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Lives of the Saints
After four years of college in New England, Louise Brown is back in New Orleans, steeped in society's "wastrel-youth contingent" yet somewhat detached, observing it all. From one lush, sweltering event to another, Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, laconic speech, and drunkenness reign, inscribing the South's hallmarks of defeat and refuge in a group of people as intense and adrift as one could encounter. At the center (in Louise's eyes) is Claude Collier, rumpled, accident prone, supremely sweet-and desperate. For Claude, Louise is his steadying focus; for Louise, Claude is the only man who can break her heart "into a million pieces on the floor." By turns elegiac and eccentric, Lives of the Saints is the debut novel that marked Nancy Lemann as a rising literary star.
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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November 14, 2019
P. 32
"Louise, you're a kick", Claude said. I don't know why. "Come on, you want to go hear the Ink Spots? They're singing out on Airline Highway at the High-Lite Inn. It's on the way to Des Allemands. Want to?"
"The Ink Spots?"
"Yes, it's on the way."
"Oh, the Ink Spots. Aren't they kind of old?"
"Yes, they're kind of old. They're kind of old now, you're exactly right, but they still sing. They're singing out on Airline Highway. Want to go?"
"I love the Ink Spots," I said.
"Or maybe we should just sit around talking about the Ink Spots. That's what you'd probably rather do, knowing you," Claude said.
p. 33
On the corner of Indulgence and Religion, in the Lower Garden District, there is a violently pretty spot. It was Claude's parents' house.
p, 45
Emile LaSalle. …
He was full of stories about the famous. He told me he once sat in an opera box next to Mussolini during the war and that Mussolini had tried to marry his sister. Then he told me that Nathaniel Hawthorne once walked into a restaurant when Mr. LaSalle was a very small child, and Nathaniel Hawthorne went straight up to his sister and patted her on the head and said she was cute.
"You've got quite a sister, haven't you?" I said.
"Aw yeah. I been hobnobbing in my time."
p. 72
Claude had beckoned the undertaker into the kitchen, saying he wanted to "talk shop." Then he asked the undertaker what kind of funeral he would like to have himself, after seeing so many other people's funerals, and what kind of burial he would like to have. The glamorous undertaker said, "I would like to be exploded."
"You mean exploded, like with dynamite, at the funeral?" said Claude.
"Yes."
This was Claude's kind of person.
p. 127
Mr. Collier sat in his study and fingered a ring which his wife had not worn for many years. He gave it to her when they married. She returned it to him one day in the late fall of 1950, and they did not reconcile until Saint was conceived.
The ring was a thin gold band carved with vines. On the inside it was inscribed I cling to thee.
On page 140, Nancy Lemann mentions a gospel group called the Zion Harmonizers. There is an actual gospel group called the Zion Harmonizers. They were founded in the late 1930's and are still active today, obviously with different members. I have an album with one of their recordings from the mid 1950's, so I found the mention interesting and cool.
Lives of the Saints is filled with anecdotes that charmed me, even if the narrative didn't go much of anywhere.
Perhaps that's just New Orleans.
"Louise, you're a kick", Claude said. I don't know why. "Come on, you want to go hear the Ink Spots? They're singing out on Airline Highway at the High-Lite Inn. It's on the way to Des Allemands. Want to?"
"The Ink Spots?"
"Yes, it's on the way."
"Oh, the Ink Spots. Aren't they kind of old?"
"Yes, they're kind of old. They're kind of old now, you're exactly right, but they still sing. They're singing out on Airline Highway. Want to go?"
"I love the Ink Spots," I said.
"Or maybe we should just sit around talking about the Ink Spots. That's what you'd probably rather do, knowing you," Claude said.
p. 33
On the corner of Indulgence and Religion, in the Lower Garden District, there is a violently pretty spot. It was Claude's parents' house.
p, 45
Emile LaSalle. …
He was full of stories about the famous. He told me he once sat in an opera box next to Mussolini during the war and that Mussolini had tried to marry his sister. Then he told me that Nathaniel Hawthorne once walked into a restaurant when Mr. LaSalle was a very small child, and Nathaniel Hawthorne went straight up to his sister and patted her on the head and said she was cute.
"You've got quite a sister, haven't you?" I said.
"Aw yeah. I been hobnobbing in my time."
p. 72
Claude had beckoned the undertaker into the kitchen, saying he wanted to "talk shop." Then he asked the undertaker what kind of funeral he would like to have himself, after seeing so many other people's funerals, and what kind of burial he would like to have. The glamorous undertaker said, "I would like to be exploded."
"You mean exploded, like with dynamite, at the funeral?" said Claude.
"Yes."
