Getting Mother's Body (Paperback, New Ed)

Excellent dialogue combined with an imaginative plot will be sure to make Pultizer prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks' first novel a classic. Set in the deep south, a young, single, black and pregnant Billy Beede is bored of life at her uncle's gas station. Desperate to escape as well as afford an abortion, Billy sets off to Arizona along with her quirky relatives to dig up the body of her mother and find the legendary jewels she was buried with. Oppression seeps through on every page, through the poverty and racism to the stifling Texan heat. Billy is feisty, like her mother Willa Mae famously was, but shows touching innocence and vulnerability. The characters fight amongst themselves, fight to make their way in the world, fight against racism and social attitudes, fight to earn money in any way that they can in between swigs of bourbon. This is an imaginative and unique novel that deserves to be read. (Kirkus UK)

The debut novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is a gutsy, funny, tragic and completely original work for fans of William Faulkner and Alice Walker. In the 1950s, in a small southern town in the US, the Beedes are the lowest of the low. Always struggling, they remain shackled by poverty and their own lack of ambition. Everyone, but sixteen-year-old Billie Beede. Billy Beede has big ideas about her life. She's had the Beede misfortune to get pregnant by an itinerant coffin salesman. And when he proves to have a wife and seven kids in another town, she determines to try her luck elsewhere. The answer seems to be in the hem of her mother's dress, her mother who died ten years ago. The rumour is that Willa Mae - a Billie Holiday look-alike - was the only Beede who made good, and was buried with a pearl necklace and a diamond ring sewn into the hem of her dress. Billie - and all her relatives - aim to get their hands on this treasure and make something of themselves. What follows is a mad road trip that evokes shades of Faulkner - in its potent earthiness - but also has the approachability and warmth of novels like The Colour Purple. This is a fantastic debut novel from an accomplished and well-loved American playwright.

General

Imprint:	HarperPerennial
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	October 2004
Authors:	Suzan-Lori Parks
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 16mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	304
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-00-715464-7
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-00-715464-X
Barcode:	9780007154647

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