Lewis King is a trumpet player who lands a gig in the Big Easy. He is a genius on horn, but King's private life is, morally, physically, and financially bankrupt. A heavy drinker and compulsive sexual manipulator, he is prone to paranoid fits of violent rage. Ms Sugarlicq, his girlfriend, can't keep her pants on. They're perfect for each other… A fantastic and graphic first-person narrative, Going to New Orleans serves as a surreal, yet faithful, guide to the food, music, history, and literature of New Orleans. A dirty book, but also a spiritual book one... If books had bloodlines, Going to New Orleans would be a cousin to both Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter and Tom Walmsley's Doctor Tin, and a bastard grandchild of Georges Bataille's The Story of the Eye. Like Slaughter, the protagonist is a horn player with a dark side, New Orleans in all its voodoo glory is a central character, and the language is evocative and spare. As with Tin and Eye, the all-pervasive sexuality is transgressive, perverse, algolagnic, and disturbingly captivating, like seeing a car wrecked after running the red-light district. -- Georgia Straight, Sept. 2004
