Rating: 
Summary: It's all down hill from the Poisonwood Bible.
Review: The first book I read of Barbara Kingsolver's was The Poisonwood Bible. It was so good that I decided to read more of her stuff. Unfortunately, it's all down hill from there folks. Poisonwood is fabulous and I've not found her other books to be any where near as good. In fact I read The Bean Trees a few months ago and I really can't remember much about it. Barbara Kingsolver is a talented writer, but this one just didn't hit the mark for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow!
Review: With the diversity of the charactors and a story that touches the soul, this book was an amazing read. Each charactor can be identified with and each relasionship that the book describes is easily understood. This book is neither too short nor too long. My first Kingsolver book, but, guaranteed, not my last.
Rating: 
Summary: ok....
Review: It was a pretty good book, but I think it needed some more action to it like all of the middle is incredibly prolonged and really boring but the begning and end are good. I would read this book once but probably never agian. It is worth reading though.
Rating: 
Summary: The Taylor of Tucson
Review: Stories of women overcoming adversity are becoming more common. There's more than a little justice achieved by these tales. Many of them, particularly this work, show how women use their power of community to manage their lives successfully. These stories need to be told, and Kingsolver has given us a superlative example. The community theme is superbly demonstrated in Estevan's recital of heaven and hell - hell is peopled with those who cannot reach out to others, starving in a kitchen full of food.Lou Ann and "Taylor" are fellow Kentuckian exiles living in Tucson. The relocation has bought unexpected challenges to their lives. Not the least of these is the additional burden of infants: Lou Ann's by an unwanted pregnancy and Taylor's by an abandonment. What does it say about women that Taylor makes no attempt to off-load Turtle to a state agency, but keeps her to raise. Kingsolver evokes the reader's sympathy for both Taylor and Lou Ann, although both are in situations of their own making. Mattie, too, might have been given greater role, particularly since she provides so many fundamental changes in Taylor's life. Kingsolver's character development makes wonderful reading. Occasionally, her descriptive powers overcome her characterization and Taylor waxes rather more eloquent than her background and education [which is almost entirely self-taught] would warrant. It's easy to forgive these lapses in light of how well she relates the story. Throughout the book i wondered why only Taylor speaks in the first person. A dual viewpoint of characters and events might have given this story more depth. Estevan and his wife, Esperanza, are Guatemalan refugees. Kingsolver's use of these characters to point up America's support of the oppressive regime is depicted with skill. Taylor's growing awareness of conditions there represents that of the average American -it's visible only by direct confrontation. Unfortunately, Taylor lives where sympathy for refugees from oppressive regimes is minimal. The place is called the United States, symbolized, interestingly enough, by a woman standing in a harbour offering sanctuary to the oppressed. There is a disturbing element in this and similar stories by and of today's women. Men here are universally portrayed without a redeeming feature. There are no "neutral" males who provide any form of support or reinforcement. Angel Ruiz could just as easily have lost more than a leg in his rodeo accident. Instead, he must be portrayed as a deserting husband. Kingsolver, however, has him appearing in cameos which only reinforce his role as the uncaring male. We are returned here to the early days of feminism in declaring males superfluous to the community of women. It's not a healthy indication for the future. If the atmosphere of "us versus them" intensifies, there will be greater backlash than is currently the case. If men have truly failed women over all these millennia, then it's reconciliation that's required, not intensifying of resentments. That only builds mutually reinforcing resentment.
Rating:
Summary: Not The Kingsolver I Was Expecting
Review: I'm being a little hard on Kingsolver with just two stars, but that's partly because I have also read her amazing POISONWOOD BIBLE, a work of gratifying emotional and psychological complexity. BEAN TREES, by contrast, seems simplistic and shallow. For example, the characters in BEAN TREES divide up neatly into the not just good but positively heroic gals (Taylor, her employer, her neighbors, her roommate) and the bad guys (INS, various ex-husbands and boyfriends). Notice that these categories also divide up neatly by gender. For whatever reason, Kingsolver doesn't address the male point of view at all, except to use men as cardboard villains creating the problems that the women have to deal with. This may be a point of view worth addressing, but I'm dismayed to find it the only point of view, period.(Estevan is a woman's mind in a man's character). The result is that BEAN TREES reads more like a light fantasy than a challenging novel. In POISONWOOD BIBLE, Kingsolver dealt skillfully and realistically with the personal and political tragedies. But in BEAN TREES, all the loose ends are wrapped up neatly and unconvincingly in no time at all. The ending in particular seemed contrived to make things work out a particular way. As a reader, I grant the author complete suspension of my disbelief in establishing the premises of a novel, but then I expect the writer to follow the implications of those premises to their logical ends, for better or worse. POISONWOOD BIBLE satisfied me in this respect, but BEAN TREES did not. On the other hand, I greatly admired the characterization of the Taylor character, especially the little "Kentucky-ism's" she threw into the dialogue. In this respect Kingsolver reminds me of Larry McMurtry, whose Texas characters' colorful speech keep even his lesser productions highly entertaining. As long as Taylor and also Lou Ann were speaking out loud, I enjoyed the book a great deal. When the preaching about American policy toward illegal aliens kicked in, I skipped ahead to the next part which actually dealt with her characters. I think Kingsolver is really on to something with this sort of character, grounded in Appalachian Kentucky, and I'd like to see the author explore her possibilities in novels more ambitious than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Another masterpiece by Kingsolver
Review: Barbara Kingsolver, in my opinion, along with Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison, is perhaps the finest crafter of works in the late 20th Century. If only I could write half this well, with the words just flowing like a river to create a story. I haven't read a bad Kingsolver book yet. You would be doing yourself a favor by reading all she has to offer.
