Book talk time. What have I been reading?
A lot!
I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's
Prodigal Summer, and, ok folks, lets talk here. There really is no question in my mind--and there really shouldn't be in yours either--Barbara Kingsolver is truly the most eloquent, most diverse, best writer of America in our times. Am I right? I mean,
maybe Margaret Atwood would challenge Kingsolver in a battle of objective character formation, but I really don't think so. And strangely enough, I was first introduced to Kingsolver in one of her least erudite books,
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was in 2008 just after Josephine was born. I kept from falling into the depths of postpartum insanity (I was severely depressed) by listening to poetry and books on tape while walking with both girls in our hand-me-down red jogging stroller. We walked all over our city. We walked. And walked. And walked. I walked myself slowly out of the darkest time I had ever experienced in my twenty-five years. And I listened and thought and took myself out of my dark, scary cave of depression by consciously focusing on the words being read to me. I imagined one of my sisters next to me, reading aloud as we walked (which was silly, who reads as they walk? Um, me. Guilty). I learned to nurse Josephine in the Guatemalan woven sling as I kept walking. Not even stopping to feed her...I was healing myself as I listened and walked and nourished my babe. Clare would be babbling in the stroller about everything and nothing. I could hear her just enough to follow what I was listening to and also tune in to her needs.
Anyway, I listened to
Animals, Vegetable, Miracle and loved Kingsolver's drive to explore her world in the context of her beliefs and dreams. I too dreamed of moving to a farm somewhere on the east side of the Mississippi and growing food to feed my family. It seemed so unreachable at the time. We were living in a two bedroom upstairs apartment with a teeny tiny balcony patio. Our lives were very controlled, very prescribed in what we could and couldn't do. I loved Kingsolver's words and the glimpse into her soul through her writing.
Actually, as I'm writing and thinking about this,
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle wasn't the first Kingsolver book I read. No, it was actually
The Poisonwood Bible. How could I forget reading that?! I was eighteen and had just graduated from high school. I was spending the summer staying with my grandparents off and on and helping them around the farm. I fixed the sprinkler system with my Grandpa Farmer (I remember wearing a red linen skirt and feeling so farm-womanish and it got muddy while I was digging out a pipe from the weeds with my bare hands and I loved the smell of the wet earth and the sun baking my skin and when we were finished my grandpa went inside for his afternoon nap and I went out to the back black bottomed pool shaded by a locust tree and stripped naked and dove into the pool and lounged with the hot sun touching my baked skin and feeling cool and inseparable from the water lapping about me and I got out and wrapped a towel around me and lay on the antique iron pool lounge chair that was under the hanging grape vine arbor and read my battered copy of
The Poisonwood Bible and I was transported to Africa and it felt strange and delicious all at the same time to be in two places at once.) and gutted the chicken coop spreading new wood shavings down and spraying all the wooden roosts with linseed oil and turpentine. I also gathered countless vegetables from the garden and watered and watered and watered. We planted corn and radishes in succession so they would bear at different times and a Mennonite farmer came by with a couple of chickens as a thank you to my grandpa for some service he had done for them. I ate hundreds of juicy ripe figs and peaches and lusted after the unripe grapes that were everywhere just begging to be picked. We ate dinner in the old downstairs family room on the same round wooden table that my mom had eaten on as a kid and I helped myself to seconds and thirds. I was so starving after working all day. I slept upstairs in my Aunt Jane's old room. It was patterned with dark red sprigged wall paper and antique lady's hats hung from nails on the sloping attic like ceiling. It was hot, even in the cool of the night. Often, I would make a pretense of going to bed when my grandparents would and then I'd sneak out down the stairs, avoiding the creaks--I knew exactly where they were--and tiptoed out the back door to again strip to my skin and slip into the black inky water of the pool. I wouldn't be able to stay in for long since my imagination would get the better of me and I would think up all kinds of horrors coming at me from the depths of the water. But once I was wet and cooled off I could slink back to bed nice and cool and my wet ropes of hair would air condition me for the rest of the night.
On the farm, in the summer, no one ever slept in. I was up at first light. I always slept so heavy and soundly. I would go outside and walk around in the dew-wet grass and smell the morning smells. Then I would go inside and Grandma would have coffee that had percolated on the stove. I always drank from the same, chunky restaurant ware mug with the green band around it. Usually two cups, maybe three. Breakfast was cold cereal. Then the days work would start. Around eleven, Grandpa would go into the house and lay out a smorgasbord of bread, pickles, onions, cheese, fruit, huge torn off hunks of iceberg lettuce and cookies. As far as I could tell, he didn't seem to eat much. I relished the food and ate copious amounts. I think my grandparents liked to see someone eating what they were so generously offering. It felt good to be getting positive attention for eating. And my metabolism was running on high at the time. I was eating huge meals but losing my early teens pudge. My thighs were becoming even more muscled from the work and also all the hockey I was playing back at home. I kept hoping I would lose weight in my breasts--I so badly wanted to have smaller breasts. I was a double D and felt like all my breasts did was get in the way. I would bind them in with two sports bras when I played hockey. I absolutely HATED that part of my body. That all changed when I breastfed Clare for the first time. Suddenly I was in awe of my huge milk producing machines!
But back to Barbara Kingsolver. Geez, I am NOT good at staying on topic. Anyway, I've loved all of her books, although I couldn't finish
The Bean Trees for some reason. I'm going to reread
Small Wonder soon. Her writing is like a whole meal: vegetable, meat, sauce, salad, bread and dessert all rolled into one.
Lucy's Summer tells the story of two sisters who live in rural New Hampshire with their mother who is a milliner. Lucy's Summer has all the charm and sweetness of a bygone era and it will make you want to transport back into the early 1900s to experience some of what Caroline and Lucy experience.
