Carolina Moon

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing from beginning to end
Review: At first, the novel was a bit perplexing, moving from one character's POV to another with each brief chapter. Very soon, though, I began to see how the vignettes linked together. I became fascinated with the progression of the story. The story threads weaved together into a beautiful story tapestry.

I disagree with those who say that the book was "dull." Far from it. Granted, the story isn't formulaic and it's plot not immediately apparent, but like most great storytellers, this author is a master at slowly revealing a fascinating story. These character may be "quirky" but they did grow, and as they grew, they took root in my heart. They will live with me for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time
Review: I love Myrtle Beach and all of the South and was very excited to read a Southern author. What a huge disappointment! I'm curious how this is a National Bestseller as advertised.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat Pointless
Review: I wouldn't exactly say I'm sorry that I read this book, but I was definitely expecting more out of it. I did make it to the end, where I thought the vignettes would come together to create a meaning and one of those lightbulb over your head moments where you realize what's been happening all along. However, the end was just as confusing as the rest of the book. I felt like I had just spent my time reading something that amounted to nothing. What a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Carolina Moon has great charm and depth
Review: okay, all you people who said you didn't like this book didn't say something about the book. You said something about yourself. In a world of cynical people who expect something bigger out of the story than just pure human emotion do not realize what you're missing. This book is full of beautiful prose that tell you everything about the characters even if a particular chapter is not from their point of view. I had the privelage of seeing her read excerpts from this masterpeice aloud and it was wonderful! She truely is a great storyteller and this book is fabulous!

Rating:
Summary: Bursting with life
Review: The award-winning McCorkle's fifth novel delivers the humor, zest, and thoughtfully engaging characters readers have come to expect from this Southern writer ("Tending to Virginia," "Ferris Beach").

In the North Carolina town of Fulton, 15 miles and a world away from the coast, Quee Purdy, 69, a flamboyant and free-spirited widow, has just opened an unconventional quit-smoking clinic where resident addicts are "pampered right out of the addiction."

Quee is at the center of a small circle of younger Fultonites. She holds the key to the mysteries in their lives and explores these secrets aloud in story-telling tours of her gallery of photos - pictures of strangers who have captured her imagination and inspire her to heights of fancy and fact. Her audience, however, seldom gets the point of her veiled parables.

Tom Lowe is a favorite of Quee's. A handsome handyman, Tom's life is stalled in brooding over the suicide of a father he scarcely knew, the underwater lot that was his father's only legacy, and the lover he lost to the wider world outside Fulton.

Denny Parks, sexy, insecure and adventurous, is the daughter of Quee's oldest friend, who has been invited to the clinic as a therapist, a profession in which she has absolutely no experience. She has, however, had a nervous breakdown and loves to talk, eminent qualifications.

Alicia Jameson, another of Quee's assistants, is the abused wife of a loathsome-Lothario local talk show host, Jones Jameson, who has disappeared.

The next circle out includes Sarah McAllister, Tom's high-school sweetheart, who returned to Fulton with her husband in tow and fading hopes of a baby, only to end in a coma from an aneurysm. And Wallace Johnson, the old postmaster, who's been reading letters addressed to the Wayward One, a suicide, for 20 years. And Myra Carter, an elderly admirer of Jones Jameson, who hates Quee for suspected adultery with her husband, the late doctor.

The lives of all these people are intertwined with Quee's in ways only Quee is cognizant of, a Godlike omniscience that is a driving force in her own life. But one of the book's chief ironies is that the reader comes into possession of a puzzle piece illuminating a misunderstanding that has haunted, romanticized, even directed Quee's life.

McCorkle, also an accomplished short story writer, reveals her characters' lives in vignettes that rove among various points of view, exploring interlocking histories that share a peripheral fascination with the missing Jones Jameson and an unknown but crucial connection with Quee.

The author forges an intimacy with her readers through lives full of vivid details, memories and actions that make her characters' anxieties, fears and ambitions visceral. While her story includes romance, adultery, even murder, these are only colorful elements in the greater tapestry of the human heart. Her concluding chapter, with its quietly explosive revelations, sends the reader reeling while barely causing a ripple in the lives of her still-unknowing characters.

"Carolina Moon" is a novel of intricate beauty, fueled by Southern humor, charm, tragedy and guile.

Rating:
Summary: Dull as Dirt
Review: This is one of those books where all the best parts can be found on the book jacket! I was intrigued by the book jacket description of the Swap Shop Show: "If you've got something you're itching to sell, something you mighta never woulda bought no way, then give us a call," but this idea isn't expanded upon in the text. Instead, this seems to be another in a series of recent books where the authors seem to believe a series of quirky characters alone a great novel make. Not so. Readers want characters they can get to know, characters who grow and change throughout the book, not a series of semi-related vignettes about cardboard cutouts of people. I particularly found McCorkle unable to handle the parallel story lines well. Perhaps the plot ties together in the end (I just couldn't get that far, I really tried!), but the impression I got was of jerking back and forth between stories that may have stood better on their own. For examples of successful books employing the parallel-lives technique, see Tom Wolfe's *A Man in Full* or Michelle Huneven's *Round Rock.* I've gathered in reading reviews that McCorkle is being hailed as a great new Southern author; I found no Southern flavor at all in this book. These silly characters could have lived anywhere. I guess I'll stick to Rita Mae Brown when I want a taste of the South.