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The Sound of Building Coffins
It is 1891 in New Orleans, and young Typhus Morningstar cycles under the light of the half-moon to fulfill his calling, re-birthing aborted foetuses in the fecund waters of the Mississippi River. He cannot know that nearby, events are unfolding that will change his life forever - events that were set in motion by a Vodou curse gone wrong, forty years before he was born. In the humble home of Sicilian immigrants, a one-year-old boy has been possessed by a demon. His father dead, lynched by a mob, his distraught mother at her wits' end, this baby who yesterday could only crawl and gurgle is now walking, dancing, and talking - in a voice impossibly deep. The doctor has fled, and several men of the cloth have come and gone, including Typhus' father, warned off directly by the clear voice of his Savoir. A newspaper man, shamed by the part he played in inciting the lynch mob that cost this boy his father, appalled by what he sees, goes in search of help. Seven will be persuaded, will try to help...and all seven will be profoundly affected by what takes place in that one-room house that dark night. Not all will leave alive, and all will be irrevocably changed by this demonic struggle, and by the sound of the first notes blown of a new musical jazz.
358 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
July 25, 2021
voodoo, jazz, rabid dogs, con artists, abortions turning into catfish. you know, the usual...
there are some really fantastic scenes in this book, and i already want to reread it for clarity on a couple of points, but life is short and i must move on for now. but this gets put in the mental file of "worth rereading,"so it's gotta be worth reading once for all of youse.
come to my blog!
there are some really fantastic scenes in this book, and i already want to reread it for clarity on a couple of points, but life is short and i must move on for now. but this gets put in the mental file of "worth rereading,"so it's gotta be worth reading once for all of youse.
come to my blog! 
April 29, 2022
Hearing the sound of your own soul can be an enlightening and satisfying thing, even if it isn’t a pretty sound.
This novel was recommended to me by someone whose taste generally crosses with mine. I read the first chapter before deciding I would read the book, and I found it quite strange but somehow interesting. I took a leap of faith and chose it as a group read, and I might owe my apologies to the group! I’d say it isn’t for everyone.
It isn’t the worst thing I have ever read, in fact it is oddly mesmerizing, with some eloquent prose and some catchy characters. It is also just exceedingly weird and at times totally meaningless. I believe it is meant to be about death and the cycle of life, but it is a mix of too many floating ideas for me to be sure that is even the impetus. It no doubt falls into the Magical Realism category, which isn’t a favorite for me, although the magical part of this is part of the Louisiana bayou voodoo culture and seems to blend in believably with the environment it is set in.
Imaginary people real, too—in their way. If a person can remember or even dream up a face, then the face does exist in some kinda way. Things remembered are sometimes more real than what a person holds in his hand.
At about halfway through, courtesy of a fellow reader, I found out that one of the characters, Buddy Bolden, was a real person. He is held to be the first Jazz player and made his way through the seedier side of New Orleans nightlife and brothel areas, playing his trumpet in his own distinctive style. Somehow, knowing that at least one of these characters actually existed, added some grounding and credence to the novel itself.
When we think about death and New Orleans, there is a marked difference from death in other places. The way the dead are buried, the way they are seen to their graves in parades and with music, and the always sweeping threat of the water.
In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death, a closeness, a delicate truce. They say in New Orleans death is so close that the dead are mostly buried above ground, that the dead share altitude with the living.
This book is more about the dead than the living, but then, in this book, it is sometimes hard to tell which we are dealing with. In the end, it was just a little too strange for me. 2.5 Stars, rounded down.
This novel was recommended to me by someone whose taste generally crosses with mine. I read the first chapter before deciding I would read the book, and I found it quite strange but somehow interesting. I took a leap of faith and chose it as a group read, and I might owe my apologies to the group! I’d say it isn’t for everyone.
It isn’t the worst thing I have ever read, in fact it is oddly mesmerizing, with some eloquent prose and some catchy characters. It is also just exceedingly weird and at times totally meaningless. I believe it is meant to be about death and the cycle of life, but it is a mix of too many floating ideas for me to be sure that is even the impetus. It no doubt falls into the Magical Realism category, which isn’t a favorite for me, although the magical part of this is part of the Louisiana bayou voodoo culture and seems to blend in believably with the environment it is set in.
Imaginary people real, too—in their way. If a person can remember or even dream up a face, then the face does exist in some kinda way. Things remembered are sometimes more real than what a person holds in his hand.
