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Summary: WONDERFUL SCARLET-IN-A-SNIT VOICES
Review: The Louisiana born author who is currently a Washington based actress, playwright and TV writer, has unlatched the hearts of women by creating earthy, irrepressible heroines. Following her award-winning "Little Altars Everywhere" Ms. Wells transfixed us with the Ya-yas, a coterie of women who are by turns loyal and lusty. Sometimes delivered with humor, sometimes with hubris, this author always has a meaningful story to tell. She has an awareness of human foibles and an understanding of our need for hope as she chronicles the joys and pains of human relationships. No one could bring these Scarlet-in-a-snit voices as vividly to life as Rebecca Wells.
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Summary: Hmmm...Beat your kids, but it's okay
Review: First of all, the main character Sidda is a whining brat who blames her mom for everything. Second, the Mother is a drunk who beats her kids. The book tries to redeem her and explain the reasoning behind beating her kids, but I'm sorry, I've had a tough life, and I don't see how beating my kids would help. Of course, I have other interest than dwelling on old boyfriends, my nails, etc.... As I said, I had a horrible life when I was a child. I left home at 14 because of it. However, I managed to work my way through college, get a great career, find a loving good husband and have terrific kids. I have known great women who are Sidda's mother's age who have overcome great adversities in their lives and did not have to cope with bottle or belt. I'm sorry, but the sympathy for these characters, which I know the author was trying to bring out, never emerged. I just saw them as shallow people relying on others to find happiness. Never once did this woman (Sidda's mother) stand up to anything with her own two feet.....
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Summary: The big three
Review: There are three books that must be read by anyone who is a fan of today's Southern fiction and writers: FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, and DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD. While all three are stellar achievements in their own right (and all three totally different in content and style), DIVINE SECRETS is by far my favorite. If you saw the movie and were somewhat put off by it, don't worry--the book is sooooo much better. The characters will stay with you long after you've finished this hilarious, disturbing, wonderful, and even dark tale. Please dont' miss this one.
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Summary: Ya-Ya!
Review: This novel makes you want to become a crazy, drunken, southern bell! I have never had the desire to be crazy, a drunkard, or a southern bell, but after reading this novel I aspire to be all these things. The relationship between Sidda and Vivi is as hysterical as it is frustrating and touching. Vivi is the character you love to hate. To inspire such love and loyalty from her friends, the Ya-Yas is an amazing thing, and yet she does not inspire that same loyalty from her daughter. While the Ya-Yas have been privy and witness to all the events that have shaped Vivi Abbott Walker her daughter Sidda has been protected from them, and it is that protection that has done the most damage to Sidda. Rebecca Wells has created a great novel about mothers and daughters and girlfriends. It is not a surprise to me that this novel was created into a major motion picture (though the movie is only a shadow of the book). This novel is both touching and entertaining, but at times it is over the top. Melodrama from Vivi tends to leak into other areas of the book detracting from the characters and the story. Despite this weakness the book is entertaining and worth the time spent to read it cover to cover.
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Summary: A moving story about friendship
Review: The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a story of love, friendship and the events that shape a person. Sidda Walker is a forty-old playwright who is afraid to love or lose her fiancée. After a misleading article in the New York Times proclaiming her mother a "Tap-Dancing Child Abuser" Sidda decides to go and find herself. She goes to a secluded cabin in Washington, and asks her mom, Vivi for "The Divine Secrets", a scrapbook of Vivi's life growing up with her friends in Louisiana. In the book, Sidda finds letters, newspaper articles, and stories about Vivi's life, and she discovers all the divine parts of Vivi's life.
This book talks about friendships that shape peoples lives. The friendship between the "Ya-Ya's" is strong, and shapes all of their lives. The author, Rebecca Wells tells this story beautifully through stories. Wells used a narrative that jumps around from third to first person, depending on the story or letter. This adds closeness between the reader and the characters in the book. The reader is able to be a part of the story, and when it's first person, they can feel what the character is feeling.
Another great thing about the book is the unique relationship between the mother and the daughter. The relationship is introduced very harshly, with the New York Times article. Then through the stories, the reader is able to see all of the events that changed the relationship, including the main one, the abuse. Wells wrote the story in a way that the audience can relate with this story line. Most people have unique relationships with their mothers, and this is a topic people can relate with.
Another thing Wells did well in the story is to talk about the issue of abuse. In the story, Sidda is abused when she was a child. This affected Sidda throughout her life. The abuse story line is a very real issue, and helped create emotion.
