Southern Gothic

Under Magnolia, A Southern Memoir, was a great surprise. I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy reading yet another novel about growing up in the South. But Frances Mayes (known for her Tuscany books) used poetic images and elegant prose to describe growing up in Georgia in the fifties. Passages like this one "…Listening to women - playing bridge, shelling peas, visiting the dressmaker - those who were dead seemed present…" - evoked the women of my own childhood in Mississippi in the sixties. But like all Southern families I know, this  story was not without its damaged characters and twists in the plot line.   Her parents, unhappy with each other and small town life, drank and fought in the background and sometimes foreground of her childhood.  Her father died while she was in high school and her feelings about him were even more complicated after his passing.  His death left her alone in the house with her mother throughout her difficult teen years and their relationship was fraught with emotion. But her tribute to her mother later in the book is one of the most beautiful I've ever read.

Mayes' mother, Frankye 

"She will never lean toward the light, moisten the thread between her lips, and thread the needle. She'll never throw one sheet on the floor and pile on the dirty laundry. Brush her hair a hundred strokes….no more - placing blue hydrangeas in a glass bowl, scraping her rings on the inside of the black mailbox, boiling jars for peach pickles, dabbing a bath powder puff under her arms, refusing catfish because they're bottom feeders, bidding grand slams, pulling meat off the bone for chicken divan, hand washing a peach silk slip, surrounding the birthday cake with pink camellias…" This describes my mother and probably some of your mothers as well, if you grew up in the South. 

Mayes never directly says why she has never written about her family of origin and her place of origin. Her beloved Tuscan books certainly evoke a strong sense of place and identification of the culture of that place. Yet, I, for one never knew about her Southern upbringing.  Once Mayes moved to California with her first husband in her early twenties, she never looked back on her past.  California is a place of re-invention and Mayes did just that.  She says, "When I left the South at age twenty-two, the force that pushed me west was a powerful as the magnet that held me."  She went on to later buy the home in Tuscany and began to write her many books about Tuscany. Her genre is memoir and essay, so this book at age 75 is a long-awaited remembrance for her fans.  She did write a novel, set in Georgia, called Swan, published in 2002, but I think this memoir is Mayes at her finest with strong imagery and boldly accurate descriptions of small town Southern life.

In the preface, Mayes shares what made her decide to write a book about her childhood. She was in Oxford, Mississippi, one of my favorite places, for a reading at Square Books, one of my favorite bookstores, and the feeling of being in a small town in the South brought back memories she had avoided for years. In fact, she said, "For years when I went back home to visit, I broke out in hives." As she wanders through Oxford and even visits Faulkner's house, the smells and sounds of the South that she had ignoring for years drew Mayes back in. She had long known the resemblances of Tuscany and the South - "the complex interconnections of family and friends, the real caring for one another, the incessant talk, emphasis on ancestors, the raucous humor, the appreciation of the bizarre, the storytelling, the fatalism, the visiting, the grand occasions…"  Now she realized that she wanted to go back to the South, to re-look at her past and to even live in the South. At the end of that visit to Oxford, Mayes called her husband and told him, "I want to move back South."  They did indeed move to rural North Carolina and Mayes wrote this lovely memoir about the South. Thank you Oxford and Square Books!  I was pleased to receive this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Peace. Love. Books.

When I travel, I make it my personal mission to visit either a bookstore or library in each place. I strongly believe in supporting independent bookstores, starting with my local favorite, Blue Willow Books, in Houston. So today, I want to give a shout-out to some of the bookstore bests from my travels so far this year. 

In late December (I'm counting this as 2014 since the visit was on the cusp of the new year), my niece took my daughters and me to the stellar Elliott Bay Book Company in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. With high ceilings and wooden floors, the bookstore felt airy and light. We spent a pleasant hour making our selections on a Sunday morning after a delicious brunch next door at Oddfellows.

Of course, I made several visits and purchases at my Mississippi favorite, Square Books in Oxford. The bookstore has THREE locations on the Square in Oxford - a young people's store, Square Books, Jr.; a discount store, Off Square Books; and the venerable two-story location on the prime corner in this literary city. Richard Howorth, the owner and a friend, is often around and it's wonderful to talk books with him.  This spring I bought a very special book there titled, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists by my old professor, William Ferris. This wonderful collection includes a CD and DVD.

I was lucky enough to go to Asheville, NC a couple of times this year and no visit there is complete without stopping in Malaprops, my favorite of the SEVEN bookstores this amazing city. I visited this bookstore with a dog! Yes, my friend was able to take her dog with us to Malaprops because they are dog friendly. This was a first for me – selecting books with a dog.

Over spring break, I visited Portland, Oregon for the first time and was able to go to Powell's City of Books with my sister. The store was everything I had hoped for and more: a whole city block and the world's largest independent used and new bookstore in the world. I was in book heaven wandering around to my heart's content. While there, I picked up The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, a book I enjoyed very much just recently.

During our Easter visit to New Orleans, we stayed within walking distance of my favorite spots in the Crescent City, Octavia Books. I bought a neat book of maps of New Orleans, called Unfathomable City: A New OrleansAtlas.  This wonderfully illustrated book sits in a place of honor on my coffee table, a reminder of the city I love.

This summer, I took my older daughter to my favorite Austin bookstore, BookPeople, after eating lunch at the Whole Foods flagship store on N. Lamar. We wandered and book looked for an hour, both purchasing books. I look forward to reading The All of It by Jeannette Haien with a forward by Ann Patchett.  I'll admit, I was attracted to it because of Patchett's name on the cover (I've had a Patchett obsession this summer - see future blog post), but I can't wait to start it. 

Last weekend, both of my daughters finally got to see my sister's home in Moscow, Idaho and enjoyed a visit to Bookpeople of Moscow, a gem of a bookstore in this small college town. This bookstore is one of the reasons my sister, a librarian at the University of Idaho, loves her new town so much.  

Independent bookstores are alive and well. These little lighthouses shine for all and keep many book lovers nourished and fed in this fast-paced world.  What wonderful bookstores have you visited recently?