Priestdaddy: a Memoir

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Priestdaddy: a Memoir Details: Amazon rank: #7,022 Price: $27.00 bound: 347 pages Publisher: Riverhead Books (May 2, 2017) Language: English ASIN: B01L8C4W98 File size: 1644 KB Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood >>>DOWNLOAD BOOK Priestdaddy: A Memoir >>>READ BOOK Priestdaddy: A Memoir 1 / 6 "Consistently alive with feeling. Lockwood's prose is cute and dirty and innocent and experienced, Betty Boop in a pas de deux with David Sedaris." --The New York Times “You’ll be wowed by Patricia Lockwood’s darkly profane and poetic memoir Priestdaddy.” —Elle Magazine From Patricia Lockwood—a writer acclaimed for her wildly original voice—a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition. Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met—a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates “like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972.” His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church’s country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence—from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group—with scenes that chronicle the eight- month adventure she and her husband had in her parents’ household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother. Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition. 2 / 6 Priestdaddy: A Memoir book german Priestdaddy: A Memoir book pdf Priestdaddy: A Memoir discount for book Priestdaddy: A Memoir fb2 online find book сhapter Priestdaddy: A Memoir download via torrent client Priestdaddy: A Memoir You search pdf online pdf Priestdaddy: A Memoir book zipshare Priestdaddy: A Memoir book iCloud Priestdaddy: A Memoir book book free from Galaxy Priestdaddy: A Memoir book for ibooks Priestdaddy: A Memoir book pc free Priestdaddy: A Memoir .fb2 download Priestdaddy: A Memoir mobile ebook Priestdaddy: A Memoir information wiki author book francais Priestdaddy: A Memoir book samsung Priestdaddy: A Memoir book format djvu Priestdaddy: A Memoir book iCloud Priestdaddy: A Memoir find audio pc bookstore book Priestdaddy: A Memoir download book from sony xperia Priestdaddy: A Memoir download free cloud Priestdaddy: A Memoir ebook android pdf Priestdaddy: A Memoir ebook android pdf Priestdaddy: A Memoir book 4Shared 3 / 6 Priestdaddy: A Memoir audio book Priestdaddy: A Memoir book download Priestdaddy: A Memoir .txt download Priestdaddy: A Memoir book pdf Priestdaddy: A Memoir how to find book without register Priestdaddy: A Memoir francais ebook access online offline Priestdaddy: A Memoir book ipad free Priestdaddy: A Memoir download full book Priestdaddy: A Memoir free ios apple without signing via Priestdaddy: A Memoir link without registering selling online ebook Priestdaddy: A Memoir tpb free torrent Priestdaddy: A Memoir pc read value kickass francais 48a4f088c3 4 / 6 Everette Hartsoe's RAZOR: Killer inside 5 / 6 PlusL%27s+Remake+Instructions+de+Samurai+pour+LEGO+31008%3A+Vous+pouvez+construire +le+Samurai++de+vos+propres+briques%21+%28French+Edition%29 My Quarter Century, of American Politics, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) Black Russian Terrier Coloring Book IL Messia di F. A. Klopstock: Poema in Venti Canti (Classic Reprint) (Italian Edition) Cry Wolf: Hell's Gut Calvary+-+A+Novel Zombie Jerky Le Précieux-Sang: Prières au Précieux Sang Et A la Vierge Immaculée (Classic Reprint) (French Edition) King Edward VII as a Man and Monarch James Boyle 6 / 6 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).
