More Kingsolver

To honor Earth Day in April we elected to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Later I borrowed a gorgeous book of essays that touched on similar themes called Small Wonder that must have been a precursor to AVM. I’ll save you some time if you’d rather not continue reading: read these books.

Again, readers will be familiar with my love of Kingsolver’s work (here and here). These books aren’t novels of fiction, but rather Kingsolver speaking directly to the reader through essays about what she is passionate about.

I would start with Small Wonder which is a collection of essays written about motherhood, sustainability, and politics in a post-9/11 world. I was very impressed. Each essay is so well-crafted that you could read one and savor it all day long. The exception would be the essay on her relationship with her mother that I think was written more instinctually than with her writer’s eye, but is nonetheless lovely.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle we get a more in-depth look at the Kingsolver-Hopp family’s journey through a year of eating only what they could grow or purchase locally. I was very impressed and totally intimidated. The book follows the growing season through the year and includes recipes and passionate advocacy for genetic biodiversity (which is a lot more interesting than it sounds), the local food movement, and sustainability practices. I’m not at all ashamed to say that I conscientiously bought the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. I’ve been passionate about sustainability for years and reading AVM was like coming home. My lifestyle isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, but I’ll get there.

As I’ve said before, I adore Kingsolver’s books and will treasure them for the rest of my life. I love the gentle way she explores the human condition and advocates for authentic human connection with the earth. I hope you find books that move you as these have moved me.

Prodigal Summer

I’ve written about how much I love Barbara Kingsolver’s books before, and my promiscuity really knows no bounds when it comes to her books. She is one of a few authors whose work I will pick up and read not really even caring what the book is about. The grace and mysticism with which she writes about human relationships is just too good to pass up.

Prodigal Summer tells three stories that don’t necessarily overlap other than taking place in the same county during the same sultry summer. There are Deanna and Eddie who collide despite their polarizing differences; Lusa whose world collapses and who finds herself facing choices she didn’t know she was prepared to tackle; and Garnet and Nannie, elders who go to lengths to work at odds even as they try to preserve the same land. Kingsolver is able to intertwine the stories in a way that makes them feel relevant to one another and not at all choppy or out-of-place. They are full of heartbreak, humor, lessons in biology and conservation, and the underlying truth that everyone has needs and those needs are oftentimes much more similar than we realize.

Prodigal Summer is alive with life and brought two things to my attention that I previously hadn’t noticed:

1. There are no antagonists in Kingsolver’s stories. There are people who antagonize one another, but there is no single character or group who plays the “bad guy” or wicked stepmother. I really appreciate this as in life there are no evil characters, just folks who, through their own needs, are antagonistic. We are all humans, we all have needs, and sometimes we step on one another in an effort to fulfill those needs.

2. In Kingsolver’s writing, the setting is a character in the story alongside the human players. The mountain comes alive as the coyotes return, bringing Eddie and Deanna together. Lusa comes out of the ash of her life and into gardens that refuse to stop producing. And Garnet and Nannie bicker over how to tame the wild land they farm as it grows out of control. This overabundance coupled with some intensely beautiful human intimacy lends undertones of reproduction and sweaty connection to the stories that give them a very organic feel, like the whole thing is happening in a hothouse.

This was a great book to read in July, particularly during the hot hot heat that we’ve had recently in Minnesota. Prodigal Summer takes place in southern Appalachia, a part of the country I know nothing about, but it sounded eerily familiar. Minnesota is known for, if nothing else, the diversity of weather we get and the book could have just as easily taken place here. There is going to come a time when I will need to read Kingsolver’s catalogue a second time and I’ll be sure to read this one in the summer, it just doesn’t belong anywhere else.

Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver speaks to the universal feeling of being lost within oneself without even comprehending the tragedy of that small negligence. In it, protagonist Codi Noline returns to the town that raised her in an effort to regain some familiarity in her life after her sister Hallie leaves for South America. She is reacquainted with her father, her childhood friends, and Loyd, all of whom push her to acknowledge who she is and stop avoiding herself and what she is capable of. I hesitate to use the word "destiny" because it is an absurd concept, but in a way, Codi is faced with committing to life as her destiny.


At one point it irritated me that Codi was turning into another character wrapped up in a gauze of aimlessness and I worried Kingsolver would send her on a quest to find her spirit animal or have a dream of her destiny in the desert, dehydrated and sunburned. Rather, without neglecting the importance of solitude, Kingsolver allowed Codi to renew her value and self-worth in the company of folks who could point her along the way without doing the work for her. Her friend Emelina, Emelina's mother Viola, Loyd and his mother, the ladies of the Stitch and Bitch Club, her own addled father, and from a distance, Hallie's letters, all had profoundly quiet influence on pulling Codi out of her habit of avoidance of who she was capable of being and who she was worthy of loving. Loyd, for all his physical loveliness and his habit of being a bit of a recluse, was able to tell her that "It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else."

Woven into Codi's story is a brief foray into the sustainability movement as the town of Grace grapples with a devastating (and human-made) environmental catastrophe. As she idolizes her sister for her heroics in the field of sustainable and indigenous farming in Nicaragua, she is faced with her own monumental task: being the instrument for people who have become foliage in the memories of her childhood. She is caught unawares by the gravity of her involvement and simply moves forward because it is what is required of her. It seems that if a task isn't outrageously difficult or effective on a global scale, Codi doesn't see the heroic value in it. It takes the entire community, each person contributing a small action or comment to get Codi to realize that living her life with people who truly value her and her skills is heroic, even if she doesn't think so. To honor the value others see in you is often the most difficult task.

Kingsolver, master at the ache we place upon our own hearts, is also master of using the setting of her stories to reflect the characters and the story itself. I love the setting of the American Southwest (in this case, the fictional town of Grace, Arizona; how fitting and lovely!). Kingsolver uses the background as an allegory of the beauty of human emotional suffering, as well as the physical suffering of a marginalized indigenous community. The haunting wind and parched land that annually give way to the beauty of desert flora makes for a delightfully spiritual place for such a quiet and meaningful story.

Animal Dreams reinforced for me the joy of Barbara Kingsolver's stories of heartbreak and emotional redemption. Her tales of the American Southwest always carry a detail of desperate loneliness with them that makes them stand apart as complete and separate things; yet they never actually do break your heart. She manages to uplift the reader without being trite or saccharine and make you feel as if you'd earned the entire book's secrets and trust. It is with reverence that I delve into each new Kingsolver book, for the quiet themes, the lovely characters, and the fragile matter of deep human love.