Before there were Pigs in Heaven
May. 25th, 2010 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringThe Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
.
Book Bay at Fort Mason is one of my favourite bookshops. Along with Shakespeare and Co., the Evil BookShop in Sydney, Larry McMurtry's Booked Up in Archer City, and a whole bunch of others.
I had an hour to spend there, and not a lot of room (or weight) let in my luggage for the long flight home the next day. I coulda spent a day and a fortune. These books were good and cheap!
I try to ignore fiction. Novels are piling up on Mount Toberead, and I could easily spend my life in fiction fantasyland. So many good writers out there!
I plumped for facts, browsing my way through the categories and wishing for more time. So many books!
But I glanced quickly through the fiction. Can't leave San Francisco without checking on Armistead Maupin and sure enough, there were a dozen of the Tales of the City
series.
But I've got them all. A few other favourite authors sprang to mind and I checked Barbara Kingsolver. I love her books, ever since being delighted by the rich tapestry of Prodigal Summer
.
Her books are interwoven narratives, where the natural or spiritual environment is a big player. The reader is enmeshed in Kingsolver's world. People, places, plants, sky, animals and communities are linked, living and thriving.
The books were mostly those I'd read before, but The Bean Trees was a new one for me. Taylor and Turtle were familiar from another book, a sequel to this one, and here was the story of their meeting and first months together. How could I resist?
Set in the South and Southwest, the story follows Marietta Greer as she leaves her childhood home in Kentucky, seeking fresh worlds in a battered VW Bug. Changing her name in Taylorville, she encounters Turtle, an Indian infant, in a tavern carpark.
Turtle, who herself changes her name, is one of literature's great child characters. She doesn't say much that isn't horticultural in nature, but she engages the reader from the first page. This book is really Turtle's tale.
Of course, this being a Kingsolver book, there are a host of other characters and plotlines. Another baby, a distant country, the Cherokee Nation, career choices, whitewall tyres, government officials, Hope and sorrow all enter the story.
Perhaps my favourite of the minor characters is Lou Ann, a fellow Kentuckian transplanted over state lines with a child of her own. She has a box full of phobias and a wonderful, rustic, way with words. Every time she appears on the page I'm holding my breath to see what she'll say next.
The loose strands of intricate plots are woven together and tied up neatly, which makes the sequel, Pigs in Heaven
, a pleasant surprise, taking the story further.
I loved this book. But then I never expected different. So many novels nowadays are like frozen TV dinners. They tick all the boxes, but they are bland and poor. The Bean Trees is rich and meaty. You know you are getting good value with this one. It's food for the soul.
by Barbara Kingsolver.Book Bay at Fort Mason is one of my favourite bookshops. Along with Shakespeare and Co., the Evil BookShop in Sydney, Larry McMurtry's Booked Up in Archer City, and a whole bunch of others.
I had an hour to spend there, and not a lot of room (or weight) let in my luggage for the long flight home the next day. I coulda spent a day and a fortune. These books were good and cheap!
I try to ignore fiction. Novels are piling up on Mount Toberead, and I could easily spend my life in fiction fantasyland. So many good writers out there!
I plumped for facts, browsing my way through the categories and wishing for more time. So many books!
But I glanced quickly through the fiction. Can't leave San Francisco without checking on Armistead Maupin
and sure enough, there were a dozen of the Tales of the City series.But I've got them all. A few other favourite authors sprang to mind and I checked Barbara Kingsolver. I love her books, ever since being delighted by the rich tapestry of Prodigal Summer
.Her books are interwoven narratives, where the natural or spiritual environment is a big player. The reader is enmeshed in Kingsolver's world. People, places, plants, sky, animals and communities are linked, living and thriving.
The books were mostly those I'd read before, but The Bean Trees was a new one for me. Taylor and Turtle were familiar from another book, a sequel to this one, and here was the story of their meeting and first months together. How could I resist?
Set in the South and Southwest, the story follows Marietta Greer as she leaves her childhood home in Kentucky, seeking fresh worlds in a battered VW Bug. Changing her name in Taylorville, she encounters Turtle, an Indian infant, in a tavern carpark.
Turtle, who herself changes her name, is one of literature's great child characters. She doesn't say much that isn't horticultural in nature, but she engages the reader from the first page. This book is really Turtle's tale.
Of course, this being a Kingsolver book, there are a host of other characters and plotlines. Another baby, a distant country, the Cherokee Nation, career choices, whitewall tyres, government officials, Hope and sorrow all enter the story.
Perhaps my favourite of the minor characters is Lou Ann, a fellow Kentuckian transplanted over state lines with a child of her own. She has a box full of phobias and a wonderful, rustic, way with words. Every time she appears on the page I'm holding my breath to see what she'll say next.
The loose strands of intricate plots are woven together and tied up neatly, which makes the sequel, Pigs in Heaven
, a pleasant surprise, taking the story further.I loved this book. But then I never expected different. So many novels nowadays are like frozen TV dinners. They tick all the boxes, but they are bland and poor. The Bean Trees is rich and meaty. You know you are getting good value with this one. It's food for the soul.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 12:33 pm (UTC)Perhaps this summer I shall reread the copy Bron sent me and release it.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 09:34 am (UTC)I loved the parable about comparing the dinner tables - the starving people and the well-fed people, in fact, time I quoted that again on my FB I think!
I just finished "The Lacuna", which is a much longer narrative, better comparison to "Poisonwood Bible" than "Bean Trees", and maybe it is because as you say her writing is so "rich and meaty" that I am now finding Ian McEwan's "Atonement" very drab, despite his trying really hard with all his descriptive passages! He seems to take a whole paragraph to portray what Kingsolver could say in a couple of brilliant sentences.