Crazy in Alabama (from Ex Libris)

6/30-7/1/05—Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
Even though it became a downright painful read, I enjoyed the book. I don’t agree with the blurb on the back that the story has anything remotely in common with Stephen King, however. If anything, it reminds me a bit of the movie, Forest Gump in that Peejoe unwittingly continues to fall into the major events occurring around him, without necessarily trying to. All the killing, by the end, had me exhausted. And, if I had a largest gripe, it would be that those who were the least faultless—those whose actions were the most giving and heartening—were the exact ones who Childress seems to take glee in persecuting. Making Meemaw a racist seems almost added as an afterthought—perhaps to make the reader feel less sorry for her, with all that she is having to endure in her old age. Peejoe’s Uncle Dove also seems to go through much torture, to the point of madness, for doing only what he thought was right—taking in his orphaned nephews and standing up to those who were evil. Peejoe seems to come out relatively unscathed in the end. His Aunt Lucille, though she’s totally self-involved from the get-go, also seems to come out okay. Even with all the death in the book, in the end it all is shucked off under the auspice—“All’s Well that End’s Well.” While I enjoyed the trip through these peoples’ lives and local events, I thought the attitude at the end was a bit blasé about the whole thing.