January 22, 2008
Book Review
Well, seeing as I'm only half way through, this is more accurately "book opinion thus far."
You'd have to be pretty dense not to pick up on my affection for Gone With The Wind. I love it, it's one of my all-time favorite books that I read every year without fail. So when I saw this book (in Kroger, no less) I snapped it right up. What book, you ask?
It is, essentially, "The other side of the greatest love story ever told." At least, that's what it says on the back of the dust jacket.
I'm already noticing discrepancies, however. And even though I have never cared much for the sequel to GWTW, Scarlett, I'm noticing that the two newer books just don't jibe with the original or each other.
(And if you want to know why I don't like the so called "sequel" it's because, while I enjoy Alexandra Ripley's writing on her own, hers is a totally different style from Mitchell, and one can tell that it was written in the latter twentieth century as opposed to the 1930's.)
Anyway, back to Rhett. I'm not saying this is a bad book, per se. I realize this is a different writer, with an entirely different take on the story, and so on.
But....where, oh where, is the scene in which Rhett asks Scarlett to be his mistress? Those familiar with GWTW will know what I mean. Scarlett is on Aunt Pitty's porch, alone and feeling lonesome for Tara but she can't go home because Suellen and Careen have the typhoid. Rhett walks up, and after some talk tells Scarlett he wants her to be his mistress. Remember? He kissed her palm and she felt something "vital and electric."
Oh, sure, there's some backstory to Rhett's "service at the Battle of Franklin," pretty gory in some detail, too. But this book is, from what I can gather, trying to say that Archie hooked up with Rhett during the war!
(If you don't know who Archie is...go get a copy of GWTW.)
Like I said, I'm only about halfway through, up to Reconstruction, anyway.
I'm too picky, I know, but I guess I'm a purist when it comes to Scarlett. And I don't feel like, at this point anyway, I understand Rhett any better. But then again, maybe we aren't supposed to?
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