If it is true that laughter is the best medicine, then Rita Mae Brown's, BINGO, will cure anything. I laughed so hard! The small southern town of Runnymede, Maryland, is split down the middle by the Mason-Dixon line. The war between the states is still being played out, and how could it not be?! In trouble with the law in the South? Run north across Town Square and you're free of that jurisdiction. Two sheriff's, two city halls; hilarious!Nickel Smith is often (always) smack-in-the-middle of her mother and aunts' outrageous sisterly competitiveness. And I do mean outrageous. One of my favorite examples is when her nearly ninety-year-old aunt, Louise, sometimes called Aunt Wheezie, wears falsies when competing with her sister, Julia, sometimes called Juts, for the attention of a newly arrived, available, Ed Tutweiler Walters. The antics these octogenarians pulled were not befitting their age and made me forget mine as this sort of funny is ageless!! Nickel is a newspaper journalist, born and breed. When the town's only newspaper, the Clarion, is sold out from under her feet her world seems to be crumbling down around her. But, with the help of friends and happenstance, the Mercury newspaper is established giving Nickel her much-needed newspaper job, and the town an opposing daily. This book was published in 1989, before being gay was a fad. Back when coming out of the closet could close a lot of doors. Yet, the main character, Nickel, is a proud publicly professed lesbian, amongst other well-rounded qualities culminating in a well developed, fascinating main character, surrounded by a family and town of "characters". Funny, funny, funny.A friend loaned me this book. Guess I will have to give it back.
Rita Mae Brown spins a good yarn. When I need a little light-hearted snack to get me comforted before bed, I turn to Brown and her eccentric cast of characters, with whom I fell in love in "Six of One." This tome is told from the POV of Nickel, the adopted lesbian daughter of the spirited Juts - she's having an affair with her best friend's husband. Bingo is missing the heart that I loved so much in "Six of One," and the madcap bickering and capers start to wear a little thin. But still, it's always comforting to read Brown, whose philosophy is: "I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it."
What do You think about Bingo (1999)?
I think this is my favorite of Rita Mae Brown's novels. I don't care for how wishy-washy she makes some of her characters, especially the main character Nicole Smith whom I'm surprised can stand up without help since she lacks a backbone. But overall, this is Brown at her funniest.I do, however, get the feeling that Brown is a self-loathing lesbian. I've noticed that in almost every one of her books that have a lesbian character, they all sleep with men, thereby making them bisexuals. If it was just one book, I'd chalk it up as an aberration. But it's almost every one of her books. If she wants her characters to be lesbians, then have them actually be lesbians, goddamnit. None of this "I'm a lesbian except when I have sex with men" bullshit.
—Freyja Vanadis
