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Animal Dreams

3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 · rating details · 32,621 ratings · 1,332 reviews

Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, "Animal Dreams" is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments.

Paperback, 352 pages

Published June 4th 2001 by Abacus (first published 1990)

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Apr 05, 2008 Doc Opp rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was a bit disturbed that I could appreciate this book. While I have liked a lot of Kingsolver's other work, this particular book is centered around the sort of seriously damaged character that usually turns me off to a book. And had I read this in high school, or college, or maybe even grad school, I'm fairly certain I would have disliked it tremendously.

And yet... having read it when I did, I was able to identify with some elements of the what the character was experiencing, even if I didn't...more

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May 12, 2008 Meghan Pinson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My memory, like Codi's, is for shit. I have very few memories -- from childhood through this week -- that aren't factually suspect, and thus justifiably subject to correction by others. This is either sad or liberating, depending on my mood and motivation, and provides both impetus for and against the writing down of Real Life. Sometimes the only proof I want is the emotional residue. But sometimes that, too, is inaccurate -- like the blinding "pop" in Codi's recurring dream, even the subconscio...more

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May 23, 2008 Lindsay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reread-ing, barbarakingsolvermadnesssss, favorites

In a letter to Codi, Hallie writes, "'What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.'" This is not a love story as the back of the book may have you believe. Sure, people fall in and out of love within its pages, but this book is really about understanding oneself amid a lifetime of memories and secrets...the risks we take not only when we cheat ourselves, but when we find ourselves, too. I read this for the first time two y...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Sabina Cazadd rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Picked this one up for next to nothing at a garage sale in September along with Sol Yurik's "The Warriors" and S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders".

The pretty woman in her early 40's refused to sell it to me, instead wanting me to take it for free. I insisted and gave her a buck for all three. She lives in a tiny little pink and turquoise casita around the corner and up the street from my flat which I have always lovingly admired. Now having read the book I feel like there was some sort of "Never Endi...more

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Apr 03, 2008 Cat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is only the second book that I've read by Barbara Kingsolver, and I'm very interested in learning about her writing process. She has this infectious, cultural curiosity that drives her to learn anything and everything about a place and its people...even if they only exist in her mind. She creates an entire world of history, geography, lineage and folklore.

And every character is filled with so much wisdom and humor that I feel like I was given a sneak peak into Kingsolver's personality. Eve...more

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Nov 02, 2008 Wfbcreeds rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub

"Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What the finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental c...more

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Jan 29, 2008 Joyce rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a pleasant, "chick lit" kind of read and I can't, for the life of me," figure out why the community where I live chose it as a community read. The most I got out of this tale is a desire to visit Arizona. It's a nice story and I liked the central character and her boyfriend, but I fail to see any deep meanings which would resonate with the whole Midwestern county where I live. There's an environmental subplot that is amusingly and deftly handled, but it's not central to the story. If an...more

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Oct 24, 2007 Dana D. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my favorite Kingsolver novel, and I've re-read it several times, not because it's the best "literature" but because I loved several the characters and some of the imagery... I even named my cat after the main character's sister. Sort of. Anyway, it's readable in a day or two; it's a little preachy and the plot is contrived, but of great sentimental value to me. And the scene of Cody's aging father developing black and white photographs meant to resemble completely unrelated objects reall...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Z rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the Kalamazoo Public Library's Reading Together 2008 book, and I would highly recommend it. It deals with family issues, Alzheimer's, environmental issues, political issues (specifically Nicaragua in the 1980's), and Native American issues, yet it is not an "issue book." It is a captivating story of a 30-something woman who returns to her small hometown and struggles with opening herself up to life. That may make it sound sappy, but it's not, because Cosima, our protagonist and narrator,...more

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Dec 03, 2008 Leslie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cry-lit

I stayed up late tonight finishing this book. I just bought the book 2 days ago at a used bookstore. This was an uncharacteristically fast read for me. I read like I eat - slowly and often distracted. I've been sobbing (not crying, SOBBING) through the last half of the book. I'm just getting over a nasty cold and it definitely wasn't pretty.

