THE MILE HIGH HAIR CLUB

Author: Naomi Neale ISBN: 0843955643 8/2005 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: DORCHESTER/Making It

When worlds collide: My life in a nutshell By Bailey Rhodes, talent producer, Expedition Network   NYC DIXIE Fabulous career in cable television, incredible friends, and exciting culture X   Strong coffee and down-home cooking   X Backstabbing assistant attempting to steal my job X   Relatives who are, shall I say, two bubbles shy of plumb crazy   X The boyfriend who can't commit X   The agronomist with the heart of gold and biceps by the pound   X Shrill, talentless anchorwomen trying to claw their way into my programming X   Loud, talentless contestants trying to claw their way into thesixty-fourth annual Miss Tidewater Butter Bean Pageant   X Big mouths, big heads, big dreams, and even bigger hair X X

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Bailey Rhodes is establishing her career as a talent producer at a television station. It's not the acting career she had hoped for when she first came to NYC, but still not bad for a hick from the rural end of Virginia.

Now she is headed back on another dreaded trip to the home she spent her childhood, to help out after her mother suffers a stroke. Bailey is counting the minutes until she can leave before she even arrives.

Bailey is at a loss as to how she should deal with her mom. The woman is no longer the outspoken and self-sufficient person she was, or at least is able to be. Topping it all off, her younger sister who she's been trying to avoid shows up, her two crazy aunts are coaching several young ladies for entrance to the Miss Tidewater Butter Bean Pageant, and she's sure her assistant back at the station is sabotaging Bailey's job to assume the position herself.

This trip south ends up being the same as every other Bailey has made home, and yet nothing like any other. Bailey discovers things on this visit home she's never realized about herself and about her family. Sometimes it's painful, but enlightening all the same.

I loved this book, just loved it. My first Chick Lit and I'm wondering if they are all like this.

Naomi Neale has a fantastic grasp on this story and it's workings. I was especially taken with the reality she brought to contrasting rural life to that of the big city. Having been dragged along on similar trips to my mother's home as a child, to a town not unlike Crestonville and not located far from where this story takes place, I can't help but feel much of what's going on here. My aunts weren't crazy like Bailey's, but they had the same attitudes, same small town outlook. And Bailey's mixed feelings were so easy to understand and empathize with. I was always 'the one from up North', felt like a fish out of water, and still came away appreciating where my mom came from, but doubt I could live there.

But you can be from anywhere and appreciate the relationships Ms. Neale portrays between mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, and sisters. That's one of things I like about this author's style. Anyone can read it and say, "I can so relate to that!"

Don't be thinking this is a deep and analytic story—it's far from it. I laughed out loud from the very beginning and on through to the end. The humor is fresh and fun, some of it surprising, in that it is humor directed at all of the characters, sometimes cutting. Sidney and Euan, Bailey's friends from the city, are easy to imagine as Will and Graces' Jack and Karen duo. They add more style and humor to an already laughing out loud book. More than once I let out one of those 'wahahahaha' laughs, never seeing it coming, that had heads turning my way. I didn't care, it felt too good to laugh.

It ended exactly how it should have, with more laughter and a few tears mixed in. That's how it was for me, anyway. I loved every second of it and felt good when I was done.

Sue Cloud