Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver) Conclusion

The “Old Chestnuts” storyline, which started out seeming almost as a whimsical side-issue, functioning as an amusing set of interludes to the two other, heavier storylines, has become my favorite by the end of the book.  Garnett, in particular, is fascinating in his reactionary, ingrained piety.  His thought processes, though not presented in first person, are artfully telegraphed in the phrasing of each paragraph in which he appears, to show his perspective on events as they unfold.  And though he is probably not a person we would like to become close friends with, he’s a lot of fun to watch.  He is continually righteously outraged by the things that come out of Nannie’s more “modern” mouth; yet, he’s infatuated by her, though he doesn’t realize it – the reader is in on the secret he keeps from himself, and that’s part of the fun.

Lusa’s storyline is much more complex.  She’s wise enough to decide to simply do things her way, knowing that capitulating to the opinions of her new family (surrounded on all sides by the disapproving relatives of her now-dead husband) is a losing proposition, no matter which way she turns.  Believing in herself and her ability to make the right decisions for herself eventually wins the family over, in a big way.  A great message here for those who might tend to live their lives to please others.  Her interaction with the seventeen-year-old “Little Rickie,” especially after it is revealed that he has a huge crush on her, is fascinating to watch.  The realism of the writing here is superb; these fictional characters become real to us to an extent rarely matched in literature, in my humble opinion.

The Deanna/Eddie storyline ends on a somewhat darker note, with him finally giving up on their relationship, totally unaware that he’s leaving behind his child.  Any moral obligation that Deanna has to let him know she is bearing his child is pushed aside, here.   Should this lower our esteem for Deanna, the fact that she decides to have his child without ever telling him?  Kingsolver seems to think it needn’t, or, if it does seem morally questionable that, in this case, a concession should be made.   It’s not as if he was being irresponsible; several references to his condoms have been made.  He had finally read her academic treatise on coyotes and why they shouldn’t be hunted so relentlessly.  His answer was to walk out of her life without saying goodbye, leaving behind only a short note on the last empty page of the treatise:  It’s hard for a man to admit he has met his match.  E. B.  Not the most manly of departures, it must be admitted.

The constant references in each storyline to the other two that are left here and there throughout the book become more frequent until we see that Jewel’s two children, which Lusa is apparently going to adopt, are Garnett’s grandchildren.  Deanna is moving in with Nannie, who was once practically her adopted mother, having been very close to her father for years.  All the final interactions between these characters are left to the future, letting the readers fill in those blanks for ourselves.  We have enough familiarity by now with the people and the nature of the small-town setting to imagine these things for ourselves.

And, fittingly, the final chapter gives us a glimpse of a hitherto unintroduced character, though one that is very important to the story none-the-less.  The mother coyote herself, patrolling her adopted territory, thinking her coyote thoughts and looking to her own future in this fascination setting.  A beautifully depicted final chapter concluding a beautifully told masterpiece.  For me, Barbara Kingsolver has definitely lived up to all the accolades I have read about over the years.  The next book on my reading agenda is her short story collection, Homeland – I can hardly wait!

 

 

August’s book of the month; “Corduroy Mansions,” by Alexander McCall Smith.
 

Week 1 will post on August 8 - See you then!

Week 1:  Chapters 1-25
Week 2:  Chapters 26-50
Week 3:  Chapters 51-75
Week 4:  Chapters 76-100

"Filled with charming eccentrics . . . McCall Smith, a master of weaving the many strands of his complex stories together, does so here with supreme virtuosity."—The Washington Post

The indefatigable Scotsman's latest exercise in grace and good manners . . . McCall Smith is the P.G. Wodehouse of our time, and we should be grateful for his prolificacy."—Richmond Times-Dispatch

"As ever, McCall Smith is droll, philosophical, full of original insights, and above all, entertaining."—Bookreporter

“Quirky and original . . . Told with warmth, wit and intelligence, and McCall Smith’s cast of characters are beautifully observed. It’s a page-turner with many happy endings. Perfect.” —Daily Express

“The author’s gentle humor and playful teasing-out of moral dilemmas great and small are there in abundance.” —The Scotsman

“The seriousness is always sugar-dusted in McCall Smith’s delight in the ridiculous and his perfectly paced humour.” —The Daily Telegraph

 

 

 

Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver) Chapters 15-19

There is a lot of practical wisdom as well as specialized knowledge packed into these chapters.  It’s hard to decide whether we’re seeing the result of extensive research that has gone into this book, or the author is just sharing from a vast wealth of facts picked up over the years.  Probably some of each.  But however much she has studied natural history and biology, her insights into human relationships and conversational dynamics are impressive as well.  Lusa’s ordeal of having to fit into her dead husband’s family is such a lucid study of adaptability that we almost feel we’re witnessing a true case history in great detail.  The personalities involved are as convincingly intricate as they are varied.

