Review: Bound South by Susan Rebecca White
Bound South
by Susan Rebecca White
From Booklist
Louise Parker is a classic southern belle. Well-dressed and well-mannered, she can’t help but be frustrated by her daughter. Wild Caroline goes to a strict Christian prep school where she cheats in math class and can only focus on becoming an actress, until she has to leave after she’s discovered in flagrante delicto with her drama teacher. In the meantime Louise is distracted by Missy, the daughter of her housekeeper, a born-again evangelical who assists her mother in between trying to convert Louise’s gay son. Despite the consequences of Caroline’s behavior, Louise finds herself wishing she could be as careless and wondering how her life would have turned out had she chosen a different path. Even with their differences, Louise’s thoughts eventually lead her to believe that Caroline may be more of a southern dame and Louise more of a rebel than either of them thought. --Hilary Hatton
There are three main narrators: Louise, Caroline, and Missy. Each girl/woman is distinctive from one another, both in voice and personality, so you don’t even need the chapter headings to know the identity of the speaker. I found something in each character that I could really identify with. Louise is so blunt and thoughtless about the words she speaks that she appears cruel or bigoted, but she means well. She has always worked hard to maintain her role as a good wife and good mother, but as life throws her one surprise after another she is forced to re-evaluate her approach. Her daughter, Caroline, ran away to California when she was eighteen. We’re roughly the same age, in the same Bay Area, so many of the choices she makes and people she meets are the same sorts of faces and situations I get into every week. She’s utterly believable and real to me: Caroline could have been inspired by one of my co-workers or a classmate. Missy, with her drive and desire to ‘save’ Louise’s son, at first glance seems the perfect stereotype of the meddling, brimstone-and-hellfire born-again Christian. One of my friends in Texas is also in this mold; after Obama’s election last November she was convinced the world would end, he was the end of America, etc. I couldn’t get her to really discuss the issue with me, which was frustrating. Through Bound South’s Missy and the way she processed the world, my friend’s world view - although still seeming out of touch with reality as I understand it - made a lot more sense. Susan Rebecca White does a great job of highlighting the ‘Southerness’ of her characters, even as in incarnates differently in each person.
Bound South meanders carelessly to a close. Well, it’s not that the ending is careless. But the story doesn’t have a really specific start or a definitive resolution. It’s like the author stepped into the characters’ heads drove them around like they were cars until she ran out of gas. There’s no real destination in mind, but that’s OK. I suppose one could argue that since the book opens and closes with funerals, and some sort of theme or metaphor for life could be extrapolated out if one felt so inclined.
Susan Rebecca White's debut novel was as refreshing as a tall glass of sweet tea on a hot summer day, a leisurely and humorous vision of the 21st century Southern belle. Check it out!
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