Công Chúa Nhỏ - Tiệc Sinh Nhật Của Công Chúa tải xuống LIT miễn phí

Julio A _esign_rf — This is a beautifully written, culturally rich story about the troubled mother-daughter dynamic and the healing nature of femaling bonding. The "Ya-Ya's" are a group of four older women from Thornton, Louisiana--Vivi, Teensy, Caro and Necie--who sealed their lifelong friendship in a Mother Earth-type ceremony when they were just children in the 1930s, and have been there for each other ever since. The story begins in 1993, when Siddalee Walker, Vivi's daughter, who has become a successful playwright and director on Broadway, brings just a little too much of her mother's persona and foibles into her play Women on the Cusp. If this weren't bad enough, a sneaky New York Times interviewer persuades Sidda to reveal a little more about her mother's "booze-soaked, self-centered existence," and an unflattering portrait ends up in print calling Vivi "a tap-dancing child abuser." Not surprisingly, back in Thornton, Vivi goes ballistic, threatens to disown and disinherit Sidda, and refuses to speak to her. Their relationship does thaw a little as Sidda puts off her wedding plans to Connor McGill (one of the most super-sensitive and all-around terrific guys you'll ever find in literature), takes off to an isolated retreat in Washington state, and writes her mother for more information about Vivi's own troubled past. Vivi responds by sending Sidda her battered scrapbook called "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which doesn't answer all of Sidda's questions, but gets her on a path to better understanding her mother, the other Ya-Ya's, and how love--and, as Vivi puts it, "good manners"-- can see people through the worst of traumas and personal failings. The other Ya-Ya's eventually pay Sidda a visit and fill in a lot of the gaps. The novel keeps the reader on his/her toes because it contains so much flip-flopping backwards and forwards in time, and Vivi's and Sidda's stories are not told chronologically, but rather, fall together randomly like odd puzzle pieces. I absolutely loved the rich, colorful, Cajun flavor of this novel--even in the parts that did not take place in Louisiana--and the bits of French in the dialogue that prove that the language does indeed still thrive in that part of the United States. The movie version of Wells's novel is also nicely done and perfectly cast. I loved the slightly different ending of the film in which Sidda is eventually inducted officially into the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. However, the book's ending is wonderfully written and satisfying as well. I am curious, however, as to why the filmmakers would take away a key scene about young Sidda and Vivi riding atop an elephant-"Lawanda, Mother of Us All" --and change it into an airplane ride. I am not a cinematographer, and maybe I don't know how hard it would be to film a mother and a child on an elephant ride, but that scene just seems too vital and too fraught with symbolism to ignore.

Margien Klein margienklh2061 — Beautifully, lyrically written. Somewhat of a wandering story-line, more focused on vignettes than on overarching plot. The whole book exudes a melancholy quietness, even in some of the more graphic scenes. I must say, I'm not at all tempted to see the movie after having read the book, because the elements of the novel that make it most compelling (in my opinion) are precisely those elements that wouldn't translate well to screen.