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Prodigal Summer: A Novel

Prodigal Summer: A NovelAuthor: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book

List Price: $14.99
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Seller: thrift_books
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars 459 reviews
Sales Rank: 7422

Media: Paperback
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1.3

ISBN: 0060959037
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060959036
ASIN: 0060959037

Publication Date: October 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Features:
  • ISBN13: 9780060959036
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.

Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:

The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.
The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story."

Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn

Product Description
Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.




Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 459
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4 out of 5 stars Chick Lit for all of us   February 16, 2010
Erik D. LOFQUIST (Shoreline, WA)
With almost 500 reviews already in, I won't rehash them, just add a few points. Kingsolver has been accused of being too female-centric. That is at least a partially valid claim. Each of the novel's three separate story lines consists of a smart woman proving to a man (or men) that he is wrong. Most married men will find this scenario all too familiar. Kingsolver is no man-hater however. Her male characters are sympathetically drawn. They are simply misinformed or perhaps too caught up in their maleness.

The sections dealing with Lusa (entitled "Moth Love") are by far the strongest of the book. Kingsolver is absolutely masterful in showing the widow Lusa's tense relationships with her five sisters-in-law with whom she has little in common. The story's resolution is particularly satisfying (not to give anything away, you'll have to read it).

Kingsolver's prose descriptive of nature is superb. Luminous, reverent, and vivid, reading Kingsolver's paeans to nature is like viewing the best paintings of the Hudson River School.



5 out of 5 stars Evocative, Sensual and Scientific!   December 14, 2009
C. Ghezzo (Queens, NY)
What an incredible book.

Love, Loss, Nature, Humor, Lust and Ecology - all interwoven into beautiful sentences.

I could not stop reading. I have to discover more of Kingsolver's works.




3 out of 5 stars Maybe it is just me...   December 2, 2009
M. Keesee (Trinity Center, Ca USA)
This is my second Kingsolver book. I read one of her early works-so long ago I cannot remember which one. I liked one third of this book, which was Nannie's story; I loved Lusa's story and I could live without Deanna's story. Thus I gave it a middle rating. I have no complaint with Kingsolver's writing-excellent craftsman. But the subject matter and characters do not grab me emotionally. Since there is no plot then the characters need to carry the ball and this one is a fumble.


4 out of 5 stars Interesting novel   November 22, 2009
Audrey Banks Hacker (Prairie Grove, Arkansas USA)
As a farmer and home educator I don't have a lot of time to read novels, but I had been studying the American Chestnut tree and this book was referenced. Kingsolvers enigmatic writing style intriqued me, and I had trouble putting the book down, especially since I have Appalachian roots. I felt much of the environmentalist issues were overdrawn, but appreciated the spirit of the novel. Enjoyed that she could turn everyday emotions and trials of women into such an enthralling story.


4 out of 5 stars A great relaxing read   October 14, 2009
Pam Davis (Bethel, Ct United States)
It's a very easy,relaxingly enjoyable kind of a read.Very engaging,with great characters....one of those books where you're sad to see it end because you want to stay in it,stay with those characters awhile longer

Showing reviews 1-5 of 459
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