State of Wonder

Sep 04, 2012 Danielle McClellan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I thought that Ann Patchett had made her great contribution to literature with "Bel Canto," which seemed to me to be the perfect novel, and stays high on the list of my very favorites. It is the book that I sold by hand as a bookseller and the book that I still pass along to friends. I should keep a stack of them since I have handed mine off so many times that I never know if I have a copy or not. A jewel box of structure, character, and language that left me overwhelmed with admiration.

Since r...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Tara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book never felt right. The characters were weak and hard to identify with, the plot seemed like something of a time past (yet wasn't), and the outcome of it all was ridiculous. The book would head in one direction for a while, then veer wildly in another. My pet peeve is when authors play fast and loose with characters and established world facts in order to advance plots. Lazy!

Let's go for a ride:
-American researcher dead in the jungle and his colleague goes to Brazil to find out more - R...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Clare Cannon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adults

A scientific jungle experiment/investigation involving an elderly and rather secretive matriarchal doctor who leads the experiment, a missing/deceased company representative who was sent to investigate what the experiment is up to, and a female company representative (who happens to also be a former medical student of the matriarch) who is sent to investigate what happened to the previous company representative.

In spite of lengthy descriptions of the experiment and professorial soliloquising by...more

A scientific jungle experiment/investigation involving an elderly and rather secretive matriarchal doctor who leads the experiment, a missing/deceased company representative who was sent to investigate what the experiment is up to, and a female company representative (who happens to also be a former medical student of the matriarch) who is sent to investigate what happened to the previous company representative.

In spite of lengthy descriptions of the experiment and professorial soliloquising by the matriarch, the science and ethics of the experiment is secondary to the drama of the story, and perhaps because I didn't really care for any of the characters I cared even less about their dramas. The general plot kept the story going in an unobjectionable direction: the experiment was a little bizarre (extending the fertility of women beyond the normal time of menopause) but the direction the matriarch headed with it was fairly balanced, and she combined it with experiments that were more urgently needed for the health of the poor.

Yet many of the characters had confused little escapades along the way, the main character is in a non-public physical relationship with her 20-years senior boss, and (view spoiler). The two specific scenes were described, but more 'poetically' than graphically.

Personally I don't think it's worth the read, but if melodramatic and rather bizarre scientific experiments set in the middle of the jungle and told in the style of a higher-level tv drama sound enticing, then the quality of the writing may make this slightly higher-level than others of its type. www.GoodReadingGuide.com (less)

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Dec 06, 2012 Carol rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: perhaps Patchett fans?

Shelves: female-lead, literary

Alas, I did not reach a state of wonder reading this. I would say I was in State(s) of: Interest, Appreciation, Mild Irritation, Interest Modified by Moments of Irritation, Shock, and then Milder Shock that dwindled into a State of General Annoyance, which would possibly make it the longest book title in history.

A super-summary: Although she trained as an OB/GYN doctor, Marina is ~~gone to the dark side~~ a pharmaceutical drug researcher who has studied cholesterol for the past seven years with her...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Florence MacIntosh rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Cultural: S American - Amazon

Recommended to Florence by: Arah-Lynda Hay

Shelves: lit-usa, cultural, dark, suspense, 2013, reviewed, favs-current

I won’t give too much detail; you need to read this spoiler free. It’s deliciously gloomy and atmospheric, a dark adventure with Hitchcock style suspense. You’d expect a fearless heroine in a novel like this; instead you get Dr. Marina Singh, a neurotic woman with a really bad case of low self-esteem quite content with her life as a pharmacologist. That is till her boss & lover Mr. Fox (exactly the kind of ass insecure women go for) bullies her into taking on the quest of finding a missing c...more I won’t give too much detail; you need to read this spoiler free. It’s deliciously gloomy and atmospheric, a dark adventure with Hitchcock style suspense. You’d expect a fearless heroine in a novel like this; instead you get Dr. Marina Singh, a neurotic woman with a really bad case of low self-esteem quite content with her life as a pharmacologist. That is till her boss & lover Mr. Fox (exactly the kind of ass insecure women go for) bullies her into taking on the quest of finding a missing colleague, a journey that sends her completely out of her comfort zone deep into a Brazilian rain forest. Dr. Singh is fragile & incompetent,(view spoiler) sometimes annoyingly whiny, but she’s also interesting and complex, it’s precisely because she’s so flawed that this works.
Pachett’s description of the Amazon is nothing short of brilliant. There are a couple of unforgettable scenes, one involving a meeting at the opera, another with an anaconda snake. The plot can be a bit of a stretch, forgiven for it's depth. Tackles the ethical ambiguities surrounding medical research and the impact of scientific exploration on native cultures.

