false 14249 23 There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With <I>Prodigal Summer</I>, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories. <p> Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley: <i>"The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration." </i> The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story." <p> Structurally, that gossamer web <I>is</I> the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. <I>--Kelly Flynn</I> 718772 2000 Prodigal Summer: A Novel total:18012|5:5754|4:6651|3:4166|2:1120|1:321| 18012 70433 21588 1889 2 5 true false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Oct 21 22:17:02 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 21 22:17:20 -0700 2007 I have adored her work for years, and had this particular book sitting on my shelf for a long time unread. I picked it up to read recently, and went "oh yeah, that's why". i'd tried previous times to read it and couldn't "get into it". I'm usually...more...]]> 3 6 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 17 20:20:22 -0700 2007 Tue Dec 11 06:15:14 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 5 false true Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Sep 03 07:51:51 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 04 10:23:19 -0700 2007 The Poisonwood Bible is one of the best books that I've ever read, ever.

Prodigal Summer is, however, not one of the best books that I've ever read.

**NOTE: There is a minor spoiler in this review**

It's part romance novel and...more...]]> 5 5 false false Tue Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Feb 01 12:32:14 -0800 2008 Wed Jul 16 14:14:41 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 4 false false Tue Aug 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 04 17:32:42 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 26 18:29:21 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 2 false false Sat Sep 08 10:35:56 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 10:46:46 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Sun May 27 10:48:31 -0700 2007 Sun May 27 18:00:15 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 20:19:04 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 21 11:49:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Sep 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 06 15:19:31 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 21 15:45:58 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun May 11 20:15:14 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 21 12:05:36 -0700 2008
Three stories weave together into a beautiful story of nature, love, and family. The biology Kingsolver integrates in the narrative is educational and fascinating.

The three threads begin with "Predators" which fo...more...]]> 5 3 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 06 17:28:32 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 21:34:38 -0700 2008
Her descrip...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Dec 23 07:08:32 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 23 07:09:03 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 26 12:57:48 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 15 17:06:14 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Tue Jul 10 09:32:38 -0700 2007 Mon Dec 17 05:51:10 -0800 2007
This novel is feast for anyone who...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Wed May 02 11:54:01 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 19 12:23:31 -0700 2007 In this case, Barbara Kingsolver took a topic that I honestly could not have cared less about, and wrote a book that had me complet...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Mon May 28 21:41:58 -0700 2007 Mon May 28 23:04:02 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Apr 06 08:14:26 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 08:16:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 12 16:08:36 -0700 2008 Sat May 17 15:27:24 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 1 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Apr 03 02:05:16 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 03 02:06:50 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jan 30 13:41:07 -0800 2008 Wed Jul 15 11:59:52 -0700 2009 more...]]>