I finished it and it was amazing. Lily finds out a bunch of things about her mother and it's not the predictable "she didn't shoot her mother, it was actually her father would murdered her". Lily really did shoot her mother, on accident, because sometimes life just happens like that. You mess up and you hate yourself and you feel so stupid but nothing can change it. You want to play the victim, you want somebody to blame, to put all your anger and shame upon, but sometimes you've got nobody but yourself. I think that's one of the worst feelings in the world.
May killed herself because their friend went to jail for no good reason and it broke her without repair. She was tired of carrying the weight of the world around.
One major theme of the book was feminism and the symbol for that was Mary, the Madonna. They worshipped a wooden carving of a black Mary that, as the story goes, came to the slaves and helped them. She was chained up, but every night she unchained herself, even though she was just a wooden statue. They were Catholic, I think, or well it was a lot of catholicism and a lot of feminism. I'm protestant, so I don't know how I feel about it. Everything they talked about Mary doing for them, that's what Jesus does for me, so I could see it in that light, but I don't worship Mary so it was different in that way, too. Even though Lily's mom died, in this book she found other mothers. August, the Queen Bee, June, May, Rosaleen, and Mary.
I treated myself with the movie and the book is ten times as good. One of my favorite books.
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