Joe Jones

Joe Jones is Anne Lamotts raucous novel of the lives gathered around Jessies Cafe, a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan. Jessie, thin, stooped and gorgeous at seventy-nine, inherited the cafe years before and it has become home to a remarkable family of characters: Louise, the cook and vortex, sexy and sweet, somewhere on the cusp between curvaceous and fat; Joe, devoted and unfaithful; Willie, Jessies gay grandson; Georgia, an empress dowager who never speaks; and a dozen others all living together in the sweet everyday.