Rating: 
Summary: Woman Scorned
Review: This is a funny tale of a woman scorned. Though I saw the movie before the novel, I was still pleased. This is a book for anyone who has been in an abusive situation and taken action against her abuser.
Rating: 
Summary: Silly, Irrelevant
Review: The civil rights movement which took place in the U. S. in the sixties was an extremely important era, and deserving of the massive number of historical and artistic interpretations it has received. Here is yet another novel with this period as its backdrop. It would be difficult to find another one with this subject matter that is more trivial and inconsequential. The novel consists of two concurrent stories. The first is written in the first person by Peejoe, an eleven year-old white orphan who lives, primarily, in Industry, Alabama, with first his grandmother, and then his uncle, the local undertaker. It takes place in 1965. The second is a third person narrative, and has to do with his aunt, Lucille. She is a 33 year-old woman with six children. In order to start a new life, she murders her husband and brings his decapitated head over to grandmaw's to show everybody. She then drags it around with her as she goes to New Orleans where she robs a bar, Las Vegas where she wins about thirty thousand dollars, and Los Angeles where she gets a part on the Beverly Hillbillies television program. In between she has wonderful sex with hunky bellboys and other oddballs. In the meantime, poor ol' Peejoe is witnessing some rough times in Industry. See, the rednecks first kill a young black man. Then, during a demonstration over a segregated swimming pool, they kill his brother. Soon, a lot of other black men and women are killed or beaten, and a lot of buildings are firebombed. This goes on with the sheriff's tacit if not outright approval. Hold your breath; I know this is hard to believe, but the sheriff is a racist and has a big beer belly. Peejoe, despite being only eleven years old, and a product of this place and these people, is nevertheless a model of sensitive and correct political thought, and is outraged by all of these events. He publicly sides with the black demonstrators. Like Bill Clinton's story about riding in the back of the bus to show his support for Rosa Parks, it is not terribly believable. But on the other hand, nothing else is either. Of course, the Lucille story was probably not meant to be, with its lurid, pulp-fiction, made-for-Hollywood plot. It is not clear, in fact, why this plot-line is in the book in the first place. But if it is there to illuminate some thematic quality of the more important civil rights story--again, a subject worthy of examination--it fails miserably, instead only serving to highlight the more improbable and ludicrous elements of it. Mr. Childress is a comptetent writer and knows how to sustain a narrative, but what he has constructed here, despite being occasionally entertaining, is lightweight and completely forgettable. He adds nothing which is fresh or new to what we know about the civil rights movement; peopling the opposition with standard, Southern-bumpkin caricatures, and grossly exaggerating the havoc created by them. What he does instead is to smugly congratulate his little Peejoe--and by extension himself--for merely coming to the correct political viewpoint. A viewpoint, I should add, which is today universally accepted. Big deal.
Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining escape
Review: Crazy in Alabama is an engaging, quick read. We follow two developing stories: One of Peejoe, a young boy thrust into the racial conflicts of the mid-sixties in Alabama; the other of his Aunt Lucille, a woman on the run in search of fame in Hollywood after she murders her husband. This is an amusing story, but I have one quibble. I felt the two stories just didn't mesh well together. Peejoe's story is serious (told, however, in a lighthearted manner). There are deaths, lynching, sit-ins, etc, in other words, much food for thought. Then we have the Lucille story. She drives cross country with her husband's head in Tupperware. She makes it big in Las Vegas and makes her way to Hollywood. It's like a warped little fairy tale that just didn't fit in all that well with Peejoe's story. Despite that quibble, Crazy in Alabama is a fun book to read and is ultimately satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderfully entertaining!
Review: Whew..feels like I just got off a rollercoaster, but what a great ride it was. Crazy in Alabama is a wild, wonderful story of a summer of racial unrest in Alabama in 1965, and the experiences of two orphaned white boys living with their uncle in his funeral home. The book is told from the points of view of twelve year old Peter Joseph (Peejoe) and his Aunt Lucille. Lucille tells of her wild and crazy escapades to free herself from an opressive marriage and find her dream as an actress in Hollywood, leaving her six children behind with her mother. When a friend asked about the book, I tried to summarize the plot, and realized how crazy it all sounded, but somehow it works and is a very entertaining book. Good to the last page, it is a funny, crazy, wonderful book, but one with a serious side that reminded me of the civil rights movement of the 1960s; the marches and demonstrations, and how far we have come since then.
Rating:
Summary: Crazy is putting it mildly!
Review: I found the story of PeeJoe and his crazy Aunt Lucille to be a wickedly funny book with dark undertones.In the time of serious civil unrest in Alabama,the parallel stories both have moments of hilarious comedy and frightening truths about the way people see each other in their different worlds.Lucille decides that she's had quite enough of her appalling husband who,she's convinced,has been the sole reason for her not being a famous movie star.She therefore slips rat poison into his coffee and after cutting off his head(with great difficulty)pops it into a Tupperware lettuce keeper-I'll never be able to look at mine in the same light again!She then sets out for Hollywood,complete with the head and starts the great adventure.Meanwhile,PeeJoe is caught up in the civil rights confrontations and quickly learns that he will never again see life in the same way.I can't imagine anyone NOT liking this book and intend looking up the other things that Mark Childress has written.
