Fancy Strut

by Lee Smith

Book Overview

"Nothing less than masterly." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Speed, Alabama is frantically preparing for the event of a lifetime: Sesquicentennial Week. And all her proud citizens are kicking up their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345410394
• ISBN13: 9780345410399
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Good bedtime read

I have read most of Lee Smith's books, I found this one to be one of the best, It flows and keeps you guessing

My favorite Lee Smith novel..

This book made me laugh so hard, so often, I had to run to the bathroom on more than one occasion to avoid wetting my pants. The characters are all a delight to get to know, even the ones you love to hate, and it made me wish I lived among fun folks like these. What better compliment could a writer get?

on the march of progress

Smith certainly knows how to interweave characters' plots. This is a delightful book. A bit more obvious than her later books, it is also more humorous, with several laugh-out- loud moments. Mostly, it has a wry sense of irony, as people believably rail against the very vice they are illustrating, for instance. The title is ostensibly about an event in competitive baton twirling (a quintessentially Southern event in 1965, the time of the novel). But, the title is also about the self-congratulatory town celebrating its 150th anniversary, and all of the town's population are represented doing their own version of a "fancy strut." I think my favorite is Manly Neighbors (a too-obvious name, but fun), the owner/editor of the weekly paper, a happily complacent guy who knows he doesn't like to think too much. I also like batty, snobbish old Miss Iona Flowers, a belle left over from a finer era, as she alone sees it.