The House on Coliseum Street

By Shirley Ann Grau

Book Overview

Twenty-year-old Joan Mitchell has lived her entire life in the stately New Orleans house on Coliseum Street, where her mother and half sister have steadily undermined her self-regard. To Joan, her fate seems sealed and strangely inconsequential. Then a brief affair with Michael Kern, a man she knows to be a cad but is drawn to anyway, unfurls for her a surreal sequence of events -- pregnancy, an abortion, and eventually withdrawal into a numbed existence. Only a growing obsession with Michael and a yearning to fill her cavernous loneliness spur Joan to any premeditated action. An intricate psychological novel that plumbs the pain and rage born of identity and volition suppressed, The House on Coliseum Street is an arresting, somber story that transcends period and place even as it so immediately evokes New Orleans in the late 1950s.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807121010
• ISBN13: 9780807121016
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Southern story of love and revenge (mostly revenge)

Joan Mitchell has been dating safe and boring Fred for quite a while, when she has a fling with the blunt and somewhat more dangerous Michael Kern. She becomes pregnant by Michael and her family rather matter-of-factly arranges an abortion for her. She never tells Fred and they get back together again, though she keeps him so at arms length he eventually gives up on her. Michael's indifference to her having the abortion soon unhinges her, and she seeks revenge against him by scandalizing him to his boss. Grau writes in a very spare style that moves the story (and the reader) along quickly; she avoids any histrionics on Joan's part, which places the emotional response to what she's up to totally on the shoulders of the reader. She does not rely on a lot of description and doesn't feel the need to inform the reader of every incident the characters engage in (the love-making, for example, between Joan and Michael is barely hinted at). Grau is a good storyteller with an interesting knack of keeping the reader focused on her narrative while carefully controlling the emotions of her characters. It's a good novel worth checking out.

Sad journey, psychological treat

Shirley Ann Grau's protagonist Joan Mitchell ventures into an eventful, observable passage after one date. Her loneliness and ongoing existence lead her to realize the essentials in life. The scene settings are done marvelously. A great read=)

A Real Treat to Read

If you like New Orleans and would have liked to be a fly on the wall of one of those decadent mansions in the 1960's, this is the book for you. The book takes you to a different era and may seem dated to some, but one must remember that this book deals with abortion before Roe Vs. Wade and causal sex before the sexual revolution. It is beautifully done and well thought out.