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Summary: Taken by the book cover
Review: Being one that loves gardening, I must admit, that the cover first caught my eye. There, at the bottom, peeking shyly from the rows of beans is a small child with wide eyes. How can these two aspects come together to make sense of this title?? I suppose that is not why most people want to buy books and read them, but for me I felt motivated to solve the puzzle of the lost looking wide eyed black haired youngster. Right away, I was intrigued by "Missy", from Kentucky. She has by no means had an easy life, but she has had a mom who loved her (forget about the dad) and knew enough to look around her in high school to see all her girl friends having unexpected pregnancies, and vowed to herself that she would get out of town with her uterus non-gravid. A sad goal, but a goal non-the-less, and with the help of a beaten up barely drive-able car she makes her escape to somewhere else, or rather to as far as the car can make it without breaking down. That in, and of itself, seemed like a novel worth checking out. I appreciated the humor and the spirit of this young girl. She kissed her Mama goodbye, (after her Mama made her demonstrate how to change tires--which by the way is her number one fear of all time. You see, she saw a guy get blown up and away after trying to change a truck tire, and that vision never left her.) Anyway, off she goes to the next town, oh, and she decides to rename herself too. Depending on the town she breaks down in. Within no time, she ends up in an out of the way town where she goes into a down and out bar type cafe, well, bar. Hoping to get something to eat, or coffee, she looks around and sees a woman huddled in a back dark booth with a blanket around her. The place is dark and mysterious, she checks out some postcards and learns she is near or on an Indian Reservation. Leaving the bar, she gets into the car and is confronted by the woman sitting in the bar. What she takes out of the blanket and plops down on the passenger seat will change her life forever. The woman begs her to take the toddler. The woman looks haggard, the situation in bigarre, this has to be a joke, but suddenly, the woman spins away, the lights are turned off, the two trucks fly out of the parking lot, and she is staring into the helpless eyes of a physically, sexually and mentally abused baby. Oh, what to do. Well, what would you do? I don't know what I would do, but I can tell you that it was pretty interesting to see what newly named Taylor (alias Missy) did. She is spunky, idealistic, naive. But, you have to give her credit. She's got alot of heart, and the people she meets in the following town make it bloom just like the garden she begins to work in behind, you didn't guess it, her next job, in a tire store. Enjoy, I did. Oh, and there is a follow up book, called Pigs in Heaven, which I just got and will read next!
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Summary: Fiction is Fact?
Review: I live in Tucson,Arizona and enjoyed this book by our local resident author. However, I wonder if she will comment publically on the Linda Chavez affair as the Guatemalan immigrant sounds like she could have passed through the Tire Shop. However, as I suspect Ms. Kingsolver espouses the liberal, Democratic side of things, I would be really surprised if she breaks ranks with the muck rackers back in Washington D.C.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting book
Review: I found this book to be very interesting. The autor put ideas together in a way that was well crafted. I don't want to give any of the plot away, so I'll stop here. If you do read this book, I hope you enjoy it!
Rating:
Summary: Unexpected journey through the mid western US
Review: The Bean Trees is a well written novel about a young woman fighting through life. Growing up in Kentucky with her mother and making careful choices not to tie herself down in relationships like everyone else in the community. After she decides to travel west, Taylor finds herself in Tucson, Arizona. Lou Ann, Mattie, Esperanza, Estevan, and many more of her new friends help Taylor through her transition with a little unexpected miracle. A story with pleanty to say. Barbara Kingsolver couldn't have done it any better. Great book for anyone!
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