Kingsolver writing is so earthy, playful and gorgeous at the same time. She weaves in these metaphors about globalism and environmentalism (in the most non-...more

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Aug 04, 2007 Vrinda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is a pretty good novel from the author of The Poisonwood Bible. It has some really beautiful writing, and quirky characters, but it a little bit slow moving. A lot on sisterhood, the American southwest, nature, changing and growing. The narrator (Codi) isn't as much of a risk-taker as her sister Hallie (just off to Nicaragua), but still has some interesting changes and issues to work out. Not too serious, there are definitely subtly humorous and light-hearted thoughts and scenes in this boo...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Stephen Gallup rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this novel in small doses, over a few weeks. It’s at least the fifth by Kingsolver I’ve read, and I know she can be relied upon to turn out prose that’s smooth and stories that are provocative. Even so, I haven’t always liked her books. I needed a long break after The Poisonwood Bible , and the memory of that led me to approach this one with a little suspicion. But then, a few pages in, I encountered the following scenario:

The branches were ringing with bird calls now. And I could hear ki...more I read this novel in small doses, over a few weeks. It’s at least the fifth by Kingsolver I’ve read, and I know she can be relied upon to turn out prose that’s smooth and stories that are provocative. Even so, I haven’t always liked her books. I needed a long break after The Poisonwood Bible , and the memory of that led me to approach this one with a little suspicion. But then, a few pages in, I encountered the following scenario:

The branches were ringing with bird calls now. And I could hear kids laughing. … Toward the far end of the orchard I could make out children’s silhouettes jumping and dancing under the trees. … A bunch of kids, and something in the trees over their heads. … Whatever it was they were chasing, they were going to get it. I could see plainly then it was a heavy-bodied peacock shuffling from side to side on a low branch. Apparently the creature was too dull-witted or terrorized to escape, or possibly already injured. The children pursued it ferociously, jumping up and pulling at its long tail feathers, ready to tear it to pieces. The boy with the stick hit hard against the belly and they all shrieked. He hit it again. I couldn’t see the stick but I heard the sickening whack when it made contact. … “Stop it!” I yelled. My heart was thumping. “You’re killing that bird!”

The boy froze like a rabbit in headlights. The other kids, down on their knees, stared too. I’d arrested them in the act of grabbing fistfuls of bright paper and candy that sparkled on the ground.

I thought that scene was nicely rendered and plunged ahead, hoping for the best. What I ended up liking most was the sense of place and the local color. But unfortunately, as I progressed toward the end, in between readings I found myself thinking about the story and feeling irritated if not depressed.

Codi, the main character, is an emotionally scarred adult, primarily because she became pregnant at age 15 and spontaneously aborted the child – an experience that seems to have damaged her sense of self-worth. On top of that, she has no memory of her own mother and has a complicated attitude toward her father, an ailing small-town doctor who always stayed emotionally aloof from his daughters. She has been in a relationship with a man who means nothing to her. Compensating for the gaps in her life, Codi idolizes her younger sister Hallie, who has given up everything to go live in a war zone in Central America.

Codi’s eventual lifeline comes via romance with an appropriately mysterious and desirable man, and that thread of the story goes a long way toward making this into chick-lit. But there are other threads as well. Codi inspires locals in her home town to fight (effectively) against a remote, soulless corporation that is polluting the place. And in that distant war, it seems the bad guys who threaten Hallie are funded by the U.S. Government. Their only objective, as far as can be determined here, is to rampage against peaceable peasant farmers. For Hallie, and to a lesser extent for Codi, salvation from self-hatred also comes in the act of taking a stand against the wrongs perpetrated by the larger society.

Literature can and often does have a moral purpose, but the trouble with using it to grind an axe is that the writer typically both fails to illuminate the subject and undermines the quality of the product. Someone reading this for information would be mystified as to why the U.S. was involved in Nicaragua (the objective was to head off the likely creation of another Soviet client state like Cuba) or why people tolerate a profit-driven society (capitalism reduces infant mortality, increases lifespan, and generally improves the quality of life). This absolutely does not mean that the government is always right or that corporations get carte blanche to do as they will, or that I’m opposed to citizen involvement in righting wrongs. Actually, I think the town’s rebellion against the polluter is the nicest part of the story. It’s just that I think a 342-page book could spend at least a few paragraphs in making its villains three-dimensional or at least acknowledging the complexity of the issues it introduces. Especially when Codi’s personal regrets and yearnings get so very much ink. Which brings us back to the chick-lit aspect.

