When does sleeping with the boss ever work out? As Natalie Goldberg, recent Harvard Law Grad, discovers in MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT, she learns it doesn't. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that when the romance backfires on her, in a big way, that she packs up her Manhattan corporate law job and runs away from all her trouble. She ends up down south in Macon, Georgia where all her values about convicting arsonists, thieves, and even murderers come out to play.
As things happen in Southern time, the real story of Natalie discovering how to life well is at the core of this novel. In a tight knit community like Macon, there really isn't anything other than time on her hands to figure out how she made mistakes, what her life means in the present, and what her future might look like. Sometime all a girl needs is one long summer of southern discomfort to figure all out.
Overall, this novel is reminiscent of Sophia Coppola's film, "Lost in Translation." It meanders, strolls, and loafs around the south as the main characters takes the summer to try and really figure out what she wants from life and what she needs. There are some points that are even tedious. However, if you connect to Natalie, then you'll absolutely love this book.
Stephanie Gayle's debut novel is an intimate character study that she wrote while taking a class at Harvard called "Writing the Novel." She'll be the first to admit that her imagination was more at play than first-hand experience, in terms of understanding the south. But, you'd never know it from the novel! She is currently at work on her second novel that has a "sort of legal bent to it."
Today is Monday. The calls do not come as before. Weeks elapse between them, and when I answer the phone there is no overlap of voices, only my mother's. She spends much of the conversation avoiding mention of the pink elephant trumpeting in the middle of the room.
The pink elephant would be my defection to Georgia. When I telephoned with the news of my imminent relocation my father asked, "Georgia, as in the Republic of Georgia by the Black Sea, or Georgia as in the Peach State?" He hoped I meant the former because that Georgia promised unique opportunities to advance the democratic cause of justice. What could Georgia, former land of the Confederacy, offer?
Convicting arsonists and thieves in Macon, Georgia, was never Harvard Law grad Natalie Goldberg's dream. The pay is abysmal, the work is exhausting, and the humidity is hell for a woman with curly hair. But when a steamy romance with her high-powered New York boss went bad, Natalie jumped at the first job offered, packed her bags, and headed south.
Natalie's leftist Yankee background brands her a conspicuous outsider in this insular community. Her father, a famous civil rights lawyer, refuses to accept her career changeβor talk to her. Her best friend begs her to come back home, and Natalie keeps thinking she sees her former lover everywhere.
But Natalie's not completely alone. There are a garden-obsessed neighbor, a former beauty queen-turned-defense attorney, and a handsome colleague who has a nervous tic whenever she gets near. And then there's a capital case that has her eating antacids by the truckload.
Yep, it's going to be one heckuva long, hot summer. . . .
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