Rating: 
Summary: Limoges is where gossip rules
Review: She Flew the Coop is the first book I have read written by Michael Lee West and I enjoyed it so much that I'm planning on reading American Pie. The story was able to captivate me even though I really didn't like most of the characters in this book. My favorite character was a little girl named Billie, who had a terrible domestic life but seemed to overcome this obstacle and represented hope for the citizens of this town. Limoges Louisiana is a town where gossip rules and the wholesome life is anything but wholesome. Adultery, wife beating and even the town's minister is raping young girls are some of the problems this town faces but its the gossip that I consider its doom. There is one part where the author compares gossip to a disease spreading that I thought was brilliant. This book was captivating and I enjoyed reading this one even though I couldn't like more than two or three character, but the story is what we will keep you interested. The recipes sounded good and I loved the way the author inserted them into the book as if they were part of the story. I would recommend reading She Flew The Coop.
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Summary: Mercy!!!!
Review: This book has all the things found in a small southern town, sex, spousal abuse, gossip, town tramp etc. The graphic sex scene was a bit much for me, but the story overall was great. I grew up in the area of the fictional town of Limoges & found myself wishing it were a real town. If you like southern lit. this one is a winner.
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Summary: Raunchy read with almost too real scenes
Review: This is the second Michael Lee West novel I have read this week. I liked "Crazy Ladies" a lot, but this volume, despite its graphic scenes of sex and violence is an artful piece of writing. There is a lot of talent in West's prose, as her characters seem larger than life, though real. And, again, this is a novel about strong women and their men, of whom there are MANY feet of clay. The Nepper family, with Vangie, Henry, and Olive, are the core of the book. Vangie is a poignant woman whose naivete shields her from seeing the truth about her daughter and her husband, but who finally flies the coop and demonstrates her strength when she has had enough. It is Vangie who keeps the home fires burning, and her flower gardens growing, who assumes her pharmacist husband is the faithful, truthful man she believes she married. Together Vangie and Henry face the suicidal poisoning of their only child. Apart, when Henry has violated all the principles of his wedding vows by falling in total lust with DeeDee Robichaux, each meets his own destiny. The town's solidarity around the lone Baptist church sets up the downfall of the hypocritical church leader, the young, and dashing bachelor preacher, Reverend T. C. Kirby, whose personal secrets lurk in the background, as he seduces women of all ages to suit his own devilish whims. The right and wrong social sides of town are made clear, with the tragic Robichaux family living among the outcasts of Hayes Street, and the Neppers, Galliards, Hoopers, and LeGettes residing as neighbors on Cypress Street across from the oxbow of water known as Lake Limoges. In the fictional Limoges, all streets are either named for U. S. Presidents or for flowers and trees. Linking all the upper and lower class families together are the children, especially red-haired Billie Robichaux, the enterprising daughter of DeeDee and her miserable Korean War veteran Reney, now a wheel-chair bound paraplegic. DeeDee's Aunt Butter is their landlord. Butter, owner of a town eatery, provides a home for the ingrates that are DeeDee and Reney. She sacrifices her home's sanctity for the drunken destruction of Reney who feeds off the hatred he has for DeeDee, his whoring wife. Butter is the refuge that Billie deserves, however. And Billie, in her efforts to survive her poverty and the dysfunction of her parents, finds ways to work for the well-off ladies of Cypress street. Knitting the families of Cypress together is Sophie Donnell, the black maid to Vangie Nepper, Waldean LeGette, Harriet Hooper, and Edith Galliard. Sophie is the ultimate survivor, as she is the brutally abused wife of Burr, a wife-beater any reader will love to hate. As a day maid and cook, Sophie, knows the business of all the households, and they in turn wonder why she continues to take Burr's abuse, even sheltering her whenever they can. She is one of the noble characters of the novel. Israel, the black mortician's helper at Beaulieu's is another noble character. As an old bachelor, he does his work taking in the dead to prepare for burial, and lives a solitary life of independent respectability. There is rich humor in this book, some of it laugh out loud in nature, a great comic relief to the rougher scenes. An especially endearing comic narrative comes from the owner of the town's funeral home, Cab Beaulieu, as he explains his sexual history. Even more delightful is his encounter with Vangie's sister-in-law, and his neighbor, the widowed older woman, Edith Galliard. His entanglement with this widow is one he cannot escape. Each part of this novel is laced with the real heart of life in northeastern Louisiana in 1952, the recipes that feed the very soul of the populace. Those recipes reveal the joy of food, the importance of its sustenance in a story that is rich and calorie laden. Third person chapters are interspersed with first person narratives of the many characters. In these narratives, West executes exceptional skill. The voice and dialect of each person according to their race, class, age, is right on the mark. One feels like they have lived four months of 1952 in Limoges, learning its most human secrets, good and evil. These people of West's fiction are hauntingly real, just like the recipes that they share.
