Mermaids in the Basement

by Michael Lee West

Overview

Reeling from the loss of her mother, plagued with a bad case of writer's block (and don't even talk about those extra twenty pounds), Renata DeChavannes feels as though everything is just plain wrong. And that was before the tabloids caught her sweetheart, filmmaker Ferg Lauderdale, sharing an intimate squeeze with Hollywood's hottest young tamale.

But the granddaughter of the formidable Honora DeChavannes possesses more hell than belle in her backbone—and she's about to reclaim it. Heading south to Honora's home on the Gulf Coast, Renata is determined to stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and emerge as the unstoppable kudzu her beloved grandmother proudly proclaimed she would be. But for that to happen Renata's got to face some not-so-genteel ghosts from her past, discover the truth about the mother she desperately misses, and make peace with the first man who abandoned her and broke her heart: her handsome and distant father.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060985073
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/06/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael Lee West is the author of Mad Girls in Love, Crazy Ladies, American Pie, She Flew the Coop, and Consuming Passions. She lives with her husband on a rural farm in Tennessee with three bratty Yorkshire terriers, a Chinese Crested, assorted donkeys, chickens, sheep, and African Pygmy goats. Her faithful dog Zap (above) was the inspiration for a character in the novel.

Editorial Reviews

Deliciously zany novel of Southern discomfort. — Redbook Magazine

West has a knack for realistic and engaging characters. This charming tale will keep readers wanting to know more about the inhabitants of Point Clear. — Library Journal (starred review)

Southern belles hell-bent on belated truth-telling in West’s latest wacky outing... . the belles’s barbed commentary never fails to entertain — Kirkus Reviews

“An engaging tale that skips from glitzy romantic Hollywood to Deep South without missing a beat.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

An engaging tale that skips from glitzy romantic Hollywood to Deep South without missing a beat.

Booklist

Deliciously zany novel of Southern discomfort.

Redbook Magazine

An engaging tale that skips from glitzy romantic Hollywood to Deep South without missing a beat.

Booklist

Southern belles hell-bent on belated truth-telling in West's latest wacky outing (Mad Girls in Love, 2005, etc.). After a six-month saltwater-taffy binge on North Carolina's outer banks, Renata, a screenwriter, is shopping for a cashmere sweater to send to her sweetie, Ferg, a director who's on location in Dublin shooting the "remake" of James Joyce's Ulysses. She spots a tabloid depicting Ferg in a pub in the clutches of "man-eating actress" Esme Vasquez, who plays Molly Bloom. After the shopkeeper inflicts an impromptu mullet on Renata, she flees to Alabama, into the sheltering arms of her paternal grandmother, Honora, who's hosting an engagement party for Louie, Renata's daddy. When, after a few too many flutes of champagne, Renata confronts Louie's fiancee, squeaky-voiced Joie, in Honora's attached garage, Joie rips off Renata's pearls. Later, Joie is found comatose in the garden pond, and a few loose pearls in drops of blood on the garage floor point to Renata as the suspect. Still above suspicion is Honora's friend Isabella, a former Hollywood actress who's inserted Lord knows how many valiums in the chocolate-covered strawberries Joie was last seen gorging on. Isabella thinks it's high time someone told Renata about the secrets harbored by her mother, Shelby, who, long divorced from controlling cardiologist Louie, has recently perished in a plane crash with her longtime second husband, a movie producer. Family retainer Gladys, Isabella and Honora alternate revelations. In 1972, Shelby had an affair with studly hairdresser Kip. Shelby's father was accidentally shot while quail hunting with Kip and Louie. After Shelby almost drowned while cavorting with Kip, she and Louie reached aturbulent truce. Isabella's affair with Louie and her compulsion to lace comestibles with pharmaceuticals caused her husband's not-so-accidental death. More brutal unveilings follow, until Renata achieves a rueful understanding of her father's and lover's motives. Few surprises on the road to rapprochement, but the belles's barbed commentary never fails to entertain.

Kirkus Reviews