Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Haywood Smith (Author) "I took the long way home that fateful midsummer day last July, maybe because I still couldn't quite believe what I was about to do..." (more)
Key Phrases: unaskable question, garage apartment, Miss Mamie, Mimosa Branch, Uncle Bedford (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"The only degree I have is a Ph.D. in Southern Bitch," proclaims Linwood Breedlove Scott, the feisty Prozac-popping, menopausal heroine of Smith's hardcover debut. When her husband drains their bank account and leaves her for a stripper, Lin retreats to her hometown of Mimosa Branch, Ga., to lick her wounds. Facing her conservative, gossipy Southern town as a newly divorced woman is no easy task, however, especially when her best friend lives miles away, her house has become a menagerie haunted by her Alzheimer's-stricken Uncle Bedford, and her boss at the drugstore is an uptight Northerner, Grant Owens, whom she finds disturbingly attractive. Determined to leave her meek hausfrau self behind and start taking charge of her life, she plots to seduce Grant and joins forces with an ex-con preacher with the proverbial heart of gold to oust the corrupt mayor from office. The story covers familiar territory, but Lin's efforts to make a home for herself in a now-unfamiliar town, to reconnect with her old friends and mend rifts with her family are well-observed and bittersweet. Snapshots of Southern living will charm the hardest-hearted Yankee; the purple bathtub full of pink begonias on Lin's mother's porch is irresistible. The inspirational tone becomes rather cloying as the happy-ever-after ending approaches, but strong characters and Smith's irrepressible wit anchor the fluff.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Left in a situation right out a bad country-and-western song (her husband has run off with a stripper), Linwood Breedlove Scott heads back her hometown of Mimosa Branch, GA, to create a new life. Lin finds her parents as crazy as they were when she married 30 years ago, and the small town outside of Atlanta is ripe with corruption. After a slow start, the novel seems to lurch from romance to parody to pop psychology to Southern belle humor, though the language at times sends some for smelling salts. There are funny moments, and Holiness preacher and mayoral candidate Donnie West is a great character. But humor is a matter of delicate balance, and Lin's Uncle Bedford falls flat; Alzheimer's is too horrible for many to inspire chuckles. Also tiring is the frequent male bashing. Smith has written six successful historical romance novels and should perhaps stay with the genre she's mastered. With reduced public library budgets in many states and an abundance of excellent Southern belle novels, this one can be ignored.
Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (October 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312300565
• ISBN-13: 978-0312300562
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,053,860 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch, November 21, 2002

By	Sandra Mitchell "Sandra Mitchell" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch focuses on Lin Breedlove Scott, who after 30 years of marriage to her first love, finds herself bitterly divorced. Now pessimistic towards all men, Lin returns home to Mimosa Branch, living with her parents, an aunt, and an uncle who isn't "with it" and a brother she has grown distant from.

Lin's most pressing issue is to save enough money to move into the apartment about her parent's garage, where she can regain a bit of privacy & self-respect. She lands a job at her old place of employment, the local drug-store. Lin gets to experience small town life once again, and her story unfolds as she mixes with a cast of zany characters and gets mixed up in the local small town politics & scandals. Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch had a lot of potential, and had it's cute moments, but overall I felt it was lacking in character development. The story was an easy read and the writing was good, I just couldn't identify with the main character as much as I hoped.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun sassy book!, March 18, 2005

By	Busy Mom (Ohio) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

I read The Red Hat Club first but I did pick this one up first at the bookstore ~~ it looks fun and after having surgery, I was definitely in the mood for FUN! Linwood is the character that I wish I could be ~~ speaks her mind and gets away with it. And this book had me laughing in several spots ~~ which is the best medicine that the doctors could recommend.

Linwood moves home after thirty years of marriage ~~ moves home to an ailing father, a bossy mom, an uncle who is slowly losing his mind and his beleagured wife. There is the long-suffering brother who is home after his numerous divorce. Linwood was just not anxious to be back home ~~ but she didn't have any place left to go.

Stuck in real estate classes at night, she works at the local pharmacy during the day time ~~ Linwood becomes embroiled with the local politics in butting heads with the current mayor and council ~~ and she also falls into lust with her next-door-neighbor. This book is just fun ~~ and not so predictable as I thought it might be. It's full of sassy humor and wit ~~ perfect for any woman who is going through a male-bashing period.

This book is intended to be fun ~~ not a serious tome of life ~~ and it worked for me! It's also a perfect beach/pool read for this upcoming summer! Be sure to bring your glass of iced tea and enjoy!

3-18-05

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well, I didn't like the Ya-Yas, either. , June 12, 2006

By	Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

A friend loaned me this book, and I found the premise intriguing and the promise of an escape-read appealing. Maybe you do have to be Southern to "get it," as another reviewer claims.

Though I enjoyed the setting (which was well-described and interesting), a few of the characters (especially the preacher/candidate who gives it all up to God with something bordering right on lunacy), and the consistent battles with hot flashes (a subject I'm learning more about every day), I was brought up short by the offhand racism in both the attitude and characterization of this book. The main character, Lin, considers herself enlightened because she wants to bring water service to the poor black part of her small town, but she makes these kinds of observations: "An Oriental couple--Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese? I could never tell--hovered close to the register...A young black couple with a runny-nosed baby argued in some kind of an indecipherable rap jargon..." Trust me, there's plenty of this to go around, including a loudly dressed hippy lesbian whose art is all concerned with the organs of reproduction, who (of course) makes Lin very, very nervous.

Yes, maybe you do have to be Southern to find this amusing. I kept trying to like the book, and failing. I guess since I'm divorced, I am also supposed to be amused by Lin's hatred of men. No men are good, no woman has a happy marriage, any woman who is married is just putting a good face on the fact that her husband is messing around. Love does not exist outside the Breedlove family, apparently, and is only seen in self-sacrificing old white women who show Lin the meaning of real love (it involves forgiving a man everything and changing his Depends). Who does this character think she is, I wanted to ask? She hides a bunch of nice furniture paid for by her husband so the IRS won't get it, shoves it into a garage apartment, and thinks it's a triumph?

Add in the mawkish conversations between Lin and her in-recovery brother where they sit on the porch and she says how badly she misjudged him and he tears up and says, "That means a lot coming from you, Lin," (this happens over and over and over again, or at least it feels as if it does) and the talky-talky-talky descriptions of corrupt city politics, and I really had to wonder how on earth I was going to finish it.

Perhaps the most offensive part of the book it is the aborted romp between Grant and Lin. She knows exactly who he is and what he wants, and he goes to a great deal of trouble to treat her with gallantry, even though he is not offering her love. When they FINALLY get to bed, after too many descriptions of his legs and chest and spicy man-tang scent, she keeps laughing at him. When he becomes frustrated and lashes out, she erupts in hatred at the man. "Oh how dare he desire me and not love me! He should be thrashed, the scoundrel! Thank goodness I ate five brownies, got drunk and called a girlfriend rather than have some sex! I am a true Southern lady!" It's baffling, insulting, and representative of the huge ax-to-grind, chip-on-shoulder attitude of this main character.

I finally had to admit that I found her loathsome and the book tedious, and skimmed about a hundred pages, just to say I finished it. No one else needs to bother.