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A review by drlark
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
I remember reading this close to when it came out and absolutely LOVING it. But that was about 20 years ago, and my experience this time was quite different. Following three loosely intertwined stories, Prodigal Summer takes place in one eventful summer, where our three POV characters navigate the natural world alongside their family, neighbors, and lovers. Deanna is a Forest Ranger living on a mountain, tracking a family of coyotes when she meets a young hunter. Lusa is a young entomologist who's just married into a farming family. And Garnett is a grumpy old man who's a little obsessed with his neighbor. He's also trying to resurrect the American Chestnut from near extinction. Lusa is by far my favorite of the three.
Barbara Kingsolver writes as a naturalist in this book. Her deep reverence for the land and its creatures, humans included, is so clear on every page. What's also clear, though, is that she Has Something To Say in this book, and by god, you will hear it. A lot. To me, this felt like a collection of all the conversations she wants to have with her community. Her main characters are so convinced of their rightness, even if I agree how important it is to protect predators as part of the food chain, and how awful chemical pesticides are for the ecosystem, I found this to be overly preachy and tiresome in many scenes. Especially because this is a book that meanders from one conversation to the next without much happening. The ending gave me all the warm fuzzies, but getting there was quite a struggle.
Barbara Kingsolver writes as a naturalist in this book. Her deep reverence for the land and its creatures, humans included, is so clear on every page. What's also clear, though, is that she Has Something To Say in this book, and by god, you will hear it. A lot. To me, this felt like a collection of all the conversations she wants to have with her community. Her main characters are so convinced of their rightness, even if I agree how important it is to protect predators as part of the food chain, and how awful chemical pesticides are for the ecosystem, I found this to be overly preachy and tiresome in many scenes. Especially because this is a book that meanders from one conversation to the next without much happening. The ending gave me all the warm fuzzies, but getting there was quite a struggle.