Maybe I’m a bit slow but I didn’t see the ending coming, nor did I find it abrupt. My 1st Ann Patchett , I’m really looking forward to reading more by her,Bel Canto next.
Cons: If you’re a “give a book 50 pages to grab me” reader give this a pass. Too slow a build, doesn’t hit its stride until about 1/3 of the way in. Once Marina boards that boat and heads down the Amazon though you’ll be hooked. Also, enough with the rehashing of Marina's nightmare about losing her father. She’s got abandonment issues and a father complex, I got it, really no need to hit me over the head with a 2 by 4. Prepare to do some skimming: 4 ½ stars rounded down to 4

“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”(less)

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May 26, 2012 Christina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

it's been a while since a book has forced me to keep reading.. I have hated the interruptions of work and sleep.
Ann Patchett writes amazing people....Marina, Dr Swenson, Anders, the Bovenders, Milton and Thomas and Easter.
This is a keeper. This is a book to read again!

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Jan 22, 2013 Joan Winnek rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: for-book-club

It takes a brilliant writer to make a narcissist a sympathetic character, and Patchett achieves this in Dr. Annick Swenson, who is a foil to the main character, Dr. Marina Singh, from whose point of view the story is told. Marina is herself a complex and engaging character. The deaf boy, Easter, is another strong character.

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Oct 02, 2011 Uomo di Speranza rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cooler-than-sliced-bread

WARNING: SPOILERS PRESENT!
When everyone was in about second grade, their teacher taught them about how each butterfly was once an entirely alternative being called a caterpillar. She also must have thrown in the term "cocoon" while you were thinking about how mean the cockney in front of you was for stealing your colorful eraser. Nevertheless, most everyone conceived the concept that there were two inseparable stages to a butterfly's life, two states completely indistinguishable from one another...more WARNING: SPOILERS PRESENT!
When everyone was in about second grade, their teacher taught them about how each butterfly was once an entirely alternative being called a caterpillar. She also must have thrown in the term "cocoon" while you were thinking about how mean the cockney in front of you was for stealing your colorful eraser. Nevertheless, most everyone conceived the concept that there were two inseparable stages to a butterfly's life, two states completely indistinguishable from one another. Being the conceited little priss that I was, my brain never thought this knowledge would be applicable to life in the future. And I was only to be proved wrong years later by a book my very eyes devoured.
State of Wonder by Anne Patchett describes the experiences of pharmacologist Marina Singh when getting to and living in the Amazon rain forest. After a colleague of Marina's named Anders Eckman dies there, Marina is sent by her boss and lover, Jim Fox, to both discover the exact cause of Eckman's death and oversee the progress of brilliant Dr. Annick Swenson, who is studying the indigenous Lakashi people so that a drug permitting lifelong fertility in females can be forged. Singh's determination to discover how her colleague perished is intensified by a heart-wrenching plea from Karen Eckman, Anders' widow who is left with three mourning boys while she is still miserable herself, for information about the death. One found phenomenon unexpectedly turns out to be an alternative Dr. Marina Singh-the scant resources and dire situations that the Amazon present cause our main character to perform previously unthinkable actions. When an anaconda threatens to strangle her ever-lovable companion, a deaf boy named Easter, Marina suddenly finds enough courage to murder the great snake with a machete. Marina was once Dr. Swenson's gynecology student, but switched her major to pharmacology after performing a hasty cesarean (something I am so glad we didn't have to complete a lab about in biology) that blinded the baby she was delivering. When a Lakashi woman is in desperate need of a cesarean because her infant is (for lack of a better word) stuck, Marina finds herself forced by an incapable Dr. Swenson to actually conduct the necessitated procedure on a wooden floor with unsterilized equipment and shoehorns to hold open the uterus. When Dr. Fox actually comes into the Amazon to check on her, Marina doesn't tell him the imperative secret every doctor there is incubating: that Fox's investment is being used for, along with that fertility drug, the development of a malaria vaccine from which he will not fiscally benefit. Then it is discovered that Anders is really alive, which leads to Marina having sex with her former colleague on small cot.
The Marina Singh who boarded that plane bound for the Amazon would never have executed any of the aforementioned actions. She loved Dr. Fox and therefore would never have desired to hurt his well-being. Karen Eckman was a morbid woman who reached out to Dr. Singh in a time of need, not a person whose spouse she would desire as a sexual partner. The bleak lab at Vogel Pharmaceutical company was her home, a place where discomforts meant tedious faculty meetings, not watching an anaconda strangle the life out of her friend. She had palpably turned into a butterfly somewhere along the way...
All humans experience dramatic change-in-state's throughout their lives. It is imperative that after these changes transpire, we do not completely revert back to our previous state. What comes to the forefront of my mind when I think of this concept is the drastic change from childhood to adulthood-would I witness Barney singing on my television every twenty-four hours nowadays? Would I hold on to my parent's hand every time I cross the street now that I am a teenager? The reason behind this prohibition is that our previous states cannot support us as we attempt to fulfill our current potential for success. As arrogant a priss I was, there is no way I would be writing this post at the present time if I was yet to learn long division.
Dr. Singh eventually returns to her Minnesota hometown with Anders and fondly watches her colleague's reunion with his family. It is then that Ms. Patchett composes an immensely vague sentence to culminate her narrative: "And Marina brought him back, and without a thought that anyone should see her, she told the driver to go on.(page 353)" I interpret this to mean that Marina brings the spirit of Anders and therefore the Amazon (the two are intertwined since she knows how that Amazonian endeavor started and ended because of him) back to her and uses them in forging her decision to once more be at the side of Dr. Swenson, who both predicted Marina's return and desired that Singh stay to work on the project with her. It is in the Amazon, not in Minnesota, that the new Marina can fulfill her potential to help develop the fertility drug and malaria vaccine. I cannot study records of a 1920s newspaper for my novel tomorrow if I spend all of the day at a day-care. Uomo di Speranza has switched from being raised by others to raising himself.
So, my dear friends, insure that you do not crawl on the ground once you have turned from caterpillar to butterfly. You cannot be squashed by an unsuspecting foot if you are flying. (less)

