The God of Nightmares

by Paula Fox, Rosellen Brown (Introduction)

In 1941, twenty-three-year-old Helen Bynum leaves home for the first time and sets out from rural New York to find her Aunt Lulu, an aging actress in New Orleans. There she finds a life of passion and adventure, possibilities and choices. Falling in with a bohemian group of intellectuals, she discovers romance and sex, friendship and risk, her world mirrored by the steamy mystery of the French Quarter.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and two memoirs. Her novel The Slave Dancer (1973) received the Newbery Medal in 1974; and in 1978, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. More recently, A Portrait of Ivan won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2008.

A teenage marriage produced a daughter, Linda, in 1944. Given the tumultuous relationship with her own biological parents, she gave the child up for adoption. Linda Carroll, the daughter Fox gave up for adoption, is the mother of musician Courtney Love.

Fox then attended Columbia University, married the literary critic and translator Martin Greenberg, raised two sons, taught, and began to write.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are certain things in books that seem to irrationally turn me off of them. Books that take place on ships is one of them (with some recent exceptions). New Orleans as a setting seems to be another. I don't know if it is the setting itself, or maybe it is an alien mindset to my own that holds sway in writers who either live there or place their novels there. I don't really know. I suspect I personally wouldn't enjoy visiting New Orleans, and that is fine. It is one less place I will never go to, which isn't a big deal since I don't really go anywhere, anyway.

It's been awhile since I read this book, and my memory is already hazy. I'm going to try to stick with the few things I thought about writing about the book, which are stronger in my mind than the actual novel is. I thought about writing this review a few times, but stupid real-life sort of threw a dirty curve-ball towards me around the time this book was fresh in my mind and I should have sat down and written it.

The novel is well-written, in that well-written way that competent contemporary fiction is crafted. It is the sort of novel that feels crafted. Like something that would be oooh and ahhhed about in a creative writing seminar. Something that I imagine people in like a 1980's Iowa Writers Workshop fell all over themselves about.

To me it felt well-crafted but souless. Sort of like I imagine most of John Updike's books to be (as opposed to how I actually found the few John Updike books I read to be, which was well-written but derivative and somewhat repulsive). If this book were a movie it would have won an Oscar for Best Picture just because it is technically good while heaping on lots of social issues in ways that sound important but seemed to me to be kind of trite, in the way that a made for tv movie would deal with an issue like racism.

Want examples? Can't give them to you, my mind has been scrubbed fairly clean, except that I remember that those are the basic ideas I meant to write about. Feelings about New Orleans, made for tv movie feeling, best picture, well-written. Hit all of what I meant to write. Go, me.

Why write a review for a fairly obscure contemporary book that I felt blah about? Why give it three stars and not just give it one star to let the whole world know that I wasn't that happy with it? The book wasn't bad at all, it just didn't do much for me. Maybe it was the second hand humidity and heat soaking out through the pages describing New Orleans that made my brain feel so awfully sluggish that had me feeling the way I did about the book. But isn't feeling a problem? Aren't there supposed to be hard-truths to books and isn't it without hard and fast aesthetic rules to guide how we confront a book the whole act of reading becomes less-than serious and a dismal waste of time? Fuck feeling, right? Let's go for hard-facts, a checklist of what makes a book good and follow that checklist so that our opinions fall into dogmatic line. Feelings? Pshaw.

A fairly interesting phenomena to me is the way people react to the whole Fifty Shades thing. I'm not interested in how it has been liberating to women or being dismissive about why people are reading 'trash' in droves (thanks for keeping the publishing industry going and helping to give me a paycheck!). What I've found interesting is how some readers of this sort of book categorize the writing in the book as good or bad in relation (to what I as someone who just makes assumptions but hasn't actually read the novels in question) to similar books. Was that clear at all? I've had this interaction quite frequently with customers, where they say like Fifty Shades but then want something well-written like it, but not like the un-well-written book (x), or they like (x) but found Fifty Shades to be awfully written. As an outsider observer I'd imagine that the writing is about the same. I've had similar experiences (but less frequent over the years) with people who want something well-written like Dan Brown, but not like poorly written like this other author of page-turners; and vice-versa. It's fairly interesting to me because I don't think I would see the difference in the not-so good writing (what I imagine, except in the case of Dan Brown and some of the other thriller writers of the NYT Bestseller variety who I have read some pages of and have seen that the writing is (to me) kind of painful to read) of any of these books. Of course, I'm sure that there are people who (if they cared to think about it) wouldn't be able to see the difference between say two 'serious' writers that one I'd say didn't write very well and one that I loved.

