I recently finished Judge Stone by Viola Davis and James Patterson. I consider myself progressive, but I really didn’t like it. Mainly due to the lack of nuance. All of the characters were either cartoonishly evil or cartoonishly righteous and it felt like it was written to be a movie with a Perfect Ending (derogatory).
However, it brought up the interesting situation of old vs new ideologies clashing in small town Alabama. I would love to find a good book that addresses this as a more complex issue. Open to both fiction and nonfiction!
by hoemechanic
8 Comments
This is an oldie (pub in 1994) but you might enjoy Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It’s classified as non-fiction but reads like fiction. In a good way.
ETA and it was made into a movie. I think Clint Eastwood directed it.
Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy might be worth a look. You might also check out James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, which doesn’t shy away from the messy aspects of Louisiana’s bayou country (some books better than others, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt).
I adored Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, and my students really liked it too – it’s non-fiction, but it’s oral history so very readable, and it traces the arc from old labor arrangements up into the 1950s as things changed. It’s expensive though because it’s from an academic press – more expensive than it should be even for an academic press, but I got my copy from the library.
Lack of nuance is a James Patterson trademark.
If you haven’t read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, it’s an immediate must-read to me! Nuanced as hell, empathetic but frank. I think about it often.
I really like the way all three of Gillian Flynn’s novels wrestle with northerners’ and expats’ revulsion towards the small-town south. The original Gone Girl is about that as much as it’s about the “gender war” stuff.
Where the Crawdads Sing is a good read about a girl abandoned by family and her relations with the other locals.
Fiction: **Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver,** which deals heavily with Appalachian poverty and addiction in a very nuanced way.
Nonfiction: **Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.** The city of Savannah is basically a character in itself, and Southern culture and class hierarchies are absolutely at the forefront!