Synopsis
Set in Appalachia, Kingsolver's very pastoral novel tells the stories of three women who live close to the land. A wildlife biologist studying coyotes is fascinated by a young man with a passion for hunting. An intellectually inclined farmer's wife finds she must stand up for what she believes in. And two elderly country people battle about everything from religion to pesticides, and make startling changes in their lives.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-10-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 444 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 12.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
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.
Industry Reviews
"[A] vibrant new novel....[A]n improbably appealing book with the feeling of a nice stay inside a terrarium."
New York Times - Janet Maslin (11/02/2000)
"Readers hoping for the emotional intensity and wide-angle vision of THE POISONWOOD BIBLE...will most likely be disappointed....Kingsolver is an ambitious writer, but here she has bitten off a lot that she doesn't really chew. A richer book might've given life to the hunter's worldview and Bible Belt ignorance rather than setting them up like bowling pins to be knocked down....PRODIGAL SUMMER has its plot twists, few of them surprising....In the end the expendable males have disappeared, and the women and children band together in their own blended families, like the coyotes....This may be an attractive fable, but it doesn't make for the kind of psychologically complex literature Kingsolver is well capable of."
New York Times Book Review - Jennifer Schuessler (11/05/2000)
"Kingsolver is an able realist writer, whose delicately wrought plots are characteristically improbable and satisfying....PRODIGAL SUMMER is the least satisfying of Kingsolver's novels....[T]he tendentious ecological diatribes with which each woman tries to educate her chosen mate become highly tedious here."
Times Literary Supplement - Juliet Fleming (12/01/2000)
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