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161st out of 404 books
—
466 voters
Getting Mother's Body
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 preg...more
Hardcover, 280 pages
Published
2003
by Random House
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"Where my panties at?" is a great first line for a novel. Reading that line in someone else's review is what convinced me to read this.
So..Kind of like Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying' except they aren't taking the body, they're getting the body. Different characters narrate alternate chapters, and almost of all of them are Beades, which is a family name and a chronic affliction ('Beade-ism').
Billy Beade;s mother died in Arizona and was buried with her 'treasure'. Billy has an urgent need for the $$...more
So..Kind of like Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying' except they aren't taking the body, they're getting the body. Different characters narrate alternate chapters, and almost of all of them are Beades, which is a family name and a chronic affliction ('Beade-ism').
Billy Beade;s mother died in Arizona and was buried with her 'treasure'. Billy has an urgent need for the $$...more
My Amazon review: Detailing the adventures of Billy Beede and her non-traditional family on their quest from Texas to Arizona to get "treasure" buried with Billy's mother in order to fund an abortion for Billy's "bigged" belly (by a married, custom coffin maker), Suzan-Lori Parks' first novel is intelligent, well-written and enjoyable.
While the plot is darkly comic and compelling, the real pleasure of this book is the writing which is full of wonderfully emotional descriptions but is not overblo...more
While the plot is darkly comic and compelling, the real pleasure of this book is the writing which is full of wonderfully emotional descriptions but is not overblo...more
Suzan Lori Parks is a Pulitzer Prize winner, which I guess just goes to show. I am somewhat baffled as to why the NACCP has not risen up in arms about this novel, which recounts the mishaps of a group of poor blacks who get involved in a project of traveling from Texas to Arizona to dig up the body of the mother of the main protagonist (for lack of a better word), because the grave is about to be bulldozed into a shopping mall parking lot, and the protagonist, Billy Beede, is a pregnant teenage...more
Definitely a book where I had to let go from the beginning because it's a different world and the choices these characters make would not be mine. Interesting characters who all get the chance to narrate one or more of the short chapters. An easy, quick read but with some substance. More anxiety provoking than uplifting, but left me with a feeling of "that was cute".
A quote chosen at random - this one in the voice of Roosevelt Beede - the uncle of the main character, Billy.
--The life of a Negro...more
A quote chosen at random - this one in the voice of Roosevelt Beede - the uncle of the main character, Billy.
--The life of a Negro...more
Engrossing, well written tale of a black family populated with an eclectic group of characters(pregnant 16 yr. old, lapsed preacher & his one legged wife, lesbian pig farmer, mortician's son....). The pregnant 16 yr old is off to dig up her mother's body because rumour has it her Mom (willa mae) was borrowed with her diamond & they all need the $$.
The author is a professor @ CalArts in Valencia. I liked it-a very fast read!
The author is a professor @ CalArts in Valencia. I liked it-a very fast read!
I heart SLP!
Seriously, what a great read. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the characters, so it reads almost like extended prose monologues that flow in beauty and simplicity the way that Parks's writing usually does. Yet the subject - how much are we fated to act out our lives (and isn't this the stuff of all great literature) is played out uniquely, through the discussion of Beede blood and Beede luck contrasted through the admissions of guilts - most tiny, some large - w...more
Seriously, what a great read. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the characters, so it reads almost like extended prose monologues that flow in beauty and simplicity the way that Parks's writing usually does. Yet the subject - how much are we fated to act out our lives (and isn't this the stuff of all great literature) is played out uniquely, through the discussion of Beede blood and Beede luck contrasted through the admissions of guilts - most tiny, some large - w...more
I was tempted to give this 5 stars, but since I did enjoy it on audio instead of reading it myself, I'm thinking that the author's engaging reading may have given it that entertaining edge. Still, the characters are so colorful and distinct and real, and the plot has momentum. The story takes place in 1963, in the South and Southwest, and it is told from the point of view of black characters, so you know it's going to touch on racism and segregation. This theme, however, is not heavy-handed. In...more
This is my new favorite novel of the moment. I had more fun reading this than anything in a long time. Suzan-Lori Parks was a new author for me, and I guess this is her only novel. She received a Pulitzer for a play in 2002, and she's foremost a playwright. I loved the heroine, Billy Beede, and her optimism and stubbornness in the face of one and then another plan that doesn't work out. She's unstoppable. She's surrounded by great characters with their own private stories. A satisfying twist at...more
I absolutely hated this book. The writing style was bizzarre and unreadable and the plot was no better. How this ever got published is beyond me. I would avoid this like the plague.
1 like · like · see review
I enjoyed this fast-moving novel, and it made me chuckle throughout. I almost didn't stick with it after the first line, "Where my panties at?" The self-conscious words shout, "Look at me! I'm a shocking first line!" But I had a good time on the road trip with the Beede family--a fun, quick read with surprises all along the way, from that doozy of a first line to the satisfying and credible ending. Did I say credible?! Well, you'll just have to read it yourself. It's a lark, and a good one. The...more
This story of an extended family preparing to dig up a grave with the official purpose of relocating the deceased woman, and unofficial purpose of finding some jewelry she's allegedly buried with might sound horrific or a type of dark comedy had it been written by someone without Suzan-Lori Parks' writing talents. (For reference, the last modern book I can think of that I'd put in this same category of writing would be "Bastard Out of Carolina"). The novel is narrated from different family membe...more
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks's debut novel, Getting Mother's Body, has an affinity to William Faulkner's classic, As I Lay Dying, only this time, Parks has flipped the script in a couple of areas. First, instead of taking a body home to be buried, the characters are planning to exhume the remains of one "high-strung, party girl/singer", Willa Mae Beede; and secondly, the characters are African American, the setting is 1963 rural Texas, and the lead character is Billy Beede, a poor pregnant, unwed...more
1 like · like · see review
Sep 25, 2009
Molly
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Molly by:
Lori - loridjohnson.blogspot
Shelves:
fiction
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had not just read Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" earlier this year. Because all I did while reading this was compare it to the classic that I enjoyed very much.
