Southern Living

If you are a transplanted Yankee now living in the South you have to read this. I've heard this is being used in some southern universities to teach satire, and I can see why. This guy hits southern culture on the head. (No wonder the natives don't like it!) That said, it's also a very sweet story about how three young women and southern culture in general are fighting for their identity.

I began reading this book while stranded in the airport, and it made the time fly by. i thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining commentary on life in the south and highly recommend it.

I enjoyed Hudler's Househusband, and found Southern Living an even better read.Boy, does this guy have women down pat.How does he do it?His charachters are so finely drawn that I could not put the book down. It's a superb read.What a wonderful peek at the genteel South. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying this book.I'd recommend it to anyone. Highly!

an absolute hoot of a book, very well written! having lived most of my life in atlanta, and have many friends from macon, i could relate.ijust started househusband today and am already almost finished...can't wait for a new one!!!

Being a Yankee forcefully transplanted to Southern soil can be traumatic. I know --- born and bred a New Yorker, I have been uprooted several times to towns deep in the heart of Texas and back in Old Virginny. From the Bible verses on the front page of one local rag to themed Christmas trees to the near-religious fervor accorded high school football games, things Southern seemed as foreign as any overseas exotica from old National Geographic magazines. Meanwhile, Southern mores and manners confounded me. Telling someone "That Mrs. Thingummy is just so smart!" was not, I learned, a compliment but a stinging putdown that meant Mrs. Thingummy had no decorative aspect to speak of and, therefore, all that was left to comment on was her mind.Yet so many Southern habits, ideas and traditions now crowd my mind and household that I can't imagine not having experienced the place (I still live in Virginia, but Arlington doesn't really count as The South, despite its having brought forth that region's very scion, Robert E. Lee). Ad Hudler, author of the new comic novel SOUTHERN LIVING, has been similarly affected. In one interview, Hudler talks about how often during five years in Georgia he heard women use the term "cute," pronounced as "ke-YOOT," meaning that the thing/person/behavior described had their firm (although not necessarily long-lasting) seal of approval. (I can confirm this, having myself been in tiny towns full of boutiques whose purpose seems otherwise hazy and heard fellow shoppers say things like "Lookit this li'l Beanie Baby --- isn't it ke-YOOT?")Hudler is also a transplanted Yankee, having grown up in Colorado with a firmly feminist mother. He found his little nuclear family living in Dixie when his journalist wife took a job with the Macon, Georgia newspaper. Hudler, whose previous novel HOUSEHUSBAND detailed his stay-at-home lifestyle, found that he had plenty of time to observe the local customs and local gentry. The result is SOUTHERN LIVING, a book that manages to be laugh-out-loud funny, deadly accurate, and yet still compassionately kind to the American South.To maintain a balance between humor and candor Hudler uses the chapter-opening excerpts from "Chatter," a call-in line established by the new Northern editor of the Selby, Georgia Reflector. Randy Whitestone believes that "Chatter" will be the kebab rack on which local residents will skewer themselves like so many chicken chunks, talking about quaint Selby traditions and airing dirty laundry. Hudler wisely allows the bits of "Chatter" to stand alone and shows that the only resident on the spit is Whitestone himself (who derides Southern culinary specialties but keeps getting fatter and fatter).Meanwhile, Margaret Pinaldi, Donna Kabel, and Suzanne Parley are trying to fulfill their wildly different needs. Margaret, a New Yorker and daughter of a famed abortion-rights doctor whose deathbed bequest is her Selby home, edits the "Chatter" column and is trying to understand her gen