Synopses & Reviews
Held captive by her employers-and by her own demons-on a mysterious farm, a widow struggles to reunite with her young son in this uniquely American story of freedom, perseverance, and survival.
Darlene, a widow and mother devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband, turns to drugs to erase the trauma. While in this fog of grief, she is lured with the promise of a great job to a mysterious farm run by a shady company-with disastrous consequences for both her and her young son, Eddie, who is left behind in a panic-stricken search for her.
Delicious Foods tells the gripping story of three unforgettable characters: a mother, her son, and the drug that threatens to destroy them. In Darlene's haunted struggle to reunite with Eddie, in the efforts of both to triumph over those who would enslave them, and in the voice of the drug that narrates Darlene's travails, Hannaham's daring and shape-shifting prose not only infuses the desperate circumstances of his characters with grace and humor, but also wrestles with timeless questions of love and freedom, forgiveness and redemption, tenacity and the will to survive.
Review
Advance praise for DELICIOUS FOODS:"James Hannaham's new novel is a tour de force. Gripping, haunting, and deeply moving, it beguiles the reader with the urgent immediacy of its characters' lives, while also reverberating with universal themes of freedom and enslavement, love and survival."-- Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winner for A Visit from the Goon Squad
Review
Praise for GOD SAYS NO, Hannaham's first novel (McSweeney's, 2009):"As familiar as this setup might seem from a dozen shame-drenched political press conferences, Hannaham shifts the trajectory in an unpredictable story that zigzags from the Atlanta avant garde theater scene to a religious reparative therapy program called Resurrection Ministries, where men like Gary struggle to purge their sinful desires . . . GOD SAYS NO follows as that drama unfolds in original, startling ways."--Salon
Review
"A tender, funny tour of a mind struggling to do the right thing. A revelatory and sympathetic guide to a misunderstood world."--Steve Martin
Review
"GOD SAYS NO is a book that was desperate to be written but well out of reach. And then James Hannaham came along and wrote it, with the kind of care, wit, sympathy and fury that the book deserved. Imagine Candide . . . okay, imagine Candide as a black man, a southerner, a Christian fundamentalist, middle-class, obese, married, a father, and utterly, even profoundly gay. If a comedy, in the classical sense, is a story then ends in a marriage, and a tragedy is a story that ends with a death, then what do you call a book that ends with a split and a resurrection? A truly daring first novel, and something to read."--Jim Lewis
Synopsis
An inventive feat of storytelling bravado that captures the pathos and absurdity of addiction as it comes between a mother and her son.
Darlene, once a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, is devastated by her husband's death. In a fog of grief, she turns to drugs, quickly forming an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace.
Unbeknownst to Eddie, Darlene has been lured away with false promises of a good job. A shady company named Delicious Foods shuttles her to a remote farm, where she is held captive and forced to perform hard labor.
Delicious Foods tells the gripping story of three unforgettable characters: a mother, her son, and the drug whose irreverent and mischievous voice narrates Darlene's travails. This compassionate story about the unbreakable bond between mother and son wrestles with timeless questions of love and freedom, forgiveness and redemption, tenacity and the will to survive.
About the Author
James Hannaham was born in the Bronx and grew up in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the novel GOD SAYS NO (McSweeney's, 2009). He teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute and Columbia University.