SOURCE: A review of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXI, No. 20, October 15, 1993, p. 1300.

[In the following review, the critic offers praise for Midnight in the the Garden of Good and Evil.]

Steamy Savannah—and the almost unbelievable assortment of colorful eccentrics that the city seems to nurture—are minutely and wittily observed [in John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story].

In the early 1980's, Berendt (former editor of New York Magazine) realized that for the price of a nouvelle cuisine meal, he could fly to just about any city in the US that intrigued him. In the course of these travels, he fell under the spell of Savannah, and moved there for a few years. Central to his story here is his acquaintance with Jim Williams, a Gatsby-like, newly moneyed antiques dealer, and Williams's sometime...