Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Death Wishing
by
Laura Ellen Scott (Goodreads Author)
This is a terrific story, beautifully written, and completely enthralling.”Dorothy Allison
I admire the sentences, the clarity of mind, and characters who catch and keep our attention. Bob Dylan sings about a journey all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem ’ as way of apotheizing, scrutinizing, and recognizing the world we live in. Laura Scott is on the way.”Alan Che
...morePaperback, 280 pages
Published
October 11th 2011
by Ig Publishing
(first published October 1st 2011)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
316)
About a third of the way through my initial reading of Laura Ellen Scott’s Death Wishing, I realized I was probably the wrong person to be reviewing it. Or saying it another way, that I or people like me are not the likely audience for the novel.
It happens occasionally (unavoidably) that a reviewer gets novels that aren’t necessarily bad, that execute more or less what the author intended, but which, for whatever reason, are simply not in the reviewer’s wheelhouse or on his/her wavelength or wh...more
This is not something I'd normally come across, but my daughter Ginger recommended it and I'm very glad she did. Death Wishing is urban fantasy, but not of the current vampires and werewolves ilk. It's urban in the sense that, like Ellen Datlow's Naked City anthology, the setting (post-Katrina New Orleans) is absolutely essential to the plot - the story just couldn't happen anywhere else. It's fantasy, but with only one fantastical element - that a person's dying wishes can come true. But not ev...more
The premise of this deeply weird novel is that the final wishes of the dying sometimes come true. The book delivers this to the reader somewhat unremarkably – the concept is de facto to the narrator, Victor, and the question of whether or not you will accept it is entirely moot. You are dropped in the deep end to some extent. This is a challenging novel for the reader. I can normally tear through 300 pages in three and a half to four hours; this book took me the better part of a week, at only 28...more
2 likes · like · see review
What do you get if you take someone that is very good at creating a real person, with all of that persons strengths and weakness, add a city that inspires dreamers and throw in one (just one mind you) improbable thing. You get this. A book that reads like straight fiction but has enough fantasy to tantalize. Then you take the one thing and realistically show how it would affect the actions and thinking of ordinary people. The protagonist is not a hero and never aspired to be a hero. He is just a...more
What would you wish for a world without you? There's no denying the world has gotten strange. In the middle of New Orleans, Victor Swaim is just trying to live his life.
Victor is an extremely distinctive and enjoyable narrator with a great, unique voice. He comes alive through Scott’s writing, a complex mixture of goodness and hopelessness and humor that makes him the sort of person you could imagine having a beer with. Victor’s narration is snappy and precise, the dialogue smart but totally bel...more
Victor is an extremely distinctive and enjoyable narrator with a great, unique voice. He comes alive through Scott’s writing, a complex mixture of goodness and hopelessness and humor that makes him the sort of person you could imagine having a beer with. Victor’s narration is snappy and precise, the dialogue smart but totally bel...more
In Laura Ellen Scott’s smart and quirky debut novel Death Wishing, the last muttered desires of some, though not all, are coming to pass. Cats are wished away along with cancer, Elvis comes back from the dead (young Elvis, thankfully) and orange clouds fill the sky. Set in the steamy streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, the story centers around a father and son, Vic and Val, as they vie for the affections of a neighbor and struggle to adapt to the precariousness of the world in which they live....more
In many ways, this book reminds me my various trips to New Orleans and the French Quarter. At first, everything is coherent, even in its American exoticness. Eventually, though, things get looser looser as narratives, internal and otherwise, blend, merge, and fade. By the time it is over, and you are drunk on sugar and booze in your garish hotel room, you know something fun happened but that it spiraled indecently out of control, ultimately culminating in something haphazard and far less satisfy...more
My brief response to Laura Ellen Scott’s fantastical debut novel, Death Wishing, is live at PANK: http://www.pankmagazine.com/pankblog/...
The post also includes an exciting FREE FOUR BOOK Giveaway. All you have to do is share your deepest wish. Imagine, as in Death Wishing, your dying wish could come true. What would you wish for? Tell us here in the comments at PANK and you could win the following books:
Death Wishing (signed), novel by Laura Ellen Scott
The Curfew, novel by Jesse Ball
Echolocatio...more
The post also includes an exciting FREE FOUR BOOK Giveaway. All you have to do is share your deepest wish. Imagine, as in Death Wishing, your dying wish could come true. What would you wish for? Tell us here in the comments at PANK and you could win the following books:
Death Wishing (signed), novel by Laura Ellen Scott
The Curfew, novel by Jesse Ball
Echolocatio...more
This is a beautiful book that captures the feeling of New Orleans. I recommend it to anyone who's spent even a short visit in New Orleans, and any one who hasn't but imagined it.
My thought as I read was that a lot of time when you read fantasy or science fiction or anything with a nifty premise, the story exists for the premise, and the characters are there to serve the premise. Death Wishing is about the characters. I love that.
This is dreamy and surrealistic. And it's even funny.
My thought as I read was that a lot of time when you read fantasy or science fiction or anything with a nifty premise, the story exists for the premise, and the characters are there to serve the premise. Death Wishing is about the characters. I love that.
This is dreamy and surrealistic. And it's even funny.
Not what I expected but enjoyed every minute of it. Missed my subway stop twice!
I laughed from start to finish. Haven't a clue what it was all about, but it was one crazy read. New Orleans is the perfect scene for this piece of voodoo, who do, and fancy. Surely a head tripper, if nothing else.
I'm going to steal Dorothy Allison's word, up above: this book is enthralling. The writing is amazing. The story, weird, wild, original. So good. I recommend it highly.
Forgot I could review my own dang book!
Release date moved up to ROCKtober 1!
Release date moved up to ROCKtober 1!
Oct 02, 2011
Lori
marked it as to-read
arc from publisher / signed paperback from author
Apr 17, 2013
Paul M.
marked it as to-read
Mar 16, 2013
Amanda Aziyade
marked it as to-read
Feb 19, 2013
Amanda
marked it as to-read
Feb 14, 2013
Clio
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Oct 19, 2011 09:00am