Letourneau's Used Auto Parts - Softcover

Carolyn Chute burst on the literary scene in 1985 with the critically acclaimed and bestselling The Beans of Egypt, Maine. She followed this success with Letourneau's Used Auto Parts and the epic Merry Men. Her nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, and elsewhere, and she has written about the militia movement in Maine, where she lives with her husband, Michael, and various furry creatures.

Chute's new novel is a slice-of-life story cut from the middle of the loaf. Loosely structured around the interactions and relationships of Big Lucien Letourneau, owner of the Miracle City junkyard, and his family, neighbors, and assorted hangers-on, the novel seems a series of barely connected sketches. The absence of a coherent point of view further diminish Chute's undeniably vivid language and clear eye for the details of life on the margins of society. Still, the immediacy of the prose evokes in startling clarity the amoral jumble of passions and the suffering of characters whose lives seem at once so different and yet so much like our own. Librarians should consider, given the interest in Chute's first novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine ( LJ 3/15/87). Linda L. Rome, Mentor, Ohio
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