Little Altars Everywhere CD [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Rebecca Wells (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 1999

New York Times Best Seller

“Rebecca Wells does such a marveous job reading . . . that her acting is worth equal billing with her terrific writing.” - The Providence Sunday Journal

“Rebecca Wells brilliantly and adeptly moves among the voices, lending depth, honesty, and reality to the characters. With an intimate, intuitive sense of comedy, she exposes her characters' crazy, hilarious attempts at keeping reality at arm's length.” - Bloomsbury Review

“What an exciting new voice, and what a splendid first novel. Just wonderful!” - Pat Conroy

Little Altars Everywhere is the nationally bestselling companion to Rebecca Wells's celebrated novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Told in the alternating voices of Vivi and her husband, Big Shep, along with Sidda, her siblings Little Shep, Lulu, Baylor, as well as the almost-but-not-quite family Cheney and Willetta, Wells embraces nearly thirty years of life on their plantation in Thornton, Louisiana, where the cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets at once shelters, traps, and defines an utterly original community of souls.

Little Altars Everywhere is an insightful, piercing, and unflinching evocation of childhood, a loving tribute to the transforming power of faith, and a thoroughly fresh chronicle of a family which is as haunted as it is blessed.

Performed by the author on three CD's.

Little Altars Everywhere is also available on cassette, performed by the author - 0694521531 - $18.00.

Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is available performed by the author on cassette - 069452008X - $18.00; and on CD - 069452168X - $22.00.

Both audiobooks on cassette are available in special box set The Ya Ya Audio Collection - 0694521817 - at the special price of $29.95.

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"It can wear you to a nub, trying to be a popular person and a good Catholic all at the same time." So says Sidda, one of the characters inhabiting Little Altars Everywhere. Author Rebecca Wells uses her considerable acting talent to perform this abridgment, adding even more spark to her already lively characters. Everyone--Shep, Vivi, Willetta, and the rest--is given a distinct voice, and Wells plays each of them to the hilt. More like a recording of a one-woman show than a mere reading, Altars is an excellent example of how entertaining audiobooks can be. (Running time: 3 hours, 2 cassettes) --C.B. Delaney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The lineage of Wells's first novel can be traced directly to the "adult children" literature that has gained popularity in recent years. "I have one main rule for myself these days: Don't hit the baby. It means: Don't hurt the baby that is me. Don't beat up on the little one who I'm learning to hold and comfort . . . ," Siddalee says in the book's final chapter. Her voice, like those of the lesser narrators (sister, two brothers, parents, grandmother, blacks who work for the family), sounds increasingly contrived as the book progresses. The structure doesn't help matters, allocating one or two chapters to most characters--in Part I showing Siddalee and her siblings as children in Louisiana in the 1960s, in Part II the same characters 30 years later. Attempts at black dialect or small-town Louisiana slang are also superficial. The entire book consists of retellings, with little room (or incentive) for readers to share the action. There are some wonderful sections, such as when the grandmother's lap dog has a "hysterectomy," then learns to put dolls to bed as if they were her children, but such moments cannot sustain the reader's interest through more than 200 pages.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: HarperAudio (May 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0694521221
• ISBN-13: 978-0694521227
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (251 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,119,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rebecca Wells is a novelist, actor, and playwright. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Ya-Yas in Bloom, Little Altars Everywhere (winner of the Western States Book Award), and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (winner of the American Booksellers Book of the Year Award, short-listed for the Orange Prize), which was made into a feature film. She performs from her work internationally, and her books have been translated into twenty-three languages. A native of Louisiana, she now makes her home on an island in Puget Sound, Washington, with her husband, their spaniel, and three sheep.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innocence offered up on the altar of madness, July 17, 2000

By 

Sherrie Martin "sherchez" (Roanoke, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Altars Everywhere (Paperback)

I wish that I had read this before its sequel, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." With the background on the life of Siddalee Walker and her siblings offered in this fecund tapestry of family dysfunction, I have a much better understanding of Sidda's "whining."

This is a disturbing tale of a prominent family in small-town Louisiana and the hidden rot at its core. Viviane Abbott Walker is a self-centered, immature woman who would have done better to collect dolls than have living, breathing children to annihilate. The best answer the narcissistic Vivi can come up with to the everyday problems of life is to drown them in alcohol. Under its influence, she systematically physically abuses and emotionally batters her children, indelibly damaging them for life. Her weak husband's solution to the domestic battlefield is to flee to his hunting camp for days on end and drink himself into oblivion. This bittersweet novel was excruciatingly painful to read, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

There were divinely funny moments interspersed with heartbreaking passages that make one so angry you forget that this is fiction. I suspect that many of us can identify with key issues of this profoundly touching novel. I know I did. This is one of those rare jewels whose lessons to live by can change your life.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Writing..., June 17, 2002

By 

Quaker Annie "reader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Altars Everywhere (Paperback)

Richer, darker and deeper than the second book or the movie, this book truly is a 'must' read if you want to understand the Walker family, especially the mystery who is Viviane Abbot Walker.

Starting as a simple short story ("Looking for My Mules," with Shep, Viviane and an old man lost on their farm), Rebecca Wells' tales of growing up in Louisiana in a less than perfect home grew first into Little Altars Everywhere, then into the Divine Secrets book and movie. Each chapter contains a well crafted short story, told from the viewpoint of different characters. Each chapter offers a title with the name of the narrator and year they are talking in. In some cases, the titles are enough to draw you in (Catfish Dreams; E-Z Boy War; The Princess of Gimmee.)

From the 60's to the 90's, each story offers a simple, but meaningful slice of the entire Walker family's story. Some are told in the present, some are memories of what happened long ago. The chapters weave together to give you a wider view of what was going on from different perspectives.

As you read, you'll find yourself piecing together the story of Sidalee, her siblings, her mother Vivi and father Shep, as well as Willetta and Chaney, the black couple who were hired help, and who have an outside view of the family.

Don't stop reading with this book, or you'll miss a view of the whole person -- doting mother, child abuser, unloved child, shattered schoolgirl, broken hearted, passionate lover, distant wife and mother as well as a view of Shep as a fallible human being and how he contributed to Vivi's 'condition' and the affect it had on their children.

A treasure of a book, you may find it more unsettling than the movie or the second book. Excellent writing, it will leave you wanting to know more (unless you've already read the second book!)

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sadder than the Ya-Ya's, but a must-read..., June 3, 2002

By 

lovestoread "aquacies" (Springdale, AR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Altars Everywhere (Paperback)

I read "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" a couple of years ago and fell in love with it. When I found out there was a book that came before of the same characters I had to read it. The book was good and a must-read for anyone that reads the Ya-Ya's. BUT be prepared. It's definitely a more disturbing picture of Vivi. While we get a better look into Big Shep's head (Sidda's father) and learn that his compassion runs deeper than Vivi's but he just either doesn't know how to show it or feels there'd be no point to it anyway. Vivi's dark side is much more than I'd suspected having read the second book first. Her alcoholism is plain as day in Altars whereas in the Ya-Ya's she just seems to be a social drinker. (Same goes for Big Shep) And you can see more clearly the emotional scars all of her children carry and how they truly feel about their mother. This book left behind some disturbing images in my head and I wish that I had been left with the ones I garnered from reading the Ya-Ya's. One's where Vivi's motherhood crimes did not seem so vicious and contemptable.