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nancf 's review for:
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
I loved this book! It is a beautifully written story of the lives of four very different people in a Virginia mountain community. Deanna is a reculusive forestry worker; Lusa is a newly-wed farm wife and bugoligist; Nannie is an organic farmer and Garnett is her nemesis/neighbor. Deanna's chapters are titled "Predators"; Lusa's Prodigal Summer is an extravagant tale of life and lust and love.
"Her heart emptied of words, for once, and filled with a new species of feeling...
Lusa sat still and marveled: This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he's not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark." (47)
Talking about the age difference between Deanna and Eddie, he says,
"Damn, girl, get over that. Look at you. It takes more than thirty years to tune an engine to run like that." (182)
Deanna speaking to the Forest service delivery person.
"Tell me something, Jerry. If the President got shot this afternoon, what would you do tomorrow that'd be any different from what you'd do if he hadn't?'..."Why I like my life, Jerry. I watch birds. They do something different every fifteen minutes." (249)
"Garnet had a strange, sad thought about his own special way of seeing trees inside his mind, and how it would go dead, like a television set going off, at the moment of his death." (367)
"It dawned on Lusa that this was the Tree of Life (a mulberry) her ancestors had woven into their rugs and tapestries, persistently, through all their woes and losses: a bird tree."
"But he would have been wrong. 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. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen." (444)
This is the last paragraph of the book of the last, untitled chapter.
"Her heart emptied of words, for once, and filled with a new species of feeling...
Lusa sat still and marveled: This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he's not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark." (47)
Talking about the age difference between Deanna and Eddie, he says,
"Damn, girl, get over that. Look at you. It takes more than thirty years to tune an engine to run like that." (182)
Deanna speaking to the Forest service delivery person.
"Tell me something, Jerry. If the President got shot this afternoon, what would you do tomorrow that'd be any different from what you'd do if he hadn't?'..."Why I like my life, Jerry. I watch birds. They do something different every fifteen minutes." (249)
"Garnet had a strange, sad thought about his own special way of seeing trees inside his mind, and how it would go dead, like a television set going off, at the moment of his death." (367)
"It dawned on Lusa that this was the Tree of Life (a mulberry) her ancestors had woven into their rugs and tapestries, persistently, through all their woes and losses: a bird tree."
"But he would have been wrong. 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. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen." (444)
This is the last paragraph of the book of the last, untitled chapter.