Barbara Kingsolver: Small Wonder

By ANNE GIBSON

This collection of essays from the author of The Poisonwood Bible (published 1998) is an eclectic collection of political views, conservation preaching and observations on nature, united only by a date: the Arizona-based writer says she began her new book on September 12 without exactly knowing what she was doing.

It shows. This disunited, disparate dishing up is an odd meal of themes and thought strands which could make a reader nauseous with the over-cooked combo.

Not all the essays are original and not all were written after September 11. Some were published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe dating back two years or so, so not all of the new book will be unfamiliar to Kingsolver's United States readers.

The self-righteous concoction of anti-technology, anti-American ramblings ties together themes as diverse as her hatred of television to her love of sensible eating, from America's greed and over-consumption to respect for nature and endangered bird species.

Yet in a chapter called "The One-Eyed Monster and Why I Don't Let Him In", Kingsolver argues forcibly against television with a memorable line, "nobody ever gets killed at our house". Not her line, unfortunately. But nice touches sprinkled throughout the book give hope.

Her moving chapter "Letter To My Mother" reveals the more folksy writer praised for her Bible, opening her memories and feelings over the years in a fluid way. More chapters with these insights would have improved the work.

Kingsolver unburdens herself of her political views, yet her skill is in writing fiction and taking a reader into her fantasy worlds. Reading Kingsolver for her views on globalisation, nature and the hope in our backyards is a little like being interested in actor Tom Cruise for his Scientology - faintly interesting, but not the point.

As the New York Times Book Review noted this year: "Small Wonder has a lot to say, but its heavy-handed wisdom is unfulfilling." It criticised the book, saying it never quite came together as a forceful poetic and political response to any global crisis.

Kingsolver, who was only 7 when she and her family left their Kentucky home to spend two years in the Congo, wrote eloquently in the The Poisonwood Bible. Yet reading her political views in Small Wonder somehow spoils the Bible and unveils the real message she was trying to force. Global warming, biodiversity, genetically engineered food, the world's hungry and eco-economies all get a good run from the author who thanks no-logo promoter Naomi Klein in her forward. Right, well, she would, wouldn't she?

Kingsolver could preserve her political views for when they are needed, like at the ballot box, and return to the fiction she made her name with in Bible.

* Penguin Books, $34.95

* Anne Gibson is a Herald journalist.