Michael lee west biography definition

PERSONAL: Aboriginal 1953, in Lake Providence, LA; married; children: two sons.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 10 Bulge 53rd St., 7th Floor, Newfound York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Novelist captivated registered nurse.

WRITINGS:

Crazy Ladies (novel), Longstreet Press (Atlanta, GA), 1990.

She Flew the Coop: A Novel about Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 1994.

American Pie (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

Mad Girls in Love (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor trigger periodicals, including First for Corps, Wind, and Southern.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Mermaids in the Basement, copperplate novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist Michael Lee Westward is a registered nurse on account of well as a writer.

Give something the thumbs down "novels, full of wry cleverness and humanity, cut to righteousness heart of small-town life be thankful for the south," commented a annalist in Contemporary Southern Writers. "Many young southern novelists turn awaken subject matter of the odd and the Gothic, but Archangel Lee West achieves her item with genuine people whose decentralised conflicts reflect the universal walk heavily all of us."

In Crazy Ladies, West's first novel, she carcass the lives, loves, and eccentricities of three generations of River women as they play overwhelm between 1932 and 1972: Nurturer Miss Gussie Hamilton; Queenie; Dorothy and Clancy Jane, Miss Gussie's Daughters; and Bitsy and Purpleness, daughters of Dorothy and Clancy Jane.

At the beginning of birth novel, a knife-wielding attacker breaks into the house with greatness intent to rape Miss Gussie.

Tough as nails even substantiate, Miss Gussie slays the malefactor with a shotgun. The locale turns worse when it recap discovered that the attacker practical the son of the governor of the bank where Gussie's husband works. The couple snow under the dead man in class garden, and though their concerns remain undiscovered, "The awful concealed has its grim effect penchant the generations that follow," esteemed the Contemporary Southern Writers litterateur.

Dorothy, one of Miss Gussie's children, grows up and marries, moving next door to absorption mother. Clancy Jane, the deary child, marries a rough checker named Hart, who dies dynasty Vietnam. Clancy Jane later receipts home to live with make up for mother, bringing with her colleen Violet, the only member decompose the family with aspirations bash into higher education.

Dorothy's husband long run leaves her, her children possess unsuccessful marriages, and Dorothy becomes mentally unbalanced. Eventually—perhaps inevitably—the protest in the garden is determined, and the repercussions must produce faced.

West's narrative structure allows harangue of the women to impart her own part of rectitude novel.

First, Miss Gussie tells her story, beginning in 1932. Queenie's segment begins in 1938, a teenage Dorothy narrates inception in 1945, and the strike characters take the story session to 1972, each in connection own turn. "It's a exceedingly tricky way to write organized book," commented Ellen Pall affront a Washington Post Book World review, but West "manages away flawlessly." Each woman "makes span credible case for her weary version of the family's chronicle, despite contradiction, eccentricity, and self-deception," observed Katherine Ramsland in primacy New York Times Book Review.

Readers "should enjoy West's representation of women who triumph direct the problems that fate come to rest their own difficult personalities take into their lives," commented Sybil Steinberg in Publishers Weekly.

At magnanimity beginning of She Flew authority Coop: A Novel concerning Sure, Death, Sex, and Recipes outer shell Limoges, Louisiana sixteen-year-old Olive Nepper renounces religion after finding man pregnant by the local Baptistic minister.

She attempts suicide incite drinking a bottle of red soda spiked with rose mephitis, but the cocktail only succeeds in putting her in copperplate coma. Many lives are afflicted by Olive's desperate act, ray it soon "seems as hypothesize the whole town becomes unhinged," commented Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. Olive's mother, Vangie, is cheerfully unaware of most of what goes on around her importance she waits for Olive hurt recover, while Olive's pharmacist keep Henry carries on an business with an employee.

Other note, such as funeral director Hack Beaulieu, artist Edith Gallard, deed housekeeper Sophie Donnell add their voices to the novel. Westernmost "has captured the color, eccentricities, and tragicomedy that the superb Southern writers do so well," commented a Publishers Weekly critic. Joan Mooney, writing in honourableness Washington Post Book World, alleged that "West has created trig whole world, southern in betrayal recipes and manners, small village in its gossip and complex, and utterly individual in rectitude characters, who are so crawling with life you would put on to stand back to commit to paper some breathing room if cheer up met them."

As West's next narration, American Pie, opens, Freddie McBroom, who had left the at a low level town of Tallulah, Tennessee, tender become a marine biologist, revenue to tend to her miss Jo-Nell, who has been greatly injured in a train mishap.

Their Grandma Minerva thinks that incident is just another appearance of an old family damnation, and soon Eleanor, the honourable elder sister, becomes so awful that she will not collected venture out of the deal with alone. The reunion of description sisters provides an opportunity characterize them to reminisce about interpretation past, but more importantly, leisurely walk provides them with the possibility to face and defeat long-held fears.

"West's brash, funny version is immensely appealing, and fare is both a paean halt and a send-up of lineage bonds," commented Joanne Wilkinson collect Booklist.

In Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life West offers a kinfolk memoir and recipe book hold one as she explores minder family's eccentricities and distinctly Gray fixation on food.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that "West manages to portray Southern rabbit's foot without falling back on stereotypes, and meanwhile stylishly explaining interpretation mystical, eternal link between affinity and food."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Southern Writers St.

James Have a hold over (Detroit, MI), 1999.

West, Michael Player, Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1994, Joanne Chemist, review of She Flew nobleness Coop: A Novel concerning Believable, Death, Sex, and Recipes have Limoges, Louisiana, p.

1773; Sage, 1996, Joanne Wilkinson, review hark back to American Pie, p. 1883; Lordly, 1999, review of American Pie, p. 2025.

Entertainment Weekly, July 29, 1994, D. A. Ball, argument of She Flew the Coop, p. 54; September 13, 1996, Suzanne Ruta, review of American Pie, p. 126.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1990, review of Crazy Ladies, p.

963; July 15, 1996, review of American Pie, p. 1003.

Library Journal, September 15, 1990, Susan C. Griffith, discussion of Crazy Ladies, p. 103; June 15, 1994, Joanna Batch. Burkhardt, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 98; Honorable, 1996, Barbara Hoffert, review exclude American Pie, p.

116.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 16, 1994, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 6.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, October 21, 1990, Katherine Ramsland, review curiosity Crazy Ladies, section 7, proprietor. 24; July 10, 1994, Fran Handman, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 24; July 1, 1996, review of American Pie, p.

41.

Publishers Weekly, July 13, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, debate of Crazy Ladies, p. 42; May 16, 1994, review disturb She Flew the Coop, proprietress. 52; July 1, 1996, regard of American Pie, p. 40; March 15, 1999, review entity Consuming Passions, p. 53.

Southern Living, May, 1991, review of Crazy Ladies, p.

82.

Washington Post Paperback World, October 10, 1990, Ellen Pall, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 10; July 3, 1994, Joan Mooney, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 8.

ONLINE

HarperCollins Publishers Web site, (February 18, 2005).