Are some of these reviews and ratings serious? If you’re looking for a safe, middlebrow, humorless workshop novel where the threads are tied in a neat bow, “Carolina Moon” isn’t for you. Now, if you’re looking for raw, purposefully messy and brilliant tragicomedy, "Carolina Moon" is up your alley. McCorkle, as another reviewer wrote, “can do no wrong.” For whatever reason, there’s a dearth of tragicomic realism in contemporary American fiction; it’s amazing how humorless American writers have be...

I have mixed feelings on this one, which I'm sure will affect the quality of my review. But whatever. The beginning of this book hinted at bit of mystery and darkness that really drew me in, but then I felt it kind of left me hanging, in favor of character and relationship studies. Which are actually brilliantly written, but after a while, I wondered what the point was. Then ALL WAS REVEALED, very quickly, at the end. And while that was more satisfying than not, it was the kind of information du...

I read a few Jill McCorkle books about twenty years ago and really liked them. I don't know if I would still like them as much today based on how I feel about 'Carolina Moon.' I wanted to find out about the characters but I also felt like much of their stories were telegraphed early on so I didn't get any kind of aha moment toward the end. (Maybe I wasn't supposed to?) I also didn't really like the different narration techniques. I usually don't like stories told in letters, which is how one of

#1 01/03/06TITLE/AUTHOR: CAROLINA MOON by Jill McCorckleRATING: 4.5/B+GENRE/PUB DATE/# OF PGS: Fiction, 1996, 288 pgsTIME/PLACE: early 1990's/Fulton, NCCHARACTERS: Quee Purdy -- 69 yr old widow & businessowner of smoke-out signals clinicCOMMENTS: Set in a small southern coastal town, w/ quirky residents. If you are looking for a strongplot, this may be disappointing -- enjoy it forthe various characters & how they communicate andinteract. Quee Purdy, writes letters to a dead lover and collects p...

I don't think I've ever not been able to finish a book, but this book was the exception. I just hated it. The plot made no sense at all, and there was nothing happening. All I understood from the book was this guy receives letters and this woman is cheating on her husband. Other than that, nothing flowed together at all. I was downright confused about 10 pages in because the reader isn't given any information at all. After 50 pages, I had to stop because I hated it so much. Sorry for all of you

Carolina Moon has a similar structure to that of Baxter's Feast of Love. But her book's better. She's better. She's my hero.McCorkle doesn't frame her novel or preface it, like Baxter, with this near apology for writing a work of fiction. I don't want apologies; I want to be hit in the face by the sheer brilliance of someone's prose, and McCorkle does that. So be ready.

I agree with everyone that says the book is built around this one mystery, this one incident only to be quickly solved and settled within 3 pages at the end of the book. I don’t think the book has aged well for the modern readers attention span BUT given the publishing date and keeping that in mind, I think the author does a really good job of tying everything up and connecting this small southern town.

FANTASTIC! Fave quotes: "It's very easy to be wrong about a person's life." "Even before I was ever really happy, I was afraid of losing happiness." "Something or someone is always overlooked, and it's only in looking back that it all comes clear." "They are white tube socks but she has colored in the toe with black permanent marker so that they look like stubbed-out cigarettes."

A book I've had on the shelf for awhile. Written 1996, sometimes hard to read but as you continue the story line and links reveal themselves. Unique writing style. Would play well in a movie setting. I enjoyed it.

NC authors club selection The different narratives took awhile to get into this book but once I learned the characters my interest increased.

A good summer read.

I liked this book. The characters have strong personalities. Quee is an Earth mother whose goal is to help anyone she can. She will go above and beyond to support the needy.

2.5. Quee is a great character.

I was having a difficult time getting into the book. There were too many stories but in the end, they intertwined so I did get a big "aha" moment where all the pieces fell into place. But, for several of the initial chapters, I had to trudge through them and was confused several times. I kept putting this book on the back-burner while I read other books. Then, things started to get interesting when the stories revolved more on Quee Purdy and her newest business of helping people quit smoking at

Just fantastic. I grew up in a South of prim and proper, of clean tablecloths and girls who crossed their white-socked ankles. McCorkle does a good job of transporting me back to my South, the same exact era, but she shows what was going on under that clean tablecloth--girls in those same white socks were playing footsie under there with a boy who had gotten a peek at their underthings reflected in the toes of their perfectly shiny patent-leather shoes. That's the reality I didn't know. It's a b...

The author was in Charlottesville for the Virginia Festival of the Book a couple weeks ago and on Saturday night she was at The Paramount (where I usher) with another Suthren Wrahter and two guitar-playing women who are Suthren Sahng- Wrahters.A wonderful evening of laughter. I smuggled in my two writing colleagues from California who were staying with me (I'll deny it!) because the tickets weren't cheap, but the audience was laughing much of the time. The writers alternated reading sections fro...

