South Will Rise at Noon

Rogues, rednecks and local characters populate Gomez Gap, Fla., the swampy setting of this unsteady comic novel by the Canadian author of Precious. Just out of jail, devil-may-care drunkard Tully Stamper returns to his hometown seeking his ex-lover (a woman namedor labeledDanger); his mother, an ailing, semi-senile floozy; and his ex-wife, now wed to a flamboyant movie director who plans to re-create the Civil War in an epic that has dozens of Gomez Gappers clamoring for roles. Every villager from the imposing sheriff on down bears a different grudge against Tully;as he wanders from bed to bed and brawl to brawl, oddballs pile up around him, among them a woman who ambushes and then paints birds, a brilliant artist hiding from society and a half-witted lynch mob. They converge in an overheated battle-on-film in which Tully tries to win back his loved ones through gallantryand almost everything goes wrong. Glover's ripe imagination keeps this shaggy-dog story hurtling along, but it has more momentum than direction; Tully and the band of eccentrics around him comprise a town in search of a story. (Jan.)