Having a hard time figuring the value in the meaning of this book. Family members put their faith in the religious people around them in MI but when they get to Africa, we realize what had happened. This book had adultery with the parish priest, teen sex, bastard children, self-mutilation, fasting/starving, child slavery, and murder. After awhile it was hard to have sympathy for anyone in the family. The only one worth caring about was the neighbor lady. ( )

*plenty of spoilers ahead*

This book made me glad that we don't have to write book reports as adults. I just didn't understand the ending, I felt like there was going to be a moral, a take away from reading the book and I had missed it. Maybe there wasn't one, but if there was then I'm afraid it went over my head.

Seena and Dick have four daughters. One day, their youngest daughter realizes that Dick is not her biological father. Dick realizes it then too.
He's so angry with Seena that he decides the best thing to do is to go to Africa and help the less fortunate.

So, they all head to Africa. They're taking some major drama with them and they find more in Africa.
One daughter is pregnant, one is starving and cutting herself, and one is able to sense things that others cannot.

It's the 1970's and life in Africa is really rough. Everyone gets sick. Everything gets worse.

The book starts with a murder trial, so we know early on that Dick dies but we don't know how or why until the end.

This book was really really heavy. There was a lot of drama. It was very well written but sometimes it was hard to like the characters. Every one of them except Yllis was extremely selfish. Seena was really not a great mom. Seena and Dick seemed to care more about their issues than their kids' problems. And Seena was so deeply punished for her affair that I thought they just might have one of her daughters die so that she'd have that to feel guilty for too.

The last chapter was the confusing part for me. It was in the perspective of the man Seena had the affair with and it didn't provide closure. If anything, it was frustrating. ( )

Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum is set in Michigan and West Africa during the summer and fall of 1976. It is a highly atmospheric novel that follows the highly dysfunctional Slepy family: parents Dick and Seena and their four daughters, the Marys - Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, and Mary Tessa - and Amaryllis, known as Yllis. After their summer in Michigan, Dick decides to take his family to Africa where he will serve as a medical missionary.

The first chapter reveals the end of the novel - when Seena is on trial for Dick's murder in West Africa. Then the narrative goes back to the summer and intertwines scenes from the past and present. The novel is told from the viewpoints of all the Slepys, their elderly neighbor Clara, and a single, final chapter from the viewpoint of the priest, Father Heimdall. Although each character has a unique voice, Meldrum makes an interesting stylistic choice and has everyone but Yllis tell their stories in the present tense, even when they look back on past events. Yllis tells her story in past tense.

In Amaryllis in Blueberry truth and reality are questioned. Obsessions, imagination, storytelling, and cross cultural myth-making (Greek mythology, African mythology, and Catholic doctrine) are explored. Additionally, we learn that Yllis has synesthesia; she is an emotional synesthete so she sees and feels all the emotions of everyone around her. The Slepy's bring a myriad of emotions and problems with them to Africa where Dick hopes they will find redemption but instead everything escalates out of anyone's control. All of the characters are flawed and it is these flaws that form a basis for their problems. There is also a feeling of distant reserve, a separateness, from all the characters in the novel.

Although it shares some similarities with Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, which apparently turned some readers off, I felt there were enough differences to separate the two novels. In Amaryllis in Blueberry creditability was a little stretched when the Slepy's were in Africa so quickly after Dick's decision and their family is so radically affected immediately upon arrival. Although I accepted it, I will also admit to liking the second half of the novel a bit less than the first. Additionally, since it is set in 1976, I could certainly pick up any cultural references to the time.

Meldrum is a very talented writer and I imagine we can look forward to more well crafted novels with intricately developed characters from her in the future.
Very Highly Recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
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??1/2 rounded up to ???

THE END West Africa: Dick is dead. Seena knows this, of course: her husband is dead.So begins Amaryllis in Blueberry. Dick, Seena, Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, Mary Tessa and Amaryllis (Yllis) Slepy, along with Clara, tell the story of the Slepy family in 1976. Yllis, a synesthete for emotions, is the youngest and looks nothing like her blonde sisters. When she and one of the Marys come across a dead snake, it’s head cut off and it’s body splayed open on display, they meet a native American man and it is at that moment that Yllis knows for certain that Dick is not her dad, but that someone else is. Her mention of this motivates Dick to make a change, and he takes his priest’s advice and moves his family to West Africa where he, a pathologist who has never practised clinical medicine, plans to practise as a medical missionary. The whole family goes, including a now pregnant Grace and now anorexic Catherine.

Where and when Clara comes into the tale along with other characters both in Michigan and in West Africa is something that is woven in between the after and the before parts of the tale. I thought I would like this book better than I did, and others may like it a great deal more, because it wasn’t quite what I’d expected nor is it necessarily my kind of book. But also because while each of the viewpoints gives a different angle and viewpoint, I really didn’t find that all the voices were particularly distinct from one another. Nevertheless, the tale unfolds in ways that are at once not totally expected but also not in a way that grossly misrepresents what has been written before.
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Just couldn't get through the first few pages. Just weird and nothing caught my attention. Returning to the library ( )