Rating: 
Summary: Great Book but has some very controversial topics...
Review: The book starts out with a bang! I ordered it to send to my dad for Christmas because he wanted to read some of Suzan Lori Parks books, but I hadn't read it first. Maybe I should have! There are numerous explicit sexual scenes. The story line is exciting, and it is a quick read, although I found it a little difficult to keep up with all the characters. I also didn't understand the significance of Dill's character (and who she/he was)until about halfway through the book. It becomes clearer toward the end. If you don't mind adult situations, this is a fun book to read. Her use of language to express the character's thoughts is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Great characterizations
Review: The plot of this book is without a doubt an engaging page-turner. The events unfold through the alternating voices of a variety of characters. And while this is not a terribly long book and there's a number of characters in on the action, Parks does a wonderful job of creating nuanced, very human characterizations. The misery and joy of being a minority living in small-town Texas in 1963 is beautifully captured with great humor and tenderness.
Rating: 
Summary: Mama Didn't have any Jewels, or Did She?
Review: This fabulous story opens in 1960's Texas with a very pregnant Billy Beede doing the deed with a traveling coffinmaker, name of Snipes. She's worried about her panties as they're lost. Finished, she asks Snipes about marriage. She didn't want to do it, but he hadn't brought it up yet. Of course he'll marry her he says, but he's a lying you know what, who already has a wife, so he won't be coming back to dusty Lincoln, Texas anytime soon.
Billy was orphaned when she was ten and her mother, Willa Mae was buried where she died, in LaJunta, Arizona, a victim of a self inflicted abortion gone bad. Willa Mae was a blues singing grifter and her partner, the pig farmer Dill who everybody thought was a man until Willa Mae blew her cover, was the one who saw to her buriel. Rumor has it that she was buried wearing her jewels, a pearl necklace and a diamond ring, but Dill snatched them out of the coffin at the last minute.
Then Dill brought Billy back to Lincoln, a two day drive east, to live with her one-legged aunt June Flower Beede and her husband, an ex-preacher named Roosevelt who people call Teddy and the young girl grew up hating her mother.
When the coffinmaker scumbag leaves her high and dry, Billy starts to think about those jewels. She steals Dill's new truck and takes off with Roosevelt, June Flower and their nephew Homer to dig up mama. Oh, I forgot to mention the local mortician's son, Laz. He's been in love with Billy forever. He wound up with those missing panties. He and Dill take off after Billy and Teddy and I think I'll stop right here. If you don't see that this is just one heck of a fine book by now, you never will.
Wait, I should go on to say that Susan-Lori Spark has the language, the period, the characters down so cold that you'll be in that car with Billy, chasing after those jewels with her, feeling, seeing and believing with her. This is a touching story so well told that it's almost impossible to believe that it's just words on paper.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: This is one of the few contemporary novels I've read in a while that I thought was any good. The characters are very well developed, and interesting observations are made, such as Billy Beede saying 'maybe lovemaking starts to feel like love making after youse married'. This book takes the approach of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and if you loved that, then you will love this, or vice versa. What I enjoyed about this book is that the characters felt like real people for once and not a bunch of cliched card-board cut outs. They weren't the typical southern 'Negroes' and the addition of the songs by Willa Mae was a really nice touch and well written, and could have even passed for poems written in the context of the character (but not good enough to be poems alone- just good enough to make it seem like profundity emerging from characters who might not realize it). I ordered my copy here from amazon and I got a hard cover for $2.73 plus shipping. Now the costs are even less. If you like black literature (although I wouldn't limit this to just that) but are turned off from the Maya angelous, (a hack)Toni Morrissons, (a talented writer with little going for her by way of character devt)and Alice Walker's (very preachy and PC)of the world- Suzan Lori Parks is better than all of them. Toni Morrisson has never developed a character in my mind, like the way Parks did. And iin reading the reviews of her play Topdog/underdog- they seem to be pretty mixed. I prob would not like the play because it is a tad on the 'hipster' side- but one of the resons this novel works so well is because it's written by a playwrite, where if you think her play is good or not- playwrites are forced to have better dialogue, and it is with this dialogue skill where she was able to tell this tale from so many POV's. So I recommend this- I'm giving it 4 stars for now. I might have to read it again to give it 5, but if you hate most contemporary fiction (The Secret Life of Bees- a very racist book) and Time traveler's wife- a very pretentious set of card board cut outs, then you might want to give this book a try.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading 3.5 stars
Review: This is one of the few contemporary novels I've read in a while that I thought was fairly good. This book takes the approach of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and if you enoyed that, then you will enjoy this, or vice versa. And in reading the reviews of her play Topdog/underdog- they seem to be pretty mixed. I prob would not like the play because it is a tad on the 'hipster' side- but she was able to tell this tale from many POV's.
