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Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah β€” book cover

Yonder Stands Your Orphan

by Barry Hannah
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Overview

Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in ten years,Yonder Stands Your Orphanopens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino pretty boy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians β€” a disgraced doctor and two ex-bikers, all prey to their addictions β€” and an African-American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer. Mortimer has a hold on each one of them β€” a long-standing debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities they cannot yet desert.Yonder Stands Your Orphanpaints a searing picture of the American South and establishes Barry Hannah once again as one of the most important writers in America.

Synopsis

Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in ten years, Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino pretty boy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians -- a disgraced doctor and two ex-bikers, all prey to their addictions -- and an African-American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer. Mortimer has a hold on each one of them -- a long-standing debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities they cannot yet desert. Yonder Stands Your Orphan paints a searing picture of the American South and establishes Barry Hannah once again as one of the most important writers in America.

Library Journal

When a sleepy Southern town finds itself in the clutches of a truly evil man (who happens to resemble Conrad Twitty), only an ineffectual Christian saxophonist named Max can save the day. Hannah's first work in a decade. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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Editorials

Library Journal

When a sleepy Southern town finds itself in the clutches of a truly evil man (who happens to resemble Conrad Twitty), only an ineffectual Christian saxophonist named Max can save the day. Hannah's first work in a decade. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The first outing in a decade from the great southern roustabout (Never Die, 1991, etc.) goes on a long tear through the lives of a motley crew of misfits living around a giant lake in the backwoods of Mississippi. Hannah kicks it off on a raging blast of language and keeps winging higher and higher. The prologue is a standalone bit about a ramshackle roadhouse where men can buy bait, booze, and some under-the-counter pornography, and where the amenities are definitely lacking: "All this the parcels of its charm." There's little reason for this piece other than to establish the well-stocked lake as the central character of Hannah's careening ode to those whose lives keep coming back to it. Among them are: Byron Egan, a onetime biker and addict turned tattooed preacher; Melanie, a 71-year-old widow with a patrician bearing that keeps heads turning-mostly, she stands by her window: "She watched for men like a teenager. She watched for wildlife like a child"; and Raymond, a disgraced ex-doctor who plays the saxophone in his wife's band at a nearby casino. And then there's the crazy couple on the other side of the lake who once tried to kill each other but now, in their post-traumatic dementia, run a camp for orphans. Lighting a match under everyone is Man Mortimer, a hustler and gigolo who hunts for women who've given up hope and recruits them for his rolling whorehouses: luxury SUVs with fogged windows and deluxe stereo systems. With hardly any more provocation than anyone else here (in true southern-gothic tradition, surreal violence flares up quite often in these pages), Mortimer goes on a random crime spree of nonlethal knifings that leaves everyone baffled, butultimately not all that concerned. A sprawling, nearly plotless novel: Hannah shows quite authoritatively that he's still the master of his craft. The manufactured eccentricity of some of his recent short stories is absent here, but not his love of characters and language. A masterwork of southern beat terror gospel.

Book Details

Published
April 1, 2002
Publisher
Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Pages
352
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780802138934

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