This was Claude's kind of person.
p. 127
Mr. Collier sat in his study and fingered a ring which his wife had not worn for many years. He gave it to her when they married. She returned it to him one day in the late fall of 1950, and they did not reconcile until Saint was conceived.
The ring was a thin gold band carved with vines. On the inside it was inscribed I cling to thee.
On page 140, Nancy Lemann mentions a gospel group called the Zion Harmonizers. There is an actual gospel group called the Zion Harmonizers. They were founded in the late 1930's and are still active today, obviously with different members. I have an album with one of their recordings from the mid 1950's, so I found the mention interesting and cool.
Lives of the Saints is filled with anecdotes that charmed me, even if the narrative didn't go much of anywhere.
Perhaps that's just New Orleans.
April 27, 2026
A very quirky book, sort of a cult classic. The first person narrator, Louise Brown, has recently returned to New Orleans from going to college "back east" (a silly term for anyone who didn't start from there). The story is set somewhat vaguely in the eighties. Louise encounters a variety of eccentrics; are there other types of characters in New Orleans novels?. The book's Library of Congress subject heading is actually Eccentrics and Eccentrism-Fiction. In very many years of dealing with library catalogues, I had never encountered that one!
Louise's narration, almost stream of consciousness, leads us through one bar and party after another. Much of the time is spent with one or another of the Collier family, all of whose men seem to have names beginning Saint. The patriarch (Saint) Louis Collier is a trip: a wealthy lawyer who seems to spend all of his time studying Homeric Greek, listening to opera, and gardening. His ne'er do well son (St.) Claude Collier is the love of Louise's life.
It is a story of wastrel youth, told in a breathy style. A portrait of a way of life peculiar to New Orleans, and of the city. You always know when you are in New Orleans, from the early morning stench of Bourbon Street to the jazz and spicy food to the graveyards of mausolea. The one place in America that still has a distinctive character. Laissez les bon temps roulez. And pack Alka-Seltzer.
Some quotes:
Louise's narration, almost stream of consciousness, leads us through one bar and party after another. Much of the time is spent with one or another of the Collier family, all of whose men seem to have names beginning Saint. The patriarch (Saint) Louis Collier is a trip: a wealthy lawyer who seems to spend all of his time studying Homeric Greek, listening to opera, and gardening. His ne'er do well son (St.) Claude Collier is the love of Louise's life.
It is a story of wastrel youth, told in a breathy style. A portrait of a way of life peculiar to New Orleans, and of the city. You always know when you are in New Orleans, from the early morning stench of Bourbon Street to the jazz and spicy food to the graveyards of mausolea. The one place in America that still has a distinctive character. Laissez les bon temps roulez. And pack Alka-Seltzer.
Some quotes:
Mr. Collier was always trying to interest me in unexpected key changes in arias and oratorios. He was obsessed with Homer, and went around speaking ancient Greek. He was conducting studies in Rhapsody. What is a Rhapsode? What, indeed. It is a person who memorizes the entirety of Homer in ancient Greek and goes around reciting it.
This, I have concluded, is the sign of a true eccentric, for when you ask a true eccentric why he takes an interest in the things he does, he will not be able to tell you. When you ask him Why, the true eccentric does not know. He does not know why he does it. He just does it.
"What thou lovest is thy true heritage?"
(a quote from the Pisan Cantos)
He attached himself to his duty, and during the interstices of time, he innocently performed his daily rituals, without which he would certainly have Fallen Apart.
Then he asked the undertaker what kind of funeral he would like to have himself, after seeing so many other people's funerals, and what kind of burial he would like to have. The glamorous undertaker said, 'I would like to be exploded.'
'You mean, exploded like with dynamite, at the funeral?' said Claude.
'Yes.'
This was Claude's kind of person."
It is true, New Orleans was never normal. Being normal was one quality New Orleans just never had.
Dark fell. I looked into the gathering night. Suddenly, a parade came out of nowhere and passed through the unsuspecting street, heralded by African drumbeats in the distance vaguely, then the approach of jazz, the smell of sweet olive, ambrosia, the sense of impending spectacle. Then it passed in its fleeting beauty, this glittering dirge, and, as suddenly as it came, I was left, rather stunned, in its wake.
It is this passing parade that I chronicle.
February 18, 2013
I adore this book, and read it every few years. Nancy Lemann has a poetic and funny voice that's utterly enchanting and when she's writing about New Orleans, she is in her element. The Collier family appears elsewhere in her books, but never so vividly, and poignantly, as here. A gem.
