Crazy Ladies
by Michael Lee West

List Price: $14.00
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060977744
Publisher: HarperCollins

Crazy Ladies, Michael Lee West¹s spirited first novel, explores the trials and tribulations of six Southern women‹Miss Gussie, the reigning matriarch, her daughters, Dorothy and Clancy Jane, granddaughters Violet and Bitsy, and her irreplaceable maid and guardian angel, Queenie.

The story begins in 1932, in Crystal Falls, Tennessee, where Miss Gussie is struggling to adjust to life with her difficult baby daughter. When death darkens her doorstep, Miss Gussie pledges her husband to a lifetime of secrecy, a promise that she herself takes to the grave.

Miss Gussie has her hands full with her two daughters. As the girls grow older, the surprises begin. Dorothy, believing that money will heal her childhood wounds, marries the owner of the local five-and-dime and settles next door to her childhood home. Clancy Jane shocks everyone by running off with her high school sweetheart, who spends his time working on oilrigs and girls on the side. Eventually Clancy Jane¹s free spirit leads her far from home, while Dorothy free falls into obsessive self-absorption and dangerous paranoia.

Meanwhile, Miss Gussie¹s granddaughters have their own hardships to endure. Each woman, however, is ultimately guided back to the shelter of dear Queenie, where three generations of daughters are once again reunited in Miss Gussie¹s old home.

Interweaving dark calamity with remarkable insight and humor, each voice resounding with Southern cadence, Crazy Ladies is a novel full of love and laughter, pain and redemption.

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1. On the first page, Miss Gussie states, ³There is so much good in a garden, if you don¹t count what happened to Adam and Eve.² How does this statement serve as a foreshadowing of events to come and as a metaphor for the story as a whole? Why does West choose to begin and end the novel in Miss Gussie¹s garden?

2. What is the significance of Miss Gussie¹s act of murder in the first chapter? Why would West choose to open the story with this scene?

3. Both Dorothy and Clancy Jane have self-destructive tendencies that lead each to the brink of suicide. Why? What in their shared experience could lead to this behavior?

4. West uses multiple narrators to unfold the story in Crazy Ladies. What advantages are gained by this? How does the perspective of each of the six women affect your experience of the story? Do multiple narrators help to temper your judgments toward a character?

5. Clancy Jane is the most free-spirited character, and her life is filled with experiences that none of the other women ever share or understand. How does her character serve to expand the range and depth of the novel? What could her experiences teach the other women?

6. One of the dominant themes of Crazy Ladies is that of the single mother. How well do Clancy Jane, Dorothy, and Bitsy handle their issues of abandonment and the challenges of raising their children alone. What is West saying about the fortitude of women?

7. By the end of the novel, Queenie has become the most stable and secure characters. Were you surprised by this? Was there any foreshadowing of this in the novel¹s beginning?

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"Powerful. . . . Impressive. "

— New York Times Book Review

" Gripping...Dazzling...Unforgettable...An absorbing, skillfully interwoven mix of calamity and comedy, narrated in turns by a wholly entertaining cast of characters. "

—Atlanta Journal—Constitution

" A wonderful first novel of the lives of three generations of Tennessee women....I can't think of enough nice things to say about Crazy Ladies. The voices are sharp, wry, and utterly convincing. "

—Washington Post Book World

" Wonderfully inventive.... Her writing is brilliant in detail and dialogue, flavored with just enough spicy Southern wit and wisdom. "

—San Francisco Examiner—Chronicle

" Not since Flannery O'Connor's first book has a debut novel by a young Southerner been so filled with wry humor and humanity, so precisely right in its idioms, and so distinctive in its voices. "

—St. Petersburg Times