Is the line something 'objective' or does it all boil down to feeling: subjective elements of what speaks or doesn't speak to a reader.

Certain dogmatic types, certain types of personalities would like to boil down the subjective and rid it from the make-up of literary opinion. In almost all instances the ego-less objectivity is really just one person's personal feelings buttered up in haughty sounding terms and passed off as a gospel with providence and condemnation handed out as if from the heights of Mt. Sinai. There is no humility.

It's part of why I have so little interest in reading works by the 'great critics' who tell us what to think about a book. I know what to think about a book that I've read, it's what I feel, how it affects me, what it inspires me to think about, it's when I read the book, what bullshit I had going on in my life, what bullshit had already passed in my life. Each and every book I've ever read was read as part of my life, maybe the book didn't do anything for me, maybe it radically changed the way I thought about things, maybe Different Seasons isn't the best book ever written, maybe today if I read it I'd find the four stories in it to be uninteresting, maybe it's not a good book (or maybe it is), but it is one of the most important books I've ever read, it was the one that moved me into reading "adult" fiction, and my rating on this site I've tried to reflect the way a book felt to me when I read it, rather than what I might think about it now. Am I going on a tangent from what I meant? I might be. Sure, I wouldn't defend Stephen King as being great literature, maybe he is but I haven't approached him since I was 19 years old (with one un-remarkable instance), but I'm also not interested in slagging off on people who still do like him, or who think he is a great writer. He speaks to them, they enjoy his books. And there is probably as much in them to someone who loves them as there is to me in the books that I love. What would be the point in attacking them?

What am I trying to say? Reading by what the 'greats' tell you to read is pointless to me. Parroting opinions because someone like Nabokov (for example) say didn't like something is stupid. No one but Nabokov was Nabokov. When I see something he has to say it might be interesting, and it might put something in a different context than I'd previously thought of, but his tastes aren't mine. It's not like I'm going to start going around collecting butterflies just because it is something he liked, his reading of everything that he ever read was shaped by his own history and it's not mine. I choose him as an example because he had a great passion for condemning things and then being somewhat of an asshole about anyone having the gall to disagree with his pronouncements. I could say the same thing though about Harold Bloom, or even someone like Jonathan Lethem (who doesn't appear to be an asshole when people disagree with him) who I have quite similar tastes with and who I have found some great writers by following his lead but who except as a pointer towards an author I might not have ever tried before I leave his opinions to be his own and focusing on trying to make sense of my own response to the books I've read (I only used Lethem here because reading his collection of essays recently has turned me on to a few writers who I never thought of reading before).

It doesn't matter if people agree with me about what I read. I'd prefer not to be told I am wrong, stupid, myopic etc., for enjoying something that I did, and not have my experience with a book discounted as being some kind of personal failing. I'm probably a hypocrite here, and I've probably written tons of reviews where I do this very thing, and I know there are at least a couple of reviews I've written that I'd be happy to have never-written for this reason, but which I let stand (and sometimes even continue to defend on principle) because I think of all my reviews taken together has a record of sorts of my reading for the past five years and some odd months. It's an inconsistency, but I fail at being the person I would like to be all the time. All I can do is keep trying to be better.

I think that this feeling of needing to condemn others who don't like what you like, or who like something that you don't like is a residual feeling from things like religion and paternalism; from feeling that you need to have a boss tell you what to do, that there are strict right and wrong ways of doing things and the whole cognitive dissonance that arises when someone doesn't agree with you. I'm sure we all want to believe we are right, but forcing this inner feeling to be right is just another version of same thing that makes evangelicals feel like they have the only true answer and it is their obligation to convert everyone to their way of thinking. At least this mindset makes sort of sense to me when it comes to metaphysical truths, but when it is extended to something like books it's just another sign of being an asshole who feels that their way of seeing things is the only way things should be.
,
But of course I'm just being wishy-washy and dwelling in the world of subjective feelings and not glimpsing the Platonic perfection of what literature should be.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The God of Nightmares (1990) is the sixth and last novel by Paula Fox. I’ve read three in a row, all great writing: one outstanding (The Widow’s Children, see review), the other middling (Desperate Characters, see review), and this outstanding novel. Fox’s ultra-realist take on the human condition isn’t for everyone, but her writing is. I’m a fan!

