Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

First of all I did not like the movie. So don't let that deter you. This is a wonderful book full of life and poetry with passages that beg to be re-read. I read this book based on a recommendation and I wasn't sure whether I'd even finish it. It's one of my favorites now.Siddha Abbott is having some problems. She has postponed her wedding and is on the outs with her mother thanks to an interview in the New York Times where she divulges (thinking it's not for publication) that her Mother was not the best parent. And in fact she wasn't between the boozing and the pills and her just not really wanting to be married or a parent most of the time. Siddha's mother, Vivi, sends her the scrapbook she created to document the times of her and her 3 lifelong friends, the Ya-Ya's. Ostensibly this is because Siddha asked for information from her on female friendships but really this is Vivi's attempt to explain why she is the way she is to her estranged daughter in the only way she can. Over the course of the book, Siddha and Viva, in Washington and Louisiana respectively, will delve into the past and try to come to terms with it. Parts of the story are funny, like the Ya-Ya's attending the Gone with the Wind premiere (a sequence like so many others that the film failed to do justice to.) Some parts are touching and some are really disturbing-the abuse endured by Vivi and later Siddha is not dwellt on extensively but it's intense. The Ya-Ya's, who care for them both, help Siddha fill in some blanks about Vivi's disappearances and one alcohol fueled rage that literally left scars. The themes of forgiveness and redemption and finally taking joy in the moment run throughout.And the writing! Wells is in no hurry with her narrative but has such a gift for description that you could read all day happily about the Ya-Ya's sitting on that porch ("This is where they lay for hours, contemplating their navels, sweating, dozing, swatting flies, trading secrets there on the porch in a hot, humid girl soup.") If you thought the movie was too maudlin or manufactured (it was), this book strikes a perfect note. It's funny, sad and sweet in just the right balance. And the end-I won't give it away but I just wanted to step into the pages and experience it with the characters who were like family at that point. There is so much that is worthwhile in this book it's not just for mothers and daughters.

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. It is delightful. It tells the story of a group of Louisiana friends from their childhoods, through WWII, on to adulthood, and grandmotherhood. These very southern ladies are the ya-yas. A name they gave their group as children. Their children are called the petite ya-yas. And their husbands, yep, the ya-ya husbands. I strongly suspect there is some truth in this story. The narrator, no, facilitator, of the story is the daughter of one of the ya-yas. She had a special childhood, and she knows it, but events in the past, inflicted on her by her ya-ya mother, have left her uncertain of how to love, or if she is worthy. She resolves her problems, and comes to a mature love and understanding of her mother, by reading her mother's scrapbook, entitled the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The book will make you yearn for your own childhood under the swaying fronds of Spanish moss. It is as much about the narrator as it is about the Ya-Yas. One thing that comes through loud and clear is the power of friendship and love. The ya-yas pull each other through the worst of times, and celebrate the best of times together. Girl power to the 25th degree.

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. It is delightful. It tells the story of a group of Louisiana friends from their childhoods, through WWII, on to adulthood, and grandmotherhood. These very southern ladies are the ya-yas. A name they gave their group as children. Their children are called the petite ya-yas. And their husbands, yep, the ya-ya husbands. I strongly suspect there is some truth in this story. The narrator, no, facilitator, of the story is the daughter of one of the ya-yas. She had a special childhood, and she knows it, but events in the past, inflicted on her by her ya-ya mother, have left her uncertain of how to love, or if she is worthy. She resolves her problems, and comes to a mature love and understanding of her mother, by reading her mother's scrapbook, entitled the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The book will make you yearn for your own childhood under the swaying fronds of Spanish moss. It is as much about the narrator as it is about the Ya-Yas. One thing that comes through loud and clear is the power of friendship and love. The ya-yas pull each other through the worst of times, and celebrate the best of times together. Girl power to the 25th degree.