Overall, the book is outstanding. Rebecca Wells told the story of Vivi Walker very well. In one minute, the reader hates Vivi, and in the next you feel sorry for her and the next moment you understand why she's the way she is. I highly recommend this book to anyone, and I encourage everyone to read it.
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Summary: Abalahoe Moo Showey
Review: The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood
(...) Siddalle Walker is the eldest daughter of Viviane Abbot Walker. She has a very complicated relationsip with her mother. Siddallee feels she has been abused when she was a little girl and that she was never good enough for her mother. She felt she lived a horrible life when conpared to her mother's life it wasn't even close to horrible. Viviane Abbot Walker is a giddy, high strung woman. She lived a very hard life when she was younger. Her mother was jealous and hated her. She cannot get over the death of her high school sweetheart who died in the war. Ever since then she has developed a drinking problem. Siddalee and Vivi have both broken each others hearts and this is the story of them mending them. The plot starts off when Siddalee Walker is interviewed by a magazine, about a hit play she directed. In the interview her mother is described as a "tap-dancing child abuser." Enraged, Vivi refuses to accept that Sidda is her daughter. Sidda begs for forgiveness and even post pones her wedding. So, Sidda will understand her mother's life, and why she is the way she is the Ya-Yas, a group Vivi made when she was 11-years-old with her three friends, convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of her childhood memories and her growing up called, " The Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood." The rest of the story shows the ups and downs of Vivi's life, and also how Siddalee saw her mother at that time. In my opinion this was a fantastic, well written book. It very well showed the many struggles between a mother and a daughter. The characters were creatively and fully developed, and I was able to feel like I was living the characters' lives. This is a book with a lot of emotion. I was either not able to stop laughing, or I was bawling my eyes out. I was always feeling what the characters were feeling. When thye laughed, I laughed; when they cried, I cried. This was a very comic and dramatic book that I couldn't stop reading. I was very well drawn into the story.
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Summary: Divine Secrets?? definetly!!
Review: I cant say I loved this book, but I cant say I didnt like it either. Some parts were amazing, very funny, well written and with many divine secrets and rituals... having said that, I would have left the book at that, because I didnt really like the main character. Her "horror stories" really took out most of the fun of the rest of the book. She is a very complicated person, who had a rough life, but who made very strange decisions that deeply wounded the people around her. The 4 friends are truly amazing... I really wish we could all have received that kind of support when we have needed it, but I dont think they could exist in real life. In the end, I have mixed feelings about the book, if I could... I would have read only the funny parts, and skipped the rest.
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Summary: Worthless.
Review: I wish I could give it 0 stars. Completely trite garbage. It's only redeeming factor? The movie was worse.
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Summary: Fabu!
Review: This book is super fun and makes you realize that our world is way too fast paced, and we are not as bad off as we think. :)
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Summary: Beautifully written story about a woman's ego!
Review: (Minor spoilers) It's a great "chick flick" sloppily and deliciously packed in one book. Here, the story opens to an estranged playwright who unearthes a dazzling fairy tale lived once upon a time by her elderly mother who tried to disown her due to a nasty scandal. It takes place in Louisiana during the early part of 20th century, when Vivi (the young heroine of the book) officially formed a sisterhood with her three girlfriends that would last...amazingly...a whole lifetime. Digging through a very crammed scrapbook, Sidda witnesses how her mother, Viva had gone through a Shirley Temple contest that ended badly (but hilariously), angrily defended her black maid from a snooty rich family, caught buck-naked by a policeman, lost a beau at a war, shipped off to a convert school, married a husband who more or less loved her, produced four babies in only a few years, drunkenly beat them with a belt, and finally suffered from a nervous breakdown that would land her in an instutition. And Vivi had been so lovingly supported by her three loyal female friends through all those trubulent years. From curly-haired little girls to young pregnant hausfraus to old buzzards in sunglasses and scarves, The Ya-Ya Sisters adored each other so much it almost smacks of lesbianism (but not really.) And they love each other so much their own hubbies and kids are only second fiddles, of course. What's more, such sisterly relationship is just as romantically ideal as the one between Sidda and her husband-to-be, who is so warm and loving he might as well be Prince Charming in living flesh (or perhaps a mother's most tearfully wistful dreams?) Overall, it's a sweet little fairy tale exclusively for ladies succulently packed with vivid descriptions that would tickle all of your five senses like the hot Louisiana sun, the spicy Southern dishes, and the endlessly flowing Bloody Marys. And yes, there is a harmlessly mawkish moment or two between Mama and Little Sidda, of course. And in the very end, Sidda eventually made up with her eccentric, hot-bloodied mother - but still, it's small wonder the middle-aged daughter chose not to have any children of her own anyway!
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