Woohoo! I finished just a bit ago. Yay! Talk about in under the wire. I’m SUPER busy tomorrow running around so I was only going to have a cuple of hours max to be home.

Well, when I put the book down yesterday I had a feeling something was going to happen with that really sensitive sister and I was right. 😦 Too sad. So the conglomerated family had to recover from that. But soon thereafter Lily came clean and we learn what really happened and what the relationship to these women her mother had. We see her deal with the revelations about her mother.

She does get that first kiss from her black beau, but shhhh… boy could get into major trouble for that then.

Finally, Lilly’s father finds her and that is resolved somewhat.

The book actually ends on an upward beat.

This book had a rather interesting story that reveals the relationship between women, girls and mothers, and the longing a girl has for her mother. A mother-daughter relationship has such interesting qualities.

One thing was I wondered about her name. She’s Lilly. I wondered if there was a reason behind that. Is it for “lilly white” which she really feels at first but by the time the book is done she doesn’t even notice that she’s white and these are black women. What is this name supposed to mean. Well all the pictures of Mary (mother of Christ) she sees in this book have Mary being offered a lilly. So perhaps it was a way of her mother to keep a tie with these wonderful black women she knew. And the women have this whole thing with the Black Modanna so there is another tie. The Black Modanna shares her motherly love with Lilly and so perhaps this was some way of the mother knowing one day her daughter would need a mother’s love and so she gave it through her name.

So many fascinating things to talk about. The discussion guide says nothing about her name though. I thought it was interesting.

Well tomorrow is book group and I hope we will have a good discussion. Hmmm, I should really print off these journal entries to take them so I don’t forget what I want to say! HAHA.

The book is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. So if I didn’t spoil it too much and you read it, let me know. 🙂