From the Publisher
"As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous . . . [Southgate] penetrates a hidden world with devastating accuracy."—ZZ Packer
"Third Girl from the Left tells about the other side of Hollywood in the seventies—of what it means to be black, sexy, smart, and full of dreams in a land where 'blaxploitation' is as literal as it sounds . . . As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous."—ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
"Third Girl from the Left will be justifiably praised as a fine, pulls-no-punches portrait of growing up black and female in 'modern' America, but what amazes me almost more than Southgate's daring is her versatility: she can write fast and hot, then lush and tender, then just plain truthful and burning with heart."—Julia Glass, author of Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award
"Martha Southgate's novel is a loving portrait of three generations of women, as cinematic as any that has been rendered on the big screen. Third Girl from the Left is a powerful testament to mothers and daughters, and how differently we all dream."—Veronica Chambers, author of Miss Black America
"Martha Southgate's vivid, spirited novel Third Girl from the Left is largely about families—not just the ones we're born into, but the ones we make for ourselves. But it's also about movies and the hold they can have on us, sometimes even despite our better judgment." The Chicago Tribune
"Third Girl from the Left gives us the flip side of Hollywood's glitz and glamour . . . A gripping tale."—Essence
"A graceful, insightful novel." Elle
"Here are two things you'll know for certain after reading Third Girl from the Left: family communication is important, and there's just about nothing cooler than a soul sister in 1970s Los Angeles." The New York Times
"A book with blood in its veins." Newsday
"Erotic love, mother love, movie love: whatever form of desire she describes, Martha Southgate has come up with a voice to adore." TimeOut New York
Chelsea Cain
Southgate makes these women imperfect enough to be interesting, but gives them enough heart so they're sympathetic despite their flaws. Delicious details abound, but the historical flotsam works especially well in Angela's section, which includes a saucy trip to Wilt Chamberlain's party palace.
—The New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
In her second novel, Southgate (The Fall of Rome) explores how one generation's liberation becomes another's idea of constraint. Nested narratives follow three black women-Mildred, daughter Angela, and granddaughter Tamara-briefly breaking tradition to define themselves. Tamara, an aspiring Spike Lee, frames the tale of Angela, who escapes a prosaic life playing the obligatory naked black woman in the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. Hollywood's limitations turn Angela's dreams to frustration, and her outsized sexual displays incur her mother's wrath. Bold decisions and compromises leave Angela, a single mother working in a doctor's office by day, watching videos of her glory days at night with her female lover, while insisting that she is not a "dyke." The narrative spirals back to Mildred, showing how movies-a conduit through which Mildred and teenage Angela connect-are a window to a better world. The narrative culminates in Tamara's documentary about Angela, Mildred and herself, black women in America, "making their lives mean something where they can." While what should invigorate-Tamara taking the creative reins of a form her elders limitedly participated in-lacks conviction because of a too-neat conclusion, the book's emotional intensity and its characters' complex motivation overcome occasional simplification. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
At the heart of Southgate's third novel (after The Fall of Rome and the YA work Another Way To Dance) is Angela, black, beautiful, headstrong, and utterly determined to make it as a Hollywood actress in 1970. She flees Tulsa, OK, after a childhood spent watching movies with her starstruck mother and gets drawn into the blaxploitation film boom. Hollywood's big bargaining chip-sexuality-never quite delivers the hoped-for big roles, leaving Angela stranded in bit parts. Roommate Sheila is marginally more successful, and soon the two find with each other the stable love that is missing from their roller-coaster scramble for parts. Then Angela's unexpected pregnancy by Rafe, a fellow black actor, spins the two women out of the movies and into regular jobs. When Angela is summoned home 30 years later to tend to her 91-year-old mother, she brings along daughter Tamara, a budding film director. There, the three women come full circle as Tamara films her grandmother's oral history, setting in motion the kind of healing that comes from uncovering lost secrets and family tragedies. Southgate writes with a clear-eyed sensitivity of the faceless people who helped make possible the careers of today's successful African American superstars; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/05.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A compelling saga of love, film and family secrets. In her third venture, Southgate (The Fall of Rome, 2001) braids a multigenerational tale of the loves and ambitions of mothers and daughters. In the mid-1950s, Mildred is a middle-class black housewife in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with an open love of movies and a secret love of the town's film projectionist. Film provides fascination and solace for Mildred, who slips away from a haunted family past to meet her lover in the darkened Dreamland Theater. In the '70s, Mildred's daughter Angela also falls for film, leaving her seemingly stable future in Tulsa for life as an actress in Los Angeles. Yet after running headlong at her career, she finds herself typecast in the nudie bits of blaxploitation films, and her relationship with Mildred grows strained. After an unplanned pregnancy, Angela leaves the limited world of bit-part acting to raise her daughter Tamara. In the '80s, Tamara grows up watching her mother on film. Movies, the vestiges of Angela's former life, help kindle Tamara's interest in film, but as her interest in serious filmmaking grows, Tamara becomes ashamed of her mother. She sets out for New York, where she enrolls in a directing program, and cuts herself off from Angela. Yet when illness calls Angela and Tamara back to Tulsa for the first time since Angela's pregnancy, Tamara takes her camera and uncovers a past she didn't even know she was missing. Suddenly the private desires, hidden secrets and life struggles of mothers and daughters come into sharp and rich focus. Like the documentary film that Tamara eventually makes, Southgate's record cuts and jumps back between the three plotlines, which the author deftly weaves into arichly textured whole. Art conquers all: Family mysteries are solved, and sassy, determined women triumph.
