 | |
| Author | Rita Mae Brown |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction, Comedy |
| Published | 1982 (Bantam Books) |
| Publication place | United States |
Southern Discomfort is a 1982 novel by Rita Mae Brown. Through comedy and farce, it explores the theme of hypocrisy, especially that based on social status. [1]
The plot occurs between the years 1918-1928, in Montgomery, Alabama. Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre is a beautiful woman who comes from old money. She is the mother of two, and is trapped in a loveless, yet "socially appropriate" marriage. She falls in love with Hercules, a teenage black prizefighter. After Hercules dies as the result of a train accident, and the failure of the slow, for-blacks-only ambulance, Hortensia gives birth to their daughter, Catherine. To avoid the inevitable scandal, Catherine is raised by Hortensia's cook. However, the jealousy of Hortensia's son, Paris, who becomes increasingly crazed, threatens to upend the balance Hortensia has achieved in her life; and continued secrecy becomes impossible once Catherine, who clearly does not belong in either black or white worlds, becomes curious as to her lineage. After some emotional upheaval, however, the Hortensia and Catherine's lives settle into a new and happy order.
Subplots in the novel include the view of Montgomery and its residents through the eyes of the prostitutes Banana Mae Parker and Blue Rhonda Latrec, who divide the town by sexual categories, and the star-crossed film stars Grace Deltaven and Payson Thorpe.
New York Times reviewer Annie Gotlieb, analyzes Brown's view that passion is inherently innocent, but places the choices characters make in its name in the context of rules: "It's a grown-up novelist's insight that every freedom must be understood within the bounds of a shared social structure that can, if stretched, yield painful renewal; if shattered, tragedy." [2] Gotlieb laments Brown's need to fit the novel's plot into too-tight constraints: "It's rare to say that a book would be better if it were longer, but I suspect that in a less impatient era Southern Discomfort would have been a 700-page epic that slowly revealed the roots of character and the intertangling of disparate lives. As it is, the book often seems abrupt and arbitrary, jump-cut as if it were a two-hour movie... minor characters, like Hercules's boxing manager, Sneaky Pie, are so vivid that they cry out for more space. The plot moves in fits and starts. A fistfight between mother and son is perfectly rendered, but a later, even more crucial scene of violence is rushed and anticlimactic. The reader is left feeling charmed, moved - and a little bit cheated." [2]
In The Boston Phoenix , Gail Caldwell said that "Brown has done her homework in laying out the bones of this novel, and the result is her most intelligent work to date — one that borrows its historical detail from the likes of Ragtime and its bawdy humor from the likes of Chaucer." Caldwell had only "relatively small" complaints: "It’s no small feat to pull off this many subplots and intricacies in character development; Brown does it quite well most of the time. But the scope of Southern Discomfort occasionally outdistances its depth." [3]
In a generally positive review, Kirkus nevertheless rates Southern Discomfort as, "Brown, less infectiously than in Rubyfruit Jungle or Six of One , celebrates anything-goes sexual exuberance and scampers up and down the ladder of social class." [4]
Northanger Abbey is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by the English author Jane Austen. Although the title page is dated 1818 and was published posthumously in 1817 with Persuasion, Northanger Abbey was completed in 1803, making it the first of Austen's novels to be completed in full. From a fondness of Gothic novels and an active imagination distorting her worldview, the story follows Catherine Morland, the naïve young protagonist, as she develops to better understand herself and the world around her.
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown. Published in 1973, it was remarkable in its day for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism. The novel is a coming-of-age autobiographical account of Brown's youth and emergence as a lesbian author. The term "rubyfruit jungle" is a term used in the novel for the female genitals.
Catherine, Called Birdy is the first children's novel by Karen Cushman. It is a historical novel in diary format, set in 13th-century England. It was published in 1994, and won a Newbery Honor and Golden Kite Award in 1995.
The Watsons is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen's niece was published in 1850. The manuscript fragment itself was published in 1871. Further completions and adaptations of the story have continued to the present day.
Less Than Angels is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1955.
1st to Die is a 2001 crime novel by American author James Patterson that is the first book in the Women's Murder Club series. The series is about four friends who pool their skills together to crack San Francisco's toughest murder cases. The women each have different jobs: Lindsay Boxer, a homicide inspector for the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn, a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt, an assistant D.A., and Cindy Thomas, a reporter who just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.
