A review by cher_n_books
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
1.0
1 star - I really hated it.
A long, boring soap opera about small minded, judgmental, gossipy people in a backwoods town that specializes in making a full blown scandal over every petty incident. It includes something for everyone: racism, sexism, chauvinism, religious prejudice, and "yankeeism". It is like an all you can read buffet of ignorance.
But there's something for the romantics too! A charming love story about a vile old adulterer, whom after lusting for years after a woman young enough to be his daughter, he finally marries her three short weeks after he buries his wife of decades. (Well he had to move fast in case "someone else got her first").
Thankfully I read this one via the audiobook version as it would have been an even slower and more painful read otherwise due to the thick southern vernacular:
If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog.
Ain't the best prayin' jest bein' with God and talkin' a while, like He's a good friend, stead a-like he runs a store and you've come in a-hopin' to git a bargain?
-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
First Sentences: Three weeks after Granny Blakeslee died, Grandpa came to our house for his early morning snort of whiskey, as usual, and said to me, "Will Tweedy? Go find yore mama, then run up to yore Aunt Loma's and tell her I said git on down here."
A long, boring soap opera about small minded, judgmental, gossipy people in a backwoods town that specializes in making a full blown scandal over every petty incident. It includes something for everyone: racism, sexism, chauvinism, religious prejudice, and "yankeeism". It is like an all you can read buffet of ignorance.
But there's something for the romantics too! A charming love story about a vile old adulterer, whom after lusting for years after a woman young enough to be his daughter, he finally marries her three short weeks after he buries his wife of decades. (Well he had to move fast in case "someone else got her first").
Thankfully I read this one via the audiobook version as it would have been an even slower and more painful read otherwise due to the thick southern vernacular:
If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog.
Ain't the best prayin' jest bein' with God and talkin' a while, like He's a good friend, stead a-like he runs a store and you've come in a-hopin' to git a bargain?
-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
First Sentences: Three weeks after Granny Blakeslee died, Grandpa came to our house for his early morning snort of whiskey, as usual, and said to me, "Will Tweedy? Go find yore mama, then run up to yore Aunt Loma's and tell her I said git on down here."