At about halfway through, courtesy of a fellow reader, I found out that one of the characters, Buddy Bolden, was a real person. He is held to be the first Jazz player and made his way through the seedier side of New Orleans nightlife and brothel areas, playing his trumpet in his own distinctive style. Somehow, knowing that at least one of these characters actually existed, added some grounding and credence to the novel itself.
When we think about death and New Orleans, there is a marked difference from death in other places. The way the dead are buried, the way they are seen to their graves in parades and with music, and the always sweeping threat of the water.
In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death, a closeness, a delicate truce. They say in New Orleans death is so close that the dead are mostly buried above ground, that the dead share altitude with the living.
This book is more about the dead than the living, but then, in this book, it is sometimes hard to tell which we are dealing with. In the end, it was just a little too strange for me. 2.5 Stars, rounded down.
April 29, 2022
I had high hopes in the beginning of this book. The first 80 pages or so were beautifully written but then just......went in a lot of strange directions, none of which appealed to me. I admit to speed reading the last 50%. It did have a very authentic New Orleans/mysticism/voodoo vibe, but the author just couldn't pull it off. I will say that chapter 14 was pretty incredible.
May 14, 2022
DNFing this one now at 20% before I get too far to turn back. I don't get along with magical realism and this one is teetering on the way too strange, odd, weird side for me. I was having a "what is going on here?" reaction so far and not feeling great about what I was reading. I can read dark and gritty, don't get me wrong, but something about this one just went further than I want to go.
February 10, 2009
I've just finished Book 1, and thus far it is amazing. Wildly inventive, richly poetic, and utterly fascinating. I am resisting the compulsion to gulp it down quickly, because I know I will be heartbroken when there are no pages left to turn.
***
Having completed the book, I can say that it does not disappoint. It remains tragic, hope-filled, magical, and rich as New Orleans itself. I am looking forward to the author's next work.
***
Having completed the book, I can say that it does not disappoint. It remains tragic, hope-filled, magical, and rich as New Orleans itself. I am looking forward to the author's next work.
April 6, 2025
Such a wonderfully strange book that touches on grief, and the past. Magical Realism throughout. Beautiful prose. New Orleans. So glad I found this book as it's one that is rarely mentioned. I love finding hidden gems like this.
September 10, 2011
3.5 Stars
This is an extremely hard to classify book. It is a combination of a horror novel, a historical fiction novel, a surreal fantasy, and a character study. While there is a great deal to enjoy about this unusual read, it is not an easy ride.
One thing that really worked well was the overall dark and dirty 1800's New Orleans feel that permeates through out this book. Maestros has created the feel of New Orleans down to the finest detail. The book feels like it is straight out of the old bayou and makes you want to take in more. The scenery, the street shops, the transportation, and even the way the people spoke, their diction all oozed this great time period. In this sense the book really plays out mostly a historical fiction time piece.
The book also excels on it's characterizations. Our protagonists are real, three dimensional, and very unique. Take their names for example: Typhus, Malaria, Cholera, Diphtheria and Dropsy, children named after diseases to show the glory of god. Others were also interesting: Reverend Noonday Morningstar, Marcus Nobody Special and even the boogeyman named Coco Robicheaux. Typhus, our main protagonist grows up to be a man of conviction from the young boy that the story first centers on. I really enjoyed much of the cast and could actually picture what they would look like, sound like, and even smell like. These are not cardboard cutouts.
The major problem I had with this book is it's inconsistencies in the stories that were told as backstory. Some, were very good and fit with the pacing of the novel. Others were very slow, offbeat, and did not fit in well with the main story line. Disjointed is the word that comes to mind as I progressed through this somewhat difficult read.
Overall, this book is definitely worth a read if you are willing to put some effort into it. Maistros reminds me a bit of Murakami, and that is a really huge compliment. Overall a fun read.
June 15, 2021
He knew it was only the sound of concerned fathers and husbands nailing boards over glass windowpanes, but to his tormented imagination it was the sound of building coffins. (p.318)
The first 78 pages of Louis Maistros' The Sound of Building Coffins blew me away. Maistros' writing is very poetic and beautiful and we are introduced to a wild cast of fascinating people.
I thought this book would become a new favorite.
I was wrong.
