Amazon.co.uk Review
Lafayette Proulx is affectionately called Laf by his friends, and with good reason. As the likeable narrator of John Dufresne's terrific new book
Love Warps the Mind a Little, Laf has an eye for the comic elements that can be found in the everyday events of life, and an armchair philosopher's sense of detached bemusement. Laf quits his day job and decides to pursue his dream of writing fiction, a move precipitated by the break-up of his marriage and followed by a torrent of rejection slips. He moves in with his hesitant girlfriend Judi, and, for a time, the story sets into a domestic story of befuddled affection and incidental affairs. Then Judi is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and from this point
Love Warps the Mind a Little becomes a stunning love story, sweetly moving in its description of love amid tragic circumstances. Its honesty and insight are wonderful, and the comic elements are never lost. The acclaimed author of
Louisiana Power & Light has met the high expectations of his critics and readers alike with this wonderful novel.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Lafayette Prolux leaves his job, leaves his wife and heads for his mistress with his omnivouous dog. Then things get complicated for the aspiring writer. His mistress's dysfunctional family and their partners he takes in his stride, but the rejection letters take some getting over, as does her illness. This highly accomplished saga of love and loss explores the seedier side of American life, initially as a knockabout farce and later as a tragedy with an optimistic outlook. (Kirkus UK)
The ever-colorful, mercurial Dufresne follows his acclaimed debut novel, Louisianan Power and Light (1994), with a finely balanced tale about how love's baffling turns both complicate and enrich the midlife of a struggling writer. Lafayette (Laf) Proulx gives up teaching high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, to write, a breach of security for which his milquetoast wife Martha never forgives him - so he leaves her, too, taking his dog with him. Moving in with Judi, a therapist he'd already been having an affair with, he discovers with a shock that he was more welcome as a married man, but he sets up his typewriter and bangs away anyway, ignoring Judi's ambivalence and making the best of the steady stream of rejection slips he receives from literary magazines. He takes an interest in Judi's stories of her past incarnations, and in her pill-popping, trailer-trash family, even when a sister's slaughterhouse boyfriend murders her ex-con husband. The storytelling possibilities of his new life, however, are suddenly arrested, first when he develops writer's block, then when Judi is diagnosed with uterine cancer. As a hysterectomy followed by chemotherapy fails to halt the cancer's spread, Laf helplessly watches his lover waste away before he and she had really had a chance to give their relationship a solid footing. A New Age therapist gives Judi a clearer understanding of her connection to Laf through the centuries, helping her to reconcile herself to her imminent death. Through pain and revelation, Laf stands by her, giving selflessly, and when she's gone, he discovers that he's gained something vital in return. Strong, quirky characters coping honestly with life's misfortune make this a quiet success. Dufresne has written a funny, profoundly accomplished saga of love and loss. (Kirkus Reviews)
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