Yonder Stands Your Orphan (Books That Changed the World)

by Barry Hannah

Set in and around Eagle Lake, Mississippi, Yonder Stands Your Orphan pits Man Mortimer, an aging pimp who resembles Conway Twitty, against a group of hopelessly flawed lakeside denizens, including a preacher with a biker past and a Maltese cross tattooed on his cheek, a Christian saxophonist in a Latin-fusion band fronted by his wife, an elderly veteran who's become a sentimental and unstable proponent of animal rights, a pair of preteenage boys who are half feral and more mature than any of the adults around them. Mortimer learns that he has competition for the favor of Dee Allison, the town femme fatale. Despite his generally contemptuous attitude toward other people, Dee's very disinterest in him has made Mortimer feel some sort of love for her, and her betrayal sends him over the edge. He stabs his rival, who retaliates, and he ends up hospitalized. He then tracks the rival down and cuts his face up. This begins an on-again, off-again crime spree in which his fascination with ever-more-improbable knives and his desire to mutilate those who offend him come together. He is also simultaneously trying to cover up an old crime-the disposal of the bodies of an old girlfriend, who killed herself and her child whom he refused to claim-and trying to get an in at a camp for orphans so he can seduce the older, preteenage girl orphans into his burgeoning amateur porn empire. It culminates in a showdown between the heavily-armed orphans, Mortimer, and whomever happens to be standing in the way.

• ISBN10: 0871138115
• ISBN13: 9780871138118
• Publish Date: 26 June 2001
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 2 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

I needed something batshit crazy and bighearted, and there’s nobody better for both than Barry Hannah. My favorite when reading him is to forget— just for a minute, just long enough— all the ongoing story and pick a line, any line, to marvel at the mini-story packed inside it.

“Lightning loved the swamp. The willows thrashed now where all the souls of dead bad poets roamed day and night.”

“Spanish words, Japanese thoughts, for these elves of Confederate trash.”

“Here was a man who in his bad, bad days had almost blown Roman over on a gravel road riding his giant Harley next to Roman’s little motorbike, loaded with fish. Now a Christian orator when he was not playing hooky from the Anonymous program.”

“Some things were sin and the others just math.”

A million stories for one, these screwy sentences that ring with drop-dead truth. You could pick a page blind, point and find one. Here. Page 181. “‘Nice,’ said Carl Bob Feeney, less insane than last week.”