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I purchased COLD SASSY for fun because I share the name of the main character and was delighted with what I encountered. Elements of surprise and suspense are woven throughout the book, keeping you reading. Olive Ann Burns certainly had the ability to draw readers into the story. It is impossible not to engage with the characters and feel like you've lived in Cold Sassy yourself. You definitely know you are "down south" in the early part of the 20th century because of the accents in the dialogue, the amusing anti-Yankee attitude and the sprinkling of current events, like fashion and the new fangled automobile. You too will want a hat made especially for you by Miss Love.
This is a WONDERFUL book and we have passed it from person to person. I am recommending this for our next book club read.
It seemed too contrived. I just didn't like the hokey speech pattern. Not my favorite book. I rarely skip through a book but I ended up doing that very thing half way through. I have read other books from the deep south, but this book didn't appeal to me. There were too many incidents that were supposed to be funny that didn't seem funny to me. It didn't seem to matter where I opened the book, I could follow along. Sorry, I just didn't enjoy this book.
Albeit this is Georgia, and Faulkner is Mississippi, each touches upon the intermeshed and cooperative lives of former slaves or descendents of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, Southern middle class. The characters are southern folk who may seem cold and remonstrate to northern visitors. Will Tweedy, as eldest grandson to bossy but friendly Rucker Blakeslee, narrates the story of adult issues with his youthful and naive perspective, but somewhat refined as this book is drafted as though rewritten from a childhood journal made in 1906.Grandpa Blakeslee, who lost only one fight in his life - the Civil Way - runs a shop, which runs the town of the title name. At the end, in a Faulkner vein, one would ask for a sequel.
I fathom that the author's ear is acute as the book brilliantly meshes the above-referenced concepts within the confines of thick southern dialect depicting folklore and southern convention. In this 1984 novel about 1906 events in small town U.S.A., Faulkner-like melodrama meets the turn of the century post-construction Georgia. Unlike the anthem for Southern literature, Gone with the Wind, this book is devoid of Southern aristocrats.Eventually, like many novels centering upon the town's and family's patriarch, death ensues. And, anyway, who is a Faulkner. But, they are warm, and to all.
And, after the death, the book must leave its pithy and remarkably well written dialogue to have things like Rucker's will read and other issues be reviewed without the accent, syntax or Southern charm of Will's "way of talkin'."The infectious manner of the speech, combined with the vividness and uniquity of the tales, make this book special. This is good fiction. Within the confines of the simple small town live great kiddish pranks amid bigger than life paradoxical concepts of that time: how long to mourn; how many years to separate a proper marriage between man and wife; whether having a second family can be allowed; suicide; incest; and civil separations between "white trash" cotton pickers and the rest.This literary quilt is folded among great stories told to the author by her grandfather. And, Olive Ann Burns complied with less successful Leaving Cold Sassy. The white characters are not running out to the barn to jump on their horses while wearing sheets over their faces and carrying torches to burn or lynch.
These are more like the people we met in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Maybe she is no Faulkner, and I am sure that was not her ambition. Very good fiction - especially for a first novel.
They were constantly worrying about what other people thought of them, and though it may be what people back then were like, it creates nothing but irritating and one-sided characters. The tongue of deep Southerners can be hard enough to understand in person, and reading it is even worse.
I felt like I was merely following a day-to-day journal of some boy who apparently had a dull, dull life. I was required to read this novel for a summer reading assignment, and what a nightmare it was.There was absolutely no plot.
While there were the very rare moments where the story made me chuckle, much of it was putting me to sleep.Perhaps one of the most aggrivating parts of the book is the dialect. Much of the book, especially in the beginning, dragged on.
Many of the events that were portrayed in the book, such as the camping episode, seemed to have absolutely no relavence to the story at all. Half the the time I could have sworn that the grandfather was trying to make a point, but all I could focus on were the unbelievable amount of apostraphies and the strange wording that was used.I found most of the characters to be ignorant and very plastic.
The grandfather, Will, and Miss Love were tolerable, but every other character just caused me flinch every time they appeared.I also still fail to see what the relevance of the tree is in the novel, other than the fact that the town was named after it.I honestly cannot recommend this book.
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