Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - Softcover

Wells, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060502258 ISBN 13: 9780060502256

Publisher: HarperTorch, 2002

Synopsis

At thirty-nine, SiddaLee Walker has escaped her Louisiana hometown to become a theatrical director, but as she gathers old letters, photos, journals, and souvenirs from the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to assist in writing a play about women's friendships, she yearns to revisit her childhood and heal a rift with her mother. Reprint. (A Warner Bros. film, releasing July 12, 2002, directed by Callie Khouri, starring Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Smith, Shirley Knight, Fionnula Flanagan, James Garner, Cherry Jones, Matthew Settle, & Angus MacFayden) (General Fiction)

About this title

Review:

Wells is a Louisiana-born Seattle actress and playwright; her loopy saga of a 40-year-old player in Seattle's hot theater scene who must come to terms with her mama's past in steamy Thornton City, Louisiana, reads like a lengthy episode of Designing Women written under the influence of mint juleps and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!. The Ya-Yas are the wild circle of girls who swirl around the narrator Siddalee's mama, Vivi, whose vivid voice is "part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah." The Ya-Yas broke the no-booze rule at the cotillion, skinny-dipped their way to jail in the town water tower, disrupted the Shirley Temple look-alike contest, and bonded for life because, as one says, "It's so much fun being a bad girl!"

Siddalee must repair her busted relationship with Vivi by reading a half-century's worth of letters and clippings contained in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood's packet of "Divine Secrets." It's a contrived premise, but the secrets are really fun to learn.

From the Back Cover:

When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in theNew York Times about a hit play she's directed, her mother gets described as a "tap-dancing child abuser." Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda. Devastated, Sidda begs forgiveness, and postpones her upcoming wedding. All looks bleak until the Ya-Yas step in and convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos, called "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." As Sidda struggles to analyze her mother, she comes face to face with the tangled beauty of imperfect love, and the fact that forgiveness, more than understanding, is often what the heart longs for.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood may call to mind Prince of Tides in its unearthing of family darkness; in its unforgettable heroines and irrepressible humor and female loyalty, it echoes Fannie Flagg'sFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTorch
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0060502258
• ISBN 13: 9780060502256
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480