FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Put on your rhinestone tiara and get ready for some catfish! In this delightful collection of essays, Mississippi-born Julia Reed proves beyond a doubt that despite its strip malls and office parks, the South is still a world unlike any other. With a penetrating eye and an abundance of comic talent, Reed dissects southerners' penchant for such popular pursuits as the possession of firearms, the consumption of rich food, and the enjoyment of a mint julep–induced buzz, not to mention their very own endearing vernacular.

From the enlightened southern gentry who encourage their fellow citizens to "Vote for the Crook" to a redneck who dispatched his buddy because he wouldn't keep his hands off the grill to a wife who fatally stabbed her husband over the last piece of dark meat from their Thanksgiving turkey, Reed describes a people and a place better understood without "any irritating fact or reason."

Reed, who divides her time between New Orleans and New York City, further spices up her book with recipes for distinctive southern favorites, including the "frozen tomato." Foodies from the South, as well as those from Yankee territory, will laugh aloud at Reed's encounters with gourmands who declare over their favorite desserts, "Oh my Lord, it would make you hurt yourself!" (Summer 2004 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena collects a bevy of wise, witty, often hilarious essays by the inimitably charming, staunchly Southern Julia Reed.

In classic Dixie storytelling fashion, Reed wends her way through the South--from politics, religion, and women to weather, pestilence, guns, and what she calls "drinking and other Southern pursuits"--with a rare blend of literary elegance and plainspoken humor.

To hear Reed tell it, the South is another country. She builds an entertaining and persuasive case, using as examples everything from its unfathomable codes of conduct to its disciplined fashion sense. When a bemused Reed once commented on the cross-dressing get-ups of an upstanding community member, her austere grandfather said, "He's been wearing them lately. Now come on." A friend of her aunt's merely said, "I wonder where he gets his shoes. I can't ever find good-looking shoes in Nashville."

Southern food, of course, is an entire world apart: gumbo, grits, greens, okra, chess pie, Lady Baltimore cake, and Frito chili pie make memorable appearances in Reed's stories, which will amuse, delight, and even explain a thing or two to baffed Yankees everywhere.

FROM THE CRITICS

Karen Karbo - The New York Times

Julia Reed's effervescent collection of essays is an under-the-hair-dryer book (a cousin of the beach book), and even though no woman I know still sits under the dryer at the salon, a beauty parlor is the perfect place to inhale Queen of the Turtle Derby: And Other Southern Phenomena. Reed is both a senior writer at Vogue and a native daughter of the Mississippi Delta, and her voice and tone are those of your most consistently amusing girlfriend … In the end, there's a satisfying match here between the subtext and the text. Reed embodies exactly what she's trying to convey: her tone is charming, glancing, amusing, sometimes a tad superficial, sometimes biting, but never offensive. These are captivating qualities in a storyteller, appreciated not just in the South but everywhere.

Library Journal

Reed, bless her heart, has written a laugh-aloud collection of personal essays about the South. God, guns, beauty queens, fashion accessories, booze, hurricanes, and, of course, recipes are featured in these 30 previously published works by Reed, a senior writer at Vogue and contributing writer at Newsweek. Readers are sent on a roaring roller-coaster ride around Reed's childhood in Mississippi and her current life in New Orleans and New York. "Lady Killers," a prickly essay, may raise the eyebrows of unsuspecting readers with its examination of the belief that a "white, well-dressed, churchgoing" Mississippi woman can get away with murder owing to a double standard regarding capital cases. "The Morning After" explains how a good fight adds to the zest of a high-quality party. Several essays repeat the same details when describing and explaining Southern fashion, beauty, and hair styles. Satirical, spirited writing for fans of the Sweet Potato Queens who appreciate recipes for fried chicken and frozen tomatoes, this is recommended for larger regional libraries.-Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas Cty., FL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In 22 lively essays, 10 reprinted from Vogue, the New York Times Magazine, etc., Reed defends, with wry humor and an agreeable appreciation of the absurd, the South's continuing distinctiveness. Some of these pieces overlap in content, but collectively they form a portrait of a region that, despite shopping malls and national chains, continues to follow its own idiosyncratic ways. The subjects are South lite, reflecting rather regional quirks than the darker history, as Reed writes of debutantes, food, and alcohol consumption in essays titled, respectively, "Debutantes," "Eat Here," and "Booze." Debutante balls in the South, Reed observes, are burdened with a whole lot of history as they try to resurrect the past by honoring old well-born families and "the myth of our cavalier past in all its full-blown weirdness." In "Eat Here," she observes that though tastes are now more sophisticated, southerners eat okra, drink iced tea (sweet or unsweet), and, unlike Yankees, when asked to name the best meal ever eaten, will recall one served at home. Mississippi, where Reed was born, kept Prohibition laws on the books until 1966 ("Booze"), but that didn't stop the state having the cheapest and most plentiful alcohol as well as more liquor retail outfits than any of the legally wet states. Other essays explain southern fashion (soft and ladylike), justice (women murderers rarely hang despite committing some pretty lurid crimes), and attitudes about life (they subscribe to an idea of living with, as John Keats had it, "uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." The title comes from an event that began in Arkansas in 1930 and includes a 60-foot turtle race,and the crowning of a derby queen. It illustrates, Reed suggests, the South's capacity for entertaining themselves with whatever is available. This capacity is celebrated in every piece, as Reed deftly mixes personal reminiscences with facts and local lore. Engaging evidence that the South is still different. Agent: Wylie Agency

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Julia Reed¿¿¿s affectionate and hilarious observations of the Deep South and Southerners past and present are a delight to read> (author of Standing in the Rainbow) — Fannie Flagg

Julia Reed is right on target about the South-its food, its hair, its guns, its pests, even the tendency of southern women to kill their husbands and get away with it. She's clear-eyed, raucously funny, and a natural story teller, which makes her something of a southern phenomenon herself. (author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) — John Berendt

Julia Reed is a Southern original. Her writing is funny and addictive, blending the street smarts of Greenville, Mississippi, where 'girls are taught to drink Scotch and smoke cigarettes and drive a car by the time they are twelve,' with the sophistication of a globe-trotting journalist. Julia's favorite subjects are Southern--fashion, politics, and above all food, which she describes with irresistable affection, knowledge and delight. If you've ever doubted that Southern food is our greatest gastronomic treasure, be prepared to learn the truth. (author of It Must Have Been Something I Ate) — Jeffrey Steingarten