Prodigal Summer: A Novel

Author - Barbara Kingsolver ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Harper Perennial was reviewed on 12-Dec-2008.

Search ISBN:0060959037 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Prodigal Summer: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books General Kingsolver, Barbara ( K ) Authors, A-Z Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Paperback Kingsolver, Barbara ( K ) Authors, A- . Click the following link to view the cover of Prodigal Summer: A Novel.

Related topics: General AAS. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. General. Kingsolver, Barbara. ( K ). Authors, A-Z. Subjects. Books.

1) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. As I write this, we´re heading into winter--a perfect time to read this novel and then ruminate on what your own place is in our global ecosystem. I have to admit a bias to Kingsolver´s writing; she understands people and what motivates them. The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven are novels that I recommend over and over to people who say, ´I want something good to read, but not something heavy.´ This will be a recommended novel as well. Kingsolver always offers a small piece of life that most of us can accept graciously and then chew on thoughtfully--and her recipes are without unnecessary additives. Love that.¤

2) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. There are 443 reviews of this book as I post review number 444. "Prodigal Summer" is averaging four stars at this point and I´d give it four, too. I´m not a Kingsolver completist; I´ve only read "Poisonwood Bible" (loved it) and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," which was brilliant. With "Prodigal," I´d recommend only to readers who don´t mind a bit of biology class along with their plots and characters. The constant detail about mammals and bugs and reptiles and their habitats, rituals, needs and mating was, well, just a bit endless. All the major characters seem to have too much knowledge about nature. I have no problem with nature. It´s one of my favorite things. But the information about every bird and goat and snake, layered in thick strands in a fairly rich and interesting plot, grew tiresome.

Here´s an example. Deep into the book, Lusa is explaining about some vines. "This one´s nice, though; it´s supposed to grow here. It gets covered with white flowers at the end of summer, and then it makes millions of seedpods that look like little silver starbursts. It´s called virgin´s bower." I think you could extract key detail from throughout "Prodigal Summer" and extract another book, "Barbara Kingsolver´s Fairly Random Guide To the Flora and Fauna Of Appalachia."

I don´t mean to be disrespectful of Kingsolver, I´m just trying to give a flavor for the book. That being said, it´s stunning how she has created three distinct sets of characters and set the stories into motion. Loner Deanna might be most compelling and interesting (at least to this guy), but she seemed too feisty and difficult for somebody who has been communing gently with nature. I almost enjoyed the crotchety relationship between Garnett & Nannie more. Their scenes were funny, touching and bitingly real--two neighbors with sharply contrasting views of the world and how it´s put together. Similarly, how Kingsolver peels back the friction between Cole and Lusa, and then shows Lusa´s struggles to overcome an entrenched family (some of the members of Cole´s extended family are extremely well drawn) is vivid and memorable.

Some of the other reviews complain about the heavy-handed message. It´s not subtle. But you are in a whirlwind of intriguing characters, absorbing some terrific conversations, and amazed at the ability of a good writer to make characters leap from the page, fully realized. Just wish I could have removed the parts that made it feel like reading a science textbook.
¤

3) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. I picked this book up at a Starbucks trading table not expecting much.

From beginning to end I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really liked the alternating chapters covering different people who were all interesting and so well developed by the author character-wise. I loved them all and especially how the author cleverly intertwined their lives at the end.

This is a book I will read again.¤

4) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial.
Prodigal Summer was a book picked by a friend of mine for our book club. We were all really excited as Kingsolver has a strong following and critics seem to love her. Needless to say from my review title I couldn´t even finish it - I got to page 200 but with much effort. Her nature writing is nice (although probably boring and not for everyone) but her romance writing is really "cheesy" (think Harlequin romance) found in the section titled "Predators" - it was almost nauseating. "Moth love" was just depressing and the other section which I can´t even remember the title of was, well, not very memorable... I was thinking maybe it was just me but several other members of our book club "hated it" and only 1 or 2 of the ladies even finished it. I didn´t give the book 1 star b/c I admit that maybe I am missing something but this book just left me bored and wishing for more of a plot and better characters.¤

5) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. I loved this book!Barbara Kinsolver has a way of making you feel connected to every living thing on Earth.Every time I read one of her books I have a larger appreciation for the Earth as a whole.¤

6) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. Barbara Kingsolver´s fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel´s intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.

7) Paperback Book Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Harper Perennial. There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.

Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:

The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.

Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau´s mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 9-Jan-2009, 00609590379780060959036, 070-690-450-320-370-140-8

Prodigal Summer: A Novel, Book, Image © Harper Perennial

Search: Harper Perennial, Book Posters, Book Art