Getting Mother's Body: A Novel
by Suzan-Lori Parks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Suzan-Lori ParksEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-05-06
ISBN: 1400060222
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of Getting Mother's Body: A Novel
Book Review: A run romp through rural Texas
Summary: 4 Stars
Parks's novel has been compared to Faulker's "As I Lay Dying", presumably because each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person. The story line is clear enough, young un-married Billy Beede finds herself jilted after buying a beautiful wedding dress that costs too much, traveling a long distance by bus with the rest of her money to meet her fiance on the day before their planned wedding. When she arrives, not only does she discover he is not at home but that he has a wife and gaggle of children. She decides she needs to abort her pregnancy, but does not have the money to do so. She decides that she is going to unearth her buried mother's remains, and lay claim to the riches her mother insisted on being buried with. The only problem is that her mother is buried in Arizona and Billy does not have the money or the transportation to get there. She decides to con her mother's ex-lover, who claims to have carried out the dying wishes of Billy's mother and buried the pearl necklace and diamond ring with her. But did she? After all, she has the expense of a hog farm to keep up, and that shiny new truck... Billy steals the keys to Dill's new truck to make the trek to Arizona with various family members towing along hoping for a fair share of the riches. Dill, of course, races to get there first to prevent the truth from coming out, that no jewels were in fact buried with Billy's mother.
Since each chapter is told from a differing perspective, we gain insight into each characters motivations, thoughts, and of course, their lack of insight as well. The shifting perspective is a refreshing way to tell a story, if not entirely original. The characters keep you interested and the story unfolds without much effort to concentrate. I enjoyed this book and will read this author again.
Summary of Getting Mother's Body: A Novel
Billy Beede, the teenage daughter of the fast-running, no-account, and six-years-dead Willa Mae, comes home one day to find a fateful letter waiting for her: Willa Mae's burial spot in LaJunta, Arizona, is about to be plowed up to make way for a supermarket.As Willa Mae's only daughter, Billy is heiress to her mother's substantial but unconfirmed fortune-a cache of jewels that Willa Mae's lover, Dill Smiles, is said to have buried with her. Dirt poor, living in a trailer with her Aunt June and Uncle Roosevelt behind a gas station in a tumbleweedy Texas town, and pregnant with an illegitimate child, Billy knows that treasure could mean salvation. So she steals Dill's pickup truck and, with her aunt and uncle in tow, heads for Arizona with Dill in hot pursuit. While everyone agrees it's only polite to speak of getting mother's body and moving her to a proper resting place, it's well understood that digging up Willa Mae's diamonds and pearls will make the whole trip a lot more worthwhile.
The enormously accomplished fiction debut from Suzan-Lori Parks, the 2002 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Getting Mother's Body takes its place in the company of the classic works of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. But when it comes to an ingenious, uproarious knack for depicting the trifling, hard-luck, down-and-out souls who need a little singing and laughing and lying and praying to get through the day, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.
Like a country quilt, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks's spellbinding first novel, Getting Mother's Body, is pieced together from rags: short and slanted scraps of narrative recounted by various friends and members of the hard-luck Beede clan of Ector County, Texas. These sad, wily, bickering voices tell the story of Billy Beede--poor, unmarried, and pregnant--and her dead mother, the "hot and wild" blues singer, Willa Mae Beede, who may or may not have been laid to rest with a fortune of diamonds and pearls in her coffin. When a letter arrives announcing that a supermarket is being built on the ground where Willa Mae was buried, Billy determines to dig her up and get the jewels. But Willa Mae's embittered female lover, Dill Smiles, is just as intent on keeping the corpse in the ground. Deeper and richer than a typical quest novel, Getting Mother's Body is also the story of an African-American family, of beauty winding like bright thread through long-held grudges, hopelessness, and greed. --Regina Marler
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