Southern Tales - Holiday Read

I think this is the last of the books I'm going to squeeze in before Christmas:

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

It is a compilation of three essays (memoirs, really) about his time as a child growing up in Alabama and New Orleans in the 1930's.  In the store, I read the description and just stood there for a while, pawing through the pages, because I couldn't tell if it would be a boring read or not.  Being from the south is a funny thing: sometimes books about it are dead-on accurate and nostalgic.  Sometimes they are painfully dull.

This one is very good.

The stories highlight an older family member (a distant cousin in her sixties) who was essentially his best buddy as a child.  They didn't have much money but they did have a jack russell terrier sidekick named Queenie and they got into all sorts of trouble together.

The first two stories, "A Christmas Memory" and "One Christmas" are nostalgic and beautifully-written.  They are quick trips down memory lane to Capote's youth and a much different time in America.  The last story, which I've almost finished, is "The Thanksgiving Visitor."  Doesn't sound like much, right?  But his writing is hysterical.  The story is about being bullied as a child and how he reacted to it.

Here's an example of his writing from "The Thanksgiving Visitor":

"Talk about mean!  Odd Henderson was the meanest human creature in my experience.  And I'm speaking of a twelve-year-old boy, not some grownup who has had the time to ripen a naturally evil disposition...

Odd had failed first grade twice and was now serving his second term in the second grade.  This sorry record wasn't due to dumbness - Odd was intelligent, maybe cunning is a better word - but he took after the rest of the Hendersons.  The whole family (there were ten of them, not counting Dad Henderson, who was a bootlegger and usually in jail, all scrunched together in a four-room house next door to a Negro church) was a shiftless, surly bunch, every one of them ready to do you a bad turn; Odd wasn't the worst of the lot, and brother, that is saying something."

The tone of these stories is a bit - just a hint - like "To Kill a Mockingbird."  That southern, pragmatic, self-deprecating but witty at the same time kind of writing.  I wouldn't say that the south is its own character, but the location is a big part of the story itself.  So if reading about the south isn't your thing, then these stories probably aren't either.  But if you're from around those parts, or reading about them rings your bell, then I would recommend this short little book for the holidays.

Enjoy!