The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and nota little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style.
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Publisher:
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
ISBN:
9780899193090
0899193099
0899193099
Characteristics:
391 p. ; 24 cm.
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Add a CommentI love this book and come back to it when I need a good laugh or have a bittersweet longing for the days when my grandparents came of age. I love Grandma Blakeslee's funeral scene so much that when my grandfather passed, we trimmed every rose off his huge rose bush and placed them on his grave. Cold Sassy Tree is full of beautiful passages, descriptions, touching moments, and hilarious situations. It's one of my faves.
Well-written story - made me laugh and cry
It isn't often that I have the joy of discovering a "classic" that turns into a favorite novel. This book was a sheer delight. I laughed, I cried and couldn't wait to hear the next story that Will Tweedy had to tell about his family and the small town folks. If we could all have a Grandpa Blakeslee in our life, we would surely be the better for it. Loved this book.
One of my all-time favorite books. Will Tweedy's tale is beautifully told! Make sure that you read Leaving Cold Sassy to hear further tales, but more importantly, for the reminiscence by Ms. Burs publisher.
The English Journal's story about Cold Sassy Tree sums it up best: “Boy, howdy, Ma’am, you have sent us a fine book!” It’s so fine a book that I can't choose what I like most -- the well-cut characters, the historical rendering of life's simplicity at the turn of the twentieth century, the sometimes-funny and sometimes-poignant stories of familial love and conflict or the depiction of a small community where, like in most small towns, your business is everybody else’s business, too. I enjoyed the heck out of this book. It was real and just plain fun.
I thought it would be a good idea to use audiobooks to catch up on my reading since I make jewelry and don't have as much time to read as I'd like. I had read Cold Sassy Tree many years ago, and absolutely loved it. However I found out that audiobooks can be very distracting while trying to complete a task that requires a lot of attention and thought. Oh well, I tried.
Love the story, love the writing.
April 2005