Review of the Day: Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Short story collections are not novels. It is best to read just one story per day. Possibly two. Reading more just dilutes the power of the stories and reduces them.

Rather than thinking about the whole book, I decided to pick just one story out of the collection. 

The story I suggest is “Peach Cobbler.” The story starts when Olivia, the narrator, is ten years old, getting her first period and 36D bra at age 11, her teenage years and her awareness of her own sexuality. As she says, “By eleventh grade, I had tired of fighting off boys and gave in” (p. 55).

Olivia is raised by her single mother who bakes a peach cobbler once a week that Olivia is forbidden from eating. As time goes by, Olivia eventually realizes that the cobbler is for Pastor Neely and that her mother has been having a long running affair with the pastor, partly for love and partly because he pays for much of the family’s living expenses.

At the same time that Olivia is becoming more and more aware of her mother’s sexual activities, she starts to become sexually active and to have her own complicated feelings about this activity.

”Yes,” I told him. “I have big tits. Huge boobs. Giant hooters. Enormous knockers” (p. 57).

In that moment, I understood how enough desire could drown you, take you all the way under (p.59).

”You didn’t like it [sex]?”

”No, it’s not that … I don’t know. It’s weird. How something can feel right and wrong at the same time” (p. 69).

”No. I won’t ever thank him [Pastor Neely] for cheating on his wife … And I would have rather been homeless, but I guess I should thank you for fucking him all these years to keep a roof over my head” (pgs 72-73).

The big theme found in Philyaw’s stories is of women who seek purpose and meaning in their lives through the Black church but struggle to understand how their sexual desires do or do not integrate with their religious experiences.

QOTD: Which of the two situations would be more painful?

A: You discover that your partner has been having a sexual affair.

B: You discover that your partner has been sharing things with another person that they have never shared with you?

kindle and audible audiobook. 192 pgs. 12 June 2025