The Liveship Traders is a trilogy of fantasy novels by American author Robin Hobb. A nautical fantasy series, the Liveship Traders is the second trilogy set in the Realm of the Elderlings and features pirates, sea serpents, a family of traders and their living ships. Several critics regard it as Hobb's best work.
Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995) is the final novel by American writer Patricia Highsmith. It was published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury a month after her death, after first being rejected by Knopf, her usual publisher, months earlier. It was published in the United States by W. W. Norton in 2004.
A Civil Campaign: A Comedy of Biology and Manners is a science fiction novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, first published in September 1999. It is a part of the Vorkosigan Saga, and is the thirteenth full-length novel in publication order. It is included in the 2008 omnibus Miles in Love. The title is an homage to the Georgette Heyer novel A Civil Contract and, like Heyer's historical romances, the novel focuses on romance, comedy, and courtship. It is dedicated to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy", novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Georgette Heyer, and Dorothy L. Sayers.
Plush is a 2013 American erotic thriller film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke and co-written by Arty Nelson with music by Nick Launay and Ming Vauz. The film stars Emily Browning, Xavier Samuel, Cam Gigandet, Dawn Olivieri, Thomas Dekker, and Frances Fisher.
Dark Eden is a social science fiction novel by British author Chris Beckett, first published in the United Kingdom in 2012. The novel explores the disintegration of a small group of a highly inbred people, descendants of two individuals whose spaceship crashed on a rogue planet they call Eden. It is the first in the Eden trilogy, followed by Mother of Eden and Daughter of Eden.
The Baby-Sitters Club is a series of novels, written by Ann M. Martin and published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, that sold more than 190 million copies. Martin wrote an estimated 60-80 novels in the series while subsequent titles were written by ghostwriters, such as Peter Lerangis. The Baby-Sitters Club is about a group of friends living in the fictional, suburban town in Stoneybrook, Connecticut who run a local babysitting service called "The Baby-Sitters Club". The original four members were Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier (secretary), Claudia Kishi (vice-president), and Stacey McGill (treasurer), but the number of members varies throughout the series. The novels are told in first-person narrative and deal with issues such as illness, moving, and divorce.
Love Letters to the Dead (2014) is the first novel by American author Ava Dellaira, published in 2014. This is a teen novel told through a series of letters written by a girl named Laurel who is grieving the recent mysterious death of her sister May. The novel is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Six of One is a 1978 novel by Rita Mae Brown. It is the first in her Runnymede series of books about a small town on the Mason-Dixon line and its sometimes eccentric residents. It is also the first of the Hunsenmeir trilogy, a subset of the Runnymede series, which focuses on the elderly Hunsenmeir sisters. According to Brown, the sisters are based on her own mother and aunt, who "do tend to dominate in a way", and the town is based on her own birthplace, about which she says: "It’s really interesting to have one foot in the North and one foot in the South."
Bingo is a 1988 novel by Rita Mae Brown. It is the second installation of the Runnymede series of books, following Six of One, which came out in 1978.
Venus Envy is a 1993 novel by Rita Mae Brown.
Susanna Calkins is an American writer of historical mysteries, an historian, and a university teacher and administrator. Through 2020, her publications include five mystery novels in two series, as well as a work of non-fiction about higher education. Her third novel, The Masque of a Murderer won the Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award in 2016 for Best Historical Novel.
The Vanished Birds is a 2020 space opera novel, the debut work by Simon Jimenez. In a plot that spans millennia, the story focuses on the interconnected lives of several characters, including a boy whose special ability may hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. The novel received critical acclaim. It was nominated for the 2021 Locus Award for Best First Novel and the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
The Woman Next Door is a 2016 novel written by Yewande Omotoso. It is Omotoso's second novel, and her first to be published in the US. The story focuses on two elderly widows in Cape Town, one black and one white, who begin as acrimonious neighbors but come to know each other better after an accident. The novel was first conceived in 2012, and draws on Omotoso's research on Apartheid in South Africa and Jewish history in Cape Town. Thematically, the novel combines a serious examination of post-Apartheid reconciliation with witty debates between its characters.
