FROM JILL MCCORKLE
Remarkable ironies and insights guide these wholly original characters into a world you’ll never want to leave. The darkly comic brilliance of Melanie Sumner shines on, and if we’re lucky, will do so for a long, long time to come.
Remarkable ironies and insights guide these wholly original characters into a world you’ll never want to leave. The darkly comic brilliance of Melanie Sumner shines on, and if we’re lucky, will do so for a long, long time to come.
FROM POP MATTERS
There's something about a book set in the South. The lazy, elegant atmosphere. The juxtaposition of strict social regulations with hysterical and rebellious tendencies. High expectations and major disappointments. Thus is The School of Beauty and Charm, the new novel by Melanie Sumner, a coming-of-age tale that bears the marks of the Southern childishness of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and the heartbreak and insanity of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone.
There's something about a book set in the South. The lazy, elegant atmosphere. The juxtaposition of strict social regulations with hysterical and rebellious tendencies. High expectations and major disappointments. Thus is The School of Beauty and Charm, the new novel by Melanie Sumner, a coming-of-age tale that bears the marks of the Southern childishness of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and the heartbreak and insanity of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone.
A SOUTHERN EDITOR'S OPINION
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.
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.
FROM SOUTHERN SCRIBE
In The School of Beauty and Charm, Melanie Sumner has created a perfect blend of humor and satire.
Louise Peppers, the novel's narrator, has a great deal to rebel against. Her father Henry, a businessman, longs for a calm household. Her mother, Florida, has artistic pretensions and Baptist inclinations. As parents, their goal is to rear socially acceptable, well-educated, Christian children. Louise describes her family as, "... regular white.... We have no rhythm, and when we watch others dance, we tend to blush. Spicy foods burn our tongues .... The whole family avoids discussing sex, politics, and religion, favoring the topic of weather..." Click here to read article
In The School of Beauty and Charm, Melanie Sumner has created a perfect blend of humor and satire.
Louise Peppers, the novel's narrator, has a great deal to rebel against. Her father Henry, a businessman, longs for a calm household. Her mother, Florida, has artistic pretensions and Baptist inclinations. As parents, their goal is to rear socially acceptable, well-educated, Christian children. Louise describes her family as, "... regular white.... We have no rhythm, and when we watch others dance, we tend to blush. Spicy foods burn our tongues .... The whole family avoids discussing sex, politics, and religion, favoring the topic of weather..." Click here to read article
