Southern Challenge 2008 Wrap-Up

Well, a mighty big thanks to Maggie for hosting this fun challenge again!! I seem to read more and more and more Southern lit each year, so this one's both easy and perfect for me.

My books (with links to reviews):
1. Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
2. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
3. Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

My thoughts:
One of the things Maggie suggested we write about was how the books moved us.

I'd say Mudbound moved me the most - as I said in my review, it made me feel things physically. I was felt sorrow, anger, disgust, horror, and and a bit of satisfaction for Laura when her vile father-in-law got what he deserved. While Laura wasn't perfect, I was moved by her situation - being forced to live in a basically uninhabitable farm with horrid Pappy while her husband pays attention to nothing but his precious farm. And of course I was moved by the tragedy Ronsel faces, but also by the plight of his family as black people in 1946 in the Mississippi Delta - even though I know it was widespread, it still shocked me that they were treated that way, especially when Ronsel was a war hero and had been treated so well in Europe.

I was moved by The Sugar Queen because I felt so sorry for Josey being punished for her entire life for things now beyond her control - who her father was and how she'd acted as a child. Josey also moved me because she was so kind - even though she'd never really had friends or a boyfriend, she cared so deeply, so quickly about Chloe and Adam and even Della Lee. And while I don't have a closet stuffed with candy, I could relate to wanting to hide away and eat them quickly, to the feeling that they're the only comfort you have. I was so happy that she was able to finally come into her own and live her own life, after two decades of punishment and loneliness.

Girls in Trucks moved me because Sarah's tendency to screw up her life was so...pitiable. She was running from the constraints of her life in the South but she (and her Camellia friends) didn't really know what they were running to, so they ended up in various sad situations - some entirely of their own making, but some not.

I recommend all three of these books to y'all!

Review: Girls in Trucks

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch
4 stars


Reasons for reading: Southern Challenge II; recommended by Vidalia; my ongoing crush on South Carolina


Book description: Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camellias don't do. (Like ride with boys in pickup trucks.) But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she decamps South Carolina for a life in New York City. There, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life, and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind. When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia"- and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.


First line: "If you are white, are a girl or boy between the ages of nine and twelve, and, according to a certain committee of mothers, are good enough to associate with Charleston's other good girls and boys, then Wednesday night is a busy night for you."


My thoughts: The word that came to mind as I started reading this book was crackling. It's sharp and witty and not at all fluffy. I definitely recommend it, but don't expect typical chick lit.

The book is mostly about Sarah, but some chapters focus on her fellow Camellias - Bitsy, who married a rich cheater; Annie, a fat girl who seems to get men solely via cooking and blow jobs; and Charlotte, the heroin addict. Sarah is not particularly likeable - she drinks and smokes pot too much (like, right before her sister's wedding), she's addicted to cruel men, she's unambitious, and she's not a great friend. I wanted to shake some sense into her as she kept messing up her life over and over again. It made me think perhaps the belles should've stayed down South.

And as I was reading the description of the Southern belle's transition when she goes up North to college (she suppresses her accent, wears beaten-up clothes instead of the dresses her mother packed, hooks up briefly with boys rather than expecting regular dates) and how she's happy to shed the South, I couldn't believe it because I'm so very intrigued by the South and (okay, on the basis of my Charleston visit) would love to live there! These days everything northern seems so drab, cold, charmless, and impolite to me. (And I would love for my eventual children to have drawls, y'all!) But my friend Vidalia, who was a full-fledged debutante, explained to me that it's about escaping from the constraints and constant pressure of a society where you're expected to be a Camellia or deb or member of the Junior League. So, I guess I can see that. And the young do always want to escape from their parents' world.

So does Sarah escape, that's the question. She is "always a Camellia," but New York is now part of her, as well. The ending isn't a cut-and-dried, happy one, but it has some hope and at that moment, things are good. And for a crackling but not fluffy book, that's sometimes the best ending you can hope for.

Review: The Sugar Queen

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
4 stars

Reasons for reading: I loved, loved Allen's Garden Spells; 2nd book for The Southern Challenge II

Book description: Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini... has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds it harboring none other than local waitress Della Lee Baker... Fleeing a life of bad luck and big mistakes, Della Lee has decided Josey’s clandestine closet is the safest place to crash. In return she’s going to change Josey’s life—because, clearly, it is not the closet of a happy woman. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey is soon forgoing pecan rolls and caramels, tapping into her startlingly keen feminine instincts, and finding her narrow existence quickly expanding. Before long, Josey bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who makes the best sandwiches in town, is hounded by books that inexplicably appear whenever she needs them, and—most amazing of all—has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush.
As little by little Josey dares to step outside herself, she discovers a world where the color red has astonishing power, passion can make eggs fry in their cartons, and romance can blossom at any time—even for her. It seems that Della Lee’s work is done, and it’s time for her to move on. But the truth about where she’s going, why she showed up in the first place—and what Chloe has to do with it all—is about to add one more unexpected chapter to Josey’s fast-changing life.

