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THE RED HAT CLUB
by Haywood Smith
Hodder St Martin's, September 2003
306 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0733618618
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Haywood Smith, author of QUEEN BEE OF MIMOSA BRANCH is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. Her protagonists in THE RED HAT CLUB are, like the writer herself, Southern Belles. One would assume, from the content of the book, that Smith is writing on behalf of all the oppressed sisterhood of the south. She is fulsome in her acknowledgments, thanks and praise of a wide variety of people who, apparently, have helped make her an astonishing success -- people ranging from a banker to someone running a warehouse but not forgetting her family. The Red Hat Club comprises a group of middle aged matrons who have been friends since their teenage years when they were inducted into a sorority known as the Mademoiselles (I wonder why they couldn't have been Mesdemoiselles?) They have weathered the years together, valuing the bond between them perhaps even more than the bond with their respective husbands. They have regular meetings and at one such discover that the husband of one of them apparently has an extra domicile as well as an extra woman. The entire peal of belles therefore vow to ring the changes on Diane's errant husband. The tale is told in the first person and the narrator, Georgia, has a deep secret of her own which she has not willingly shared with the others, despite their Sacred Traditions. Just how Georgia's deepest wishes are fulfilled along with the revenge on Harold, Diane's husband, makes for an amusing, if slight, story. The narrative bounces happily between the present day and the sixties when the women were taking their first tentative steps toward maturity. It details various traumas suffered by them -- up to and including one of them being beaten by her husband whilst another becomes drug dependent. For anyone who was never a member of a sorority (and I have yet, in Australia, ever to meet anyone who WAS a member of a sorority ) the novel provides some interesting revelations. On the whole it is an entertaining wish fulfilment dream for depressed dowagers and should no doubt prove popular in the annals of chick-lit.
Reviewed by Denise Wels Pickles, February 2004
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