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Summary: love, life and family....
Review: Dorothea Benton Frank has again written a wonderful novel. This story centers on a young woman, Caroline, who after making what she believed was a clean break from her family and her home in South Carolina and beginning her "new life" in New York city is drawn back to Tall Pines in South Carolina. Her brother wants her to check on their mother in order to see if she is doing okay, or if they need to move her into a retirement community. The story takes an unexpected turn when the visit cause Caroline to reflect on her past and then her mothers future. This is a marvelous story of love and family, with all its warts and bumps. If you enjoyed Sullivans Island by the same author, you will love this book also. If you haven't read Sullivans Island, put it on your "to read" list too!
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Summary: A Tantalizing Journey
Review: I just spent the best hours of smmer I have had with Dorothea Benton Frank's book "Plantation". She is an exquisite writer and I cannot wait to read all of her books. The pages come to life and you feel as though you are right there in the "low Country" with all the characters and that you have lived there and never left. Very intriguing and one I shall not forget.
Rating: 
Summary: Please!
Review: I bought this book because I live in the Lowcountry. I should have learned something from buying the first one. I can think of only one or two local cliches that were left out. The character of Caroline is so thoroughly unlikeable that at first you don't realize she's the very same character as the heroine of the first book (Sullivan's Island) in a different setting. I think Ms. Frank can probably do a LOT better if she will just write about the characters without trying to get every single nugget of Lowcountry trivia within the pages of one book. Maybe this would not bother someone who is not from around here (or is it "yanh?"). It makes me feel like anyone who reads it gets a very distorted picture of what folks here are really like. Most of us don't worship our ancestors, lie about them, go to the Cotillion or have an African American mother figure to bring them up. Just plain silly. The breathless internal monologue of the self-absorbed Caroline made for some awfully tedious reading, and hardly changed from the first page through her father's funeral, her divorce, her bedroom escapades. I so hope the rest of the country will not judge us by this book or the previous one. This is truly not who we are.
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Summary: BLAH!!
Review: I can't help but wonder if the previous readers and I read the same book. I am not a southerner but have enjoyed reading books about the South. However, I just could not get into this one. The character of Miss Lavinia was the only interesting part of the book. The rest of the characters were just plain BLAH. Maybe Ms. Benton should try writing about another section of the country.
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Summary: And if I could give it more than 5, I would!
Review: Caroline Wimbley Levine is a South Carolina native living in New York City, married to a Jewish psychiatrist, mother of a darling young boy, running a decorating business, and about to turn 40. Life has been pretty good to her. She thought.When Caroline answers a call from her brother, Trip, saying their mother needs to be placed in assisted living, she makes a trip home to the Low Country of South Carolina to check things out. Her mother, Lavinia, a flamboyant but oh so well bred matron, seems like the same old Lavinia to her. The problem seems to be Trip's trashy wife, Frances Mae, pregnant again and longing to live at Tall Pines, Lavinia's ancestral home. Satisfied that Frances Mae's designs have been nipped in the bud and Lavinia is fine, Caroline heads back home to New York. It isn't long, however, before her marriage goes South and, at loose ends, she packs up her child and heads back to Tall Pines. More than the story of Caroline "finding herself" and growing up at the age of 40, this is a witty, intelligent, sensitively written tale of home and family and relationships. No matter who you are or where you live, you are sure to see glimpses of yourself, your friends, and your family as we watch Caroline learn to date, discern the difference between love and sex, mend fences with her only sibling, and discover the woman beneath the facade of her mother. And don't we all have a relative somewhere who needs a good, swift kick kick in the pants?! It is a pleasure watching Caroline grow enough backbone to send ol' Frances Mae down the road to her comeuppance. The novel enters its most poignant phase with Lavinia's diagnosis of melanoma. It is during Lavinia's illness that Caroline finally finds her mettle and comes into her own. It sure made me think about my own familial relationships and strengths and how I will handle these trials when they come. And they will. This book is a wonderful treasure trove of wisdom and lessons, and I am richer for having read it.
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Summary: Wow! What a great story.
