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Summary: Don't Miss this One -- It's Terrific
Review: Mark has a talent for writing prose that is simultaneoulsy thought-provoking and hysterically funny; his world is both authentic and bizzare. He is a master at capturing the experience of youth -- the combination of innocence and growing awareness that we all experienced in some form or another, and his narrative voice is so strong that you'll easily go along for the ride, forgetting you're laughing because one of the women carries around her husband's head in tupperware, or that the people you care about so much are only fabricated characters in a book. This is a highly enjoyable novel that weaves together the story of a woman chasing her dream of stardom with the story of a young boy growing up in the South during the height of the Civil Rights struggle. Besides being a great read, it raises thought provoking questions about how we have treated and continue to treat each other.
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Summary: Definitely crazy!
Review: Your homework for tonight: Drop everything and read Crazy in Alabama! This is such a great book -- much better than the movie. Mark Childress's carefully drawn characters come alive in these pages. Aunt Lucille will amaze you will all the nutty things she does. And Peejoe's story will have your heart breaking.It all starts when Aunt Lucille and her six children come ambling up the driveway of her mother's house early May 1965. She's killed her bullying husband and stashed his head in a Tupperware bowl (with a Press-and-Lock seal that really works!), and now with him out of the way, she's free to pursue her dream: to become an actress. Leaving her children with her mother, Lucille has zoomed off to Hollywood, evoking suspicion and evading arrest at every turn. Twisted into this story is another tale told through the eyes of 12-year-old Peejoe. He and his brother, Wiley, spend the summer in Industry, Alabama with Lucille's brother, Uncle Dove. As the county coroner and local funeral director, Dove has quite a busy summer ahead of him -- when Industry opens up their new "whites only" municipal swimming pool and the entire town takes a tragic turn. Crazy in Alabama is both riotous and rollicking as well as a sad reminder of the Civil Rights Movement and its history. Lucille's adventures will have readers laughing out loud as suppressed feelings awaken in her on her journey across the country. And the view through the innocent eyes of Peejoe will have readers wondering why all life's answers can't be so simple. An action-packed novel and one that won't be forgotten! Has all the qualities of a quirky southern tale that will amuse you and move you.
Rating:
Summary: Buy the book
Review: Loved the book. Did NOT like the movie at all. Don't even bother with it. The novel is well-written and full of memorable characters, somewhat like Flagg's FRIED GREEN TOMATOES or FORREST GUMP. CRAZY IN ALABAMA is another in a long line of great southern reads and should be added to everyone's list. Also highly recommend Jackson McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD--another great book about the south.
Rating:
Summary: Skip the Movie -- Read the Book!
Review: A reviewer cited on the back cover of this novel calls it "a combination of Thelma and Louise and To Kill a Mockingbird, and that's about right. Beginning in 1965 in the tiny town of Pigeon Creek, Alabama, a single explosive event scatters the characters and sends the story in two directions at once. Twelve-year-old Peejoe (short for Peter Joseph) and his brother are sent to live with their Uncle Dove, a mortician in nearby Industry, while their Aunt Lucille takes off for Hollywood, chasing her dream of landing a starring role on "The Beverly Hillbillies". While Peejoe witnesses both sides of the civil rights movement, right in his own backyard, Lucille seeks the freedom she never had as a frustrated housewife. As the two stories alternately diverge and intertwine, often hilariously, Childress still manages to present an important social commentary.
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Summary: Just finished reading the BEST book of my life!!!!
Review: The last book that moved me to tears was "To Kill a Mockingbird." The last book that made be laugh out loud was "A Confederacy of Dunces." I just whipped through 383 pages of brilliance in three days. I'm exhausted and exhilerated at the same time. This truly is the BEST book I have ever read bar none! I know that Columbia Pictures is releasing it this spring as a movie starring Melanie Griffith and directed by her husband Antonio Banderas. My Hollywood spies tell me this is going to be a GREAT movie -- the Martin Luther King/George Wallace scenes are thrilling and inspiring. Let's hope so! I think Griffith is the perfect choice for Lucille Bullis Vinton (a one-woman "Thelma and Louise"). Banderas is a long-shot as a director (you'd think an American-born director -- especially a Southerner -- would be the obvious choice, but maybe that would be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees). And what Robert Bloch/Alfred Hitchcock have done for showers, Mark Childress/Antonio Banderas will have done for Tupperware. (Better buy stock in Tupperware before the movie comes out, folks!) I can't give this book a higher recommendation!