It is 1941 and we meet twenty-two year old Helen Bynum, who lives with her mother, Beth, near Poughkeepsie, NY. They still live on the old horse farm where Lincoln Bynum, husband and father, who raised and sold horses, had abandoned them thirteen years ago. It has been converted to small cabins for transients. Mom, an eternal optimist, has enshrined Dad and expects his return at any time. But a note from Dad’s significant other has just arrived, telling them that Dad has died. Beth’s dream of his return is dead, and she immediately—-and very strangely—-tells Helen to go to New Orleans to find Aunt Lulu and bring her back to Poughkeepsie to live with them and help care for the cabins. Beth and Lulu were once Ziegfield Girls together; Lulu, the flamboyant one, has turned into a drunk.

Helen is not well educated—-she thinks that the book Adolphe is about Hitler, and that a rabbi is a priest, and she doesn’t know what a pogrom is—-but she is an astute observer and a thinker, able to ponder herself from a distance. At one point she turns inward:

Often I had puzzled about where in myself a concentrated sentient self was really lodged, the one that ceaselessly spoke—-perhaps in dreams, too—-and judged and directed my attention to this or that—-the self that thought it thought.

Dutiful Helen heads off to New Orleans where she finds Lulu in an old house beautifully described to evoke old New Orleans:

The building whose number Aunt Lulu had written on the postcard she had sent to my mother, and which I had passed by several times on my walks, was like a derelict ship that had run aground. Along its second-story balcony ran an indecipherable sentence written in the ornate script of a wrought-iron grill. The arched entranceway, its doors flung back against the inner walls, reminded me of a stable. The wooden floor I walked upon, scored as if by hooves, gave on to a stone courtyard dominated by a huge fountain. Its marble basin was dry, and rising from its center , the rusted tip of a pipe poking up from among its marble curls, was the statue of a girl poised on one foot, leaning forward as though in flight, her outstretched arms and hands turned to brushes and twigs.

Helen finds Lulu passed out in bed, naked, and overseen by a temporary caretaker. Very soon Helen falls into Lulu’s world, meeting Len Mayer, Gerald Boyd, Catherine Bruce, Claude de la Fontaine, Dr. Sam Bridges, and Nina Weir. Len is Lulu’s current caretaker (and Helen's future husband); Gerald is a published Cajun poet whose back-country friends brutalized him for his intelligence, driving him to the Big Easy; Catherine is Gerald’s live-in lover; Claude is a gay bookstore owner who is usually drunk, often with Lulu (but when sober they don’t acknowledge each other in public); Sam is an Army doctor who was briefly married to Lulu; Nina is a young woman who arrived in New Orleans after Helen and becomes her good friend.

Among other things, this book is about books. A conversation between Gerald, Claude, and Sam discusses morality stories—-the 15th century Summoning of Everyman, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Robert Wright’s Native Son, and Benjamin Constant’s 1816 Adolphe—-making explicit Fox’s intent to explore the moral issues of man in general, and race in particular. Where better can this be done than in the melting pot of New Orleans in its pre-WWII turmoil.

It is also about the Velcro-like constraints of the past—-always sticking to us and shaping our future. After Helen leaves New Orleans, marries Len, and has a daughter, she reviews the later lives of those good friends of youth. In particular, she quotes a stirring letter from Nina, ending with

…I [Nina] thought of the war and the millions who perished, and I recalled something Claude quoted: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ But, oh, Helen! Also those who remember repeat the past! And I thought of Lulu’s death and Gerald’s. And Claude dead beneath the oaks. Are you still falling in love with people? Helen, don’t forget me.”

And then there is Part II, a single short chapter.

This book is the most melodramatic of Fox's novels, creating a remarkable sense of nostalgia and loss as Helen ages and her peers pass on.

Five stars.

[Janne Bjørgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denne boken er rett og slett vakker! Det er 1942, Helen er 22 år, og flytter fra moren sin og den trauste amerikanske landsbygda til fargeklatten New Orleans. Det er første gang hun står på egne ben, og må forme egne meninger, egne vennskap og ta egne valg. Fox skildrer den frihetsfølelsen det er å flytte hjemmefra og bare ha seg selv å tenke på, men klarer også å få frem de mørke sidene ved samfunnet som Helen kanskje ikke helt klarer å akseptere. USA 1942 er rasisme, homofobi, en gryende andre verdenskrig og klasseskiller. Les sakte, for Fox skriver så godt, hvert avsnitt gir noe å tygge på. Og like godt oversatt til en svært passende nynorsk av Tove Bakke!

