Getting Mother's Body

At the beginning Getting Mother’s Body felt familiar, almost cliche- but as the story developed it became harder for me to get a grasp on. Billy, especially, proved difficult for me to try to understand. At first the character seemed naive but in reflecting on the story I think her optimism is more of just a shield. She is refusing to accept her reality of being a poor, unmarried mother. I was surprised by the hopeful ending of the story. I’d noticed the books similarities to As I Lay Dying and I expected it to have a similarly dark ending to other stories about race and poverty in the south. I am still not sure what the significance of the ending was besides that Billy comes to some sort of peace with her mother and herself. This interpretation implies that the book is on one level a coming of age story but I’m hesitant to reduce it to that. I feel like I am still working on understanding what the novel is about.