Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
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Book Reviews of Prodigal Summer
Book Review: Enlightening "Summer" reading.
Summary: 5 Stars
When forest ranger, 47-year-old Deanna Wolfe, falls for coyote hunter, Eddie Bondo, in the first chapter of PRODIGAL SUMMER, Kingsolver sets the stage for an ecological debate that resonates throughout the remainder of her 444-page novel. Set in the Zebulon Valley of the southern Appalachians, Kingsolver's novel offers more than hot romance. Midway through the novel, Eddie Bondo tells Deanna, "I'm ready to be enlightened" (p. 322), and Kingsolver delivers. She encourages us to "consider the world from a caterpillar's point of view" (p. 13), and when her characters argue about predators, pesticides, and growing tobacco "when everybody's trying to quit smoking" (p. 106), Kingsolver delivers ecological enlightenment by the thunderclap.Prodigal summer is "the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came" (p. 51). Simply put, this novel is about awakening and renewal. It is filled with the scents and sense of nature. Kingsolver begins and ends her novel with the insightful observation: "Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen" (pp. 1, 444).
I'm eager to reread this novel. Kingsolver is a talented writer, and PRODIGAL SUMMER is brilliant and warm, radiating enough power to influence the way you perceive life. If you are interested in this novel, you might also enjoy reading Wallace Stegner's ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS (1969), Wendell Berry's recent JAYBER CROW (2000), or any of Annie Dillard's books.
G. Merritt
Book Review: Natural selection and ecology
Summary: 2 Stars
Kingsolver's current novel, PRODIGAL SUMMER, uses three protagonists to illustrate the natural cycles and indigenous life forms that co-exist on our planet. The three characters are all sensitized to their environment: a forest ranger, A newly widowed farmer's wife and an ageing man.The story begins with Deanna, the forest ranger, who has chosen solitude as a way of healing her soul. There is a predator in her part of the forest and his name is Eddie Bondo. Immediately attracted to eachother, they spend a summer of intense passion. Deanna shares her love of all living species with Eddie, a natural hunter, attempting to imbue each day together with heightened awareness.
Lusa, on the other hand, newly wed and newly widowed, lives on the family farm after the accidental death of her young husband. With a reverance for all living creatures, Lusa's challenge is to find the emotional ties that will inextricably bind her to her husband's family. Through the numbing grief of her loss, Lusa is able to share her loving heart, changing the whole family dynamic.
Garnett Walker III is a crusty old man, feuding with his neighbor, Nannie Rawley, an elderly woman who refuses to act her age. Nannie is a constant aggravation. As Garnett attempts to put Nannie in her place, they find common ground: She with her organic produce, he with his efforts to preserve the almost extinct chestnut tree. Nannie's patience breaks through the wall Garnett has built around his heart.
From chapter to chapter, the stories touch around the edges. As well, Kinsolver has filled each page with the intimate details of life in all its permutations. The simple characters serve primarily as vehicles for carrying the ecologial message of the book. Very different from THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, Kinsolver offers an education in the interdependency of nature's creatures to the uninitiated.
Book Review: Who Says Current Fiction Can't Entertain AND Enlighten?
Summary: 5 Stars
I like to read. Often doesn't much matter what it is...fiction, non-fiction, a class text that is well written (they do exist.) I usually look for one thing in the books that I read, and that is enlightenment. Pretty heavy word, but it isn't as serious as it sounds. Pretty much means that you learn something, regardless if you expect to or not. Package enlightenment with characters to love, loathe, and surprise, and you have, in my humble opinion, good fiction. And there you have Prodigal Summer. This is a great book. I had only read one other book by this author before "Summer," and enjoyed it, so it seemed natural to pick up this one. This writer surprised me from page one, even AFTER I had read the jacket flap, which isn't always the case. The characters in this book are so very human that it matters little that the reader may not agree with them. They hold their beliefs, muddle through, and generally make mistakes of judgement. They are passionate, mis-informed, or plain muddled, and are all the more normal for it. I suspect that some readers may not be able to identify with some (all?) of the characters in this book (frankly, some escaped me), but they nonetheless exist, and that may be reason enough to read it. The language is ripe with meaning, and the imagery is lush. This book is about so much more than the location and circumstances in which it is set. But you know what? It is enjoyable on every level. Take from it what you will, but I don't think you will forget it. This is one of my 2 favorite reads from the year 2000. This author achieved something with this book...I may not have communicated it as well as she did, but I find it hard to imagine that you could lay this book down without taking SOMETHING with you. And, after all, that is why I read.Book Review: Her BEST yet! Wonderfully woven fabric...
Summary: 5 Stars
This book will go on my must read list. I have already given it out to numerous friends, and alerted others to its delights. Kingsolver, who is a favorite author anyway, has written a well-researched and loving tale about the lives of three people in an Appalachian community. She weaves the stories together in overlaying chapters: the "Predator" chapters follow Deanna, a park ranger in the mountains who is tracking coyotes; the "Moth Love" chapters follow Lusa, a half Jewish/half Palestinian urban entomologist who has married a farm boy; and the "Old Chestnuts" chapters follow Garnett, an eighty-year-old scientist/farmer who is still trying to bring back the American Chestnut tree, and is in constant conflict with his next door neighbor, Nanny Rawley (an aging feminist organic farmer).The author manages to bring together varying points of view about the community, the ecological fabric (that touches all of them and eventually brings families, lovers and neighbors together) and about sheer personal growth and development. Her research is so complete that I found I learned a great deal more about how fragile our natural world is and how much we as human beings have to do with that fragility and the continued survival of that world. Her characters are believable, and they struggle with their hearts in a variety of ways - all eventually reaching for what is right for them. I suppose that was what I so loved about the book. So many people make life decisions to suit others or per what others might like or think. Kingsolver's characters tackle the life questions and finally decide what is best for them, which is almost always the hardest route to take. This was a sexy, funny, tender, and all around tremendously rich and satisfying novel.
Book Review: B-O-R-I-N-G
Summary: 1 Stars
Unlike Kingsolver's other books, this book is preachy and dull. In spite of herself, Barbara Kingsolver is a good enough writer that some parts of the book are great and you'll find yourself laughing out loud or nodding in amazement. However, most of the story is a real yawner. The three main characters never feel quite right. Would the real Deanna fall hard for Eddie Bondo, the mystery man from Wyoming? And as to her studying coyotes in the Appalachians, well......I just couldn't buy the turkey dinner part-it made me grit my teeth. And Lusa Landowski is wrong, all wrong. For one thing, she's supposed to be Jewish/Arab. The spelling of Landowski then (her grandfather was a Polish Jew) would be Landowsky with a "y", not an "i". Lusa's muttering of Yiddish phrases and her love of Arabic food hit a false note as does her supposed Arabic family. Arab families are generally large and caring, but in Lusa's case, they don't exist. Another major detail that just isn't here-we see hardly anything at all about the goats that bring about a major of Lusa's salvation. (Maybe goats care for themselves?) The old man is the most finely drawn, although his alter-ego, Nannie Rawley, is much more interesting. However, these two have been neighbors forever and yet they are such complete and total strangers. No way. The nature scenes in the book are very clear, almost too much so. Hey, after a while mushroom spores got boring beyond belief! I found myself skipping over blocks of text. Final words-re-read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is you want reasons for not using pesticides. Want a sexy love story? Rosemary Roger's old classic titled Sweet Savage Love will do it. Skip this turkey and wait for a Barbara Kingsolver's next book.