Lives of the Saints
- Author Nancy Lemann
- Narrator Sophie Amoss
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 25 August 2026
- Run Time 5 hours and 37 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Sense of place.
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What to expect
Fresh out of college in New England, a young woman returns home to New Orleans and is quickly pulled back into the city’s “wastrel-youth contingent” in this cult-classic novel of love and decadence, now with a new introduction.
Nancy Lemann’s voice is one of the most unusual in American fiction, unabashedly digressive, weirdly and wonderfully confiding, as witty as it is melancholy, an endless surprise. Hers is a voice born of and at odds with her native New Orleans, a voice that takes on and wonders at the ramshackle realities not just of the deep South but of America. Lives of the Saints, her first book, was a revelation of new talent. Reappearing here, several decades later, it is simply a revelation.
“Claude Collier made the world seem kind,” says Louise Brown, beginning a tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another. When Louise returns home after four years of college in New England, she bemusedly finds herself reimmersed in New Orleans society’s “wastrel-youth contingent.” At the center of this gin-fueled hurricane is Claude Collier, rumpled, accident-prone, supremely sweet—and desperate. For Claude, Louise is his steadying focus; for Louise, Claude is the only man who can cause her heart to “break into a million pieces on the floor.”
Critics Review
“The virtues and morals of this Southern hothouse are as lucid as those of Jane Austen’s or George Eliot’s provincial outposts.”
“Spikily comic…This is how Blanche DuBois talked before the lampshade was torn away and life became lit with a naked bulb.”
“Nancy Lemann has taken the South away from the Sun Belters and returned it to a clutch of New Orleans natives who know how to give decadence a good name…If the Crescent City should find itself in the grip of a population explosion, they can blame Nancy Lemann for making her readers want to move there. I want to have a drink at that Lafayette Hotel.”
“Striking…richly rewarding…Reminiscent of the works of Eudora Welty and the late Tennessee Williams.”
“A tremendous first novel…with the mysterious subtlety of great writing.”
| Author | Nancy Lemann |
|---|---|
| Narrator | Sophie Amoss |
| Duration | 5 hours and 37 minutes |
| Release Date | |
| ISBN | 9798228962057 |
| Format | Audiobook |
| Publisher | Blackstone Publishing |
| Genre | Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Sense of place |
| Availability | US |
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