First line: "When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled."

My thoughts: I didn't find this one quite as charming as Garden Spells - I didn't think the magic element was quite as seamless in this one. But it was still great fun - each chapter is named after a type of candy, there are some very funny exchanges with the Cirrinis' supersitious, Englishly-challenged maid, and there's still definitely some magic - my favourite part by far were the books that literally follow Chloe around (Finding Forgiveness, which wants her to forgive her cheating boyfriend, gets completely battle-scarred as she tries to get rid of it and it has to team up with another self-help book). I'd love to have the problem!

There is also great pain in this book - Josey's mother has been suffering for years because she fell in love too late and she is unkind to and demands a lot of Josey because she reminds her so much of her husband, powerful Marco Cirrini who put Bald Slope on the map with his ski resort. For most of her life, Josey's only sources of happiness have been an unrequited crush on the mailman and her sugary treats. The townspeople think she must be happy because her father was "a great man" and they're rich, but they don't really know her and base most of their opinion of her on what a brat she was when she was a child. So it's wonderful to see her starting to break free of those constraints, with the help of Della Lee and to start to be her true self - which includes being a real friend to Chloe (Josey seems to have never really had any friends) and coming into her own, romantically. The ending is definitely satisfying.

I didn't get much of a Southern vibe from this one, mainly because it boggles my mind to associate the South with snow and skiing! I don't know much about North Carolina, but a quick Google reveals that there indeed ski areas there. So, I learned something from this book! It does definitely have a small-town feel you often have in Southern books, though, with everyone in Bald Slope knowing about the Cirrini family's history.

Definitely a worthwhile read and I hope Sarah Addison Allen (who, just as an aside, looks to be as cute as a bug's ear from her photo on the jacket, just like a character in one of her books) keeps on writin'!

(If you've reviewed The Sugar Queen, leave a link in the comments!)

Review: Mudbound

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
5 stars

Reasons for reading: Southern Challenge II; book club

First line: "Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep."

From the inside flap: "When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Laura does not share Henry's love of rural life, and she struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack with no indoor plumbing or electricity, all the while under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud.

As the McAllans are being tested in every way, two celebrated soldiers of World War II return home to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan is everything his older brother Henry is not: charming, handsome, and sensitive to Laura's plight, but also haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, comes home from fighting the Nazis with the shine of a war hero, only to face far more personal—and dangerous—battles against the ingrained bigotry of his own countrymen. It is the unlikely friendship of these two brothers-in-arms, and the passions they arouse in others, that drive this powerful debut novel. Mudbound reveals how everyone becomes a player in a tragedy on the grandest scale, even as they strive for love and honor."

My thoughts: The word to describe this book is gripping! It kept me up past 1:30 in the morning. For some reason I was often reminded of East of Eden, probably because of the two brothers, the terrible father, and the farm.

This book made me feel things physically. The first descriptions of the way blacks were treated in the Jim Crow South made me feel hollow inside and when they got much, much worse, I actually felt sick. When the worse, worse thing happened, my hand flew to my mouth, which is exactly what happens to Laura when she hears about it. I felt heartbroken for Laura, first when she felt like a rejected spinster and then when she had to move to the horrible farm (Jordan really makes you see and feel and smell the oozing, everywhere mud) and then I felt anger at Henry that he made his wife and children live that way. I felt Laura's hatred of the racist, chauvinistic, just plain mean Pappy, too.

The story is told from many points of view (Henry, Laura, Jamie, Ronsel, and his parents), which in the hand of a less talented author could be confusing and annoying, but every one of them has their own distinct personality and take on things. It also really lends itself to the theme of where a story begins and what could have been - the "ifs" of life. Laura points out early on that "Even if you start with "Chapter One: I Am Born," you still have the problem of antecedents, of cause and effect." For example, the McCallans and the Jacksons probably never would have met if For example, the terrible events that happen at the end of the story can be traced all the way back to plain Laura still being single in 30's and marrying Henry, who was still a bachelor in his 40's and was desperate to own a farm.

Oh....I can't do it justice!! Read this excellent book and see for yourself!

(Or check out my pal Vidalia's much better review here.)

Southern Challenge 2008

It's back! Yay, Maggie! How appropriate that this challenge is back right at the time I'm feeling like an honorary Southern girl!

Here's the official post about it, the rules are the same as last year - 3 books by Southern authors that are set in the South.

Here's my list (at the moment, always subject to change):

1. Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch (South Carolina)
2. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen (North Carolina)
3. Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Mississippi)