Bellocq's Women | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Bellocq's Women

Nov 28, 2025 7:47 PM

Author:Peter Everett

Bellocq's Women

In 1912, in Storyville, the notorious red-light district of New Orleans, a photographer named E. J. Bellocq took a series of photographs of the women who worked in the brothels. Rediscovered in the 1950s, Bellocq's photographs have become famous, but the man himself remains a mystery.In Bellocq's Women, Peter Everett performs as remarkable a feat of fictional reconstruction as he did in Matisse's War and The Voyages of Alfred Wallis. All we have of Bellocq are his photographs and a few fragmentary memories; in this extraordinary novel Everett not only brings the photographer to life - and with him his strange, tortured relationship with his mother and two young girls, one his landlady's daughter, the other a child whore - but also his world - the opium dens and bar rooms of New Orleans and the whore houses with their surreal combination of violence and homeliness.

Reviews

Everett effectively conjures up the city's sleazy, sexy glamour

—— Sunday Times

Bellocq's Women is a fascinating novel

—— Independent

Old-fashioned romance of the best sort … funny, comforting

—— Elle

Hardy expounds on his favourite themes: misunderstandings, missed opportunities, unrequited love and fatal omissions

—— Sunday Times

The age-old dilemma - mind-blowing passion versus a man who knows how to put up shelves

—— Independent

Maxwell's voice is one of the wisest in American fiction; it is as well, one of the kindest

—— John Updike

Every time I read this I discover something new

—— Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) , Daily Mail

What elevates The Making of Henry..is the way it talks about love. That, and being funny

—— Guardian

This is brilliantly, biliously funny. It is also painfully, movingly sad...Expansive and compassionate... Sharp and hilarious, this latest novel shows Jacobson at his best

—— Observer

A story of modern love that will have readers laughing and sighing with recognition... A wry, insightful, thoroughly enjoyable tale about how men and women choose their demons and their lovers, and the sacrifices they're willing to make for both

—— Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Delightful... Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect

—— New York Review of Books

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