Hairdo

When the most popular beauty parlor in a small South Carolina town closes, Ruby McSwain gets the chance to move her own Celebrity Styling Shop into top position--if she can please the local eccentrics

Gladys Bessinger's nervous breakdown seems the cue for Ruby McSwain's shop to seize the field as the premier beauty salon in Rocky Mount, S.C. Stylist Yvonne (of the old school, "when hair was still hair") and mousse-king Thurston believe they can carry Miss Ruby to the top--if they can put their personal rivalry on hold. But they remain fiercely competitive, from the preparation of newly dead Bebe Pointer's after-life coiffure to the ultimate contest in the Southeast Hair Show. Into the already bustling plot the author throws Thurston's convict lover and the ugly rumors of Gladys's recovery, setting the stage for Ruby's battle of a lifetime. Gilbert's first novel is a wacky, fast-paced carnival of rivalries that precisely captures the essence of modern social warfare at its most intense, with blowdryers unleashed.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Zany novels about eccentric Southern towns and characters with names like Earline seem to be everywhere these days (see Camilla Carr's Topsy Dingo Wild Dog, LJ 10/15/89, or Sarah Bird's The Boyfriend School, LJ 3/15/89, to name only two). This latest in the Rita Mae Brown-Beth Henley mode is set in a South Carolina beauty salon. The plot, what there is of it, revolves around ambitious Ruby McSwain's efforts to turn her "Celebrity Styling Shop" into the best in all of South Carolina. We have the obligatory homosexual couple (now a beauty-salon stereotype) and the bible-toter (a Southern stereotype), strange names like Ronder Jeffcoat (are weird names another Southern stereotype?) and kinky dialog and doings, all culminating in a big hairstyling contest. All in all, silly fluff that doesn't last long in one's literary memory. After two or three of this genre, the humor wanes and one wonders what is really going on down there in the South. For large budgets.
- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Libs., Seaside, Cal.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.