Download Your Copy Confessions Of A Failed Southern Lady: A Memoir Narrated By Florence King Available In Audiobook

loathe to admit how much I enjoyed this, seeing that Southern humor is something I actively avoid, Somehow, though, King won me over, She manages to paint the lives of herself and those around her in a way that employs a certain element of caricature without becoming schtick or saccharine.
I LOVED Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady! I seriously considered giving this one five this was one of those rare instances when halfstar ratings would have come in really handy.


So I differ from Florence King philosophically on several points e, g. I'm neither a Monarchist nor a Republican, but you don't necessarily have to agree with someone to appreciate her, right

King is one of the most hilarious and titillating authors I have ever read, and she is unapologetic about her feminist viewpoints.
Which always sends my heart into palpitations, I love it when King interrupts herself during a totally comic episode to throw down a razorsharp feminist critique.
Being a highly intelligent and ambitious woman seeking academic accolades ins Mississippi, King had many such critiques!

Ah, and then she falls in love.
. . and her razorsharp tongue turns to mush, King's recantation of falling in love with Bres, the beautiful but aloof queen of the Classics Department, is so sincere, astonishing and beautiful it really speaks to how love can transform even the most curmudgeonly among us.


My only complaints about King's style are that every once in awhile the comic tone falls a little flat, and some of the character types are too broadly drawn.
Hmmm, not to mention the florals NoraRobertsesque cover art, Although who knows, maybe you enjoy telling people that you're reading a smutty romance novel, Oh, did I not mention the smuttiness Add "brilliant feminist critique" to the description and that pretty much sums it up! My favorite misanthrope and southern cultural anthropologist.


Many years ago, my west coast born husband, out of sheer boredom, plucked King's Southern Ladies and Gentlemen from my collection.
Two days later, he closed the book, gave me a long look, and said, "This explains everything, "

By "everything," he meant my sister's convoluted and hyperventilating conversations, stories I'd told him about growing up in the south, certain cultural references that he felt required translation, and various turns of speech.
It may have also meant some of my quirks that he is too much of a gentleman to mention specifically.


I'll have to inform him that he was mistaken, That book only explained most everything, This one covers the rest, including the fixation on silverware, Venus versus virgin versus virago, and southern lesbian culture.
Didn't we all have the Darcy Sisters somewhere in the extended family tree

King is irreverent, smart, absolutely nonPC, alternates between profundity and profanity with whiplash speed, and funny as hell.
Although written in, there's not much in here that doesn't still hold water, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady is Florence King's classic memoir of her upbringing in an eccentric Southern family, told with all the uproarious wit and gusto that has made her one of the most admired writers in the country.
Florence may have been a disappointment to her Granny, whose dream of rearing a Perfect

Southern Lady would never be quite fulfilled.
But after all, as Florence reminds us, no matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.
Someone needs to build a statue of Florence King, I loved this book. One of the few that made me literally laugh out loud, Amazing book. I must have some notes, probably in an unindexed! paper journal, Remember those How did we live without computers

A good preview:
“No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street”
Florence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady

I wish I could find the one about the lady who came to call, Flo offered wineinabox.
Lady turns up nose. Momma said, if the hostess offers gall amp wormwood, by God you drink it! I just reread this book after first encountering it in my Southern Women Writers course.
In one sentence, I'd say this book is about Florence King's experience becoming her own woman in a culture that has a lot of expectations about what a woman should be.
If I had another sentence, I'd add that this book is hilarious and bawdy and perfect for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider.


The first time around, the hilarious descriptions of Southern culture struck me most, This time, I still laughed out loud throughout the book, but I was also more impressed by King's process of becoming and understanding herself than I'd been before.
Her sexuality, her Ayn Randian leanings often make her the outsider, but she comes to a loving, eyesopen peace with the people and culture around her.
Synopsis Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is Florence King's classic memoir of her upbringing in an eccentric Southern family, told with all the uproarious wit and gusto that has made her one of the most admired writers in the country.
Florence may have been a disapointment to her Granny, whose dream of rearing a Perfect Southern Lady would never quite be fulfilled.
But after all, as Florence reminds us, "no matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoke on the street.


I ordered this from my local indie bookstore the year they opened, likeor, because my fave author said she loved this book.
As soon as I got it, like many of my books, I admired it on a shelf, It looked great. Over the next decade, I took it down periodically and put it in my "tbr" pile, only to replace it back on the shelf.
I don't know why it took me so long to read it, sitelinkLilith Saintcrow sang its praises and sitelinkSandi Toksvig wrote the intro in my edition.
But I failed to ever crack the spine, until now,is my year to read all those dozens of books that I've bought or borrowed but never read only admired.
And let me tell you,is starting with a doozy because this was fab, It made me laugh, think and even shed a little tear, It was a very different look at White Southerns female life than I've ever seen or read, As a mixed races Southern female feminist, it gave me a lot of food for thought, It also made me so happy at how far we've come, but cognizant of how far we still have to go.