June 9, 2026
I really hoped I was going to discover a great buried cult classic with this one but, alas, it was not to be. Originally published in 1985, Lives of the Saints follows a group of wealthy, dissolute young people in New Orleans. Narrator Louise returns from university and is pulled back into this ‘wastrel-youth contingent’ via Claude Collier, a friend/lover whom she’s inexplicably obsessed with. This all sounded exciting but the ‘wastrel youth’ actually do very little of interest and the whole book has a rather subdued energy.
Louise title-cases phrases to denote particular emphasis, for example ‘Moral Qualms’ and ‘Existential Crises’, a habit that makes her voice seem disconcertingly modern even as the characters’ behaviour and milieu struck me as more 50s/60s than 80s. The setting & atmosphere are the best things here and there’s some lovely description – it’s all so lush and heady, filled with sentences like ‘society shed its bloodshot eyes upon the scene’ – although I’m sure some of the New Orleans-specific stuff went over my head. The opening setpiece, at a wedding, is a highly evocative scene, but its drawn-out-ness also began to irritate me, an ominous sign of things to come.
When people are supposed to be having actual conversations, the style becomes exasperating. At times I just genuinely could not picture two actual human beings speaking to one another in the way described. There’s constant repetition of phrases, back-and-forths that consist of characters parroting the same things at each other. The introduction positions this approach as hypnotic and rhythmic; it’s a mark of how not into this I was that it just irritated me.
The book is all about Louise and Claude, but by the end of it I wasn’t even sure what, exactly, had gone on between them. To say that Louise is the narrator, we learn very little about her. Claude too is a character I couldn’t make sense of, although for almost opposite reasons: we’re given a surfeit of info about him, and hardly any of it seems to fit together. He’s a wastrel and dissolute, a gambler, drunk and troublemaker who’s always getting into ‘catastrophes’, yet at the same time Louise also characterises him as wise beyond his years, pleasant and generous, adored by everyone, sensitive, sweet and innocent. She tells us he’s always calm, yet repeatedly depicts him as so anxious he constantly shreds any paper he gets his hands on. I couldn’t make head nor tail of this person. Of course, we’re seeing him through Louise’s eyes, but she remains so indistinct that it’s impossible to pin any of the jumbled Claude stuff to anything about her. And when, halfway through, the novel is split by catastrophe, it carries very little weight.
Reminded me most of an 80s precursor to No One Is Talking About This, which you may consider a recommendation if you liked that book.
Louise title-cases phrases to denote particular emphasis, for example ‘Moral Qualms’ and ‘Existential Crises’, a habit that makes her voice seem disconcertingly modern even as the characters’ behaviour and milieu struck me as more 50s/60s than 80s. The setting & atmosphere are the best things here and there’s some lovely description – it’s all so lush and heady, filled with sentences like ‘society shed its bloodshot eyes upon the scene’ – although I’m sure some of the New Orleans-specific stuff went over my head. The opening setpiece, at a wedding, is a highly evocative scene, but its drawn-out-ness also began to irritate me, an ominous sign of things to come.
When people are supposed to be having actual conversations, the style becomes exasperating. At times I just genuinely could not picture two actual human beings speaking to one another in the way described. There’s constant repetition of phrases, back-and-forths that consist of characters parroting the same things at each other. The introduction positions this approach as hypnotic and rhythmic; it’s a mark of how not into this I was that it just irritated me.
The book is all about Louise and Claude, but by the end of it I wasn’t even sure what, exactly, had gone on between them. To say that Louise is the narrator, we learn very little about her. Claude too is a character I couldn’t make sense of, although for almost opposite reasons: we’re given a surfeit of info about him, and hardly any of it seems to fit together. He’s a wastrel and dissolute, a gambler, drunk and troublemaker who’s always getting into ‘catastrophes’, yet at the same time Louise also characterises him as wise beyond his years, pleasant and generous, adored by everyone, sensitive, sweet and innocent. She tells us he’s always calm, yet repeatedly depicts him as so anxious he constantly shreds any paper he gets his hands on. I couldn’t make head nor tail of this person. Of course, we’re seeing him through Louise’s eyes, but she remains so indistinct that it’s impossible to pin any of the jumbled Claude stuff to anything about her. And when, halfway through, the novel is split by catastrophe, it carries very little weight.
Reminded me most of an 80s precursor to No One Is Talking About This, which you may consider a recommendation if you liked that book.
May 14, 2026
lush and chaotic and full of breakdowns
April 24, 2026
Sprawling oaks, grassy gin, overgrown gardens, afternoon rain… I don’t think I’ve ever read something that captures the lush decadence of New Orleans so well.
I feel like this book was written specifically for me.
That being said, it should be read by all. Especially writers. And New Orleanians. And current and former young women and men. So basically what I’m trying to say is everyone will benefit from reading this book.
I feel like this book was written specifically for me.
