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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by: John Berendt |
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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 975.8724 EAN: 9780679429227 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0679429220 Label: Random House Manufacturer: Random House Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: January 13, 1994 Publisher: Random House Release Date: January 13, 1994 Studio: Random House Features:
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| Customer Reviews | ||
 - Were sales influenced by witchcraft?I still can't fathom why this particular book spent over a year on the bestseller list. It's moderately good and would be especially interesting if you're visiting Savannah. It starts off rather slowly with a description by the author of his fascination with Savannah and with character sketches of people he meets there. They are defined by their obvious eccentricities rather than any psychological depth or unusual talents. One of those he meets is Jim Williams, who is successful in dealing in real estate and high end antiques but whose other trade is rough. The character sketches and glamorized descriptions of the tradition-bound and the flamboyant drag (no pun intended) on until almost halfway thought the book, when Williams kills a delinquent hustler and is charged with murder. The accounts of his four trials are well done, and at that point I found myself page-turning, although it's not up to Capote or Mailer or McGinnis. There are fascinating descriptions of voodoo rituals being used to influence the trial. I suppose it does contain a lot of bestseller ingredients, glitz, Faberge jewelry, Jacqueline Onassis, Southern Gothic, true crime, transvestism, weird sex, black magic, cooking, courtroom drama etc. but at the end I suspected that Berendt may have used some voodoo spells to influence all those people to buy it. Rating:  - Midnight SavannahThe audio book arrived in perfectMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil condition and we enjoyed listening to it. Rating:  - AWHeard so much about the movie and wanted to read the book. Could not get through the first chapter Rating: - Deliciousthough slow at times (hence the 4 stars) but the writing is effortless and seductive and the writer really captured the rich mystery of the south (what I know of it, I've only driven through a few times but that is how this part of the US feels) The characters he writes about are almost unbelievable, but he does it so well (I had a visceral reaction to almost every character, almost hated a couple of them) I laughed, I gasped ( I rolled my eyes a couple of times too) I gritted my teeth - bland is not a word that could be used to describe this book. It was a great read on the absurdities of humanity and I hope I find another book that's just as absorbing. Rating: - Long Trip, Great ListenWe took this book on a long car trip, and it kept us entertained all the way to Savannah. It also prepared us to enjoy Savannah more once we got there. The reader distinguished character voices very well, and the story itself is amazing. The interview with the John Berent adds value also. Savannah is so much more than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil though. If you go, allow yourself the pleasure of everything the city has to offer rather than focusing on the "literary" tour. |
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