The Problem with Murmur Lee
A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling author of Before Women Had Wings spins a wild new tale about the ties that bind a group of friends together after the loss of its quirkiest member, Murmur Lee.
When Murmur Lee Harp drowns in the Iris Haven river, her friends are grief-stricken and haunted by the mysteries surrounding her death. But as her circle of friends sets out to discover what really happened to her, they end up learning as much about her failings and triumphs as they do their own.
After years of self-exile in the North, Charlee Mudd returns to set her best friend’s affairs in order, only to confront her own ghosts. Edith Piaf, a former marine who underwent a sex change at the age of sixty-two, must find the confidence to carry on without the encouragement of her friend. Lonely widower Dr. Zachary Klein plummets into the depths of depression at the loss of the second woman he has ever loved. As for Murmur Lee: in death she experiences her own journey as she is plunged into her familial past and discovers the truth about who she really is.
With poignancy and humor Fowler weaves the voices of Murmur and her friends into a compelling narrative. Part family saga, part murder mystery, The Problem with Murmur Lee is Fowler’s most rewarding and engrossing work yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This elegiac novel, chronicling the life and death of idiosyncratic Murmur Lee Harp, showcases Fowler's easy, loose-limbed prose and sympathetic eye for human fallibility. Murmur Lee, 35, owns a popular local rundown bar in a North Florida backwater called Iris Haven and is skilled in the use of potions and spells. After her only child dies and her husband runs away, she finally finds the man she thinks may be the love of her life, then mysteriously drowns in a local river. Fowler (Before Women Had Wings) beautifully crafts the story of this woman's life through the eyes of her motley bunch of friends and through the spirit of Murmur Lee as she looks back at her past life. After Murmur Lee's death, Charleston Rowena Mudd, Murmur's childhood friend and a "Self Loathing Southerner," finds herself back home in Iris Haven, having dropped out of Harvard Divinity School. Also in town is Billy Speare, Murmur's last love, a writer who believes he's on the verge of bestsellerdom; Lucinda Smith, an angry, chain-smoking yoga teacher; Dr. Zachary Klein, who's mourning his wife, dead of breast cancer; and former marine turned transsexual Edith Piaf, mesmerized by the singer of the same name. Somehow, Fowler makes the disparate viewpoints and characters work, and the singular life of Murmur Lee Harp engagingly unfolds, as does the mystery behind her early death.
