Barbara Kingsolver: Prodigal Summer

Faber and Faber

$29.95

Review: Jenny Jones*

Prodigal Summer ends as it begins - with an opinion. "Solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen."

Barbara Kingsolver, whose fifth novel, the acclaimed Poisonwood Bible, sold 13,000 copies in New Zealand alone, is a highly accomplished writer who is more likely than most to succeed when she writes a novel that is meant to teach. She makes the reader feel the crunch underfoot as the beetle gets squashed. More than the crunch, she makes you feel the expiry of life. At other times she makes you feel the unstoppable prodigality that is summer.

Three sets of lightly interwoven relationships provide structure for the novel. Deanna Wolfe, a forest ranger, lives in a mountain cabin in Zebulon National Forest. Her most treasured work, tracking the re-emergence of coyotes in the region, is interrupted by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who believes that the only good coyote is a dead one. His arrival heralds discussions about the value of predators and mankind's mistaken prejudice against them.

Eddie's arrival demonstrates another truth. Despite the difference in their views, Deanna finds it hard to "keep her eyes away from the glossy animal movement of his dark hair and the shape of the muscles in the seat of his jeans." The human world is, inexorably, an animal one.

The second set of relationships revolves around recently widowed Lusa and her husband's family. With Cole's death, Lusa has inherited the farm and faces the daunting challenge of making it prosper in an ethical fashion. Tobacco is out, but what else will bring in the dollars? She finds herself attracted to her young nephew.

The third relationship is between two more farmers, the "sanctimonious old fart" Garnett Walker and his neighbour, the matter-of-fact Nannie Rawley. Issues such as the use of pesticides versus organic farming are argued out. Often mutually hostile, their conflict again goes hand in hand with attraction.

Explicit sexual scenes are a new development for Kingsolver and she delivers them with a grace, mystery and clarity that rescue the language of coition from the tentacles of pornography, consumerism and the medical profession.

But the reader struggles with the effort not to want the "bad" to prevail just because Kingsolver is telling us what's good. All through the novel I found that my awareness of the author's agenda threatened to subvert my engagement with the writing.

At the end, glossy animal movements and the shape of muscles in jeans win, though I'm ambivalent about seeing only joy in the prospect of one more baby without a father.

Kingsolver's intelligence saves her from offering simplistic answers and her insights are based on a formidable wealth of knowledge of the natural world. And she doesn't just say that acting naturally is what counts; Lusa finds a different solution with her hormonally overrun nephew.

Yes, I was disappointed. But yes, I'll follow Kingsolver's work with interest.

* Jenny Jones is an Auckland writer.