Cakewalk - Softcover

Smith, Lee

3.83

609 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345305388 ISBN 13: 9780345305381

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1983

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

First published in 1982, Cakewalk was the first short story collection by iconic Southern writer Lee Smith. Comic and observant, Smith's fourteen tales in Cakewalk introduce readers to a host of memorable Southern characters. Her protagonists include aging gossips, a soap opera-hooked housewife, a runaway teenager, and divergent sisters in various combinations. Smith's gutsy Southern women don't always triumph, but, with her sympathetic portrayals, readers gain appreciation for the merits of spirited perseverance, right or wrong, in the face of modern adversity. The characters are everyday folks with everyday problems, particularly the tensions of home and family and loneliness and connection. Smith is keenly aware of the foibles that make people so maddeningly funny but also deeply sensitive to their pain and sorrow.
This Southern Revival edition includes a new introduction by the author.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Back Cover:

"Cakewalk is great fun, its tales shrewdly observant of segments of North Carolina life." -- The Wall Street Journal

"The South has always been a special domain for women writers. Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, and Katherine Ann Porter come immediately to mind....Lee Smith, in this fine collection of short stories, joins in this tradition." -- San Diego Union

"Excellent...Beautiful portrayals...Dazzling." -- Chicago Tribune

"Lee Smith strikes dead center the nerves of women's lives and does it with a grace and style that make her one of the writers to watch most closely." -- The Houston Post

"Smith has a perfect voice, incorporating hints of both refinement and shabbiness. Quite simply, excellent writing." -- Booklist

From the Inside Flap:

In these dazzling stories, acclaimed author Lee Smith wants you to meet:

Mrs. Joline B. Newhouse, who writes a "fortnightly" newspaper column called "Between the Lines."

Georgia Rose, the girl whose life is more like a soap opera than the TV serial she's addicted to.

Martha Rasnick, the young housewife in "Dear Phil Donahue" who writes all her troubles to the TV personality.

Florrie, the cake lady in "Cakewalk" who causes her prissy sister no end of embarrassment by "wearing running shoes, at her age, and wooly white athletic socks that fall in crinkles down around her ankles."

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.