Review: Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress

Mark Childress is funny. At least his books suggest that he is because they are chock full of fun and entertainment and I have never finished one of them without a grin on my face. This is not to say that they are shallow or mindless. It's just that they will keep you happily barreling along the pages with his wacky but delightful characters even as they touch on darker concerns; here these concerns are racism and sexuality, complacency and image.

Georgia Bottoms is keeping secrets. Her well-respected family's money long gone, she must support her aging mother and her alcoholic brother who can't seem to stay on the right side of the law as well as send what she can afford to an address out of state for reasons not immediately explained. But just how does a charming, ladylike Southern belle can go about this? Why, she discreetly takes on lovers who come to her once a week and leave her monetary "gifts" for the privilege of her company of course. Georgia manages to keep each of her lovers from knowing about the others, hide her trysts from the town and her mother, and keep up the appearance of goodness that she has cultivated for so long until the preacher's wife discovers just exactly where he has been spending his Saturday nights. The trouble headed off at the pass, Georgia resumes her life, influencing town politics from behind the scenes, organising her annual ladies' tea, and struggling against her mother's creeping dementia and increasing racism. But the dam has broken, the world has changed (9/11 happens during the course of the novel), and some of Georgia's best kept secrets are about to be exposed.

Georgia is a performer, acting a role not only with each of her lovers but also acting the role of dutiful daughter, responsible sister, paragon of Southern gentility, pillar of the community, and town darling. She really hasn't had time to figure out who she actually is and it's not until she comes face to face with her past that she has to reach down inside herself and find the kernel of the real person she actually is without regard to what others expect.

The plot here is unique and the characters are wonderful. Georgia is charming and delightful and the reader roots for her the entire story, even when she is being intentionally obtuse. Her heart is generally in the right place and the situations in her life are highly entertaining. The story and everything about it is humorous with just the right amount of sass and verve thrown in to make it incredibly appealing. The story keeps moving at a good, consistent pace and ending is about perfect. I wish we could go along with Geogia and see what's next for her. She is a steel magnolia if ever there was one. Fans of Southern fiction have a gem waiting for them in this one.

For more information about Mark Childress and the book, including an interactive tour of Six Points, be sure to visit his webpage. There's also a link there to Childress' tour schedule, which mostly canvasses the south but offers an appearance or two in Yankee-land too. I plan to go to the tour stop by me and see if he's as entertaining in person as he is on the page.

Thanks to Little, Brown for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

What do your clothes say about you? What if they could tell stories of the times you actually wore them? Mine would probably say I am prone to spills and dress like a toddler. But a couple of pieces might tell of evenings out or exotic trips. Mostly though, my clothes wouldn't have terribly interesting stories to tell and no one would mistake them for things with fascinating histories. In The Secret Lives of Dresses though, the vintage dresses in Dora's grandmother Mimi's shop have tales to tell, tales imagined and written by Mimi to suit each dress.

Opening with Dora rushing home from college after her grandmother has suffered a stroke, this is a story of love and grief and finding oneself. Raised by her grandmother because her parents died when she was small, Dora is about to graduate from college, where she has drifted along without a plan. She intends to go to graduate school as much to make herself available to her cute boss at the school coffee shop (as a grad student, he won't date undergrads) as to postpone having to decide what she wants to do with her life when she grows up. Mimi's stroke changes everything. Dora goes home and takes over the vintage dress shop as a way of keeping busy while her grandmother is critical in the hospital. She discovers a real affinity for the shop, tied to it both by her love for her grandmother and by a gift for retail.

Through the shop, Dora meets Cal, a contractor renovating a condo upstairs who is wonderfully kind and understanding about the grief that Dora is feeling as her grandmother's health declines. She also finds a drawer full of secret lives for the dresses on the racks at the store, tales meant to go with the dresses when they are purchased. Never having known about Mimi's writing, she faces all the things that will remain unknown in her life, including anything much about her own parents, about whom Mimi didn't speak. The supporting characters here are quirky and fun, adding light and spunk to the story without taking the focus off of Dora and her journey of self-discovery.