The three threads indicated by the three alternating chapter titles deal with three different kinds of human personality conflict.  Lusa’s struggle with her new family, as mentioned above, is contrasted with the sharp differences of opinion between Garnett and Nannie over insect control and other farming practices, as well as the locking of horns between the lovers Deanna and Eddie over the fate of the local coyote population.  Each conflict is outlined by the characters themselves in their conversations, allowing them to present their positions in a more or less even-handed manner.

The occasional mention of people or events in one thread by characters in another thread is intriguing, such as Deanna’s mentioning of the close relationship between her father, when he was alive, with Nannie.  These feel like a kind of foreshadowing, hinting that we’ll be seeing a convergence of the threads at or near the end of the story.  This, in turn, sets up an anticipation that is almost as enticing as the eventual solution to a crime in a mystery.

The arguments between the two elderly characters, Garnett and Nannie, are gems of characterization.  They speak exactly as we feel two adversaries from their generation would, not beating around the bush the way a couple of middle-agers might, or carelessly spewing poorly-thought-out barbs to be regretted later, as we might expect younger folks to do.  We can almost hear the gruffness in Garnett’s voice (I’m thinking Harrison Ford as he sounds at his current age) and the somewhat edgy grate of Nannie’s replies:  ‘He shook his head.  “How many times do I have to listen to that nonsense?”  She leaned forward, her eyes growing wide.  “Until you’ve heard it!”’  She is a better arguer than he, as we might imagine:  ‘Garnett felt hoodwinked.  How could she do this every time?  In another day and age they’d have burned her for a witch.  “I didn’t find the fault in your thinking,” he admitted.  “Because it’s not there!” she cried.  “Because I’m right!”  The little woman was practically crowing.’

Their argument over evolution is superb:  ‘”Well, then,” he said, crossing his arms, “how does random chance create complex life forms?”  “This just seems ridiculous, a man who does what you do claiming not to believe in the very thing he’s doing.”  “What I do has nothing to do with apes’ turning helter-skelter into thinking men.”  “Evolution isn’t helter-skelter!  It’s a business of choosing things out, just like how you do with your chestnuts … What you’re doing is artificial selection,” she replied calmly.  “Nature does the same thing, only slower.  This ‘evolution’ business is just a name scientists put on the most obvious truth in the world, that every kind of living thing adjusts to changes in the place where it lives.  Not during its own life, but you know, down through the generations.  Whether you believe in it or not, it’s going on right under your nose over there in your chestnuts.” … “That’s just a godless darkness, to think there’s no divine goal.  Mankind can’t be expected to function in a world like that.  The Lord God is good and just.”’  Alas, the argument of the ages continues.  May we see an end to it in our lifetimes!






Next Week:  Conclusion - Chapters 20-31

Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver) Chapters 8-14

How long should a literary conversation, a single strand of dialog be?  How many paragraphs, how many pages?  Some authors seem to believe they should limit it to a couple of pages.  Others, maybe five to ten pages.  Kingsolver has the ability to make a conversation last for twenty or thirty pages without losing the reader’s attention and interest, or without making it seem “padded” just to add length to a chapter.  Other authors that I have noticed that have done this well are Stephen King and Robert Heinlein.  These long conversations often start out covering one topic and then evolve into something else, each topic being important to the point of the story.

Lusa’s conversation in the barn with Rickie brings about her idea about raising goats; something that wasn’t at all on her mind until Rickie happened to mention that a lot of the locals had goats they would just as soon get rid of.  These extended dialog strands are not easy for a writer to make convincing – sometimes even the best attempts by good writers cause many readers to lose patience with them.  Kingsolver makes these passages an absolute delight to read, giving us the feeling that we are in the room with the characters, listening in on a conversation that we don’t need to contribute to in order to feel like we are a part of it.

Long paragraphs seem headed for extinction for much the same reason.  Pick up your average top-selling page-turner and you’ll often see as many as a dozen indentations per page.  A very strong writer isn’t afraid they’ll lose the reader’s attention with long paragraphs.  Kingsolver excels here, too.  An interesting parallel to this is long, drawn-out scenes in movies.  Quentin Tarantino is famous for exceptionally long dialogs gripping enough to hold us mesmerized for the entire scene.  (“Say ‘what’ one mo’ time!”)  Stanley Kubrick was also unafraid of losing us with his extended scenes.