I read this series when it first came out in the late ‘90s and loved it. In this pandemic world we’re currently experiencing, I felt the need to go back and feel YaYa love again.While I still enjoyed the stories, the writing, and the fun parts, I found myself highlighting phrases and passages that now shock me. My early life was not quite as "Deep South" as the YaYas' but it was none-the-less in a culture in which black lives were indeed taken for granted. In many ways, reliving the life of the YaYa's made me long for the (relative) innocence of those times. Now, afar geographically, philosophically, and many decades later, my perspective has changed completely. The true societal, cultural and historic background of those times is embarrassing. Social justice must prevail in the now and the future. All that doesn't take away from reading or re-reading this series; it actually adds depth to the experience. Thank you, Rebecca Welles for this journey through time and emotional space.

Love this series. Anybody looking for a fun read will enjoy this!

A great read...better than the movie.

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. It is only a page and a half long, but it perfectly encapsulates the setting, tone and characterisation of the book. 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.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. 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. It is a book that has grown with me over that time, as I have matured from naive twenty-something to a woman in her mid-forties with now a history of relationships and children to inform my understanding of the book. It is a novel that gives you different things depending on from where in your life you come at it. A novel so rich in insight and understanding of the female condition that it will not age.This book is, without doubt, the best book about female friendship that I have ever read, and given how much I read that is no minor feat. When I first read it in my early twenties, I was so moved by the depiction of the relationship between the four Ya-Yas, that I immediately bought a copy of the book for each of my three closest female friends, so I could share the experience with them, and I know I am not alone in feeling this. A whole movement of Ya-Ya clubs sprang up around this book as it moved readers to celebrate their own relationships with the women in their lives. Close female friendship is a unique and special thing, and Rebecca Wells portrays this perfectly. Just as in this book, my girlfriends have been there with me through all the important times in my life, good and bad. They have celebrated with me, commiserated, listened, advised, laughed and cried. At times they have literally carried me through periods when I thought I could not go on. They are always on my side, never judging, never criticising. They are the scaffolding that has kept me upright when my very foundations have been shaken by seismic life events, and this book dissects and celebrates the true bones of these relationships and their role in our lives.As I’ve grown older and had relationships and family of my own, the dynamics of the mother/daughter relationship which is also central to this book have also come into sharper focus for me and meant more. I have come to understand it better from the perspective of Vivi, rather than Siddalee, and it has added an extra layer of richness to the narrative for me. There is always some new perspective to find on every reading, it is a book rich in nuance that takes more than one reading to mine and, as a result, I never get tired of it.In addition to the above, this book also gives the most magnificent sense of place of any book I have read and was the reason that I fell in love with the Deep South of the USA before I even visited, and Louisiana in particular. I wanted to experience all the richness that this book promised awaited me there, the heavy warmth, the spice of the food, the twanging patois of the vernacular, so unique to this place and its mongrel history and when I finally got there, it exceeded every expectation. This book took part of my heart and planted it in Louisiana and the call to return and find it continues to draw me back to this day. This is an extraordinary feat for any book and reason enough to pick it up, if the preceding praise was not sufficient. If you want a book that transports you to a different time and place, look no further, this novel will carry you away; it is a book you can lose yourself in completely.This book touches on some difficult subjects, but that is part of what makes it so glorious. This book is real. It deals with real people, real problems, real feelings, real relationships. The characters are flawed but compelling and the reader cannot help but be drawn into their drama. The writing is sublime. It is the kind of book that makes me want to write, to give people this experience, this connection with characters, this sense of empathy. When Rowan Coleman gave a talk at the RNA Conference last year about finding the three words to describe your writing, the top one on my list was affinity. I want people who read my book to feel an affinity with my characters and what they are going through, even if they have not been through the same experience themselves. That is what I feel for the characters in this book, even though they inhabit a different world than mine. And it makes me want to weep, because I know that I will never write anything as good as this.If you haven’t got the message by now, I adore this book. It is one of those novels that, when you have read it, you feel that it has changed you.

J'ai vu le film avant mais cela ne m'a pas empêché d'adorer le livre. C'est drôle et witty (comme disent les anglophones) !

thank you ! i received it !

This is an amazing book. The premise, the writing itself, the characters... all in all a very good read, I would recommend it, and I am going to read a few more books written by this author.