Crazy Ladies [Mass Market Paperback]

Michael Lee West (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 1991

From Tennessee to New Orleans, from hippie Haight-Ashbury to a remote desert ranch, here is a novel full of love and laughter, pain and redemption, told in the women's voices of one special family, that are as rich and recognizable as our own. Living large and hanging tough, they teach us the lessons we knew we were missing....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rebecca Wells's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is rivaled by a fictional sibling: Michael Lee West's Crazy Ladies. West's tale of wild women down South is faster and snappier than Wells's thick bayou prose gumbo, but it has some of the same virtues--a cast of wacky characters, lively regional dialogue, and a satisfying multigenerational time frame. The scene shifts from 1932 to 1972, and from Crystal Falls, Tennessee, to New Orleans to hippie Frisco and L.A., though it's mostly rooted in Tennessee, where sunflower gardens contain deep secrets and kids can light up whole summers with lightning bugs in a jar.

The crazy lady who starts the story is Gussie, vexed by her ornery first daughter, Dorothy. When Dorothy's kid sister, Clancy Jane, comes of age, the real ruckus begins, thanks partly to Gussie's helpless preference for sweet Clancy Jane over dour Dorothy, who calls Gussie "Mother Dear" from age 6 on. Sweet Clancy Jane turns out to be headstrong, too--she runs off in a poodle skirt with Hart, who works on oil rigs, Esso stands, and the odd Cajun girl on the side. And then the '60s hit, bringing on Gussie's grandkids, Bitsy and Violet, plus some jolting social changes reminiscent of Lisa Alther's Kinflicks. Though it's spiced with horror (rape, crib death, one character buried alive), the dominant tone is breezy humor. At one point, the sister with "thighs that could break a man's neck" catches her husband and her shapelier sister "wrapped around each other like stripes on a candy cane." Not a magisterial novel, but a really good read. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

The characters in West's promising first novel are richly eccentric and they exist in a colorfully evoked setting. However, there's little tension in this saga of a family in small-town Crystal Falls, Tenn. Though the story begins with the shock of a murder and the attempts of Miss Gussie Hamilton, resident matriarch, to conceal it, the murder has little importance in the ensuing narrative, even when the body is unearthed decades later. Meanwhile, Miss Gussie, her three daughters and their daughters endure various dramatic vicissitudes, including a fair share of illegitimate births, betrayals and divorces. (Three generations of daughters reunite under Miss Gussie's roof). Miss Gussie's daughter Dorothy is the only truly "crazy" lady among them: her whining sibling rivalry blossoms into self-absorption and culminates in nasty, dangerous paranoia. The extremity of her neurosis seems unwarranted unless one accepts her as a bad seed, but she remains the family troublemaker until she receives her well-deserved comeuppance. Cultural referents, such as pop song titles and lyrics, keep the time frame intact and convey the cadence of life in the rural South, and though readers may become somewhat exasperated by Miss Gussie's flaky kin, they should enjoy West's portraiture of women who triumph over the problems that fate and their own difficult personalities bring into their lives.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Ivy Books (July 30, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804108293
• ISBN-13: 978-0804108294
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,031,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Lee West grew up on the Gulf Coast with a wild tribe of Southern cooks. She is the author of Crazy Ladies, Mad Girls in Love, She Flew the Coop, American Pie, Mad Girls in Love, Mermaids in the Basement, Consuming Passions, and Gone With a Handsomer Man. Look for A Teeny Bit of Trouble in April 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best one yet..., January 31, 2002

By 

Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crazy Ladies: A Novel (Paperback)

Finishing Crazy Ladies marks the end of my tour de West, and I am so happy it has ended on such a fantastic note! I loved this novel and all of its humor, quirks, sadness, eccentricities and love. Michael Lee West is the best southern fiction writer in my book, and I can't wait for Mad Girls in Love to be published so I can read more.

Crazy Ladies is just that: CRAZY! A novel told in six voices, readers are treated to the intertwining lives of three generations of women, plus a maid that ties up the saga nice and tight. Miss Gussie begins the novel in 1932 with a bang of a drama and the sparks keep flying up until the end in 1972. Forty years of children, grandchildren, husbands, war, hippies, poverty, murder, rape, jealousy...it's all there. Crazy Ladies is a pageturner to the nth degree and will give readers whiplash with all its goings-on.

Michael Lee West's writing has a cozyness about it, a nice relaxing feeling that will make the pages fly by. She brings to life the signs of the times with passion and zeal; you can't help but smile and cry as your emotions are tugged in all directions. Crazy Ladies is wonderfully addictive, sweet and poignant, and outrageously funny. A fantastic epitome of southern life -- one that is not to be missed.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Lee West's Debut Novel, July 5, 2000

By 

Roz Levine - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crazy Ladies (Mass Market Paperback)

Crazy Ladies opening chapter is so riveting and harrowing that it will immediately capture your attention and won't let you stop turning pages until the end. This is the story of six southern women that takes place over a forty year period from 1932 through 1972. These women: Miss Gussie, family matriarch, her maid Queenie, her daughters, Dorothy and Clancy Jane and their daughters, Bitsy and Violet, take turns narrating the story, telling a rich, compelling tale of American life during those times. The real strength of this book are its wonderfully drawn characters and Ms West's smart, eloquent writing. A novel full of life's successes and disappointments, told with wisdom, insight and humor. Crazy Ladies is a story that both entertains you and breaks your heart, leaving you breathless and wanting more.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crazy about Crazy Ladies, April 17, 2000

By 

Janine Johnson (Chesterfield, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crazy Ladies: A Novel (Paperback)

To be honest, I picked up this book planning on light fare type of reading material. What I found was so much more. While this book was not so deeply or poetically written in the league of certain books such as "White Oleander", it kept me interested and looking forward to the next chapter. I really admired the author's ability to initally protray Dorothy as somewhat ghoulish and repulsive, yet when you read her chapters, you realize how much of this pitiful behavior has perhaps been learned and ingrained in her upbringing. My heart broke when reading the scene in the Vets office. You can see that for once in her life, Dorothy experienced true unconditional love.

Some of the charactors may have been weak and somewhat detached, however that was easily offset by the strength in the other charactors. I enjoyed this book more then "The Devine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" because the charactors in this book were flawed and not as successful in their lives, hence, more human.