If you have any sense of humor at all, you'll enjoy Naumoff's characters, predicaments, and outrage. The previous reviewer was bang on, in my opinion.

Although I read Rootie Kazootie when it first came out in paper, I still remember it vividly (unusual for me). Many of it's images can still make me chuckle. The humor ranges from the sight-gag guffaw to the bittersweet recognition of outlandish feelings and behavior. His main character has depth and is far too easy to empathize with.

This is angst with frivolity set in the South, where anything goes. If you've ever had to tolerate someone you've loved moving on with their life--without you--you'll appreciate the perspective in Rootie Kazootie.

Naumoff writes his women with insight beyond surprising. In Silk Hope, NC, he provides an even more intense character and experience.

At a small book-store gathering, Naumoff regaled us with the tale of the woman on whom he based the negative, new wife character. She was so ego-based that she was sure he had written her in as the main (sympathetic) character instead of the gal in the black hat. LOL.

I hope you'll enjoy ROOTIE KAZOOTIE as much as I did and then come share your reviews here. Naumoff deserves word-of-mouth acclaim.

So how come none of you are reviewing Naumoff??? You're missing a great bet! Rootie Kazootie was the first of his I read and I howled out loud at a few of the scenes!

He is one of of those guys who writes women FAR better than he writes men. His women are real, interesting, and sympathetic. In this one, an ex-wife is the main character...she moves from victim to KILLER TOMATO in an hysterical manner. Let's just say that in one scene she uses some farm equipment to help her out.

READ THIS...and then read his SILK HOPE, NC for an even more sympathetic herioine.

Oh....and ENJOY.

I read this crazy little book in two days. i just couldn't put it down. Naumoff is a great southern writer to get into. His characters, especially in this book, are so clear you can picture them well in your mind as you read through the story. More than once, my jaw dropped at some of the things these characters said or did. I've never experienced a character like Ronnie in anything I've read and doubt I will again. I won't give away any details but I will say this, if this were ever made into a film, I could see Kevin Spacey playing the character of Monroe. Read this book to see what I mean.

This is a provocative, disturbing and hilarious book by a master of dialogue. Naumoff is not read as much as he should be.

I did not buy this book from Amazon.com. I purchased it from a store. I picked up the book, read a couple of the reviews from the book and thought I would find the book enlightening with a little amusement. Boy, was I wrong!! The book showed a review from Publishers Weekly "A provocative, infuriating and downright funny chronicle of the sexes." With this review, I thought "hmmm this may be insightful but have a little humor." Don't buy this book if that's what you are looking for because you won't find it here. The book is well written and it's hard to believe the views of the women were written by a man.

Naumoff presents several disturbing portraits of men and women together-none of them healthy, loving, creative, or finally rewarding. Is the sadistic overtly brutal wife-beater Manny really worse than the ingrown, rigidly moralistic, intensely manipulative Walter? So we wind up with the only "happy" couple being the alcoholic nymphomaniac teamed with the amnesiac man-child. Naumoff himself strikes me as manipulative and heavy-handed. For example, when Walter gave Louise a puppy I had no doubt that the dog would have to die in the course of the story. Characters were too one-dimensional for anything else to have happened. What was interesting was to see all the entwined and parallel couples jerked around (by the author) without getting their strings tangled.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this oddly disturbing little book. I wasn't even sure whether author Naumoff likes women or dispises them. He pities them to be sure. All the relationships in the book are off balance, and even Louise and Walter, the May-December couple who initially adore each other, undergo a change that taints their relationship and makes them as unsettling as the other couples we meet.

Naumoff is a fine writer, and I'd be interested to see what he does with other material. It is always interesting when a man writes from a woman's perspective. This one is skewed at best.

Much of this book read as it was advertised. It was a stark look at the institute of marriage. It was indeed dark in humor, and the characters were very interesting and complex. If it were just advertised as an entertainging, fictional read, based on these characters I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. (Other than it's terribly flat conclusion). But when it is touted as a "required read before obtaining a marriage license" that is where I have a big problem with this book. The men in this book are all terribly flawed as far as morality, character, and self-centeredness issues are concerned. The problems or faults of the women in the story, can all be traced back to a man, and are. It causes me to wonder if the author, and I say this with absolutley no malice, or insult intended, is gay. That would help explain the obvious slant against the man in traditional male-female relationships. The mothers role in the traumatic episode with her young daughter is almost totally ignored, and she never was asked to be accountable for it. Yet the Man had to be "broken" because of it. I thought for it to be a book to truly gain insight before marriage, it could have spent more time on the two way streets of real life, rather than the one way, dead end street this book ended up on.

The author has written a searing portrait of marriage and family life. As Reynolds Price suggests, this book should be required reading before obtaining a marriage license. Naumoff deftly traces the decomposition of two long term marriages and the seeds it lays in the marriage of the adult children. Dark comedy but illuminating in the ways that cruelty, unkindness and alienation can settle into marriages.

I grew up near Silk Hope, and it wasn't even close, which made the book a little disappointing for this reader.

All in all the story was good--some really funny parts--but I was glad when it was through and that's unusual for me.

Tom Hanks or Ron Howard should get their hands on this book. It is the next Forest Gump of movies. There are numerous hysterical incidents that would make memorable movie scenes - riding a pig, pigs escape from car trunk, pig attacks man, converting a cardboard box into a confessional, etc. This book has it all