Prodigal Summer review
Aug. 29th, 2010 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobear A friend gave me Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible for Christmas last year and I loved it, so I decided it might be time to try some of her other books.
Prodigal Summer tells three stories of people living in the Appalachian region of America. One is a female forest ranger who falls for a hunter and has to decide whether to give in to her desire for him or her desire to maintain her solitary life on the mountain. One is a city girl who marries a farmer but is widowed less than a year later and has to decide whether to retreat to the city or try and make a success of the farm. The third is an elderly man trying to create hybrid chestnut trees that will survive the blight while feuding with his neighbour over crop-spraying.
So far, so mundane? Well, yes - nothing of earth-shattering drama happens the whole way through, and I have very little connection to any aspect of these people's lives.
However, something about Kingsolver's writing made me care deeply about each and every one of them, and kept me wholly engrossed in the way their lives unfolded. The book is structured so that each chapter cycles through a different plotline, with the stories only connecting very briefly towards the end. At the end of every chapter, I was disappointed that I would have to wait another two chapters to find out what happened next in my favourite of the three stories - until I started the next chapter and remembered *that* story was actually my favourite - or was it the next one?
Wonderful, wonderful book. Must get more Kingsolver!
Prodigal Summer tells three stories of people living in the Appalachian region of America. One is a female forest ranger who falls for a hunter and has to decide whether to give in to her desire for him or her desire to maintain her solitary life on the mountain. One is a city girl who marries a farmer but is widowed less than a year later and has to decide whether to retreat to the city or try and make a success of the farm. The third is an elderly man trying to create hybrid chestnut trees that will survive the blight while feuding with his neighbour over crop-spraying.
So far, so mundane? Well, yes - nothing of earth-shattering drama happens the whole way through, and I have very little connection to any aspect of these people's lives.
However, something about Kingsolver's writing made me care deeply about each and every one of them, and kept me wholly engrossed in the way their lives unfolded. The book is structured so that each chapter cycles through a different plotline, with the stories only connecting very briefly towards the end. At the end of every chapter, I was disappointed that I would have to wait another two chapters to find out what happened next in my favourite of the three stories - until I started the next chapter and remembered *that* story was actually my favourite - or was it the next one?
Wonderful, wonderful book. Must get more Kingsolver!
