March 4, 2013
The indefatigable trio of Barbara Jean, Clarice, and Odette (known as "The Supremes" since high school) churns the small community of Plainview, Indiana into a Southern-fried tailspin this debut from Moore, a professional cellist. Each of the central characters brings unique challenges to the tables at Earl's diner: Odette battles cancer while her pothead mother communicates with famous ghosts; Clarice tries to salvage a crumbling marriage with her cheating husband; and beautiful Barbara Jean, who married for money, drinks to forget a youthful affair and her dead son. In a booth at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, a short walk from Calvary Baptist Church, these women lay bare their passions, shortfalls, and dramas. Complications from Odette's condition bring them together in melancholy, but it isn't long before secrets are revealed and the scramble to catch up on lost time begins. Despite meandering points-of-view and a surplus of exposition, Moore is a demonstrative storyteller and credits youthful eavesdropping for inspiring this multifaceted novel. Comparisons to The Help and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe are inevitable, but Moore's take on this rowdy troupe of outspoken, lovable women has its own distinctive pluck. Barney Karpfinger, the Karpfinger Agency.
February 1, 2013
Well, not Florence, Mary and Diana, but rather three close friends from Plainview, Ind., who, from their adolescence to their maturity, meet to gossip and consolidate their friendship at a local eatery. Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean have been inseparable since the late 1960s, when they met in high school. Although Barbara Jean was at first an outsider, she quickly bonded with the other two, and they began calling themselves--and being called by others--the Supremes. The novel opens some 40 years after their salad days, when Odette hears of the death of Big Earl, founder of the eponymous black-owned-and-operated restaurant. (We also find out that this news has been conveyed to Odette by her mother, who's been dead for six years.) Through both Odette's narrative and a more neutral third-person perspective, we learn of the trio's personal problems and the rise and fall of their relationships. Odette, for example, is married to the patient and long-suffering James, and recently, she's discovered she has cancer. Clarice has long been married to Richmond, a charming cad who's serially and terminally unfaithful--and she needs to decide whether to leave him or not. And Barbara Jean, who married her husband, 42-year-old Lester, the day after she graduated from high school, is now dealing with his death and confronting the alcoholism that struck unforgivingly with the earlier death of her young son. Throughout the Supremes' intertwined stories is one constant--meeting and eating at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, now run by his son Little Earl, a place where relationships are forged, scandals are aired and copious amounts of chicken are consumed. A novel of strong women, evocative memories and deep friendship.
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October 15, 2012
In the mid-Sixties, three black teenage friends--Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean--start meeting at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, the first black-owned business in Plainview, IN. Watched over by Earl, they keep meeting there for 40 years. Comparisons to The Help, Waiting To Exhale, and Fried Green Tomatoes; a big tour, a reading group guide, and multiple foreign rights sales recommend this book further.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2013
Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean have been close friends since girlhood, growing up in the 1960s in the southern Indiana town of Plainview. Their personalities and cool good looks earned them the name the Supremes when they'd meet regularly to eat at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, with Big Earl keeping a watchful eye on them. Now in middle age, the Supremes meet regularly with their husbands for dinner at Earl's, now managed by his son. The aging Supremes and Earl's are institutions in a black community that has seen much progress since the 1950s, when the restaurant became the first black-owned business in a racially divided town. But the town as well as the women have also seen much trouble. Odette makes time in her busy life for the regular visitations of her dead mother, Clarice copes with the humiliation of an unfaithful husband, and Barbara Jean struggles to hide her drinking to assuage the death of her child. Moore intersperses episodes from the past with their current lives, showing their enduring friendship through good times and bad.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
June 1, 2013
Dubbed the Supremes, Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean have been friends since their high school days back in the turbulent 1960s. The trio have met every week for 40 years at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat for food and friendship, laughter and tears. VERDICT This is a big-hearted novel, full of humor and appealing characters who make it a delightful read. While we don't ordinarily think of male authors writing women's fiction, Moore gets inside the heads of these women, and his genuine affection for his characters is compellingly evident. (LJ 1/13)
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from January 1, 2013
First-time novelist Moore's story of a trio of women nicknamed the Supremes in small-town Indiana--Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean--may well become as popular as the books about women's friendship it is being compared to, such as The Help, Waiting to Exhale, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. From high school on, through marriages and children, the three friends regularly get together with their husbands at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (the first black-owned business in Plainview) to see and be seen, share gossip, and help each other through bad times. Clearly fond of his three imperfect main characters, the author uses warmhearted humor and salty language to bring to life a tight-knit African-American community that's complete with competing churches, wacky relations, a fortune-telling fraud, and the ghost of a drunken Eleanor Roosevelt. VERDICT With salt-of-the-earth characters like fearless Odette, motherless Barbara Jean, and sharp-tongued Clarice, along with an event-filled plot that readers will laugh and cry over, this is a good bet to become a best seller. [See Prepub Alert, 9/27/12; seven-city author tour.]--Laurie Cavanaugh, Wareham Free Lib., MA
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.