Bookworm

So, I knew this was going to be a quick read. However, I did not foresee the impact that it would have on me.

Claire and her mother are running out of time, but they don’t know it. Not yet. Claire is wrapped up with the difficulties of her bourgeoning adulthood—boys, school, friends, identity; Claire’s mother, a single mom, is rushed off her feet both at work and at home. They rarely find themselves in the same room at the same time, and it often seems that the only thing they can count on are notes to each other on the refrigerator door. When home is threatened by a crisis, their relationship experiences a momentous change. Forced to reevaluate the delicate balance between their personal lives and their bond as mother and daughter, Claire and her mother find new love and devotion for one another deeper than anything they had ever imagined.

My mother and I have always had a very strong relationship, so it is incredibly difficult for me to imagine what my life would be like if we weren’t so close. Conversations via notes are just not enough. I tell my mom everything… she’s always there for me and I cannot imagine my life without her. If there are things this book teaches every daughter, it’s to appreciate, love unconditionally, and communicate with your mother, because you never know when you’ll lose those chances. 

Brave New World: one of those classics that everybody says you should read, but most people probably have never actually read themselves… 

Brave New World — a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, where the people are genetically designed to be passive, consistently useful to the ruling class.

For it being a classic, I didn’t really enjoy this novel. It seemed to me a little cliché and formulaic the way people lived their lives. Huxley seemed to construct their lives in the exact opposite way of ours. Instead of being monogamous, people are encouraged to have as many sexual partners as they can muster. Instead of being raised by parents, children are raised by people who facilitate what they learn and how many times a day they learn it via hypnopaedia. However, I did enjoy it when the characters Bernard and Lenina go to New Mexico and meet John. John, being in love with and frequently quoting Shakespeare, made the plot a lot more interesting and enjoyable to read. Even though, at the end, they were almost over-quoting Shakespeare, it was still a nice marriage of the old and the new.

I finally finished Pigs in Heaven and during the last 50 pages or so, I kept wondering what I was going to say in my review for it. 

When six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, her insistence on what she has seen and her mother’s belief in her lead to a man’s dramatic rescue. But Turtle’s moment of celebrity draws her into a conflict of historic proportions. The crisis quickly envelops not only Turtle and her mother, Taylor, but everyone else who touches their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past. 

As I said for The Bean Trees, I love Barbara Kingsolver. Overall, however, I think I still prefer The Bean Trees. Two things that I liked better about Pigs in Heaven though: 1) There were a lot more characters throughout the novel, making the focus less on Taylor and more about the communities that surround her as a whole 2) Additionally, the characters that were introduced had a lot more, for lack of a better word, character. Kingsolver didn’t just brush those characters aside like she did slightly in The Bean Trees. I could actually see the characters and the kind of people they would be outside of the novel. This is a must-read if you enjoyed The Bean Trees and need closure to the story of Taylor and Turtle. 

In addition to reading The Bean Trees for class, and soon Pigs in Heaven, we also read a supplementary critical essay called “Gardens of Auto Parts: American Western Myth and Native American Myth in The Bean Trees.” You can find it in a book of critical essays on Barbara Kingsolver called Seeds of Change. 

Though I believe that the author, Catherine Himmelwright, did bring up some interesting points regarding the similarities between the Native American creation myth and the relationship between Turtle and Taylor, I thought her essay was a bit summary-heavy and she did not delve deep enough into either the Native American creation myth or any other kinds of Native American myths. I thought that would have been far more interesting than discussing how Taylor lacks a community when she moves to Arizona (a topic point with which I heavily disagree). 

Overall, this was a fairly good supplementary essay. However, I think there are far better essays out there for going beyond the scope of the plot and focusing more on what can be discovered beyond that. 

Well, I finished The Bean Trees and suffice it to say that I love Barbara Kingsolver. I had read this book once before but didn’t remember much of it, so I was glad to have a reason to read it again. 

Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get away. She succeeds on both counts and buys a ‘55 Volkswagen and heads west. By the time she pulls up on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, at an auto repair shop called Jesus Is Lord Used Tires that also happens to be a sanctuary for Central American refugees, she’s “inherited” a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle.

This book is a heartwarming story about love and friendship, knowing when to let go and when to fight for what one believes in… certainly a must-read!