Recommended publications
  • Dear READER, Winter/Spring 2021 SQUARE BOOKS TOP 100 of 2020 to Understate It—2020 Was Not Square Books’ Best Year
    Dear READER, Winter/Spring 2021 SQUARE BOOKS TOP 100 OF 2020 To understate it—2020 was not Square Books’ best year. Like everyone, we struggled—but we are grateful to remain in business, and that all the booksellers here are healthy. When Covid19 arrived, our foot-traffic fell precipitously, and sales with it—2020 second-quarter sales were down 52% from those of the same period in 2019. But our many loyal customers adjusted along with us as we reopened operations when we were more confident of doing business safely. The sales trend improved in the third quarter, and November/December were only slightly down compared to those two months last year. We are immensely grateful to those of you who ordered online or by phone, allowing us to ship, deliver, or hold for curbside pickup, or who waited outside our doors to enter once our visitor count was at capacity. It is only through your abiding support that Square Books remains in business, ending the year down 30% and solid footing to face the continuing challenge of Covid in 2021. And there were some very good books published, of which one hundred bestsellers we’ll mention now. (By the way, we still have signed copies of many of these books; enquire accordingly.) Many books appear on this list every year—old favorites, if you will, including three William Faulkner books: Selected Short Stories (37th on our list) which we often recommend to WF novices, The Sound and the Fury (59) and As I Lay Dying (56), as well as a notably good new biography of Faulkner by Michael Gorra, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (61).
    [Show full text]
  • Torrey Peters Has Written the Trans Novel Your Book Club Needs to Read Now P.14
    Featuring 329 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXIX, NO. 1 | 1 JANUARY 2021 REVIEWS Torrey Peters has written the trans novel your book club needs to read now p.14 Also in the issue: Lindsay & Lexie Kite, Jeff Mack, Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson from the editor’s desk: New Year’s Reading Resolutions Chairman BY TOM BEER HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher MARC WINKELMAN John Paraskevas As a new year begins, many people commit to strict diets or exercise regimes # Chief Executive Officer or vow to save more money. Book nerd that I am, I like to formulate a series MEG LABORDE KUEHN of “reading resolutions”—goals to help me refocus and improve my reading [email protected] Editor-in-Chief experience in the months to come. TOM BEER Sometimes I don’t accomplish all that I hoped—I really ought to have [email protected] Vice President of Marketing read more literature in translation last year, though I’m glad to have encoun- SARAH KALINA [email protected] tered Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults (translated by Ann Goldstein) Managing/Nonfiction Editor and Juan Pablo Villalobos’ I Don’t Expect Anyone To Believe Me (translated by ERIC LIEBETRAU Daniel Hahn)—but that isn’t exactly the point. [email protected] Fiction Editor Sometimes, too, new resolutions form over the course of the year. Like LAURIE MUCHNICK many Americans, I sought out more work by Black writers in 2020; as a result, [email protected] Tom Beer Young Readers’ Editor books by Claudia Rankine, Les and Tamara Payne, Raven Leilani, Deesha VICKY SMITH [email protected] Philyaw, and Randall Kenan were among my favorites of the year.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry Catalog 2021
    TIN HOUSE POETRY CATALOG NEW TITLES & ESSENTIAL BACKLIST 2021 Contents All The Names Given ..................................................... 1 My Darling from the Lions.................................................. 2 Superdoom: Selected Poems ................................................. 3 Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night ................................ 4 The Perseverance ......................................................... 5 Negotiations ............................................................. 6 Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution ................................ 7 Anodyne ................................................................. 8 My Baby First Birthday .................................................... 9 Good Boys .............................................................. 10 A Sand Book ............................................................. 11 Feed ..................................................................... 12 A Fortune for Your Disaster ................................................. 13 Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself ........................................ 14 Magical Negro ........................................................... 15 When Rap Spoke Straight to God............................................ 16 Junk ..................................................................... 17 The Möbius Strip Club of Grief ............................................. 18 Nature Poem ............................................................ 19 There Are
