State of Wonder in Around the Year in 52 Books

Feb 23, 2012 Ciara rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-in-2012

i feel kind of cheated because i specifically picked this book up in order to AVOID reading another book about pregnancy, babies, infertility, etc. i was trying to branch out & not obsess. i did not realize that fertility & pregnancy were huge elements in this book. i expected it to be a lighthearted romp through the amazon jungle as a buttoned-up med student-cum-pharmaceutical scientist tries to track down the crazy but charismatic older lady doctor/scientist that she has always idolized, who h i feel kind of cheated because i specifically picked this book up in order to AVOID reading another book about pregnancy, babies, infertility, etc. i was trying to branch out & not obsess. i did not realize that fertility & pregnancy were huge elements in this book. i expected it to be a lighthearted romp through the amazon jungle as a buttoned-up med student-cum-pharmaceutical scientist tries to track down the crazy but charismatic older lady doctor/scientist that she has always idolized, who has disappeared into the jungle & possibly murdered one of the younger scientist's colleagues. you know, fun!

instead i got a surprisingly plodding slog through the amazon jungle as our pharmaceutical scientist, marina, tries to find her former mentor, dr. swenson. swenson has been hired by marina's company to invent a magical pill that will extend women's fertile years beyond menopause. marina's boss/boyfriend is all, "just imagine! no more IVF! people can just take this pill & have babies!" which i think really belies patchett's lack of understanding about advanced reproductive technologies. a dearth of viable eggs can be one reason why someone may pursue IVF, & ensuring that you have a ready stockpile of fresh eggs right up until you die at age 85 could be a way to continue conceiving into your twilight years. but a lot of people end up doing IVF because they have scarred fallopian tubes or a hormonal issue that makes it difficult for them to sustain a pregnancy or there's a sperm issue complicating things. nice fresh eggs aren't necessarily going to solve these problems.

the characters also get about 250 pages into the book before anyone stops to ask, "wait, WHY would someone WANT to have a baby when they are like 75 years old?" it's not exactly like pregnancy & childbirth are SUPER-FUN! i guess swenson hit on this whole fertility pill thing because she found this tribe deep in the jungle in which women continue to bear children until they are wicked old--they never experience menopause. so, do these women have some kind of herbal jungle birth control they use? because i really feel that if i was capable of getting pregnant every year from age 13 until death, i'd probably defect from the tribe to start a woman-only village on the far side of the jungle. it would be just like herland by charlotte perkins gilman. we'd just let dudes in once a year to impregnate us & keep the race going.

brief plot summary: it takes some doing & some charming of obnoxious young australians but marina finds dr. swenson & gets sucked into her research vortex. then she learns that swenson has been experiemting on herself, & is pregnant at the advanced age of 73. swenson bullies marina into sticking around to perform a C-section, but the baby has a congenital abnormality & dies. then marina's boss & the australians show up. they hadn't heard from her & were worried. so, you know, they just stopped by. in a remote amazon outpost. as you do. they brought pecan rolls. (not really.) marina suddenly wonders if maybe her colleague, anders, could still be alive. supposedly he died of a fever, but she hijacks a boat & takes this unusually gifted deaf kid with her & finds this cannibal tribe down another tributary. & there's anders. she trades the deaf kid for him (i guess the deaf kid was originally part of the cannibal tribe, but dr. swenson stole him for some reason) & the book basically concludes the same way as "burn after reading":

anders: "so...what did we learn from that?"
marina: "not to do it again?"
anders: "fair enough."

kind of a disappointment.

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Jan 31, 2012 Ashley Dreyer rated it really liked it

Shelves: ebook, library-rental, read-in-2012, tournament-of-books-2012

Great book. One of my favorites from Ann Patchett. The only reason this is not getting 5 stars is because I think that it ended abruptly. I'd like to know more about what happens to a few people after the last page. ...more

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