Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
A Novel
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- 20,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
“Kirsten Miller has that rare ability to take a serious subject and make it very, very funny. I enjoyed this novel and you will too.”—James Patterson
The provocative and hilarious summer read that will have book lovers cheering and everyone talking! Kirsten Miller, author of The Change, brings us this bracing, wildly entertaining piece of humorous fiction and satire about a small Southern town, a pitched battle over banned books, and a little lending library that changes everything.
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on a mission of censorship to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
What Lula doesn’t know is that a local troublemaker has stolen her wholesome books, removed their dust jackets, and restocked Lula’s library with banned books: literary classics, gay romances, Black history, witchy spell books, Judy Blume novels, and more. In this unforgettable work of women's fiction, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.
That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. That's when the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This incisive comedy from Miller (The Change) finds a Georgia town transformed amid a fight over book bans. Lula Dean, a restless empty nester who's starved for attention, finds purpose by banning books she deems inappropriate for children, among them Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Furthering her crusade, Lula stocks a makeshift lending library in front of her house with "appropriate" titles like The Southern Belle's Guide to Etiquette. Lindsay Underwood, a lesbian teen, takes action by sneaking banned books into the lending library under the cover of dust jackets belonging to Lula's approved books. As various townspeople read the works Lula meant to ban, they start changing their lives and the town for the better (a formerly subservient woman outs her husband for secretly collecting Nazi memorabilia; a high school football star comes to accept his gay older brother; and a group of teens rally against the town's Confederate monuments). The story climaxes with a heated race for town mayor between Lindsay's mother, Beverly, who vehemently opposes the book bans, and Lula. While some of the plot turns strain credulity, they make for a clever send-up of book banners' misplaced fears. Miller's fans will flock to her latest page-turner as social critique.