This is the story of Noonday Morningstar and his children, all named after diseases: Typhus, Malaria, Diptheria, and Dropsy. Noonday is a man of the cloth who is called upon to save the bastard baby of a murdered Sicilian immigrant from a demon. The story here is weird and batshit crazy in the best of ways.
The first 78 pages of The Sound of Building Coffins details what happened that fateful night when the Morningstars and those who's fates were tied to theirs face off against the demon inside the baby. It was intense and interesting and unsettling. I loved it!
There is a lovely magical realism aspect to this book that was really cool, but criminally underused and far too loosely explained. The book opens with Typhys, the youngest Morningstar and primary protagonist of the book, as he takes an aborted fetus to the river and turns it into a fish. But don't get excited, these magical powers only seem to impact a side character or two and have no significant meaninful impact on the narrative as a whole.
So after a weird, yet charming and fascinating opening, The Sound of Building Coffins take a turn for the worst by doing my least favorite thing to happen in books ever: it jumps ahead 15-years.
I almost always HATE time jumps in books (looking at you Swan Song). In this book, I felt like I was just getting to know Noonday, his children, and the rest of the cast. I liked where things were going and who was getting them there. I wanted to see how all these interesting people dealt with the aftermath of confronting the demon.
But we don't get to see that. Instead, we jump ahead 15 years.
My biggest problem with The Sound of Building Coffins is that, after the time jump, the narrative lost focus and became unenjoyably jumbled.
Maistros' author page states that he had no formal writing instruction and it shows. Things lose coherency very quickly, and pages 80 to 356 are weird (in a bad way), nonsensical, and have almost no satisfying conclusion. I was so disappointed!
I also think Maistros struggled with character management. There are too many characters in this book, some who disappear for a long time only to resurface once they are good and forgotten. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them except Typhus, but his character arc is more of a flat line. Also, he just stright up disappears 50 pages shy of the end of the book and never shows up again. It was painfully unsatisfying.
In fact, a lot of this book was painfully unsatisfying. There never seemed to be a point to the story after the first 78 pages other than to see where all the characters are in life 15 years later. And where they are just kinda sucks. I'm left questioning why Maistros chose to bring us to such a disappointing and uninteresting place in the narrative.
Like, why did you take me so far away from what I was enjoying, to a place that was so miserable and boring?
And I guess the point of it all was to answer questions I didn't even ask and I didn't care to know the answer to. This narrative is overwhelmingly preoccupied with who is who's father and what that means, and I just didn't care! It also shoehorns in an explanation about the demon that I felt was totally unnecessary. If I had known that this was what we were building to, I wouldn't have continued.
I think this book would have benefitted from an editor with a much heavier hand. Maistros needed help trimming some of the unnecessary bits (like the overlong and insanely detailed scene with the tat) from this book and with weaving it together more coherently.
The last think I want to mention is that this doesn't feel like a horror novel. There are virtually no horror elements except for the demon. Voodoo is mentioned, but only really in past tense and never with much detail. Some people do some bad things, but not enough for this to earn it's listing in the horror section.
The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros is incredibly creative and unique. It has one of the best set-ups of any book I've ever read, but falls apart quickly after that. I rated it 3 out of 5 stars.
You might like this if you like: time jumps, weird fiction, and loose ends.
March 23, 2009
First time novelist Louis Maistros had been a long time resident of New Orleans 8th Ward. With his debut, The Sound of Building Coffins, he proves that not everyone in the Crescent City is down and out.
The story opens in 1891. Nine-year-old Typhus Morningstar has a gift; an understanding his father calls it. He returns aborted fetuses to the river, and, with tender strokes, turns the bloody corpses into small catfish. So sets the stage for this literary fiction/magic realism tale that reads as quickly as the re-birthed catfish swims away.
Typhus’ father, Noonday Morningstar, is a Baptist voodoo African-American preacher who has named five children after diseases. To him, “the names were a tribute to God’s glory, plain and simple.”
The Sound of Building Coffins is the story of the Noonday and his children. Noonday is called to the home of a Sicilian immigrant to perform an exorcism on the man’s child. The demon is defeated but Noonday is killed and Typhus is left irrevocably changed. The children squeak by after their father’s death, getting help from the apparition whom they believe is the boogeyman from their childhood.
The story moves forward to 1906, and what happens to the Morningstar children. Daughters Malaria and Diphtheria start out as nickel hookers and work their way to high-class call girls. Daughter Cholera died in infancy, ironically from cholera. Sons Dropsy and Typhus do their best, but life isn’t kind to them.