One of the secondary themes of this work is Man’s Place in Nature.  The letters between Nannie Rawley and Garnett Walker pretty much spell it out, with Nannie writing, ‘Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads.  Things you don’t see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you … The world is a grand sight more complicated than we like to let on.’  This allusion to the principal of Unintended Consequences, often mentioned in connection with politics and the economy, points to man’s meddling with biology and even genetics.  Both of the correspondents bring religion into it:  ‘If God gave Man all the creatures of this earth to use for his own ends, he also counseled that gluttony is a sin…’  Is Nannie being depicted as the proverbial “tree-hugger” against Garnett’s “reactionary old conservative” as the author’s tactic of hiding behind a character to tell us how she feels, while pretending to be the impartial messenger?  I think it’s pretty clear to anybody by this point in the book which side Barbara Kingsolver takes!

This theme is echoed in the tension between the lovers, Deanna and Eddie: ‘”You said I could ask you a question, and now I’m asking it.”  “What?”  “You know.”  He blinked, but didn’t speak.  Something in his eyes receded from her.  “What brought you down here to the mountains?”  He looked away.  “A Greyhound bus.”  “I have to know this.  Was it the [coyote] bounty hunt?”  He didn’t answer.  “Just say no if the answer is no.  That’s all I want.”  He still said nothing.  “God.”  She let out a slow breath.  “I’m not surprised.  I knew.  But I will never, ever understand who you are.”  “I never asked you to.”’

  

Next Week:  Chapters 15-19
Week 4:  Chapters 20-31

Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver) Chapters 1-7

The first chapter could almost stand as a short story in itself, despite the somewhat cliff-hanger nature of the final paragraph.  Upon reading some of the reviews of Kingsolver’s books, I noticed several references to the beauty of her writing, comments by readers who would go back and re-read a paragraph or a page just to enjoy the prose again, and remarks upon her ability to create a palpable atmosphere or ambience in her writing.  I was very much looking forward to this aspect, which is a major reason I admire any writer, and yes, there are some very nice turns of phrase, elegant descriptive passages and so on.  The dialog is excellent, describing the characters well, along with some revealing, though non-obtrusive subtext.  The pace is somewhat slow, but that’s natural to the character of this kind of story; we get hints that the tension is going to build rather steeply later on.

The author is showing us how and why it isn’t really all that unusual or strange for two characters such as Deanna and Eddie, in these kinds of circumstances, to fall very quickly into a physical relationship as they do.  Sometimes, things really do happen that fast between reasonably level-headed people.  “It occurred to Deanna that she was in deep.”  Indeed, especially when it dawns on her that the reason Eddie is in the area in the first place is to kill her adored coyotes.  This would have made a rather disconcerting, Hemingway-ish ending to a short story, come to think of it…

At one point I finally tripped over the key passage that slammed home the truth to me that this is a writer of true brilliance.  (Maybe I should go back and start from the beginning!)  The four paragraphs starting halfway down page 60 in my edition (beginning with, ‘A little farther on, where the trail crossed a clearing and, most likely, other animal trails, she found his [the coyote’s] scat.’ and ending with, ‘”You rascal,” she said aloud, laughing.  “You magnificent son of a b****.  You’ve been spying on me.”’) is a fascinating little mini-seminar on scatology; the “forensics of poop,” if you will.  (I like the reference to a male coyote as a “son of a b****.”  Pun intended?)  The technical detail combined with a human interest in natural science brings to mind the Jean Auel “Earth’s Children Series” of books, starting with “Clan of the Cave Bear.”  This is serious reading, but well worth the effort.

This is one of those stories that has more than one alternating thread.  There are three, in fact.  The novelty here is that each thread uses the same chapter title each time it resumes, as if we have three long chapters entitled, “Predators,” “Moth Love” and “Old Chestnuts” that have been segmented and shuffled like a deck cards, (only not at all randomly).  They all share a common setting and, presumably, characters, and we suspect will come together sooner than later and affect one another in interesting ways.

The “Old Chestnuts” thread has been given little exposure as of yet, but has provided the most humor, understated as it is.  The situation of an elderly man, trudging through a slightly swampy weed overgrown hollow and thinking he’s had a stroke because one leg feels sluggish, only to find that he has become latched onto by a large snapping turtle (also referred to as “monster” and “dinosaur”) is a vividly comic contrast to the death and funeral of Lusa’s husband in the “Moth Love” thread.  I love humor in a story as much as most people, but the depth and gravity of the rest of the writing almost makes it seem out of place here.  Not complaining! I just wish I hadn’t waited so long to finally read Barbara Kingsolver!

 

  

Next Week:  Chapters 8-14
Week 3:  Chapters 15-19
Week 4:  Chapters 20-31