Faulkner's is about a very poor family's mother who dies and then gets carted all over creation in the best illustration of Murphy's Law you might ever read. There is quite a bit of humor mixed in with some pretty heavy commentary on society.
Parks' is about a very poor family of sorts who deci...more
Faulkner's is about a very poor family's mother who dies and then gets carted all over creation in the best illustration of Murphy's Law you might ever read. There is quite a bit of humor mixed in with some pretty heavy commentary on society.
Parks' is about a very poor family of sorts who deci...more
what a fun read it was, with great characters and an premise that cracked me up. Funny thing is that I kept seeing Billy Beede as trailer park white, when this is more like Faulkner with an African American re-write. I later found out that though this is the author's first novel, she wrote an award winning play, which explains why the dialog was so good that it begged to be read out loud.
From the Publisher
Billy Beede, the teenage daughter of the fast-running, no count -- and six years dead -- Wi...more
From the Publisher
Billy Beede, the teenage daughter of the fast-running, no count -- and six years dead -- Wi...more
I thought this would be a great book from the back cover...it received a really thrilling sounding review from Richard Russo and this author had won the Pulitzer for a drama she had written. I found it to be incredibly dull with characters that were all immensely unlikable. Set in a small Texas town in the 1960s, while some African Americans were traveling to D.C. to hear MLK forty years ago, others were apparently traveling around Texas to dig up the body of a mother buried with her jewels. Wel...more
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 fo...more
The author was a Pulitzer finalist for a drama in 2000, "In the Blood". Billy Beade is 5 mohths pregnant and decides to go find (what they suspect) is buried treasure in her mother's coffin. A crazy cast of characters: the dead mother - Willa Mae; uncle Teddy, Aunt June (who has one leg), Laz (who loves Billy, Dill Smiles (Willa's ex-lesbian lover who lives as a man). Billy is a smart girl who finds love and happiness.
An easy light book that might make a good movie.
An easy light book that might make a good movie.
A very good book! I had to read this for my Black Women Writers class and related it to jazz and blues. I really wasn't expecting a lot when I started the book but I was really into the characters and the different perspectives each of them had on Willa Mae and other events. Perceptiveness and characterization are so key to this book and I can't help but repeat the fact that the blues tones are obvious and it's definitely worth reading!!
Now this was an absolutely funny journey! Parks does not care to hold back in revealing cultural infirmities. But she does it in such a way that one is left so mesmerized by her audacity that you can't even be puffed up about it. If anything, just go on and laugh! Getting Mother's Body was the type of road trip I would have loved to be on. Hot, penniless, trying to find a way out of no way on the road. I loved it!
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I picked this up from the clearance table at B&N, thinking that it sounded like some sort of Flannery O'Connor kind of thing. I mean, this girl's about to go dig up her mother's body to find something (I can't remember what)! But it was just absolutely terrible. I finished it, but I hated it and couldn't wait to foist it upon my library as a donation.
Acclaimed playwright’s first novel is a slightly skewed, wacky story with real enough emotion about a poor Texan family and their quirks. The Mother in the title was a raucous-living blues singer who lived with a woman passing as a man for awhile. She’s buried in Arizona, supposedly with valuable jewelry, and her daughter—desperate for an abortion after being impregnated by a married man—wants to dig her up before a development project tears up the grave at her Aunt’s hotel. It’s a race to Arizo...more
Your mother is buried with what you think are valuable jewels, and suddenly you're in need of some quick easy money. Great characters, wonderful voices, and a quick bouncing read. The audiobook I listened to had "mother" singing songs between chapters that illuminated the underlying themes of the book.
Parks relies far too heavily on dialogue to move "Mother's Body" along. Perhaps that's to be expected from a novel written in a series of alternating first-person narratives from a play-write, but there just isn't enough grounding to ever really give this story any traction. As a series of monologues "Mother's Body" would function beautifully -the writing is thoughtful and immensely clever in technical execution- but as a novel, it misses the mark.
I loved the way the book started, it was very honest and an interesting introduction. The plot and characters are very original and I can still remember now a few years later the story and the visuals I imagined from Park's cool literary style. The book is gritty and deep.
I'd call Suzan Lori Parks a writer's writer. Like Elmore James, she doesn't waste a word, and her dialogue is right on. We know from the title this is going to be a wild ride, and so it is..horrifying, funny, tragic. Great little book! Always felt it should be a movie.
I just finished this, and it really captured my heart. Reading the 1963, black, Texas dialect, and each chapter being in a different character's voice, just sucked me right in. By the end I liked Billy Beade so much and I was so happy for the ending of the story.
Story of a family in Texas in the early 60's who decides to go dig up a dead family member and retrieve the "treasure" buried with her. The neat thing about this book is that every single character takes turns narrating and it works well!
A young African American girl find herself pregnant by a man who claims to want to marry her. When she learns he's married with a bunch of kids, she makes plans to go dig up "treasure" that was buried with her mother to "take care" of the baby.
The author does a wonderful job of changing narrators throughout the story without it ever seeming awkward or forced. The story is both sad and humorous. The main protagonist is sympathetic without letting you feel too sorry for her. A good book.
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Suzan-Lori Parks is an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. She is married to blues musician Paul Oscher.
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Apr 22, 2013 08:45pm