Music of the Swamp

by Lewis Nordan

Book Overview

"This is not merely a stellar book. It is absolute ballad put to page." -Southern Living

Lewis Nordan's fiction invents its own world--always populated by madly heroic misfits. In Music of the Swamp, he focuses his magic and imagination on a boy's utterly helpless love for his utterly hopeless father--a man who attracts bad luck like a magnet. Nordan evokes ten-year-old Sugar Mecklin's world with dazzling clarity: the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565120167
• ISBN13: 9781565120167
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

I didn't expect it to be funny, too!

This book was highly enjoyable, and nothing on the cover suggested that it would be funny as well, but it was full of humor; even some laugh out loud moments. Clever and loved the characters. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into Mississippi Delta life.

Southern magic realism at its best!

This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's hilarious! The reason (as one reviewer noted) that all those thoughts are strung together with comma making long sentences is because that's the way Southerners talk, and Lewis Nordan has captured the sing-song music of Southern language beautifully! Faulkner did the same thing, but Nordan is more fun to read and easier to understand. If you don't like Southern literature, pass this one by. But if you do like Southern writers, it's a must!

Poignant and hilarious

I suppose I am now some sort of Lewis Nordan "groupie." I first loved "The Sharpshooter Blues" and went on to enjoy all the rest including "Lightning Song." But, tonight I think that "Music of the Swamp" is my favorite. (Or, is it just that I read it today and so it is Nordan's work most fresh on my mind?) Sugar Mecklin is a very special character - but only as special as his family and friends. Sugar has a dad who has worn yellow plastic shoes and lived to talk about it. Read this book and read Lewis Nordan.

Magical, heart-warming and heart draining at the same time.

This is a masterpiece of work, it takes the reader of a young boy and leads you throughout his life, filled with many downs and a lot of very bleak humor. Once you pick it up it will be very hard to put down until the last page is turned.

Powerful, disturbing, funny, redeeming.

Powerful, disturbing, funny, redeeming. Those are four words to describe this, Nordan's finest work. It's a back-and-forth foray into the past of Sugar Mecklin, one of the most likeable Southern boys since Huckleberry Finn. Sugar tries to come to grips with love, life and geography by returning to the stories of his late childhood in Mississippi with his lovelorn mother and drunken, Elvis-jacket-wearing daddy. It's painful at times, but so beautiful that it's the kind of book you wish you wrote.