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Media, Remediation, and North American Poetry in the Twenty-First Century
    1 BORROWED COUNTRY: DIGITAL MEDIA, REMEDIATION, AND NORTH AMERICAN POETRY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A dissertation presented by Jim McGrath to The Department of EngLish in partiaL fuLfiLLment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts August 2015 2 BORROWED COUNTRY: DIGITAL MEDIA, REMEDIATION, AND NORTH AMERICAN POETRY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A dissertation presented by Jim McGrath ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partiaL fuLfiLLment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the CoLLege of SociaL Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University August 2015 3 ABSTRACT How have our ideas about reading and writing poetry been transformed by digitaL media? In “’Borrowed Country: DigitaL Media, Remediation, and North American Poetry in the Twenty-First Century,” I discuss five American poets who have variousLy discussed and made use of particuLar forms of digitaL media in their work: John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Kevin Young, Steve Roggenbuck, and Patricia Lockwood. I am interested in these poets because they circuLate work via traditionaL sites and networks of pubLication – individuaL voLumes and poetry journaLs in print – whiLe maintaining investments in the ways digitaL modes of writing and pubLishing have both changed these conventionaL sites of transmission and created additionaL venues in which to circulate poetry: e-books, web sites, sociaL media networks. The work of Ashbery, Carson, Young, Roggenbuck, and Lockwood reminds us in various ways that constant remediation is a condition of our hypermediated Lives. The poets surveyed here aLL write about culturaL objects as they change over time: they demonstrate how works are overshadowed or otherwise obscured by historicaL imperatives that desire broad strokes and tidy narratives, fragmented or erased by poor care or inattention over the passage of time, reprinted and resituated across various print and digitaL editions.
    [Show full text]
  • Collecting, Preserving, and Celebrating Ohio Literature Spring 2019 | 1 Contents QUARTERLY SPRING 2019
    QUARTERLY SPRING 2019 | VOL. 62 NO. 2 Collecting, Preserving, and Celebrating Ohio Literature Spring 2019 | 1 Contents QUARTERLY SPRING 2019 FEATURES BOARD OF TRUSTEES EX-OFFICIO 4 Ohioana Book Festival: Fran DeWine, Columbus ELECTED A New Chapter! President: Daniel Shuey, Westerville Vice-President: John Sullivan, Plain City 18 An Interview with Tim Bowers Secretary: Bryan Loar, Columbus Treasurer: Jay Yurkiw, Columbus 20 Founders of Thurber House Gillian Berchowitz, Athens Rudine Sims Bishop, Columbus 23 A Prize for American Humor Helen F. Bolte, Columbus Katie Brandt, Columbus Lisa Evans, Johnstown BOOK REVIEWS Ellen McDevitt-Stredney, Columbus Mary Heather Munger, Perrysburg Louise Musser, Delaware 24 Nonfiction Claudia Plumley, Dublin Cynthia Puckett, Columbus David Siders, Cincinnati 30 Fiction Geoffrey Smith, Columbus Yolanda Danyi Szuch, Perrysburg 33 Middle Grade Jacquelyn L. Vaughan, Dublin 34 Children’s APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR OF OHIO Carl Denbow, Ph.D., Athens Carol Garner, Mount Vernon BOOKS AND EVENTS H.C. "Buck" Niehoff, Cincinnati Brian M. Perera, Upper Arlington TRUSTEES EMERITUS 36 Book List Francis Ott Allen, Cincinnati Ann Bowers, Bowling Green 47 Coming Soon Christina Butler, Ph.D., Columbus James Hughes, Ph.D., Dayton Robert Webner, Columbus OHIOANA STAFF Executive Director..............David Weaver Office Manager...............Kathryn Powers Library Specialist............Courtney Brown Program Coordinator........Morgan Peters Editor...............Leslie Birdwell Shortlidge Co-Editor..................Stephanie Michaels The Ohioana Quarterly (ISSN 0030-1248) is currently published four times a year by the Ohioana Library Association, 274 East First Avenue, Suite 300, Columbus, Ohio 43201. Individual subscriptions to the Ohioana Quarterly are available through membership in the Association; $35 of membership dues pays the required subscription.
