Memphis Reads Archive

Fiction/Women's

Beth reviews THE SAME SWEET GIRLS by Cassandra King (Hyperion, 2005).

Twice a year, six southern college girlfriends make the trek to the reunion of their private society, "Same Sweet Girls." As the novel opens, 30 years have passed and these "girls" are nearing 50. They each have led their own lives, intertwined through and yet so different from the lives of the other SSGs...

Corrine Cooper is a folk artist, but battles serious clinical depression with the help of a manipulative psychiatrist, later to become her husband.

Lanier Brewer is separated after a brief, ill-advised fling.

Astor Deveaux, an exotic, former Broadway dancer, flirts wildly with men but remains with her husband, a famous painter 33 years her senior.

Julia Dupont is trapped in a passionless marriage and an over-scheduled life as Alabama's first lady.

Byrd and Rosanelle round out the group--not quite belonging or accepted.

But when one of the SSGs becomes terminally ill, the remaining friends feel it necessary to resolve their own problems before she dies. With a string of narrators, it is hard to follow this book at first.* Soon however you find names falling into place and the love flowing from one woman to another.

*Try the book on tape! I’ve heard it is wonderful!

Cassandra King is a native of Alabama and has published many stories, essays and books to terrific reviews and acclaim. She currently resides in South Carolina with her husband, Pat Conroy, and belongs to a real-life Same Sweet Girls group, which reunites every year.

Beth, Highland Branch Library

Labels: Reviews by Beth, Women's Fiction