Animal Dreams

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant writing. Insightful tale of journey to find self.
Review: I have also read "The Bean Trees" and "Pigs in Heaven", so this writer was one that I looked forward to reading again. I was not disappointed. Her insight into the relationships of parent and child, siblings - and the way that those experiences affect our personal love relationships is extraordinary. Her descriptive idiom is fresh and invigorating. I regularly found myself near to tears, particularly when Hallie went missing, and in understanding how her father was unable to express his true love for his daughters who grew up feeling like outsiders.

The plot is not an action adventure, but a journey inwardly, which takes Codi from feeling cast adrift, to a safe mooring in a port which is her emotional home - a fact that the reader recognises way before Codi does.

A very true and well crafted novel - and I will certainly be looking for anything else written by the author. Thank you.

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Summary: Made me cry it was so beautiful
Review: Animal Dreams is a rich tapestry woven of many threads: mystery, love, politics, environment, benelovance, history, culture, and the finding of oneself. When Codi Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona, she must confront all these things while taking care of an ailing father, worrying about her sister in the fields of Nicaragua, and dealing with the deterioration of the town's river. She is conflicted with who she is and where she is going; she repeatedly reminds her new lover she is not going to stay yet has no idea why. While Codi searches for something to look for, she unearths a town with many secrets and many stories. Like Codi, the reader learns about the powers of culture and history; of politics and environmentalism; and of family and love. Kingsolver's ability to catch colors, emotions, and life makes for a very engaging, beautifully-written book.

Rating:
Summary: Avid Reader
Review: Simply put, "Animal Dreams" is one of the most poignant, piercingly beautiful stories I've ever read. Magnificent writing. This is not just a "novel." It is literature.

Synopses or overviews tend to give away too much of the story. Briefly, a young woman's journey into her past brings her to the present, with an eye to a hopeful future. The setting of a small southwestern town is depicted so vividly and alluringly, it will make you wish you could find it and move there. Barbara Kingsolver uses virtually every ingredient that transforms a story into a great book. A beautiful balance of joy, anger, love, despair, and hope.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing author
Review: Barbara Kingsolver's books are not merely to be read, but should be absorbed, digested, and pondered. Her characters in this book, as always, are sad and their glasses are half-empty instead of half-full. Happiness eludes Codi, the main character but is close at hand if she will only reach out and grasp it. She is an aimless soul who quit medical school shortly before finishing and ended up back home where she checks on her ailing father, the town physician. Her relationship with him has always been uneasy, as her mother's death deprived her of important aspects of being parented, and her father was unable to fill the gap. Her beloved sister Hallie is in Nicaragua trying to save crops and thus people, and somehow Codi feels useless by comparison. Added to this, her parents came from Illinois to this remote spot in Arizona, and the family were always outsiders. This is a beautiful story of Codi's redemption and growing maturity. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: Haunting, engaging, and magical, Animal Dreams explores many of the issues of life: love, familial relations, life ambition, memory, and life, human and animal. I had a difficult time finding part of Codi's character believable, but was very impressed with Hallie's character. This was my first introduction to Kingsolver and it made me eager to read more!

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Summary: Finally Found A Character I Know
Review: OK, so a friend of mine had to read "The Bean Trees" for school a few years ago. I picked it up out of boredom and started reading. She took it back that night and I couldn't finish. So last November I finally got a copy and I read it in a few hours! I bought "Pigs In Heaven" and loved that, too. But last week I checked "Animal Dreams" out at the library and I fell in love with this book! Kingsolver's style is warm and sympathetic yet honest to her characters. And Codi...here is a character that is me in so many ways. Of course, we are only similar in my own head, but this story has hit me in such a way that I think I might have to go write a song about Loyd's quote about carrying your life with you....GREAT BOOK!

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Summary: Kingsolver at her best!
Review: There are many kinds of love. Codi Noline, who can barely remember her girlhood in tiny Grace, Arizona, allows herself to feel one kind only. She and younger sister Hallie have been inseparable since their mother's death, three decades ago when Hallie was a newborn baby and Codi a three-year-old. But now agricultural specialist Hallie decides to drive herself to Nicaragua, to help the people there with their crops - just as Grace's only physician, "Doc Homer" Noline, reaches a stage of Alzheimer's at which it's obvious someone must go home and keep an eye on him.

So Codi, who finished medical school but discovered during residency that she wasn't cut out to follow in her father's footsteps, leaves her job clerking in a 7-11 and her liaison with a man about whom she has no strong feelings to hold her. She takes a one-year job teaching science at the local high school, and re-connects with her girlhood best friend (who rents Codi a small house next to her own family). Codi never felt at home in Grace before, and she feels totally alien to it now. But staying aloof, maintaining the emotional distance on which she depends for her sense of safety, doesn't work in this place where people she fails to remember insist on recognizing and acknowledging her. Memories she can barely touch pique her curiosity, and so does the slow death of Grace's great treasure, its magnificent orchards. Slowly, the woman who needs no one and doesn't want that to change finds herself connecting with those around her anyway.

Family. Community. The environment. The author's usual themes are all here, along with - to my surprise - one of the most touching yet realistic romantic love stories I've ever read. "Animal Dreams" is Kingsolver at her best!

Rating:
Summary: Avid Reader
Review: Simply put, "Animal Dreams" is one of the most poignant, piercingly beautiful stories I've ever read. Magnificent writing. This is not just a "novel." It is literature.

Synopses or overviews tend to give away too much of the story. Briefly, a young woman's journey into her past brings her to the present, with an eye to a hopeful future. The setting of a small southwestern town is depicted so vividly and alluringly, it will make you wish you could find it and move there. Barbara Kingsolver uses virtually every ingredient that transforms a story into a great book. A beautiful balance of joy, anger, love, despair, and hope.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: I just finished reading this book for the second time, I read it about 4 years ago and for some unkown reason i picked it up agian. It is a beautiful book, in so many different ways. It has a voice a feel that I can't articulate, but that has touched me both times I have read it. Yes, it has flaws, but they add to its beauty - the overall story has an honesty and quirkiness which really transports the reader.

Rating:
Summary: Finr writing, but a bit tedious at times
Review: This is the first Kinsolver book I've read. Initially I was blown away by her narration- how she described things and the way she set the plot fot the events to come. She is a geat writer. That being said, just past the middle of the book, the story began to drag, and the descriptions and some of the scenes seemed superfluous to the story. I found myself saying, "Just get on with it, already." Another issue I had with the story was the way things came together and fit sort of well; it seemed a bit hunky-dory for my taste, which led to me doubting the reality of the story.

Overall, a decent read. And if you enjoy vivid descriptions that are many, and if you enjoy stories with fairy tale like endings, then you'll probably like this book.