Rating: 
Summary: Best one yet...
Review: Finishing Crazy Ladies marks the end of my tour de West, and I am so happy it has ended on such a fantastic note! I loved this novel and all of its humor, quirks, sadness, eccentricities and love. Michael Lee West is the best southern fiction writer in my book, and I can't wait for Mad Girls in Love to be published so I can read more.Crazy Ladies is just that: CRAZY! A novel told in six voices, readers are treated to the intertwining lives of three generations of women, plus a maid that ties up the saga nice and tight. Miss Gussie begins the novel in 1932 with a bang of a drama and the sparks keep flying up until the end in 1972. Forty years of children, grandchildren, husbands, war, hippies, poverty, murder, rape, jealousy...it's all there. Crazy Ladies is a pageturner to the nth degree and will give readers whiplash with all its goings-on. Michael Lee West's writing has a cozyness about it, a nice relaxing feeling that will make the pages fly by. She brings to life the signs of the times with passion and zeal; you can't help but smile and cry as your emotions are tugged in all directions. Crazy Ladies is wonderfully addictive, sweet and poignant, and outrageously funny. A fantastic epitome of southern life -- one that is not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Michael Lee West's Debut Novel
Review: Crazy Ladies opening chapter is so riveting and harrowing that it will immediately capture your attention and won't let you stop turning pages until the end. This is the story of six southern women that takes place over a forty year period from 1932 through 1972. These women: Miss Gussie, family matriarch, her maid Queenie, her daughters, Dorothy and Clancy Jane and their daughters, Bitsy and Violet, take turns narrating the story, telling a rich, compelling tale of American life during those times. The real strength of this book are its wonderfully drawn characters and Ms West's smart, eloquent writing. A novel full of life's successes and disappointments, told with wisdom, insight and humor. Crazy Ladies is a story that both entertains you and breaks your heart, leaving you breathless and wanting more.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read....
Review: I really liked this book. I'm a big fan of books with multiple narrators (Saving Graces, Future Homemakers of America, ect.) This one was just as good. It's pretty much the story of 2 sisters, one who can do no wrong (Clancy Jane), and one who can do no right (Dorothy), their mother, and their daughters. I have to admit, sometimes I felt sorry for Dorothy (though other times I wanted to kill her), and it really wasn't right that no matter how many times Clancy screwed over her loved ones, they always welcomed her back with open arms. My favortie though was Violet...good for her!! She didn't come from the most stable of environments, but she was the most normal person in the book. Overall, a great read...for women. You become so engrossed in these womens lives, that you can't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: All Gussied up with someplace to go
Review: Fans of Southern literature will love this book. And I'm not talking about the "Gone With The Wind" or "As I Lay Dying" variety of Southern lit; I'm talking about the "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Bark of the Dogwood," "Miss Julia Speaks her Mind" Southern lit. It truly is a crazy book, told from six different perspectives, each one unique and moving. This is by far one of the most unusual books you'll find on the market today. If you're looking for a crazy good time, look no further, folks: this is it.
Rating:
Summary: Pumping gas at the Esso station
Review: Loved, loved, loved this book. With its myriad settings (the south, San Francisco, New Orleans, etc) and its colorful characters, this is one great read. Fun, heart-warming, and above all, well written, this compelling tale is a crazy good time. Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
Rating: 
Summary: A bit more like a soap opera than I would have liked
Review: This book disappointed me. What began with such promise--a man bursts into your kitchen armed and dangerous... you KNOW he is going to rape you, so you shoot and kill him. THEN, you discover that he is the son of someone important in town. You can't trust the police to believe you... The book spirals from this promise into little more than a soap opera with quirky, Southern characters. A huge disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Crazy is only half the tale
Review: If you are a fan of "The Ya-Ya Sisterhood", you are going to like the crazy women of Michael Lee West's novel. Set in small town Tennessee from 1932 to 1972, West has her women tell their own story, starting with Gussie Hamilton, continuing with her daughters and grandaughters, and including her "Nigra" maid, Queenie. This wouldn't be a truly Southern woman's tale without that black voice. There is no "sisterhood" in the sense of Rebecca Well's books, but there is a bloodline of strong and "crazy" women who tell their own version of a story that encompasses all of them as they interact in one anothers' lives. And there is a quirky play of Mother Nature in the town's creek. The men of the story, husbands and sons and lovers, are almost overwhelmed by the women, and by the consequences of war. From WWII to Vietnam, the men are decimated in spirit and/or body or both. Sibling and class rivalry condition relationships, and racial prejudice sets an undercurrent of injustice into the subplots. Small town politics, hypocritical poses, family secrets, all play into the story. An insecure, less favored, jealous Dorothy lives up to her own expectations, unsuccessfully seeking attention and love her whole life through. Her younger, seemingly chosen sister, Clancy Jane has every reason to find success, but only finds heartbreak. Their strong center, Gussie, holds the whole group together, despite her own sorrow. And Queenie, the faithful maid, becomes the lifetime companion to Gussie and her progeny. Violet and Bitsy elongate the rivalry of their mothers, but maintain an uneasy truce of cousins. Reading this book with its chapters broken into books of each decade, is a bit like hearing gossip, as each character relates her own bias on the happenings of the Hamilton heirs. This is a fast and easy read, like looking over the shoulder of a several diarists who each perceive the story in a most personal way. And, there is an awful secret in this book, shades of "Fried Green Tomatoes", "The Bingo Queens of Paradise", "Paradise", and "Little Altars". But the reader is in on the secret from the start and the suspense comes from waiting to learn how its does or does not unravel at book's end. I have also purchased three other of Micheal Lee West's novels, and I will enjoy trying them out. I do recommend "Crazy Ladies" to the reader who likes a tale of strong women told in first person narrative.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of Southern Comfort delight
Review: Oooh, Michael Lee West really knows how to write wonderful and wacky Southern characters. This is not a deep or revelatory book, not terribly meaningful in any literary way - it's just a great story with some delightfully memorable, and yes, Crazy Ladies. Three generations are spanned, headed by matriarch Gussie. Though some memorably dreadful events are chronicled, the overall tone is hilarity - and, in the end, love.
May Michael Lee Smith write on and on.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Women
Review: As a Tennessean by choice and a southern lady by birth and upbringing, I found this book to be both familiar and foreign. The characters are compelling, though not completely likable. Gussie is strong in the way the women of a certain generation are. She fights for the survival of her family when she and her child are physically threatened and through her husband's mental illness, ill health, and subsequent death. Unfortunately, she cannot find it in herself to love her children equally. Dorothy is not very lovable, but very much in need of her mother's love and approval. She becomes an unlovable woman with a dark secret, repeating the mistakes her mother made by neglecting her daughter in favor of her son. Clancy Jane is a fragile flower, bent to breaking as an adult, who eventually becomes a strong, independent woman. A mother at a very young age, she is never equipped for the responsibilities of parenthood and her daughter becomes the care-taker in the relationship. Both Violet and Bitsy, Dorothy's daughter, are strong in ways their mothers could never imagine. It is there voices, along with that of Queenie (housekeeper, friend) that make this story intriguing. It is thought provoking and frightening and fun. It is not, however, the rowdy fun so often found in souther writing.
Rating:
Summary: Kept my interest
Review: This is a fast read and very enjoyable...never a dull moment.
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