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Binding: PaperbackDewey 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 Studio: Harper Perennial Editorial Review: 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 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. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Prodigal Summer - very enjoyable light readingI 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 finishProdigal 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 ... Read More Rating: - Prodigal SummerI loved this book!Barbara Kinsolver has a way of making you feel connected to every living thing on Earth.Every time I read one of her books I have a larger appreciation for the Earth as a whole. Rating:  - spring is the right time to read this bookI just finished this book, and I learned so much. I am in the process of planting my garden, and will definitely do things differently because I read this book. It is a wonderful fictional read that sneaks in several valuable lessons about ecology and nature. I loved the characters and I wish they were my friends. Rating: - A Perrenial FavoriteI absolutely loved this book. Fiction is a matter of taste, I know, but I honestly wonder how anyone could dislike this book. Every time I read it, I discover something new within it. If you read it aloud to your spouse before going to sleep, I won't guarantee it, but I'll bet you get lucky. In Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver shows the world how craft a beautiful sentence, not just once but a thousand times. Finally, while I'm convinced that I live ... Read More |