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Nov 24, 2012 Andy Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

A great, great book. Dr Marina Singh is research scientist with a Minnesota based pharmaceutical company--she had been on track for a promising career as an ObGyn and had been under the tutelage of the formidable Dr Annick Swenson. However, a mistake by Singh during surgery caused Singh to abandon her medical career and turn to research.

Dr Singh is asked to go to the jungles of South America to recover the remains of her research partner Anders Eckman who died there while checking on the progres...more A great, great book. Dr Marina Singh is research scientist with a Minnesota based pharmaceutical company--she had been on track for a promising career as an ObGyn and had been under the tutelage of the formidable Dr Annick Swenson. However, a mistake by Singh during surgery caused Singh to abandon her medical career and turn to research.

Dr Singh is asked to go to the jungles of South America to recover the remains of her research partner Anders Eckman who died there while checking on the progress of Dr Annick Swenson's research project in that jungle. Swenson's research project, finding a fertility drug based on plant life that has apparently allowed women in a remote jungle tribe to become pregnant into their 70s.

I thought the book was slow in the first half but really picked up when Singh meets Swenson and goes to the jungle and lives among the tribe and the other research scientists. I really liked the complexities and grays of the story; the tribe is not overly romanticized nor is the occasional medical care given by the doctors while doing the research. Dr Swenson herself is a compelling character, some of my favorite sections were the flashbacks to when Singh was a medical student under Swenson's demanding teaching style(for example, Swenson did not keep office hours because she believed that students who could not understand her lectures were not worthy of anymore time--a fact that she did not advertise leading students such as Singh to patiently wait for hours outside her office during the school's scheduled hours.

I found the storyline suspenseful and was surprised at a number of turns and I ended up thinking about the characters.

SPOILER ALERT--and this is a book that is best read when you don't know the ending--- I have some questions after reading the book. These questions are based on knowing the ending.

1)Did Easter escape the Hummoca tribe and return to the Lakashi and Dr Swenson?

2)Was Dr Swenson unethical in her keeping of Easter and not returning him to the Hummoca? Was Easter better off with the Hummoca? Should Singh have acted differently in the exchange?

3) Did Singh return to the Lakashi and Dr Swenson? Did she tell Mr Fox the truth about the research? Did Anders tell Fox the truth? Should they?

4) Were the mushrooms physcially addictive as a narcotic as Singh came to suspect?

5) Was it ethical to deliberately give the male Lakashi malaria without their knowledge?

6) Who was the father of Swenson's unborn child?(less)

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Nov 25, 2011 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I've read two previous Ann Patchett novels (Bel Canto and Run) and was disappointed by both. I wondered if I was being sucked in one more time by erroneous good reviews. No. I raced through this book, finishing it on Thanksgiving even though I had house-guests.

State of Wonder weaves together a number of threads that build a good novel where nearly everyone can find a personal "hook"-- personality conflicts, infidelity, secrets, wilderness exploration, science, medicine, parenting. One is the end...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Christina White rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

I loved this book. It was full of mystery, adventure, and science. In all of the excitement the characters still managed to tug on my heart strings. This is the story of an obstetrician turned scientist named Dr. Marina Singh. She travels to the jungles of Brazil for a drug company who has a research team stationed there. Her mission is to find out the mystery behind one of her college's death and to get a status report on the fertility drug that that is supposed to be in development there. The...more

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Jan 30, 2012 Joy H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-author, discovered-reading-gr-review, medical-controversies, favorite-book, fiction, bioethics

Added 7/24/11. (Book first published in 2010)
I love Ann Patchett's writing.
I hope this book will be as good as her others.

