Joe Jones: A Novel - Softcover

Lamott, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593760035 ISBN 13: 9781593760038

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2003

Synopsis

"If love is details, so is storytelling, and Anne Lamott excels at it. Her way with analogy, metaphor, and evocative detail is subtle; her ability to shift from the specific to the general to the specific again, superb." The Nation

Joe Jones is Anne Lamott’s raucous novel of lives gathered around Jessie’s Café, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan." Jessie, "thin, stooped and gorgeous at seventy-nine," inherited the café years before and it has become home to a remarkable family of characters: Louise, the cook and vortex, "sexy and sweet, somewhere on the cusp between curvaceous and fat"; Joe, devoted and unfaithful; Willie, Jessie’s gay grandson, ("I thought he just had good posture," said Jessie); Georgia, an empress dowager who never speaks; and a dozen others all living together in the sweet everyday. Lamott’s rich and timeless themes are also here: love and loyalty, loss and recovery, staying on and staying together, the power of humor to heal and to bind.

About this title

About the Author:

ANNE LAMOTT is the best-selling author of Operating Instructions, Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, and most recently Blue Shoe. She lives in Northern California with her son, Sam.

From AudioFile:

Imagine a café facing a waterfront. Then imagine Jessie and Georgia (who have 160 or so years between them) holding court for the customers at the "regulars'" table. Georgia, the luscious cook, reigns from the kitchen. Willie, Jessie's gay grandson, moons over his new love as he bakes the specialty of the day. Listeners can leave the rest to Barbara Rosenblat, who delights in telling of the lives in these pages. Rosenblat's craft in reading is a security blanket for the listener: You know that every character is true to the author's wishes and that Rosenblat will never let go of the center of each individual. You feel a part of the entire production and carry the joy of having heard it . . . maybe forever. J.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1593760035
• ISBN 13: 9781593760038
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256