That being said, it should be read by all. Especially writers. And New Orleanians. And current and former young women and men. So basically what I’m trying to say is everyone will benefit from reading this book.
May 13, 2026
In New Orleans time collapses on itself so all the pleasures are circular - a constant current of unbridled hedonism punctured by sweltering weather and a Rolodex of eccentric characters. Although maybe if you’re normal in New Orleans Youre the one that stands out after all.
What a surreal experience this was because I live in the lush neighborhood that the author inhibits in this book - I know its streets, its architecture, its facades, its seersucker suits, and its lazy nooks and crannies occupied by families not unlike the ones animated here. And being an outsider in such an insular world is a privileged point of view - it allows me glimpses into these fantastical lives that I’m so intrigued by. The fact that this hold became available as I board my trip to Boston felt so serendipitous (and on the nose LOL). Anyway, Lemann’s writing really packs a punch and I did not mind the repetitive writing at all. I actually end up highlighting tons of the characterizations the second time around because I feel like she really has an expanding grip on these characters (in the way that you can tell she grew up around them). Kudos to her for setting that vivid vibe and atmosphere of Nola that I can taste even on the sterile plane. And its funnier than i expected!! I trace the same steps from Boston to the Garden district to the office job Downtown just like the narrator. I love New Orleans and reading this book just made me appreciate how much debauchery and pandemonium and breakdowns and culture and music and literature in the small streets that we have - its so magical to think of the new stories my friends and I are weaving in the same streets where Lemann lived hers.
What a surreal experience this was because I live in the lush neighborhood that the author inhibits in this book - I know its streets, its architecture, its facades, its seersucker suits, and its lazy nooks and crannies occupied by families not unlike the ones animated here. And being an outsider in such an insular world is a privileged point of view - it allows me glimpses into these fantastical lives that I’m so intrigued by. The fact that this hold became available as I board my trip to Boston felt so serendipitous (and on the nose LOL). Anyway, Lemann’s writing really packs a punch and I did not mind the repetitive writing at all. I actually end up highlighting tons of the characterizations the second time around because I feel like she really has an expanding grip on these characters (in the way that you can tell she grew up around them). Kudos to her for setting that vivid vibe and atmosphere of Nola that I can taste even on the sterile plane. And its funnier than i expected!! I trace the same steps from Boston to the Garden district to the office job Downtown just like the narrator. I love New Orleans and reading this book just made me appreciate how much debauchery and pandemonium and breakdowns and culture and music and literature in the small streets that we have - its so magical to think of the new stories my friends and I are weaving in the same streets where Lemann lived hers.
May 3, 2026
In his foreword to the NYRB classics edition of Lives of the Saints, the noted writer and literary critic Geoff Dyer expounds on the relative obscurity of this novel in the whole of 20th century American literature:
Lulled into an abiding trance of timelessness—as if we are accessing a realm of the city’s unconscious—we are conscious also of time passing, of transience. One night Louise sees a parade, “heralded by African drumbeats,” coming out of nowhere. The “fleeting beauty” of “this glittering dirge” passes and she is left stunned in its wake. And then: “It is this passing parade which I chronicle.” Hard to imagine anything less like a chronicle than this, but the parade and the declaration of authorial intent trailing in its wake remind us that the book’s fleeting dreamtime is not unhistoried. Louise re-creates “the fateful green garden of my youth,” a time of radiant happiness. It’s become an article of faith that happiness writes white..........In this place—the narrator’s, the author’s—of rain, fertile soil, and heat, those blank pages bloom with written life, which means, if we accept that other claim, there must be plenty of unhappiness in them too.
It is also the very fact that the book gives us a vibe of the ever omnipotent past and that it is somehow unclear when the action and the inaction is unfolding, that Geoff Dyer mentions:
It’s only with the first mention of Walkmans and, with a jolt, the “punk-rock outfits” and “disco music and rap singing” that we realize we are closer to the book’s publication date (1985) than to some ever-present past.
Louise and Claude- the two star crossed lovers- ride their destiny in this freewheeling tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another. Overall the reader of the novel will feel a gentle admixture of the uncanny in a tale of love and decadence, but at points the narrative seemed to be a futile and pointless endeavour, as it were those very sections of the novel when the narrative appeared to be lacking in a proper direction.
Lulled into an abiding trance of timelessness—as if we are accessing a realm of the city’s unconscious—we are conscious also of time passing, of transience. One night Louise sees a parade, “heralded by African drumbeats,” coming out of nowhere. The “fleeting beauty” of “this glittering dirge” passes and she is left stunned in its wake. And then: “It is this passing parade which I chronicle.” Hard to imagine anything less like a chronicle than this, but the parade and the declaration of authorial intent trailing in its wake remind us that the book’s fleeting dreamtime is not unhistoried. Louise re-creates “the fateful green garden of my youth,” a time of radiant happiness. It’s become an article of faith that happiness writes white..........In this place—the narrator’s, the author’s—of rain, fertile soil, and heat, those blank pages bloom with written life, which means, if we accept that other claim, there must be plenty of unhappiness in them too.