The Sound of Building Coffins is a complex work. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if the story had reverted to 1891 or was still in 1906. That little problem aside, Maistros writes beautiful prose and tells a tale that is mesmerizing. The fact that Maistros has no formal training as a writer, makes him a writer to keep an eye on.
In addition to a wonderful written story, Maistros also has a unique website. It appears that he has obtained old photographs of New Orleans prisoners and uses their features as a basis for his characters---the website is well worth checking out.
Review originally appeared on www.armchairinterviews.com
The story opens in 1891. Nine-year-old Typhus Morningstar has a gift; an understanding his father calls it. He returns aborted fetuses to the river, and, with tender strokes, turns the bloody corpses into small catfish. So sets the stage for this literary fiction/magic realism tale that reads as quickly as the re-birthed catfish swims away.
Typhus’ father, Noonday Morningstar, is a Baptist voodoo African-American preacher who has named five children after diseases. To him, “the names were a tribute to God’s glory, plain and simple.”
The Sound of Building Coffins is the story of the Noonday and his children. Noonday is called to the home of a Sicilian immigrant to perform an exorcism on the man’s child. The demon is defeated but Noonday is killed and Typhus is left irrevocably changed. The children squeak by after their father’s death, getting help from the apparition whom they believe is the boogeyman from their childhood.
The story moves forward to 1906, and what happens to the Morningstar children. Daughters Malaria and Diphtheria start out as nickel hookers and work their way to high-class call girls. Daughter Cholera died in infancy, ironically from cholera. Sons Dropsy and Typhus do their best, but life isn’t kind to them.
The Sound of Building Coffins is a complex work. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if the story had reverted to 1891 or was still in 1906. That little problem aside, Maistros writes beautiful prose and tells a tale that is mesmerizing. The fact that Maistros has no formal training as a writer, makes him a writer to keep an eye on.
In addition to a wonderful written story, Maistros also has a unique website. It appears that he has obtained old photographs of New Orleans prisoners and uses their features as a basis for his characters---the website is well worth checking out.
Review originally appeared on www.armchairinterviews.com
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September 5, 2009This one looks really interesting; LOVE the title and the setting!
I had such high hopes for this one but just couldn't get lost in it (which was the experience I was hoping for). Excellent writing, but the odd magical elements and the jumping around in time and with characters kept me shut out of the story. I may come back to this one at another time. I may...
I had such high hopes for this one but just couldn't get lost in it (which was the experience I was hoping for). Excellent writing, but the odd magical elements and the jumping around in time and with characters kept me shut out of the story. I may come back to this one at another time. I may...
December 10, 2009
Lyrical, melodic and magical. Louis Maistros breathes life into the most amazing cast of characters since Katherine Dunn's 'Geek Love'. The opening lines play like an operatic overture setting the stage and drawing the reader into the gaslit world of Jazz and Voodoo in turn of the century New Orleans. This is a superbly crafted, eminently satisfying novel, well worth the read.
March 23, 2010
Sweet Jesus. I can't think of another book to compare this to, so I'll call it unique. Others might say deeply strange. Unsettling even. But regardless, if you love New Orleans and its history and culture you need to read it. God, evil, death, voodoo, the birth of jazz: there's so much going on here that the story overflows its banks. Hang on, ride it out and pay attention. And if you don't recognize everything that's going on here, it's worth your while to do some research, because while the lines between reality/spirit world/dream/hallucination are almost completely fluid here, much of what's in the novel is firmly rooted in New Orleans history. But don't worry--If you don't know who Buddy Bolden is, or what a flatted fifth (‘diabolus in musica’) is, this novel will show you. One character, the root doctor/abortionist, even offers an unusual theodicy that I found myself thinking about for days after. My only criticism would be that occasionally the thread of the story, and the pace, can meander a bit. But maybe that's in keeping with the nature of a city that is itself difficult to contain.
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August 11, 2011What a delightful read! Set at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries in New Orleans, Louis has done a great job conveying life in Storyville/Treme at the time. Street con artists, prostitutes, bartenders, and other denizens of backatown all come to life and are engaging. The esoteric/spiritual aspects of the story are, as one would expect, nay, as one should demand from a story about New Orleans, are fantastic. The author weaves Catholicism, black spiritualism, Voudon, and practical life in New Orleans into a tapestry that keeps you reading.
