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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book was an unattractive, underwritten protégé of "To Kill a Mockingbird"—nevermind Flannery O'Connor, to whom the author was compared. There was no moral, no character growth whatsoever. If one is going to write utterly revolting characters, in order for the book to still be good they must also be compelling. They were not. The plot comes in a complete full circle of nothingness, which no conflict resolution whatsoever.
I just didn't really get into this book. It was hard for me to get through.
Cheryl this was a handsell for a long time! Remember it? Me neither! Other than it was sweet small town living.
I read this book about 13-14 years ago for a reading assignment. I didn’t remember a lot of the details but I remembered that I loved it so much, I kept it with the intention of reading it again. I can’t remember the last time I read something that made me go from sobbing to laughing so hard that I make the cat leave the room - all within the same page.
Olive Ann Burns was amazing at making her characters relatable and original. I wanted to be adopted by the Blakeslee-Tweedy family. I think I’m gonna keep this one in my collection. Who knows, maybe I’ll reread it in another 13-14 years.
Olive Ann Burns was amazing at making her characters relatable and original. I wanted to be adopted by the Blakeslee-Tweedy family. I think I’m gonna keep this one in my collection. Who knows, maybe I’ll reread it in another 13-14 years.
Love, love, love this book! It's one of my all-time favorites, great to read and re-read.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed this story for the most part. It was candid and made me laugh in some chapters, and others were very poignant and sobering. I would have given the book 4 stars, but took 0.5 off for the issues I had with the way the book handled race. Set in the Old South, race was a necessary topic to cover for the book, but I disliked the way the Black characters were written about. It felt unnecessarily derogatory and uninspiring (e.g. isn’t there another way to describe the Black man’s face other than “his black face”??). Other than that, which was a minor part of the novel, I truly enjoyed Cold Sassy Tree.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Racial slurs, Rape
It is kind of funny, in places. The protagonist (Will) is a 14 year old boy in the small and very Southern town of Cold Sassy in 1906. The town is named after a very old sassafras tree, and is thinking about changing the name. Modernity is encroaching on the town in other ways too, but mostly the town remains obsessed with tradition and gossip about who is breaking tradition. The central event of the book is the decision of Will's grandfather to re-marry just two weeks after his wife's death, and to a Yankee-ish (from Baltimore) much younger woman named Love. This is a huge scandal and of course Love is the one who is blamed and targeted by the town. The question of whether she will ever be accepted is what is driving the plot.
Most of the book centers on two types of humor - laughing at the often cruel pranks played by Will (and sometimes other characters) and laughing at the distress of other characters over things that seem petty to us as readers. Both of these are ways of "laughing down" at people that is tolerable in small doses but feels cheap after a while. Towards the end of the book Love tells a story about her past that is very sad and shocking, and not in keeping with the tone of the book at all. To me the events of the story do not explain her character as much as they conflict with it.
Unlike The Help, both the Black people and White people in the book are rendered in dialect. The White characters approve of the Black characters in the book, because they don't go against the established social order. The grandfather is a Confederate veteran and part of the reason why he is in a hurry to remarry is because he doesn't believe in hiring Black people but cooking and cleaning are seen as demeaning for a White woman to do (for money). At one point Love gently points out to Will that the Black people in his life know that if they ate the same food off the same plates as their White employers everyone would lose their minds, so they pretend to prefer to drink out of jam jars and eat out of pans to save face. He doesn't take it well in that moment, and it isn't brought up again later in the book.
Most of the book centers on two types of humor - laughing at the often cruel pranks played by Will (and sometimes other characters) and laughing at the distress of other characters over things that seem petty to us as readers. Both of these are ways of "laughing down" at people that is tolerable in small doses but feels cheap after a while. Towards the end of the book Love tells a story about her past that is very sad and shocking, and not in keeping with the tone of the book at all. To me the events of the story do not explain her character as much as they conflict with it.
Unlike The Help, both the Black people and White people in the book are rendered in dialect. The White characters approve of the Black characters in the book, because they don't go against the established social order. The grandfather is a Confederate veteran and part of the reason why he is in a hurry to remarry is because he doesn't believe in hiring Black people but cooking and cleaning are seen as demeaning for a White woman to do (for money). At one point Love gently points out to Will that the Black people in his life know that if they ate the same food off the same plates as their White employers everyone would lose their minds, so they pretend to prefer to drink out of jam jars and eat out of pans to save face. He doesn't take it well in that moment, and it isn't brought up again later in the book.
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
I loved the characters in this book. The story was very engaging and left me wanting to know what will happen to everyone next.