Rating: 
Summary: Endless repetition does not a good story make
Review: .... OK, I did not read "Good and Evil" or "Butterflies...". So for me, it was a "fresh read". The style was grade schoolish, and the repetition exeptionally frustrating. How many times must we hear that Lula thinks she is going to be famous (for a book she never seems to write), Lavender slept with JFK, the one character had a stalking crush on Mongomery Clift, Brian lost a decade by not loving Phil sooner, and on and on and on. The previous reviewer was right...3 chapters would have done it. The sex scenes were no big deal. It was the fact that this book plodded along with no direction. A good editor would have ripped it to shreds. And the ending? Sigh. So stupid and misplaced. The author should stick to travel books. Save your money people...I know I feel I have wasted mine.
Rating: 
Summary: NOIR-STYLED THRILLER EXPOSES BEAUTY'S BIZARRE UNDERBELLY
Review: Cinematic. That's what Darwin Porter's novels are. BLOOD MOON was an IMAX spectacle about the preternatural power of male beauty. Red-hot icons, a breathless climax, and erotica akin to Anaïs Nin on Viagra with a bump of meth. Now, in his most recent book, MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH, we're lured into a deco picture palace where menacing images flicker on a silver screen. A flattering nod to John Berendt's "non-fiction novel" about Savannah, Porter's new thriller still has its own deliciously wicked story to tell, picking up where MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL left off. And it has everything going for it: Mendacity, greed, betrayal, whoring, debauchery, and murder--the world as a film noir cul-de-sac.MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH jumps into high gear when movie producer Jerry Wheeler (looking like "an aged Tab Hunter") dispatches screenwriter Phil Heather ("a dead-ringer for Montgomery Clift") to the historic port city for pre-production and casting because his investors want "to capitalize off some of the fame of the place and [Berendt's] book." Ironically, it's a remake of BUTTERFLIES IN HEAT--Porter's cutting-edge novel made into a film over twenty years ago. But lust quickly entangles them with sexual predators more carnal, glamorous, and relentless than they'd ever imagined and a vortex of intrigue with a maw full of mayhem. Whatever you do, don't let anyone tell you how it ends. Porter's utterly irresistible new novel targets the strange, male fascination with hustlers, or at least the mythology of male hookers. And manages in MIDNIGHT to bring together, like some outrageous karmic homecoming, three of fiction's most unforgettable: Numie Chase, Danny Hansford, and Jeff Broyhill. BUTTERFLIES IN HEAT is the story of Numie Chase--a young drifter depending on his genitals to grab a life, a noir "anti-hero" taking up where MIDNIGHT COWBOY left off. Porter's adoring prose was a major factor in the novel's international success, prompting Tennessee Williams to say, "I'd walk the waterfront for Numie any day." But this "NewMe" stud quickly finds himself trapped under the blood-red sun of the Florida Keys between six powerful, desiring lovers--male and female. (Credit Porter's keen observation, his novels are pansexual--not gay, straight, or bi--because real sexuality is fluid across an erotic spectrum of desire.) And in MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH, the search is on once again to cast the part of BUTTERFLIES' devastating sex machine. Hauntingly, a body worshipped by its conquests as "a walking streak of sex" lies rotting in Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery. It's Danny Lewis Hansford--the moody, bad-ass gigolo allegedly murdered by antique dealer Jim Williams in Berendt's MIDNIGHT. His reputation for taking both men and women over the edge was so tempting that, to this day, many of Savannah's locals resent Williams for having shot the 21-year-old hustler before they could sample his wares. But centerstage in Porter's MIDNIGHT is Jeff Broyhill--an 18-year-old Adonis who fancies himself Danny's bigger, better, and more talented re-enfleshment, even down to taking his name. Men and women seem to always hit on Jeff after glimpsing the outline in his crotch. He's sure about his cash value and intends now to do whatever he has to do to grab a big-time life with a rich, glamorous, and famous future. Porter's work is characterized by an articulate obsession with the almost supernatural power of physical beauty. In MIDNIGHT, he picks up the thread in his dramatic examination of that phenomenon's darker side started years ago in BUTTERFLIES. In so many ways, his latest work is BLOOD MOON's bizarre, edgy underbelly. For instance, BLOOD MOON's Buck Brooke III not only enraptured with his beauty, but knew