Liz's review
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
This is a lively book that packs in quite a few valuable observations about the nature of things. I particularly enjoyed the dialogue, which was very cleverly crafted and made me fond of all the characters because they said such wonderful things. For the most part, the characters were more realistically painted than those in other novels, and they reminded me of people who already exist and therefore I felt more compelled to care about their lives, especially Codi.
That said, this otherwise strong sense of realism was unfortunately threatened by a pesky tendency toward heavy handedness on Kingsolver's part. Often the interconnected threads that made the story so good were tied together so tight that they almost choked the fun out the novel, although I really do appreciate and admire the number of interwoven details that she managed to include. An example of something that I think was way over the top was the almost painfully un-coincidental coincidence of Codi and Loyd both having t...more
That said, this otherwise strong sense of realism was unfortunately threatened by a pesky tendency toward heavy handedness on Kingsolver's part. Often the interconnected threads that made the story so good were tied together so tight that they almost choked the fun out the novel, although I really do appreciate and admire the number of interwoven details that she managed to include. An example of something that I think was way over the top was the almost painfully un-coincidental coincidence of Codi and Loyd both having t...more
