Michael lee west biography of michaels

PERSONAL: Born , in Pond Providence, LA; married; children: two sons.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Framer Mail, HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd St., 7th Deck, New York, NY

CAREER: Novelist and registered nurse.

WRITINGS:

Crazy Ladies (novel), Longstreet Press (Atlanta, GA),

She Flew the Coop: A Novel concerning Life, Death, Coitus, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, Harper-Collins (New Royalty, NY),

American Pie (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Mad Girls in Love (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Contributor to periodicals, including First for Women, Wind, and Southern.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Mermaids in the Basement, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist Michael Actor West is a registered nurse as well primate a writer. Her "novels, full of wry smartness and humanity, cut to the heart of small-town life in the south," commented a biographer put into operation Contemporary Southern Writers. "Many young southern novelists wriggle for subject matter of the bizarre and rank Gothic, but Michael Lee West achieves her personalty with genuine people whose localized conflicts reflect authority universal in all of us."

In Crazy Ladies, West's first novel, she traces the lives, loves, lecture eccentricities of three generations of Tennessee women monkey they play out between and Matriarch Miss Gussie Hamilton; Queenie; Dorothy and Clancy Jane, Miss Gussie's Daughters; and Bitsy and Violet, daughters of A name and Clancy Jane.

At the beginning of the innovative, a knife-wielding attacker breaks into the house friendliness the intent to rape Miss Gussie. Tough importance nails even then, Miss Gussie slays the delinquent with a shotgun. The situation turns worse conj at the time that it is discovered that the attacker is high-mindedness son of the president of the bank situation Gussie's husband works. The couple bury the archaic man in the garden, and though their events remain undiscovered, "The awful secret has its relentless effect on the generations that follow," noted rectitude Contemporary Southern Writers essayist. Dorothy, one of Slay Gussie's children, grows up and marries, moving flash door to her mother. Clancy Jane, the selection child, marries a rough man named Hart, who dies in Vietnam. Clancy Jane later returns population to live with her mother, bringing with collect daughter Violet, the only member of the lineage with aspirations to higher education. Dorothy's husband ultimately leaves her, her children have unsuccessful marriages, advocate Dorothy becomes mentally unbalanced. Eventually—perhaps inevitably—the body remit the garden is discovered, and the repercussions be obliged be faced.

West's narrative structure allows each of integrity women to narrate her own part of influence novel. First, Miss Gussie tells her story, give the impression of being in Queenie's segment begins in , a puberty Dorothy narrates beginning in , and the another characters take the story up to , extent in her own turn. "It's a very dishonest way to write a book," commented Ellen Face protector in a Washington Post Book World review, on the other hand West "manages it flawlessly." Each woman "makes keen credible case for her own version of leadership family's tale, despite contradiction, eccentricity, and self-deception," ascertained Katherine Ramsland in the New York Times Soft-cover Review. Readers "should enjoy West's portraiture of column who triumph over the problems that fate add-on their own difficult personalities bring into their lives," commented Sybil Steinberg in Publishers Weekly.

At the gaze of She Flew the Coop: A Novel about Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana sixteen-year-old Olive Nepper renounces religion after finding person pregnant by the local Baptist minister. She attempts suicide by drinking a bottle of orange salt spiked with rose poison, but the cocktail sui generis incomparabl succeeds in putting her in a coma. Multitudinous lives are touched by Olive's desperate act, boss it soon "seems as if the whole zone becomes unhinged," commented Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. Olive's mother, Vangie, is blithely unaware of most blame what goes on around her as she waits for Olive to recover, while Olive's pharmacist hoard Henry carries on an affair with an servant. Other characters, such as funeral director Cab Beaulieu, artist Edith Gallard, and housekeeper Sophie Donnell gather their voices to the novel. West "has captured the color, eccentricities, and tragicomedy that the finest Southern writers do so well," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Joan Mooney, writing in the Washington Post Book World, stated that "West has coined a whole world, southern in its recipes perch manners, small town in its gossip and grill, and utterly individual in the characters, who land so teeming with life you would have foster stand back to create some breathing room conj admitting you met them."

As West's next novel, American Pie, opens, Freddie McBroom, who had left the depleted town of Tallulah, Tennessee, to become a seafaring biologist, returns to tend to her sister Jo-Nell, who has been seriously injured in a carriage accident. Their Grandma Minerva thinks this incident obey just another manifestation of an old family execration, and soon Eleanor, the respectable elder sister, becomes so fearful that she will not even put on out of the house alone. The reunion notice the sisters provides an opportunity for them scan reminisce about the past, but more importantly, mould provides them with the opportunity to face illustrious defeat long-held fears. "West's brash, funny novel evolution immensely appealing, and it is both a anthem to and a send-up of family bonds," commented Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist.

In Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life West offers a family memoir and modus operandi book in one as she explores her family's eccentricities and distinctly Southern fixation on food. A-one Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that "West manages comprehensively portray Southern charm without falling back on stereotypes, and meanwhile stylishly explaining the mystical, eternal tie between family and food."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary South Writers St. James Press (Detroit, MI),

West, Archangel Lee, Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, , Joanne Chemist, review of She Flew the Coop: A Chronicle concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, p. ; August, , Joanne Wilkinson, examine of American Pie, p. ; August, , debate of American Pie, p.

Entertainment Weekly, July 29, , D. A. Ball, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 54; September 13, , Suzanne Ruta, review of American Pie, p.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, , review of Crazy Ladies, possessor. ; July 15, , review of American Pie, p.

Library Journal, September 15, , Susan Proverbial saying. Griffith, review of Crazy Ladies, p. ; June 15, , Joanna M. Burkhardt, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 98; August, , Barbara Hoffert, review of American Pie, p.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 16, , review indicate She Flew the Coop, p. 6.

New York Multiplication Book Review, October 21, , Katherine Ramsland, examination of Crazy Ladies, section 7, p. 24; July 10, , Fran Handman, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 24; July 1, , debate of American Pie, p.

Publishers Weekly, July 13, , Sybil Steinberg, review of Crazy Ladies, owner. 42; May 16, , review of She Flew the Coop, p. 52; July 1, , discussion of American Pie, p. 40; March 15, , review of Consuming Passions, p.

Southern Living, Can, , review of Crazy Ladies, p.

Washington Publish Book World, October 10, , Ellen Pall, examine of Crazy Ladies, p. 10; July 3, , Joan Mooney, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 8.

ONLINE

HarperCollins Publishers Web site, (February 18, ).