It is also the very fact that the book gives us a vibe of the ever omnipotent past and that it is somehow unclear when the action and the inaction is unfolding, that Geoff Dyer mentions:
It’s only with the first mention of Walkmans and, with a jolt, the “punk-rock outfits” and “disco music and rap singing” that we realize we are closer to the book’s publication date (1985) than to some ever-present past.
Louise and Claude- the two star crossed lovers- ride their destiny in this freewheeling tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another. Overall the reader of the novel will feel a gentle admixture of the uncanny in a tale of love and decadence, but at points the narrative seemed to be a futile and pointless endeavour, as it were those very sections of the novel when the narrative appeared to be lacking in a proper direction.
March 19, 2026
Strange, funny, heartbreaking, confusing, and wonderful. I am so mad I'm only now reading this book. Lemann is intentionally vague and then she hits you with some line that makes your heart stop.
"Then we lapsed into a state that was like a dark bedroom with the air-conditioning on high that you lay in when you were very young, like some old old times of heaven with someone, as though we had been this way since we were very young, though we had not, on the contrary, for it was sudden."
"Then we lapsed into a state that was like a dark bedroom with the air-conditioning on high that you lay in when you were very young, like some old old times of heaven with someone, as though we had been this way since we were very young, though we had not, on the contrary, for it was sudden."
June 3, 2017
This is among my favorite New Orleans novels, I knew real people like many of these characters in 1970s and 1980s NOLA.
May 14, 2026
This book came out in the 80s, but it feels like a throwback to the fiction of the 20s. The whole time I was reading it, I kept getting reminded of The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. It's the type of book where everyone is a mess but they have a lot of money, so nobody is allowed to call them on it. People show up to formal events so trashed that they can barely sit up straight at the dinner table lol, some of the male characters reminded me of young Bret Easton Ellis. A bunch of this author's books just got reissued and I'll definitely be reading the other ones.
May 28, 2026
i loved the atmosphere of this book
May 10, 2026
4 - 4.5
opens with one of the best (wedding) party sections I’ve ever read. Louise is such a steady, funny narrator; Claude Collier is a menace who makes me feel grateful I’ve never been twisted up over a True Wreck of a Man.
a romp that keeps an air of lightness even as it’s spinning out of control and hydroplanes into tragedy. an incredibly balmy novel. my first Lemann and not my last!!!
opens with one of the best (wedding) party sections I’ve ever read. Louise is such a steady, funny narrator; Claude Collier is a menace who makes me feel grateful I’ve never been twisted up over a True Wreck of a Man.
a romp that keeps an air of lightness even as it’s spinning out of control and hydroplanes into tragedy. an incredibly balmy novel. my first Lemann and not my last!!!
July 31, 2023
"Claude was just Going Through A Phase. He just had not Found Himself yet. St. Augustine had spent his youth in vice and dissipation, and look how he turned out. But the idler's lot is a sad one, and this I do not deny."
original review 10/24/20:
this was a very strange book. similarly, it was the most Dramatic book I have ever read that does not actually consist of /drama/. nothing much happens: Louise Brown comes home to New Orleans after college, falls in love with a "Wastrel Youth" who is somehow also the "kindest person in the world," and then her heart gets broken by him. Lemann uses capitalization to emphasize and change the meaning of certain words; like, for example, Wastrel Youth, and Going Through a Phase, and Found Himself in the previous quotes. this is fun because i do this now (Kiely's Sad Hours at the Bookstore Cafe, my Bad Semester, etc) and because it has become a part of our cultural (online) lexicon in the present 21st century, 35 years after this book was published. many times, these unnecessary capitalizations made me laugh, and definitely made me understand those words or phrases differently; but, when you emphasize everything, nothing is very important at all.
I liked Louise as a character, but also we never learn much about her at all. the entire book is about Claude, maybe for good reason, but it makes me sad that most of what we know about Louise, we know in the context of the boy she lives her life for. the beginning of the book, which takes place at a New Orleans society wedding, was quite funny; almost in the vein of Evelyn Waugh's writing. however, the book drastically changed halfway through with a tragic event that i did not see coming, and after that, the book isn't sweet or funny at all, really. the book's voice was funny and clever, but nothing much is accomplished. the book is open-ended; we have no clue what happens next, and worse yet, i don't actually care. i liked the book's insistence that it's okay to Fall Apart and Have A Breakdown, i loved the Waugh epigraph at the beginning, i loved the setting of New Orleans; and ultimately this was a quick, plotless, very unique, and ultimately very strange read.