Jan. 2012 - Finished reading this wonderful book. Loved it! Below is a post I made at my group concerning this book on 12/28/11:
=============================================
I'm in the middle of reading State of Wonder (2011) by Ann Patchett. I picked it up from the library's new book section on the spur of the moment. Glad I did. It's just as good as (if not better than) Patc...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Will Byrnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Mistah Kurtz, he dead, well, Mr. Eckman anyway. At Minnesota-based Vogel pharmaceuticals, weeks-old news of bio-researcher Anders Eckman’s Amazonian demise leads the company to send another scientist to find out what happened, and to complete Eckman’s charge. He had been sent to determine the status of research, on a long-overdue revolutionary fertility drug, being conducted by the reclusive, and somewhat scary Doctor Annick Swenson. (think Kurtz) Pharmacological researcher Marina Singh (think M...more Mistah Kurtz, he dead, well, Mr. Eckman anyway. At Minnesota-based Vogel pharmaceuticals, weeks-old news of bio-researcher Anders Eckman’s Amazonian demise leads the company to send another scientist to find out what happened, and to complete Eckman’s charge. He had been sent to determine the status of research, on a long-overdue revolutionary fertility drug, being conducted by the reclusive, and somewhat scary Doctor Annick Swenson. (think Kurtz) Pharmacological researcher Marina Singh (think Marlow) is sent to the remote Brazilian research station to investigate. Along the way she has to overcome several obstacles, including a pair of gatekeepers in a Brazilian city, conflict about leaving her significant other, and a fear of facing her former teacher. In addition there are the physical challenges of travelling up-river into this remote and forbidding place, some incoming poison arrows, a plague of insects, a very large snake, and some persistent nightmares.

In a road-trip-journey-of-self-discovery story, it is first imperative that one identify with the searcher. While Marina is a somewhat sympathetic character, it is tough to feel wholly supportive of her, let alone empathetic. She has committed some errors in her life, like the rest of us, but she keeps making such dumb mistakes that she makes one think she might have been better off staying home. (Following is borderline spoiler material, so you might want to close your eyes for a line or two.) For instance, she leaves her satellite phone in stowed luggage rather than with her carry-on materials. Any guesses what happens? Yep. Not only does she lose her sat-phone (when the airline mislays her luggage) on arrival in Brazil, she then proceeds to lose all her new belongings once again when she arrives at her up-river destination. There is a much bigger error in judgment that happens near the end but I will spare you that one. Suffice it to say that it makes one shake one’s head and mutter “Schmuck!” I understand that the sequential loss of property is a mechanism for stripping the character down to her core, but if our identification with the searcher is undermined, what is left?

A fair bit actually. What I most enjoyed were the echoes of Joseph Conrad and other classical references to be found here. Conrad’s book had a lot to do with the relationship between the western and third worlds. Marina is herself the embodiment of such diversity, being the product of an Indian (as in South Asian, not Native American) father and a Caucasian American mother. The Congo that Conrad wrote of was a source of natural resources for European colonialists. In this contemporary version, it is the potential for pharmacological resources to be found in Amazonia that the West is looking to exploit. I cannot cite a page number but I am pretty sure there was purple smoke wafting about, which summoned for me an element of Coppola’s cinematic interpretation of Conrad. And Minnesota offers an image of coldness to contrast with the heat of the Brazilian jungle.

In the quest for self-discovery, a Campbell-ian hero ventures from his/her quotidian home, in this case Eden Prairie, where Vogel Pharmaceuticals is ironically located, to a place of supernatural power, slays a dragon, literally or figuratively, thus gaining power, and boogies on home, enlarged. Patchett has some fun with this, naming the company’s Brazilian guide Milton, for example. A young native character is Easter, which must have something to do with sacrifice and return, ya think?

[Marina] understood that in life a person was only allowed one trip down to hell

That she attends an opera of Orpheus and Eurydice reinforces this. What might be thought of as a tree of knowledge shows up as well. Considering the stripping of her externalities that came before, it seems pretty clear that someone is being reborn.

He walked her into the water up to their knees and then up to their waists. It was like a bath, silky and warm. The current was so slight it barely disturbed her clothes. She wanted to lie down in it. Milton dipped his own handkerchief into the water and spread it wet over the top of her head. “It’s better, isn’t it,” he said, though it wasn’t a question.

A harpy eagle, reminiscent of the harpies of mythology, puts in an appearance, toting a soul to Hades, no doubt. In fact, birds show up a fair bit.

The pharmaceutical company in question is called Vogel, German for bird. A large white bird, a jaribu stork, flaps through. In Egyptian mythology, this bird is associated with the soul of the dead communicating with the living. Feathered friends pop up a few more times, but I did not catch any obvious (or easily researchable) references from them. Marina is seen in avian plumage as well:

she was unsteady in her shoes, which, along with the ridiculous dress, made her the human equivalent of a bird with a broken wing to any predator who might be out trawling the streets late at night.

The color purple, the color, not the story, turns up several times. This is usually associated with either royalty or spirituality. I am going with the latter here. OK, OK. I know I tend to go overboard with such things, and it is always possible, likely even, that the author did not intend all these references. But just in case.

