Have You Heard
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of the great Southern storytellers, Have You Heard explores a small town torn apart by scandal.
Author of two critically acclaimed novels, Anderson Ferrell is back with this sprawling, atmospheric tale of the American South. The attempted murder of a right-wing North Carolina senator throws a sudden media spotlight onto the alleged would-be assassin-Jerry Chiffon, who just happened to be sporting a red ladies' suit, a wig, and a fake Chanel purse at the time-and onto Jerry's tiny hometown of Branch Creek, N.C. As three separate narrators relate slightly differing versions of the story, the pieces start to come together. What really happened? How could a beloved, albeit slightly odd, boy come to such an end?
Darkly funny and full of heart, Have You Heard reveals a world that, despite all its particularities, feels like home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jerry Chiffon, protagonist of this funny, poignant tragicomedy, is something of a gay prodigy. Born to poor tobacco farmers, Jerry is blessed from the cradle with a penchant for child care and housewifery and a preternatural decorating sense. After his mother dies giving birth to his huge-headed younger brother, Jerry mothers him and cares for his father "as good as an unmarried sister would have." The ladies of Branch Creek, N.C., take this kindred spirit under their wing and, thumbing their noses at gender stereotypes, further feminize him with lessons in etiquette and hostessing. The grown-up Jerry sojourns in Greenwich Village of the late '70s and early '80s, getting his fill of out gay life and ministering to the beginning AIDS epidemic. Finally, he returns to serve as Branch Creek's paragon of taste and, decked out in a woman's pants suit and fake Chanel purse, mount an assassination attempt against a homophobic senator. Ferrell (Where She Was; Home for the Day) chronicles Jerry's rise from redneckery to refinement as a study in contrasts, offering up excruciating childbirths, bloody auto accidents and baroque gay debaucheries alongside rapt meditations on the niceties of form and propriety. His lucid prose vividly delineates a rich array of characters and voices (Jerry's story is told by three different narrators, each with a unique take on it), from politely catty Southern matrons and dissolute trust-fund rou s to racist good-ol'-boys. The result is something of a Queer Eye for the Old South, but one that finds a surprising moral gravity in the subtleties of floral arrangements and table settings.