how to capitalize on opportunities that rare gift afforded him for power and command of others. MIDNIGHT's Jeff Broyhill, in contrast, is an ambitious, but weak-willed, young beauty plunged by fate into dead-end intrigue he either can't, or doesn't want, to understand. And he's coaxed into his nightmare of corruption by femmes fatales you'll just have to see for yourself. Redolent of the genre's mood, Porter disturbs by showing corruption has no respect for gender or much of anything else. In MIDNIGHT, both Lavender Morgan ("at 72, the world's oldest courtesan") and Tipper Zelda ("an obese, fading chanteuse taunted as 'the black widow'") purchase lust from sexually-conflicted youngmen with drop-dead faces, chiseled-bodies, and genetically-gifted crotches. These women once relied on their physicality to steal the hearts and fortunes of the world's richest and most powerful men. Now, as they slide closer every day to joining Danny Hansford's corpse, these once-beautiful women must depend, in a perverse twist of fate, on sexual outlaws for le petit mort. And to survive, the hustlers must idle their personal dreams while struggling to cajole what they need from a sexual liaison they detest. Mendacity reigns. Perversity in extremis. Physical beauty as living hell. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF's Big Daddy must be spinning in his grave right now. Clearly, MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH isn't for the prudish or faint-hearted. But it's just the kind of published entertainment for the 21st-century sensibility we've come to expect from Georgia Literary Association. And perhaps it's what we should finally expect from an author who's rubbed elbows with the likes of Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, and Truman Capote. And once had Tennessee Williams for a neighbor and fondly calls Anaïs Nin "a good friend." Make no mistake, the heartthrob Jeff Broyhill nabs a spot as one of the hottest male icons in fiction today. The only thing hotter is playing Carly Simon's "You Won't Forget Me" from her CD, FILM NOIR, while you read about Jeff's Hollywood dreams and his pornographic photoshoot at the hands of Savannah's Truman Capote clone, Gin Tucker (page 205). So, do what you gotta do [to get the money], and buy a copy of MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH. You'll stay up all night... Long, slow dissolve as we fade to black.
Rating:
Summary: pure trash at it's finest
Review: Darwin Porter's earlier novel, Butterflies in Heat, plays a bigpart in his latest novel, Midnight in Savannah, and turns out to be much better than this new release. I was a huge fan of John Berendt's Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil, so I enjoyed the fun that Porter poked at it. However, Porter ends up using it as a melodramatic crutch. His gay sex scenes are completely lacking. Instead, he takes us into incest between children, hot hunks sleeping with women old enough to be their grandmothers, and black drag queens sleeping with their fathers. After pages and pages of trashiness, he finally gives us the murders we have been waiting for... He dwells from his original plot plans, using small mingled relationships between characters just to fill the pages. ...I laughed out loud at most of his surprises because I couldn't believe what I was reading. The scenes you beg to take place are only barely mentioned or covered up... ...He even tells you half way through the book who is going to die, spends only a few words dishing out the details, and instead carries on about his character's ...sexual secrets.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Darwin Porter
Review: Darwin Porter's earlier novel, Butterflies in Heat, plays a bigpart in his latest novel, Midnight in Savannah, and turns out to be much better than this new release. I was a huge fan of John Berendt's Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil, so I enjoyed the fun that Porter poked at it. However, Porter ends up using it as a melodramatic crutch. His gay sex scenes are completely lacking. Instead, he takes us into incest between children, hot hunks sleeping with women old enough to be their grandmothers, and black drag queens sleeping with their fathers. After pages and pages of trashiness, he finally gives us the murders we have been waiting for... He dwells from his original plot plans, using small mingled relationships between characters just to fill the pages. ...I laughed out loud at most of his surprises because I couldn't believe what I was reading. The scenes you beg to take place are only barely mentioned or covered up... ...He even tells you half way through the book who is going to die, spends only a few words dishing out the details, and instead carries on about his character's ...sexual secrets.