Kingsolver stirs in smaller themes as well, including fear of flying, an idealized view of Native American culture, and a gritty approach to the nurturing of young people. I think these (and occasional pithy-sounding phrases, most of which come from Hallie) mainly serve to suggest a greater sense of gravitas than the book actually has. In other words, I think it’s pretentious. I think at this point I’m going to stop reading Kingsolver.(less)

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Oct 31, 2012 Scout rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been a Kingsolver fan for many years. Somehow I missed this novel back in 1990 and just got around to reading it.

It's set in Arizona, and the setting is beautifully described. "Over our heads was a chalky full moon with cloud rubbed across it, like something incompletely erased."

I especially enjoyed the parts of the book dealing with Native American culture. The description of the ancient pueblos and how they were built to blend with the landscape was appealing.

I like Codi, the main chara...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Lois rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the third or fourth time I have read this book. Rebecca and Shannon were recently discussing what books had affected their personalities as children. I was unable to come up with any that I read as a young child, but this one definitely affected my teen and adult years. Animal Dreams is basically a story of lost identity. The main character, Codi, has always felt out of place no matter where she has been, most especially in her home town. She feels out of place in her own skin; she feels...more This is the third or fourth time I have read this book. Rebecca and Shannon were recently discussing what books had affected their personalities as children. I was unable to come up with any that I read as a young child, but this one definitely affected my teen and adult years. Animal Dreams is basically a story of lost identity. The main character, Codi, has always felt out of place no matter where she has been, most especially in her home town. She feels out of place in her own skin; she feels she has no purpose in life. Whenever this sentiment hits home and I feel untethered from the world, I read this book.

Kingsolver has loaded this novel with wisdom and simple profound statements that ring on in my head. I have to savor this novel in small tidbits as I read it so that I can let those truths sink in. This is why I love it. I remember them all, of course, from the previous times I have read it, but somehow I still love them anew each time. I will try to share a couple of them with you, although they are certainly more meaningful within the context of the book.

Codi writes to her sister, Halle: "How do you just charge ahead, always doing the right thing, even if you have to do it alone with people staring?"
Hallie replies: "What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive... You ask yourself 'what life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'" and later, "the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for, and the most you can do is try to live inside that hope."

I have so often shared Codi's desire to be "anonymous as a goldfish," yet I also take with me her philosophy of teaching (she teaches high school biology): "If I can't teach you something you'll remember, then I haven't even been here this year." These both ring especially true for me right now, since I am not really anywhere this year, so I have to go on teaching, being anonymous as a goldfish, and not ever even see any of these kids again or know if they learned anything at all.

Finally, I have kept with me from the very first time I read this book in high school, Codi's dad's belief that emotion is seated in the liver rather than the heart, because "the tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe," while the liver has "the consistency layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed."

I don't know if any of this helps me through my feelings of being lost so much as it just helps me put my feelings into words. For example, Codi says that her friend Emelina doesn't bother her on her 'bad days,' "I was allowed to do nothing, not even pretend to feel better, which I recognized as a rare act of human kindness and I appreciated." Sometimes that is all I really want.

(less)

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Jul 18, 2012 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Half of me voraciously loved this novel and the other half voraciously hated it. All in all it was a lovely book but there was a part in the middle where all I could think about was beating the shit out of Codi. Her self pity and whininess got really trying at times. I realize that not all people are perfect and that even our heroes have faults but it was just a little exhausting for me. I also found myself craving to hear Hallie's voice; her Nicaragua story. Or maybe not the whole story, but he...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the seoncd book I've read by Barbara Kingsolver. I find her a very good writer, and enjoy her work.

This is the story of a young woman plagued by indecision and self doubt, coming back to her small Arizona mountain town to take care of her ailing, but nevertheless aloof, father. She has always sought his approval, yet he seems never to give it. A retiring doctor, he seems not to share her concerns with her life. As the father of a twenty-one year old young woman, I understand his point o...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Heather P rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(http://www.nothingisheavy.com/2009/09...)

I can rifle the pages of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams and easily find my favorite part. I have many. It's unfair to pick one favorite part of a book the same way it's unfair to pick one favorite child. This book touches me on a level I struggle to even describe. I feel a bit like it's a cop-out, choosing a book that I teach as my favorite book. It's a bit like saying your favorite outfit is your work uniform. Does it help that hours of painful draw...more (http://www.nothingisheavy.com/2009/09...)

