Rating: 
Summary: Auntie Mame, Low Country Style
Review: Here is a book to hold to your heart, it is that good. And before I even get to the fun, lively and irresistible plot, let me just say that we know on page one that Miss Lavinia, our own Low Country Auntie Mame, has passed away. And yet at the end, when we have finished getting to know her and attend her death and funeral, I was crying like a baby. And I don't cry at books!!
The plot to this book is true to Dotty Frank's genre: displaced Low Country gal comes home, gets mesmerized, and slowly regains her roots. In this case, the woman is Caroline Wimbley Levine, married to a cold and smug psychiatrist, Richard, and living in equally cold luxury in New York with their beloved son Eric.
When Caroline hears from her brother Trip that their mother, Lavinia, is losing her marbles and must be put in assisted living, Caroline grabs Eric and goes home for what she thinks will be for a few days. And there she is caught up in the gullah magic; the Low Country mystique (in which I thoroughly believe, thanks to Dotty's wonderful books) and a chance to become, once again, the "real" Caroline.
This might be the best of the four books Dotty Frank has so-far written. I cannot praise it highly enough. Grab it and lose yourself in a truly wonderful read!
Rating: 
Summary: Just Awful- really deserves no stars
Review: I hated this book. It is, from cover-to-cover, chock-full of cliches. The faithful black family retainers; the silly, southern belle best friends; the wacky mother (Lavinia);the conflicted main character (Caroline).
I also found the book a little anti-semitic in that the most vile character in the book is Caroline's Jewish husband who tells her he will come to see her mother "after she's dead". Caroline's brother, who treats his wife and children like second class citizens, however, is given all sorts of excuses for his behavior and given a pass on an affair, all the while Caroline is criticizing her husband for his sexual proclivities. Ridiculous.
I thought Lavinia's illness was a cheap shot plot point to garner the reader's sympathy. I just kept wishing for Lavinia to die already.
I also found that "yanh" southern dialect for "hear" EXTREMELY annoying, as it was on every other page.
It is mystifying to me that so many people gave this book 4 and 5 stars. Evidently a great number of people have never read good literature
Rating:
Summary: EDITOR!
Review: This book first of all needs an editor to cut about 1/3 of the maundering. But the low stars goes for the mean spiritedness in this family. The low rent sister-in-law maybe a greedy gold digger but please--who said the children should pay for the mother's sins. The scathing treatment of the children is horrible. They are treated like her low rent offspring when they are also half the so called upper crust brother's. The upper crust brother who drinks, gambles and won't even buy a proper home to house his ever increasing clan. Even a new born baby is condemned as a devil's minion--no wonder they turn out 'witchy' when their own daddy showers more attention on the nephew and they get treated like dirt from the get-go. Grandmother has no trouble handing over $50,000 to her spoiled son w/o question but thinks Frances Mae is greedy for wanting more room for her children. I want to get to know these people. Not.
Rating:
Summary: Her second excellent book!
Review: PLANTATION by Dorothea Benton FrankPLANTATION is the second book I've read by the author Dorothea Benton Frank. I was not thrilled with her first book, SULLIVAN'S ISLAND. But I already had PLANTATION in my pile of books to be read, and many have told me that this book was much better than her first. So, I read it. PLANTATION, like SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, is a story that takes place in the "low country" of South Carolina. This area includes Sullivan's Island (outside of Charleston) as well as the ACE basin, the area where the Ashepoo, Combahee, and the Edisto Rivers join at St Helena's Sound. It's a picturesque area of beauty that only nature could create, and it is near the Edisto River on a plantation called Tall Pines Plantation that the bulk of this story takes place. Caroline Wimbley Levine's search for happiness is one of the main themes of this book. She's married to a man that was once her professor in college, and while at one time in her life she loved this man with a passion, she is now at a point where she needs her space. The plot though is not as simple as that. Caroline is fighting demons in her head. She's grown up almost hating her mother for a past that started with her father's death. When her brother Trip asks her to come home to check on their mother's mental stability, Caroline does just that. After being gone for so many years, the memories come flooding back, memories of her father, the only parent she thought she loved, and a mother that abandoned them emotionally after their father had passed on. She becomes reacquainted with her brother and his wife, the lowly Frances Mae, who seems so uncouth that she embarrasses the entire family, including Trip. Through it all, she finds that she can come back home again, finds that she has bonded with her mother again, and returns to New York a much happier person. However, things in New York have not changed. Upon returning she finds that her husband has been unfaithful to her, and the scene where she confronts the two of them is something I will never forget. Now that her marriage to her husband Richard has failed, her mother's warnings about marrying Richard haunt her. It seems that no matter what she does, her mother never approves. She can never live up to her mother's high expectations. Now, with her husband left behind in New York, Caroline hopes to start a new life in South Carolina. With her son Eric, she moves back to Tall Pines Plantation with her mother. Another theme of this book is the unforgettable character of Miss Lavinia, Caroline's mother. She is a woman of southern class and is so outgoing and gregarious that she is almost a caricature of a woman of the Deep South. Lavinia is loved by all, and even Caroline cannot help but love her mother, who outside of her faults, is such a likeable person, but a formidable force in the family and amongst those who live their lives around her. As the reader learns about Caroline's past, we also learn about Lavinia's crazy life. The story is told in the first person, changing narrators between Lavinia and Caroline. Through this narration, we learn why Lavinia behaved the way she did and why she treated her children so horribly after losing her husband. We also learn about Trips internal demons, and how his father's death truly affected his life into adulthood. PLANTATION is not a simple story. It's a complex tale of a family that is falling apart, but through it all Caroline and Lavinia find a way to keep them together, and they both find the peace that they have been looking for all their lives.
Rating:
Summary: Loved It!
Review: This is the first Dorothea Benton Frank book I've read and I must admit, I'm hooked! Her characters are so real and convincing (not to mention hilarious). I'm a native of Charleston, SC and Ms. Benton has amazingly captured the essence and culture of the Lowcountry in this wonderful story. Would I recommend this book to others? You bet!
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