Rating:
Summary: It Grips like a Boa Constrictor
Review: Darwin Porter's Midnight in Savannah grips well, and it grips hard. It's absorbing as so few novels are--tender but edgy, a pleasure to read. I didn't want it to end. Ray McClain, in a brilliant and insightful review (see below), summed it up better than I can. Unlike some detractors who might be better off sticking to tamer literary fare, McClain understood the meaning, beauty, and depth of Porter's story. The book's cover clearly warns readers what to expect--corruption, greed, sexual tension, and murder. But the cover also points out (accurately) that the book lampoons the eccentricities of the Deep South. With that kind of warning, don't expect the kind of niceties you'd find at a socially prominent garden party attended by the blue-haired ladies of the local bourgeoisie. What you get instead is the raw and enticing underbelly of Savannah that's set against a backdrop of well-endowed hustlers who are aggressively competing for the coveted role of Numie in Butterflies in Heat. (Butterflies in Heat, you might remember, is Darwin Porter's still-in-print first novel, a cult classic that he penned when he was still in high school. One asks oneself what kind of high school did this unusual author attend?) In his version of Midnight, Porter recalls two of the most powerful characters in the history of American film: Eve Harrington and Margo Channing, as portrayed by Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in All About Eve, released in 1950 and based on a story by Mary Orr. In Midnight in Savannah, Porter gives the Harrington/Channing conflict a post-millennium update in a way that reflects the changing demographics of America. In Porter's saga, the beautiful drag queen, Tango, is trying to upstage The Lady Chablis as the reigning Empress of Savannah. But in Porter's case, the duelling divas play tougher and harder than Harrington and Channing ever did--and with a transgendered twist that is very charming, roaringly funny, and almost savagely hip. Other archetypal conflicts exposed by Porter's keen eye include those that flourish among writers. In this case, Phil Heather (who could be a double for Montgomery Clift) and Lula Carson (obviously inspired by Georgia's literary sweetheart, Carson McCullers) are handled with sensitivity, delicacy, and good humor as they maneuver their way through the lower depths of a city (Savannah) that can get sweaty, smelly, and very low-down, indeed. There are some "taboo" subjects that are examined within this book, including incest, so the faint-hearted are warned to stay away. But if you like cutting-edge writing and a deliciously seedy walk on the wild side, this is for you. Which brings up what might be interpreted as the central character of the book--the city of Savannah itself. Porter presents the town as a place to run to whenever you've been thrown out of other, less congenial, places in the world. As a local resident remarks, "No one in Savannah can point a finger at you about some indiscretion from your past, because everyone is too busy covering up their own sins." Another memorable line involves the warning that "everybody in Savannah becomes queer after Midnight," an observation that is sure to disgruntle some readers, and to absolutely delight many others. In brief, I had a wonderfully decadent time reading this book, and applaud the novelist's courage in meeting head-on so many of the issues that were swept under the carpet in John Berendt's earlier saga about Savannah, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. As for the issues raised by Clint Eastwood in his vanilla-and-very-tame film version of the Berendt original, Porter goes way, way, WAY beyond that, into a version that filmmakers more daring than Eastwood might have a lot of fun trying to adapt. In brief, I loved the book--it's absolutely worth the purchase price of whatever Amazon.com opts to charge for it. See y'all soon in Darwin Porter's Savannah, OK, dah-lings?
Rating:
Summary: It Grips like a Boa Constrictor
Review: Darwin Porter's Midnight in Savannah grips well, and it grips hard. It's absorbing as so few novels are--tender but edgy, a pleasure to read. I didn't want it to end. Ray McClain, in a brilliant and insightful review (see below), summed it up better than I can. Unlike some detractors who might be better off sticking to tamer literary fare, McClain understood the meaning, beauty, and depth of Porter's story. The book's cover clearly warns readers what to expect--corruption, greed, sexual tension, and murder. But the cover also points out (accurately) that the book lampoons the eccentricities of the Deep South. With that kind of warning, don't expect the kind of niceties you'd find at a socially prominent garden party attended by the blue-haired ladies of the local bourgeoisie. What you get instead is the raw and enticing underbelly of Savannah that's set against a backdrop of well-endowed hustlers who are aggressively competing for the coveted role of Numie in Butterflies in Heat. (Butterflies in Heat, you might remember, is Darwin Porter's still-in-print first novel, a cult classic that he penned when he was still in high school. One asks oneself what kind of high school did this unusual author attend?) In his version of Midnight, Porter recalls two of the most powerful characters in the history of American film: Eve Harrington and Margo Channing, as portrayed by Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in All About Eve, released in 1950 and based on a story by Mary Orr. In Midnight in Savannah, Porter gives the Harrington/Channing conflict a post-millennium update in a way that reflects the changing demographics of America. In Porter's saga, the beautiful drag queen, Tango, is trying to upstage The Lady Chablis as the reigning Empress of Savannah. But in Porter's case, the duelling divas play tougher and harder than Harrington and Channing ever did--and with a transgendered twist that is very charming, roaringly funny, and almost savagely hip. Other archetypal conflicts exposed by Porter's keen eye include those that flourish among writers. In this case, Phil Heather (who could be a double for Montgomery Clift) and Lula Carson (obviously inspired by Georgia's literary sweetheart, Carson McCullers) are handled with sensitivity, delicacy, and good humor as they maneuver their way through the lower depths of a city (Savannah) that can get sweaty, smelly, and very low-down, indeed. There are some "taboo" subjects that are examined within this book, including incest, so the faint-hearted are warned to stay away. But if you like cutting-edge writing and a deliciously seedy walk on the wild side, this is for you. Which brings up what might be interpreted as the central character of the book--the city of Savannah itself. Porter presents the town as a place to run to whenever you've been thrown out of other, less congenial, places in the world. As a local resident remarks, "No one in Savannah can point a finger at you about some indiscretion from your past, because everyone is too busy covering up their own sins." Another memorable line involves the warning that "everybody in Savannah becomes queer after Midnight," an observation that is sure to disgruntle some readers, and to absolutely delight many others. In brief, I had a wonderfully decadent time reading this book, and applaud the novelist's courage in meeting head-on so many of the issues that were swept under the carpet in John Berendt's earlier saga about Savannah, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. As for the issues raised by Clint Eastwood in his vanilla-and-very-tame film version of the Berendt original, Porter goes way, way, WAY beyond that, into a version that filmmakers more daring than Eastwood might have a lot of fun trying to adapt. In brief, I loved the book--it's absolutely worth the purchase price of whatever Amazon.com opts to charge for it. See y'all soon in Darwin Porter's Savannah, OK, dah-lings?