I can rifle the pages of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams and easily find my favorite part. I have many. It's unfair to pick one favorite part of a book the same way it's unfair to pick one favorite child. This book touches me on a level I struggle to even describe. I feel a bit like it's a cop-out, choosing a book that I teach as my favorite book. It's a bit like saying your favorite outfit is your work uniform. Does it help that hours of painful drawing-out of student discussion and years of reading terrible student notes that are really repackaged Sparks Notes have not managed to kill this this book for me? Every time I read it, I love it more.

I discovered Animal Dreams and Barbara Kingsolver as a senior in high school, near the end of a long and sentimentally vapid year of Advanced Placement English Literature wherein I was saddled with such page-turners as A Year in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Crime and Punishment. Blech. After a steady diet of Russian and Boring, this book hit me like a clear September breeze. It was balm to my soul. I got lost in Kingsolver's prose, and it was the first time I remember feeling that someone else felt what I did but she was able to express it in a much more powerful way. It was one of the first times that I had to read something for school and I loved the heck out of it. One of the things I love most about the novel is that you can pull out almost any sentence and it stands alone.

I won't list all the quotes that I love, but I will link to them. There's a passage on the steam of a teakettle hitting her eyelids that is just about as apt as anything I've ever read. My favorite quote, as a parent, is God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.

I now realize that when I first read this book at eighteen, I hadn't experienced enough life for it to affect me as deeply as it does now. Yet another benefit of being unfolded by time, to paraphrase Frisch. At the time I was amazed by Kingsolver's use of alternating points of view, the way Homero is losing his mind at the same time Cosima regains consciousness of her past. There is a sad and beautiful duality to the story. I appreciated the pain of Codi's miscarriage when I read it, but I couldn't feel it until years later when I returned to the book after experiencing the same loss myself. I remember reading the chapter immediately after I lost my first pregnancy. I cried so hard, seeing my feelings expressed on the page with more clarity and truth than I was able to find on my own.

This book is a part of my memory. I used it to answer the open question for the AP test my senior year, and I passed with a score of 5. I read it again in college when I was playing hooky from my textbooks and required reading. I read it after I miscarried. I read it as a new mom. I read it and tried to explain it to eighteen year olds. Each of these have meant that it affects me from another angle. I think I've owned (and lost) about four copies of it by now.

As I have continued to experience life and return to this book, it continues to reach out to me. This book isn't perfect; I don't really like the resolution and there are questions left unanswered after the last page. There are dropped story lines and the end seems to come too quickly. I accept it as imperfect the same way I accept my friends and family as imperfect, and love them anyway. No book has touched me the way this book has. Or perhaps its that this book was the first one to do so--in a way it marks a transition for me from the ravenous reading I did as a child wanting to consume any and all books to an adult who chooses carefully but finds a deeply satisfying pleasure in the beauty on the page.

This book isn't for everyone. If I need any evidence of that, I can look right at the AP English classes I teach every year. It is for me, though. It speaks to me and it speaks for me, I'd like to think. Every year there are a few people in class who will catch my eye during a discussion and I'll think they get it.(less)

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May 08, 2011 Gypsy Lady rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Page 61
In high school, Hallie and I were beneath Trish's stratum of normal conversation. I remembered every day of those years, no lapses there. Once in the bathroom I'd heard her call us the bean-pole sisters, and speculate that we wore hand-me-down underwear. I wondered how the rules had changed. Had I come up in the world, or Trish down? Or perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.

Page 261
If Grace gets poisoned, if all these trees die and this land g...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Jeffrey Taylor rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book was interesting light reading, easy to read; not very demanding. Overall, however, I found it disappointing.

An essential quality of a novel is its ability to take us into the consciousness of another person. In that respect Kingsolver succeeds. Codi is a feminine, anti-hero. Kingsolver takes us into all of Codi's doubts and misgivings. We experience the broken and the whole moments of her life.

Unfortunately there are unexplored and incomplete elements in Codi's life that are not fully...more The book was interesting light reading, easy to read; not very demanding. Overall, however, I found it disappointing.

An essential quality of a novel is its ability to take us into the consciousness of another person. In that respect Kingsolver succeeds. Codi is a feminine, anti-hero. Kingsolver takes us into all of Codi's doubts and misgivings. We experience the broken and the whole moments of her life.

