Small Wonder: Essays
by Barbara Kingsolver
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Book Summary Information
Author: Barbara KingsolverEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-04-15
ISBN: 0060504080
Number of pages: 267
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Small Wonder: Essays
Book Review: My Review From Southwest BookViews Summer 2002
Summary: 3 Stars
After Barbara Kingsolver accumulated a number of editorial pieces in response to the September 11 attacks, friends pointed out that she had a book in the making. As she writes in her forward, "These and other essays that began as short op-ed or magazine pieces inhaled and expanded to new girths when I offered them the chance to appear in a book."
Small Wonder is novelist Kingsolver's second collection of essays following High Tide in Tucson published in 1995. This volume consists of twenty-three thoughtful (and thought-provoking) works on a variety of subjects including the value of short stories and poetry, why television is not watched in her household, homelessness, culture shock in Japan, and the dangers of genetic engineering.
Conservatives and right-wingers,according to Kingsolver, seem to consider her political views naïve and wrong-headed. In "Small Wonder" she answers, "I find it insufferable to bear silent witness to the flesh-and-bone devastations of war, and bitterly painful to be cast sometimes as a traitor to the homeland I love, simply because I raise questions."
Still, others (myself included) view her as valiant for speaking out about what she believes. I may not always agree with Kingsolver's views, but I always enjoy reading them and respect her for raising hard questions Americans simply do not want to face. "...Everybody in the world, Turkestanis included, already knows global warming is the most important news on every possible agenda-except here in the United States, where that info has been successfully suppressed," she asserts in "The One-Eyed Monster, and Why I Don't Let Him In."
She seems to perceive her role as a canary in the coal mine of the world we will pass down to our grandchildren. "This is the lot I was cast, to sit here on this sharp, jagged point between two centuries when so much of everything hangs in the balance." Issuing a wake-up call to those readers who may otherwise be unaware of the serious issues facing the globe, she presents them in as pleasant and entertaining a manner as possible.
The first half of this collection may feel more didactic than Kingsolver's earlier works. Much of her time and energy in these first works is taken up with issues of conservation, environmentalism, biodiversity and "irresponsible agriculture." With the repetition of environmental themes the reader may feel as if they are being hammered over the head as the author drives home her point.
The title piece and "Saying Grace," especially, don't flow well, feeling forced. Don't let that daunt you. "Knowing our Place," about her sense of where she lives and works, and "The Patience of a Saint," co-authored with husband Steven Hopp, exploring the endangered San Pedro River, are two less heavy-handed works in this section.
The last half of this volume is simply a joy. "Marking a Passage" is an elegy to the closing of the Book Mark, Tucson's landmark independent bookstore. The companion pieces of "Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen" and the stunning "Letter to My Mother" are achingly heartfelt Kingsolver classics. She creates fluid and lyrical prose that draws the reader into her world, assembling words more gracefully than most accomplished writers.
Take this passage from "Setting Free the Crabs" for example: "The deliberate, monotonous call and response of the waves-assail, retreat-could have held me here forever in a sunlight that felt languid as warm honey on my skin." I am always amazed, amused, enlightened and enthralled by her words and am engrossed by her perspective on the human condition. This collection is no exception.
My initial reading of Barbara Kingsolver was shortly after the publication of her debut novel The Bean Trees. That book was forced into my I-don't-read-fiction hands by a number of my Haunted Bookshop coworkers. Until then I did not know writing could be so eloquent. My devotion for Kingsolver and her work has not waned. I have become a champion of her words, recommending them to anyone who will listen.
Kingsolver also is a grand ambassador of Tucson and Southern Arizona, shining an inspiring light on the desert Southwest. Tucsonans are mighty proud to call her one of their own: she is a genuinely warm, caring and generous individual. I have seen her patiently sign books and chat with her fans for hours on end, treating the very last person at the table with the same cheerfulness and gratitude as the first to stand in line.
In Small Wonder it is evident she cares more about the world than herself. Kingsolver is a person (and writer) I strive to be more like. She thinks globally and acts locally. Some of her readers, upon meeting her in person, have simply said, "Thank you. Keep writing." I add my voice to that chorus.
Summary of Small Wonder: Essays
In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us, out of one of history's darker moments, an extended love song to the world we still have.
Whether she is contemplating the Grand Canyon, her vegetable garden, motherhood, genetic engineering, or the future of a nation founded on the best of all human impulses, these essays are grounded in the author's belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers may lie in both those places.
Sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive, Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.
Readers familiar with Barbara Kingsolver will find that Small Wonder, a collection of 23 essays, shows the same sensitivity and thoughtfulness, the same rich knowledge of and love for the natural world, as her spellbinding novels. In "Knowing Our Place," she describes the two places in which she writes: a tin-roof cabin in Appalachia and her home in the Tucson desert. In "Setting Free the Crabs," she uses her daughter's decision not to take home a beautiful (and occupied) red conch shell from a Mexican beach to illustrate our own need to give up our sense of ownership of the earth, to resist "the hunger to possess all things bright and beautiful." Many of these pieces, like the lovely title essay, were written (or rewritten) in response to the events of September 11, which threw into relief the growing social and economic inequities that are so little remarked on in the American media. These are political essays, although Kingsolver is not a natural rhetorician; her prose is too supple and inclusive. She is more inclined to follow the turns of her mind, like water in a curving stream bed, than to hammer home a point or two. But she has a rare gift for apt allusion (from sources as wide-ranging as Robert Frost to Beanie Babies) and for the elegant use of facts and figures. And she is highly quotable. It is easy to imagine the speechwriters and activists of the next 10 years dipping into Small Wonder for inspiration and the perfect phrase. --Regina Marler
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