It’s been seven years, and Eleanor Rushing is still waiting for Maxim Walters, the love of her life, to leave his wife and move into her rambling mansion on St. Charles Avenue. But when she meets Dr. Richard Kimball—tall, dark, handsome, and a plastic surgeon—her life takes on a whole new direction. Smitten, she decides to go under his knife to alter her looks, and her life. But the summer of 2005 has other plans in store and Hurricane Katrina interrupts Eleanor’s transformation.
As the water rises, self-absorbed Eleanor, thinking only skin deep, floats on the surface of the disaster. She and her longtime housekeeper Naomi wade through the flooded streets of New Orleans, and wind up in Houston along with Dr. Kimball, who gives Eleanor more plastic surgery. This time the result is hideous. Eleanor returns to New Orleans with a body as wrecked as the city and neither will ever be the same.
In this tragicomic novel, Patty Friedmann deftly exposes the damaged and tenuously intact faces of New Orleans. Friedmann helps us to understand that transformation is probably the most difficult image to process—especially when change has been wrought by someone or something beyond our control.
Friedmann's new novel is both amusing and bemusing. Her antiheroine, Eleanor Rushing, star of Friedmann's earlier novel of the same name, is an unreliable narrator; her woman of all work, Naomi, and childhood friend Patti Ann are always plotting to save Eleanor from herself. When Eleanor decides to get plastic surgery to repair a scar on her face, she becomes devoted to her plastic surgeon. Her devotion isn't enough to make her leave her New Orleans house during Hurricane Katrina, but her loneliness following the devastation is. She, Naomi, and other survivors head out to Houston, allowing Eleanor to pursue her married doctor; upon returning to the ruins of New Orleans, she has a final, disastrous surgery. At once funny and odd, this book reveals the eccentricity of human nature and the enduring relationships of people determined not to be ruined by tragedy. Ultimately, there's depth here that no plot summary can reveal. Recommended for medium to large libraries.
—Amy Ford
I wasn't very into this book at the start, but, with the setting in New Orleans, I was able to relate to and easily picture many of the scenes in the book. This kept me interested enough to get to the telling of Eleanor's experiences during and after hurricane Katrina. Being a lifelong resident of New Orleans, this really hit home for me. Although I feel some parts of the aftermath of the storm were told with an unrealistic flare, this was in keeping with the character's personality, and her vision of the world around her. I enjoyed reading this book and to my surprise, did find it hard to put down.
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Overview
It’s been seven years, and Eleanor Rushing is still waiting for Maxim Walters, the love of her life, to leave his wife and move into her rambling mansion on St. Charles Avenue. But when she meets Dr. Richard Kimball—tall, dark, handsome, and a plastic surgeon—her life takes on a whole new direction. Smitten, she decides to go under his knife to alter her looks, and her life. But the summer of 2005 has other plans in store and Hurricane Katrina interrupts Eleanor’s ...