Welcome to Higby
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Following the national success of 'Ella Minnow Pea', this second novel from Mark Dunn brings the same charm and love of good language to a small town in the South. 'Welcome to Higby' follows the hilarious goings-on in a small town in northern Mississippi over Labor Day weekend. The weaving of narratives brings us Stewie Kipp and Marci Luck, whose love for one another has grown stale as Stewie’s faith becomes impertinent; Carmen Valentine and Euless Ludlam, whose shared debilitating shyness threatens to derail a relationship that has hardly gotten started; the Reverend Oren Cullen, a widower who struggles to renew ties to his emotionally distant son Clint in the midst of lingering grief and a midlife crisis; Tula Gilmurray, whose love for her brother Hank can’t heal her worry over his fading mind; and Talitha Leigh whose thirst for adventure delivers her into the hands of a vegan cult that ignores her protestations, but tries to calm her with hearty legumes. 'Welcome to Higby' is a Southern-comical tale about simple dreams both realized and thwarted by all the complexities of the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writing in the spirit of his clever debut novel, Ella Minnow Pea, in which an island's language-loving inhabitants must adapt to a shrinking alphabet, Dunn delivers another witty and intricate book. This time he uses biblical quotations to guide his narrative, which tracks the residents of Higby, Miss., during Labor Day weekend of 1993, as they search for happiness, love and salvation. The tightly interwoven story lines feature a veritable swarm of oddballs, including Stewie Kipp, a born-again Christian whose fianc e, Marci Luck, resents his attempts at piety; Talitha Leigh, a floozy who is kidnapped by an extremist vegan cult and renamed "Blithe"; and dim-witted Euless Ludlam, who finds himself on the receiving end of a huge inheritance. The Bible quotes aren't just gimmicky transitional devices, since the novel closely follows themes of redemption and salvation, albeit in a screwball manner: as one character, Carmen Valentine, notes, "My guardian angel likes to help me stretch my shopping dollar." The collision of celestial concepts and quirky mannerisms makes the book both laugh-out-loud funny and sweetly touching. At its core is the belief that "God equals love," though the characters demonstrate this in some rather strange ways. Dunn, a playwright, has a wonderful ear for dialogue; his rich and enticing prose, elegant structuring and wonderful attention to the smallest of details make this novel a delight.
