Barbara Kingsolver has such a way with words. She can crystallize a moment, a thought, an emotion, and fasten it to the paper like very few people can. There is such detail and nuance in the book that I'm finding it very hard to sum up. I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could. (I try to give 5 stars only to my favorite books.)The main character and most frequent narrator of this book, Codi, grew up in the (fictional) small town of Grace, Arizona. Her mother passed away after giving birth to her little sister, Hallie, so the two sisters are raised by their distant father, whom Codi refers to as Doc Homer. He is the only physician in Grace, and moved there from Illinois, so is seen as an outsider. She and her sister have to wear orthopedic shoes because their father is concerned about them damaging the many bones in their feet for frivolous fashion. He encourages the girls not to be concerned with what other people think, but of course Codi is only mortified at not fitting in with her peers.As soon as she can, she moves away from Grace. She enrolls in medical school, but drops out when she is almost finished with her program and becomes somewhat aimless in her career and personal life. She lives with her emergency room surgeon boyfriend, Carlo, with whom there is no particular attachment or passion. Hallie also lives with them, since Codi is drawn to her light and life, as is everyone around her. Codi mentions that she suspects every love interest she ever had first fell in love with her sister. Hallie answers the phone for a gardening hotline through the university and helps refugees. She feels she is not making enough difference, and so announces that she is going to Nicaragua to help the war-torn people there grow their crops and live their lives. With Hallie gone, Codi feels even more adrift than usual. When she gets the news that her father may be ailing mentally, she heads back home to Grace to see him. She gets a job as a high school science teacher, although she isn't certified, since they need a teacher pretty badly. She plans to stay there for the year and then drift onward. She has forgotten most of her childhood, and she feels even more like an outsider than she had before. She writes religiously to Hallie, though there is a two-week delay in their correspondence. She also discovers that the town, which is primarily a farming community, is in danger of having its orchards killed when a mining company first pollutes their water sources and then plans to divert the river elsewhere. Her friend, who is now a mother of what seems like a houseful of boisterous children, lets her stay in a small house on her property. When she was in high school, she had a secret miscarriage, and the children are an ever-present reminder of her loss. “A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had.But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.” Having lost both mother and child, she feels like the strings that should hold her in place have been cut, which is part of why she remains so directionless. The only real connection she has is with her sister, and she is scared to try to make a connection with anyone else, including the lovers she's had. While in town, she spends time with Loyd, a Native American man who went to high school with her and who was the unknowing father of the baby she lost. Codi didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy before or after she lost the child. (Her father saw the signs of pregnancy in her, but he didn't know how to bring it up.) Loyd is a charming and genuine man who takes her to see local areas of history and beauty, and Codi is hard pressed to keep her customary distance. She maintains it by reminding him that she is leaving at the end of the year. I thought that the short chapters from her father's perspective were particularly interesting. His worsening mental state makes him confuse past and present sometimes, and they are woven together with a beautiful sadness.
I've been a Kingsolver fan for many years. Somehow I missed this novel back in 1990 and just got around to reading it. It's set in Arizona, and the setting is beautifully described. "Over our heads was a chalky full moon with cloud rubbed across it, like something incompletely erased."I especially enjoyed the parts of the book dealing with Native American culture. The description of the ancient pueblos and how they were built to blend with the landscape was appealing. I like Codi, the main character, who describes herself like this:"At some time in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier, I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit."An aspect of the novel I really liked was the juxtaposition of the Native American and the modern American attitudes toward the land."To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests [Native Americans], American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming land could also forget what had been done to it."And this, from Codi's sister working in Nicaragua, where having one plate, one cup, and one fork is a luxury: "Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery-store shelves with thirty brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and I think, 'What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?' I think it's fear. . . I don't think I'll ever be going back."Kingsolver writes from a place that's familiar to me.
What do You think about Animal Dreams (1991)?
This is only the second book that I've read by Barbara Kingsolver, and I'm very interested in learning about her writing process. She has this infectious, cultural curiosity that drives her to learn anything and everything about a place and its people...even if they only exist in her mind. She creates an entire world of history, geography, lineage and folklore. And every character is filled with so much wisdom and humor that I feel like I was given a sneak peak into Kingsolver's personality. Even when her characters are making their mistakes, they are learning and changing. It's as if Kingsolver is teaching a lesson she learned at the same moment she wrote it.She also has this way of juxtaposing the fiction with real life events. In Animal Dreams, Hallie, a daughter of a tiny canyon village in Arizona keeps her sister, Codi, connected to the war in Nicaragua. Hallie spreads truth and hope with her letters...two subjects that aren't too prominent in Codi's life.
—Cat
Page 61In high school, Hallie and I were beneath Trish's stratum of normal conversation. I remembered every day of those years, no lapses there. Once in the bathroom I'd heard her call us the bean-pole sisters, and speculate that we wore hand-me-down underwear. I wondered how the rules had changed. Had I come up in the world, or Trish down? Or perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.Page 261If Grace gets poisoned, if all these trees die and this land goes to hell, you'll just go somewhere else, right? Like the great pioneers, Lewis and Clark. Well, guess what, kiddos, the wilderness is used up." I walked around my little square of floor like a trapped cat. "People can forget, and forget, and forget, but the land has a memory. The lakes and rivers are still hanging on to the DDT and every other insult we ever gave them."Page 337No hugs or confessions of love. We were all a little stiff, I understood that. Family constellations are fixed things. They don't change just because you've learned the names of the stars.
—Gypsy Lady
After a somewhat slow start, this turned out to be a great read! I really loved the imagery of the southwest, and all the great characters that Kingsolver brings to life. Codi (Cosima - for "Order in the Cosmos") Noline returns to Grace, AZ to care for an ailing father and to try to come to grips with her own past. Fearing loss and hurt, she struggles to remain "apart" from everything, even as she becomes more enmeshed with the townspeople and their plight. Her relationships with a distant father and a precocious sister are explored in depth by Kingsolver. So is her new relationship with an old lover.Kingsolver is at her best in describing the beauty of the desert southwest, but her dialogue between her characters is equally notable. There are several great lines of prose throughout the book that mark it as undeniably Kingsolver. "Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier."I gave this one 4 1/2, downgraded to 4*.
—Garlan