(3.5 stars)
re-review 7/2/23:
I reread this after visiting New Orleans for the first time with my best friend, and I definitely understood some of the particulars of the geography and character of that bizarre and layered city much more this time around. at the same time, though, this book is still ~just okay~; something about it still doesn’t sit too right with me. It kind of reminded me of The Great Gatsby at the end, there, with the Good character devolving into shady business dealings and vice and dissipation, as Louise says in the quote above. the main point that I take away from this story is that you really cannot let someone else be the main character of your own life!!!!!
original review 10/24/20:
this was a very strange book. similarly, it was the most Dramatic book I have ever read that does not actually consist of /drama/. nothing much happens: Louise Brown comes home to New Orleans after college, falls in love with a "Wastrel Youth" who is somehow also the "kindest person in the world," and then her heart gets broken by him. Lemann uses capitalization to emphasize and change the meaning of certain words; like, for example, Wastrel Youth, and Going Through a Phase, and Found Himself in the previous quotes. this is fun because i do this now (Kiely's Sad Hours at the Bookstore Cafe, my Bad Semester, etc) and because it has become a part of our cultural (online) lexicon in the present 21st century, 35 years after this book was published. many times, these unnecessary capitalizations made me laugh, and definitely made me understand those words or phrases differently; but, when you emphasize everything, nothing is very important at all.
I liked Louise as a character, but also we never learn much about her at all. the entire book is about Claude, maybe for good reason, but it makes me sad that most of what we know about Louise, we know in the context of the boy she lives her life for. the beginning of the book, which takes place at a New Orleans society wedding, was quite funny; almost in the vein of Evelyn Waugh's writing. however, the book drastically changed halfway through with a tragic event that i did not see coming, and after that, the book isn't sweet or funny at all, really. the book's voice was funny and clever, but nothing much is accomplished. the book is open-ended; we have no clue what happens next, and worse yet, i don't actually care. i liked the book's insistence that it's okay to Fall Apart and Have A Breakdown, i loved the Waugh epigraph at the beginning, i loved the setting of New Orleans; and ultimately this was a quick, plotless, very unique, and ultimately very strange read.
(3.5 stars)
re-review 7/2/23:
I reread this after visiting New Orleans for the first time with my best friend, and I definitely understood some of the particulars of the geography and character of that bizarre and layered city much more this time around. at the same time, though, this book is still ~just okay~; something about it still doesn’t sit too right with me. It kind of reminded me of The Great Gatsby at the end, there, with the Good character devolving into shady business dealings and vice and dissipation, as Louise says in the quote above. the main point that I take away from this story is that you really cannot let someone else be the main character of your own life!!!!!
November 15, 2021
Didn’t realize it’s a Lost Cause narrative - there’s even a “Voices of the South” label my eyes were oblivious to! Hate all the characters but still guiltily enjoyed. Droll, spare but ethereal writing. The South in the 80s seem ancient. “He was made to scream wild declarations of love to women in dressing rooms and gardens, and then throw pots and pans on them.” “She could spend an entire afternoon talking about what hat she wore when she was fifteen.” “Mary Grace Stewart, the bride, sailed past the parents of a boy whose life she just ruined.” Aesthetic fetishizing of “southern gentility”: “…w vivid colors of black maids in white uniforms on the velvet green lawn.” Green. Bamboo grove. Majestic silence. Lonely Splendor. Wastrel Youth.
Want to Read
April 10, 2026New Orleans is full of stories. I have a few myself. City where I was born, (mumble) years ago.... Commander's Palace figures in one. "Let me know when you're almost ready to come" in another....
Surprised I've missed this one, in all these years. Better late than never....
Surprised I've missed this one, in all these years. Better late than never....
August 13, 2012
An old favorite. Quirky and tender. One of my favorite quotes: "Three-fourths of all sorrow is self-pity," from Mr. Collier's wise soliloquy.
May 31, 2026
I can’t say exactly why but I ended up loving this book
October 6, 2020
Thanks to my friend Paul for recommending this book to me. I can't say that it broke my heart into a million pieces on the floor, to use one of the main character's favorite phrases, but it definitely got more and more under my skin as I made my way through the book. Unusual, moving, and excellent.
May 28, 2026
first nyrb book club i read and idk that this was For Me. i don’t think im made for aimless stories (just as claude is aimless). like yes, i understood the meaning, but a lot of this book felt so repetitive with the narrator’s persistent thoughts on the kindness and wildness of claude like I GET IT. everyone honestly was described incessantly, i guess because there’s no plot. i was enticed when the description said the narrator was a nutty girl, but that was a lie 😔 i barely even knew her. maybe im missing what im supposed to be seeing. i didn’t find it funny and it wasn’t really clever. just sad. i really loved the setting of New Orleans though and this makes you reflect on the unique sadness you see in your own hometown.
