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Malaise: A Novel
Struggling against her California home community of sun worshippers, new-age practitioners, and mall enthusiasts, Alabama-born Fleming Ford finds herself torn between devotion to her husband and an attraction to an older English tycoon who represents the culture and formality she seeks. 12,500 first printing.
- GenresFictionContemporary
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2002
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February 12, 2012The reader of this writer's canon—THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS (1985), THE RITZ OF THE BAYOU (1987), SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE (1993), THE FIERY PANTHEON (1999) and most recently MALAISE (2002), the first, third, and last brought back into print by LSU’s "Voices of the South" Series—will notice that Lemann is sufficiently wise to have set only one of her novels in New Orleans itself, thus giving herself ways to talk about the city and its people from the viewpoints of both the native resident and the exile. Were Lemann’s style not so absolutely singular, her lyricism so heartstoppingly beautiful, and her humor so entertaining, she would likely be bashed for some of the extreme political incorrectness in her novels. For, without apology, she presents families who, in the best tradition of paternalism, cannot manage their days without black domestic help, whom the families regard as near blood-kin. (Of course, there’s no telling what the various maids, laundresses, and chauffeurs think about them.)
Lemann adores men and seems to have little interest in women except as wives and ditzy debutantes; she is almost waif-like in her lack of self-determination and her willingness to allow her romances shape her destiny; and she depicts with unreserved love and admiration the usually silver-haired Live White Males who run the CBD, or Central Business District, from their banks and law offices. These potential objections gotten out of the way, one cannot help but notice the extremely serious (and for some readers, more psychosocially resonant) theme of alcoholism that permeates many scenes in her novels. How I wish for more space here to offer excerpts of Lemann’s prose long enough to give a taste of what makes her an absolute genius. Her novels have plots, yes, but they are primarily driven and unified by the use of repeated phrases or verbal motifs, some of them Southern clichés—hearts are constantly “breaking into a million pieces on the floor,” for example—that she, like Tennessee Williams, somehow turns to poetry. Her gifts hardly withered when transported to the desert country of southern California, the setting of MALAISE, a grown-up’s novel if ever there were one. “It's so godforsaken, so historical, and so pure,” she writes of the sandy wasteland surrounding her, “that you are curiously elated. It may be called Death Valley, but the minute you get there you are subsumed by a vast and incongruous gaiety.”
Lemann’s critics protest that she says the same thing over and over about nothing of great import. This accusation that has been hurled at writers as variously great as Jane Austen and Peter Taylor, so no one can accuse Lemann of keeping bad company. It’s not irrelevant to mention here that all three writers, as well as many others good and great, have been dismissed by the phrase “novelist of manners.” But since when don’t manners matter? If those who run our country loved its every square inch as much as they claim—and not just its oil and other nonrenewable and thus most valuable natural resources—they might not have ignored the dire situation in New Orleans after the levees broke, offering initially little more than faint encouragement, vague promises of relief, and rote sympathy murmured from an airplane high over the city. Southerners have a quietly damning phrase for such disregard: just plain bad manners.
(excerpt first published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
Lemann adores men and seems to have little interest in women except as wives and ditzy debutantes; she is almost waif-like in her lack of self-determination and her willingness to allow her romances shape her destiny; and she depicts with unreserved love and admiration the usually silver-haired Live White Males who run the CBD, or Central Business District, from their banks and law offices. These potential objections gotten out of the way, one cannot help but notice the extremely serious (and for some readers, more psychosocially resonant) theme of alcoholism that permeates many scenes in her novels. How I wish for more space here to offer excerpts of Lemann’s prose long enough to give a taste of what makes her an absolute genius. Her novels have plots, yes, but they are primarily driven and unified by the use of repeated phrases or verbal motifs, some of them Southern clichés—hearts are constantly “breaking into a million pieces on the floor,” for example—that she, like Tennessee Williams, somehow turns to poetry. Her gifts hardly withered when transported to the desert country of southern California, the setting of MALAISE, a grown-up’s novel if ever there were one. “It's so godforsaken, so historical, and so pure,” she writes of the sandy wasteland surrounding her, “that you are curiously elated. It may be called Death Valley, but the minute you get there you are subsumed by a vast and incongruous gaiety.”
