It took me a while to finally get around to reading "Deep in the Shade of Paradise" but am I ever glad I did! The characters are so quirky, colorful and yet insightful. Dufresne is a master Southern storyteller. This is one of those books that you think would make a good movie or play because it's SO AWESOME and you realize that the reason it's so awesome is that more is felt, dreamt, and imagined than said.

As I said in my review title, this would've earned 5 stars if it wasn't for Louisiana Power & Light. The only downside to this book is that when I finished the book I didn't find myself missing the characters as much as I did when I finished LP&L.

I'll read any book set in Louisiana and am seldom disappointed.
Deep in the Shade of Paradise was no exception. Like Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, the cast of characters is enormous, quirky, and memorable. A classic love triangle, it's the story of a wedding interrupted by the third party, a death, and an equally important sub-plot. Well, actually, about 10 subplots.
Read it - and prepare to laugh and enjoy while pressing a cold glass of sweet tea to your forehead to ward off the humidity.

How Dufresne can accomplish so much in the space of so few pages is beyone me. THIS should be the book you BUY and read this year. BUY it, because, I promise, you'll want to read it again and again. It affected me as THE SHIPPING NEWS did, with characters so memorable and plot so rich and believable, that I was not content to read it only once.

If you're looking for a book to lift your spirits and set your heart soaring, "Love Warps the Mind A Little" is not the book you're looking for. Dufresne's novel tells the story of Laf Proulx, a man who has quit his regular job (he is an aspiring writer) and left his wife (or more accurately been thrown out for his indescretions with another woman). More accurately, perhaps, this novel tells the moving story of the other woman -- Judi Dubey. Not long after Laf moves in with Judi, she discovers she has Term IV cancer and the majority of the novel deals with the wrenching, painful reality of her disease and poignently describes how she (and to a lesser extent those around her) deals with the disease.
This is a powerful novel with some lightness early on as Laf tries to figure out what to do with his life and whether or not he loves Judi or the wife he left (the only sure thing is his love for his dog Spot). Once Judi's cancer is diagnosed the novel moves quickly and despondently toward its conclusion. Judi's suffering through chemotherapy and desire to live are documented in such a way that the reader actually feels involved (albeit miserable) with the characters in this story (most of whom are fairly quirky). There's some talk of life after death, reincarnation (Judi believes she's led several lives), hope for an afterlife and salvation, but the narrator (Laf is apparently an agnostic) offers little encouragement for these ideas thus adding to the weight of dread ensconcing the reader as this book lunges toward its end.
Overall, this is more a well told story of a woman's bout with cancer and those who surround her than a story about love and its trials. It's not uplifting, but it is thought provoking and poignent. Recommended.

This is the best book I have read, maybe ever. Perhaps simply because I could relate to the main character. He acts out the way I think - obsessed by love and he doesn't know what to do with it. Love of women - lust and true love, though he often can't tell the difference between the two. And love of life - seeing it from a failing writer's perspective, taking it all with a wonderfully passive-aggressive sense of humor. This book pulls you through itself, being easy to read, funny, and heartfelt. The true guy's love story - not sappy on the outside, just on the inside. The title speaks for itself, and if you agree with it, you will like the book.

The title of this book hooked me instantly. I love its clinical and detached tone, which is all the more appropriate when you realize one of the main characters is a psychologist. The experience that followed was worth the sleep I lost reading late into the night. Dufresne's second novel is touching and profoundly human. The main character, Laf, isn't much of a hero--he's far more like a real person: a good heart, good intentions, but real fears that sometimes get in his way. Love makes us crazy, irrational, and just plain confused at times. Dusfresne shows us that this is more normal than you might otherwise think.

If you're a short fiction fan, don't miss John Dufresne's "The Way That Water Enters Stone." My yellowed Plume reissue copy came to me in the most accidental of ways, and it was years before I ended up reading it, even so. But since then, I've read all of the stories twice and a few, such as "A Long Line of Dreamers" and "The Slow Death of the B Movie" three and four times.

These stories are good in the way all good stories are good--memorable characters, inventive yet (mostly) believable situations, anchored but not overdrawn places, and superb writing. Yet this doesn't say anything about Dufresne's fine work here. There's everything here from a 43 page story about a man cursed, according to those in the local parish, with a genetic blight which ultimately he cannot escape ("The Fontana Gene"), to a 5 page story about the razing of a beloved tomato garden ("The Surveyors"), and so much in between. Some stories are set in Louisiana, others in Massachusetts and one in Florida. They are not grouped geographically, so you have to be aware of the leaps from story to story, yet many of these characters seem of a piece, or as if they knew each other. They are united in their aloneness, and how easily they let slip away the person or thing that might have saved them.

The reason for the "Dubliners" comparison is this. In the way that it depicts Ireland as dark but sparked occasionally by remarkable people, so does Dufresne here depict America. He writes from America's dusty corners--Louisiana parishes soaked thoroughly in Catholocism and despair, Massachusetts after the tourist season ends, with the cold coming on and things closing up, and Belle Glade, Florida, about as bleak a place as anyone could find. Yet some of the characters in these stories, like those in "Dubliners," find ways to live against their circumstances and in spite of their locales. A few of the stories are rough in places, but the easier ones apply salve in between to keep you steady. All in all, worth the scrapes.

I picked up this book and was flooded with memories of my years in Worcester, MA. John, thank you for the terrific read. I enjoyed your stories and the details (Alice and the Hat Diner, for example). Glad for your success. I am recommending this book to friends.

Dusfresne certainly has a way with titles; this book caught my eye as I was buying my books for school this semester. I paged through it and couldn't help reading the title story because I was so intrigued. What I found is a refreshing cllection of short stories about love and loss that is remarkably free of the tired cliches that are so common in love stories today. These stories are not only sympathetic but also profoundly thought-provoking. Dusfresne is one of my favorite new authors. His writing is real: sympathetic, poignant and about real issues that we all can relate to.

I just finished reading LP&L today. It was a very entertaining book and I can understand the comparison to John Irving, but the book seemed to be missing something. When I finish an Irving novel I really feel like I know the characters and miss being caught up in their stories. I don't feel that any of the characters in LP&L will stick around in my memory. Part of the problem was too many characters popping in and out of the story. The other part of the problem is the inability of any of the characters gain any wisdom through their travails, especially Billy Wayne. It's still an enjoyable book and worth reading.

...Billy Wayne Fontana is obsessed with escaping the fate of his ancestors-a quirky, unlucky life, with a rather brutal and bizarre death. Upon giving up the priesthood for marriage, he believes that he can avoid his fate. Its a southern gothic romp with a humorous edge to it. You don't have to read through many pages before you can see the wit that Dufresne is capable of.
I hate to say that a book is an excellent first novel. It should be based on its own merits, but this is a certainly an excellent first novel. I look forward to reading more of his writing.

The story of the folks of the fictional town of Limoges, Louisiana, a place where one family's pre-destined ill fate stirs up drama after drama. The characters DuFresne creates are so true to life in their matter-of-fact emotional extremes and absurdities that we are pulled into each and every one of their lives. With unforgettable characters like Moonpie and the tragic family lineage he has shouldered, the book is the quickest most well-written prose I have read in a long time. Laughing and crying through countless dramatic encounters the story's charactersgo through, I found myself a resident of Limoges for three months after I finished reading the book. One of the best qualities of DuFresne's writing lies in his ability to display humor, being one of the most important and warm human characteristics, as an instinctive defense mechanisms in playful and wonderfully surprising ways. I read this book close to seven months ago but can not get the charcters out of my mind. I would like not to divulge much of the story line since that would detract from your reading experience. Read it and you will remind yourself why you love literature be proud that we have such imaginative literary writers living in America during such turbulent times. Isn't it time all of us picked up a book that was NOT a national bestseller and read it for the sheer enjoyment of the playful words and literary merit? Reminiscent of Nabokov with a dash of John Irving and Tennesse Williams with the surreal literary quality of Paul Auster, "Louisiana Power & Light" should be a most enjoyable read for all of you that still believe in literature and its inherent love of life.

What a SUCK-FEST! This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The (unlucky) 13 authors seem only slightly concerned with plot continuity, and the result is like a novel with every third page torn out. Characters come and go, and come back again for no apparent reason, other than to satisfy the authors' self-indulgent egos. In particular, the chapters by Elmore Leonard and Vicki Hendricks were appallingly bad. Hendricks ignores all the preceeding chapters and suddenly changes the eponymous manatee from an aquatic pinhead into some amalgam of Lassie and the Hardy Boys. In a later chapter Carl Hiaasen openly mocks this sudden swerve in character. (Tip: avoid books where one co-author ridicules another co-author's writing) Elmore Leonard contributes a time capsule that might have been hip 25 years ago, with a black character refering to someone as a "cat", and in the very next sentence actually using the phase "shuck and jive". I am very happy I checked this book out of the library, instead of squandering 22.95 on this train wreck of a book

OK, thirteen of Miami's favorite writers are sitting around a campfire (this isn't a joke). Dave Barry kicks off a story involving a couple hit men, a manatee, a 102-year-old woman and a box containing the head of Fidel Castro, and passes it to the writer to the left. The next eleven writers circle the story around the campfire in an attempt to blend this motley cast of characters (and heads) into the literary equivalent of a refreshing Miami Beach smoothee.

Throwing in monkey wrenches, stranger characters and even more heads-in-boxes in the process, they mostly succeed in creating a wholly unbelievable, extremely offbeat and wildly entertaining mystery. Poor Carl Hiassen (of Striptease fame) is challenged with tying up all the loose ends without playing the Demi Moore card, and succeeds in delivering an ending as strange as a manatee is large.

Above all an interesting experiment, Naked Came the Manatee is also an entertaining quick read.

Booger is the answer to the walls talking. Suspend belief and enter the world of a manatee that thinks, feels and reasons like us. He becomes involved in a mystery not as a victim, but as a participant in important events. The concept of a manatee detective aiding the likes of Brit Montero in solving the case of the Castro heads is only exceeded by the writing of this by the many different writers, from Dave Barry to Carl Hiaasen. No mystery should be this much fun