This was a very difficult book to get through. For me it dragged along with many characters and detailed descriptions that went nowhere. The actual story of Jim Williams and the murderer he committed was interspersed throughout the book. The part I did think was ok was the description of Savannah. To me the whole book seemed like a set up for a story that never took off. It took me half the book to realize that THAT was the story. I would not recommend it.

"For me, Savannah's resistance to chance was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world." (388)

Rating to come!

Note, February 2014: I was just rereading this review, and FUNNY STORY, I moved to a small town. Not so much a big city person as I had originally thought...

Original review, circa 2007: I love this book to the point where I don't even really know what to say about it, because nothing I can say about it will be good enough to explain just how incredible this book really is.

After reading this book, I had to restrain myself from booking a flight to Savannah. It makes you want to be there, it makes you want to know the people, it makes you want to pick up and find a place just like it so you can move there. I am a city person through and through, but this book made me want to move to a small town. The characters are so remarkable, so interesting that you can't believe they are real people. This books makes you proud to be a human being as much as it makes you laugh at our ridiculousness.

A NOTE ABOUT THE MOVIE: don't see it before you read the book. (but if you have seen the movie and haven't read the book, please read the book because it's so much better.) while the movie essentially leaves no doubt about the actual account of the murder that it focuses around, the book does not. and the book is also not nearly as centered around Jim Williams as the movie is.

“If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?”

A reread, updated from 4 to 5 stars because I'm a sucker for Southern Gothic and there's something about this one that really presses all the right buttons for me - potentially because it's based on real events.

Gossip fiction at its best with a sweet southern sauce, quite enjoyable, even if a bit shallow for my tastes, a satisfying piece of skilful journalism nonetheless. Extremely descriptive, which can be a turn off for some readers.

P.S. Couldn't get rid of Kevin Spacey's face when reading about Jim Williams. Which was pretty disturbing in the light of the recent allegations. Which makes the story even more ambiguous in some weird meta way.

Although I enjoyed it, I think this book could have been much better. The first half is largely a series of character studies, and the second half is essentially a true-life crime novel. Unfortunately I grew dangerously bored with the first half, and as the mystery unfolds, I grew annoyed that many of the characters introduced in the first half really have little play or impact on the rest of the book. The murder mystery itself is an interesting story but is very anticlimactic. While the book is nonfiction, and in that sense rather remarkable that the author experienced these people and events, I perhaps would have liked the author to instead written a much more compelling fictional work inspired by Savannah and the circumstances included in the book.

Midway through the first hour of the first day of my first visit to Savannah, back in the fall of 1996, I came to understand that in Savannah, this book is *The* Book. One does not need to mention author John Berendt, or give the book’s title. All one has to do is say, “She comes across really well in The Book,” or, “He doesn’t look very good in The Book,” or, “There’s too much [or not enough] about them in The Book.” It is simply “The Book,” like the Bible in Jerusalem.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil unfolds a fascinating, compelling tale of author John Berendt’s time in Savannah. Berendt, an Esquire magazine columnist and former editor of New York magazine, says that he got into the habit of traveling to Savannah, and found himself in the midst of a bizarre story that involved larger-than-life characters, wild sexual escapades, and murder.

Having learned the three rules of Savannah life – (1) “Always stick around for one more drink”, (2) “Never go south of Gaston Street” (for a true Savannahian, that’s “North Jacksonville”), and (3) “Observe the high holidays – Saint Patrick’s Day and the day of the Georgia-Florida football game” (pp. 50-51) – Berendt quickly acquaints himself with an array of colorful individuals. One character that has made a strong impression on many readers is The Lady Chablis, a fearlessly self-expressive transgender woman of whom Berendt says that “she was definitely a she, not a he. I felt no tendency to stumble self-consciously over pronouns in her case” (p. 100).

In the main, however, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is the story of Jim Williams, a man who came to Savannah from a small Georgia town and achieved such success and wealth as an antiques dealer that he could install himself in the Mercer House, one of Savannah’s most prestigious old homes, and live like an antebellum Southern aristocrat. Many things made Jim Williams an outsider – his small-town origins and his sexual orientation among them. But his parties were the toast of Savannah’s high society, and even those who hated him hoped for an invitation.

All of that changed when Williams shot and killed 21-year-old Danny Hansford, a hot-tempered young man who was described by both men and women as “a walking streak of sex.” Hansford restored furniture for Williams part-time, was a sex worker much of the rest of the time, and constantly used drugs and alcohol in a manner that exacerbated a decidedly nasty violent streak. Everyone involved in the case, including Jim Williams himself, agreed that Williams had shot Hansford inside Mercer House. The question was whether the shooting was murder or justifiable self-defense.

The case quickly became a cause célèbre throughout Savannah – a case in which sex, violence, socioeconomic class, and money intersected. People followed the case with the same degree of rapt fascination that ordinarily would be reserved for the Georgia-Florida football game, as when a guest at one of Williams’s parties – Williams still gave the parties, whenever he was out of jail long enough to be able to do so – opined that “Jim has good lawyers. That’s why I think he’ll get off. That, and because of his standing in the community” (p. 200).

As one murder trial gave way to another, with twists and turns that one would not have thought possible outside of a Perry Mason episode, Williams himself maintained, with the enigmatic, serene equanimity that seems to have outraged his enemies, that “One way or another…I will get out. You can rely on that….My conviction will be reversed. You’ll see” (p. 300). Williams’s tactics ranged from the tried-and-true – hiring top lawyers with a reputation for securing acquittals, even in the most difficult murder cases – to measures that will never be found on the books in any law-school curriculum.