Finally hope as a theme comes into play. The core of the jungle research is a fertility drug. What could symbolize hope more than that? The dead researcher’s wife charges Marina with the task of finding out just what happened to her late husband. She harbors faint hope that he might still be alive. Swenson’s dedication to her work, and to keeping the corporate suits at bay, is based on hope for a great scientific breakthrough. Marina gains some hope of redemption. On the other hand:

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody keeps pulling and pulling it.

But then:

Had they not been so hopeful [Marina’s parents] and guileless her birth would have been impossible.

Maybe things in Patchett’s tale are not quite so dark as in Coppola’s bleak vision, or as in Conrad’s. Some light does seep through. State of Wonder can feel slow—maybe like a journey up-river?—but while the story takes a long time to get where it is going, it is an enjoyable read, particularly if you like playing literary treasure hunt, as I do. There is content to be had, questions raised, moral dilemmas to be resolved, and some bio-tech issues to consider. This is a thoughtful and interesting read.
(less)

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Aug 17, 2012 Laraine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was my first book by Ann Patchett and will not be my last. The story was mesmerizing and drew me in from the first sentence. The visual images her writing suggests are colorful, rich and memorable, especially her description of the thickness of the Amazon and what "lies within." Her style, like the Amazon, kept flowing and added to the pace and enjoyment. My review is not a five as I am not a fan of how she tied up the loose ends.

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Aug 03, 2011 Maggie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel was just what I've been looking for this summer: a dazzling story, a meaty pile of ethical questions, characters that endure long after the book is over, and prose that gets more beautiful the more you notice it. I didn't love the novel's end; it was a bit too rushed for me, and the sudden pile-on of action left me wanting more of the slow build-up that carried us to the climax. It occurs to me, though, that wanting more of a book is as good a sign as any that it won me over completel...more

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Jun 25, 2011 JoAnne Pulcino rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction, book-club-selection

STATE OF WONDER
Anne Patchett
This marvelous atmospheric and multi layered novel takes place in the Amazon jungle where an emissary from a pharmaceutical company dies under mysterious circumstances at a research facility.
Dr. Marina Singh is sent to find the remains and effects, but must first locate the famous and reclusive gynecologist, Dr. Swenson who is in charge of the research. Dr. Swenson is researching the women of a local tribe who can conceive well past middle age, and other secret remedi...more

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Jul 06, 2011 Julie (julie37619) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

My all-encompassing love for Ann Patchett is not a secret. She is my absolute favorite living author and I own every single one of her books. (Side note: remember that time she came to Chattanooga and I couldn't afford to go to the signing - still bitter about that). I've been anxiously waiting on the release State of Wonder for a while now, so when TLC gave me the opportunity to review, you know I was all over it. The day it came in the mail I called Luke at work because I was so excited. And...more My all-encompassing love for Ann Patchett is not a secret. She is my absolute favorite living author and I own every single one of her books. (Side note: remember that time she came to Chattanooga and I couldn't afford to go to the signing - still bitter about that). I've been anxiously waiting on the release State of Wonder for a while now, so when TLC gave me the opportunity to review, you know I was all over it. The day it came in the mail I called Luke at work because I was so excited. And when I started it last week he told me he couldn't believe I had waited three whole weeks to read it. But I wanted to draw out the anticipation as long as I could - and it was SO worth it. The complexity of the plot, the themes, and the characters is way to difficult to describe in detail without giving things away, so I'll just summarize by saying: the Amazon, a miracle fertility drug, anacondas, cannibals, and the mystery surrounding a man's death. Read the full publisher's description here for more details. The book is fascinating and engrossing and below I will tell you all of the reasons why you ought to go find a copy of this book and start reading now.

Writing
This novel is no Bel Canto. And by that I don't mean that it isn't as good as Bel Canto - I mean it is so completely different from that novel and everything else that the author has written that the two defy comparison. It's one of Patchett's strengths, I think, that she can craft a beautiful story that is so completely different from everything else she's written. Another thing that I loved about this book in particular, and most of her other books, is that it's not about anything. I mean, it has a plot, and it's obviously got a compelling story, but it's not an issue book. It's not a book about being a woman, or a book about falling in love, or a book about a timely topic. Even though a good portion of the story centers around the development of this miracle fertility drug, the book isn't making a statement about fertility treatments or addressing the current state of pharmaceuticla companies - she's just telling a beautiful, unique story. And, yes, questions of morality and ethics are raised, but not in the way they are in so many "issues' books.

Patchett also does an excellent job, as always, with setting. Like Bel Canto the book is set in South America, but that is where the similarities end. The descriptions of the insects, the heat, the trees, the suffocating atmosphere are integral to the story and are conveyed beautifully. I would go as far as to say that the jungle itself is a character in the book and the way Patchett weaves it into every part of the story is engrossing.