Lemann’s critics protest that she says the same thing over and over about nothing of great import. This accusation that has been hurled at writers as variously great as Jane Austen and Peter Taylor, so no one can accuse Lemann of keeping bad company. It’s not irrelevant to mention here that all three writers, as well as many others good and great, have been dismissed by the phrase “novelist of manners.” But since when don’t manners matter? If those who run our country loved its every square inch as much as they claim—and not just its oil and other nonrenewable and thus most valuable natural resources—they might not have ignored the dire situation in New Orleans after the levees broke, offering initially little more than faint encouragement, vague promises of relief, and rote sympathy murmured from an airplane high over the city. Southerners have a quietly damning phrase for such disregard: just plain bad manners.
(excerpt first published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
May 13, 2024
…The universe being so vast, who planned it that our green earth and humanity should grow, why are we here, what is before and after, the span before and after life so immeasurably longer than the span of life itself. I grew seedy hanging out in my pajamas all day trying to figure out the universe…
Please read my entire review here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
Please read my entire review here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
March 26, 2022
Couldn't even finish it. It was pointless
February 4, 2024
I desperately hope Lemann publishes more novels.
August 8, 2015
Fleming Ford, mother of two w/ another on the way, is adrift. A Southerner by birth, she moved to Esperanza, CA from NYC w/ her husband, who is looking for water in the Mojave Desert. Fleming searches for purpose, happiness, contentment, and her malaise is all the more evident to her now that she lives in a self-proclaimed paradise. The story follows her relationship w/ Mr. Lieberman, an ~80 year old British mogol, who was an old boss in NYC. His wife recently passed away, and Fleming relates to his melancholy.
Nancy Lemann is funny (the scenes w/ the Russians and the fetid ponds come to mind; I found myself laughing out loud). However, the humourous moments were lost in a sea of repetition, both of specific words and certain phrases. For example, Lemann wrote that Esperanza was a paradise at least 15 times (I started counting...and when your reader starts counting, you've lost them). She used the word quaint four times in one paragraph. She used the word vast seven times on one page. The examples are practically infinite. Was this an intentional device? If so, it was a terrible failure, at least to this reader. Never assume the reader is stupid, or so I've heard successful writers preach - her repetion of certain phrases appeared a reminder, as if I could have forgotten that mariachi bands are always playing in Esperanza (mentioned ~7x), that whenever there's a threat of rain, everyone goes to pieces (~5x), and that everyone tries to get you to buy a boat (~3x). The readers remember these things, esp in a book of only 250 odd pages. Either it was a device, or it was desperation for material...regardless, it was not successful.
The blurbs on the cover are giving her what she hasn't deserved - they are filling in the blanks on half thoughts.
Lemann has great potential - she can write a great chapter of vivid, funny prose. I'd read something else and know to put it down if these same flaws are there in her later work.
Nancy Lemann is funny (the scenes w/ the Russians and the fetid ponds come to mind; I found myself laughing out loud). However, the humourous moments were lost in a sea of repetition, both of specific words and certain phrases. For example, Lemann wrote that Esperanza was a paradise at least 15 times (I started counting...and when your reader starts counting, you've lost them). She used the word quaint four times in one paragraph. She used the word vast seven times on one page. The examples are practically infinite. Was this an intentional device? If so, it was a terrible failure, at least to this reader. Never assume the reader is stupid, or so I've heard successful writers preach - her repetion of certain phrases appeared a reminder, as if I could have forgotten that mariachi bands are always playing in Esperanza (mentioned ~7x), that whenever there's a threat of rain, everyone goes to pieces (~5x), and that everyone tries to get you to buy a boat (~3x). The readers remember these things, esp in a book of only 250 odd pages. Either it was a device, or it was desperation for material...regardless, it was not successful.
The blurbs on the cover are giving her what she hasn't deserved - they are filling in the blanks on half thoughts.
Lemann has great potential - she can write a great chapter of vivid, funny prose. I'd read something else and know to put it down if these same flaws are there in her later work.
December 10, 2014
Ms. Lemann is a contemporary of mine from New Orleans, and I read her again and again, when I get homesick for the heavy air of the South. Drama abounds and plans are hatched, and I go along for the wonderful ride.
March 28, 2014
Good, light read, but not as good as Lives of the Saints.
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April 22, 2014zero stars
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews