Hiding My Candy

Hiding My Candy: The Autobiography Of The Grand Empress Of Savannah by The Lady Chablis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was very intrigued by this character after reading (and watching) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, so when I discovered she wrote an autobiography I had to read it. She is witty, clever, and oh so full of herself… It gets a little wearing after awhile. I was hoping for something a little more serious and behind the scenes perhaps, but The Lady is all about image, and this book is all about perpetuating that, so nothing new here really. Still, it’s fascinating to try and understand someone who is on the opposite end of every imaginable spectrum from myself…

Book description:
After leaping off the pages with her unforgettable debut in John Berendt’s bestselling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the unabashed personality known as The Lady Chablis now brings her irresistible charisma to the remarkable odyssey of fabulousness that USA Today calls “sassy” and “provocative….” Born Benjamin Edward Knox in Quincy, Florida, “The Doll” always knew she was different. At a Tallahassee club, in her teens, she found the drag mother who would set her on the path to stardom. Before long, The Lady Chablis had a headline drag act replete with trademark saucy wit, down-home wisdom, and, of course, breasts. The rest is “Miss Thang” history….

 

Saving CeeCee Hunneycutt

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A quick read and a heart-warming story with some brilliantly laugh-out-loud moments. While the book touches on some dark topics – mental illness, child neglect, prejudice, racial injustice – you know that everything is going to be just fine. Reading this book is like watching a Shirley Temple movie. I especially enjoyed the photographic adventures of the traveling brassiere. Everyone should have friends and surrogate mothers like these women.

Description: Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell.

In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah’s perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie’s all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.

Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman’s sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, “packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart.” It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

View all my reviews

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ll give it three stars. It’s an interesting and entertaining story with quirky characters. But I have no particular interest in the south and its culture. I found the characters mostly just bizarre and I certainly didn’t care much what happened to any of them. I almost didn’t finish this book when my car CD player died halfway through listening. I decided it was a quirky and rambling portrait of Savannah and some of its denizens and I had heard enough to get a feel for the book. But after our book club meeting, and after I got a new audio receiver for my car, I decided to go ahead and finish listening. The second half was almost a different book, focusing on one man and the murder trial that dragged on for more than 8 years, and his involvement with Minerva, the voodoo priestess.

Having just read the book, I watched the movie last night. It didn’t get very good reviews. I thought it was all right. Not a great movie, but not a bad one either. I do think it might have been a bit confusing without having read the book. I especially liked seeing the actual locations – Savannah, the Bonneventure Cemetary, Mercer House, Sweet Georgia Brown’s, etc. And the Lady Chablis was played by herself in the movie. What a fascinating person. From the credits I learned that she wrote an autobiography, so that is going on my reading list!

Description:
Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt’s sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t know what to say beyond “5 stars” – one of the best reads of the year! I loved the characters, and didn’t want the book to end. Can’t wait to see the movie. This one is destined to become a classic.

Description:
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.