Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This book of essays by Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, etc.) is like a visit from a cherished old friend. Conversation ranges from what Kingsolver ate on a trip to Japan to wonder over a news story about a she-bear who suckled a lost child to how it feels to be an American idealist living in a post-September 11 world. She tackles some sticky issues, among them the question of who is entitled to wave the American flag and why, and some possible reasons why our nation has been targeted for terror by angry fundamentalists and what we can do to ease our anxiety over the new reality while respecting the rest of planet Earth's inhabitants. Kingsolver has strong opinions, but has a gift for explaining what she thinks and how she arrived at her conclusions in a way that gives readers plenty of room to disagree comfortably. But Kingsolver's essays also reward her readers in other ways. As she puts it herself in "What Good Is a Story": "We are nothing if we can't respect our readers." Respect for the intelligence of her audience is apparent everywhere in this outstanding collection. Illus. (Apr. 20) Forecast: Kingsolver's name means bestseller potential, possibly aided by the possibility of revisiting the controversy she has aroused with her response to September 11. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Don't be misled by the foreword and opening subject in novelist and essayist Kingsolver's new collection: this work is not all about our continuing anguish over September ll. Some of the essays do concern themselves with that fateful day and her reactions to it, but most are pieces on varied subjects written since her 1995 collection High Tide in Tucson. Some have been published before, like the three little gems Kingsolver co-wrote with her husband, Steven Hopp. The topics range from television to the homeless, Columbine to problems of writing about sex, poetry to the meaning of the flag. Throughout, Kingsolver seamlessly combines the personal and the political. Thus, an essay about her daughter Lily's chickens comments on world agriculture; watching a hummingbird build its nest becomes a springboard for informed and impassioned thinking about evolution and genetic engineering. Recommended for most collections in both academic and public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/02.] Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wearing her essayist hat, novelist Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, 1998, etc.) responds to the September 11th terror attacks with a collection addressing the wonders of life. In an effort to "burn and rave against the dying of all hope," Kingsolver offers a contemplation of how we are blessed in our lives and urges us to consider the planet we live on and those with whom we share it. Her first two essays disjointedly consider how the September 11th attacks may have come about and voice her distress over our wastefulness as a nation: "Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food." She then moves on to document her love affair with nature in an account of her two residences, one in Arizona and the other in Appalachia, where she works while looking at beautiful views. While she stresses repeatedly how blessed she is to have these twin retreats, it's somewhat jarring in conjunction with a preceding essay in which she writes, "For most of my life I've felt embarrassed by a facet of our national character that I would have to call prideful wastefulness." Kingsolver continues to rend our nation's collective garment as she moves on to discuss the scarlet macaw and habitat loss in general; freeing a hermit crab in the context of letting go of a "hunger to possess"; her daughter's chickens and "the energy crime of food transportation"; and why she doesn't have a television. All of Kingsolver's issues are worthy, certainly, but the work is made less palatable by what seems to be a naivete that surfaces when the author (mother of three) makes such statements as, "I can barely grasp the motives of a person who hits a child." Her best pieces-a discussion of adolescence addressed to her daughter; an essay on the difficulties of writing about sex-have a narrow focus. Good intentions and craft marred by sanctimony.
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