This is one of those books where you need to read the entire thing before you can fully appreciate how amazing it is. Even though the book is only told from a handful of perspectives, you get to know the characters who are "silent" and you become invested in their story.McCorkle takes a "love Actually" approach when telling the story. You have many different story lines that somehow intertwine; Quee, Tom, Alicia, Mack, Denny, Joe, Myra, Wallace, Sarah and the list goes on and on. It's not until

Lovd the characterizations in the book. I didn't want it to end! You hear from many voices (Quee, Denny, Tom, Mack) but you don't hear from other characters. What is June thinking? What about Alicia? I liked that some of them were silent and you had to figure out things from what you knew from other characters.I loved the book and thought that it was simple enough to understand while on the other hand, keeping you wondering about some peices of the story that were revealed at the end. My favorit...

This one sounded promising - interrelated stories in a small southern town, a brief murder mystery, and people whose pasts are catching up to them. Unforunately, it didn't work for me. The plot, which was fairly complicated what with all the various stories going on, unfolded awkwardly and felt clumsy. The writing wasn't anything to write home about, though it felt like McCorkle seemed to think that character and plot development could be sacrificed for writing style. Sadly, none of it worked fo...

Eccentric characters with damaging mysteries in the past intersect under quirky circumstances in an off-the-beaten path locale. It's that type of book...and she kind of pulls it off. Around the middle of the book, several members of a population of earnestly offbeat characters seem not nearly as lovable, or believable, as the author clearly finds them. But she gets back on course as she moves toward a slightly contrived finish, enough so that I was able to stay on board to the end. Set on the Ca...

This book was recommended to me by a fellow displaced North Carolinian who recently met the author. I started reading it with some reluctance because Nicholas Sparks was recommended to me under similar circumstances and I found his books to be unbearably insipid. Jill McCorkle is not insipid. She assembles a mosh pit of quirky characters through short snippets and tasks the reader to make sense of it. She (and I) almost failed. However, about halfway through the book takes off and keeps the read...

I was feeling so-so about this book most of the way through it. In fact, I didn't really love it until I got to the end. The characters seemed superficial at first, but they become much more complicated as the book goes on. The structure of the book is unusual, and a bit choppy at times. It is sort of a collection of different stories that connect in some way in the end. There is not a very strong plot, though there are elements of plot and mystery. The book is primarily about the characters, an...

One of my new favorite southern writers (see greater detail re author in my review of Ferris Beach)."Fulton NC gets pretty quiet during the off season. Or at least it seems that way. At the town post office it's so slow the postal clerk has time to hunt through the dead letter file for entertaining reading. Six parallel love stories and an unsolved murdery mystery are woven together into a deeply insightful story of how true community comes out of individuality. ...Carolina Moon is a novel about...

"Somehow it just seems right that every person needs a secret." In Fulton, NC, the residents' lives are overfull with secrets, hopes, plans. Many of these involve Quee Purdy, businesswoman, matchmaker, problem-solver, and small-town philosopher. Excellent characterizations, humor, and (very nicely done) justice for wrongs done in the past and present. This novel has an almost perfect construction.

I did not like this book. I feel it wanted to be like a Maeve Binchy story but the characters were weird. Most of them were unlikable to me.The book begins with a mailman sorting mail on a Sunday morning. Throughout his career he sees these letters to Wayward One. He has been reading them too. Then the story starts and the characters are introduced and I know right away who the letter writer is.I will not be reading this author again.

I don't mind when there are multiple characters,or 6 or 7, but maybe label the chapters and give me a reason to care about them. Perhaps, it was because it starts off with an anonymous letter, but I never felt like I cared about any of them. I read the flap and thought it was going to be about the post man and the radio person, but there were just so many characters. Rambling about not much of anything.

This book contained many interesting characters and also had plot twists that I did not see coming. I also thought the novel did a good job of exploring the different perspectives of people in a relationship and how one person can be very mistaken in assumptions about another. I also liked that the book touched on what can happen when someone's assumptions are proved to be false.

A good read but not as gripping as some of her other books . . . I'm betting had I read it when it first came out I would've felt otherwise. She seems to have always been a good writer/storyteller but has really grown into her power later in life; at least that is why I think I like her later stuff better.

I've read a number of Jill McCorkle books (read local!) and enjoy her writing. This was not one of my favorite books. The characters were not as fully developed as I thought they should be, and the relationships and plot are completely credible. I think she gets distracted with too many characters and delving into the oddities of small town southern life. But it's still pretty good.

I didn't like this book at all to begin with, but there was something soothing about the slow rhythm of the narration that I ended up appreciating. On the whole, it's a completely satisfying read, and I'd recommend it to a friend.