    [Show full text]
  • Modern and Contemporary American Poets
    The Long and the Short: Modern and Contemporary American Poets Chris Spaide [he/him/his] Office Hours: TBD [email protected] 1 of 9 English 98r: Junior Tutorial | The Long and the Short: Modern and Contemporary American Poets American poetry, from modernism to now—where do we begin? Can modern American poets situate themselves between Walt Whitman’s multitude-containing maximalism and Emily Dickinson’s loaded-gun minimalism, or do they avoid those two poles entirely? What forms and modes define the past century-or-so of American poetry, and how are those forms and modes changed by poets of different races, genders, sexualities, backgrounds, and traditions? To answer these questions, our tutorial charts an idiosyncratic course through modern and contemporary American poetry, focusing entirely on its greatest long and short poems. We’ll see, for example, how one incarnation of the modernist long poem reconstructs the fragments of classical epic and myth, and how another incarnation, taking cues from be-bop, is “punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and disc-tortions of the music of community and transition” (Langston Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred). And we’ll see how the contemporary short poem has learned as much from Japanese haiku and the dozens as from stand-up jokes and memes. Unraveling the intertwined histories of the long and the short poem, we will survey many of the chief topics in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry. Certain topics will seem exclusively modern: ecopoetics, poetry and social media, writing in the age of American empire and #BlackLivesMatter.
    [Show full text]
  • TBT Sep-Oct 2018 for Online
    Talking Book Topics September–October 2018 Volume 84, Number 5 Need help? Your local cooperating library is always the place to start. For general information and to order books, call 1-888-NLS-READ (1-888-657-7323) to be connected to your local cooperating library. To find your library, visit www.loc.gov/nls and select “Find Your Library.” To change your Talking Book Topics subscription, contact your local cooperating library. Get books fast from BARD Most books and magazines listed in Talking Book Topics are available to eligible readers for download on the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) site. To use BARD, contact your local cooperating library or visit nlsbard.loc.gov for more information. The free BARD Mobile app is available from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon’s Appstore. About Talking Book Topics Talking Book Topics, published in audio, large print, and online, is distributed free to people unable to read regular print and is available in an abridged form in braille. Talking Book Topics lists titles recently added to the NLS collection. The entire collection, with hundreds of thousands of titles, is available at www.loc.gov/nls. Select “Catalog Search” to view the collection. Talking Book Topics is also online at www.loc.gov/nls/tbt and in downloadable audio files from BARD. Overseas Service American citizens living abroad may enroll and request delivery to foreign addresses by contacting the NLS Overseas Librarian by phone at (202) 707-9261 or by email at [email protected]. Page 1 of 87 Music scores and instructional materials NLS music patrons can receive braille and large-print music scores and instructional recordings through the NLS Music Section.
    [Show full text]
  • Dear Friends of the Writers House
    Dear Friends of the Writers House, ne week into September, we his family contributed punningly burnt-up embarked on something entirely John Ash-berries to our Edible Books party, new. Our free and open online along with stunningly rendered gingerbread Ocourse on modern and contemporary Kindles. Over 100 ModPo’ers demonstrated American poetry — ModPo, as it’s known their belief in our mission by responding with — launched with an enrollment of 42,000 extraordinary generosity to our annual KWH people from more than 120 countries. The fundraising campaign. Kelly Writers House course was based on Al’s famous “English Indeed, this was the year in which we felt 3805 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104-6150 88,” a class he has taught for more than 20 our community truly expand in new and tel: 215-746-POEM years. Through a series of video discussions exciting ways, reminding us that, after almost fax: 215-573-9750 and live interactive webcasts, led by Al and a two decades of innovative work, the potential email: [email protected] trusty band of teaching assistants, the ModPo for what we can do here is still nearly limitless. web: writing.upenn.edu/wh experiment brought a KWH-style learning In the pages of this annual you’ll read mode into homes, offices, and schools around more about ModPo and several of the the world. other projects that made us proud this year. Now, months after the ten-week MOOC On pages 16-17 we share news about our wrapped, we’re still in touch with ModPo’ers expanded outreach to prospective Penn from all over, many of whom have traveled students and the great work of Jamie-Lee great distances to visit us here in Philadelphia, Josselyn (C’05), who travels the country to to express their enthusiasm for our space and seek out talented young writers.
