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Crazy in Alabama
Books: Travel: Alabama: Item 6
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Crazy in Alabamaby Mark Childress
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful: Definitely crazy!, March 19, 2002 Reviewer:Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Baxter Springs, KS) - Your homework for tonight: Drop everything and read Crazy in Alabama! This is such a great book -- much better than the movie. Mark Childress's carefully drawn characters come alive in these pages. Aunt Lucille will amaze you will all the nutty things she does. And Peejoe's story will have your heart breaking. It all starts when Aunt Lucille and her six children come ambling up the driveway of her mother's house early May 1965. She's killed her bullying husband and stashed his head in a Tupperware bowl (with a Press-and-Lock seal that really works!), and now with him out of the way, she's free to pursue her dream: to become an actress. Leaving her children with her mother, Lucille has zoomed off to Hollywood, evoking suspicion and evading arrest at every turn. Twisted into this story is another tale told through the eyes of 12-year-old Peejoe. He and his brother, Wiley, spend the summer in Industry, Alabama with Lucille's brother, Uncle Dove. As the county coroner and local funeral director, Dove has quite a busy summer ahead of him -- when Industry opens up their new "whites only" municipal swimming pool and the entire town takes a tragic turn. Crazy in Alabama is both riotous and rollicking as well as a sad reminder of the Civil Rights Movement and its history. Lucille's adventures will have readers laughing out loud as suppressed feelings awaken in her on her journey across the country. And the view through the innocent eyes of Peejoe will have readers wondering why all life's answers can't be so simple. An action-packed novel and one that won't be forgotten! Has all the qualities of a quirky southern tale that will amuse you and move you.
From Publishers Weekly
Family tumult and nationwide social unrest converge to shake the world of 12-year-old orphan Peejoe Bullis in the summer of 1965, "when everybody went crazy in Alabama." This wise, funny novel by the author of Tender opens as Peejoe's relatively tranquil life with his grandmother is jolted by the arrival of his Aunt Lucille, who is on her way to Hollywood to become a star after poisoning her husband (in the first of the book's many violent images, she pulls the dead man's severed head out of a tupperware container). Peejoe and his older brother Wiley move on to their Uncle Dove's home in Industry, Ala., where racial conflict brings frightening bloodshed as well as oratory from George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. Meanwhile, on the road and in California, the newly emancipated Lucille brings every ounce of her desirability and determination to bear on her quest for stardom. Childress tells his story through the masterfully crafted voice of the adult Peejoe reminiscing from his home in present-day San Francisco. He depicts each character with convincing detail and all the vividness of childhood memory; there is magic in his mixture of humor and pathos, boyish candor and time-earned understanding. The narrative has a unique gentleness that tempers even the most extreme horrific or comic events without dismissing or oversimplifying them. Terrible crimes go unpunished, and good people face tragedy--not always nobly--but this remains a tale of laughter and great hope, one not easily forgotten. Literary Guild featured alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The year is 1965. The place is a small town in the deep South. Having murdered her redneck husband, Lucille drops her six kids off at her mother's and heads for Hollywood to audition for a part in The Beverly Hillbillies . Now that his grandmother has others to care for, 11-year-old Peejoe goes off to live with an uncle a few towns away. The story is told in parallel narratives (first person as Peejoe relates his own life, third person as the boy learns about Lucille, his enthralling aunt), a structure that does not usually lend itself to audio. Here, however, it works perfectly. This wonderfully tragicomic tale records various attempts at freedom: Lucille kills her husband in "self-defense" because he's been killing her for 13 years, while Peejoe becomes embroiled in the civil rights struggle and its various murders. With gentle, self-mocking humor, this coming-of-age novel describes memorable people, in a vivid time and place. Highly recommended despite a contrived ending.
- Rochelle Ratner, formerly poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1994 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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