New novel includes Carolina Greek Life
 

It's Lookaway Lookaway, by Wilton Barnhart, who teaches in the MFA program at NCSU. I put it on hold at the library and just got it today -- if I didn't have a meeting tonight I'd drop everything and read it.

p. 4: 2003 -- "This led to Jerilyn's one upcoming act of proposed rebellion. She was going to rush a sorority." (at UNC)
p. 9: "Jerilyn said nothing about rush registration to Becca, so the date deadline for her to participate came and went. And what Jerilyn truly couldn't explain was that Becca was a jeans-and-t-shirt, dykey haircut kind of girl, and, sure, those kinds of casual sororities existed, but among the top powerhouse sororities, you showed up stylish and sharp...just not so sharp that it looked like you went to the store and bought the most expensive thing they had....Jerilyn was as committed as ever to Operation Sorority....
She liked the girls at Sigma Sigma Sigma; they had a Carrie Underwood CD playing the whole time in the background--Carrie was a TriSig made good....At Delta Delta Delta (on a repeat visit)...if she got accepted there (which wasn't going to happen) she contemplated the long sophomore exile to the lesser TriDelt houses, probably three or four to a bunkroom in some lightless basement, until one day, as a junior, she would summoned....to the glorious upper rooms of the bid white mansion with the wraparound porch."

Jerilyn's mother is a Theta Kappa Theta and she thinks that's what she'll settle for ("a brown brick box with narrow horizontal upper windows which made the structure look like it was squinting"). But she pledges "the legendary Sigma Kappa Nu," the wild one: "drugs, booze, and boys...in a house like Sigma Kappa Nu, you know that end of all that work is some serious playtime."

And the rest of the story? You'll need to check it out yourself! :)

Dykey haircut? Wowsers.

Ummm, I think I'd be opting for the meeting .... : )

Tarheel here.

I've had my name on the waiting list at our library for a few weeks now. There were lots of names ahead of me.

Are you sure about that? Tarheel, not Tar Heel?

:p

Oh, yes, MysticCat. : )

As you know there are Tar Heels (far beyond West Raleigh's ditches), and then there are Tarheels. : )

Ha! I know nothing of the sort. I was born and reared in the Tar Heel State, not the Tarheel State.

You can rant and you can rave all you like, but Tar Heel is the preferred spelling, whether one is speaking of the Old North State or of the Southern Part of Heaven, any affectation of the denizens of West Raleigh notwithstanding. ;)

I'm not going to rant and rave. That would be unbecoming! : ) I am NC born and bred too, with relatives having graduated from all four Tobacco Road schools. The Tar Heels were the esteemed students and alumni of UNC-CH; Tarheels were the rest of us born and raised in the state ..... : )

Now, we'll have to see how the author portrays the state and its citizens. (I can't say that the excerpts seem promising ...)

Same here.

Ummm, no. Tarheel is how people from away spell it. My father—a proud son of the Old North State and a proud graduate of NC State—taught us at an early age that Tar Heel is always two words. Always. :p

{hopes that pinksequins knows I'm just having fun with her.}

The reviews and excerpts I have read look great. The thing to remember is that it's comic satire. The focus family is from Myers Park in Charlotte, where I think most of the story takes place.

And remember that Asheville seethed when Look Homeward, Angel first came out. Now they love him.

I know you're teasing MC! If the book is missing Beach Music, Queens Raad West or CCD, all bets are off ..... ; - )