    [Show full text]
  • What Turns Us on “These Scientists Studied Human Fascination—And You Won’T Believe What They Found Out!”
    The Canada Council’s former CEO speaks his mind PAGE 3 $6.50 Vol. 22, No. 8 October 2014 Julie Sedivy What turns us on “These scientists studied human fascination—and you won’t believe what they found out!” ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Jessa Gamble The fracking fracas Michael Valpy Toronto: biography of a mean city Andrea Lawlor The night we almost lost a country PLUS: NON-FICTION Stephen Bown on the surprising scientific interests of the HBC + Adam Chapnick on Jack Granatstein’s re-evaluation of Vimy + Susan Knutson on Canada’s use of Shakespeare + Michael Morden on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission + Jill Frayne on canoeing in the north + Peter Macleod and Frances Woolley on unions, workers and democracy Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 FICTION Ava Homa reviews The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan + Mark Frutkin Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. reviews Us Conductors by Sean Michaels PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 POETRY Jeff Latosik + M. Travis Lane + Ben Ladouceur + Robyn Sarah New from University of Toronto Press Reclaiming the Don Surviving Trench Warfare Religious Radicalization and An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918, Securitization in Canada and River Valley Second Edition Beyond by Jennifer L. Bonnell by Bill Rawling edited by Paul Bramadat and Surviving Trench Warfare offers a whole Reclaiming the Don illuminates the Lorne Dawson impact of Don River Valley on Toronto’s new understanding of the First World War, development and unearths the missing replacing the image of a static trench war This book is an ideal guide to the story of the relationship between the river, with one in which soldiers actively struggled ongoing debates on how best to respond the valley, and the city.
    [Show full text]
  • Cornerstone Spring Catalogue
    1 2 CONTENTS Contacts | 4 Century | 5 Hutchinson | 15 Del Rey | 21 Random House Business | 26 William Heinemann | 33 #Merky Books | 36 Windmill | 40 Arrow | 47 3 CORNERSTONE CONTACTS Charlotte Bush – Director of Publicity and Media Relations [email protected] | 020 7840 8613 Najma Finlay – Publicity Director, Hutchinson [email protected] | 020 7840 8614 Laura Brooke – Publicity Director, Cornerstone Imprints [email protected] | 020 7840 8695 Klara Zak – Publicity Director, Century & Arrow [email protected] | 020 7840 8548 Rachel Kennedy – Senior Publicity Manager [email protected] | 020 7840 8893 Isabelle Ralphs – Senior Press Officer [email protected] | 020 7840 8388 Alice Spencer – Senior Press Officer [email protected] | 020 7840 8624 Anna Hibberd – Senior Campaigns Executive [email protected] | 020 7840 8772 General Enquiries: Georgia Williams – Publicity Assistant [email protected] | 020 7840 7323 Lydia Spooner – Publicity Assistant [email protected] | 020 7840 8673 4 CENTURY 5 Charles Soule Katie Flynn Light of the Jedi A Mother's Joy Two hundred years before the events of Star Wars: The brand new uplifting novel from Sunday Times The Phantom Menace, in the era of the glorious High bestselling author Katie Flynn, about a young woman Republic, the noble and wise Jedi Knights must face a searching for hope in Liverpool during the second January 2021 January 2021 Hardback Hardback £20.00 £20.00 368 pages 432 pages 9781529124644 9781529123890 __________________________________________ THE BRAND NEW NOVEL FROM SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING Two hundred years before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, AUTHOR KATIE FLYNN in the era of the glorious High Republic, the noble and wise Jedi Knights _____________________ must face a frightening threat to themselves, the galaxy, and the Force itself….
