- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
-
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 
The cover of the 1994 novel, which features the Bird Girl sculpture.Author(s) John Berendt Country United States Language English Genre(s) Nonfiction novel Publisher Random House Publication date January 1994 Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Pages 400 pp ISBN 0-679-42922-0 OCLC Number 27975809 Dewey Decimal 975.8/724 20 LC Classification F294.S2 B48 1994 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a non-fiction work by John Berendt. Published in 1994, the book was Berendt's first, and became a The New York Times bestseller for 216 weeks following its debut.[1]
The book was subsequently made into a 1997 movie, directed by Clint Eastwood and based loosely on Berendt's story.
Contents
The book
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is atmospheric and Southern Gothic in tone, depicting a wide range of eccentric Savannah personalities.
The action that serves as a catalyst in the book is the killing of Danny Hansford, a local male prostitute (characterized as "a good time not yet had by all") by respected antique dealer Jim Williams. Four murder trials resulted, with the final one ending in acquittal after the judge finally agreed to move the case away from the Savannah jury pool. The book characterizes the killing as the result of a lovers' quarrel, not a pre-meditated murder. The death took place in Williams' home, originally built by an ancestor of songwriter and Savannah native Johnny Mercer.
The novel also highlights many other residents of Savannah, most notably The Lady Chablis, a preoperative transsexual woman and local drag queen and entertainer. Chablis provides both a Greek chorus of sorts as well as a light-hearted contrast to the more serious action.
The book's plot is based on real-life events that occurred in the 1980s and is classified as non-fiction. Because it reads like a novel, it is sometimes referred to as a "non-fiction novel" or "faction", a sub-genre popularized by Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. (Booksellers generally feature the title in the "true crime" subsection.) It is among the most popular non-fiction releases of all time.
The title alludes to the hoodoo notion of "midnight", the period between the time for good magic and the time for evil magic, and "the garden of good and evil," which refers principally to Bonaventure Cemetery.
The famous Bird Girl statue, originally designed both as art and as a birdseed holder, was originally located at Bonaventure. A Savannah photographer, Jack Leigh, was commissioned to take a photograph for the cover of the book and created his now famous photograph of the statue. The Bird Girl was relocated in 1997 for display in the Telfair Museum in Savannah.
Awards
The book won the 1995 Boeke Prize, and was one of the finalists for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.[2]
See also
- The City of Falling Angels is John Berendt's second book.
References
- ^ New Georgia Encyclopedia: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- ^ Jan Whitt (28 August 2008). Settling the borderland: other voices in literary journalism. University Press of America. p. 53. ISBN 9780761840930. http://books.google.com/books?id=8UftPA8gv_8C&pg=PA51. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
External links
Categories:- 1994 novels
- American novels
- Non-fiction crime books
- Savannah, Georgia
- Non-fiction novels
- Debut novels
- Novels set in Savannah, Georgia
- Lambda Literary Award winning books
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
