‘Walker Percy once wrote that ‘the next Southern literary revival will be led by a Jewish mother, which is to say, a shrewd self-possessed woman with a sharp eye and a cunning retentive mind who sees the small triumphs and tragedies around her and has her own secret method of rendering it, with an art all her own.’ And that is totally Patty Friedmann.’ —Anne Gisleson, author of The Futilitarians
Over the course of her novel-writing career, New Orleans writer Patty Friedmann also has written short stories that resonate with her darkly comic voice. This collection offers the best—some old, some new, some before Katrina, a few written after she unscrambled her mind from not evacuating for the storm. All deal, in one way or another, with the weighty loneliness of urban living.
What the reader finds here are the New Orleans characters only locals recognize. Patty doesn’t venture much into the French Quarter; she doesn’t do public drunkenness; she certainly never secondlines. Instead she shares what might be her most memorable character, Jerusha Bailey, a mean old white woman who loses her husband’s ashes in a McDonald’s parking lot. And Darby, the smart girl who lives in a New Orleans gingerbread house but is tormented by her dumb brick-house-dwelling private school classmates—with tragic consequences.
Patty takes us back to the time when Mr. Bingle was hoisted every Christmas onto the front of Maison Blanche on Canal Street in New Orleans. But she also brings young cynics into the flooded city after the storm. We meet lonely men and controlling women, yet we smile crookedly.
‘Many of Friedmann’s stories contain an admixture of quirkiness, with elements of dark humor. Most of the stories contain startling surprise endings that this reviewer hesitates to explain, lest the surprise be ruined. These stories are truly enjoyable—New Orleans Review of Books
About the Author
Patty Friedmann is a New Orleans novelist and short story writer whose hallmark is dark humor. Her novels include Eleanor Rushing, Secondhand Smoke, and Too Jewish, and she has been selected for Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers, Borders Original Voices, and BookSense 76 among other honors and awards.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Over the course of her novel-writing career, New Orleans writer Patty Friedmann also has written short stories that resonate with her darkly comic voice. This collection offers the best—some old, some new, some before Katrina, a few written after she unscrambled her mind from not evacuating for the storm. All deal, in one way or another, with the weighty loneliness of urban living.
What the reader finds here are the New Orleans characters only locals recognize. Patty doesn’t venture much into the French Quarter; she doesn’t do public drunkenness; she certainly never secondlines. Instead she shares what might be her most memorable character, Jerusha Bailey, a mean old white woman who loses her husband’s ashes in a McDonald’s parking lot. And Darby, the smart girl who lives in a New Orleans gingerbread house but is tormented by her dumb brick-house-dwelling private school classmates—with tragic consequences.
Patty takes us back to the time when Mr. Bingle was hoisted every Christmas onto the front of Maison Blanche on Canal Street in New Orleans. But she also brings young cynics into the flooded city after the storm. We meet lonely men and controlling women, yet we smile crookedly.
‘Many of Friedmann’s stories contain an admixture of quirkiness, with elements of dark humor. Most of the stories contain startling surprise endings that this reviewer hesitates to explain, lest the surprise be ruined. These stories are truly enjoyable—New Orleans Review of Books
About the Author
Patty Friedmann is a New Orleans novelist and short story writer whose hallmark is dark humor. Her novels include Eleanor Rushing, Secondhand Smoke, and Too Jewish, and she has been selected for Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers, Borders Original Voices, and BookSense 76 among other honors and awards.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Patty Friedmann's Where Do They All Come From?