I have absolutely zero complaints about the writing. Beautiful, moving, engrossing, perfect.

Entertainment Value
Again, not a single complaint. I have to admit that I am not typically one to grab up literary fiction. I think most of the time literary fiction sounds like it's trying to be literary and winds up being boring. It's fashionable to write books about people who are bored with life, which can make for very boring reading. This is an exception to the rule. Not only is the writing amazing, but the book as a whole is engrossing. From the first page I was committed to finding out what would happen to the characters.

The characters themselves are believable and largely sympathetic. I love when authors are able to make unlikable characters sympathetic. It's so much closer to real life. People do bad things and make bad decisions, but they also have redeeming characteristics. In reality people are rarely completely wicked or completely noble and pure, and Patchett's characters follow reality.

Honestly, I just can't recommend this one highly enough. It hasn't taken the place of Bel Canto as my favorite Patchett book, but it has come in as a very very close second. And really it's hard to compare the two at all because they are such very different books. I rarely recommend a book to every reader. I usually give some stipulation ("You'll love this if you're a fan of YA" or "this one is for people who are interested in romance"), but I truly think anyone and everyone can and should read this one. Seriously. If you can read what I'm typing right now, there is no reason I can think of that you wouldn't love State of Wonder.

Major, major thanks to Trish at TLC for letting me in on this tour! For all of the tour information and to see other readers' opinions, check out the tour page here.(less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this at my mother's request and recommendation. She rarely recommends books and even more rarely asks me to let her know when I've finished so we can discuss it. And also, it talks place in the Amazonian rain forest, a place where I had recently spent some time. As you can probably tell, I'm delaying the start of this review. The book was okay. And I guess for me it falls into those categories of books I sometimes describe as "writers workshop-y" where the author's hand of god is felt for...more

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Oct 14, 2011 Kerry rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I really wanted to like this book. After all, there are all the raving reviews, and it's the kind of story that usually grabs and holds my interest (jungle adventure + medical drama), but I couldn't finish it. In fact, I gave up after the 4th disc (the audio book has 11 discs). The story plods on like the stifling heat of the jungle, so slow, that it was all padding and no plot for almost half of the book! The author wrote painstaking all the tedious details of Marina's past (she has father issu...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Paddy rated it 2 of 5 stars

After all the rave reviews, my expectations were high. But this is no Bel Canto. The infuriatingly hapless heroine does not look ahead to scout out minor(everyone knows to pack some necessities in carry-on luggage, including cell phone)or major consequences of her actions and is locked in past failures and losses (one grows tired of her lost father nightmares and all her screaming). One could also hope for subtler symbolism and metaphors, less stilted dialogue, more skillful writing. For example...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Vivienne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, literary, orange-2012, readathon

It was fairly obvious that Patchett's tale of a trip undertaken into an inhospitable jungle in order to track down a maverick researcher had taken inspiration from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; even the official synopsis above directly evokes this reference. While I've never read the original novel, I have seen Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and so made the connection quite quickly. Of course, since Conrad's time the issues have changed and yet in other respects they are perennial. M...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Emma rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: brazil, latin-america, contemporary, 3-stars

I had a good time with this book, and would like to give it 4 stars for enjoyment, but some significant flaws detract from my ability to recommend it to others.

State of Wonder is about a scientist, Dr. Marina Singh, working for a pharmaceutical company that is attempting to develop a new fertility drug in the Amazon. The company sends Marina to the research site to report on the progress of the drug, the brainchild of Marina’s former teacher, Dr. Swenson. But Marina, naturally, finds much more t...more I had a good time with this book, and would like to give it 4 stars for enjoyment, but some significant flaws detract from my ability to recommend it to others.

State of Wonder is about a scientist, Dr. Marina Singh, working for a pharmaceutical company that is attempting to develop a new fertility drug in the Amazon. The company sends Marina to the research site to report on the progress of the drug, the brainchild of Marina’s former teacher, Dr. Swenson. But Marina, naturally, finds much more than she bargained for.

The story never failed to engage me; while not hard to put down, I was always happy to pick it back up and read more of Marina’s adventures in the Amazon. Patchett’s fluid, accessible prose is easy to fall into, and she does a good job creating a vivid setting. The relationship between Marina and the formidable Dr. Swenson is especially interesting and true to life, and Dr. Swenson is a great character who steals every scene she’s in; I can’t recall ever encountering a character like her in fiction before, although she reminds me of one or two people I’ve met.

But there are some problems. The book’s structure is lopsided; the first 200+ pages out of 350 are introductory, while the conclusion is rushed. Meanwhile, Marina herself is a dull character, as if Patchett went too far in making her a foil for Dr. Swenson; she’s passive, fearful, and so lacking in common sense that she manages to lose all her luggage, twice! There are some point-of-view oddities; while 99.9% of the book is told from Marina’s POV, the occasional jarring sentence seems to come from someone else's head: “Dr. Budi smiled shyly, having made so few successful jokes in her life.” Marina could not possibly be responsible for this comment, having only just met Dr. Budi.