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good, even and reserved, until the almost incredibly hysterical last five pages.

[Piero Ungaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

La lettera era come un rasoio che mi tagliava, silenziosamente, sempre più a fondo. La leggevo spesso e la portavo con me dappertutto. Non la mostrai a nessuno. Sentivo il mio cuore sprofondare , al di sotto della vergogna, fino a qualche luogo grigio,opaco, che doveva essere il purgatorio.

<< La bontà di Claude nei miei confronti era la linfa della mia vita>>

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with this book — I love all of Paula Fox’s books that I’ve found so far — each one is special in its own way — they are treasures to be found; they are treasures to be shared.

“Don’t pay much attention to what people say. Then, someday, you’ll find out what you think yourself. Try to go to what is new as innocently as you can — let the surprise of it take you first.” – from Page 37

Everyone should approach a book they’ve never read before with this innocence — I made myself at home with the vivid assortment of characters and enjoyed my all too brief visit — I didn’t want it to end — a trip that went by much too fast. When it did end, it was with the sense of life goes on as it should. Paula Fox makes writing seem so easy (but I know better than that.) It’s simple yet complex; its haunting gritty reality is tender, even the worst of the worst of the human flaws and frailties are treated with sensitivity that allows them to be forgiven or blithely overlooked because people are mysterious creatures and who are we to judge? Yet there is the other element that is cruel and unforgiving, the carved in stone social morals that pry into private lives and judge with a sneer, thus leaving characters anxiously looking over their shoulders, wondering when — if — why — oh, how come? Painful but true. Humans are miserable wretches — there’s not much nice about them (yes, even the nice ones are far from perfect), they stink, they’re mean, they’re pitiful, they’re nasty creatures — until you come to this realization, I swear to you, everything will be all right — yet never the same.

“I don’t believe people can look at themselves very clearly, do you? No one is free enough. How do you leap out of your own nature and look down at it? Laws may be the nearest human beings get to self-criticism.” – page 94

Life goes on as it should.

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of The God of Nightmares reads like a dark odyssey with no clear point, but I was utterly fascinated and enchanted throughout it. This is the coming of age story of Helen Bynum, and her journey takes her to the New Orleans French Quarter of the 1940s on the verge of WWII and in the thick of Jim Crow segregation, a world that might as well be another planet to Helen of upstate New York. She goes in search of her alcoholic Aunt Lulu and finds so much more. This is the second book I have read by Paula Fox, and I thoroughly enjoy her beautiful writing style as well as her ability to surprise her readers when it's least expected. Do we all eventually become our mothers, even the parts we dislike? Read and find out.

Paula Fox's books are dark, and they haunt me long after I am done reading them, because she raises questions rather than simply answering them, which is the mark of great fiction for this reader. Maybe that is why her work is underrated and floats under the mainstream radar. I highly recommend this one, and I look forward to reading other books by Fox.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy, enjoyable read, BUT I have no idea what the novel is actually about. I kept waiting for something to happen, for the characters to realize something or to make me feel or realize something. That never happened. In the end I don't know what to feel about it. In many ways the characters and situations were artificial; there was simply no depth, no aim. Still I can't say I hated the book. Maybe it's because there was a sense of possibility or somehing like that. The ending was really rushed. We find out that Len and Nina had an affair, may have possibly been each other's greatest loves. I didn't feel anything about that because despite a few subtle hints that there is something between the two, we never actually see anything between them. I wonder if that is the message of the novel; you make random choices, you make a life for your yourself and eventually realize that it never really is or was the way you thought it was.

