[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s Lee is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Janet Ingraham for Library Journal, 15 September 1991. I copied the text from Amazon and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]
Rancorous, arrogant septuagenarian Lee, the eponymous nonhero of Perdue’s terse first novel, wanders a bleak mental region where the boundary between reality and delusion is unmarked. He is followed doggedly by a narrator who declines to provide guideposts. Upon returning to Alabama after a 60-year absence, Lee devoted himself to baleful observation, antisocial gestures, and fantasies of using his heavy cane as a deadly weapon. Obsessed with his books, classic and obscure, Lee derives his contempt for people from his conviction of their ignorance and incapacity for thought. As he lurches toward completion, Lee regularly conjures the multiform spirit of his deceased wife, Judy, his sole companion. Hallucinatory and sordid, this discomforting story holds limited appeal. Consider where nontraditional fiction is popular. — Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio.
No comments:
Post a Comment