The Last of How It Was

by T.R. Pearson

Book Overview

From Publishers WeeklyIn his third installment (after A Short History of a Small Place and Off for the Sweet Hereafter of hilarious adventures narrated by young Louis Benfield of Neely, N.C., Pearson... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345356403
• ISBN13: 9780345356406
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Passion. Madness. Murder. Mayhem. Funny.

The closing book of T. R. Pearson's Neely trilogy, "The Last of How It Was" seems to ramble, but is tight as a drum. Does murder run in the family? Young Louis Benfied, Jr., listens raptly as Daddy and Momma and Aunt Sister explain.

Like a hysterically funny Faulkner

The town of Neely, North Carolina is just as Gothic as anything Faulkner ever wrote, with murders, adultery, accidentally slaughtered mules, Stonewall Jackson, escaped convicts, dropped coffins, and Injun fights, but T. R. Pearson makes Neely one hell of a lot funnier than Yoknapatawpha County. In the final volume of the trilogy that also includes _A Short History of a Small Place_ and _Off for the Sweet Hereafter_, narrator Louis Benfield relates stories of his family as told by Louis's daddy Louis, with interruptions, corrections, and emendations from Aunt Sister, Louis's maternal great-aunt, and from Louis's mother. The story rambles like a footpath through the North Carolina hills, with sentences that continue for whole paragraphs and paragraphs that continue for pages, creating a style that seems incomprehensible on the page but which reveals its meaning when read aloud, in all its Southern baroque glory._The Last of How It Was_ has the flavor and feel of a long Sunday afternoon visit, sitting on the front porch, listening to family tales that don't go anyplace much or have any enormous meaning, but which, for that very reason, are nonetheless a delight.

Passion. Madness. Murder. Mayhem. Funny.

The closing book of T. R. Pearson's Neely trilogy, The Last of How It Was seems to ramble, but is tight as a drum. Does murder run in the family? Louis Benfied, Jr., listens raptly as Daddy and Momma and Aunt Sister explain.