Unfortunately there are unexplored and incomplete elements in Codi's life that are not fully developed in Codi's story We are left shielded from the experience that took her from her dream of becoming a doctor to becoming a seven and eleven clerk. Was it a traumatic experience, there are hints of this, or was it her self doubts? Codi is damaged as a child by the loss of her mother and the remoteness of her father. This theme is never resolved to my satisfaction. She explores it when Codi returns to Grace but never comes to grips with it, or with grace for that matter.

Codi is the catalyst for the events that save Grace but the activists are others. She in tangentially involved but stand on the sidelines.

Cody's childhood is most dramatically effected by her relationship with her sister and her loss of her first child due to miscarriage. This sense of loss is never explored as our only contact with her sister is letters from the wings of the stage after she goes of to Guatemala. My feeling of disappointment was fueled by the impression that Kingsolver was telling us the wrong story,Codi's story rather than her sister's story. Although Cody reestablishes her relationship with Loyd I never got that feeling that this marked Cody's recovery of loss or of grace. I was impressed with the feeling of interiority that Kingsolver created, we experienced Codi's rekindling relationship and felt the interplay of love and doubt as the relationship deepened. I was fascinated by the revelations of Indian culture and Codi's place in that culture. I wished that had been explored further.

The story was good and had great potential. It could have been far better had Kingsolver done a better job as an author in handling the fascinating themes she created.(less)

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Jan 28, 2011 Rebecca T Marsh added it · review of another edition

I really liked this book by Kingsolver. It is interesting how she is expanding out to the romance genre, but hasn't abandoned her message, which seems to be: only through knowledge and kindness can the masses become illuminated and deter the oppression of greedy and corrupt governments or corporations.

She maintains her stance on the press as being blind to the real news of the day. She also remains biased toward the collective power of women as protectors of cultural tradition and cooperative p...more

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Oct 22, 2010 Emily Douglas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I continue my quest to finally read all of Kingsolver's books, I'm now trying to decide which I loved more, Animal Dreams or The Bean Trees... as if it mattered.

I think I found The Bean Trees to be a bit more magical, and it certainly grabbed me from the very beginning, whereas I actually had to reread the first 20-30 pages of Animal Dreams a few times before I picked up enough momentum to keep going. But I think it's safe to say that Animal Dreams not only hooked me and reeled me in, but af...more

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Jul 13, 2010 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ok, I cried. Laughed, too, but books that can actually squeeze a tear out of me are few and far between - especially one's that aren't overtly manipulative.

I waited a long time to read this - 19 years, in fact. I'm like that with some books. I know I'm going to read them, but the time has to be "right." In some cases like The Last Temptation of Christ that I carted around for ten years, "right" meant I had to mature as a reader - and maybe that's what it meant for Animal Dreams. I knew from the...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Elizabeth Wallace rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Compared to the, well, "epicness" of Prodigal Summer and Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams seems much quieter, more personal, smaller in a way. And I really liked it JUST as much.

It takes place, mostly, in the fictional town of Grace, Arizona (and the nearby Indian Pueblo) and in some ways, rather than a novel, it's almost a collection of short stories: the day she moved back home. The day she saved a life, the day they made paper mache peacocks to sell for charity (which, of course, got me thinki...more

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Sep 10, 2009 Caleigh added it · review of another edition

In this book, they tell it from two different people's perspective. The main character, Codi, is very open about all of her feelings and what she feels should be done. The father, on the other hand, is very mysterious and only really told about through Codi's point of view. However, after hearing everything Codi has to say about her father, you read a little part from her father's view, which is completely different from Codi's. I think you learn more about each character this way, and about how...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Alina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(If I didn't know who the author was, I would have loved this book. Unfortunately, Barbara Kingsolver has blown me away too many times to be able to settle for 'just' a good book. I know -- I'm so unfair in my ratings, but so be it!)
The book was very romantic. It show-cased the many varieties of love -- parental-child, romantic, sisterly bond -- and it was done so, so well. I really sympathized with Codi in all of her relationships, and could literally feel her frustration with life and life dec...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Kalika rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a story of a woman's rather reluctant homecoming to a small town in Arizona with a mixed hispanic and native american population. The protagonist's (Codi) emotional state of mind that leaves her an outsider in the community where she should belong is interwoven with larger socio-political concerns of ecological damage by greedy businesses, the armed struggle in south american countries, teenage pregnancies, racism and social exclusion. And that is what is problematic in the novel, you do...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Tad Hopp rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So, this is now my favorite of all her books that I've read. I just so could relate to the main character and her struggles. Her attempts to leave her past behind only to discover that she can't do it. As with her previous books, Kingsolver manages to add in some political commentary but it never comes off as heavy-handed but instead just feels like a natural part of the story. This book also had a lot to say about siblings and the inherent competition that goes on between them. I think, more th...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Rosemarie Herbert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

Codi is from Grace, but has spent years running from her past. With the departure of her sister for war-torn lands, Codi can return to Grace and make a new life for herself - but only after she has salvaged her childhood.

