Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Crazy in Alabama (1993)

by Mark Childress

Industry, Alabama

Alabama: 9/18

   It's the half-way mark for the Alabama chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  The Alabama chapter is weak, and it got me thinking how editor Susan Straight made her picks for this state, where the only sure-fire canon level pick is To Kill a Mockingbird.   I realized, walking the dog last night, that you can use the subject categories from the Library of Congress, like Alabama - fiction, to look at every title so classified, and that there was likely to be a 100% overlap.  The Alabama - fiction tag in the library of congress returns about 330 titles.  I looked through 80 of them on my walk and saw 40% of the titles from this chapter, so I think it is likely that Straight must have had the same insight.  

  Crazy in Alabama is the kind of title that would have driven me nuts as an Audiobook but was fine to read in physical form.  It's a comic novel, later turned into a film by Antonio Banderas, of all people, starring Melanie Griffith, about an abused housewife in small-town Alabama who murders his husband and escapes to Hollywood to pursue her dream as an actress.  Meanwhile, back at home her relatives deal with the consequences of her actions and their own feelings about the incipient civil rights movement.