Baby Cat-Face

A NOVEL OF MORAL CHAOS AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Called Baby Cat-Face because of her "feline green eyes and tiny snub nose," Esquerita Reyna lives in the dark world of modern New Orleans. Surrounded by bizarre characters, whose lives are a chain reaction of horrific yet absurdly comic events, Baby struggles Candide-like to make her way in an inexplicably brutal world.

Disillusioned with the violence around her, she joins a religious cult called the Temple of the Few Washed Pure by Her Blood. After a kinky indiscretion with the obese Waldo Orchid, she becomes pregnant with a child who would be dubbed a Second Coming -- of sorts. Even Wild at Heart's perpetually drifting lovebirds, Sailor and Lula, have a wacky cameo. "That none of this seems more than slightly odd in context," noted one critic, "is testimony to the seductive power of Gifford's virtuoso wordplay."

"[Gifford's] singular genius is a kind of everyday surreality ... Baby Cat-Face inhabits a New Orleans so feverishly peculiar that Anne Rice would feel at ease there." - Washington Post

"Mr. Gifford's characters face the ridiculousness of life with existential gusto -- and in this, at least, there is perfect sense." - The New York Times Book Review

From Publishers WeeklyAfter watching her dancing partner get his neck fatally slashed by a jealous rival, young New Orleans creole Esquerita Reyna, aka "Baby Cat-Face," heads out of the big city for an aunt's place in Corinth, N.C. Meanwhile, Sailor and Lula (the protagonists of Wild at Heart and five other Gifford novels) are on the way to to Corinth, planning on some fun and games, but instead they wind up rescuing Baby from trouble. Wackiness abounds: back in New Orleans, Baby joins Mother Bizco's Temple of the Few Washed Pure by Her Blood, a religious sect headed by a former prostitute, who, when Baby gets pregnant, jumps to the conclusion that Baby's is an immaculate conception. Indeed, Baby gives birth to an avenging youngster named Angel de la Cruz, who quotes scripture at age one, can float in the air, winds up sharing a jail cell with Sailor and fathers a child of his own. Gifford's universe is unpredictable. His characters turn on a dime, one minute asking why evil exists in the world and the next minute committing heinous acts. And Baby, the usual victim, recovers with the ease of a cartoon figure straightening itself after being flattened by a two-ton anvil. It's often great fun. But as Gifford takes his brand of trash-Americana through three generations of Christian fundamentalism and conspiracy theory, he remains disinterested in anything resembling sustained drama or characterization, content to rely on momentum, funky phrasings and the idiosyncrasies of his hyperthyroid world.

From Library JournalIf you're looking for a fin-de-siecle car chase through the backwaters of fundamentalist Christianity, and rape and violence served up with a New Orleans accent, then you've come to the right place. Messiahs and malcontents share the stage as Esquerita Reyna, better known as Baby Cat-Face, leaves town after witnessing a murder and meets soul singer Sugargirl Crooks, whose influence guides her to Mother Bizco's Temple of the Few Washed Pure by Her Blood. There she becomes unknowingly wrapped up in an elaborate plan to give birth to a female messiah who will lead a feminist revolution in the 21st century (one smells a sequel). In between these episodes, other vectors appear, whose meaning is only barely apparent at the tale's end. Sailor and Lula, whom Gifford readers will recognize from Wild at Heart and Sailor's Holiday, make a brief, and ultimately meaningless, appearance. Fans of Gifford's slapdash style, replete with quick cuts and untied loose ends, may appreciate this latest effort. Others might pass. Recommended where Gifford is popular.