McKean has a feather-light touch, only brushing the reader's emotions gently while still managing to convey the depth of Dora's feelings. The premise of the book is a charming one and plays out just as charmingly in practice. It was hard to not gobble the book down in one greedy sitting but instead to let it flow slowly and steadily. It is a thoroughly modern book but the detailed descriptions of the vintage dresses and their stories give the book a lovely old-fashioned tone in places. Despite the sadness, there's a warm feel of friendliness here. Over all, this is a delightful book and anyone captivated by the idea of dresses having histories will find a small gem in this tale. Characters, plot, setting, tone; it all comes together into a perfectly pleasing whole.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West

Author Michael Lee West is one of the south’s treasures as she’s shown with her previous works set amongst the live oaks and Spanish moss. Mermaids in the Basement is a worthy addition to her funny and convoluted tales of the modern day south and the resilient (and sometimes off-beat) women who live there.

No blowsy magnolia blossom, screenwriter Renata is down and depressed by her mother and step-father’s unexpected death in a plane crash several months prior to the opening of the story. She has a distant and superficial relationship with her father, who is about to marry a very young trophy wife. Her writer’s block is flaring up even as the latest deadline on a crap screenplay is due. And to cap it all off, she sees a tabloid showing her boyfriend, a successful director, in a clinch with the latest Hollywood “It girl” on location in Ireland. After an unproductive call to boyfriend Ferg, a few too many drinks, a bonfire, and alcohol-inspired Fed-Exing, all of which turn out to have been Bad Ideas, Renata finds a letter from her mother marked to be read only in case of an emergency. This letter drives Renata’s flight to her paternal grandmother’s home in coastal Alabama to find out the truth behind her parents' life together. Once home, matriarch and grande dame Honora, former nanny Gladys, and long-time family friend and former actress Isabelle conspire to help Renata find the steel in her backbone, share the skeletons in the family closet with her, and show her that her future, while anchored on the past, can be made to suit the person she is becoming.

Filled with grand parties, shocking revelations, and more side plots than you can shake a stick at, West has created her trademark eccentric but entirely believable characters and plot. She has a way with the turn of a phrase that sometimes doesn't dawn on the reader until they are a paragraph further on but will still elicit a bark of laughter. This is a snappy, witty, and fun read that sucks you and and doesn't let you go, through both the unconventional, crazy happenings and the more mundane. And it will make you a bit sad you don't have characters like this in your real life, because honey, you know they'd take you for some wild ride. An easy, smooth read, West does tackle some heavier topics than calling this a breezy romantic novel would suggest. And she handles them deftly, not allowing them to destroy the light touch of the whole. This is one I definitely recommend.

Review: Welcome to Higby by Mark Dunn

Summer just seems like the proper time to read quirky Southern-set novels, doesn't it? All I'd need is a mint julep and a funeral home fan and I'd be all set although this isn't exactly a mint julep type of book. Rather is is a small town, Bible Belt sort of book.

Higby, Mississippi may not be a hellfire and damnation kind of place but there is a clear demarcation between appropriate and sinful there as the various characters stumble towards redemption. Opening with local police pondering what drives young Clint Cullen to climb the old watertower regularly simply to sit above the town and then having him crash through the rusted railing, landing squarely in a neighboring pool, the reader knows this won't be your garden variety novel. It is people with a large cast of characters, each of whom is facing his or her own challenges, wondering which path to choose.

Stewie Kipp is a born again Christian whose ardent faith is driving away his fiancee, who mourns the good time days they used to spend together. Carmen Valentine is a retiring woman who is working up the courage to actually sit next to the man she'd like to date and whose hobby is crafting with dry spaghetti. Clive's father Oren is a preacher who is struggling with his own faith, with his relationship with Clive, and with his growing attraction to the massage artist whose establishment on the outskirts of town is dodgy. Euless Ludlam is a loyal employee, although a little slow, and is about to inherit a staggering sum of money. Talitha Leigh is all about a good time, whether that means drinking at a bar or going home with nameless men who is rescued/kidnapped one morning by a strange vegan cult intent on offering her a peace in captivity (and re-naming her the very ironic Blithe). And finally Tula Gilmurray keeps losing her beloved brother Hnk, both physically and mentally as he is fogged in the beginning stages of what would appear to be Alzheimer's.

As disparate as the characters seem, they are all intricately intertwined as only folks in a small town can be. Better yet, they are all well-fleshed out and individual characters who make entertaining reading. There is a lot of humor laced throughout this novel about the connections between people and between hearts. Each chapter's epigraph is a Bible verse that relates cleverly and directly to the action in the chapter. Having read Dunn's previous epistolary novel, Ella Minnow Pea, I was delighted to find that his ingenuity continues in new and different ways in this novel. Definitely clever and thoroughly entertaining, this was a delight to read.