The character who keeps the plot moving is jazz musician Buddy Bolden. From his early years, learning the trumpet, to young adulthood, to his mental breakdown, the characters of the story come in and out of his life, making him what he was, for better or worse.
The slice-of-life aspects of Building Coffins are well-researched. I love the connection to the "Sicilian lynchings" of 1893, one of the more shameful incidents in New Orleans' history.
recommended!
The character who keeps the plot moving is jazz musician Buddy Bolden. From his early years, learning the trumpet, to young adulthood, to his mental breakdown, the characters of the story come in and out of his life, making him what he was, for better or worse.
The slice-of-life aspects of Building Coffins are well-researched. I love the connection to the "Sicilian lynchings" of 1893, one of the more shameful incidents in New Orleans' history.
recommended!
April 29, 2009
This just may be my new favorite book. Beautifully written and almost impossible to put down! Louis Maistros has written a totally engaging novel unlike anything else I've read...except maybe 100 Years of Solitude. I look forward to more from this writer.
February 13, 2015
The Sound of Building Coffins
Louis Maistros has written the best book that I have ever read. "Very Powerful", I'm at a loss for words. I will never forget this book. This book is one of the reasons I love my beautiful strange city of New Orleans so very much.
Louis Maistros has written the best book that I have ever read. "Very Powerful", I'm at a loss for words. I will never forget this book. This book is one of the reasons I love my beautiful strange city of New Orleans so very much.
May 27, 2009
A perfect New Orleans story. Vibrant, loud, disastrous--in turns obscene and sacred. It's like Maistros tapped directly into the soul of the city to find the characters to inhabit this book.
Currently reading
March 13, 2010I recently started reading this first novel...Strong voice. Compelling. Graceful. And creepy/weird in the best way. Stay tuned for a full review when I finish.
February 11, 2018
Since I live in New Orleans, it’s hard for me to be objective about books, movies and TV shows that are set here. In fact, I normally avoid them like the plague. It’s apparently hard to capture the essence of New Orleans without instead creating a silly exaggerated caricature of it, which drives me bonkers. Give me a cheesy detective novel set in L.A. or Miami or Boston or Timbuktu and I will gladly devour it. Give me one set in New Orleans and I’ll throw it across the room at the first mention of voodoo queens or Mardi Gras beads. When I started reading this book and saw it opened with a young mulatto boy with magical abilities and the quirky name Typhus Morningstar, (His father’s name is Reverend Noontime Morningstar, and his siblings are Malaria, Cholera, Diphtheria and Dropsy.) I thought, Oh crap. Here we go again. A few pages in, however, the story and the writing had me hooked, so I kept reading.
It’s not a cheesy detective novel, by the way. It’s more of a modern extension of New Orleans folklore and myth, weaving magical realism with historical events and figures to create an often beautiful and engaging novel with some terrifically vivid scenes. The chapters with Antonio Carolla in his jail cell, for instance, made me feel like I was there with him. And the story of the murder of police chief Hennessey and the vigilante lynchings that occurred at Orleans Parish Prison in its aftermath is one I didn’t know. So, I learned something, and enjoyed doing so. Malvina Latour, the voodoo queen in the book, was a real person as well, taking the much more famous Marie Laveau’s place after she stopped practicing. I’m not sure if I knew this or not before reading this book, but if so, I had forgotten and was glad to learn about it again. And, of course, cornetist Buddy Bolden, so essential in the early development of Jazz, is possibly my favorite New Orleans historical figure. (I took a trip to Holt Cemetery a few months back to look for his grave marker. Sadly, no one really knows where his actual grave is since he was buried as a pauper.) But, anyway, it was fun for me to see him appear as a character in this book even though he was depicted as a jerk.
Though there is a central story that flows through the book and holds it together, much of what I enjoyed were the many smaller stories and sub-plots that populated it. I liked the “love affair” between Typhus and the picture of a woman he never met and never intended to meet and the initial logic behind it. I liked the story of the Morningstar family’s mysterious benefactor leaving gifts and provisions for them at night. And though the quirky, over-the-top names of the Morningstar kids almost made me put the book down and find something else to read when I first started it, the logic behind the names was actually quite spiritual and beautiful. (I never did truly warm up to those names though.)
