Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
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Book Reviews of Prodigal Summer
Book Review: Sex, Sex, Sex
Summary: 4 Stars
The Prothalamium, or song raised to connubial love, which introduces the book, prepares the reader to be lectured on the attraction of the genders all the way from the insect world, through the animal kingdom, climaxing (pun intended)with the human protagonists. Kingsolver uses her background in biology to point out the similiarities between all species in nature. She weaves three tales together, tying them up together in the end rather too neatly for this reader. The author describes a summer that is indeed lavish to the point of prodigality. Spring is literally "bursting out all over," in this story as fruits and vegetables grow with reckless abandon, coyotes, goats, birds, and even one protagonist succumbs to this fecund summer. She gives at least two of her characters lines such as, "You are attracted to me because I am fertile and my pheramones are calling to you." The author never misses a chance to ascend her particular soapbox(es)and in this tale takes on smoking, government subsidies, pesticide use, racism, and even religion. IShe simplifies religion to a child in the book, by explaining that all religions believe in the same God, but just disagree over "which son did or did not inherit the family goods." One of my favorite lines though was one she used in describing rampant nature's tendency to creat chaos out of order: "Nature is an uncle with a drinking problem... You have to persuade it two steps back every day or it will move in and take you over." As one of her characters says, "In all her life Lusa had never seen such an oversexed muggy summer. The same might be said of the book. Kingsolver's imagination was certainly fertile in this one.Book Review: Funny, real characters, clever plot, celebration of life
Summary: 5 Stars
There are three stories in this book and I loved the intertwining tension between the three, and had to stop myself from looking ahead to see how they finally untangled. I also like the way there are implied possibilities of how the characters might connect months and years after the last page.Kingsolver has a moral here, and she presents it through her characters without bashing the reader over the head. I'm enjoying thinking back on how each of her characters presents his/her (well, you have to admit that the women are the ones with the more overt earth-friendly points of view) polemic regarding pesticides/protecting species/fecundity.
I'm more of a non-fiction reader than fiction, so I demand to learn something in a fiction book. I did here: about moths, chestnut trees, coyotes, goats (really??), flashlights (a neat trick), small-scale farming.
I'm shocked that a few reviewers didn't find humor in this book. Kingsolver has such a way with dialogue and with what the characters are thinking. The "Old Chestnuts" are wonderfully funny and rich. The characters are fully developed and multidimensional, and I think the "Predators" protagonist--Deanna Wolf--is necessarily more zealous and perhaps a little less lovable than the female protagonist in "Old Chestnuts," who has discovered that you can make an easier way in the world if you can poke a little fun at yourself. My guess is that Wolf will continue to moderate her public self while still going for the things she believes in, and she'll continue to have good results. She is aware even in her solitude on the mountain that she won't get anywhere by insulting the manhood of poachers.
An exceptional book.
Book Review: Loved Prodigal Summer!
Summary: 4 Stars
It just goes to show you can't please everyone! Some have accused Barbara Kingsolver of being "formulaic" in her prose in Prodigal Summer, while someone else thinks she's trying to be "Dickensian." I've read some early Kingsolver (The Bean Trees, Pigs In Heaven) and now Prodigal Summer. As much as I enjoyed the first two, they didn't compare to Prodigal Summer. Her writing is so much more vivid and lushly detailed in this book, her characters more realistic, less "quirky" or on the fringe. This is an intricately woven piece with three stories being alternately told. "Predators" is about Deanna, a 40ish forest ranger living on an Appalachian mountain for two years, protecting wildlife from hunters. When she encounters a young bounty hunter, Eddie Bondo, who has come in search of the very coyotes she is protecting, she must reevaluate her beliefs and try to influence his. "Moth Love" is about a city-raised insect researcher who marries into a farm family that doesn't accept her. Tragically widowed, she must decide what direction she wants her life to take. The third story, "Old Chestnuts," is about two elderly feuding neighbors: Garnett, an old man who is trying to grow blight-resistant chestnut trees, and Nannie Rawley, an old woman known for her refusal to use pesticides on anything on her property. The novel's focus is on the natural world, and how and why we fit into it. It is a thought-provoking book, beautifully written. It's one I know I'll reread soon, hoping to make Kingsolver's connections about humans and the biological world all the clearer. Kingsolver has not gone downhill at all; she's woven a tapestry out of three stories using nature, rich,fertile, and delicate, as its thread.Book Review: The birds and the bees -- literally.
Summary: 3 Stars
Moths are doing it, birds are doing it, coyotes, goats, even chestnut trees are doing it. And of course, the human characters are no exception. This is a book about the lifecycle: birth, death, reproduction, nature's weeding out of the weak in favor of the strong. It is about the urge to put forth one's own genes, or at the very least, one's own privates. Barbara Kingsolver (my long-time favorite author) puts forth her own beliefs, in a work that is very enjoyable, if a bit preachy. It has sucessfully changed the way I think about nature. It has given me hours of entertainment. It has not given me a compelling story about characters that I am truly happy with.
In this book, three stories are told in parallel, and I kept waiting for them to intersect or collide. While there are mentions of the others in each, they never fully blend. If this is a story about the coyotes and the community, it needed to take more of a foreground position (it makes an *amazing* background). If this is a story about the people, why is there no real interaction by the end?
In short, I feel I've just finished reading the first *half* of a very good novel. This is in no way her best, but the sequel has great potential, should there be one.
For the record, I've read all Kingsolver's fiction, and would rank "Animal Dreams" as the most entertaining, and "Poisonwood Bible" as the most ambitious and well-written. "High Tide in Tuscon" was my least favorite, and "Prodigal Summer" goes one above that. Still, I'd recommend it to many of my vegetarian and/or animal loving friends. And I'll probably buy a couple of copies as holiday gifts.
Book Review: A pleasant summer read
Summary: 4 Stars
Out of the Kingsolver books I've read, this was my favorite. Maybe I just got used to Barbara Kingsolver's sermons and political correctness, but that was even tolerable for me in this story, as I saw it more in line with each of her characters.Kingsolver's number one strength: Painting beautiful, lush, realistic, highly visible pictures. This book was just as outstanding in that area as in her other books, if not more. I felt like I was living on a mountain, protecting my territory. I felt like I lived on the farm, tolerating in-laws and maintaining the land. I felt like I was a little old man, spending hours in my greenhouse propagating trees.
Kingsolver's number one weakness: Character development and building. Although this book was better than her others. Especially for Lusa. I felt like I knew her. But what was the deal with the scent of her husband across the field? Kingsolver seems to love throwing in important, subtle details and then forgetting all about them. I also was disappointed on how Kingsolver alluded to the fact that all of the main characters were somehow connected, and in the end, it was extremely weak and disconnected. It could have been so much more fulfilling.
If you're a Kingsolver fan anyway (I'm not sure I am), you'll like this book. If you've never read Kingsolver before, this may not be the best place to start because I think you'll be EXTREMLY disappointed in her other books as the characters are, in my opinion, less interesting. If this is the ONLY Kingsolver book you ever read, or if you like her anyway, this is a good, laying on the beach, sitting on the deck, or in the fishing boat summer read.