May 11, 2026
This book was at an automatic disadvantage in my esteem coming as it did on the heels of Brideshead Revisited, but it was also just bad.
Most of the book’s content is spent beating the reader over the head with either cringeworthy generalizations about the American south or cloying assertions about the personalities of its characters, in the complete absence of any actual character or world building.
The style that the book is written in is similarly obnoxious. Lemann doesn’t have the skill to pull off whatever vaguely modernist/stream of consciousness poetic writing she’s attempting to do. There are two moments where this almost succeeds – the wedding and the funeral – but otherwise it‘s discordant, aggressively quirky, and generally unpleasant.
I wanted to like this, but it was impossible. I also just have zero tolerance for even mild Confederacy apologia, which there is a bit of in this.
Most of the book’s content is spent beating the reader over the head with either cringeworthy generalizations about the American south or cloying assertions about the personalities of its characters, in the complete absence of any actual character or world building.
The style that the book is written in is similarly obnoxious. Lemann doesn’t have the skill to pull off whatever vaguely modernist/stream of consciousness poetic writing she’s attempting to do. There are two moments where this almost succeeds – the wedding and the funeral – but otherwise it‘s discordant, aggressively quirky, and generally unpleasant.
I wanted to like this, but it was impossible. I also just have zero tolerance for even mild Confederacy apologia, which there is a bit of in this.
May 28, 2026
Loved this book. The details the main character focuses on are so hyper specific and poetic in their “factuality”, something she faults others for doing which poses an interesting contrast throughout the book. The characters in this were truly unlike any I’ve read in a while, immensely eccentric. Thoroughly enjoyed the way the book was written as a series of details, so simply, with the philosophical musings peppered plainly within the narrative. It really touched on that indescribable feeling of your heart being full and breaking “into a million pieces” because of the beauty of all the little details of the people around you and generally just being alive. Side note, I couldn’t help but think, like Louise, I would absolutely be a victim of falling in love with Claude.
January 27, 2011
This novella is very much like New Orleans, filled with colorful characters who all are trying to suppress their darker side, yet ultimately failing and how they deal with the fall out of that. Beautifully written and it makes me want to hop on a plane south.
December 8, 2013
This was and is and will be perfect. I'm lucky to have read it.
June 13, 2023
made me want to go down to a new orleans hotel and drink the night away
May 13, 2026
Nancy Lemann's Lives of the Saints takes us to New Orleans and captures its essence through the actions and impressions of Claude Collier and Louise Brown. The book is almost twenty years old and takes place in the 1980s. A WalkMan helps place it in time, but the drinking and partying could have served to date it ten to twenty years earlier. The atmosphere and action combine to convey smells, temperatures, and relative humidity. It's never too early or too late for a drink. Clothes get wrinkled and destroyed. Weddings and funerals add to the atmosphere. Louise manages to have ambition but lacks the ability to carry out plans. Claude is generally too busy creating an image to be taken seriously as anything other than a serious drunk. However, he manages to end up with three patents in different fields. Claude's younger brother died in childhood. The death may have destroyed his father. When people aren't busy being drunk, they have breakdowns. The writing style uniquely captures the characters' pace of life, cycling through manias of wild, drunken behavior, and the despair of inaction. This book has been reissued as part of the attention being given to Lemann's new book The Oyster Diaries.
June 5, 2026
I wish it never ended. I adored it so much
Mrs. Stewart, next to me, was talking about who married in 1910. Claude returned and sat down, chewing a bottle cap. Pensively, he took out the pack of cigarettes and started to divide the foil part from the paper part, leaving a pile of strips on the table.
"Could you please tone it down a little?" I said.
"Yes, enough silliness," he said. "Now I must suffer." He cutched his throat and pretended to be having a strangulation fit.
"If that weren't so amusing, one might laugh," I said darkly-but confused.
"I find it so terribly amusing," he said, "that I'm terribly amused. I find this terribly amusing."
"I find this rather immature," I said. "If this weren't so unbearably immature, maybe I would-"
"I feel very mature right now. I feel extremely mature." He put his hand on my knee. I just stared at it in a stupor.
"The way your slip was showing,” he said, “it reminded me of the South.” Mrs. Stewart the elder was just sitting there with a rhapsodical expression in her eyes. Probably recalling the famous pink kid evening bag she used to carry in 1915.
