Berendt

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994)

In 1981, a young man is shot to death in the house of one of the richest, most influential, and most controversial citizens of Savannah, Georgia, USA. The resulting trial will occupy the city and many of its most colorful residents for years.

The narrative of Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil is divided into two parts. The first is a lengthy, gossipy introduction of many of the diverse characters that populate the city—and I mean diverse. There’s the antiques dealer who lives in one of the landmark houses of the city and his neighbor, an architectural conservationist, with whom he has a hostile relationship. There’s a gregarious, deadbeat lawyer who refuses to practice law and runs a piano bar instead. Another is a flamboyant drag queen who likes to butt his way into other people’s business for fun, and a voodoo priestess who yells in cemeteries asking the dead for winning lottery numbers. The characters come at the reader in a seemingly endless parade of oddities that seem to be trying to out-weird each other. All these people and more are introduced before the shooting happens.

The second part is the trial and aftermath. This is where all those characters become important. Each represents a different piece of Savannah’s world. According to the book, Savannah is cut-off from the rest of the southeast by geography—by rivers and swamps. For much of its history, it had no real highway system running through it to connect it to the rest of the region. Savannah is just there, in its own little world and its people became eccentric in their isolation. The characters serve the story by symbolizing the different reactions and attitudes to the shooting and its aftermath.

The story is told from the first-person view of the author. He is the common denominator between these peculiar people and seems to know everyone. He is also the only sane figure in the story. The author is not a native of Savannah. He’s from New York City and acts as the stand-in for the reader. His relative stability anchors the story, bringing normalcy to the weirdness, and keeps the book from spinning off into chaos.

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil is weird. I really don’t know how to classify it. It’s not a mystery. We know who did it and how. It’s not really about a trial either which only occupies one chapter. Another reviewer I read called it a true crime story. OK, except the story isn’t about the shooting. To be honest, the shooting and trial are the least interesting things about this book. It is really about the city of Savannah itself — its personality, identity, and people. The author makes the city attractive. Early on he writes about a guided tour he took when he first arrived that covered its history, design, parks and squares, old houses and architecture, et cetera. Berendt makes Savannah sound like such a beautiful place to visit. I want to go now.

So, did I like the book? Not really. Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil is not for everyone. I read it because I remembered how popular the book was when it first came out. I was working at a bookstore at the time. It was even made into a movie. How bad could it be, right? I finally decided to see what the big draw was. The book is very different than what I’m used to, and I will admit that I could not put it down. I needed to see how this chaos ended. So, that’s a win for the author and the book, I guess.

If you like odd books with weird characters, go for it. If not, skip it. You’re not missing anything.