I've heard all sorts of reports on this one. I liked it. I don't think it is one that I will reread repeatedly although others have told me that they will, nor did I have a hard time finishing it as others have told me.
It is a mother/daughter thing and very, very Southern. Southern with a capital S. Although I don't think that people in Louisiana go around naked quite as much as Wells would have it. And guess what! Thornton, Louisiana, is a real town - unlike Shakespeare, Arkansas (of Charlaine Harris's Lily Bard books).
Although the main character is Siddalee (how's that for southern), it really revolves around her mother, Vivi, and her three BFFs from childhood - the other Ya-Yas. Vivi is wild and crazy and in many ways broken and her brokenness is visited upon her daughters. The plot is very simple. Sidda wakes up one morning and, in absolute terror, postpones her wedding and runs away to think things out. She does - with the aid of her mother's scrapbook (The Divine Secrets of the --- yeah, you guessed it) and the intervention of the other three Ya-Yas - and returns home for her mother's birthday and decides to go through with the wedding. Most of the story is flashbacks to various events and/or periods in Vivi's life.
It is like The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks in that the reader learns a lot of background and explanation that Sidda never learns. But she does learn that what she and her mother share is a part of her, and that she must accept it to get on with things.
And I do like a happy ending.
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