Rating: 
Summary: From Storyteller to Supreme Pontiff, a turn for the worse
Review: The worst thing about all of this is that I share most of Kingsolver's views. I worry about pesticides. I can't stand hunting. I abhor sanctimonious religious types who have all the answers. Unfortunately, with her relentless preaching about her own world views, Kingsolver becomes as sanctimonious as those she derides or parodies.
This is less a book than a sermon. It reminds me of the plays we were assigned to write and perform in elementary school, little dramas that taught safety, or drug awareness, or moral lessons. The Poisonwood Bible managed, for most of its length, to demonstrate the evils of colonialism without resorting to having its characters pontificate. It's a rare moment in Prodigal Summer when its characters don't pontificate. Maybe Kingsolver is so concerned with her message that she has forgotten how to tell a good story.
I suppose that Kingsolver thinks that adding sex into the mix separates her sermonizing from the conservative's rant. But it works in just the opposite way. Her attempt to show how different she is merely points out how her preaching is just the other side of the nasty dogmatic coin. Moreover, her middle-aged obsession with younger men is as embarrassing as watching the balding boomers who dump their wives, grow bad ponytails, and chase twenty-somethings. Any man who wrote about younger women the way she writes about younger men would be dismissed as an aging lecher.
There's more: the mannered prose, the pedantic descriptions of bugs, the multicultural pandering. But why keep writing when everything can be summed up quickly: avoid this book--it's enough make a liberal want to start drilling in Alaska or hunting endangered species.
Rating: 
Summary: Just A Little Too Preachy
Review: Prodigal Summer is a very good novel which probably could have been fantastic had Barbara Kingsolver gotten off her soap box a bit. It tells three stories of people in a small county in Appalachia, three stories which ultimately become intertwined. The novel, as all of Kingsolver's, is extremely well-written; however, I believe her eco-preachiness really got in the way. Kingsolver's characters are all black and white, no shades of grey. It is obvious from before some of these characters open their mouths who is "right" and who is wrong. The older gentleman who wants to use pesticides on his crops--well, he doesn't stand a chance. Kingsolver portrays him as an utter, close-minded fool. His archnemesis, an organic farmer who lives next door--well, she's perfect. I only wish Kingsolver had let us decide for ourselves which is the right eco-position to take instead of essentially shoving it down our throats with such obvious characterizations. Each story line has one character who is eco-perfect and who comes up against others who aren't. All characters come off as being almost stereotypical and much of the plotting is predicable. So why four stars? Kingsolver writes like a dream and Prodigal Summer is an enjoyable read. Read it with a grain of salt and you'll be OK.
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Summary: Preachy Summer
Review: Unless you are a 40+ woman who hasn't had sex in a while, and enjoys a simplistic look on environmental issues, skip this one.... Unfortunately, I knew enough about the issues to resent the simplistic, didactic lecturing by her "characters" that saturates the novel. It would be great if we could all be rich hippies who could afford to buy organic everything, and have no impact on our environment - but get real!! In addition, she boxes her female characters into the role of educating the men. Her male characters are either niave, stupid, or just [frisky], and the "enlightened" women seem to just use them for sex and arguments. The [explicit] sex scenes border on offensive, and if I was somehow stuck listening to this book with my mother, I would be beet red the entire time.