Rating:
Summary: Ploddingly dreadful
Review: I couldn't put the book down because I wanted to see just how dreadfully plodding it could become. The story could have been told in 3 chapters. What a relief when the end was reached. Fantasy should have a sense of underlying reality to make it work, but this was just drudgery and off putting as another continuing revelation of supposed southern decay and depravity. Reading this book is good for those who are masochistic and want to see just how much mind numbing drivel they can put up with. The book is so bad that it will surely become a literary classic due to way art is appreciated in this day and age.
Rating:
Summary: not what i expected
Review: i read midnight in the garden of good and evil, loved it, and was looking for something as good with savannah as the locale.
after flipping through my copy of midnight in savannah, i ran to the post office and sent it right back to amazon. what a disappointment!
Rating:
Summary: Endless repetition does not a good story make
Review: If I could give this [book] minus stars I would. OK, I did not read "Good and Evil" or "Butterflies...". So for me, it was a "fresh read". The style was grade schoolish, and the repetition exeptionally frustrating. How many times must we hear that Lula thinks she is going to be famous (for a book she never seems to write), Lavender slept with JFK, the one character had a stalking crush on Mongomery Clift, Brian lost a decade by not loving Phil sooner, and on and on and on....3 chapters would have done it. The sex scenes were no big deal. It was the fact that this book plodded along with no direction. A good editor would have ripped it to shreds. And the ending? Sigh. So stupid and misplaced. Save your money people...I know I feel I have wasted mine.
Rating:
Summary: An addictive plot from an addictive writer
Review: Over the past few years, I have become addicted to the novels of Darwin Porter. These have included BLOOD MOON and RAZZLE-DAZZLE. In both cases, I read them twice. To begin with, I'm entertained. For a man who grew up during the Television Age, my attention span for reading is not that great. But I stayed up until I'd finished every delectable page of Mr. Porter's latest novel. Set in Savannah at the end of the 20th century, it is more than a mere stepchild to the world-famous work of nonfiction, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Whereas that book was "closeted," MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH deliciously describes the lives of six residents, both male and female, who have taken up residence in this decadent Southern city, which is so unlike the rest of Georgia. Although from the beginning, some of the characters seemed doomed, we enjoy the fictional ride to its bloody conclusion. Although a drama, there is fantastic humor here in both the depiction of Southern gay life, and in aging Southern Belles of any gender. Instead of Tennessee Williams' wilting moth, Blanche Du Bois, we get the lusty Lavender Morgan, the most recent in a string of the world's great courtesans. We are treated to the likes of Tango, the beautiful black drag queen who's ready to reign as Empress of Savannah, dethroning The Lady Chablis. And we are presented with some lusty young men, ranging from the sexy, and usually oversexed, screenwriter Phil Heather to the handsome cop from Marien, Georgia, Brian Sheehan, with whom Phil falls in love. Jason McReaves has something every man and woman wants a part of, and his wife, Lula Carson, is the most evocative portrait of a Carson McCullers clone I've ever read. The rest of the cast of characters, from Norma Dixie, who claims she was the maid to Mae West, to Gin Tucker, a Truman Capote clone, bring today's South brutally alive in the seething tale of corruption and greed. Steamy Savannah was never steamier than the way it appears in this novel.
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