Lives of the Saints

Lives of the Saints - Paperback

$16.95
Sale price  $16.95 Regular price 
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Lives of the Saints

Lives of the Saints - Paperback

by Nancy Lemann
$16.95
Sale price  $16.95 Regular price 

Book Overview

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."
ISBN9798896230281
Author Nancy Lemann
PublisherNew York Review of Books
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages208
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About Nancy Lemann

Nancy Lemann was born in New Orleans and is the author of six books, including The Ritz of the Bayou (republished in 2026 by Hub City Press), Malaise, and, most recently, The Oyster Diaries (published in 2026 by New York Review Books).

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