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Pigs in Heaven (Greer Family, #2)

Barbara Kingsolver

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Jan 04, 2013 Booknblues rated it really liked it

Shelves: native-americans, contemporary-fiction, family-relationships

Pigs in Heaven
By Barbara Kingsolver
4 stars
pp. 436.

I read Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible many years ago, before it became an Oprah book and I loved it. I loved her use of varying points of view and the voice of the children of the family and her description of life in the Congo. So, I purchased Pigs in Heaven and let it languish on my shelves for so many years that the pages turned yellow and it acquired that musty book smell that I adore. I am sure I would have let it languish there a few more y Pigs in Heaven
By Barbara Kingsolver
4 stars
pp. 436.

I read Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible many years ago, before it became an Oprah book and I loved it. I loved her use of varying points of view and the voice of the children of the family and her description of life in the Congo. So, I purchased Pigs in Heaven and let it languish on my shelves for so many years that the pages turned yellow and it acquired that musty book smell that I adore. I am sure I would have let it languish there a few more years if I were not challenged to read it.

Pigs in Heaven is the sequel to Kingsolver's The Bean Trees and as I have read that book and can vouch for Pigs in Heaven ability to stand on its own. In this book we find a young Cherokee girl, Turtle who is being raised by a white woman, Taylor Greer. When Turtle and her mother are seen on Oprah by hot shot Cherokee lawyer, Annawake. and thus begins the modern King Solomon tale of a struggle for a child, one for herself and one for her tribe.

Like Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver is adept at telling a tale from multiple points of view. She can be quite lyrical in her writing and there were many sections which I loved:

"The air isn't any cooler outside the house, but being outdoors in her sheer nightgown arouses Alice with the possibility of freedom. She could walk away from this house carrying nothing. How those glass eyeballs in the china cabinet would blink, to see her go. She leans back in the proch swing, missing the squeak of its chains that once sang her baby to sleep, but which have been oppressed into silence now by Harland's WD-40. Putting her nose deep into the mug of bourbon, she draws in sweet, caustic fumes, just as she used to inhale tobacco smoke until Taylor made her quit."

My one criticism of the book is that everything is a little too neatly tied up with a bow. I don't see this occuring all that often in life and I'm not sure that these days I altogether appreciate it in a book.

The title is based on a charming Cherokee myth of the formation of the Pleiades, I'm not going to disclose it here to encourage you to read the book. ...more

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Nov 10, 2010 Sue rated it really liked it

Shelves: zl-crpl-cd-reread, zc-challenge-colors, 01-flc-reading-bee, zq-audio-repeat-0, linn-area-reads, womens-fiction, fiction, family, zq-read-2010, zc-living-authors-0

"It takes a village to raise a child." "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or of the one." "The good of the few, or of the one, outweighs the good of the many." These quotes (from other sources) are some of the ideas explored in 'Pigs in Heaven.' A sequel to 'The Bean Trees', we rejoin Taylor Greer and her young daughter Turtle, three years later. Taylor's mother, Alice, also becomes a prominent character in this second book. In addition, we meet Alice's cousin Sugar, the formid ...more

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