Ratings7
Average rating4.4
Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven.
In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom.
Kingsolver's canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.
Reviews with the most likes.
These essays blend family/sociology stuff with bits about nature, many seen through the lens of her personal experiences. The one titled “Stone Soup” especially got into my head, and I think anyone working with kids or families - hell, anyone IN a family - will recognize the truth she speaks.
Unforeseen side effect of this book: burning desire to travel to Kentucky and Arizona.
As good as I've come to expect from Barbara Kingsolver. I've been reading her stuff out of order and it's interesting–she seems much less confident here than in Small Wonder, her later essay collection. But in a sweet, honest way. I particularly liked the last few essays, in which she discusses the power of fiction and what kinds of responsibilities readers and writers have.