Rating Four virago strong


Devoured the book, couldn't put it down,
Really liked it, consumed within days
Enjoyed a fair bit, better than average
Meh
Absolute drivel This is one of the most brilliant and funniest books ever written about being a southern woman.
It is purportedly the autobiography of Florence King, I say purportedly because who knows how accurate the details are, It doesn't matter because the truth is in the telling, There are so many great one liners in it that it's impossible to have a favorite although I'd say that "Like charity, schizophrenia begins at home," is a pretty good start.
I bought a paperback edition in London when I was dealing with a dying relative and the attendant family nuts.
This book helped me get through it all with a minimum of fuss, I read this many years ago and loved it because of the humor, This time around, it was just as funny, but I also appreciated the love and respect Florence had for her family, eccentric misfits all.
A bookish British father Herb who made his living as a musician, A mother who smoked, drank and cussed with the best of them, Granny, determined to make a lady of Florence since she had failed so miserably with her own daughter, and Jenzy, Granny's black best friend who lived with them.
Just imagine this group of people living in Washington, D, C. in the's. Just imagine Florence going to graduate school in Mississippi inand realizing that she was a lesbian, Or just leave your imagination aside, because the scenes in this book are wonderful enough without it,

A word of warning to some readers, Florence King is honest about her feelings and her life, in addition to being funny as Hell, So it's guaranteed to be be offensive to many, and it was published inbefore political correctness was introduced.


Of course, Granny and Jenzy were my favorites in this biography, Granny failed at making Florence a "lady" in the long run, but she kept trying to her dying breath.
When Jenzy died, Herb delivered her eulogy, in which he included this quote from Cervantes: "A lady is a woman who is so resolved to be respected that she can make herself so even amidst an army of soldiers".


I never heard a better description, Parts of this were touching, but I'm not sure whether it was the gulf of time, the literal gulf of the ocean, or the fact Florence admitted to liking Ayn Rand that just would not allow me to connect with a lot of this.


I should have learnt by now, after the Anne Lister debacle, that looking up historical gays in an effort to find some sort of chain of unity is always a mistake and leads only to irritation.
The only exception is Sappho, and that's because we're missingof it, My mom gave me the book Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady at the age of, but I wish she would have passed it to me at.
So many of the mistakes of my life could've been avoided if I had had the wit and wisdom of Florence King to name and define, and to steer me away from the toxic influence of the failed Southern ladies around me.


Part memoir, part horror story, every character was the best and worst all at once, Florence represented all of them with honesty and mercy that I hope the people in my life extend to me.


My one major complaint is the pacing of the story was jarringly inconsistent at the end of the book.
We spend multiple chapters in certain periods of her life, and at the end of the book, we get a concise summary of what I assumed to be important events.
It just ends, and I would've liked to know more, I usually avoid autobiographies and memoirs something about the ego involved in writing one puts me off, This book is an exception, perhaps it is as much about the women in Ms, King's life as it is about the author, The book is humorous, many of the stories have the tone and timing of oftentold oral tales, The last quarter of the book focuses on King's coming out, which is handled with the same tone but perhaps less humor than the rest of the book.
Her exploration of the "Southern lady" takes on an almost anthropological, Almost. Nonetheless, it leads the reader to think about both the terms, Regardless of the exasperation the author feels for these strong women and her father, it is also clear she feels affection and respect for them.
Some interesting insights, and I appreciate the candour at least, It just left me cold in the end, nowhere near as witty as was billed on the front cover.
Might have smirked a couple of times but certainly didn't laugh out loud and in broad terms it is my kind of humour.
Maybe I missed something by not being American, or of that era but good writing should trancend that, I'm not sure what marketing genius decided to saddle this book with a pink floral cover, It's unfortunate and misleading.
Once I recommended this book to a soccermom type looking for something for her Southern Writers Book Club.
I'm not sure what I was thinking, Possibly I was only remembering how hilarious this book is, and how I actually cry with laughing every time I read it and I'm up to my tenth rereading at this point.
Or maybe I remembered the inspirational comingofage aspects, I think the flowery cover is what put the finishing touches on my argument and sealed the deal,

At any rate, I failed to mention the massive amounts of drinking, swearing, smoking, and sex lesbian and otherwise, or the fact that Florence King pretty much loathes humanity.
It was apparently a little much for the Southern Writers Book Club Ladies, who were, however, too polite to directly complain.
They did let me know that they would NOT be taking my recommendations ever again, Alas.

If you haven't read anything by Florence King, then it's time you started! And this zesty memoir is the place to begin.
It's an amazingly fine and funny book about growing up absurd in Washington, D, C. in the Forties and Fifties, The only child of a British band musician and a takecharge mother, young Florence's life was full of contradictions, rife for comic humor.
Her way with dialog alone will have you in stitches, Read about her relation with her brother "Gottapot" a pun on a certain Virginia county, her literate father who was accused of reading "John Quincy Shitass" also known as "The Virgin and the Dynamite" by her businessoriented mother, and the time young Florence almost started a race riot by throwing an Al Capp "Shmoo" doll out the window of their cramped Washington, D.
C. flat. And when Florence goes to college and tangles with the military well, she was a lady to her fingertips but flunked out of the Service anyway.
As King memorably informs us, she may have wound up in bed with a member of her own sex but she never, I repeat NEVER, smoked on the street.


Failure was never so much fun as in this amazing work that deserves to be much better known than it is.
Florence King is no longer with us, but I hope CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY and other works such as SOUTHERN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN and WASP, WHERE IS THY STING live forever they deserve to.


To this day, I am liable to call a boring, conventional lady a 'malkin' in my head or to think 'those who study Greek must take pains with dress' when I'm at a library convention.
Thanks for keeping it real, Florence!,