Subplots in the novel include the view of Montgomery and its residents through the eyes of the prostitutes Banana Mae Parker and Blue Rhonda Latrec, who divide the town by sexual categories, and the star-crossed film stars Grace Deltaven and Payson Thorpe.

New York Times reviewer Annie Gotlieb, analyzes Brown's view that passion is inherently innocent, but places the choices characters make in its name in the context of rules: "It's a grown-up novelist's insight that every freedom must be understood within the bounds of a shared social structure that can, if stretched, yield painful renewal; if shattered, tragedy.

"[2] Gotlieb laments Brown's need to fit the novel's plot into too-tight constraints: "It's rare to say that a book would be better if it were longer, but I suspect that in a less impatient era Southern Discomfort would have been a 700-page epic that slowly revealed the roots of character and the intertangling of disparate lives.

As it is, the book often seems abrupt and arbitrary, jump-cut as if it were a two-hour movie... minor characters, like Hercules's boxing manager, Sneaky Pie, are so vivid that they cry out for more space.

"[3] In a generally positive review, Kirkus nevertheless rates Southern Discomfort as, "Brown, less infectiously than in Rubyfruit Jungle or Six of One, celebrates anything-goes sexual exuberance and scampers up and down the ladder of social class.