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The Redneck Bride: A Novel
Rafe Munger, junior gets himself in trouble when he continues to see Sula Jean, a former girlfriend, only a week before he is engaged to marry Davy Sue Merkle
- GenresFiction
175 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1986
About the author
John Fergus Ryan
9 books7 followersJohn Fergus Ryan is the author of three novels, The Redneck Bride, The Little Brothers of St. Mortimer, and Watching. Billy Bob Thorton (Slingblade) recently finished production of a film version of his book The Redneck Bride, starring Antonio Banderas. Ryan has lived in Memphis, Tennessee for over 40 years.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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July 23, 2021reviews likening books to confederacy of dunces generally range from wrongheaded to fraudulent so what i will say is: this novel does NOT bear a strong resemblance to the classic work by john kennedy toole and you do NOT owe it to yourself to read it.
August 9, 2023
This is NOT southern gothic. People are comparing this to everyone from John Kennedy Toole to Lewis Grizzard to Flannery O’Connor. Good grief. This is NOT even literature.
I saw Billy Bob Thornton raving about this book on PBS’s Southern Storytellers. I should have known not to take advice about books from someone who used to wear Angelina Jolie’s blood around his neck in a vial.
It is not the worst thing I’ve ever read; this kind of book has its place, but I’m not sure it’s place was even thirty-seven years ago when it was published, but it doesn’t translate today. A Confederacy of Dunces and everything Flannery O’Connor wrote translates to today. (Themes of grace, forgiveness, loneliness and greed are classic themes. Even a character who is a lazy dreamer can translate.) What does not translate well is this author’s OVERWRITING and need to be overtly clever on almost every single page.
This book is tiresome. It is like a local play where every actor has no clue about being subtle. You sit through it to be polite and because you paid for the ticket…but you are dreading every minute that the curtain doesn’t fall.
I did not laugh at anything. I found parts of the Exorcist funnier than this book. They should raze Bloat, Mississippi and build something useful over it —like a landfill.
I saw Billy Bob Thornton raving about this book on PBS’s Southern Storytellers. I should have known not to take advice about books from someone who used to wear Angelina Jolie’s blood around his neck in a vial.
It is not the worst thing I’ve ever read; this kind of book has its place, but I’m not sure it’s place was even thirty-seven years ago when it was published, but it doesn’t translate today. A Confederacy of Dunces and everything Flannery O’Connor wrote translates to today. (Themes of grace, forgiveness, loneliness and greed are classic themes. Even a character who is a lazy dreamer can translate.) What does not translate well is this author’s OVERWRITING and need to be overtly clever on almost every single page.
This book is tiresome. It is like a local play where every actor has no clue about being subtle. You sit through it to be polite and because you paid for the ticket…but you are dreading every minute that the curtain doesn’t fall.
I did not laugh at anything. I found parts of the Exorcist funnier than this book. They should raze Bloat, Mississippi and build something useful over it —like a landfill.
March 8, 2016
Whelp. I liked "Watching" a whole heck of a lot more, probably cuz it was set in NYC and my Yankee sensibilities are more attuned to the mean streets of Manhattan, but this was a fun read. Imagine a pair of petty crooks, one semi-intelligent con man and one giant mute who doesn't know his own strength. That's the set up here; these two try to rob a Dog and Cat Hospital assuming that the fees for dog licences will take them least as far as Memphis, but get nabbed in the process of doing the deed.
Complicate that with the fact that the Rafe Jr., son of the town's most important businessman (Rafe Sr.) is about to get married but who himself has been nabbed for his his less-than-legal transgressions, an incarceration that threatens to put the kibosh on an upcoming development deal. Throw in Davy Sue Merkle, the redneck bride of the title, who's just trying to marry Rafe Jr. cuz she's grown up poor and don't want to be poor no more.
We've got proxy grooms, bloody murders, and a lost set of upper teeth in this book. There's also the town celebrity who's made one Hollywood movie, but has fallen on hard times, making skin flicks to turn a profit. So much weird. So much dark weird. So much funny weird. It's a Southern Gothic with a pop twist. I've read reviewers who compare it to Faulkner, but dear God they are off. There's none of that here. Here we have Hemingway sentences serving up a Southern-fried plot. And in the pairing of Rixie Leaptrot and Bunny Whitesides, we have a little of Steinbeck's George and Lenny.
Actually, after writing this review, I can see that I liked this novel better than I thought I did. There's a scene in the book where Rixie and Bunny go to Memphis to get fitted in their lime green tuxedos for the upcoming nuptials. The store proprietor is thrilled by their presence, excited about the prospect of outfitting a "real Delta wedding." What this tells me is that I'm pretty far from the deep south. I can barely understand what that means. John Fergus Ryan, however, understands it perfectly.
Complicate that with the fact that the Rafe Jr., son of the town's most important businessman (Rafe Sr.) is about to get married but who himself has been nabbed for his his less-than-legal transgressions, an incarceration that threatens to put the kibosh on an upcoming development deal. Throw in Davy Sue Merkle, the redneck bride of the title, who's just trying to marry Rafe Jr. cuz she's grown up poor and don't want to be poor no more.
We've got proxy grooms, bloody murders, and a lost set of upper teeth in this book. There's also the town celebrity who's made one Hollywood movie, but has fallen on hard times, making skin flicks to turn a profit. So much weird. So much dark weird. So much funny weird. It's a Southern Gothic with a pop twist. I've read reviewers who compare it to Faulkner, but dear God they are off. There's none of that here. Here we have Hemingway sentences serving up a Southern-fried plot. And in the pairing of Rixie Leaptrot and Bunny Whitesides, we have a little of Steinbeck's George and Lenny.
Actually, after writing this review, I can see that I liked this novel better than I thought I did. There's a scene in the book where Rixie and Bunny go to Memphis to get fitted in their lime green tuxedos for the upcoming nuptials. The store proprietor is thrilled by their presence, excited about the prospect of outfitting a "real Delta wedding." What this tells me is that I'm pretty far from the deep south. I can barely understand what that means. John Fergus Ryan, however, understands it perfectly.
July 5, 2010
I'm sorry. I really am. I'm about to tell you not to live another hour without reading this novel, and you're never going to find it. The Redneck Bride by John Fergus Ryan is pure southern Gothic, out of print and mighty scarce.
(Read more . . .)
September 30, 2014
This is one heckuva hilarious ride!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews