Prodigal Summer
By Barbara Kingsolver
464 pages
Megan’s review-
Quick summary
Don’t know how I missed this 23-year-old, beautiful novel about love, the interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature.
What’s it about?
Set in fictional Zebulon County in rural Appalachia across a single summer, the novel, in alternating chapters, tells 3 parallel narratives that grow increasingly entwined in surprising ways as the novel progresses. Deanna Wolfe is a reclusive wildlife biologist and forest service employee who has lived the last 2 years in an isolated mountain cabin as she maintains the wilderness habitat. When a den of coyotes migrates to the area, she keeps tabs on them and must fight to protect them against a Wyoming sheep-rancher with whom she is having a passionate affair. Lusa Landowski, a city-bred entomologist, is newly married and unexpectedly left a widow on her husband’s farm near a tiny community of 600 people. In-laws who despise her and crushing farm debt lead her to inventive actions. Garnett Walker, an elderly and conservative curmudgeon who is trying to revive the near-extinct breed of American chestnut trees butts heads with his neighbor over God and organic farming.
What did it make me think about?
So many things. The interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature. The magnificence of the natural world, its astonishing beauty and rhythms and forces, and how humans should find better ways to live in peace with it on planet Earth. The sexual reproduction of flora, fauna (and humans) and their frenzy to procreate in the summertime! The animal nature of humans. The role of keystone predators, like coyotes, that hold together a complex ecosystem by allowing other species to survive. Independent women. How to find your place among the world’s chaos after the death of your mate, your anchor.
Should I read it?
In the end, the 3 intertwined plots are really 3 stories about human love and the love of all living things. Despite some preachiness about conservation in this (more-than-20-year-old) book, the writing is beautiful and the characters are compelling and lushly portrayed. The natural world is described in mesmerizing and sensuous detail. I savored every word of this love-song to nature.
Quote.
“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.”
Related Books.
Once There Were Wolves (review to come soon).
Megan’s review-
Quick summary
Don’t know how I missed this 23-year-old, beautiful novel about love, the interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature.
What’s it about?
Set in fictional Zebulon County in rural Appalachia across a single summer, the novel, in alternating chapters, tells 3 parallel narratives that grow increasingly entwined in surprising ways as the novel progresses. Deanna Wolfe is a reclusive wildlife biologist and forest service employee who has lived the last 2 years in an isolated mountain cabin as she maintains the wilderness habitat. When a den of coyotes migrates to the area, she keeps tabs on them and must fight to protect them against a Wyoming sheep-rancher with whom she is having a passionate affair. Lusa Landowski, a city-bred entomologist, is newly married and unexpectedly left a widow on her husband’s farm near a tiny community of 600 people. In-laws who despise her and crushing farm debt lead her to inventive actions. Garnett Walker, an elderly and conservative curmudgeon who is trying to revive the near-extinct breed of American chestnut trees butts heads with his neighbor over God and organic farming.
What did it make me think about?
So many things. The interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature. The magnificence of the natural world, its astonishing beauty and rhythms and forces, and how humans should find better ways to live in peace with it on planet Earth. The sexual reproduction of flora, fauna (and humans) and their frenzy to procreate in the summertime! The animal nature of humans. The role of keystone predators, like coyotes, that hold together a complex ecosystem by allowing other species to survive. Independent women. How to find your place among the world’s chaos after the death of your mate, your anchor.
Should I read it?
In the end, the 3 intertwined plots are really 3 stories about human love and the love of all living things. Despite some preachiness about conservation in this (more-than-20-year-old) book, the writing is beautiful and the characters are compelling and lushly portrayed. The natural world is described in mesmerizing and sensuous detail. I savored every word of this love-song to nature.
Quote.
“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.”
Related Books.
Once There Were Wolves (review to come soon).
