****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Poppy has said how it is now her desire to write more realistically about her hometown of New Orleans, rather than perpetuate some silly spooky, decadent image that really doesn't have anything to do with what New Orleans is really like and is more for tourist consumption. However, one of the problems authors run into when they try to reproduce "real" life is that everyday life is often largely boring and redundant. However, readers tend to want to be entertained by what they read, and if you reproduced real life as it really is in all it's often mundane glory, you'd have a boring, depressing novel that nobody would really want to read. To paraphrase something that Jerry Seinfeld once said, we watch movies and read novels because they have a point to them and they try to entertain us. If we wanted a long boring story with no point to it, we have our lives for that! What I'm trying to get at is the fact that even the most realistic piece of fiction involves a certain amount of stylization in the sense that you are trying to keep the reader's interest by giving characters obstacles to overcome in the course of its storyline, AND stylization in the sense that since the writer is often trying to make certain points about real life, this involves constructing a story that help to highlight the various themes that the author is trying to explore.In the case of Prime, Poppy is able to successfully write both realistically and in an entertaining manner about New Orleans and it's restaurant scene by presenting what she sees as its essential truths, but she does so in the context of an entertaining story. In terms of story and plot, Prime is much more intricate and complex than it's predecessor Liquor. (So intricate that I'm guessing she had to work its storyline out a bit beforehand. I doubt she did this by the seat of her pants.) Liquor is also an entertaining page-turner in terms of its plot, but the overall pace of Liquor is more stately overall, whereas the plot of Prime quickly switches into higher gear, and the tension builds and builds until finally reaching its climax. While the plot developments made sense and were (in retrospect) foreshadowed and hinted at, I didn't see a lot of the plot surprises coming beforehand, which impressed me.It's probably important to keep in mind Prime is the third installment in Poppy's series of novels about the relatively young New Orleans chefs Rickey and G-man. (I still haven't read The Value of X, the prequel to Liquor.) This has the advantage of allowing the readers to see Rickey and G-man develop over time. Since this novel is part of an ongoing series of novels and short stories, then in terms of plot and theme right now we're just seeing the trees in the forest, one piece of fiction at a time (like how Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings originally was published), and it won't be until all novels and stories are published in this series that we'll see the total forest. It'll be interesting to see what the big picture eventually looks like.Poppy explores various themes in Prime. There's the theme of youthful idealism versus the cynicism of old age. There's that saying that old age and cynicism will always triumph over youth and idealism. Ricky and G-man seem to constantly find themselves pitted against older, less moral characters, and so the question becomes will they continue to be able to be morally decent and good human beings or will they succumb to the cynicism and amorality/immortality that seems to constantly surround them.Another theme is that of the concept and ideal of family, both literally and metaphorically. It's obvious from her online blog that Poppy is very passionate about issue of gay marriage, and she explores in Prime the question of whether Rickey and G-man's de facto union is as philosophically legitimate and morally right as any de jure heterosexual marriage in part by subtly comparing their marriage life to that of the New Orleans District Attorney. Poppy looks at family in the metaphorical sense by such examples as the idea of your co-workers as a second family, and even the citizens of New Orleans as one large, sprawling interconnected family.It's to Poppy's credit that she sees and reproduces in Liquor and Prime the humor that is often a part of everyday life. Unfortunately, too many times the pretentious literary stick-in-the-muds who self-importantly proclaim their desire to write about "real life" are-maybe not surprisingly-rather humorless, dour types. Not Poppy. She realizes that there is quite a bit of humor in everyday life and Prime contains a lot of funny moments, which adds to the novel's entertainment value. I wouldn't call Prime a satirical novel per se, like A Confederacy of Dunces is, but Poppy recognizes and reproduces the humorous absurdity that she sees as integral to life in her hometown. On a related note, Poppy's use of satirical humor, and her use of colorful characters who nonetheless still come off as real people reminds me of Charles Dickens, whose work I have been reading a lot lately.The more straightforward prose style that Poppy uses in Liquor and Prime retains the clarity of her earlier ornate "purple prose" style, and her use of language continues to be very skillful and clever. For example, one of Poppy's strengths is that she's very good at providing vivid description through her use of language. Also interesting is how Poppy uses an online message board in which she accurately reproduces the language used on these boards to impart to the reader information about the talk on "the street" about Liquor and their chefs. She's living in an age where people write online all the time so why not use it in a novel that tries to reproduce what life is really like? Poppy's clever use of language can also be seen in the scene where Rickey goes through a series of drafts of letter he's trying to write, demonstrating the various approaches by which we try to deal with a difficult situation when communicating in writing, and how we often go through one draft after another to try to find the right words to communicate the content and spirit of what we want to say.It'll be interesting to see what Poppy comes up with in the upcoming novels regarding the New Orleans restaurant scene. In any case, like her beloved John Kennedy Toole and his novel A Confederacy of Dunces, Poppy's recent novels might very well be pointed to someday as an accurate and entertaining literary biography of the essence of what the city of New Orleans really is like. Good job Poppy! Five stars.