The title chapter, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” shows Williams seeking out the help of a vodun priestess named Minerva. As Berendt tells it, he joins Williams and Minerva on a midnight visit to the grave of Danny Hansford, where Minerva tries to work rituals that will lessen the dead man’s wrath. Even dead, Minerva says, “That boy is still workin’ hard against you” (p. 251), trying from beyond the grave to ensure that Williams will come across as a cold-blooded murderer, and therefore will go to prison.

That story, compelling as it is, captures some of the things that made me wonder about this book. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is often described as a “nonfiction novel”; and as with other works of this genre, such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, one is left wondering where the borderlands between nonfiction and novel lie. When is Berendt describing what he saw, and when is he using the techniques of fiction to reconstruct? Interesting to wonder about.

Whatever the case, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is the kind of book that becomes a phenomenon. When my wife and I were in Savannah in 1996, we found it fun to go to the club where Emma Kelly, “The Lady of Six Thousand Songs,” played the piano. During Ms. Kelly’s breaks, visitors queued up, waiting patiently for Ms. Kelly to sign their copies of Midnight, no doubt on some page of Chapter 6 wherein Ms. Kelly’s story is told.

Today, I do not know whether Midnight tours of Savannah are as popular as they were in the 1990’s. Perhaps those tours still go on, along with the ghost-story tours for which hearses fitted with rooftop rows of seats make their way along Bay Street. Whatever the case, I do believe that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will be “The Book” in Savannah for many years to come. Savannah is truly the main character of Midnight; and as John Berendt depicts her, she is an intriguing and beguiling Southern belle indeed.

This is what is known as a true crime classic; it is well written, very easy to read and compeling. However I am reading it at the same time as "In Cold Blood" and the two don't compare so well. Capote manages to stay entirely neutral, an outside observer. Berendt is living in Savannah and is part of the community he is writing about.
The first part of the sets the background and characters well, especially Chablis. I just wonder what would have happened without the murder and where the book would have gone; it would certainly have lost much of its impact. Having said that the trials dominate the second half of the book to the exclusion of most of the rest of the characters. There is a certain amount of tweaking the truth in terms of chronology whichmakes one question some of the characterisation.
I read it fairly quickly and if I suspend my critical faculties it reads easily and is enjoyable. However there are parts of the book which bothered me a little; the treatment of the poorer residents of Savannah, the voyeurism of the author felt uncomfortable at times and there was a sense of the characters being exhibits in a zoo.
Nevertheless I am glad I read it and reading it in conjunction with Capote's book has been very interesting.

I read this book as required reading in high school before taking a trip down to Savannah for a literary tour. I loved it. It perfectly captures the goings on behind closed doors in the South where everybody knows about some scandal but nobody will truly talk about it and nobody knows where they heard it first. My mother always says that if she had thought about it, she could have written a very similar novel about growing up in Nashville, Tennessee in the 60's, 70's and 80's.

I went into this expecting a murder mystery, which this is not! It's a travel book full of anecdotes that eventually (and then only occasionally) becomes a courtroom drama. The main problem is that all of the people Berendt meets and hangs out with and seems to be friends with are a bunch of racist, homophobic snobby assholes, and their comeuppances are often nonexistent or boring. It's one thing to be surrounded by the upper crust of white Savannah society and have to relay their thoughts and attitudes, it's another to be completely uncritical of them and repeatedly stress how fun they were to be around.

This book makes the social attitudes of the Great Gatsby look modern, and it can't even present the murder trial in an interesting way because Berendt has to interrupt it to provide chapters detailing the exploits of a mascot for Georgia State's football team. The narrative structure is so lax that I accidentally listened to the audiobook tracks with shuffle on and it took me over 30 minutes to realize it.

“Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone.”

I should’ve read this in print rather than on audio. It’s pretty dialogue-heavy and I was often bored listening. It was less about the murder than I expected. I’m not complaining, just surprised. That was maybe half and the rest was about an eccentric cast of real-life characters who lived in Savannah at the time. Some were connected to the accused, some weren’t. It was a bit boring, guys. Did I say that already?

The Lady Chablis was a much-needed treat.

“The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.”

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is the “bestselling true crime classic” that I personally wouldn’t specifically categorise as true crime, but as more of an entertaining examination of a community and all its eccentric characters. With a murder thrown in for good measure.

It’s a first-person account of life in an isolated remnant of the Old South - specifically Savannah, Georgia - where nothing really changes. Until one day shots ring out in one of Savannah’s grandest mansions. The book has a real sense of place, as Berendt so beautifully describes this city. I’ve since added it to the bucket list of places that I must visit before I die!

The characters that live here are absolutely OFF THE CHARTS. They’re all so eccentric and unique, it truly feels as though you are reading about fictional people. There’s a voodoo priestess, a recluse who owns a bottle of poison so lethal it could kill everyone in town, a HILARIOUS Black drag queen, a redneck escort... I could go on. Some of the stories had me shrieking with laughter as I thought “but this can’t be real!!” And yet it is - for the most part. Similar to the other “true crime classic”, In Cold Blood, some parts are filled-in by the narrator in order to complete the narrative. But it’s so fuckin’ entertaining and funny I don’t even care how much of it is actually true!

I would say don’t pick up this expecting your usual true crime novel. Sure, there’s a murder and a court case etc, but for the most part that was the secondary to the story of this city and it’s crazy inhabitants. My only minor quibble is that some parts moved a little slow, but on the whole I had a BLAST reading this! I’d definitely recommend. 4 stars.