I fell hopelessly and irrevocably in love with this book the first time I read it, and that love has remained unaltered – steadfast and true – through repeated readings over the intervening twenty-plus years. This is the third of the books I have chosen to accompany me to my Desert Island, to be read repeatedly in perpetuity and I had absolutely no doubt at all as to whether to include it in the list. It wraps you in the mood, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings of the Louisiana bayou and pulls you in to the book a literary seductress of a prologue – I defy you to resist its siren call.
It is only a page and a half long, but it perfectly encapsulates the setting, tone and characterisation of the book. If you want to know if you are going to like this book or not, all you need to do is to read the prologue. 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.”Īs 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. When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in the New York Times about a hit play she’s directed, her mother gets described as a “tap-dancing child abuser.” Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda.ĭevastated, Sidda begs forgiveness, and postpones her upcoming wedding.
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