Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful story, beautifully told
Review: I was wary of this book at first. I thought it would be preachy, and I thought its inspiration would be its fascination and its undoing. I was right - "The Wind Done Gone" is preachy, and the novel that inspires it also confines it. But this is not just a satire of or sequel to "Gone With the Wind"; this is, or it wants to be, a book in its own right. It's the story of a woman who learns how to love herself and her family, how to share (and how not to share) her men, and how to finally outgrow her past. The book has problems. Randall's writing is sometimes cumbersome and sometimes beautiful; the book's 200 pages sometimes seem too long for its story. The novel is written in the form of a diary, and the inherent sluggishness of the format is an intermittent difficulty. The narrator's obsession with the events of another book is often tiresome, especially for readers with a less-than-detailed memory of the plotline of "Gone With the Wind". In the end, though, all is forgiven. The diary format showcases Randall's amazing writing, which seems to ripen in the last 40 or 50 pages of the novel. She becomes less a parody of Margaret Mitchell and more a likeness of Octavia Butler. The narrator moves out of the past and into the present, and this narrator is in many ways more sympathetic than Scarlett. Scarlett was a woman you loved in spite of yourself; she was also a woman you hated. Cynara, the narrator of "The Wind Done Gone", is a woman you like; in some ways she is probably a woman you *are*. This is a story about African-Americans after the Civil War; it is also a story about what people everywhere, once freed, must do to own their freedom. This is a beautiful story and beautifully told. It suffers from its superficial dependence on another book and from its author's insistence on ripping to shreds a few of the many myths of that book. But at its core is a really good novel. If you're willing to sift through the viciousness toward Scarlett and her story, this is definitely a book worth reading. Otherwise, remember Alice Randall's name - hopefully she'll write a second novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious to listen to and hard to follow
Review: I listened to all the controversy about this book,laughed out loud at the clever name, and was hoping for some insight into the minor characters or parody of the story told in the novel. Instead, Cindy, the mulatto half-sister, the protagonist of this story, does not seem to exist in her own right, only in how she relates to and resents the novels' privileged characters. It was difficult to follow the relationships (To be fair, I listened to, rather than read this book.) Cindy's diary gradually reveals the true story behind her sale and earns her mother, Mammy, the respect she deserves. She attains, then disdains, what the "Other" coveted. Only in the end, as she develops a relationship with the colored congressman, is the story unpredictable and Cindy developed, at least a bit, as a character in her own right.
Rating: 
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise
Review: Well, probably enough done been said on this little book but one more review won't hurt. As everybody must know by now, this is the story that turned Atlanta upside down. I had read so many bad reviews of THE WIND DONE GONE that I expected not to be able to finish it. It's not nearly as bad as the critics say and parts of the tale are quite intriguing. Yes, the characters are black and white-- no pun intended here-- many of them-- and there are a lot of them for such a small book-- aren't developed very much. This is not the great American novel-- it's hardly more than a long short story-- but then GONE WITH THE WIND is not the great American novel either. The title is awfully clever. Ms. Randall's idea is a good one-- we all know that slaveowners had sex with their slaves, that is, everyone except Margaret Mitchell apparently-- but Ms. Randall's execution is not nearly as good as her ideas are. She throws in enough "stuff" here to make a gumbo from the cliche about trying black and you'll never go back to the story of why "Amazing Grace" was written. What I found most compelling is Ms. Randall's portrayal of the narrator's-- we all know by now she's Scarlett's half-sister-- relationship or lack of relationship with her slave mother since they had been separted. This was very well done and quite moving.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough of this "Wind" business before I catch a chill!!!
Review: GWTW was a work of fiction, Margarett Mitchell said so herself. As an African-American who grew up in a part of the South were the legacy of slavery is still fresh in many ways, I find BOTH Margaret Mitchell and Alice Randall laughable! Each completely ignores the existance of the other; each completely dehumanizes the struggles of the other. "Cane River","North & South", "Roots" and "Queen" are much better in their scope and well-roundedness. This book, like GWTW and Scarlett before it, is just another magnolia and moonlight fantasy. At least GWTW was a good read. Both Alexandra Ripley and Alice Randall have talent, but fall short in making people care about the characters they're writing about.While Randall is good novelist (in many ways stylisticly, better than Mitchell or Ripley), the book has no depth. Why should I care about Cynara or Cindy or Cinnamon or whoever the hell she is? I think if Cynara had been put in a different vein, I'd have been more inclined to embrace her as a character. To be blunt, all Cynara is is a ... Scarlett O'Hara with a drop of black blood. Randall should've made Cynara more independant and dynamic; someone who creates her OWN world instead of trying to fit into everyone elses (like Queen). That was what I was looking for but it just didn't materialize. Even though Scarlett leaves much to be desired when it comes to respectable human traits, I'd still rather deal with the original than a mulatto carbon copy - sired by Gerald O'Hara?! Yeah right! Mammy would've hung HERSELF before she let THAT happen!
Rating:
Summary: A book that makes you think
Review: This book by Alice Randall makes me think about the blacks that were at Tara/Tata and what their perceptions are pertaining to life as slaves. Mammy,had to be a very smart with the ability of wearing many hats, because her position held so much power on the plantation which "American History" does not give her credit for having. Cynara, was rather complicated, because she had always felt inferior to Other who was her half sister. I know I will have to read this book again to pickup things I did not get the first time, but I did enjoy the book a great deal.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning and Vulgar.
Review: A postmodern pastiche in the style of Robert Coover's A Night at the Movies. Beneath a gentle narrative tone of wistful nostalgia the author exacts revenge from GWTW for neglect of racial realities with strident reverse stereotyping. Unpleasant.
Rating:
Summary: schizophrenic
Review: The author and the main character both have a real love/hate relationship with all that is Gone With the Wind. I found Randall's tale of the flip-side of Tara incredibly provocative and thorough, but wondered why both she, and the mulatto mistress Cynara, were so fascinated with all things Confederate. Scathing hatred mixed with nostalgia and remorse are what I read in TWDG. In general, Randall writes too well to be in the company of such worthless fiction as Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett, and with too much depth and self-awareness for Margaret Mitchell. This is not a book for the readers of GWTW who were fans of the Rhett and Scarlett "romance", but for readers who were critics of GWTW, fascinated by the racial slip and slide that was antebellum and Reconstruction America.
Rating:
Summary: The Wind Done Gone Truly Blows
Review: While I believe that the issues Randall claims to be addressing in her literary parody of Margaret Mitchell's epic novel should be explored, I feel Randall lacks the craft as a novelist to "explode" the myths created and generally embraced by the collective consciousness of those who've read Gone With the Wind or seen the derivative film.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME SUGAR
Review: I am an African American fan of the Gone With the Wind book and Tape. This book was such an extreme waste of my time and energy. It is paper thin and usually for me this would be an afternoon read...it took two weeks. I kept reading it because I really wanted it to get better. I was severely and sincerely disappointed. YUCK!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time or Money
Review: I picked this up based on the "Unauthorized Parody" sign on the cover - ridiculous, as the author of GWTW has been dead for decades. This pathetic book takes everything fine about GWTW and sullies it. In her author description in the dust jacket, Randall says she wondered about the mulatto children of Tara. Perhaps there weren't any! Poorly written and contributing nothing at all to the body of American literature, this book is a sad waste of time.
|
