Lives of the Saints

Description

After four years at college in New England, Louise Brown returns to the humid nights and brittle manners of New Orleans society. She falls back in with a dissolute young crowd whose romances, drinking, and sudden emotional collapses turn every gathering into a test of loyalty. At the center is Claude Collier, a sweet, accident-prone man who clings to Louise as his emotional anchor. Louise, however, recognizes that his desperation gives him the power to wound her more deeply than anyone else. The novel follows their volatile dependence through a gin-soaked social world where affection, cruelty, comedy, and self-destruction repeatedly become difficult to separate.

Themes