The sections I had the most trouble with were the more voodoo-y ones. I simply found them a bit “much.” They didn’t make me fling the book across the room, but they did cause me to put the book down for a day or two then come back to it a couple of times. And though this book does nothing but reinforce pretty much every New Orleans stereotype in existence, I did, for the most part, enjoy reading it.
It’s not a cheesy detective novel, by the way. It’s more of a modern extension of New Orleans folklore and myth, weaving magical realism with historical events and figures to create an often beautiful and engaging novel with some terrifically vivid scenes. The chapters with Antonio Carolla in his jail cell, for instance, made me feel like I was there with him. And the story of the murder of police chief Hennessey and the vigilante lynchings that occurred at Orleans Parish Prison in its aftermath is one I didn’t know. So, I learned something, and enjoyed doing so. Malvina Latour, the voodoo queen in the book, was a real person as well, taking the much more famous Marie Laveau’s place after she stopped practicing. I’m not sure if I knew this or not before reading this book, but if so, I had forgotten and was glad to learn about it again. And, of course, cornetist Buddy Bolden, so essential in the early development of Jazz, is possibly my favorite New Orleans historical figure. (I took a trip to Holt Cemetery a few months back to look for his grave marker. Sadly, no one really knows where his actual grave is since he was buried as a pauper.) But, anyway, it was fun for me to see him appear as a character in this book even though he was depicted as a jerk.
Though there is a central story that flows through the book and holds it together, much of what I enjoyed were the many smaller stories and sub-plots that populated it. I liked the “love affair” between Typhus and the picture of a woman he never met and never intended to meet and the initial logic behind it. I liked the story of the Morningstar family’s mysterious benefactor leaving gifts and provisions for them at night. And though the quirky, over-the-top names of the Morningstar kids almost made me put the book down and find something else to read when I first started it, the logic behind the names was actually quite spiritual and beautiful. (I never did truly warm up to those names though.)
The sections I had the most trouble with were the more voodoo-y ones. I simply found them a bit “much.” They didn’t make me fling the book across the room, but they did cause me to put the book down for a day or two then come back to it a couple of times. And though this book does nothing but reinforce pretty much every New Orleans stereotype in existence, I did, for the most part, enjoy reading it.
August 2, 2021
There's so much going on here that I will probably need to read the book a second time to really feel like I've got a handle on it. The combination of fantasy, horror, and historical incidents reminds me of Tim Powers, but Maistros definitely has his own voice. Very New Orleans. The story is not in strictly chronological order, but goes back and forth depending on the perspective. Revenge, betrayal, love, redemption, sacrifice, mystery and horror. Not all questions answered even at the end. The last section of the book ties up some (but not all) lose ends in a combination of interviews, journal entries, and news articles from 1906 to 1931. Not too enthused about the meta "character talking to the reader" bits. 4 stars.
November 15, 2019
I'm places this story is surreal, in places it is bizarre and in others it is beautiful.
Because of that it's quite hard to get a handle on. New Orleans in the late 1800's is fascinating, dark, seedy and disturbing and is a hell of a backdrop for the story.
The voodoo aspect is always there and is a thread running through the city and the story.
I enjoyed this without ever fully coming to grips with it!
Because of that it's quite hard to get a handle on. New Orleans in the late 1800's is fascinating, dark, seedy and disturbing and is a hell of a backdrop for the story.
The voodoo aspect is always there and is a thread running through the city and the story.
I enjoyed this without ever fully coming to grips with it!
June 7, 2022
A very unusual novel. Parts I liked, and parts I did not.
I'll just leave it at that.
If you are into voodoo and magical realism, it might be your cup of tea, but it does
go in many directions.
I'll just leave it at that.
If you are into voodoo and magical realism, it might be your cup of tea, but it does
go in many directions.
