West, Michael Lee 1953-

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West, Michael Lee 1953-

PERSONAL: Born 1953, in Lake Providence, LA; married; children: two sons.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd St., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Novelist and registered nurse.

WRITINGS:

Crazy Ladies (novel), Longstreet Press (Atlanta, GA), 1990.

She Flew the Coop: A Novel concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 1994.

American Pie (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

Mad Girls in Love (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including First for Women, Wind, and Southern.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Mermaids in the Basement, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist Michael Lee West is a registered nurse as well as a writer. Her "novels, full of wry humor and humanity, cut to the heart of small-town life in the south," commented a biographer in Contemporary Southern Writers. "Many young southern novelists turn for subject matter of the bizarre and the Gothic, but Michael Lee West achieves her effects with genuine people whose localized conflicts reflect the universal in all of us."

In Crazy Ladies, West's first novel, she traces the lives, loves, and eccentricities of three generations of Tennessee women as they play out between 1932 and 1972: Matriarch Miss Gussie Hamilton; Queenie; Dorothy and Clancy Jane, Miss Gussie's Daughters; and Bitsy and Violet, daughters of Dorothy and Clancy Jane.

At the beginning of the novel, a knife-wielding attacker breaks into the house with the intent to rape Miss Gussie. Tough as nails even then, Miss Gussie slays the intruder with a shotgun. The situation turns worse when it is discovered that the attacker is the son of the president of the bank where Gussie's husband works. The couple bury the dead man in the garden, and though their actions remain undiscovered, "The awful secret has its grim effect on the generations that follow," noted the Contemporary Southern Writers essayist. Dorothy, one of Miss Gussie's children, grows up and marries, moving next door to her mother. Clancy Jane, the favorite child, marries a rough man named Hart, who dies in Vietnam. Clancy Jane later returns home to live with her mother, bringing with her daughter Violet, the only member of the family with aspirations to higher education. Dorothy's husband eventually leaves her, her children have unsuccessful marriages, and Dorothy becomes mentally unbalanced. Eventually—perhaps inevitably—the body in the garden is discovered, and the repercussions must be faced.

West's narrative structure allows each of the women to narrate her own part of the novel. First, Miss Gussie tells her story, beginning in 1932. Queenie's segment begins in 1938, a teenage Dorothy narrates beginning in 1945, and the other characters take the story up to 1972, each in her own turn. "It's a very tricky way to write a book," commented Ellen Pall in a Washington Post Book World review, but West "manages it flawlessly." Each woman "makes a credible case for her own version of the family's tale, despite contradiction, eccentricity, and self-deception," observed Katherine Ramsland in the New York Times Book Review. Readers "should enjoy West's portraiture of women who triumph over the problems that fate and their own difficult personalities bring into their lives," commented Sybil Steinberg in Publishers Weekly.

At the beginning of She Flew the Coop: A Novel concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana sixteen-year-old Olive Nepper renounces religion after finding herself pregnant by the local Baptist minister. She attempts suicide by drinking a bottle of orange soda spiked with rose poison, but the cocktail only succeeds in putting her in a coma. Many lives are touched by Olive's desperate act, and it soon "seems as if the whole town becomes unhinged," commented Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. Olive's mother, Vangie, is blithely unaware of most of what goes on around her as she waits for Olive to recover, while Olive's pharmacist husband Henry carries on an affair with an employee. Other characters, such as funeral director Cab Beaulieu, artist Edith Gallard, and housekeeper Sophie Donnell add their voices to the novel. West "has captured the color, eccentricities, and tragicomedy that the best Southern writers do so well," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Joan Mooney, writing in the Washington Post Book World, stated that "West has created a whole world, southern in its recipes and manners, small town in its gossip and interconnections, and utterly individual in the characters, who are so teeming with life you would have to stand back to create some breathing room if you met them."

As West's next novel, American Pie, opens, Freddie McBroom, who had left the small town of Tallulah, Tennessee, to become a marine biologist, returns to tend to her sister Jo-Nell, who has been seriously injured in a train accident. Their Grandma Minerva thinks this incident is just another manifestation of an old family curse, and soon Eleanor, the respectable elder sister, becomes so fearful that she will not even venture out of the house alone. The reunion of the sisters provides an opportunity for them to reminisce about the past, but more importantly, it provides them with the opportunity to face and defeat long-held fears. "West's brash, funny novel is immensely appealing, and it is both a paean to and a send-up of family bonds," commented Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist.

In Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life West offers a family memoir and recipe book in one as she explores her family's eccentricities and distinctly Southern fixation on food. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that "West manages to portray Southern charm without falling back on stereotypes, and meanwhile stylishly explaining the mystical, eternal link between family and food."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Southern Writers St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

West, Michael Lee, Consuming Passions: A Food-obsessed Life, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1994, Joanne Wilkinson, review of She Flew the Coop: A Novel concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, p. 1773; August, 1996, Joanne Wilkinson, review of American Pie, p. 1883; August, 1999, review of American Pie, p. 2025.

Entertainment Weekly, July 29, 1994, D. A. Ball, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 54; September 13, 1996, Suzanne Ruta, review of American Pie, p. 126.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1990, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 963; July 15, 1996, review of American Pie, p. 1003.

Library Journal, September 15, 1990, Susan C. Griffith, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 103; June 15, 1994, Joanna M. Burkhardt, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 98; August, 1996, Barbara Hoffert, review of American Pie, p. 116.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 16, 1994, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 6.

New York Times Book Review, October 21, 1990, Katherine Ramsland, review of Crazy Ladies, section 7, p. 24; July 10, 1994, Fran Handman, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 24; July 1, 1996, review of American Pie, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, July 13, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 42; May 16, 1994, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 52; July 1, 1996, review of American Pie, p. 40; March 15, 1999, review of Consuming Passions, p. 53.

Southern Living, May, 1991, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 82.

Washington Post Book World, October 10, 1990, Ellen Pall, review of Crazy Ladies, p. 10; July 3, 1994, Joan Mooney, review of She Flew the Coop, p. 8.