Sweet Jiminy by Kristin Gore: Book Review

 

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Publisher: Hyperion | Published: April 19, 2011

Hardbound | 240 pages | ISBN 978-1401322892

Summary: Jiminy's mother has been prone to nervous breakdowns since Jiminy was a small child, leaving Jiminy in the role of parenting rather than being parented.  When her first year of law school got to be too much, Jiminy fled to the only home she felt she still had - to her grandmother Willa in Fayeville, Mississippi.  Once there her grandmother and Lyn, the black woman who has helped her for 40 years, give Jiminy the space and time she needs to recuperate.  Jiminy meets Bo, Lyn's great-nephew, who is also home from college preparing for his MCATs.  A tentative friendship between Jiminy and Bo quickly blossoms into something much more romantic, leaving some people in the town with less of a kindly thought towards the couple.  When Bo and Jiminy stumble upon the murder mystery of Lyn's husband and 17 year old daughter 40 years prior, Jiminy is hell-bent on finding the civil-rights violators who murdered them.  When she convinces an attorney who has won some recent widely publicized cases of civil rights violators to take on the case, Jiminy comes out of her shell completely.

Author's Tone & Writing Style: Sweet Jiminy has a definite southern feel to it, from the sweet tea as thick as molasses to underneath the giant magnolia tree where the Black community has laid their dead to rest - the fragrant, luscious magnolias filling the air with their sweetness. Kristin Gore knows the south intimately, the customs, the inflections - even how to drive off a herd of cows by shouting "Hup, hup!"

Memorable Quotes:
When Jiminy arrives at her grandmother's home and just sleeps for several days she tries to explain to Grandmother Willa what is wrong with her.

You seem like you need a good, long rest, she said. The world's what's gone crazy. You just got old enough to notice.

Mood this book evokes:  Lazy days on a porch swing; undercurrents of a racial fault line that is very bad news; so much to say in such a short book about race relations between white & black; white & Mexican; white & Hispanic - where do you truly reside on the topic?

My Final Thoughts: Sweet Jiminy is more light-hearted than The Help. The characters are defined but not necessarily deeply drawn out for us - there's just not a lot of space to have extremely well-developed characters.  The story is more plot driven rather than character driven - a lot rested on well-known prejudices.  I thought it amusing how a well-known superstore was even poked fun at - the "Hush-Mart."  Grandmother Willa thought the green-vested managers found ways to expand the store monthly even though it backed into a cliff!  There were moments of hilarity and equally moments of deep sadness over a time our Country did not show it's better self.  Overall, an entertaining book for a few hours.

If you like this book then perhaps you will like:

 
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
The Secret Lives of Bees
Where the Heart Is

It is with many thanks I received this book from the publisher by way of NetGalley to read and review.  

In no way did that affect my opinion or statements herein of the book.