Little Altars Everywhere (1992) by Rebecca Wells

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Little Altars Everywhere (1992)

by Rebecca Wells

Thornton, Louisiana

Louisiana: 20/28

   Wells is best known for her viral phenomenon, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which is the publishing industry equivalent of the late-blooming chart success of Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses.  Both rose to number one on their respective industry charts over a year after publication.  This success drew the attention of Malcolm Gladwell in HIS best-seller, Tipping Point, where he explored the word of mouth that made Ya Ya such a hit.   The website for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America mistakenly lists the publication date as 2009, no idea where they got 2009 from, and not the first or second time they've listed the wrong publishing year for a mapped title.

   I'm not sure it was because of my utter disinterest in the book or actual issues with the writing, but Little Altars Everywhere felt more like a knitted together cluster of short stories.  It's a fine, well-travelled literary tradition though I don't think Wells was getting stuff published in the New Yorker before Little Altars Everywhere was released.  I would place Wells' bibliography squarely within the "chick-lit" genre- 1992 was the year the phrase was coined, in reference to Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale.  Altars fits into that broad category although it's also obvious to an almost painful degree the literary debt Altars owes to its southern literary forebears.    Maybe it's just the early Eudora Welty stories I started reading after this book that put me in mind of this, but it always seems like there is pressure on writers from the deep south to add some element of freakishness, either race based or otherwise, that sets the action apart from what you commonly see in other parts of the country.

  Here, there is a plot line- in a light comic novel mind you- about mother son incest that would be eyebrow raising even a much more seriously regarded work of fiction.