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Summary: Beyond the Poisonwood Bible
Review: While Prodigal Summer has not enjoyed the level of popularity The Poisonwood Bible has seen amongst Kingsolver's fans, for me personally Prodigal Summer is, by far, the better work, more developed and more mature than the excellent, poetically beautiful and eventful Poisonwood Bible. In Prodigal Summer Kingsolver's lyrical and sensitive language and detailed description transport us whole into the lives of Lusa, Deanna and the fascinating elderly feuding neighbors Nanny and Garnet The various characters, even the minor ones, in Prodigal Summer are far more developed, more real, more 3d in comparison with the admittedly more poetic Poisonwood. In Prodigal the pace, throughout, is restrained, consistent, the various plots nicely develop towards a future meeting point at a natural pace. Beautifully crafted and exciting natural meeting point emerge in a slow fashion as we get to know more and more about our new friends. Lusa, a city woman from Lexington, with a Polish Jewish father and Palestinian Moslem mother finds herself on a farm in an Appalachian valley. Lusa, surrounded by a closed society with lots of antagonistic and suspicious in-laws inherits the big house and the family farm. Conscious of the suffering and the loss of her Jewish family of their farm at the hands of the Nazis and the loss of her mother's Palestinian family of their farm at the hands of the Jews, Lusa won't quit she fights on to make a go of it. Lusa, an expert on bugs and moth, struggle with loneliness, widowhood and temptation, her desire to fit but to be herself, her whole being is so very beautifully created and brought to life in vivid colors before our eyes by Kingsolver. The minor in-laws start out as cardboard characters, a hateful envious lot in the distance; gradually they are turned into real people in Lusas' and our eyes. Deanna, the Forest Service Rancher, living in the mountain above Lusa, nearly 20 years her senior, is the center of the second plot. Originally from the valley below, and had she stayed there she could have been Lusa's soul mate, has been on the mountain for two years. In love with the mountain, its animals, its birds and its weeds and trees, a true conservationist with a devotion to predators. Kingsolver portrays Deanna's life on the mountain with such detail and empathy, one can picture her log cabin, can see the little bird's nest and can smell the change in the air. Deanna's peace and tranquility are disturbed by an intense affair, one that leaves her confused about her own body but very clear on her ideas The odd pair, the elderly Nanny and Garnet are so wonderfully painted by Kingsolver. Nanny, again a generation older than Deanna, is an organic farmer, a hardworking woman who has always stood up for her ideas and for her independence. A fascinating woman in her weaknesses, in her courage and in her wit. Kingsolver's talent, so clearly evident in Poisonwood in the way she wrote on behalf of the several characters, comes across so well here but in a more subtle way. The three women from different generations share a lot in their independence, self respect and love of nature, but they are different, they speak differently and they deal differently with life. In Poisonwood the daughters were very different and thus their language, when Kingsolver wrote on their behalf, was just as different. Here, the three women are so similar yet Kingsolver masterfully captured their far more subtle differences in their dialogue. Garnet, an endearing and aggravating old man, dedicated his later years to finding a way to reestablish the American Chestnut tree, virtually wiped out by logging and blight. A devout Christian, a firm believer in insecticide and all the most inorganic farming techniques of the 50's and 60's is at odds with his neighbor. In Poisonwood Kingsolver's portrayals of the male characters was rather one dimensional, good or bad. Garnet is real, he has his insecurities and his kindness, his ignorance but he is also a formidable expert on raising goats which comes in handy for the Palestinian Lusa This is a true masterpiece, beautifully crafted and written. Excellently researched and informative, and, wow, never forget about the coyotes, the proud mystical predators with their haunted cry and piercing eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: Lovely language, but...
Review: I recently listened to this book on tape over one weekend. As it happens, my son is reading The Bean Trees in high school. As much as I love Kingsolver's prose, by the end of this book I was left with a feeling of uneasiness. The novel feels quite didactic. In particular, the male characters aren't well developed. Deanna's lover seems to exist mostly as a cardboard figure to enable Deanna (or Kingsolver) to lecture on the environment, and of course, ... I think some judicious editing could have stengthened and tightened the novel. In contrast, The Bean Trees seems to have stood the test of time quite well, and I'm enjoying reading it aloud with my son. In part, I think, it's because there Kingsolver shows us characters developing and changing, whereas in Prodigal Summer she does an awful lot of telling.
