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Original Essays | April 29, 2013

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This title in other editions

Joe Jones

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Joe Jones Cover

ISBN13: 9781593760038
ISBN10: 1593760035
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Joe Jones is Anne Lamott's raucous novel of lives gathered around Jessie's Cafe, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan." Jessie, "thin, stooped and gorgeous at seventy-nine," inherited the cafe years before and it has become home to a remarkable family of characters: Louise, the cook and vortex, "sexy and sweet, somewhere on the cusp between curvaceous and fat"; Joe, devoted and unfaithful; Willie, Jessie's gay grandson ("I thought he just had good posture," said Jessie); Georgia, an empress dowager who never speaks; and a dozen others all living together in the sweet everyday. Lamott's rich and timeless themes are also here: love and loyalty, loss and recovery, staying on and staying together, the power of humor to heal and to bind. Out of print for fifteen years, Joe Jones is a novel of hilarity and joy.

Review:

"Lamott has written before about coping with death....But Joe Jones is about nothing else....Lamott's spare prose can sing, but here it too often sounds forced." Library Journal

Review:

"Anne Lamott is a cause for celebration. [Her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones...perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous." The New Yorker

Synopsis:

Joe Jones is Lamott's raucous novel of lives gathered around Jessie's Cafe, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan." Her rich and timeless themes are also here: love and loyalty, loss and recovery, staying on and staying together, the power of humor to heal and to bind.

Synopsis:

Centered around a group of eccentric characters who congregate in Jessie's Cafe, this is a story of loss, recovery, and the humor that heals.
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About the Author

Anne Lamott is the author of five critically praised novels: the national bestseller Crooked Little Heart (1997), All New People (1989), Joe Jones (1985), Rosie (1983), and Hard Laughter (1980). She has also written three bestselling works of nonfiction: Traveling Mercies (1999), a collection of autobiographical essays on faith; Bird by Bird (1994), a guide to writing and the challenges of a writer's life; and Operating Instructions (1993), an account of life as a single mother during her son?s first year. Lamott's online column in Salon magazine was voted the Best of the Web by Newsweek. She lives in northern California.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
fergs, January 2, 2007 (view all comments by fergs)
Joe Jones was thought to be a write-off by critics and ultimately by Anne Lamott herself. In the wake of Blue Shoes and Travelling Mercies and Plan B, and other, later works, Joe Jones sank without a trace. However, a number of people, me included, found in this novel a quirky brilliance that it seemed everyone else overlooked.

It's a "Deep Space Nine" sort of novel, in which a single location is the centre of the narrative's universe. Jessie's Cafe in San Francisco is the novel's geographic focus, but it's character-driven from the get-go.

Despite its title (and it's wrongly-titled, in my view), Joe Jones is not the protagonist of the novel, merely one of a half-dozen memorable characters--protagonists in their own right: Lou, his ex, who clings to her faith like a barnacle; Jessie, the septuagenarian owner; Willie, her gay 20-something dex addict grandson and chief cook; the brittle Georgia, best known for her raspberries (the inedible kind), and the mysterious Eva.

It's about relationship and identity, about coping and not despairing. It's an awkward toddler of a book, but brimming with potential--Lamott decided to have another go at it recently, having heard of Joe Jones fans (maybe a literary equivalent of Deadheads), and having looked it over and seeing some potential she'd missed first time around.

I haven't read the rewritten JJ, but the 1985 original was well worth the trip. Twice around, at that.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781593760038
Author:
Lamott, Anne
Publisher:
Counterpoint LLC
Author:
Lamott, Anne
Location:
Washington, DC
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Women
Subject:
Restaurants
Subject:
San francisco
Subject:
FICTION / Literary
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
2003
Edition Number:
Reissue ed.
Edition Description:
Trade Paper
Series Volume:
122
Publication Date:
September 2003
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Language:
English
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.25 x 5.5 in 13 oz
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Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
History and Social Science » Politics » General

Joe Jones Used Trade Paper
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$7.95 In Stock
Product details 256 pages Shoemaker & Hoard - English 9781593760038 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Lamott has written before about coping with death....But Joe Jones is about nothing else....Lamott's spare prose can sing, but here it too often sounds forced."
"Review" by , "Anne Lamott is a cause for celebration. [Her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones...perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous."
"Synopsis" by , Joe Jones is Lamott's raucous novel of lives gathered around Jessie's Cafe, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan." Her rich and timeless themes are also here: love and loyalty, loss and recovery, staying on and staying together, the power of humor to heal and to bind.
"Synopsis" by , Centered around a group of eccentric characters who congregate in Jessie's Cafe, this is a story of loss, recovery, and the humor that heals.
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