Customer Reviews

The New Southern Gentleman

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I've been waiting for this book's release for awhile, having seen a draft copy of it some time back. Imagine if Fitzgerald were Southern, lived now, and had approached Gatsby from a slightly different perspective. That's sort of what Booth's satire, the NEW SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN, is like.

The focal characters, two law students born into once-proud families with good Southern pedigrees that have fallen upon less favorable times, swing back and forth between self-indulgent and loathesome, all the while playing at honor without really understanding the first thing about it.

The picture Booth paints is not a flattering one, and you're advised to come to the book with a healthy sense of humor.

There's a pretty good interview with Booth on The Lullaby Pit.

Meet Dan and Alex, two southern law students who don't have a clue about honor, but who clumsily wrap themselves in its protection by providing lip service to it...and like the effect of a news report covering a horrific event, sensibilities are offended, but the public craves more.

Evelyn and Alicia--two young women who stir in emotional and sexual ingredients, offend the senses a little less, but just a little less. Their ingrained pragmaticism--simply because they are female--prompts them to simply do whatever they feel they must to get along with the men they're presented with. It's the old, but thriving dilemma: "Men--can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, can't shoot 'em."

The only true to one's self character found in this wryly humorous work is Jason; a truly repulsive frat cat with few, if any, scruples--but at least he knows he is unscrupulous and makes no attempt to play at being a gentleman. Neither Dan nor Alex have a clue about what really drives them--they hide behind what is best termed southern historical gentlemanliness only to be exposed as self-ingratiating clods; whereas Jason, a rebel of expected norms, has no reason to hide.

The characters living in this novel will drive a true loyalist to romantic southern mannerisms mad for the mostpart, whereas the storyline will grab them and have them examining their own southern ideals.

The New Southern Gentleman pricks the intellect with its edginess. Readers will shake their heads, laugh out loud, and ultimately applaud this Jim Booth treasure.

Reading this was a great joy. There are many of us who have waited a long time to read a published piece of work from Jim Booth - it was well worth the wait.

The main characters play both sides of the fence - you love them one minute, loathe them the next. I could not wait to turn the page to see what they would do next.

The book makes this southern girl wonder if there are still good ol' southern gentlemen out there.

I have never had a problem with the South. I like grits and ACC sports and the Clintons. So I wasn't exactly anticipating the attack on chivalry and tradition (read chauvinism and classism) that The New Southern Gentleman delivers, with a vengeance even Sherman would envy.

The novel opens quietly on a young man, Dan Deal, as he confidently strides through a world completely under his command. But it quickly becomes clear just how much of that world is illusory, and we feel compelled to sympathize with Dan, the innocent dreamer, the gentleman among scoundrels. Then we discover that it has always been clear to Dan that his world is just a mirage, and things start to get really interesting.

Mr. Booth's writing is pure and precise, with those sweet, indolent tongues of Dixie concealing the all-steel construction of his New-South sentences. The tone is impartial and the timing is perfect. He's quite the storyteller.

The best first novel this side of Fitzgerald. Five Stars.