June 9, 2014
This is a very unique and powerful novel, set in New Orleans starting in the late 1800's. The main characters are the members of the Morningstar family, mixed-race poor people living on the wrong side of the tracks. Their hardscrabble existence is exacerbated by the invisible burdens imposed by racism. Success is elusive, and what passes for success is not defined by standards set out in Harlequin Romance novels. Girls are drawn into prostitution, men are gamblers, grifters, or grave diggers. There's a nasty jailhouse event, where some whites are acquitted, only to be pulled from their cells by a rioting mob and lynched. Ties to the paternity of some of the mulattos are established. A white newspaper editor, whose story catalyzed the riot, seeks redemption. Voodoo and black magic are quasi-religious threads that both empower and burden the characters. Some see life as merely a journey whose pain is inevitable, a step towards the freedom of death. Back-alley abortions, gambling con schemes, potter's field burials, and folk remedy drugs marble the lives of the afflicted.....and nobody gets away unafflicted. When you read the last page, you realize that your perspective on life, values, and redemption may never be the same again. I felt drawn to select this book as a premium from Amazon.com for being a good online customer, but I was not required to write this review, nor would I ever pump up a novel's merits for pecuniary gain. I simply liked this haunting tale, set in The Big Easy, but not cut from the same cloth as most competitors.
March 9, 2009
delightfully surreal and engrossing turn-of-the-century tale set in old new orleans-historically sound and culturally true to the roots and lore of new orleans, a very surprising and heartbreaking tale of loss and renewal. it is probably safe to say that any new orleans tale involving voodoo(vodou in this case) can border on cliche at best, but in the context of coffins, it is merely a small but significant means to an end. the morningstar family and their various friends, neighbors and associates are all vividly developed characters without many pages of description being devoted to the cause. maistros use of new orleans history, especially with regard to the infamous crescent city lynchings in the late 1800s, is powerfully used to help set the stage for many events in the story. even more impressively, maistros has been able to fuse together so many elements that comprise new orleans lore and history into a sturdy and richly designed tapestry, woven with great care and to great literary effect. although a supernatural element permeates coffins, it is the blatant humanity of the core characters which tells the true tale here, and one feels all the more special for having read it.
*note- dont be fooled into thinking this book even resembles confederacy of dunces, despite the helpfully misleading quote on the jacket. two very different paths to a literary grail, both awesome.
*note- dont be fooled into thinking this book even resembles confederacy of dunces, despite the helpfully misleading quote on the jacket. two very different paths to a literary grail, both awesome.
August 11, 2021
I really wanted to love this, but I just couldn't. I appreciate the author's style, but the story never came together. Several "conclusions" came out of left field entirely and other portions were never particularly tied up.
There were also a couple incidents of murderous violence against women that were basically written off as "well, she was the love of my life, it was a bad moment" and then the characters who committed the crimes are written as pretty okay people from there. That's something I tend to look the other way on when it's a book written 50+ years ago, but this one was not.
There are better books about New Orleans, and better examples of magical realism. I wouldn't say this is a must read.
There were also a couple incidents of murderous violence against women that were basically written off as "well, she was the love of my life, it was a bad moment" and then the characters who committed the crimes are written as pretty okay people from there. That's something I tend to look the other way on when it's a book written 50+ years ago, but this one was not.
There are better books about New Orleans, and better examples of magical realism. I wouldn't say this is a must read.
August 14, 2013
From the opening chapter I knew this was a book that I'd need to take my time with. Every character is burdened with a weight they never asked for. Even the city is bloated with the dead. Some of the imagery is unsettling, but I found the less incredible the fiction, the more uncomfortable I felt. The only refuge in the book is found in the magical elements. The human drama was brutal. This is not a book for everyone. It wraps a little too tidily. It tries a little hard to be shocking. But I've never read another book like it. I felt, reading this book, like I have felt with at most a dozen other books in my life --- like I was reading something wholly new.
November 16, 2014
It is hard to describe this book. It is a story of voodoo and spirits and peoples lives in early New Orleans, around the turn of the 20th century.
As a reader I was drawn into the story, deeply. I felt involved; the author did a remarkable job describing the location and characters. I could *feel* the atmosphere.
Very well written, in an original voice. Recommended.
As a reader I was drawn into the story, deeply. I felt involved; the author did a remarkable job describing the location and characters. I could *feel* the atmosphere.
Very well written, in an original voice. Recommended.
January 30, 2016
Atmospheric. Bizarre and kinda freaky, but it takes place in late 19th Century New Orleans, so I expected nothing less. Voodoo, magical realism, even a little humor sprinkled in here and there, with characters that I really liked. I'm glad I finally read this - it's been on my TBR pile for years.
March 26, 2009
Once again another book that I really wanted to read, but couldn't get past the half way point.
May 18, 2009
I thought this books sounded neat after I read another review of it, but I just couldn't finish it. I found it cheesy and didn't care about any of the characters.
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