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Summary: Dealing with a scandal
Review: West does a wonderful job of weaving the story of a mother's reaction to reality. The recipes are skillfully intertwined with the story and add an interesting touch. Good Southern fiction and worth the read.
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Summary: Good Characters....Bad, very bad characters
Review: Imagine living in a town where EVERYONE knows your business, sometimes even before you do, and thus is the setting of She Flew the Coop.
There are a few good-hearted characters but most are bad, really really bad. Pervert preacher, skirt chasing husband, money loving floosy, crippled bitter verbal abusive vetern, wife-beating low-life, shall I go on???
If you love to dish out gossip or always bend your ears toward it then definately pick up She Flew the Coop.
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Summary: Small town life, the beauty and the beast!!
Review: She Flew the Coop is an inside look at life in a small Southern town. Set in the lush, steamy town of Limoges, Louisiana in theearly 50's the story discloses itself layer by layer. When a young girl realizes she is pregnant and attempts to kill herself the first layer of the tiny town is peeled back like a layer of tissue paper. Underneath is layer after layer exposing not so proper and definitely not so God fearing behavior as those of Limoges would lead you to believe. Each new layer draws you quickly to the next in order to discover what makes the true heart of Limoges beat. Adultery, trust, betrayal, lust, friendship, dreams,desire, love and acceptance are residing side by side but when the chips and cracks are exposed where do people turn? These are the questions that Michael Lee West wraps her wonderful novel in. Her characters are unique, clear and evolving. The town seems held together by the most unlikely combination of faith, manners, gossip and food. This is an amazing jewel of Southern fiction that deals with the beauty and the beast of small town life.
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Summary: An expertly woven tapestry of small town southern life.
Review: Limoges, Louisiana is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name. And your business. And just exactly with whim you are conducting that business, no matter how clandestine you may wish to be as you go about it. Vangie Nepper finds her small town friends and neighbors know her business before she does. They know her husband Henry, the town's pharmacist, has something going with his soda girl. They know that her daughter, Olive, lies in the hospital, comatose and pregnant-though they have no idea who helped her get that way, a fact that arouses extreme frustration among the town gossips.Life in Limoges in 1952 is orderly and wholesome--at least for appearances' sake. But as the story told by its citizens unfolds, life is hardly pious and sedate in Limoges. Adultery, wife-beating, false preaching, and of course gossip, color the town. It is the gossip-and the less than wholesome activities that feed it-that keeps the pace of the story. The reader, like the good citizens of this sleepy town, yearns for more. This is a book that is a deeply textured and expertly woven tapestry of small town southern life. The characters are so splendidly defined, the reader wants to know all motivations, all nuances of the place from its inception to this very moment.
Though more sexually explicit than I prefer, it is still a captivating story. One eventually has to surrender the story, yet the recipes, contributions of each character which appear throughout the text, allow me to return to the richness of Limoges. The taste lingers, nearly as savory as the tale from which they emerge. I cans see I have a joyous task ahead of me-reading all of West's other novels. What greater tribute to an author than the fact that as soon as one finishes one of her books, one is immediately on the hunt for others?
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Summary: ...
Review: This author is one of my favorite writers. This story has everything you need including good recipes as well as sex. What more could you want? Good story.
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Summary: Vibrant clear voices of the women of the South
Review: I have been a fan of Michael Lee West's since I got an advance copy of American Pie. Coming from a VERY Southern family, West knows not only how to capture the voices of the South but how to put pen to paper to make them come to life. Each distinct voice (and trust me, they are VERY distinct) is followed by a chapter written in the third person to give the reader a fully omnipotent view of life in Limoges, Louisiana. From Dee Dee Robichaux (the town tramp) to Vangie Nepper (the wife of the husband that Dee Dee is sleeping around with) to the battered Sophie, this is an absolutely wonderful detour through the world of the South.
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Summary: She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death.....
Review: I read this book when it first came out and I've been rereading it on an almost yearly basis since. Everytime I pick it up I'm (...) back into that hideous heat of a Limoges summer, laughing at Henry's mid-life crisis, worrying about Billy's future with her wayward Mother, rooting for Sophie to finally leave her husband and of course watching the gossip as it spreads like ink in water. I disagree that there's no happy ending, Vangie moves on, the reverend gets his just desserts, someone deserving languishes in the freezer, and there is the promise of new love for some of the residents. It's a group of people dealing with small town life, dealing with the sorrows, tragedies and everyday routine written so well that you may have well been dropped into Limoges to become another character. If you want to laugh and cry and grow attached to some folk just trying to do the best they can then this is the book for you. The only problem is that you'll want a sequel.
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Summary: Love Southern? You Have to Read This!
Review: From page one I could not put it down. It is funny, strange, dark, surprising and so so southern... The town may not actually exist but these characters are too real to be fictional. I laughed so hard at parts and cried at others, then I tried the recipes (terrific!) Buy this book!
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Summary: Hungry? Whet your appetite and be in the know
Review: Michael Lee West does a great job catching southern culture and the life in a small town and puts in recipes just for enticement. Very good read.
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Summary: A Delightful Cast of Characters
Review: I absolutely loved this book! The story is told through the eyes of a number of delightfully quirky citizens of Limoges, Louisiana. I don't usually care for stories that are told from many points of view, but in this case, I became totally immersed in the lives of the folks in Limoges and loved every minute of it. There is plenty of humor along with plenty of heartbreak, but the overall feeling is upbeat. The strength of the story lies with the characters, who come to life on the pages, so real and human in their struggles.
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