[Valentina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro strano, per certi versi confuso e poco comprensibile, ma senza dubbio un libro che non lascia indifferenti. A tratti mi ha dato sensazioni alla Giovane Holden (pur trattandosi di due opere nettamente diverse, ben inteso): il percorso di crescita "in fuga", i personaggi pittoreschi, le scelte sbagliate, la morte, la violenza, il sesso, la perdizione, tutte tematiche che accomunano tra loro le due opere, pur con esiti e sviluppi diversi. L'ambientazione principale è una New Orleans prebellica (seconda guerra mondiale) e questa città da sola basta per rendere affascinante la narrazione. Ogni personaggio è particolare, istrionico, affascinante e irritante al tempo stesso, tremendamente umano eppure stravagante e incomprensibile. Persino Helen, all'inizio così scialba e piatta, si rivela simile ai comprimari che accompagnano i suoi anni a New Orleans. È un romanzo altalenante, con momenti altissimi e altri che davvero ti lasciano perplesso, passaggi intensi e pagine incomprensibili. L'ultima parte mi ha pervasa di malinconia e tristezza, ma ammetto di aver storto la bocca sul finale, che mi è sembrato "mozzato". In conclusione, non è il libro che mi aspettavo quando ho scelto di leggerlo, e nel complesso mi ha lasciata interdetta. Ma è una buona lettura, divertente e piena di fascino.

[Tatiana Sabina Meloni · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Il dio degli incubi", di Paula Fox, è un romanzo di narrativa contemporanea bellissimo, strano e ipnotico.
Ambientato in Louisiana, nel 1941, ben delinea la realtà del profondo Sud degli Stati Uniti. Lo stile è pressoché perfetto e riesce a dipingere i tratti caratteriali distintivi di ogni personaggio, le peculiarità fisiche, l'accento, le smorfie. Ma soprattutto riesce a dare tridimensionalità ai luoghi, ai colori, agli odori, all'afa soffocante che incombe come una maledizione su New Orleans. Leggendo queste pagine, ho rivissuto quella splendida e assurda città visitata alcuni anni or sono, ne ho riscoperto profumi e fetori, risa e lacrime.
Ma perché, all'inizio, l'ho definito "strano"? Perché lo è. Se le pagine sono intinte di malinconia, non è un libro triste, ma piuttosto fatalista. È un libro che parla di chi si vorrebbe essere e invece si è, di ciò che si vorrebbe fare e invece si fa per dovere o per autocompiacimento. È un libro di scelte e di obblighi, di cambiamenti e staticità, dubbi e delusioni, che si osteggiano o si accettano per imposizione sociale o quieto vivere. È un libro che a volte sussurra e a volte grida che il nostro dio degli incubi siamo noi.
Assolutamente consigliato.

[Mari Spallone · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you haven’t read Paula Fox, here’s some unsolicited advice. Read her novel Desperate Characters and memoir Borrowed Finery first. If you read God of Nightmares first, you might not feel those others are worth your bother which would be a mistake. The characters in this novel seem underdeveloped, which can be OK but not in the case of a book that is character driven. It has a southern Gothic tone that I appreciated with its nod to a historical New Orleans, and really the City of New Orleans was my favorite character. I feel the author was using the novel as a vehicle to get some point across, social or political, but it didn’t feel like it was achieved. It was kind of all over the place. It looked good, the premise appealing, but disappointing and really kind of hard to get through. Much eye-rolling especially with some stereotypes.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a bummer that my review of Paula Fox’s memoir is atrociously under appreciated.

Considering it explains the entire 20th century. In numbers and in mothers. No need to try to figure out what had happened these 100 years. I figured it out for you. Here are the roles we ladies play, if we want to be the subject instead of the object, singularly 1 generation at a time.

Well, I’m a poet, so the kicker is also the nut graf.
“Candelaria will spurn Elsie, who will reject Paula, who will give up Linda, who will lose Courtney, who will alienate Frances Bean.”

Read the rest here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this author's writing style. She has a way of bringing the characters and setting to life in an almost visceral way. I am quite fond of New Orleans, so that beautifully crafted setting roped me in from the start. The characters were a delightfully quirky but believable collection, most of whom I think I'd enjoy meeting. The plot was not gripping and the outcomes rather sad, but I was entertained throughout and I'd try another by this author.

[John Senner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Young woman from upstate New York learns that the father who left the house at her age 10 has died. Then the real story on the brink of WWII - she takes the train to New Orleans, supposedly to get her Aunt Lulu to move north, but stays, finds a job, a place to live and meets all sorts of people.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captivating, unique, eerie, dreamlike, strange (yet believable) characters, and beautiful, unassuming prose. Captures the dawning and never-quite-complete realizations of that period known as "coming of age." Am I there yet? Will definitely read more Paula Fox.

[Dan Plonsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking other books by Paula Fox substantially more. Characters and situations are too self-consciously constructed.

