Rating: 
Summary: Not quite as good as previous Kingsolver novels
Review: When I saw this new Kingsolver book, I just had to plunk out the money for it, something I usually don't do for a hardcover. I am a great Kingsolver fan, even buying all the females in my family copies of Animal Dreams and Poisonwood Bible, but I was somewhat disappointed with this one. It was a fairly good book, just not what one would expect from a fantastic writer like Kingsolver. Maybe it was a bit of writer's block and pressure after the huge success of Poisonwood. It would be hard to write another book as great as it is. "Summer" was worth reading, but I wish I'd waited for it at the library rather than paying for it. If you've not read Kingsolver before, I would highly recommend Animal Dreams as a place to start, rather than this one.
Rating: 
Summary: All I can say is WOW
Review: I just finished the book and found it to be both beautiful and insightful. Kingsolver has a way of making real social commentary while carrying a wonderfully woven, heart-breaking tale. Her ideas about nature and humanity are not sappy and sentimental, but are based on accurate research and scientific studies. What an amazing work of fiction. The dialogue and the third person narrative was so creative and well done- the characters were so real, you could reach out and touch them! She has done it again! I could not put it down. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Bridges of Madison County Meets Farmers' Almanac
Review: What the heck happened? I bought this in hardcover the minute I heard about it: I am crazy about almost all of Kingsolver's books, "The Poisonwood Bible" most of all. I knew it wasn't a good sign when the primary love interest's name was "Eddie Bondo," but there is enough about moth sex (yes, you read that right) and the phallic resemblance of flowers to make Kingsolver sound like the Hugh Hefner of the forest floor. Problem is, there's not much else to this book: the dialogue is hackneyed and predictable, and the plot line is entirely uncompelling. If you have never read Kingsolver, this review is a plea not to begin here. If you have, all I can say is: proceed at your own risk. I personally regret reading a work that has so profoundly compromised my love for this author's stories.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, real characters, clever plot, celebration of life
Review: There are three stories in this book and I loved the intertwining tension between the three, and had to stop myself from looking ahead to see how they finally untangled. I also like the way there are implied possibilities of how the characters might connect months and years after the last page.Kingsolver has a moral here, and she presents it through her characters without bashing the reader over the head. I'm enjoying thinking back on how each of her characters presents his/her (well, you have to admit that the women are the ones with the more overt earth-friendly points of view) polemic regarding pesticides/protecting species/fecundity. I'm more of a non-fiction reader than fiction, so I demand to learn something in a fiction book. I did here: about moths, chestnut trees, coyotes, goats (really??), flashlights (a neat trick), small-scale farming. I'm shocked that a few reviewers didn't find humor in this book. Kingsolver has such a way with dialogue and with what the characters are thinking. The "Old Chestnuts" are wonderfully funny and rich. The characters are fully developed and multidimensional, and I think the "Predators" protagonist--Deanna Wolf--is necessarily more zealous and perhaps a little less lovable than the female protagonist in "Old Chestnuts," who has discovered that you can make an easier way in the world if you can poke a little fun at yourself. My guess is that Wolf will continue to moderate her public self while still going for the things she believes in, and she'll continue to have good results. She is aware even in her solitude on the mountain that she won't get anywhere by insulting the manhood of poachers. An exceptional book.
Rating:
Summary: Memorable and compassionate
Review: For those who love the wild places of the world this book is a must.
Rating:
Summary: if you love the earth.....read this
Review: if you love the earth more than its people....you absolutely must read this latest effort by my fellow kentuckian barbara kingsolver. her understanding of how systems work - particilarly the appalachian region ecosystem is very insightful and thoughtful. the book displays a kentucky woman's abiding respect for both her natural and cultural heritage. and....a deep understanding of free-spirited human nature. parting comment.....a truly sensual book.
Rating:
Summary: An exquisitely beautiful book about survival
Review: This is a book you can read over and over again, finding something new to appreciate each time. I've read every book Barbara Kingsolver has published, including her non-fiction and poetry, and this is undoubtedly one of her best efforts. I LOVE the way that the three main narratives in Prodigal Summer are linked together in incredibly subtle ways. A more predictable novel would have had these different stories all come together at the end in some tidy package, but that would have ruined it. Instead, the reader slowly begins to see how these separate lives are connected to one another, even when the characters themselves don't realize it. Kingsolver doesn't hit you over the head with these ideas, so it takes a careful reader to appreciate all these connections, and I'm compelled to start reading this book over again from the beginning to see what I missed the first time through. Anyone who was disappointed by this book just utterly missed the point, and needs to start over again, SLOWLY. The women in this book are awe-inspiring. It's not a book about coyotes, or moths, or chestnut trees, or anything that simple. It's a book about survival, and about the intrinsic interconnectedness of all life. Approach this book with an open mind, and you might learn something important.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Wow! Kingsolver reading Kingsolver on audio!
Review: Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! An audio book of Kingsolver reading Kingsolver! Prodigal Summer is so wonderful that I am parceling it out to myself, tape by tape, for I cannot bear for it to end. The hill accents, the actual bird songs, Kingsolver's wonderful prose -- and a storyline that only disappoints when the focus shifts to a new subplot and leaves me wanting to hear more about the people I was listening to! But wait -- the new subplot is just as interesting, the characters just as enthralling. I shall never listen to the coyotes in my woods with the same jaded ear, nor dismiss a moth as just a moth.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening "Summer" reading.
Review: When forest ranger, 47-year-old Deanna Wolfe, falls for coyote hunter, Eddie Bondo, in the first chapter of PRODIGAL SUMMER, Kingsolver sets the stage for an ecological debate that resonates throughout the remainder of her 444-page novel. Set in the Zebulon Valley of the southern Appalachians, Kingsolver's novel offers more than hot romance. Midway through the novel, Eddie Bondo tells Deanna, "I'm ready to be enlightened" (p. 322), and Kingsolver delivers. She encourages us to "consider the world from a caterpillar's point of view" (p. 13), and when her characters argue about predators, pesticides, and growing tobacco "when everybody's trying to quit smoking" (p. 106), Kingsolver delivers ecological enlightenment by the thunderclap. Prodigal summer is "the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came" (p. 51). Simply put, this novel is about awakening and renewal. It is filled with the scents and sense of nature. Kingsolver begins and ends her novel with the insightful observation: "Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen" (pp. 1, 444). I'm eager to reread this novel. Kingsolver is a talented writer, and PRODIGAL SUMMER is brilliant and warm, radiating enough power to influence the way you perceive life. If you are interested in this novel, you might also enjoy reading Wallace Stegner's ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS (1969), Wendell Berry's recent JAYBER CROW (2000), or any of Annie Dillard's books. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: zzzzzzzz
Review: Boring romance novel. Hated reading it. Not quite up to par with, well, anything.
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