Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

book data

374 ratings, 3.48 average rating, 65 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		16%
4		36%
3		31%
2		12%
1		4%

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published

January 1st 2003 by Random House

details

Paperback

setting

United States

isbn

096575488X

description

The mischievous shape-shifting spirit is back in this stunning companion to The Boggart. Emily Bolnik and her younger brother Jessup return to the cas…more

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Jan 15, 2009

Alisa rated it:

Read in January, 2009

"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'. B...more

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Feb 19, 2007

Beth rated it:

(review of isbn 000715464X)

Read in February, 2007

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!

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Nov 23, 2007

David Simonetti rated it:

(review of isbn 1400060222)

Read in September, 2003

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.

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Oct 11, 2009

Mocha Girl rated it:

Read in May, 2003

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 pregn...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, high school dropout.

After her mother's (Willa Mae) untimely demise, Billy returns to Lincoln by her mother's lesbian lover, Dill Smiles, to live with her maternal uncle, Roosevelt, and his wife, June, in their trailer behind a gas station. Billy becomes pregnant by a married man and believes an abortion will solve all of her problems. To get the money for the procedure, she plans a journey back to Arizona to recover the small fortune (a pearl necklace and diamond ring) which according to Dill adorns Willa Mae's corpse. Billy is accompanied by an eccentric cast of characters, each with selfish desires for the treasure, each hoping it will "fill a hole." These "holes" run deep ranging from pride, envy, debt to lust, unrequited love, childlessness, and spiritual loss. Billy becomes an expert in recognizing "holes," i.e. finding one's weaknesses, and uses her "gift" to manipulate her family and strangers to get what she wants unknowingly becoming more like the con artist mother that she despises.

This novel, told in first person by each lead character, causes the reader to experience the journey from differing viewpoints. Often times, the chapters represent character perspectives of the same event granting the reader the opportunity to "hear" multiple sides of the story. The author even interjects observations, blues songs, and ominous passages by the deceased Willa Mae. The use of monologues allows the reader to learn firsthand each character's motivation, vulnerabilities, and haunted pasts; these elements contributed to the novel's well developed characters. This reviewer also enjoyed the writing style and the extensive use of regional dialect to add realism to the dialogue.

Without a clue on how this story was going to end until the end, I was happy that the journey ultimately brought about some semblance of absolution and redemption for the motley crew, which was a welcomed relief for an otherwise dismal tale. There is a lot more to this story than this review covers; one has to read to appreciate all the author has to offer. Ms. Parks shows great promise and if you enjoy deviating from the "relationship drama" of modern contemporary fiction, you may enjoy this book. I think readers who enjoyed eclectic works like Lolita Files's Child of God and Olympia Vernon's Eden might appreciate this novel.(less)

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5 comments

Mar 23, 2009

Molly rated it:

(review of isbn 1400060222)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in September, 2009

recommended to Molly by: Lori - loridjohnson.blogspot

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 ...more

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2 comments

Nov 15, 2008

Bookczuk rated it:

bookshelves: bookcrossing

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 -- ...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 -- Willa Mae, comes home one day and finds a 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 her mother'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 a fatherless child, Billy sees hope and opportunity in the buried treasure. So she steals Dill's pickup truck and, with her Aunt and Uncle in tow, heads out 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 little more worth while.

About the Author
Suzan-Lori Parks is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "Topdog/Underdog." She is a playwright and screenwriter whose other plays include "Fucking A," "The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World," "The Sinners Place," "Devotees in the Garden of Love," Betting on the Dust Commander," Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom" (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), "The America Play," "Venus" (1996 Obie Award), and "In the Blood." Her first feature film was "Girl 6," directed by Spike Lee. She is currently working on an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel PARADISE. She has been a playwriting professor at universities around the country including The Yale School of Drama and she currently runs the Dramatic Writing Program at Cal Arts. She lives in Santa Monica, California.
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Apr 05, 2008

Kirstie rated it:

Read in April, 2008

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. ...more

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Nov 21, 2007

Joe rated it:

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

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Jan 17, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, humorous

Read in May, 2004

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.

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Aug 28, 2009

JG rated it:

(review of isbn 1400060222)

bookshelves: 1_star, author_american, fiction, gave_away, reviewed, setting_us

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.

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3 comments

Aug 21, 2008

Ryan Mishap rated it:

bookshelves: novel

Read in January, 2003

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 r...more

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Mar 02, 2009

Kerry rated it:

Read in February, 2009

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!

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Aug 03, 2009

Genya rated it:

Read in August, 2009

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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Nov 28, 2009

Robyn rated it:

Read in December, 2009

It took me a while to get into this, but enjoyed it once I did. I like the style, pared down to the very basics without a lot of frilly, lyrical language. Each chapter is told from the first person perpsective of one of the characters, but what's interesting is how many interesting gaps there are in what you know given all the different inside perspectives you get. And a very interesting character in Dill.

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Jan 26, 2009

Mary rated it:

Read in November, 2008

Hilarious! More fiction with a taste of reality. The author addresses gender, race, teen pregnancy and homosexuality all in a family dynamic that is outside any idea of normal. And with humor too. Genius!

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Nov 11, 2009

Lisa rated it:

Read in November, 2007

I love any book that starts out with the words: "Where my panties at?" This is very much like Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in the style as well as premise; however, Parks' novel is much more riveting.

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Apr 15, 2009

Johanna rated it:

(review of isbn 0739302973)

bookshelves: listened-to

Read in April, 2009

It doesn't get me as excited for my commute as Harry Potter did, but then it's a completely different kind of book. It's good so far. I like it when the author reads for the audio.

a 3.5 really.

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Jul 10, 2009

Kristine Goldberg rated it:

Read in July, 2009

I enjoyed this book. The characters were very funny. The story alternated between the characters different points of view. It was fun and quick to read.

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