What I’m Listening to: PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver
Sex, sexuality, ecology and spirituality are the themes that burgeon and wither in an almost seasonal cycle throughout this vivid, flawed, but ultimately successful audiobook.
Set in rural southern Appalachia, Prodigal Summer divides itself into three main story lines, each helpfully labeled—‘Predators’ chronicles the turgid love affair between a wildlife specialist and a hunter; ‘Old Chestnuts” the clashes of an set-in-his-ways farmer and his progressive neighbor; ‘Moth Love’ the struggles of a young widow to find her way in her husband’s family and tobacco farm.
Each story line is successful in its own right, presenting dilemmas and resolutions without resorting to formula. More pleasing, each story line begins on parallel but seemingly unrelated trajectories but slowly bend toward each other. Kingsolver resists the urge to tie all lines into a neat bow of an ending. There are no melodramatic epiphanies or permanent solutions. Rather she gives the reader room to see how her characters change individually and how they will continue to change as a community.
Kingsolvers lush prose naturally wanders into passages of complexity and lyricism before retreating to more economic discourse. At times the ornate passages become almost overwhelming, but rather than subtracting, these purple passages provide a textual analogy for the urgency and passion felt by her lusty songbirds, moths, and characters.
Indeed, the books greatest strength is its ability to give the reader an analogous experience to that which Kingsolver describes.
The audiobook proves more satisfying in this regard than the dead-tree version. Birdsong picks up at the end of each section and then surges before fading into the next bit of narration. Kingsolver herself narrates the book. Her soft voice intones the book’s rhythms with a confidence born of an author’s intimacy with the prose. More importantly, Kingsolver takes on the many subtle accents which figure prominently in many characters’ identities.
Addressing such scholarly issues as ecology, evolution, and religion requires a soft touch. For the most part, Kingsolver avoids lecturing or breaking up her stories with raw exposition. Nevertheless, there are several passages that drag on in their analysis of the old testament or the specifics of evolution.
However, the book’s only real crime is its portrayal of men. The conflict between the need to live within nature or the need to battle it saturates the book. Time and time again, male characters long to spray pesticides, knock a nest of baby birds from a rain gutter, or address their insecurities and sadism but shooting big game. Kingsolver provides likeable, even admirable, male characters, but they’re either barely out of boyhood (therefore not yet corrupted by other men) or dead. Worse, no male character possesses the understanding of nature that Kingsolver attempts to cultivate.
This war of the sexes, though low, is not so distracting or discreditable as to ruin the book. Kingsolver’s sophisticated storytelling, ornate prose, and intelligent portrayal of difficult themes make PRODIGAL SUMMER an enjoyable and profound achievement.
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