Before Elvis There Was Nothing

By Laurie Foos

"A wonderful mixture of insecurity and insanity. Every line of Laurie Foos' new novel is suffused with intelligence, wit and daring. Exhilarating "--Fay Weldon A fabulist for the twenty-first century,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156689168X
• ISBN13: 9781566891684
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Not your average Elvis

I picked this up on someone's recommendation and was surprised to find I liked this book as much as I did. I'm not normally a fan of so called surrealism, if that's how you would characterize this kind of book about a woman who grows a horn in the middle of her head. Once I got into it, I thoroughtly enjoyed it. There are lots of Elvis jokes in it, which some people may not like, but the author shows great compassion, also, instead of letting it just be an easy, bad joke. Parts of the book are very sad and other parts are totally bizarre. Somehow it all works. What the author has to say about beauty and family and Elvis made me think about all those things in new ways. Foos has a really interesting way of looking at life. I'm looking forward to reading some of her other work.

A great read!

Laurie Foos mixes characters who are afflicted with agoraphobia, female pattern baldness, and rhinoceros horns, for starters, and sets this band of freaks in a suburban ghost town with its own King -- Elvis. Ordinary people and the prosaic details of their lives are Foos' stock in trade, yet you find yourself contemplating the nature of beauty, loyalty, abandonment, and life's other, larger truths. The plot pivots on a surreal sequence set at a special hospital that shatters the narcotic routine of suburbia. Despite the story's fluid pace, memorable characters, and scattered truisms ("All roads lead to Elvis"), there are no pat answers here. Foos is following her own literary trajectory, beginning with Ex Utero, and doesn't feel obligated to spoon-feed meaning to her readers. A great read, impossible to put down, though far too brief -- I was in for a dozen more chapters, at least.

Foos Delivers Really Funny Wacky Book

Foos's new book is both hilarious and very sad. The narrator, Cass, is a hair replacement specialist who wants to be Jewish because she can't eat ham for fear of choking like her namesake, Mama Cass, and has an agoraphobic sister, Lena, who can't stop pining for their long-lost parents. The parents, Elvis fanatics, took off one night and never returned, but that doesn't stop Lena and Cass from speculating about where they are. There's also all sorts of trivia and bits about Elvis, who may or may not be hiding out at a hospital for people who develop animal characteristics. After Cass grows a six-inch horn in her forehead, she winds up in this hospital, and things get wackier and wilder from there. Foos has drawn a really sharp heroine who imparts wisdom about hair, identity, beauty, and Elvis throughout the book. I found myself rooting for her all the way. There are so many themes interwoven and many different surreal and strange plot lines, but somehow it all works, and you put down the book feeling you learned something you hadn't known before. I read it all in one sitting, and it made me laugh out loud and get choked up all at once. I wonder why Foos doesn't have a bigger following.