The Nature of Things

This book has languished on my TBR list for quite a while and I'm not sure why I haven't read it sooner. Now that I have read it, I regret that I didn't read it the minute that I got it. It is a terrific book, the first novel by this author, but one would never guess that for it is an assured and self-confident bit of writing. Sexton gives full-bodied life to her characters without either sentimentalizing them or making them into oddities. These are ordinary people whose struggles we can identify with. The author is a resident of New Orleans and that is where her novel is set. Part of the appeal of the narrative is that she deeply understands her city and its culture and she delivers it to us with clear-eyed descriptions which allow us to see it with all of its richness as well as its deeply ingrained flaws. She tells her story through the lives of three generations of a New Orleans family, a quintessential New Orleans family of Creole and African-American heritage. She beg...