Rating: 
Summary: gone with the facts
Review: This is another sad example of revisionism in the PC age. The author just doesn't seem to get the fact that GWTW is a work of "fiction" set in the civil war south. She treats the book as if it were a recent treatise promoting racism. DONE GONE is a terribly misguided attempted to "set the record" straight about the role of black females in 19th century America. Randall needs to do a lot more thinking and researching before attempting to do that. About the only thing this book will do is expand her bank account. It certainly will not expand society's understanding of the hard road people of color--females and males alike--have had to traverse. This book just promotes literary censorship!
Rating:
Summary: Political Corrections
Review: Although touted as 'the unauthorised parody' of Gone With the Wind, it lacks both the wit and humor necessary to carry it off. The story is plodding and pedestrian, told in the first person as if written in a diary. Cindy is a mulatto woman, child of Gerald O'Hara and Mammy, half-sister to Scarlett and long time lover of Rhett Butler. She's been to Europe, outlived most of the O'Hara family and is meant to be a 'strong resourceful black woman'of her time, a role model. However it is as a cardboard cutout of such a role model that she works best, being two dimensional and altogether lacking in life! Rather than exploding the myth of GWTW, this novel serves better as an example of editorial fallibility. The author meant well I'm sure, unfortunately contemporary politics and pseudo-afrocentric feminist analysis do not a great historical parody make.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written
Review: I bought this book for my daughter in laws birthday we both enjoy good books and both love to read when I received the book I almost hated to give it away the book is well written easy to read easy to follow and very enlightening I believe anyone that loved the gone with the wind book will like this one one of the best I have read for awhile
Rating: 
Summary: Glad the wind is let out of Gone With the Wind
Review: The controversy around the printing is what attracted me to this book as much as my hatred of Gone With the Wind. The Wind Done Gone was hard to read due to fairly constant changes in writing style (formal to informal to almost speaking in tongues). I found the story haunting and disturbing. I wanted to put it down but the story wouldn't allow me that peace. I cannot say it is my favorite book or really recommend it to anyone who thinks the souths past is romantic, but if you want a little realism in your life this is the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Apples and Oranges
Review: I happen to be one of those rare individuals who enjoyed both Gone With the Wind and The Wind Done Gone. However, they differ wildly not only in perspective but in style, scope, quality and consistency. Gone With the Wind is an ambitious work that required a great deal of research and thought. It handled numerous characters and their lives with Dickensian skill. And it was of epic length. The Wind Done Gone is a very brief contemplation on the flip side of the world depicted in Mitchell's novel. I expected Randall's work to be longer and far more detailed considering how strongly she suposedly feels about the subject matter. It doesn't really compare in scope. It is more like an essay in terms of impact. I wish that Randall had been more ambitious in her project. I would have better enjoyed reading an answer to Gone With the Wind that had been given the same amount of time and effort that the original was obviously given. It is indicative of the flaw of many recent novels, the writer lacks the stamina to deliver an authentic classic. If you are at all interested, it is worth a look. However, it does not live up to the hype. But, after all, it is her first novel.
Rating:
Summary: Congratulations, Ms. Randall, on this great work of art.
Review: Dear Alice Randall: During the legal battle over the publication of your beautiful book, I got the impression from the press coverage that it was a parody of some sort rather than the great artistic and literary triumph that it is. I was going to write to you to congratulate you on your beautiful book, but I decided to put my comments here instead, with the hope of encouraging others to buy your book. Your characters are wonderful. Their names and back stories are perfect. (I was ready to start writing a letter to you after page 3. The only question was, what kind of card to send you. I decided to send an old Priests of Pallas Parade card from Kansas City. When the name, Pallas, jumped off one of your pages, I shivered.) Your language, in all its shades, is poetic, magnificent, heart-breaking. Your understanding of history and human nature is stunning. How beautiful and complex are the relationships, and how perfect the settings. So many passages brought tears to my eyes, that I cannot list them all. Thank you for the great pleasure you gave this reader. You spun straw into gold.
Rating:
Summary: Average and Under
Review: The book has a few genuinely amusing scenes, but overall it falls short of parody: it's neither biting nor insightful. The premise is awe-inspiring, but the execution could have been so much better in abler hands. This is another example of Hype over Substance, which is unfortunate.... the book might have been a better read if it had been given a slow word-of-mouth buildup. As it stands, you can't separate the book from the publicity, which makes the author's average writing ability seem worse than merely average.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept, but this wasn't it!
Review: I eagerly awaited the publication of this story, and read it within 24 hours of receipt. I agree that a book needed to be written debunking the romantic myths of GWTW and give a more realistic POV. Unfortunately, this was not the book. I found many (not all) of the characters far-fetched and I found it difficult to get a true feel for Cynara and where she was coming from outside of her conflicting feelings for Mammy and "Other". I also found the alternate names for the characters quite distracting, although I understand why it was needed, it certainly took away from the continuity and enjoyment of reading. As a "parody" (using the term loosely), it simply cannot be understood without reading or seeing GWTW. I was hoping for so much more, and was severly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A haunting book
Review: I was less interested in its connection to Gone With the Wind (a piece of fluff fiction in my opinion anyway) as to the mind-blowing perspective warping insight The Wind Done Gone offers as compared to that mindless piece of chattel. I also found the diary form of the book enlightening as Randall captured the gradual improvement of the main character self-education. Lets face it: Great literature always champions for the truth and does so with courage honesty and without working about social convention. This book does these things and at the same time 'outs' the sinister nature of a book that justifies evil through nostalgia. Gone With the Wind Fans, this book is not for you.
Rating:
Summary: Unfortunate
Review: This book was a complete waste of my time and money. Of course I heard the controversies and of course I went out and bought the book. I can't believe I read the same book that other reviewers have given 5 stars to!!! It was absolutely horrible. Ms. Randall wanted to write a book about the Old South from the perpective of the slaves, and she didn't even do an adequate job of it. By portraying the slaves as violent and abusive towards others she did a great injustice to those who suffered during this unfortunate time in our nation's history. Taking over the plantation and controlling the white owners is just as bad as the white owners controlling the slaves to begin with, and it's hypocritical for one to think that behavior is acceptable or justified simply because the black man suffered during this time. I understand this book just fine, and the only thing that it really accomplished was to further divide man against his fellow man on the basis of skin color. As far as the references to Gone With the Wind, well why people can't appreciate Ms. Mitchell's work for what it is and leave it alone is beyond me. It was written in the early 1900's, and despite Ms. Randall's attempt to prove otherwise, it's still and will always be a literary and Hollywood classic. While I agree that slavery was despicable and something should have been written from the slaves' perspective, The Wind Done Gone turned out to be a complete joke. Hopefully in the future someone can step forward and write a literary classic without trying to defame another artist's work in the process. It makes me think that Ms. Randall used the references to Gone With the Wind to push her own book sales, and that sort of behavior is despicable as well.
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