Animal Dreams: A Novel (P.S.)

This will not be an objective review, I get a bit sappy over Kingsolver's work. I'm not alone. In this first person narrative, Cosima Nolina (Codi) returns to her home in Grace, AZ, looking for many things, among them, herself. So far, her life has been one of incompletions, a love affair that fizzled, a medical education abandoned at the last minute. Her former life in Grace was difficult. She and her sister, Hallie, were raised by a single parent, a conflicted, rigid father who was also the town doctor. As if being tall weren't enough (Hallie about six feet, Codi, just under), he forced them to wear orthopedic shoes for most of their early years, further isolating them from their peers. Now Hallie has gone off to improve agricultural practices in Nicaragua, and Codi has returned to Grace to resolve some of the demons within. The setting is so strongly rendered as to be a character in itself. Grace was named after a troup of sisters who were sent there (sold) by their father many years before. Kingsolver offers up painstaking, careful detail of the countryside and pueblo architecture. Among the many conflicts set forth, the trees in Grace are dying. A local mine is spewing forth acid rain. Saving the water supply, and the village becomes one of Codi's primary tasks. Suffice it to say, there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning pages. Even more than that, there are the characteristic Kingsolver insights: About her sister: "I spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it." About her love interest, Loyd: "You can't know somebody, I thought, till (sic) you've followed him home." About bread served to her: "It had a hard brown crust and a heavenly, steaming interior, and tasted like love." About her family: "Family constellations are fixed things: they don't change just because you've learned the names of the stars." What's not to like? A great read!

I have enjoyed other books by this author, so I decided to read Animal Dreams when I found it on sale. Barbara Kingsolver is masterful at telling a character driven story. This is the story of a young woman returning home to a small town when her father is struggling with dementia. As she settles in, she has to make peace with her past, accept her present, and allow herself to plan for a future. She must remember and discover who she really is. There are several people from her past that prove to be important on her path of discovery. There are many thought-provoking passages for the reader along the way. One is about the Importance of remembering and the dangers of forgetting. Another reminds us that childhood perceptions are not always accurate and to remember that people have reasons we may not be aware of for doing the things they do. Each of us just does the best we can. While there are other titles by Barbara Kingsolver that I liked better, this one was good and definitely worth the time to read.

I'm a sucker for reading other people's favorite books of all time. When someone tells me a certain book is one of the books of their life, I get this pressing urge to run out and secure a copy. It generally doesn't matter what genre or style of book it is. I think this is mostly because I know what it means to care so much about a book you have to have it nearby at all times. Maybe you own more than one copy so that if you lend one out you've still got a spare...just in case. Maybe you can't remember a time when you hadn't read and loved that book, those characters. I know what that feels like. And because I have such tender feelings for certain books, I want to have read the books others feel the same way about. It's almost always a rewarding experience. One of the most memorable of these times happened several years ago when a good friend of mine on Readerville was talking about what a superb novel Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL DREAMS was. I had read one Kingsolver book at that point-- The Bean Trees: A Novel --and, while I appreciated parts of it, my overall reaction was pretty lackluster. So it wasn't with a lot of excitement that I approached Kingsolver's second novel. Codi Noline thought she'd left Grace, Arizona once and for all when she and her little sister Hallie escaped and went away to college. It's been ten years since then and Codi and Hallie have traveled farther than she ever expected. Even after medical school and several stints as a world traveler, she's never found a place she could call home And yet, when the call comes in that her father has Alzheimer's and can't live alone anymore and Codi returns home to look after him, she finds to her chagrin that she hasn't moved that far beyond her childhood after all. Back in Grace, she stays in her old friend Emelina's guest house and takes a job teaching biology at the local high school. With her platinum blonde hair and her checkered history with this town, she stands out like a sore thumb and she's all but sure it was a colossal mistake coming home this way. But as she exchanges letters with Hallie, deals with her deteriorating father, and strikes up a tentative friendship with Loyd Peregrina--an Apache railroad brakeman she once knew--Codi's perspective is challenged on so many levels and the lines between memory and truth and past and present are blurred so far it's all she can do to hang on to the here and now. Here are the opening lines from Codi's perspective: "I am the sister who didn't go to war. I can only tell you my side of the story. Hallie is the one who went south, with her pickup truck and her crop-disease books and her heart dead set on a new world. Who knows why people do what they do? I stood on a battleground once too, but it was forty years after the fighting was all over: northern France, in 1982, in a field where the farmers' plow blades kept turning up the skeletons of cows. They were the first casualties of the German occupation. In the sudden quiet after the evacuation the cows had died by the thousands in those pastures, slowly, lowing with pain from unmilked udders. But now the farmers who grew sugar beets in those fields were blessed, they said, by the bones. The soil was rich in calcium." I knew right away I liked Codi. I felt sorry for her and I wanted to know her better. By the end, I liked her even more, as though I understood her because I had followed her home. Kingsolver's storytelling is breathlessly evocative. I constantly found myself gasping at the way she wields the written word to move her readers and wrap them up in a vision of the world the way it is and the way it could be. Halfway through my first read, I couldn't take it any longer. I quietly returned my library copy and fled to the bookstore to buy one of my own. I had to own this book and I wasn't even finished yet! Truthfully, ANIMAL DREAMS took me completely by surprise. It had me by the throat with its motherless sisters who want to save the world, its handmade peacock pinatas, its dying town, and its gorgeous, gorgeous longing. The story of a girl searching to belong, of a town struggling to survive, and the intricate myths and culture surrounding them all completely engulfed me. To say nothing of the quiet, intense love story winding its way through the beautiful prose. There were so many other passages I wanted to quote for you but in the end I couldn't take away that opportunity of discovering them for yourself. It's just too special to intrude on in that way. When I think of those few perfect books, this one always comes to mind. I'm so glad Zanna sang its praises so emphatically. I'm so glad I listened. Because it's one of the books of my life now, too. I like having it nearby at all times. I have a lending copy...just in case. And I have trouble remembering a time I didn't know and love Codi, Loyd, and all of Grace.

I loved every minute of it

Yet another fabulous read from this fabulous writer! The Science and humanity is balanced perfectly and scenes/ settings are luminous.

Excellent story and engaging writing!

Good

This is simply one of the best books I have ever read