Mrs. Stewart, next to me, was talking about who married in 1910. Claude returned and sat down, chewing a bottle cap. Pensively, he took out the pack of cigarettes and started to divide the foil part from the paper part, leaving a pile of strips on the table.
"Could you please tone it down a little?" I said.
"Yes, enough silliness," he said. "Now I must suffer." He cutched his throat and pretended to be having a strangulation fit.
"If that weren't so amusing, one might laugh," I said darkly-but confused.
"I find it so terribly amusing," he said, "that I'm terribly amused. I find this terribly amusing."
"I find this rather immature," I said. "If this weren't so unbearably immature, maybe I would-"
"I feel very mature right now. I feel extremely mature." He put his hand on my knee. I just stared at it in a stupor.
"The way your slip was showing,” he said, “it reminded me of the South.” Mrs. Stewart the elder was just sitting there with a rhapsodical expression in her eyes. Probably recalling the famous pink kid evening bag she used to carry in 1915.
April 12, 2024
Sort of a quirky book with a host of silly characters overtly emphasized. I was reminded of my own thirty-one years living in Louisville, Kentucky and their vast contingents of Southern-made blue-bloods and wannabes. Of course, New Orleans is far more entrenched within the culture of the deep south. And Lemann celebrates these eccentricities with a deft hand and a cleverness that is surely a major element of her character and charming personality.
Please read my complete review here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
Please read my complete review here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
June 3, 2026
Here is an author who takes the language by the hand and drapes it over iron balconies while gents and ladies glisten to the hum of crickets.
I languish over appropriately liquored lunches and let my eyes follow tourists deciding to give in to easy joy. I turn into Tennessee Williams as I wait for Big Daddy while sipping a Sazarac.
…all blurry beiges with the occasional tan deck chair or pink seersucker suit. And the heat wiggles in front of you daring you to shout but you fall gently back into immobility to conserve the slightest breeze.
…being daring and switching from Diet Coke to Mr Pibb like the soft rebel you are.
I don’t know if I’d survive New Orleans today. You have to be willing to expose yourself to genteel jibes and noble truths because trying to buck it forces motion you can’t afford when the soggy air tugs you down into a cushion.
This story reminds me about the endless green of the city—the hedges, the painted ironwork, the moss growing on dripping drains, the signs for cocktails, the anoles sunning in the gazebo gardens, the beads stuck in the trees from any of a number of parades or first lines, the deep shadows in the Mississippi.
I languish over appropriately liquored lunches and let my eyes follow tourists deciding to give in to easy joy. I turn into Tennessee Williams as I wait for Big Daddy while sipping a Sazarac.
…all blurry beiges with the occasional tan deck chair or pink seersucker suit. And the heat wiggles in front of you daring you to shout but you fall gently back into immobility to conserve the slightest breeze.
…being daring and switching from Diet Coke to Mr Pibb like the soft rebel you are.
I don’t know if I’d survive New Orleans today. You have to be willing to expose yourself to genteel jibes and noble truths because trying to buck it forces motion you can’t afford when the soggy air tugs you down into a cushion.
This story reminds me about the endless green of the city—the hedges, the painted ironwork, the moss growing on dripping drains, the signs for cocktails, the anoles sunning in the gazebo gardens, the beads stuck in the trees from any of a number of parades or first lines, the deep shadows in the Mississippi.
May 7, 2026
“Lives of the Saints” by Nancy Leman (1985) is enjoying a bit of a renaissance; a new edition in print to be “discovered” by a new generation, and I’m thrilled to have read this unique novel that I somehow missed in the 80s!
Set in New Orleans, which is a character itself (and if you’ve been there you know!) our wonderfully engaging narrator Louise Brown describes the Garden District society with both humor and pathos. These characters are perfectly painted and unforgettable.
The prose of the novel is lyrical; complete with haunting refrains. It’s a Homeric tale of Claude Collier as Odysseus, having one adventure after another, Louise his Penelope always awaiting his return.
Normally I caution against reading the Introduction to a classic because they tend to give away too many plot points, but this Introduction by Geoff Dyer, is fabulous and gives away nothing while enhancing the reader’s experience, well done, Mr. Dyer!
Set in New Orleans, which is a character itself (and if you’ve been there you know!) our wonderfully engaging narrator Louise Brown describes the Garden District society with both humor and pathos. These characters are perfectly painted and unforgettable.
The prose of the novel is lyrical; complete with haunting refrains. It’s a Homeric tale of Claude Collier as Odysseus, having one adventure after another, Louise his Penelope always awaiting his return.
Normally I caution against reading the Introduction to a classic because they tend to give away too many plot points, but this Introduction by Geoff Dyer, is fabulous and gives away nothing while enhancing the reader’s experience, well done, Mr. Dyer!
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