458
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #42,257 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
A great novel that deserves to be protected from the pc attacks of those who want to tell people what they can and cannot read
I bought this book after reading a politically correct rant in a magazine by someone who thought it was high time that the book should be shunned or even banned. In general, I tend to think that anything that people want to ban should be immediately and strongly supported for free speech reasons, if nothing else, but I did not necessarily have high expectations for the book. I assumed it would be a low/middlebrow, well written historical romance, but not much more than that. I was way wrong. Its a great novel on many levels: plot, characterization, narrative flow, and effective advocacy and support for a vanquished way of life (Mitchell does not pretend to be objective; she is fighting a rear guard action to defend the South she loved against the judgment of history; the reason she infuriated liberal critics from the moment the book was published to the present day was because she fought that action so effectively in this book.). Of course, her view of the institution of slavery was disingenuous (at best), but, on the other hand, her bitter attacks on the carpetbaggers and speculators during the reconstruction era certainly ring true. But the politics of the book are not the elements that make it great; it is the portrayal of an era and the way she makes you care about the events, characters, and land that make up Scarlett O'Hara's world
This novel is the second greatest selling book of all time (the Bible is first), and I can now see why it has maintained its extraordinary popularity for 75 years. That popularity was, and is, well deserved.
