Jamesland

by Michelle Huneven

Book Overview

How do people live in this world'is a question that seems to hover, alongside the Hollywood sign, over the neighborhood of Los Feliz. Certainly Pete Ross wonders as much, his run as a successful chef,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375413820
• ISBN13: 9780375413827
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 381 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

One of the Best

Quite frankly, this is one of the best books I've read this year. A total joy from beginning to end.

Heartlfelt characters that I was really rooting for.

It took me a little while to get engaged with this book, but once I gave myself in to to these not-quite-appealing characters, I fell in love with them. And I couldn't put the book down. I think the book is a very accurate reflection of the modern American (LA especially) tendency to avoid all things religious, but helps show how we also all have needs that a proper spiritual guide can help us come to terms with. In addition to a good story, the book is an easily digested discourse on religion, spirituality, philosophy, mysticism, psychoanalysis, and friendship, all slipped into the story in ways that mesh very nicely. Now I want to read Huneven's earlier book.

At Home in Jamesland

Michelle Huneven, relying on an exquisite use of language and a sharp sense of humor, has created a wonderfully bizarre love story that blooms from the City of Angels. Dysfunctional much of the time, but secure in their desire to improve themselves and find love in the right places (even if they hang around the wrong places a bit too long), Pete and Alice have every reason to disturb and rankle the other. But within the healing orbits of an unusually honest minister (Helen) and Alice's eccentric aunt, Kate, we can rejoice in their respective baby steps toward something resembling a "normal" life. Thrown into the mix is--almost literally--the ghost of William James and an assortment of Los Angeles inhabitants such as a jive-talking, white cross-dresser and a beautiful, aging movie star. Huneven, who simply is a brilliant writer, begins this novel with a haunting image that carries through until the final pages. This is a spectacularly successful work of fiction that deserves to be read.

Charm and wisdom.

One of the reviews (PW) called the narrative ``slow going." Not so. Perhaps stately, but never boringly slow. Good wise stuff, plus plenty of charm on every page. Two characters, of a type not always easy to make appealing, really work well. One is Pete, the obsessively blunt, often bizarre, sadly awkward failed chef. The other is Kate, an elderly aunt to main character, who drifts into Jamesland, a state in which she's living in a couple of centuries. Very funny stuff on New Age-y-ness, mediums. Very wonderful concrete evocation of the real Los Angeles. Very wonderful evocation of great meals. And good advice: a handsome nice guy with an adorable dog is not necessarily the answer to one's prayers.

A (Real) LA Story

Jamesland opens with Alice, great-granddaughter of philosopher William James, having an odd waking dream of a deer in her house. Alice fixates on the deer as a portent of a coming change in her life, and the very next day her life begins to change slowly and inexorably. The book does not dwell on the supernatural, though it does have a bemused dialogue with the otherworldly throughout. Mostly it is about three forty-somethings whose social and professional lives are deteriorating and reconfiguring. I'd call it a mid-life crisis, but these characters have that quality, peculiar to Californians, of being youthful, unserious adults. The book is mostly set on the East Side of Los Angeles in neighborhoods that I know well. It was great to read a book that addresses a somewhat larger Los Angeles than usual. Movie stars are around, and Hollywood is nearby, but they are just parts of the great stew of the city, things that are noticed but after a while not accorded any greater importance than things like Griffith Park or the LA River. The only other book that I have read that successfully turns LA's flashy side into just another bit of peripheral scenery is T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain. Huneven is well-known in Los Angeles as the food critic for the LA Weekly, and the way she writes about food in this book is magnificent. Pete (who along with Helen, a modern sort of minister, are the other two wayward adults) is a former near-celebrity chef who is recovering from a nervous breakdown, suicide attempt combo. His character is both abrasive and charming, the type of person who makes you nervous the moment he steps into the room. His background as a chef is the venue for Huneven's descriptions of foods. It was nice to see that Huneven did not place this book firmly in the world of food and restaurants in the way that many writers tend to crib from their day jobs. Instead, Huneven manages to weave her knowledge skillfully into the larger narrative. The book itself is a rather satisfying meal, best taken over a few languorous days on a sunny balcony or sitting on a park bench.