About book Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels (2010)
It's hard to describe why I loved this so much. I guess I just did. It's 7 stories and whilst they're not all worthy of five stars, the book as a whole is.I have seen the film based off the first book, Wild at Heart and so for a while, it was hard to see Sailor as anything but Nic Cage, that wears off after a bit though. It was lond of jarring to have the descriptions of Lula and Perdita to be so very different to their representations on the big screen, lots of specific mentions of black hair, not blonde. I think Wild at Heart, Sailor's Holiday and Sultans of Africa were my top three, with my least favourite probably being The Imagination of the Heart. The latter is more because of the writing style, it's written mostly as letters, with very little punctuation and I found myself having to re-read a lot to try and get the intonations right in my head.Mostly, I think I enjoyed it because of how care-free the plots seem to be. There's storylines almost Taranatino-esque, double crossing, murder, accidental deaths, you name it, it's been in one of his films, but where these things would be massive events in a whole lot of books, they're just things that briefly happen here. The death of an important character might take up a couple of sentences, out of the blue, and then may never be spoken of again. I know some people might hate this, but I loved it. So much happens, but it doesn't feel overwhelming.I like the accents you imagine, it's mostly set in North Carolina, New Orleans and Texas and it's refreshing to read something modern and American but not in a big city. The plot never goes where you expect, but it doesn't feel like twists of an M. Night Shymalan proprtion.I think mostly, I just really loved all the characters, they all have so much personality and even the bad people are still likeable. Of course, Sailor and Lula, our titular lovebirds are so endearing. It may be fiction, but their love seems very real and it leaves you longing to have that in your life. As Lula would say, it's wild at heart and weird on top and I loved it so very much.
A long ride that was often wild but sometimes disappointing. Gifford has a true poet's skill for dialect, dialogue and--in the final novel--believable first person narrative voice flowing from mostly Lula's soul. If you love love stories and can get behind weird shit for its own sake, this is recommended. I experienced some tedium throughout and especially toward the end. I thought the penultimate novel in the collection verged on a writer tired of the world and characters he had created at best and hack work at worst. In that particular novel in the set, Bad Day for the Leopard Man, I really didn't feel like Gifford was working from a place where he respected me as a reader and fell back way too much on half assed recycling of a formula he'd created and executed much more skillfully earlier in the saga. Something really went off the rails with that novel in particular and I'll probably reread it to make sure something about it wasn't going entirely over my head. The next to last chapter of the final novel is beautiful and comes close to redeeming all and any let-downs that came before. Hard to say how much of the preceding high volume of narrative was needed to make that sparse moment shine the way it did. Maybe all of it. I have no regrets about reading this, mon Cheri, despite the places where it dipped down into depths I can't help but feel Gifford could have avoided.I just now finished the book and wrote the thoughts above. They are extemporaneous and unedited. I may come back later and write a more careful and thorough review.
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Absolutely loved reading this big ol' saga. Yeah, OK, there might be a few things that could have been done differently, but these novels are just so tasty and absorbing that any little imperfection is gloriously outweighed by the sheer pleasure of reading about these two unforgettable lambs wanderlusting in a world of wolves. And what wolves! Equally vivid and unforgettable. My only real regret, which perturbed me while reading the last novel, was the evaporation and replacement of dear Beanie's offspring. What happened to Madonna Kim??
—Andrea
There are seven short novels in this 500 page omnibus and I'd say 4 of them are worth the ride. The others are relatively uneven, and the last one is something of a slog. I found myself skimming some pages of the last book, just wanting the whole thing to end. Nonetheless, Gifford is a born storyteller, creating his own hothouse version of the American South and then inventing little potboiler stories within this hyper-violent world. His short, punchy chapters keep the plots rolling, but his ear for Southern dialect gets cartoonish at times (everybody sounds the same). This is more evident in the later novels when even New York and Hollywood urbanites sound like they should be manning a gas pump in Tennessee. I can't help but love Sailor and Lula as their natural born naivete morphs into world-worn wisdom. Gifford executes the stages of their lives in fine style. All the novels spill over with cinematic violence, murders, crimes, and bloodspattered gore, but that's part of the fun.
—Jeff Buddle
These seven novels (except one) relate a series of bizarre events in the life Sailor and Lula shared. While leaning towards the outrageous, the beauty of the books is their presentation of the enduring love of Sailor and Lula through and, apparently, beyond time. Barry Gifford has created the perfect writing style for the telling of these stories. With a marvelously quotidian attention to detail, the author nevertheless writes tales that are wildly imaginative. The series comprises the unique world inhabited by Sailor and Lula as it exists within the world at large. This was a delightful reading experience.
—Matt
