Lunch with the Do Nothings at the Tammy Dinette

Brewer’s second novel, “dedicated to Southern women of a certain age,” is all about these ladies, or at least as much about them as one jaded young man can perceive. Marcus Sumter is rootless and cynical, and getting into a car crash in the tiny town of Marathon, Ga., does nothing to improve his outlook. Though vaguely aware that his father hailed from the area, Marcus is in no way prepared to discover that his grandmother there has died and left him her house. He’s even more nonplussed by the parade of postmenopausal ladies this brings into his life: Delores, the menace who drove her car head-on into his; Helen, who sweeps him out of the hospital and into his inheritance; Inez, who thirsts for the gossip a gay neighbor will inspire; and a small host of other Do Nothings of the title. Though billed as romance, this is a classic comedy skit show, a series of set pieces strung along the simplest of plot lines. Hank, the town mechanic, does eventually wander into Marcus’s life, but the point of the story is laughter, and Brewer shows a wicked facility with the pratfalls and plain speaking of the steel magnolias at the book’s heart. (Jan.)