A Southern Exposure [Paperback]

Alice Adams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 1996

"A work that will be for many readers as memorable as the last decade's Superior Women, and her exquisite novel from the 1970s, Listening to Billie."
--San Francisco Chronicle
It is 1939, a brief, hopeful moment between the Depression and war. The Baird family--Harry, Cynthia, and their precocious daughter Abby--have escaped the burdens of their Connecticut life to salvage themselves in the sleepy southern town of Pinehill, North Carolina. But the Bairds soon discover that their new home is not quite as idyllic as it seemed up north. And while the family's fondest desire is to be enveloped by the timeless town and its eccentric characters, clouds of war loom darkly, suggesting the possibility of change. But who among them will change, and in what startling ways, remains to be seen. . . .
"What a terrific book. I loved its rich, recognizable characters, the intricacies and excitement of the plot, the beauty of the writing. I laughed out loud a number of times, growled with jealousy at Alice's skills, and stayed up all night to finish it."
--Annie Lamott
"Deliciously readable, evocative, sensuous, and intoxicating as a gossip with an old, smart friend."
--Mary Gordon
"A seductive panorama of a small southern town in the late 30s . . . With great truth and clarity, this novel captures it all."
--The Boston Globe
"Adams is a modern-day Jane Austen. . . . A Southern Exposure is a timeless comedy of manners."
--The Dallas Morning News

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Her deft prose both sensual and sophisticated, Adams, in her ninth novel, leaves the San Francisco setting of her recent books (Almost Perfect, etc.) to explore the intrigues and desires of the residents of a small North Carolina town. The country is in the grip of the Depression when the bright and beautiful Bairds?Cynthia and Harry, and their young daughter, Abigail?move to Pinehill. "They are, as they might half-ironically put it to each other, on the lam" from their too demanding and expensive life in Connecticut. In fact, there is much half-ironic about the novel, including Cynthia's secret reason for choosing Pinehill: it is the home of her favorite (and rumored to be sexy) poet, Russ Byrd. As the Baird's determinedly climb Pinehill's tiny but formidable social ladder, they encounter people thoroughly entrenched in the communal hierarchy and in their environment; at parties, the cleverly unattributed dialogue gives the sense that the town is of one mind. And yet each of the dashing characters is distinct?Dolly Bigelow, the pretty gossip; Jimmy Hightower, a writer manque who shares Cynthia's fascination with Russ Byrd; Odessa, Dolly's servant, who seems as suspicious of Cynthia's passive disapproval of Southern segregation as she is of Dolly's overt racism. Meanwhile, Russ neglects his wife, who has a breakdown; has a passionate affair with the town beauty, who bears him a son whom she passes off as her younger brother; and eventually becomes himself "helpless among the major passions of women"?including Cynthia's. Such melodramas feel witty, given Adams's intelligent characterization, and are at equal pitch with her descriptions of Pinehill's flush, distracting beauty. As always, her forte is the subtle misunderstandings and meshings of human relationships, viewed with both irony and compassion.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

During the Great Depression, Harry and Cynthia Baird and their daughter, Abigail, run from their New England roots to Pinehill, North Carolina, hoping to escape from debt, social obligations, and boredom. Instead, they stumble into a small-town soap opera with its own rules of conduct they struggle to understand. The mystery of the Southern way of life unravels as they settle into its rhythms. Their "Southern exposure," brief and idyllic, broadens them and helps them to approach the future with a new point of view. Adams's (Almost Perfect, Knopf, 1993) insightful descriptions and dialog make engaging reading. The characters are both complex and complete. Recommended for general readers.?Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (October 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449911136
• ISBN-13: 978-0449911136
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,800,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One of our best writer's best books, April 1, 2011

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Southern Exposure (Paperback)

Alice Adams was one of the great storytellers of the late 20th century, best known for her short stories, but I've always loved her novels. And she was one of the great delineators of character, too, painting deft portraits of urbane but conflicted Northern women and smart but constricted Southerners. And she could set them in their milieu and tell you all the important things to know about them in just a few sentences. The setting this time is the small college town of Pinehill (North Carolina, probably, though it's never specified) and the time is 1938, with the Depression having made a lasting mark especially on communities that were never that well off to begin with. And most people are aware by now that another war is coming, though few will say so and most don't want to think about it. Cynthia and Harry Baird and their 12-year-old daughter, Abigail, have fled Connecticut (each for their own reasons) for a place where they hope they can regain their self-respect and their financial balance. Harry had a job he hated. Abby's school was full of rich girls she didn't like; her only real friend was the son of the school's black janitor. Cynthia had bills at Lord & Taylors, but she also has a crush (without having ever met him) on James Russell Lowell Byrd, a regionally famous poet living in Pinehill. The point of view switches between the two women and Russ Byrd himself (Harry mostly just provides background for his wife and daughter) as they sort out the complications in their lives and, as you knew they would, begin to intertwine about each other. Cynthia and Abby also have a great deal of adjusting to do (or not) when it comes to Southern susceptibilities regarding race and gender. And then there's young Deirdre Yates, astonishingly beautiful and with her own secrets and pressures, and there's Jimmy Hightower, who deliberately built his big new house just down the road from Russ Byrd's, hoping some of his writing talent would rub off. And there's Jimmy's wife, Esther, an Oklahoma Jew, who lives in terror of what Hitler might do. All of these people exist in four or five dimensions and their individual stories -- which Adams lets the reader in on a little at a time, like real life -- will keep you reading steadily until you finish the book. And you will wish there was more.

Adams tosses out little observations that make you pause and think: Yes. Like, two people approaching middle age, on a stroll across a small college campus, who stop and sit on the steps in front of the library among a group of students, because it makes them "feel young by contagion." Or, at a party, Cynthia observes, "Have you noticed how Southerners get more and more Southern as they drink? So interesting." Wow. That's a great ear. There's also the nighttime torchlight parade through Pinehill that precedes the college's upcoming game against Duke, which frightens Abby and she doesn't know why. But the reader can imagine similar parades featuring swastikas taking place at that very moment -- and perhaps similarly sinister torchlight gatherings not so many years before in the South that ended with lynchings. None of this is made explicit but if you pay attention, it's there.

0 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read, August 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Southern Exposure (Paperback)

I enjoyed the book but I can't help but thinking about how unsafe the sexual activity was in this book. I know that it took place in the 30s and 40s but I was reading it with '01 eyes and got dizzy with all of the adultery and unsafe sex.

The protagonist Cynthia Baird was so flighty! She wanted to go to law school but she also wanted to run around having affairs. What about her husband?

So much for the "old days" being so sexually repressive!