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Summary: Kinsolver delivers
Review: I discoverd Barbara Kingsolver this summer during an Arizona public library initiative prmoting one of her novels (Animal Dreams in "one book arizona". I enjoyed Animal Dreams enough to seek her other books and particularly enjoyed Prodigal Summer and Poisonwood Bibles the most. I just love when you find a new author and race to read everything she has written. Prodigal Summer was rich in character development - it focussed separately on several characters that you kept reading to figure out how they were related. I enjoyed the focus on nature and farming as a background for the purity of hard work and cycles of good and bad that life presents. This book presented a realistic view of life full of positive things, but not a life with fairytale endings.
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Summary: Sensual, filed with independence
Review: Like Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, Kingsolver is weaving several stories together as one, and only as the book progresses do you see how each person's life will touch those of the others. A mountain ranger, living alone and trying desperately to protect a family of endangered coyotes while falling for a handsome hunter that crosses her path; a city girl married to a farmer whose crop (tobacco) she hates, and who finds herself widowed and trapped among a family determined to make her feel like an outsider; and a retired agriculture teacher trying to finish his legacy of renewing an almost extinct species of tree while battling his eccentric neighbor. The book is full of ordinary people living through extraordinary circumstances, and like all of Kingsolver's books, thrums with the joy of discovering relationships and love in unusual places.
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Summary: The book on tape made my commute enjoyable!
Review: I found myself not minding the traffic jams in the DC Metro area, and looked forward to driving every day so I could hear what happens next. I enjoyed the three perspectives, however, I felt a little disappointed with the open ending.
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Summary: Prodigal Summer: A Summer of Reckless Extravagance
Review: Prodigal Summer means a " Recklessly Extravagant or Wasteful " Summer according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary. This richly endowed natural setting of an Applachian summer's abundance provides the backdrop for three interwoven tales of human lives. At first seemingly unrelated, the chapters alternate in a disjointed fashion . This particular format initally seemed distracting, and I have to admit I jumped ahead at times to maintain continuity. Apparent links appear half way through, and by the final pages the interrelationship of the characters and the impending inevitable convergence of their lives becomes clear. I think there must be a bit of Kingsolver in all three of her heroines: the independent, strong minded, and adventuresome Deanna; the ethnically unusual Jewish-Palestinian Muslim American , Lusa, (who finds herself locally labelled as " one of those other Christianities" ); and the nonconforming elderly and feisty Unitanian single mother, Nanny Rawley . Like the female coyote , none of its three strong and independent female human prototypes really needs a man for survival or for much more than the biological functions of procreation and sex. Kingsolver's messages are loud and clear: "Go organic-no pesticides!", respect rather than hunt predators, and we humans responding to our own biological rhythms and pheromones are just a part of this complex, diverse, and abundant biosphere. The final chapter, devoid of its human characters, focuses solely on the surrounding rich natural world with its central figure, a triumphant female coyote. She has succeeded in establishing new turf over the course of the summer, despite a bounty hunt and despite the irrational hatred of her predatory human hunters. Visually imagined, the ending graphically would be akin to a movie that fades from human action to a panoramic overview of the natural settting before final credits appear. Read this book for its well crafted converging stories, for the wonderful descriptions of the fauna and flora that inhabit this biosphere , and for its interesting and strong female characterizations. Don't get bogged down in the detailed descriptions of the plant and animal kingdom. Enjoy them for the overall wonderful feeling of the exuberant abundance of nature that this book creates.
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Summary: Ecology, Relationships, and Sex
Review: The other reviews of this book are so good, thoughtful, and complete, that I don't have much left to add! This book is about ecology, biology, relationships, feelings, and sex. The book consists of three intersperced love stories-all three incredibly sensuous, intertwined with ecological themes (the author is trained as a biologist). This book was completely different from the Poisonwood Bible, an an easier read in terms of enjoyment. I loved the Poisonwood Bible, but it also disturbed me. This book was pure pleasure. I did have the feeling that this book might be too slow-paced for many men. It deals mostly with the intricacies of relationships between the characters, and their feelings. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it.
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