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Leroy Dearman is twelve, and he lives on a llama farm in Mississippi. Life is perfect. It's true that his grandfather just died in the attic and that wild dogs kill a baby llama now and then, and it's true that one little sister curses him and the other one wets her pants. But up to the day Uncle Harris moves in, life looks like it's right out of a Walt Disney movie. No wonder the llamas greet each morning with a song. Uncle Harris arrives in a sports car, full of funny stories and new ideas. He manages to persuade Leroy's straitlaced parents to join him for cocktails in the evening. He sets up a pretty grand bachelor pad in the Dearman attic, with a telephone, a TV set, and a stack of Playboy magazines. He is, you might say, Romance itself. Once Uncle Harris moves in, life on the llama farm takes on an entirely different flavor. Leroy discovers those magazines. Electricity fills the Dearman house. Equilibrium tilts, conversation trails off, the atmospheric pressure twists--and lightning strikes. Leroy starts seeing things he's never seen before, like the very gifted baton-twirling teacher, and his world changes forever. Not since PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT has a novel looked so directly, hilariously, and bittersweetly at the heartbreak of puberty. From the Back Cover Copy
"Portnoy's Complaint set on a llama farm in Mississippi." -- Self magazine "I must confess--reviewers have hearts, too--that I love this boy. I also love the excesses of this novel's language; I love the lightning striking at regular intervals; I love the llamas singing in the fields beyond the house where Leroy lies in bed, pondering the mysteries of growing up. I love the novel's shifting tone, sardonic when that's required and tender when only tenderness will do." -- The New York Times Book Review "If you call yourself a serious reader but still haven't discovered Lewis Nordan, shame on you." -- The Seattle Times "Reading him is a challenge, a pleasure, and an experience that will leave you looking for his earlier books in an effort to do it all over again." -- Richmond Times-Dispatch "Unforgettable." -- The Bloomsbury Review "Side-splitting." -- Booklist "A potent novel." -- GQ Lightning Song is a hilarious, high-risk fiction that walks the wire between vision and vertigo. Leroy Dearman is twelve, and he lives on a llama farm in Mississippi when Uncle Harris arrives in a sports car, full of new ideas. He sets up a pretty grand bachelor pad in the attic, with a telephone, a TV set, and a stack of Playboy magazines. He is, you might say, Romance itself. And life on the llama farm takes on an entirely different flavor. Electricity fills the house. Equilibrium tilts, lightning strikes, and Leroy finds himself kissing his innocence good-bye. Author Biography
Lewis Nordan is the author of three collections of short stories and four novels, Music of the Swamp, Wolf Whistle, The Sharpshooter Blues, and Lightning Song. His prizes include the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and three American Library Association Notable Book citations. Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, he lives now in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he serves as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Summary: a lyrical slice of pre-teen angst
Review: A very readable, moving account of an emotional period of a 12-year old boy's existence. While the lone fault of this novel may be that many questions seem left unanswered, that could be intentional...as if Nordan is saying there aren't any easy answers in life, especially when you're twelve and have just made the discovery that you're parents are no longer in love. Alternating between funny, painful and heartwarming, at certain moments Lightning Song manages to touch on all the emotions at once. Enjoyable and rewarding, this book will have me reading the author's other works in short order.
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Summary: Absolutely hilarious .... great story
Review: Excellent reading. Touches the southern thing well, creates a great story line, and well worth the read. I hope to read other books by Nordan.
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Summary: My new favorite author!
Review: I discovered him last summer, and Buddy Nordan immediately ascended to the top of my list. I recommmend evry one of his books, especially Lightning Song and Wolf Whistle. Read him now! You won't regret it.
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Summary: Nordan's Prose Almost Forks Lightning
Review: Lightning Song has one of the world's funniest seduction scenes. Nordan's prose is funny, brisk and authentic, but I felt a little "had" by what seemed the staged eccentricities of the characters and the situations, which bordered on the formulaic Southern Gothic. Still, I got caught up in the story toward the end and did finally buy into it. I just wish I felt like Nordan was writing from deep within his heart. But he is so good, it's worth the read.
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Summary: Nordan's Prose Almost Forks Lightning
Review: Lightning Song has one of the world's funniest seduction scenes. Nordan's prose is funny, brisk and authentic, but I felt a little "had" by what seemed the staged eccentricities of the characters and the situations, which bordered on the formulaic Southern Gothic. Still, I got caught up in the story toward the end and did finally buy into it. I just wish I felt like Nordan was writing from deep within his heart. But he is so good, it's worth the read.
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Summary: A terrible disappointment
Review: Nordan's an extraordinary writer. I love his short stories, as well as all three of his earlier novels. But this book is terribly disappointing. There's very little plot, for one thing, and the characters are hardly as captivating as those of Nordan's earlier fiction. I don't want to give away the story, but near the end events take a pretty disturbing turn (even for Nordan, who has always thumbed his nose at conventional notions of good taste). The setting is different from that of his earlier fiction; it doesn't take place in the world of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi developed over his five previous books. That and the fact that he seems to have written the book very quickly (See the acknowledgments page) may account for some of the book's problems. It's not at all the quality book you'd expect from Algonquin.
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Summary: Almost wonderful
Review: Nordan's characters are wonderfully flawed and intelligently drawn. In LIGHTNING SONG he presents the reader with the perfect metaphor for the odd and beautiful. I have known such llamas my entire life and appreciate seeing this careful and fair presentation.
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Summary: Calling All Llamas
Review: Nordan's characters are wonderfully flawed and intelligently drawn. In LIGHTNING SONG he presents the reader with the perfect metaphor for the odd and beautiful. I have known such llamas my entire life and appreciate seeing this careful and fair presentation.
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Summary: This Electricity Is Staticly Charged
Review: One should never read a book expecting to get zapped by lightning. But my expectations were high--I had read Nordan's novel Wolf Whistle and thoroughly enjoyed it. But in this novel, lightning only struck from a distance, and then the thunder rolled away and away. Set in a Mississippi town in the 70's, this "bildungsroman" of a young boy trying to mature never really matures as a narrative; Nordan doesn't develop it. Instead, he is content to have his protagonist watch others debauch themselves around him. Only later in the novel, when the 12-year-old boy goes to paton twirling camp in the summer and is eventually lured into a rape situation by his teacher, does the reader finally get some intriguing development. Nordan writes well, but his plot meanders. He relies on his descriptions of lightning storms and wayward behavior of his mother and uncle (who have a clandestine romance) to carry the momentum of the story. But he never digs into the character's minds, and this leaves me with only a damp postcard of meaning and not much else.
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