Rating: 
Summary: YOU'RE CRAZY IF YOU DON'T READ THIS BOOK
Review: If you like to romp in the park, or people watch at the mall, then you will like this book. If you like to chuckle once in awhile or even laugh out loud, then you will like this book. This novel is about a young boy and his family including a crazy aunt in Alabama by the name of Lucille. There is a serious part regarding race relations, however, the highlights of the story involve Lucille and her antics.
Rating:
Summary: Wacky, hilarious, outrageous ...
Review: ...but there's a solid message buried not too deeply in this book. In part it's another southern coming-of-age tale, but it's somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Terrific story telling and utterly outrageous scenes. The thought that even a little bit of this is probably based on something that really happened is too delicious to contemplate.
Read it and laugh - and then think about it a little more seriously.
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Summary: Tide Alum Pens A Winner w/ Crazy in Alabama
Review: The University of Alabama is known for having a winning tradition on the gridiron, but Alabama graduate Mark Childress is establishing a winning tradition of a different sort. His highly successful fiction book Crazy In Alabama is the funiest book I've ever read. Set in 1965, the reader is taken on a hillarious journey across country from Alabama to Hollywood
with Lucille, the wacko aunt of 12-year old Peejoe, the story's narrator, as she heads to audition for a part on the Beverly Hillbillies. Along for the ride in the back seat of a stolen Cadiallac, Lucille has the head of her husband Chester stored in a Tupperware lettuce crisper. Lucille gives Chester rat poison mixed in a cup of coffee, then decapitates him with the Sunbeam craving knife, because Chester refuses to let her go to Hollywood for the audition. It's Lucille's life long dream to be a Hollywood actress. One of the funiest lines from the book, Lucille says, "Chester said no, when he should've said yes." He'd still be alive. She drops their children off at her mother's and takes off as a fugitive. Peejoe is the only one she tells the whole story to, before she runs off. Along the way she gets into a number of funny situations, while back home in Alabama her family, in particular 12-year old Peejoe, are left to deal with the aftermath. A parallel story line in the book is the civil rights movement in small town Alabama and the very votile race relations during the times. I give Crazy in Alabama 5 out of 5 stars. The book was made into a movie and was the directorial debut of Antonio Bandraas. His wife Melanie Griffith starred as Lucille. I stongly suggest reading the book before watching the movie. The movie is not nearly as funny or well written as the book. Excellent book and a definite winner for author Mark Childress.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I think the book crazy in alabama was a really interesting and easy to read book. This book held my interest and im not a real heavy reader. I liked the part where Peejoes aunt cut off her husbands head and put it in a tupperware container. I also liked the adventures that peejoe and that aunt lucille went on during the book. This book was very descriptive and had very good detail.
I liked this book alot and i would recommend it to anyone who likes descriptive writing and really good detail. That is my look on the book and i will be looking forward to reading all of the other reviews for this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but why 2 stories?
Review: This book presents two different stories that are related only because the woman leading one of the stories is the mother of the boy leading the other. While both are interesting, you would think that the parties would eventually come together for some monumental accomplishment that both have worked together for. But this doesn't really happen, and it makes me wonder what the author's intent was in structuring it this way. The main story deals with a woman who kills her husband, leaves the rest of her family, and sets off on a cross-country odyssey. Oh yes, her husband's head is in a tupperware container as part of her luggage. We are informed by the woman that this was her way of ending an abusive relationship. However, as we get to know the nature of the woman, whether this is true or not is subject to debate. Her conversations with the head should steer you in the right direction on this. But her adventures, which include a guest role on "The Beverly Hillbillies", are entertaining enough to make this a great attempt at dark comedy. The other story concerns her son, who is left behind while mom "finds herself". He gets involved right in the middle of the 1960's Civil Rights movement after a racist encounter at a local swimming pool explodes into a national incident. While his story is not nearly as far-fetched as the other, is is the more moving of the two, and could have been a book in itself if the author gave it a chance. Which is the problem. You've got a dark comedy and a serious drama intertwining. I give the author a big thumbs up for reinforcing the true character of the mother with his ending, but once again, these are two different stories, and belong in two different books. Read it anyway.
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