The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell
Aug 8, 2006
Author: Loraine Despres
Publishing House: Harper Collins
Published: June, 2006
www.lorainedespres.com
http://lorainedespres.blogspot.com/2006/09/courage-to-live-your-life.html
I was offered the opportunity to review this book by Harper Collins and I jumped at the chance.
Belle Cantrell reminded me of someone close to me.. myself.
She knows what she SHOULD act like, what the people of the town thinks she should act like, what she doesn't want people to think of her.. but...
she also knows what she WANTS to act like.
It's the 1920s in Louisiana. Women are trying to get the vote. They're bobbing their hair. Liquor's banned. The Ku Klux Klan is coming around town. Her Jewish friends are encountering racism in the town, along with her black friends being chased out of the same town.
Belle believes she killed her husband by the fact that he died in a fight defending her honor after someone showed him the picture of her being arrested wearing a swimming outfit while he was at war.
The guilt is strong, but the yearning to live a life of her own is stronger.
She has a 17 year old daughter she’s trying to raise in the right and proper manner that the times demand, while not setting a bad example with her yearning for a married man who happens to be her best friend’s brother. At the same time she finds herself fending off the advances of a man her Mother-in-law has all picked out as the next husband to take care of her, her property and to keep her in line at the same time.
Belle has the most amusing way of quoting the proper "Primers of Propriety and Virtue" that she grew up with when in a ticklish situation, but then making her own book in her head..." The Southern Girls' Guide to Men and other Perils of Modern Life". These quotes come up every time she's in a 'ticklish' situation.
I would classify this as a nice summer read book, but with enough "guts" to make you think about things... freedom, racism, woman's rights.... and love.
