Called back to a past she hoped she erased, Tallulah Mae James sets her steering to the swelter of southernmost mud when news hits her of her brother’s charge of murder.
Coming from a family tightly knit, due to its loose ends, begins on a pecan plantation. The father is an undiagnosed manic-depressant professor, the mother a flighty, free-spirited activist, and their combination tends to erupt more than teenage acne. Griffin, the eldest, tries to shield Tallulah “Lulie” from the ugliness around them as she then does the twins after her. One being Walden, who after her own flight, needs that protection again.
Shades of “The Glass Castle” dance around the tumultuous childhood where little nurturing and plenty neglect fill their lives more than their bellies.
A grandmother as steeped in southern propriety as she is in mayhaw jam is the stalwart of sanity, albeit stoic in keeping indiscretions in the closet.
Descriptively set in New Orleans, where “In defiance of appearing weak and ordinary, even the wisteria refuses to wilt” and Mississippi. Tallulah faces ghosts of love and resentment with the unending need to grovel for expertise and compassion in forging her own way through the sweltering angst of her family.
Her return, after nine years, brings this danse macabre to its crescendo, reuniting animosity with misguided reason and more of the same where tongues never stop wagging.
It’s when Tallulah heeds her grandmother’s old family friend’s advice of “You just ask her why she keeps paintin’ a storefront that got no goods to sell. No need anymore. The shelves been stripped bare.” that festering wounds get the airing needed to heal. To basically abate appearances and pride and release. The la douleur exquise for them is eased in a Dorothy Gale vein. There really is no place like home.
Coming from a family tightly knit, due to its loose ends, begins on a pecan plantation. The father is an undiagnosed manic-depressant professor, the mother a flighty, free-spirited activist, and their combination tends to erupt more than teenage acne. Griffin, the eldest, tries to shield Tallulah “Lulie” from the ugliness around them as she then does the twins after her. One being Walden, who after her own flight, needs that protection again.
Shades of “The Glass Castle” dance around the tumultuous childhood where little nurturing and plenty neglect fill their lives more than their bellies.
A grandmother as steeped in southern propriety as she is in mayhaw jam is the stalwart of sanity, albeit stoic in keeping indiscretions in the closet.
Descriptively set in New Orleans, where “In defiance of appearing weak and ordinary, even the wisteria refuses to wilt” and Mississippi. Tallulah faces ghosts of love and resentment with the unending need to grovel for expertise and compassion in forging her own way through the sweltering angst of her family.
Her return, after nine years, brings this danse macabre to its crescendo, reuniting animosity with misguided reason and more of the same where tongues never stop wagging.
It’s when Tallulah heeds her grandmother’s old family friend’s advice of “You just ask her why she keeps paintin’ a storefront that got no goods to sell. No need anymore. The shelves been stripped bare.” that festering wounds get the airing needed to heal. To basically abate appearances and pride and release. The la douleur exquise for them is eased in a Dorothy Gale vein. There really is no place like home.