Georgia Bottoms

Starred review from December 13, 2010
Sassy Southern belle Georgia has a lot of secrets: a rotation of gentleman callers with unique sexual needs, a mother with a tenuous hold on reality, and a lucrative (if dodgy) business of selling at a huge mark-up the folk art quilts she buys and passes off as her own creations. But then 9/11 comes along, Georgia's world of naughty innocence is changed forever, and all the plates she once spun so effortlessly in midair come crashing down: her illegitimate black son shows up on her doorstep; her best friend and town mayor, Krystal, loses her job; her demented mom and drunken brother become increasingly errant; and one of her boyfriends—a spiteful preacher—has an unfortunate attack of conscience and intends to publicly confess his affair and simultaneously condemn poor Georgia to hell. Childress (One Mississippi) is sassy magnolia lit's Truman Capote—sharply observant, unrelentingly honest, and downright hilarious—and his Georgia peach is the freshest bad girl to rise from the South since Scarlett O'Hara.

Starred review from December 1, 2010

The title of this novel from Childress (One Mississippi, 2006, etc.) refers to a person rather than to a place—and what a memorable character she turns out to be.

Georgia is a good ol' Alabama girl, actually a woman in her mid-30s when the novel opens. She lives with her mother, Little Mama, who's showing increasing signs of dementia, and with her wastrel brother (called Brother), who hits a tavern after every AA meeting. Life is pretty good for Georgia, however, because she freely gives her generous sexual favors to a number of prominent citizens in Six Points, Ala., including the judge, the Baptist preacher, the sheriff, the doctor, the bank president and the editor of the local newspaper. (She takes Mondays off.) Of course, each of these upstanding citizens thinks he's the only one being "serviced" by Georgia, and she takes great pains to keep them from knowing about each other. The affairs start to unravel a bit when Brenda Hendrix, the wife of the preacher, gets wind of her husband's unfaithfulness. Georgia quickly gets the upper hand, however, when she pulls some strings to get the preacher transferred to another backwater town. Georgia also presides over the biggest ladies' social event in Six Points, a genteel luncheon put on every September, but in 2001 this gustatory occasion is ruined by 9/11. Georgia can't believe that such a terrorist act could ruin her luncheon because "it doesn't have anything to do with us!" Other surprises are in store as well, for her 20-year-old son Nathan, whose father is black and one of Georgia's first flings, literally shows up at her doorstep, and a new Baptist preacher moves to town, movie-star handsome and quite interested in Georgia, whose reputation has preceded her. But this preacher is not exactly who he appears to be.

Light, amusing fiction.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

Georgia Bottoms is a real piece of work. An Alabama beauty in her thirties who goes to church for appearance's sake, she is juggling a lot of balls (pun intended): she is caring for her mother, Little Mama, who is slipping further into dementia; trying to keep her charming but worthless brother out of jail; and struggling to maintain their crumbling Southern home by sleeping with six town fathers, each assigned one night a week, who leave her "a little something" after their rendezvous. Oh, yes, then there's the matter of her son from a forbidden high school romance with an African American classmate, whose appearance is part of the unraveling of Georgia's carefully constructed house of cards. VERDICT Childress (Crazy in Alabama) is a master of regional detail--his portrayal of shallow, narcissistic Georgia (she's annoyed that 9/11 derails her annual ladies' lunch) is an amusing tale of small-town naughtiness that should please most readers. Just be sure to be up on notable U.S. events, or the last page may sail right on by you. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/10.]--Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2011
Perhaps no region of America is caricaturized through stereotypes as thoroughly and nakedly as the South. In Georgia Bottoms, Childress indulges these stereotypes more than he challenges them. Here the reader finds the hypocritical Baptist preacher, the gossipy congregation, and the femme fatale in impeccable dress. It is awfully hot outside, and the townspeople could not be politer. Of course, everyone is talking behind everyone elses back. This is problematic, as the storys conflict comes from the protagonists struggle to juggle a coterie of paramours, one of whomthe reader discovers earlyis the guilt-stricken preacher. All of this can be more cute than entertaining, especially in dialogue, where one finds few surprises. Childress is perhaps most charming between jokes; occasionally, in drawing a simple setting, he dazzles: The old town seemed suddenly lovely: long green lawns stretched out under live oaks, sprinklers chattering, flinging arcs of bright glitter. Some of the clapboard cottages were as old as the live oaks. Kids made skateboard racket on the broken sidewalks.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)