聚合作者:John L'Heureux

A Woman Run Mad

作者：John L'Heureux

时间：2021-02-17

John L'Heureux is a consummate stylist and entertainer, and in A Woman Run Mad he delivers a novel that is part comedy of manners and part psychosexual thriller. Blocked writer, accidental scholar, inattentive husband, all J. J. Quinn wants is peace, and he has gone to buy his wife an expensive handbag to accomplish it. As the bag in question walks out the door under the arm of a beautiful, aristocratic shoplifter, though, Quinn's curiosity leads him deep into mystery and danger. The shoplifter is Sarah Slade, a Boston Brahmin attempting to ditch a past as bloody as Medea's. Compared to Quinn's hypercompetent, Euripides-scholar wife, Claire, the unhinged Sarah is an alluring breath of fresh air -- but, of course, Quinn has no idea of the Pandora's box he's opened. Acclaimed by Newsweek as "witty and literate … Grand Guignol for grown-ups," A Woman Run Mad is an unsettling, deeply satisfying novel. "Remind[s] one of Iris Murdoch, or Muriel Spark, or E. M. Forster. Yet A Woman Run Mad is unlike any novel I know … unusual intelligence and personality are alive throughout the book." -- Richard P. Brickner, The New York Times Book Review; "Unless you have no interest in passions, the edge of madness, forbidden obsessions, runaway libidos and dangerous desires, A Woman Run Mad will fascinate you, from its title to its perfect final sentence … . A thinking man's Fatal Attraction." -- Chicago Sun-Times; "Normality -- as our time understands the word -- and monstrosity are L'Heureux's poles, and he joins them with extraordinary dexterity … . The ending is not to be revealed." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review; "A superior suspense story … It is the kind of story that might well have appealed to a writer like Patricia Highsmith, a drama of interlocking obsessions." -- The New York Times.

An Honorable Profession

作者：John L'Heureux

时间：2021-02-17

John L'Heureux is one of our most authoritative and compelling novelists, and An Honorable Profession, a New York Times Notable Book, is a "splendid novel" realized "superbly well" (Newark Star-Ledger) about an ordinary New England school where a young English teacher's life is about to undergo the most serious of tests. Miles Bannon works hard and strives to be fair; he enjoys his popularity with students -- a bit too much, sometimes -- but overall he is a good man. When he witnesses a group of students picking on one boy in the shower after football practice, he is suddenly forced to balance his responsibility for the situation with the unexpectedly intimate glimpse he now has of them. And when the victim begins to cling to him in the face of his own father's rejection, Miles finds it perhaps too welcome a feeling. Then comes an accusation of impropriety that will destroy his career -- and transform his life, and who he thought he was, forever. "An Honorable Profession is … about survival both personal and professional, not merely that but survival with dignity and self-respect." -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World "A deeply ambitious novelist … who isn't afraid of dealing with dark themes and what it means to be fully human." -- Robert Ward, The New York Times Book Review