All for Beauty

Blog #34

     The name really put me off:  The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  I really did not really enjoy the book or the movie very much, except for the ending.  A book with too many pitiful, dysfunctional characters is not the type reading I relish. 

     The ending is, however, the best finale one could imagine. It a beautifully crafted ending…one of the best surprises.  Did Rebecca Wells plan her book with the "end in mind"?  She must have, because it was luminous. 

     The troubled mother, Vivi, is talking to her soon-to-be married daughter about a surprise that her quiet husband had presented to her:  300 acres of sunflowers.  “Not cotton, not soybeans…  It’s a Van Gogh out here.  You think you know a man that you’ve put up with for nearly fifty years and then he does something like that…All for beauty.”

     I have thought about this over and over. There is intricate symbolism in the book, but on the most basic level: what a magnificent, sight that would be, a sunflower field! Three hundred acres of sunflowers! When I went to Tuscany, I found myself looking for sunflower fields.  In our school garden, we had dozens of beautiful sunflowers growing: some were planted and some came up on their own. Yet, I just have never seen a sunflower field.  Does anyone know where I might find one?