This is another American Literature book I read, and the essay question with it was with Ceremony. I can understand why these t...more This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

Codi is from Grace, but has spent years running from her past. With the departure of her sister for war-torn lands, Codi can return to Grace and make a new life for herself - but only after she has salvaged her childhood.

This is another American Literature book I read, and the essay question with it was with Ceremony. I can understand why these two books were paired together - they are both filled with symbolism and strange narrative forms. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this novel.

Although some of this novel is memories, particularly the sections by Homero, the rest shows a drive towards Codi reclaiming her memories in the present. This process takes place over two years, between three All Souls' Days. For me, this process was fascinating, and I really didn't know what I expected Codi to do until near the end of the novel - making it a strangely compelling page-turner.

I think if I go on to do further studies in literature of some kind, I would choose American Literature to work on. My only regret of this degree is that English literature (as in, Britain) is not represented in the major. I also really enjoyed Irish literature. Give me something with a decent history and anything but Australian literature.

Although I couldn't recommend this for fantasy readers, if you naturally enjoy general fiction I would definitely recommend it. I'm not even sure precisely why I would, but I just would! I enjoyed it. The neuroses of Codi, her memories, and the unforgettable Loyd - it's just so powerful, losing a mother, a daughter and a sister.

I would even venture to say that if I was required to read some more general fiction for some reason, I'd choose a Kingsolver novel to do it. Yay, Kingsolver! Seriously, go ad borrow it from your local library - you'll find yourself enjoying it despite any preconceived notions you might have.(less)

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Jan 11, 2011 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

"Animals dream about the things they do in the daytime, just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona, to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silt environmental ca...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Zoe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this at Brattleboro Books, the used bookstore in town, and thought that if I actually bought it, maybe I would finally read it. I've checked it out of three different libraries now at least five times, but somehow have always been too distracted to get into it. I have paid enough library fines because of this to have paid for my used copy several times, I'm sure. But ohhh my. This was perfect. My (early-)mid-winter desert escape.
How do these things find us just when we need them? I think...more

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About Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo,...more Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.

Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Each of her books published since 1993 have been on The New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change."

Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle in rural Kentucky. When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father, a physician, took the family to the former Republic of Congo in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her parents worked in a public health capacity, and the family lived without electricity or running water.

After graduating from high school, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology when she realized that "classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of [them:] get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby." She was involved in activism on her campus, and took part in protests against the Vietnam war. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977, and moved to France for a year before settling in Tucson, Arizona, where she would live for much of the next two decades. In 1980 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Arizona, where she earned a Master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Kingsolver began her full-time writing career in the mid 1980s as a science writer for the university, which eventually lead to some freelance feature writing. She began her career in fiction writing after winning a short story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper. In 1985 she married Joseph Hoffmann; their daughter Camille was born in 1987. She moved with her daughter to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a year during the first Gulf war, mostly due to frustration over America's military involvement. After returning to the US in 1992, she separated from her husband.

In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University. She was also married to Steven Hopp, that year, and their daughter, Lily, was born in 1996. In 2004, Kingsolver moved with her family to a farm in Washington County, Virginia, where they currently reside. In 2008, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Duke University, where she delivered a commencement address entitled "How to be Hopeful".

In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Kingsolver says, "I never wanted to be famous, and still don't, [...:] the universe rewarded me with what I dreaded most." She says created her own website just to compete with a plethora of fake ones, "as a defence to protect my family from misinformation. Wikipedia abhors a vacuum. If you don't define yourself, it will get done for you in colourful ways."(less)

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Quotes from Animal Dreams

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” — 3,090 people liked it

“What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.” — 189 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/823957.Animal_Dreams?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345810498l/823957.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/823957.Animal_Dreams?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver[/url]

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