Rating:
Summary: The new 'Mockingbird'
Review: For those who think 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is not a 'hip' book any more, check out this variation on the same theme. From the viewpoint of a child, racism in a small Southern town in the days of Rev. Martin L. King seems to be even less understandable and more cruel, devastating and all in all unnecessary. Moral values turned up-side down as revealed by a politically ignorant child. The second, more flamboyant and sometimes - admittedly - hilarious story line about a woman decapitating her husband in order to get away from her homely Alabama life towards glamour as a Hollywood star tends to take the book over at times. That's a bit surprising, because the craziness of Southern political life those days would have been able to make up for the book title all by itself. It doesn't need to be beefed up by a crazy personal story. 'Crazy in Alabama' is still great entertainment and at the same time a highly important book ... still ...
Rating:
Summary: forget the movie, read the novel
Review: Wonderfully entertaining piece of work. If you see the movie after reading the novel, you will be sorely disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: So crazy, it's hilarious
Review: 'Crazy in Alabama' is one of those unique novels that comes along every once in awhile, and just makes you grin and shake your head in amusement. The book focuses around 2 characters, Peejoe, and his unique aunt Lucille. Lucille, frustrated with the boring life she's leading, decides to run off to Hollywood to become a movie star, and there's only one thing stopping her: her abusive husband Chester. So she puts rat poison in his coffee, and decides to take his head along as a keepsake. Meanwhile, Peejoe, usurped from his grandma's house by Lucille's brats, is in the middle of a race war with his brother and Uncle Dove, all the while worrying about Lucille and what will happen if she's caught. 'Crazy in Alabama' is one-of-a-kind, showing us the ugly side of the South, and just how far people will really go to get what they want.
Rating:
Summary: A book review from Mr.Lertlit S. from Bangkok Thailand
Review: Crazy in Alabama, a tragi-comedic novel written by Mark Childress, is a delightful book. The novel concerns a story of two journeys which begins in the summer of 1965, when everybody went crazy in Alabama. An adorable Alabama lady named Lucille cut off her husband's head in order to allow herself to be free to go to Hollywood to star in the " Beverly Hillibillies " and that is the beginning of crazy events for herself and her nephew, Peejoe, an orphan who is also the narrator. One day, while Peejoe was sitting in his apartment in California, he got a phone call from his sweetful aunt, Lucille. This phone call took him back to the unforgetable summer of 1965 in Alabama when his beautiful life with his grandmother was disrupted by a short visit of his aunt, Lucille. Lucille had just successfully ended her unsuccessful marriage by murdering her hunband, Chester, and cutting off his head. After showing his head to the eyes of everyone, she drove off with it, but she didn't take any of her six naughty children. So, after Lucille's children replaced Peejoe's place, he had to stayed with his uncle Dove in Industry. When Peejoe arrived in Industry, another city in Alabama, the civil rights was the most seriously topic throughout the city, especially after the death of a coloured teenager during the arrestment of white duputies at the swimming pool, the conflict between the white and coloured people seemed to got worst. After seeing a lot of unfair issues for coloured people, Peejoe and his uncle switched to the coloured's side. At the same time, Lucille lived like she was in a sweet dream in Hollywood, rich and glamourous, a beauty and no beast. She got lots of luck, including a role in the most famous TV series. However, her dream was over when her top secret, which is sealed in a Tupperware bowl, was revealed. So, she had to fled, but she was arrested in San Francisco and sent back to Alabama for a trial. Unbelievably, the judge free her. After she got a freedom, she went away with Norman, a limousine driver who crazy for her.She never came back. So did Dove's happiness, it went away from his life and never came back to him even once. This is a reward for Dove's kindhearteness from some whites. Basically, Crazy in Alabama is a well-written book. It is not a fearful novel; it is a funful novel instead. I would like to recommend this book as a must read book. Every plot is unpredictable, but believable. The funny of this book derives from the sense of humor and the art of writing of Mr. Childress. I especially like the way he depicts and associates all those fact with his imagination. In my opinion, Crazy in Alabama is not crazy as its name. I learn one important thing from this book, not every crime makers get the punishment, sometimes they are admired as heroes or heroines, while a man who always doing good things get the punishment because his good things are against somebody feeling.
Rating:
Summary: Southern cookbook
Review: Here's a good old recipe: take a mentally challenged 30-something Marilin Monroe wannabe with 5 kids and a domestic tyrant for a husband, add two orphaned nephews, one of whom clearly possesses a certain genius for ending up in places where he shouldn't be, then for good measure introduce a loving, caring uncle who also happens to be a mortician. Now there's going to be a gruesome murder (you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs), a flash of Las Vegas, a glimpse of Hollywood, it's going to simmer in the humid heat of Alabama and racial clashes will pour more red pepper than anybody might want in any dish. So it's hot, it's delicious, parts of it light like a soufflé, and parts of it heavy like high meat.
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