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Loading... Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel (edition 2010)by Beth Hoffman
Work InformationSaving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A sweet, coming of age story that leaves a good taste. In this easy-to-read book, young Cee Cee Honeycutt has become her mother’s keeper and in doing so, Cee Cee has become socially awkward and outcast. Cee Cee turns to reading as her escape and dives headlong into her books. When an unfortunate accident leaves Cee Cee alone, her great-aunt, Tootie, comes from Savannah, Georgia to take Cee Cee in. A reluctant Cee Cee comes to love Tootie and rely on Odette, Miss Tootie’s cook. Set in a time where color divided people, Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt shows how love and empathy can heal wounds and save people. I enjoyed this book, even though it felt a bit like a version of The Secret Life of Bees, it, like the Bees, is worth the read. Audiobook edition, read by Jenna Lamia. This was overall an enjoyable story. The author is terrific at creating vivid characters and settings, and Jenna Lamia's reading is as fantastic as always. But the story itself felt too scattered, as though it is a series of events that the characters experience and react to, rather than a coherent plot. The resolution to each event felt unfinished and a little unreal, and the story overall was a little too syrupy for my taste. A well done book. I know it seems like Southern Lit is a popular genre right now but it is books like this that make it so. No strong male figures and I do wish there had been atleast one. However, the women in this story hold up the story with great beauty. I can see this book being made into a movie.
Saving CeeCee Honeycut ((Beth Hoffman) Set in the 60's Cecilia (CeeCee) Honeycut just wants to be an ordinary girl. Living in Ohio with her mother and father, she is not sure what normal is. Her mother is mentally unstable, while her traveling salesman father is never home. CeeCee seems to be the mother as she watches over and takes care of her "crazy" mother. Then one day, unexpectedly her mother dies. Soon CeeCee finds herself in another world when her great Aunt Tootie, comes to take her to Georgia, to live with her. Saving CeeCee Honeycut, was a wonderful (emotional) read. Well written Ms. Hoffman grabs the readers attention and won't let go until the perfect ending. Colorful unforgettable characters, laugh out loud, moments, a perfect coming of age story. I look forward to more work from Beth Hoffman. AwardsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: Read Beth Hoffman's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer. Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others. Watch a Video .No library descriptions found. |
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Yes, the nick name is spelled different, but it started out as Cee Cee, based on her initials, which my character actually explains in the story. And I came by the last name by picking something out of thin air that started with "Ch" because I liked the alliteration I'd had with Chelsea Church, which I'd abandoned when it occurred to me that, being in the first line of the story, it sounded like a place, rather than a person.
You’re thinking the last name isn’t relevant, because it’s nothing like "Honeycutt?" I thought the similarity ended with the first name too, until I Googled “Savanna Georgia”, since Mrs. Hoffman makes it sound so pretty that I wanted to see pictures to see if it was still that pretty, since her story, like mine, takes place some 50 years ago, in the 1960’s (it appears to be--still that pretty), and discovered through that search, that Savanna is in “Chatham” County. Yes, again a slightly different spelling, and that fact occurs nowhere in Mrs. Hoffman’s story, but I still find it odd –and seriously think anyone who read Mrs. Hoffman’s story, then mine, if they knew Georgia well enough to know counties, would certainly think I was borrowing.
It doesn’t matter, of course, since it’s not real likely our NaNoWriMo Anthology will get too far beyond our library’s community, and my story is nowhere near as interesting or well written as Mrs. Hoffman’s--mine's only about moving, where hers is about so much more.
It could easily only be me seeing similarities since I'm basing them a little on things I cut from my story to keep it within the word limit, but it occurs to me that I might have psychically connected to a book already in existence—which is scary. One worries about not borrowing from other works they’ve read, now apparently, if I decide to develop my writing skills, I have to add to that worry, that I’ll borrow from things I haven’t read.
But I’ve made this review all about me instead about this wonderful debut novel. It was great! I especially loved it because her characters share my interests; nature—both wild and cultivated, photography, old homes, estate sales, and with the added skills of being able to renovate—a talent I envy. Keep writing Beth!
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