The story is also full of improbabilities, beginning with the pharmaceutical company’s allowing someone on its payroll to operate for years in an unknown location and without giving progress reports, and including some important plot points. (view spoiler)

And as for the ethical issues it supposedly examines.... they are not so much explored as mentioned in passing. Dr. Swenson will explain why she doesn’t think the doctors should treat the local people.... and that’s it; there’s certainly room for readers to discuss the issues, but the book doesn’t follow up with new twists on the question or explore the consequences of the scientists’ choices. This is particularly unfortunate with regard to the local tribe they’re studying. Patchett likely wanted to say something about their treatment (and it’s surely deliberate that the only local character to play any significant role is deaf and literally voiceless), but wound up creating a childlike group of natives, who never get to speak for themselves and apparently have nothing better to do than cheerfully mob the foreign doctors upon all their arrivals and departures. Yikes.

Despite the problematic elements, though, I genuinely enjoyed this book. It’s not quite as good as Bel Canto, but for me it was worth the read.(less)

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May 06, 2013 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I "read" this on CD while driving; audio reading is a different experience from visual, and I'm never sure if I'd feel the same way about a book if I'd experienced it through the other medium. I really enjoyed the reader here, and miss her now that I'm finished - it was as if I had a friend waiting for me whenever I got in the car recently!
Normally, my favorite books are ones where I feel I'm learning a lot, whether they be fiction or nonfiction. This wasn't one of those (what did I learn? I usu...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Dana Stabenow rated it 2 of 5 stars

I should have known there would be opera. After Bel Canto, I should have known. I'm sorry, but Patchett, Pretty Woman and Moonstruck notwithstanding, I just can't get behind the idea of opera as a redemptive force.

A modern retelling of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, that feels more like Apocalypse Now. Beautifully written. Some good situational humor ("The shaman would no doubt have direct billing with Vogel."). Plot wandery and repetitive, and, I suppose most damning for me, I didn't give a hoot a...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Almeda Riley rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a really gripping book about a woman scientist who takes on a mission to go to Brazil to discover what happened to a co-worker who died while at a research site on a tributary of the Amazon among indigenous people. At this point in my reading, she is deep in the jungle, still trying to discover what is really going on with the research, and getting new surprises almost on every page. An amazing read!

I finished it in a grand swoop. The ending is amazing, and leaves you breathing hard.

The...more

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Jul 13, 2011 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, exotic, great-locale, literary, nature, rivers, trees-woods

I knew from Bel Canto that Patchett was likely to succeed in capturing a character's descent into the heart of darkness with all the melodrama of the jungle - the exotic tropical flora, piercing insect bites, sweaty, sleepless nights, and mysterious tropical diseases. And she delivers, with overtones of Joseph Conrad and Fitzcarraldo. I appreciate Bel Canto a little more, mainly because the seduction felt more subtle, the sources not so obvious; and the characters feel integral to the novel's te...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Craig rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is my first experience with Patchett. I had tried THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT a good number of years ago, but didn't quite make it through. And now I'm reminded why I didn't make it through.

Here is what is advertised: Dr. Marina Singh is tasked by her boyfriend-boss with going into the Amazon to find her mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, a fellow scientist who has gone radio silent & continues to spend corporate money on her own experiments.

Here is what is delivered: The jungle makes women craz...more This is my first experience with Patchett. I had tried THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT a good number of years ago, but didn't quite make it through. And now I'm reminded why I didn't make it through.

Here is what is advertised: Dr. Marina Singh is tasked by her boyfriend-boss with going into the Amazon to find her mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, a fellow scientist who has gone radio silent & continues to spend corporate money on her own experiments.

Here is what is delivered: The jungle makes women crazy for babies.

Conceptually, I am terribly interested in the mother-daughter dynamic, even a non-familial one, as is on display here between Dr. Singh and Dr. Swenson. The ethical conundrum of the malaria cure is also interesting, given recent debates over affordability versus profitability of medications.

But beyond concept, this book is a schizophrenic mess of dropped characters, plot holes and plot dead ends. Beyond concept, this is like reading a Cosmo article. Beyond concept, I feel like I'm at the Mommy Reading Club. Beyond concept, I...shall I go on?

I liked that I thought I was getting a book about smart women doing smart things as opposed to dumb sluts shopping. However, I sort of get a variant of "dumb sluts shopping" when everyone goes gaga for getting pregnant. I'm truly over the culture's obsession with babies and fertility. Oh, sure, Patchett contextualizes it as "for the sake of work" here, ie "I must test it myself...FOR SCIENCE!" But really that's just making excuses for the characters.

I won't even get into Marina's decision to fuck her friend's husband at the end of the novel, which literally comes out of nowhere. All I'll say is that there better not be a sequel with Marina pregnant with her co-worker's baby, since she had taken to eating the magic baby tree bark (a plot point that goes unfinished).