    [Show full text]
  • SPRING 2019 Coursebook
    SCHOOL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS SPRING 2019 Coursebook Workshops Seminars Lectures Master Classes Updated: February 13, 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF COURSES BY DAY AND TIME WORKSHOPS 1 SEMINARS 2 LECTURES 5 MASTER CLASSES 6 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SEMINARS 7 Translations Workshops 24 Hybrid Forms Lab 26 LECTURES 27 MASTER CLASSES 31 SPECIAL PROJECTS WORKSHOP 41 WORKSHOPS FICTION – OPEN (6 points) FICTION – THESIS (9 points)* Lynn Steger Strong Sam Lipsyte Tue., 10am-1pm Mon., 12:05pm-3:05pm Charles Bock Joshua Furst Tue., 12:05pm-3:05pm Mon., 3:10pm-6:10pm Paul La Farge Rivka Galchen Tue., 5:15pm-8:15pm Mon., 3:10pm-6:10pm Eli Gottlieb Ben Marcus Wed., 12:35pm-3:35pm Tue., 1:05pm-4:05pm Gary Shteyngart Binnie Kirshenbaum Wed., 3:40pm-6:40pm Wed., 3:40pm-6:40pm Anelise Chen Paul Beatty Fri., 10am-1pm Thu., 1:05pm-4:05pm Elissa Schappell Thu., 1:35pm-4:35pm Ben Metcalf Thu., 4:40pm-7:40pm POETRY – OPEN (6 points) NONFICTION – OPEN (6 points) Lynn Melnick Leslie Jamison Mon., 12:05pm-3:05pm Mon., 10am-1pm Major Jackson Morgan Jerkins Tue., 10am-1pm Mon., 10am-1pm Mark Bibbins Phillip Lopate Fri., 1:10pm-4:10pm Mon, 1:05pm-4:05pm Lis Harris POETRY – THESIS (9 points)* Tue., 1:05pm-4:05pm Richard Locke Alan Gilbert Tue., 2:10pm-5:10pm Tue., 4:30pm-7:30pm Michael Greenberg Dorothea Lasky Tue., 4:15pm-7:15pm Tue., 4:30pm-7:30pm Meghan Daum Timothy Donnelly Wed., 12:35pm-3:35pm Thu., 4:10pm-7:10pm Mitchell Jackson Shane McCrae Thu., 10am-1pm Thu., 10am-1pm *Second-Years only SEMINARS ——MONDAY—— ——TUESDAY—— Rob Spillman (FI) Monica Ferrell
    [Show full text]
  • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 3 New & Noteworthy READTHEBOOK I HAD a MISCARRIAGE: a MEMOIR, a MOVEMENT, by Jessica Zucker
    ON THE FORCE Two books about the culture of policing in America WHY THE LONG FACE? Lucinda Rosenfeld looks at self-loathing literary heroines PLUS Charles Blow, Elizabeth Kolbert, Patricia Lockwood and audiobooks MARCH 14, 2021 CANNADAY CHAPMAN *3EB1* You Reap What You Sow drilling sites have left the fields fallow and the they get what they want, the villagers should HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE By Omar El-Akkad water poisoned. The residents of Kosawa want hold Pexton’s men as prisoners. the company gone and the land restored to what By Imbolo Mbue It’s a propulsive beginning, though one that 364 pp. Random House. $28. A KIND OF MORAL claustrophobia hangs over the it was before Pexton showed up, decades ago. feels at first as though it’s about to roam familiar opening pages of Imbolo Mbue’s sweeping and The company’s representatives say they’re do- ground — a tale of a casually sociopathic corpo- quietly devastating second novel, “How Beauti- ing everything they can, though their audience ration and the people whose lives it steamrolls. ful We Were.” In October of 1980, in the fictional knows it’s a lie — Pexton has the support of the By the end of the first chapter, I couldn’t help African village of Kosawa, representatives of an village head as well as the country’s dictator bracing for a long march toward one of two con- American oil company called Pexton have come and, with it, impunity. Nothing will be done. But clusions: the corporation’s inevitable victory, or to meet with the locals, whose children are dy- just as the meeting concludes, Konga, the village ing.
    [Show full text]