Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society
Nov 29, 2012
Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society
Author: Amy Hill Hearth Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Atria Books; Original edition (October 2, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1451675232
ISBN-13: 978-1451675238
Publisher: Atria Books; Original edition (October 2, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1451675232
ISBN-13: 978-1451675238
Book Description:
Eighty-year-old Dora, the narrator of a story that
began a half century earlier, is bonding with an unlikely set of
friends, including Jackie Hart, a restless middle-aged wife and
mother from Boston, who gets into all sorts of trouble when her family
moves to a small, sleepy town in Collier County, Florida, circa 1962.
With humor and insight the novel chronicles the awkward North-South cultural divide as Jackie, this hapless but charming “Yankee,” looks for some excitement in her life by accepting an opportunity to host a local radio show where she creates a mysterious, late-night persona, “Miss Dreamsville,” and by launching a reading group—the Collier County Women’s Literary Society—thus sending the conservative and racially segregated town into uproar. The only townspeople who venture to join are regarded as outsiders at best—a young gay man, a divorced woman, a poet, and a young black woman who dreams of going to college.
Idgie Says:
This is a fun, easy read of a book that's filled with the usual Southern eccentrics - but these ones are more along the lines of just everyday people with tiny little quirks that make them not fit in completely with the "proper" people in town. In other words, characters that are easy to relate to.
The stories stay fairly light and delve into each character's lives and what brings them into the book club. But darker passages arise regarding secrets that remain hidden for years, unhappy marriages and of course the Great White Elephant in Southern culture - the Klan.
The ending is very pat and unrealistic, but the story that gets you there is still worth reading. After all, "fiction" does have a certain meaning for a reason!
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Reviewed by Idgie. If you would like to have the Dew review a book, please contact me at dewonthekudzu@gmail.com
