Customer Reviews

The School of Beauty and Charm

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Based on an interview I heard with the author on NPR, I expected the book to be a quirky comic romp about a Southern family. While the book seems to start out that way, it completely turns on you and becomes much more. More than any other author I've read recently, Melanie Sumner completely understands the mother-child relationship in America. In the relationship between Louise and her mother, I see almost every mother I have ever met. The extremeness of Louise Peppers' rebellion may seem like it comes out of left field as one reviewer noted. On closer inspection, however, it's a rebellion like many teenagers have experienced. Louise doesn't know why she does what she does - she just does it because she's a teenager and hasn't figured anything out yet. I would recommend this to any parent having a hard time coping with an unruly teenager and any teenager who feels chafed by their parents but doesn't quite know why.

The School of Beauty and Charm by Melanie Sumner; Wow! This book is filled with emotions that we are rarely able to confront eye to eye, but is written with a frankness that is not only sought after but often necessary! Take my word; this book is a movie waiting to happen! More books Melanie, Please!

This excellent story of the roamings and "maturation" of an independent young Southern hellcat has kept me howling for two days now. From flower-eating cats to poodle-eating owls to sneakily thrown devil's paws, to unprotected sex with carnies, the parade of oddities and absurdities called forth by this author will give even the most jaded sense of humor a good workout.
Underneath all this is a sweet story about a rural (kind of) Southern family with the eccentricities of all Southern families, and their attempts to keep sane in the face of adversity. Definitely worth your while.

Okay, this is what I loved about The School of Beauty and Charm:

The hamster named America The Beautiful
The old Kentucky farmer who asks, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?" on his death bed.
The sex scene on the Ferris Wheel.
The inmate reading Southern Living in her cell.
The father who routinely lets the family car run out of gas because he's compulsively shopping for the best price.
The unfriendly encounter between two Bible Thumpers.
A teenager's seduction of her would-be rapist.
A conservative business man's retirement speech - for the first time in his career, he draws a blank and ends up telling the company about his earliest memory.
Florida - the mother. Everything about Florida.

I'm reading this book for a class, and it's the best out of the whole pile. At first I was like, oh no, another southern chick-lit book, but this one is like a classic or something. I can see my grandkids reading it. Everybody in it is really, really real. I can see everything happening just like I was there. This lady is Great!

I admit it, I don't usually read stuff by women, and I almost never read southern fiction. But...my sister gave me this novel because she read it in her English class, and it went over pretty big. Usually when I read a book, unless it's by Hemingway or something, I skip over pages. Most books are too long. But The School of Beauty and Charm is tight, man! Every word is necessary. It's like Chekov. I would go on an on, but then I would be wordy and laladah. Seriously, read this one.

The School of Beauty and Charm is a stunning first novel. The intense, hilarious energy that Evan Connell describes as "Hieronymus Bosch in rural Georgia" is balanced by crisp, exquisite sentences. Sumner's tale is classic: a rebel comes of age in a small, conservative town, and like all great classics, it can be read again and again. The characters are real, and the writing is beautiful.
Florida, the mother of the protagonist, is a character like Dickens's Scrooge or Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who takes a room in the reader's mind and never quite moves out. Here she is rallying for her husband not to leave the house during a tornado warning:
When he returned to the kitchen with his briefcase, Florida was ready for him. She was wearing what she always wore in the morning: a slinky zebra-print housecoat that zipped to the floor and a pair of sparkling gold spandex house shoes with hard soles that clacked on the tiles. A quilted green scarf covered her head, to keep her hair from going flat while she slept. Even though it was still dark outside, she wore lipstick. "I know you don't want to listen to me," she said, "but I'd like to make a suggestion. May I make one suggestion?"
In the background, a musak version of Delta Dawn is playing on the intercom...and this is what Sumner does best - mix tension with humor. Like David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Melanie Sumner presents the unbearable (adolescent alcoholism, the death of a brother, and an excruciating painful mother/daughter relations) with such wicked sass that the reader is laughing and crying at the same time. Jill McCorkle describes the author's trenchant wit as "darkly comic brilliance."
What finally marks this young writer as a great artist is her reverence for humanity. The School of Beauty and Charm is a love story. It exposes the love that runs between parents and children, freaks and preppies, and even wardens and their prisoners. From the first sentence, "I was born again, for the first time, when I was seven," to the last, "The guard jangled her keys, and I passed through the pearly gates," Sumner addresses the love between man and God.
Melanie Sumner, winner of the coveted Whiting Award, is a writer to watch closely.

Initially, I found this book quite charming indeed. The tale of the Peppers family was quirky (but realistic) and amusing. Once the book starts zeroing in on Louise and her downward spiral of self-destruction, it gets a little boring--another adolescent angst novel involving substance abuse. The thing is, it's never clear WHY Louise should have so much self-loathing. She comes from a loving family (with a neurotic mother, but who doesn't have one of those?) When her brother dies, her emotional problems increase, but there's not enought to convince me that she should remain so distraught for the rest of the story.

This book really jumps around, too, so there isn't a lot of character building. Louise's family is portrayed on a pretty superficial level--I guess they're all supposed to look ridiculous to make us better understand why Louise runs from them. Anway, I did truly enjoy about the first half; the second half loses momentum and the part where Louise wants to be a clown and runs off to join the circus is completely outlandish. But overall, I think it's worth sticking with this book because its good moments are certainly worthwhile.

This novel begins as a charming tale of a neurotic Southern family as seen by the young protagonist, a quirky young woman ill at ease in her surroundings. Then, midstream, the narrative abruptly changes and begins detailing the protagonist's self-destructive behavior, ultimately culminating in a poorly conceived trip to join the circus. The writing throughout is strong, but I wish the author had stuck with the original plotline, without devolving into a _White Oleander_-esque parade of horribles.

To me, this is zany, f unny, and serious. A search for a real identity, but with lots of zippy, off-the-wall lines that constantly surprise and delight. *** Also read "The Monster," an intriguing story about another young girl who's possibly (?) being seduced.