Ultimately, Patchett takes strong characters and renders them more "womanly" than I prefer. And in the case of Dr. Swenson, she is made barren, old and forgettable. Really, then, what is the author saying about her own gender?

And, oh my word...this tore me up with minutiae. I half-expected a descriptive chapter about the character on the toilet, an EYES WIDE SHUT for the literary set. The minutiae never quite goes away, with the last half of the book feeling like a freshman bio class. Too much telling makes the baby go deaf.

The dynamic is clearly reminiscient of HEART OF DARKNESS. Unlike HOD, though, the jungle seems so civilized. Dr. Swenson is not lost to the world, but rather engaged in it. She's merely lost to Corporate America, unable/ unwilling to make the trip into discomfort to find her. And the isolation of the secret location is completely rendered pointless since Patchett gets every character there by book's end. SIGH.

To sum it up: white women writing white women guilt about white women views of non-white/ foreign cultures, filtered through white-tinted, baby-obsessed glasses.(less)

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May 07, 2013 Averil rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The minute she stepped into the musty wind of the tropical air conditioning, Marina smelled her own wooliness. She pulled off her light spring coat and then the zippered cardigan beneath it, stuffing them into her carry-on where they did not begin to fit, while every insect in the Amazon lifted its head from the leaf it was masticating and turned a slender antenna in her direction..."

And so begins a perilous journey into the dark heart of scientific wonder for pharmaceutical lab researcher Mari...more "The minute she stepped into the musty wind of the tropical air conditioning, Marina smelled her own wooliness. She pulled off her light spring coat and then the zippered cardigan beneath it, stuffing them into her carry-on where they did not begin to fit, while every insect in the Amazon lifted its head from the leaf it was masticating and turned a slender antenna in her direction..."

And so begins a perilous journey into the dark heart of scientific wonder for pharmaceutical lab researcher Marina Singh.

It's worth getting the obvious and often stated parallels between Conrad's classic and Ann Patchett's contemporary re-imagining out of the road straight up. Because anyone who's read Heart of Darkness will note the eerie, haunting sense of horror at finding themselves aboard yet another precarious vessel heading upstream into the unfathomable jungle in search of answers.

Yet, Patchett's State of Wonder takes on a horror and madness all of its own: the narcissist scientist with a hellishly unnatural secret blooming; the deadly cast of jungle creatures and diseases all clamouring to end your life in the most gruesome way possible; and, perhaps most frightening of all, the greed of human nature working feverishly to create a miracle drug set to revolutionise human fertility as we know it.

And oh, Patchett brings the jungle to lush, seething life with spellbinding eloquence and skill! Her descriptions of torrential rain, for example, are breathtaking: "Every drop of rain hit the ground with such force it bounced back up again giving the appearance of something boiling"

And the scene with the anaconda is heart stopping: "There was an odor none of them recognised, the smell of a furious reptile, a oily stench of putrid rage that sunk into the membranes of their nostrils as though it landed to stay there forever..."

Marina's journey from Minnesota to Brazil, and into both the inner sanctum of a hidden tribe, and the mind of an eccentric scientist, is utterly transfixing. The building suspense, with Marina's every step closer to the secrets guarded in a faraway jungle tribe, gradually becomes outright, defiant inability to put the book down for a second! The last hundred pages are an addictive, page-turning rush toward the final stunning and unexpected conclusion.

I gasped, cried and gripped my book tighter still until the very last, beautiful sentence. And was left, undeniably, at the finish of this novel in a state of dazed wonder...(less)

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May 07, 2013 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, international-latinam-caribbean, literary-fiction, travel-culture

I read State of Wonder over the weekend. It’s the story of a scientist who goes to Brazil to find out what happened to her colleague (who she learns has died on the first page of the book) and to the fertility research project he was checking up on. There are a lot of complications. Along the way, she deals with old personal and professional wounds and ponders being single in her early 40s and decisions she has made about family and children. Being childless (by choice) in my early 40s and havin...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

If I had my druthers (and the means), I'd give this book 3 1/2 stars. Ann Patchett engages her readers with a fluid writing style that pulls them along with the narrative. She also manages to create a strong main female character with a clear voice.

The gist of the story is that scientist Marina Singh, tasked by her company to track down old mentor Dr. Annick Swenson in the Amazon jungle, descends into a world that challenges the choices she has made with her life and career. Eschewing a career...more

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did anyone else catch this? SPOILER!	112	1921	May 14, 2013 08:41pm
Live Video Chat with Ann Patchett	369	518	May 07, 2013 08:50pm
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William T. Cozby ...: State of Wonder	1	2	Mar 22, 2013 09:33am
Inspiration Lane: State of Wonder	7	16	Mar 15, 2013 10:14am
Inspiration Lane: Group Discussion	1	14	Mar 15, 2013 10:11am

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