Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer
Deanna, 47, is a wildlife manager. She lives alone in a cabin, in a national forest in southern Appalachia. She tries to preserve the ecosystem and has a passion for predators, particularly coyotes. When Eddie Bondo, 28, farmer from Wyoming, meets Deanna, she immediately knows that her peace and symbiosis with nature is threatened: she feels attracted to Eddie, despite what her reason tells her…
Lusa, 28, is fascinated by moths: she wrote a thesis on them and taught farmers how to avoid using pesticides. This is how she met her husband, Cole Widener. She feels she doesn’t fit in the Widener family: Cole’s sisters, who each own land in the neighborhood, seem to ignore her, at best, or to criticize her openly. When Cole dies in a truck accident, Lusa feels lost in a hostile environment. Will she abandon the farm and go back to town, as everybody believes? Or will she find a way to survive in an environment of which she has only an encyclopedic knowledge?
Garnett, a widower in his eighties, is a "bitter old man", according to his neighbor Nannie Rawley. He is trying to resurrect the American Chestnut, that disappeared from the region because of a blight, by crossing it and trying to create a blight-resistant kind. He feels that his garden, and also his whole life, are plagued by Nannie, who insists that no pesticide shall be used around her organic apple trees. The war between Nannie and Garnett has been going on for years, and is not about to end, Garnett will make sure of it…
Through the intertwined stories of these three characters, whose relationships to each other will unravel, we discover their concerns about nature, plants or animals, and their beliefs about ecology, evolution and other topics. These people, who believe themselves independent, will learn that human connection is what they really crave. One particularly humid summer, the "oversexed" nature, in which every plant or bug reproduces itself, influences the characters and their choices, while they try, each in their own way, to influence nature…
Being mostly an "indoors" kind of person, I confess I did not know much about the side-effects of pesticides, or the consequences of killing predators, probably because I never took the time to think about it or research it. However, despite my ignorance or lack of interest, and the fact that Kingsolver can’t help being preachy, I loved this book. Probably due to the author’s immense talent, I got hooked from the first page until the very last. A true lesson of biology, Prodigal Summer succeeds to convey the message that everything in nature is connected, whether we are aware of it or not; plants, bugs, predators, and human beings…
Like The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer is a rich book, symbolically and thematically, readable on several levels. As much as I was sure I would enjoy The Poisonwood Bible by reading the back cover, I had serious doubts that I would enjoy a book about nature. I was wrong, I loved Prodigal Summer nearly as much as I did The Poisonwood Bible!
Rating: 4,5/5
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