Rating: 
Summary: Wish I had never read this book.
Review: I picked up this book after hearing all of the controversy over whether or not it should be published. It should never have gotten published I thought it was awful. If she ever decides to write another "novel" maybe Ms. Randall can come up with her own ideas instead of working off of another author's book. Don't bother with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Despicable!!!! A true classic is sullied!!!
Review: This book should never have been allowed to be published. The characters and story of "Gone With The Wind" are not only etched in the hearts of millions of fans, but are copyrighted in law. To take those characters and use it in this manner is despicable and illegal. GWTW is one of the finest novels ever to be written and one of the best movies in motion picture history. "The Wind Done Gone" takes wonderful, classic characters and mocks & belittles them. GWTW was an incredible story of the Old South, a time and place that has been forever lost to the forces of political correctness "The Wind Done Gone" is nothing more than politically correct propaganda.
Rating:
Summary: not so great
Review: I didn't enjoy this as much as I expected to. The original "Gone with the Wind" has outrageous depictions of the slaves and this book, with its sparkling concept, could have been great. Unfortunately, though, there isn't much of a plot and the writing isn't very compelling. It's in diary form and represents the musings of Cynara, an ex-slave and the illegitimate daughter of "Mammy" and "Planter," the plantation owner of "Tata" [Tara], and the half-sister of "Other" [Scarlett]. In her entries, Cynara muses about the men who love her, her beloved Mammy and her rivalry with "Other", with some historical details thrown into the mix. ["We went to see a play at Ford's Theater. A woman's dress caught fire. Some of these new dyes are so dangerous."] Her fixation on whether her Mammy loved her or "Other" better fills many entries, along with somewhat tiresome discourses about "R" [Rhett], whom Cynara seems to be primarily interested in because of her rivalry with "Other." ["When had R grown old? When did he stop being Other's husband? How will I know? How will I let myself know? When did I start loving R? Had it stopped? Could it stop? Had I ever really loved him, or had I just wanted what was hers? Was he mine before he was hers?"] Cynara spends a lot of the diary fussing about "Other" [Scarlett]. ("["Other"] wasn't pretty... " "["Other"] knew I was the prettier one... " "["Other"] was not beautiful, but men seldom recognized this... ") In this revisionist history, the slaves conspire to kill "Planter's" sons to maintain control over "Tata." "Miss Prissy" [Prissy] who in this version has a "keen and labyrinthine intelligence" surreptitiously kills off "Mealy Mouth." [Melanie Wilkes] Anyone would agree that the depiction of the slaves in the original "Gone With the Wind" was outrageous, but does it help matters to have a new version where the slaves conspire to kill [the "Planter's" and "Lady's"] white babies, who had not (yet) done any wrong to anyone? Does that "even up" history? The author also has "R" saying that "... all Irish are shiftless, lazy crackers, no matter how rich they get." Further, this "diary", written as if the entries had been made in the 1870's, has a disconcerting "written in the twentieth-century" feel to it. One example of many of this is Cynara mentioning a self-taught black congressman and then noting "He merits a line in anybody's history of these United States." This is clearly a [valid] sentiment that one could have in evaluating today's history textbooks, but doesn't seem like anything someone would write in the 1870's. I guess I was hoping this book would be something more like Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" where one came away with a compelling and deeply-researched look into another world. All in all, not a great effort.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting perspective but disappointing overall
Review: I wanted to like this book, I really did (hey, its main character is named Cindy!). I was rooting for Randall to be able to publish it as a parody despite the lawsuits brought by the Mitchell estate, and it truly does lend an interesting perspective on what life might have been like for slaves in the deep south. (I especially enjoyed Cindy's comment that slave owners did not need to pay for sex in a brothel because they could "steal poontang" anytime they wanted.) The first third or so of the book is quite good. But I found some of the events that occur later in the book too unbelievable, and I thought there were a few too many gratuitously sexual passages. I think the book is still worth reading, but the rave literary reviews I had read caused my expectations to be set higher than what the book delivered to me.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the fuss. No Scarlett, Rhett or Melanie here !
Review: Incredibly disappointing and poorly written. This is NOT a parody of Gone With The Wind, which has been a long time favorite of mine... Life on the plantation, Georgia, a spoiled heroine, the plight -- or well being -- of slaves before during and after the war, reconstruction, clothing, the essentials of food and shelter and survival, love and its tangles -- are barely covered, and at that without conviction or in an interesting,compelling, memorable manner. I'm sorry I bought the book. It wasn't worth it, and frankly, after the fact, I find the manner of its marketing to GWTW fans somewhat deceptive. A thumbs down.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a parody or sequel
Review: I am about 1/3 way through this book, and it is very intriguing. It is reminiscent of Gone With the Wind, which I know mostly from the movie. I read the book by Margaret Mitchell many years ago, however, I don't see this book as a parody at all, nor a sequel. It's a different perspective on the view of the South offered in Gone with The Wind. I think Ms. Randall is respectful of the characters Mitchell created, and it is sort of like following someone peeping into GWTW and is thinking "hmmm, wait I know there's a shadow behind that door, and a few skeletons to boot." I am enjoying the book, it's fascinating. It's in first person, the story of a mulatto woman, her feelings and her inner life, so certainly this is not found in GWTW at all, and I'm glad to be able to read this. It's good, I recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Randall Done Gone and Ran With It!
Review: This is a must read ... Alice Randall opens our eyes and superbly shows us an alternate portrayal of one of Americas favorite books. I'm so glad she won her battle in court to have this published, because this story needed to be told ...
Rating: 
Summary: The Wind Done Gone
Review: I have a hard time understanding why there was so much controversary over the release of a parody on Gone With the Wind which was, of course, fiction. Although this was written from the opposite view point of Margaret Mitchell's novel, and I suppose the purpose was to tell the same story with the other view, so much of the story line did not match up. Over all, I reallly did not think much of the story even though I positively agree that the slave's lot was horrible and they existed solely for the pleasure and purpose of the whites.
Rating:
Summary: Was The Controversy A Publicity Stunt?
Review: Thank God. I checked this book out at the library. It would have been a waste of money to buy it. I found it to be boring so I pressed on reading up to chapter 15 but it didn't get any better so the book went back unfinished. I think the controversy around this book was mainly for publicity to get people to buy it. It's so sad that most were disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbingly fantastic
Review: Listen to the other reviewers: this is NOT a parody. It's not funny. I was expecting funny. What I got was one of the most dark, haunting, poking-into-uncomfortable-areas experiences with literature I have ever had. And I loved it.
As other readers have noted, it turns the romanticized pro-slavery ideology of GWTW on its head. If you don't want that, okay--don't read it. But it's done in such a masterfully emotive way that reading it is painful, humiliating, mesmerizing and sweet/sad. It's an experience everyone should at least try. There is such a wealth of careful detail here, and every bit of it hangs together, i.e., is plausible based on the events depicted in GWTW. (I always did wonder why bad things seemed to happen to Melanie whenever the slaves were close by.) The one thing I'd say Randall forgot to address was Will Benteen and Suellen O'Hara's claim to Tara.
|