Rating:
Summary: One of three
Review: This is one of three great books that I've run across lately. The other two are "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" and "The Bark of the Dogwood." All three are great, but "Getting Mother's Body" is probably my favorite. With its fresh and unusual voice, this book will, without a doubt, be around for quite a while. The colorful and eccentric characters make this debut novel come alive. I highly recommend this new and exciting book.
Rating:
Summary: What A Crazy Story
Review: This novel is set in Lincoln, Texas, in 1963 - the story of several black characters. Billy Beede is a sixteen year old pregnant unmarried high school drop-out, who lives with her one-legged aunt and former preacher uncle. Her con-artist mother Willa Mae died six years previously of a self-induced abortion, and was buried in Arizona in back of her lesbian girlfriend's mother's motel, supposedly still wearing her "jewels" - a pearl necklace and diamond ring.
The goal of these (and other colorful characters picked up along the way) is to dig Willa Mae up, get her jewels, sell them, and therefore solve all their problems. It turns into a madcap adventure from Texas to Arizona, a trip undertaken with not much thought and even less money. These people don't think ahead too far...that would spoil the theme. The story wanders back and forth in time, and the chapters are interspersed with "songs" written by the dead Willa Mae, which personally, I skipped after the first one.
Ms. Parks writes excellent dialogue in perfect dialect. Some of the things the characters do are believable, some are not...did people really jump into bed (or car, or outhouse) with strangers that easily in 1963? And then seem taken aback when confronted with a pregnant sixteen year old with no husband? As if a husband, any husband, would immediately bring relief to the situation.
A few things that irritated me: Billy, her aunt June and Uncle Teddy visit Teddy's cousin Star and her son Homer on their way to Arizona. When it's Homer's turn to speak (his chapter) he announces that Teddy is his uncle. Since Teddy and his mother are cousins, how does he figure that? Even though he's a smart college boy and all. Then at the end of the book, Billy makes a comment about something happening five years from now, as though it's already happened. Doesn't make any sense. Also, I just couldn't figure out what the moral of this story was - Go for what you want? Live your dreams? You never know what's going to happen? Or all's well that ends well? Who knows. This book kept me entertained, but didn't leave me feeling any better off for having read it.
Rating: 
Summary: A good story
Review: This novel tells a very good story "IF", you can get past the extremely bad english. I passed this book on to a couple of co-workers and not 1 was willing to finish the book. I struggled with this book all the way to the end. It told a very good story but (I feel) it should have been written with better english. I understand where the author was going with the english but, oooooh weeeeee.
Rating:
Summary: I AGREE
Review: with the reader from Mobile, AL. Getting Mother's Body along with ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere are two of the freshest, most exciting works of African American fiction that I have come across in years. They're also two of the best books I've bought this year. Both books (Packer's is a collection of short stories) eschews the common girlfriends/black-men-are-no-good themes of most comtemporary black writers like McMillan and shy away from more cerebral themes like Morrison or Walker. Instead this is fiction, straight forward fiction meant to entertian, that just so happens to have black main characters. Getting Mother's Body, like McMillan's Day Late and a Dollar Short, is told from the POV of several characters with the purposeful use of bad grammar. Although some grammatical purists may find it difficult to get into the novel for that reason, I felt it lent an honest and real voice to the characters. Not everyone says "are not" instead of "ain't" or "going to" instead of "gonna". Personally, I found the purposeful use of bad grammar more difficlut to follow in McMillan's Day Late... than Getting Mother's Body. I won't go into the particulars of the novel as so many others have. What I will say is that this is a breezy, fast and fun read. Parks is a vivid storyteller and her images scroll across your mind like a well paced movie. Pick this up and see for yourself. Pure, unadulterated fun.
Rating:
Summary: Just WONDERFUL - listen on tape!!!!!!!
Review: You much try to listen to this book on tape. I was so pleased with this book and its funny story. Listening to it helped since the character's English was not the best. Also there were many parts with singing and music!!! I was sooo into this book; it made the ride to school much easier.
|