[Brinda Gurumoorthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing's solid but nothing happens in the story until the very end.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

A 2.5

While the story starts alright, it struggles when it moves off of Helen. As the other characters are added, it becomes a muddle.

[Walter Polashenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost. I didn’t love the ending. Seemed flat compared to the rest

[Button · Rating 3 out of 5]

My two cents.

The Good:

Fox successfully fabricates atmospheres as disparate as bleak muted wooded moonlit gaunt motionless rural New York and sultry dizzy gyral heavy sensuous senseless New Orleans (I, on the other hand, don't write atmosphere well, so yes, I'll rely on a bevy of adjectives).

The inner monologue of the protagonist, Helen, is enchanting. She is intelligent, she is figuring out morality (sometimes coming to obnoxious/cowardly/no conclusions, which manages to work rather than feel like laziness on the part of the author), and she is just enough of a wallflower to offer us a tantalizing view of a rollicking world that cannot truly be a part of the story. Helen isn't rollicking. But she loves the people who are. She loves nearly everyone, which proves for a lovely read. Her empathy doesn't feel forced, and it isn't extensive. She feels about people the way I feel about my neighbor's garden: admiring and removed.

The Bad:

Both Helen's inner monologue and the novel's overall plot is stilted, littered with strange disconnects and half-made claims. Unbuilt characters are judged, and it feels to the reader that she ought to have come to some sort of conclusion too; that she missed something. What she missed, I believe, is another fifty pages of character development and abandoned events that would have threaded together a more coherent tapestry. It is not just that things happen offstage (yes I know, I'm mixing my metaphors). We have no intimation of what they are, and yet we are supposed to have feelings about whatever could have happened. It isn't good storytelling.

3.5 stars.

[Barbara Rhine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, the tale of a girl once she leaves home and gets to New Orleans, with its debauchery and sexual secrets, is full of both insight and a sly humor. Here is just one example, as she describes her mother's penchant for being full of easy slogans about how to live:

(Describing the narrator's father) "'He simply didn't know how to grin and bear it as we all must.' By the time she spoke those words, I had begun to believe grinning was a way of not bearing it."

Then read the mother's final letter to her daughter, near the end of the book, for the final understanding of this trite woman's character.

But that's not all. So much more Check it out!

[Sylvie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plutôt lisible pour un roman psychologique. Des personnages prisonniers de leur histoire familiale (le père disparu, la mère traumatisée et névrosée), de leur époque(le début de la deuxième guerre mondiale), de leur milieu social (l'amérique petite bourgeoise). Une certaine acuité néanmoins dans la vision des personnages, l'atmosphère de la Nouvelle Orléans, moins étouffante que le milieu d'origine de l'héroïne. Il manque au roman ce qui manque aux personnages : de la légèreté, de la distance, un grain de folie et de liberté envers et contre tout.

[Mardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think of Fox as a Young Adult author. I believe this may have been her first adult novel. It's a wonderful story about a young just-out-of-college woman in New Orleans trying to get her journalism career started. she shares a flat with a gay man who drinks a nightly cocktail which may contain absinthe and which causes major nightmares--his theory is that if you get all the bad stuff out while you sleep, your waking life will be better.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paula Fox writes beautifully, & I liked the book, partly because I like New Orleans. But I felt abused by the author because of the way she manipulates the end.
I want to read more Fox adult novels.

insightful:
"Showing herself her own virtues” 107
“She must have known, with the utterly indifferent knowledge of a drunk…” 109
“… that grisly fascination medical stuff has – the inside of the body, that has no self.” 121

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memorable lines:

"I imagined the thick, slow-moving viscosity of blood and the thin pure freedom of water."

"Were people utterly unknown to themselves?"

"I must give up the future, I told myself. Could one do that? Or must there always be this blind frantic tunneling away from the moment?"

"I was too sad to mind. And too flat, a flatness of feeling I recalled experiencing as a child when I finally attained something I had been mad with desire for."

[Cecil Paddywagon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much to my disappointment, only remnants of Paula Fox's genius can be found in God of Nightmares, a straightforward example of New Orleans kitsch with a high-school-reading-list quality to it.

Just to be clear: Fox's genius is not, and could never be, under suspicion. Desperate Characters will forever be a great novel. This one, however, seems to have been written in the hopes of cornering a certain regional bookstore market.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing read -

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neat concept, very enjoyable

[Béatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peinture psycho sociologique attachante, même si le personnage principal brille par son manque de caractère !