LETOURNEAU'S USED AUTO PARTS

by Carolyn Chute ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 1988

From the earthy author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1984): seven more stories of life in that bleak little burg, this time centering--with rather less force or humor--on the immense, loosely extended Letourneau family. The head of this clan--""Big Lucien,"" a small yet virile man with a ""heart of gold"" when it comes to finding room in his makeshift trailer-park for stray relatives--appears only sporadically here, leaving center-stage to assorted kinfolk and employees, In ""Leaving Freddie,"" we meet Lucien's ex-wife #3, Lillian, who desperately marries born-again, tattooed Vietnam-vet Gene Babbidge--violent father often by his first wife--and immediately regrets it; meanwhile, Lillian's teen-age daughter Junie tries to find some distinctive place in this overpopulated household--as a budding entrepreneur (selling fortunes) and seductive stepsister. Two other stories also feature the Babbidges. In ""Callows Humor,"" Gene's half-brother Ernie--a flashy, semi-famous, but broke and suicidal country-music singer--comes for a visit, while Junie and her stepfather surrender to lust amid parked cars. (""His passion is hardly distinguishable from his familiar and constant rage."") And in ""Blackstone's Baby,"" a miserably pregnant Junie finds peculiar comfort with Letourneau employee Crowe Bovey, a macho man addicted to guns and killing but (like most of Chute's men) a silent sufferer. Elsewhere, the focus comes closer to the Letourneau household itself. In ""Springtime in Miracle City,"" Big Lucien's 30-year-old son Norman--a dour, scruffy bachelor--halfheartedly (to put it mildly) stumbles into an affair with his lather's ex-wife #2, aging hippie Eve; Norman's mother Maxine, meanwhile, lakes up belligerent residence in the overcrowded trailer park. And, in ""The Crusher,"" Big Lucien's pathetic nephew Severin faces eviction (with wife and kids) while waiting for Letourneau's Used Auto Parts to get solvent enough-via the crushing of old cars into scrap metal--to pay him some back salary. Like The Beans of Egypt, Maine, this assemblage of vignettes bristles with convincingly grimy details, vividly brutish dialogue, and downbeat irony. But, while the earlier book was shrewdly held together by a strongly sympathetic central figure (sometime-narrator Earlene Pomerleau). the effect here--especially since Chute's prose seems less taut this time around--is often amorphous and disjointed, with only occasional stretches of fully involving storytelling.

Pub Date: June 6, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION