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A review of All Saints' Day

by Brent Benoit

An inter-generational saga set in Louisiana's Cajun country.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Santiago
About Jennifer Santiago

All Saints' Day Brent Benoit's debut novel, All Saints' Day, is an engrossing tale of family dynamics, blue collar life, love, loss and growing up, set against the colorful backdrop of Louisiana's Cajun country. All Saints' Day follows the hard lives of Russell Bueche and Doreen Gidot from their troubled childhoods- Russell is beaten so severely by his father that he is left nearly blind, and Doreen watches her mother succumb to cancer- to their troubled marriage. Russell struggles through a series of labor-intensive jobs, never making ends meet and taking solace in alcohol, while Doreen is left to wrestle with their two sons and the memory of a dead child, accidentally killed by his twin brother. As their surviving children, Whitaker and Clayton, grow up, they too must confront problems including love, drugs, and mental illness. Through it all, Benoit's characters are unfailingly accepting and never self-pitying.

Benoit's inter-generational saga is a refreshingly honest look at a family whose only aspiration is daily survival. He effectively captures the essence of the Cajun old-timers as well as the youngest generation, torn between the traditional way of life and the modern world beyond the bayou.

Each chapter is narrated by a different character and sometimes by a third-party narrator, which can be somewhat confusing. And merely because the story is set in Louisiana does not put Benoit's novel on a par with the work of John Kennedy Toole, as the dust flap copy boasts. Nonetheless, All Saints' Day is a gripping novel to be devoured in a single sitting.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: All Saints' Day

Copyright © by Jennifer Santiago, 2003

Reviewed by Jennifer Santiago:
-- The Lovely Bones - by Alice Sebold
-- 30 Minute Meals - by Rachael Ray
-- Raising Blaze - by Debra Ginsberg
-- Backpack - by Emily Barr
-- You Are Not a Stranger Here - by Adam Haslett
-- Bookends - by Jane Green
-- A Confederacy of Dunces - by John Kennedy Toole
-- Ash Wednesday - by Ethan Hawke
-- All Saints' Day - by Brent Benoit
-- The Stepford Wives - by Ira Levin
-- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating - by David M. Buss
-- Literary New Orleans - by Judy Long (Editor)
-- The Sopranos Family Cookbook - by Allen Rucker; Recipes by Michele Scicolone
-- Atonement - by Ian McEwan
-- The Crimson Petal and the White - by Michel Faber
-- Midnight Bayou - by Nora Roberts
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - by Ann Brashares
-- The Zygote Chronicles - by Suzanne Finnamore
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - by J.K. Rowling









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