Chana's Reviews > Little Altars Everywhere

I think a childhood in America in the 1960's is going to have a lot in common whether you grew up in the suburbs of S. Calif like I did, or in a farming family in a small town in Louisiana like the character Siddalee and her siblings. From being called Sara Bernhardt when you pouted and stomped your foot and whined, to watching Roadrunner on TV, to eating Ritz crackers, bologna sandwiches, Fritos, grilled cheese sandwiches, coca-cola, and snickers bars, calling things "even-steven", being told to push back your cuticles and wearing cold cream at night. And a lot of the tougher stuff too, like most adults smoking cigarettes and drinking, getting "belted" for a punishment, parents screaming at each other.
But this book goes beyond that. It starts out eccentric and charming in its way, the drinking doesn't seem beyond what I used to see, as I said drinking and smoking was accepted in the 1960's as regular behavior, and belting your kids was acceptable as well. This book strays into territory beyond that, it gets kind of monstrous and very sad really.
The author is a gifted writer and succeeds at connecting her reader to each character in her story, and to Louisiana itself. Without being overly descriptive each character tells you about what is going on with them at the time and it makes a very complete picture, especially when the children are young. When the children are grown I had a harder time relating to them although I retained my connection to the main four adults: Vivi, Big Shep, Letta and Chaney. I felt especially connected to Big Shep in the section where he finds an old black man in his fields looking for his mules. I could understand his tears and his feelings very well and I mourned the changes and the loss of the farmland in Louisiana, I cried along with Big Shep. Despite Vivi's behavior I found myself often liking her and I liked the way the book wrapped up with Siddalee's declaration to her mother, the one she repeats twice, that felt right. Still a sad book in many ways, not the light-hearted read that I expected. It is much more complex and sophisticated than it would seem to be, a social commentary, not just a story of one family.