The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
A Novel
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4.2 • 19 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A privileged Southern girl must choose between her heart and her family’s expectations in this heartfelt novel from the author of The Funeral Dress.
“Simply a wonderful book . . . bold and tender and memorable.”—Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and The Book of Marie
It’s hard to be your own person, especially if your name is Bezellia Grove.
Relationships are complicated in 1960s Nashville, where society is neatly ordered by class, status, and skin color. For the Groves, one of the city’s most prominent families, and particularly Bezellia, uniquely named for a fiery ancestor, it’s especially difficult. Bezellia is closer to the family’s black servants, her nanny, Maizelle, and the handyman, Nathaniel, than she is to her alcoholic mother and her distant, inaccessible father. When Bezellia has a clandestine affair with Nathaniel’s son Samuel, their romance is met with anger and fear from both families. In a time and place where rebelling against the rules carries a steep price, Bezellia Grove must decide which of her names will be the one that defines her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gilmore's lackluster second effort (after Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen) never manages to find its way out of humdrum territory. In 1960s Nashville, Bezellia Grove, the darling teenage daughter of an important family, has a henpecked father who spends all his time at work, and a status-obsessed mother who has no problem verbally savaging Maizelle Cooper and Nathaniel Stephenson, the black hired help whom Bezellia considers kin. Everyone is alarmed when obvious sparks fly between Bezellia and Nathaniel's son, Samuel; though Bezellia loves him, they are kept apart, and when Bezellia's not shielding her younger sister from their mother's drunken rages, she frolics with Ruddy Semple, a young man from the wrong sort of family. After Bezellia heads to college and her horizons are expectedly expanded, fortunes are lost and secrets are revealed, some entirely out of left field and others without narrative purpose. This very mixed bag contains just about every half-baked trope of Southern women's fiction, but it doesn't do anything new with the material.
Customer Reviews
Like coming home
Having been "raised", as we say in the south, in a town like Ringgold and very near Ringgold, this book was like coming home. I don't know if other people will find it as interesting and comforting as I did because of its familiarity. But if you like Southern coming of age stories like "The Secret Life of Bees", then this book is one you will love.