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Summary: Entertaining fiction at its best!
Review: Although this book takes place in small town Limoges, Louisiana the characters could be from any location. Ms West takes you inside the the heads of several of the locals of Limoges. I found the book hard to put down; and during the course of the day when I wasn't reading it I wondered what was going to happen to Olive the girl in a coma pregnant by the local Baptist preacher, Harriet the town gossip, DeeDee the oversexed counter girl at the drugstore and her sweet child Billie, Sophie the maid and her abusive husband Burr and of course Vangie--Olive's mother, and Henry Olive's daddy the druggist. Thanks Ms West for providing me with some great entertainment---I loved Limoges!
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Summary: Poitnant and funny - with recipes!
Review: Teenager Olive Nepper, pregnant and spurned by the local preacher, drinks poison "just to show him," and as she lies dying and comatose in the hospital, the folks of Limoges, Louisiana, tell Olive's story as well as their own and that of the little deep-Southern town. Lives change, recipes are shared, life goes on, romances wax and wane - and Olive slumbers on...
Michael West and his writing are both treasures.
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Summary: Funny but Very Spicy
Review: This book has lots of color to the characters, which is what makes it interesting.I found them all interesting and funny. It can be difficult keeping up with each character the way the book shifts from one to the next. For me, the book was a little too racy with all the graphic sexual contents. The first few chapters were really good, but, afterward it seemed the book focused on almost all the characters engaging in sex. What turned me off was the in depth, graphic details of the sex the author gave--it seemed she went way overboard in adding that. The book would have been excellent without all that. The characters had plenty of personality, wit and charm that could have been further capitalized on rather than downplaying it by bringing sex into it.
If all of this author's books center around sex, it is not what I am looking for to read.
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Summary: Great stuff -- there is no Ya-Ya sisterhood in Limoges
Review: There is no sisterhood, period. The story is told by the aspects of several different residents of the town of Limoges (pop. 905), mostly women but a few men too. The story starts with 16-year-old Olive Nepper, upon discovering she is pregnant by the new reverend in town, who then refuses to make an honest woman of her, drinks poison and goes into a coma. She is taken to the hospital, with no one knowing why she did it. The story then concentrates on Olive's parents, Vangie and Henry; Henry's affair with Dee Dee, his counter girl who is married to an abusive disabled veteran; Dee Dee's very smart young daughter Billie; Vangie's sister-in-law from New York, Edith; Cab and Israel, the two men who work at the funeral home; Sophie, the cleaning woman who is constantly beaten by her husband; Reverend TC Kirby; and pregnant Waldene and her husband Dr. LeGette, and his daughter Fanny. The stories are intertwined together, without the characters knowing necessarily what is going on in their little town, although they will speculate and gossip endlessly. There are also actual recipes peppered throughout the text (with an index in the back to look them up again.) Who is good and who is bad is examined as the story progresses, and it is incredibly satisfying that everyone gets what they deserve in the end.
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Summary: Move OVER Ya-Ya's
Review: If you want to read a very WELL WRITTEN, quirky, sincere, sad and funny-at-the same-time book about the South, give this one a whirl. Give all of Micheal Lee West's books a whirl. I hate that it will take a movie deal to get her books out on the nightstands of ladies everywhere but... whatever it takes!
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Summary: Our 4th Reading Selection
Review: We read this book in July of 2002 and our average rating rounded out to 4 stars. This book is set in the steamy southern town of Limoges Louisiana where gossip rules, everyone knows your business sometimes even before you do. Most of us didn't like the people of this town there were very few that were likable, with the exception of one little girl Billie. Most of us thought the this was a good book and here are some random comments from our members, "Just like a good Soap Opera", "Captivating", and "an amazing jewel of Southern fiction"
Rating:
Summary: Limoges is a town of gossip and scandal
Review: West has created dysfunctional characters that are nosy and gossipy (I see people I know in this town...) Olive Nepper is a teen who drinks poison to end her life because she is pregnant by the Baptist minister in town. This event and her ensuing coma, has the tongues wagging in town. The characters have a shallow and somewhat pitiful existence. We get to know Olive's parents, and their sadness as they endure their daughter's coma. We watch as their housekeeper Sophie, experiences spousal abuse at its worst. We meet DeeDee, the town tramp, who is searching for an escape from her unhappy marriage. DeeDee's daughter Billie, who is not yet 10, is the wisest and most delightful character in the book. West has included Southern recipes to pique our culinary interests which enhances the flavour of this story of living in Louisiana. If you like a soap opera style story, then "She Flew the Coop" is for you. I give this book 4 stars.
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