Helpful Score: 6
A first novel written in the primitive prose of a primitive segment of American society--the rural underclass that flies beneath the radar of "normal" American society. The Beans are the people whose places we drive by and shake our heads--an old house trailer, a pickup on blocks with the wheels missing, a rusty old wringer washer abandoned on a sagging porch, chickens and naked children in the yard.... "Beans" is a gritty and disturbing portrait of a class most of us refuse to acknowledge, written by an author who lived what she writes about.
Helpful Score: 4
If you're a person who thinks "politically correct" is a joke, you will laugh like crazy reading this book. We start with a young girl and her father in bed together, seemingly innocent, with the grandma showing up and marching her granddaughter to her own room, telling her she must stay there and miss supper because "The Lord's good meat and tatahs ain't for no dirty little girls." We laugh at poor people a lot, including a woman who seems to be retarded but keeps getting pregnant with no daddy in sight! I understand that it was a New York Times Best Seller, but I don't understand how or why. This was definitely not my cup of tea. In fairness, I stopped reading after 2 chapters, but that's because I could see no way for it to get good enough to make up for how painful those first 2 chapters were to read.
