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Prodigal Summer: A Novel
by: Barbara Kingsolver

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060959036
ISBN: 0060959037
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: October 01, 2001
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: October 16, 2001
Sales Rank: 15120
Studio: Harper Perennial

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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.

Amazon.com Review:
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.

The 'she' is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, '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, and that's the moral of the story.'

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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Loved it
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.

Rating:

- Biology 101
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 ... Read More

Rating:

- Prodigal Summer - very enjoyable light reading
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.

Rating:

- Got halfway through and just simply couldn't finish

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.

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