Review: I'm another one of those who couldn't put this book down and who was sorry to have it end. Living on the Gulf Coast, it is easy to slip into the Lowcountry especially the way Frank paints it. And what a cast of characters she serves up. This lady can really "turn a phrase" and create not only a marvelous place but fill it with believable characters. Punch the buttons and let amazon.com send this wonderful book to you. This one is a winner.
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Summary: Southern Sap
Review: Am I the only one who hated this book? It was very predictable, sugary, sappy and I could not wait to be done with it. Southern cliches roll on like the Edisto River, out of control. Caroline was not at all a likeable character - either in her repressed state in New York or her supposed transformation at Tall Pines. Her relationships with men developed too fast - you couldn't feel her need to hop into bed or fall in love with any of them. What caused her strained relationship with her mother to magically transform? All the other characters were equally predictable and unlikeable: Frances Mae - the tiresome white trash climber, Trip - the weak, ineffective "bubba", Millie - the woo woo voodoo Gullah mammy, Miss Lavinia - the sterotypically doomed steel magnolia. Please! Move along to a book more worthy of your time, yahn?
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Summary: Southern Comfort
Review: "You know those pivotal moments in your life that you don't see coming? The ones you wished arrived with a timer going off so you'd know this is it! Well, when the phone rang in February, you couldn't have convinced me that six months later, Mother would be in "the box" and I'd be wearing her pearls, twisting them around my finger exactly like she used to do." So begins "Plantation" the tale of Caroline Wimbley Levine and her flamboyant mother, Miss Lavinia, "the ACE basin version of Auntie Mame." Add to that a practicing psychiatrist husband with more bats in his belfry than the Sistine Chapel, an alcoholic, gambling brother with a perpetually pregnant white trash wife and three uncivilized kids, and you have a book you can't to put down. But Dottie Frank, best selling author of "Sullivan's Island," was not quite satisfied with her cast of characters. She created an intelligent, organized female plantation overseer who sees that the entire family doesn't jump headlong into the Edisto River. Not done yet, the author then puts life into a young dreadlocked Kama Sutra lover who makes Caroline "twitch in places she didn't even know were nerve endings." Caroline has been living in New York City for fifteen years when she is called home by her brother, Tripp, who fears that Miss Lavinia, the Queen of Tall Pines Plantation, has popped her cork. As the only daughter, it's high time, so says her brother, that Caroline gets herself on back home to see about the situation. (Situations are what the Wimbleys call family trouble.) Like any good daughter, Caroline flies south to tend to Mama and by doing so, once again becomes involved in the dysfunctional family antics that sent her dashing off to New York City in the first place. Plantation is delightful. As a former South Carolina Low Country woman myself, Dottie Frank's words were so beautifully painted on the page that I could almost feel the cool, dark waters of the Edisto River and smell the dirt that surrounds it. Southerners will love the richness with which Benton Frank writes of family secrets, tantalizing the reader to become as enmeshed in their "situation" as Caroline, Tripp, Millie and the ever zany Miss Lavinia. This bright new star on the literary horizon writes from the heart. You will put the book down for only one reason: to wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes.
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Summary: Another Winner!
Review: I waited patiently for this book to come out and was not disappointed when it did. Ms. Benton has another great southern novel on her hands with Plantation. I was drawn in from the first chapter. She takes you into the lives of a grand southern dame in Miss Lavinia who tries to come to terms with her daughter Caroline, the southern belle who moved to New York to forget her southern past and her son Trip the boy who found it hard to grow up. By the end of the book these 3 characters have found themselves and where they belong. I enjoyed her first novel "Sullivan's Island" a little better but couldn't put this one down till I finished it either. I am eagerly awaiting her next book.
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Summary: Southern Traditions
Review: After returning to the Plantation, Ms Benton Frank really hits her stride with passion and knowledge of the ACE basin in the Gullah Low Country of South Carolina. By mixing life stories from all facets of this particular plantation, the reader is drawn into a comforting fold of Southern Life, making you one of the family. The book is so enjopyable, I felt as if I was a vouyeristic member of the family peeking in on all the secrets. I read this book AM and PM, and was only dissapointed that it ended. Ms Benton Franks writing is evolving into a much crisper, more joined together style than Sullivan's Island, with a better grasp and flow of the wonderful story of rediscovery of ones true heritage and inner self. I loved this book, please keep 'em comming!
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