''Fields of Asphodel'' is a 2007 novel by the American writer
Tito Perdue. It picks up the story of Leland "Lee" Pefley where Perdue's first novel,
''Lee'', left off.
Publication history
The novel was first published in 2007 by the
Overlook Press simultaneously with the reissue of Perdue's first novel, ''Lee''.
[ Antoine Wilson]
"The Misanthrope,"
''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' (15 July 2007). A new edition was published by Standard American in 2023.
Reception
''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...
'' praises the book's "funny scenes and arresting lines."
[''Publisher's Weekly'', 14 May 2007.](_blank)
/ref> In the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', Antoine Wilson praises its "utterly charming and brilliantly comic penultimate scene" but also complains of "tone-deaf caricature" in passages where "satirical elements take center stage."Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...
'' and ''Publishers Weekly'' compare the novel to those of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
; but the latter finds that it lacks Beckett’s "lyricism."Quarterly Review
The ''Quarterly Review'' was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967. It was referred to as ''The London Quarterly Review'', as reprinted by Leonard Scott, f ...
'', Derek Turner judges it "without a doubt the strangest" of Perdue's books yet published.[ Derek Turner]
"Meet Lee Pefley – Sociopath (and Sage),"
''Quarterly Review
The ''Quarterly Review'' was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967. It was referred to as ''The London Quarterly Review'', as reprinted by Leonard Scott, f ...
'' (Spring 2008). Don Noble notes its "highly literate, idiosyncratic diction," while Turner finds it "difficult to know how to do justice to a book that combines … courtly archaisms with crude street slang … philosophical points … with haemorrhoid-related humour."
Series
The main character, Lee Pefley, and his forebears appear in many of Perdue's novels.[Jim Knipfel]
"Tito Perdue: America's Lost Literary Genius,"
New York Press (June 2001).
References
{{reflist
2007 American novels
Novels set in Alabama
Novels by Tito Perdue