To create tension, Kingsolver juxtaposes an opposite value or ideal in the shape of a side-kick or partnering character next to her protagonists. Hence the lifeworld and drives, urges, passions of each character represent a bigger concern in the world that you as a reader can identify with or abhor. And finally there is the Coyote, in whose skin we walk in the closing episode of the book.Īs with all books by Kingsolver I have read so far, the individual characters, besides being layered, humane, passionate and frail, also represent a theme, ideal or normative value. Not that the novel lacks pretence or engagement with some of the big Questions befuddling humankind: there is ecology, biological versus industrial farming, the future of family farming and the role of the next generation in that, Hunters and the Hunted (Predators and cannon fodder) and the fate befalling each, there is even a bit of climate change.
The valley, its farmer folk, its forest and all the animals in it, become a place to wallow in, away from the madding crowd. It feels like a bubble, disconnected from the wider world.
It is quite an idyllic rural setting, despite all the misery and misfortune befalling its characters. So why not 5 stars – Errr… What it lacks is greed, violence, race, extremists, hunger.
This desire is left unfulfilled in the end, leaving space for a part 2 (dunno whether Kingsolver actually wrote a sequel). Somehow Kingsolver creates suspense, with the reader pining for her carefully developed and layered characters to meet each other and become friends, tap each other’s founts of knowledge and capabilities, and storm off into the future. Reads like a master class in writing about ordinary, yet passionate folks in such a loveable, engaging, and realistic way that it is hard not be drawn in and identify with the struggles, passions, tears and fate of every character.
0 kommentar(er)
