Margaret Mitchell's estate tried to do to this clever parody of Gone With the Wind what Sherman did to Atlanta. But Randall won a court battle over alleged copyright infringement, turning her first novel into one of the most talked-about books of the year—and making fools of those who bid more than $400 for advance copies on eBay.
Randall loved Mitchell's 1936 book, but wondered: What about the slaves? Believing the original story racist, Randall retells it through the eyes of a new character, Scarlett O'Hara's mulatto half sister Cynara, an ex-slave. Cynara is fiercely jealous of Scarlett (here renamed Other), but this time Rhett (now simply R) dumps Other for Cynara. "He was the prize, and I wanted the prize to feel and know, taste and see that I could win it," Cynara writes.
Frankly, m'dear, the concept is fascinating. But the book's first half is as slow as a southern summer afternoon. And the novel is full of stereotypes: All the white characters are stupid or weak. "Garlic [a slave] pulled the string and Planter [his master] danced like a bandy-legged Irish marionette," Randall writes. But a lyrical style and intriguing reflections on race make this rewrite deserving as well as daring. (Houghton Mifflin, $22)
Bottom Line: The author done good
What My Children Taught Me About Trout Fishing, Jelly Toast, and Life
By Marc Parent
We know they're out there, but we don't hear much from stay-at-home fathers. The aptly named Parent, who cared for his two toddler sons in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse while his wife taught fifth grade, shines a welcome light on one full-time dad's world. And surprise: It's not all roughhousing and unwashed dishes. In spare (if sometimes overly earnest) prose, Parent describes the many moments he finds himself being taught by his boys: playing board games without wanting to win; making the most of rainstorms; pondering death. "You took [my heart] when I wasn't watching," he thinks while observing his sons, "and I will never have it back." Every parent will know what he means. (Little, Brown, $21.95)
Bottom Line: Deeply felt dad's-eye view
By Philip Roth
Roth's searing and cold-eyed novel is about the 60s, both the Day-Glo decade and the gray-haired one. Turning 70, Roth's narrator, Professor David Kepesh, finds marriage an institution, as in maximum-security lockdown. When he's not picking apart books on public television, he's picking young women to join a sad conga line of conquests stretching back to the 1960s, when, declaring himself a paragon of "emancipated manhood," he left his wife to enlist in the sexual revolution. But he's about as free as the dog who gets an electric shock every time he tries to stick his nose past the front lawn. Sexually omnivorous and occasionally brutal, Kepesh has a frosty relationship with his 42-year-old son (whom he advises to dump his wife and join the party) and no one to grow old with; instead, he is obsessed with his own "decay all the while." So he hunts such prey as a beautiful 24-year-old student. But the reptilian professor's self-criticism is so honest that it's hard not to feel for him when he argues that even a creature of his years should still be "unapologetically an unmonastic old man susceptible still to the humanly exciting." (Houghton Mifflin, $22)
Bottom Line: Roth creeps closer to the Nobel
By Janet Evanovich
Beach book of the week
Expect a laugh per page as big-haired bounty hunter Stephanie Plum chases the depressed but gun-happy septuagenarian Eddie DeChooch in this witty, gritty seventh episode of Evanovich's popular crime series. Considered a smalltime crook, DeChooch turns out to have a dead woman in his toolshed and some dangerous enemies who kidnap Plum's stoner high-school pals. The grapevine in Italian-American Trenton, N.J., proves more effective than Plum's detective work, resulting in a plot that relies on explanatory dialogue rather than clever twists. But a cast of good-hearted hoods and nutty family members to rival The Sopranos' (Plum's randy granny is a hoot) more than makes up for that. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Plum pick
By Jane Green
If money can't buy you love, it still comes in handy when you want to be swathed in the Gucci and Prada labels craved by Libby Mason, a London showbiz publicist who can't afford the glad rags and can't find a man. Her choices are slim: Nick, a gorgeous novelist who is broke and lives in a dump, and Ed, a moneyed financier whose Platinum AmEx card can't buy him a personality. Libby means well, but her gold-digging streak couldn't be more obvious if she carried a pickax. It takes her the whole book to figure out what readers know before they get past the title page: Love is more important than a society-page wedding. (Broadway, $19.95)
Bottom Line: Maybe not
- Contributors:
- Olivia Abel,
- Kim Hubbard,
- Kyle Smith,
- Anne-marie O'Neill,
- Joseph V. Tirella.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
