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Summary: A refreshing read.
Review: A delightful collection of essays. After reading heavy and verbose novels of "thundering" dinosaurs and burned war participants, it is refreshing to read essays again. Kingsolver is a wonderful storyteller whether it's fiction or real life.
This collection is a must read for anyone relocated from their roots and family, or anyone looking for insight into their own lives.
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Summary: One part essay, one part poetry...
Review: After reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, I was impressed enough to read some of her earlier works. High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, is actually a collection of essays, articles, opinions and speeches that first appeared in a number of places including magazines like Smithsonian, Parenting, and The New York Times Magazine. Although most of them are excellent, on the whole, they are a little uneven.
Kingsolver was first a biologist, and many of the articles are written through a scientist's eye. Her love of nature shines through when she writes about the flora and fauna of her native Kentucky and her adopted home of Tucson. She tells us about the joys of parenting and the heartache of a failed marriage. She regales us with tales of traveling and living abroad for a spell. And she also preaches from her soapbox on a number of political and domestic issues (including nuclear weapons, The Gulf War, the mistreatment of children in the US, limited efforts at conservation, working out, her lack of fashion sense, and the trials and tribulations of writing-to name a few). One of her funniest chapters is about a two-week tour she took as part of a rock band, The Rock Bottom Remainders. This band consisted of fellow writers, and we can only imagine Kingsolver, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry and others sounding more like "Hound Dogs in Heat."
But what makes High Tide in Tucson different from many other collections is Kingsolver's beautiful prose. About the Santa Cruz River, she writes "In these lean days, she's a great blank channel of sand, but we call her a river anyway, and say it with a straight face too, because in her moods this saint has taken out bridges and houses and people who loved their lives." Or in describing a sunset, Kingsolver shares with us "No one else to see the sun go huge and round, then drown itself, burning a red path of memory on the face of the sea." Much of High Tide reads like poetry.
So while I liked some essays much better than others, overall, I think High Tide is a very worthy book. Kingsolver has become one of our best writers today.
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Summary: A book about things we've always looked at but never seen
Review: As I read this book, I found myself agreeing with the author about so many things I've thought but never put into words. From tongue-in-cheek humor about childhood dreams of motorcycle gangs and ongoing battles with local wild pig populations to philosophical ruminations on our place in the universe and high tide in a desert, this book delighted me and touched me. A series of short essays, it's a book that can be sipped or gulped, according to personal preference. I'm going to buy it for my mother and my best friend. What better recommendation can I give
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Summary: A Treasure Of A Book
Review: Barbara Kingsolver has assembled a very pleasurable and entertaining short stories into one book. She's proven herself to be a very competent writer with one gigantic heart. One story after another, I couldn't put the book down 'till I finished.
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Summary: A life affirming collection of essays
Review: Barbara Kingsolver's collection of essays, High Tide In Tucson, is a truly life affirming, touching, true, poetic, real, view of life, nature, the Animal Kingdom, the Plant Kingdom, and community. If you enjoy the novels of Barbara Kingsolver, you'll enjoy the essays in this collection. Well written, poetic-prose that is truly touching! As in all Kingsolver's books, even if you don't agree with the conclusions she comes to, it's ok. You don't feel preached at, she acknowledges the diversity of life, that we all have different, legitimate, opinions about all things. For example, I personally do not believe that science and biology are infallible, I am a Creationist. Ms. Kingsolver clearly believes in evolution and makes no secret that she believes that evolution is a "scientific fact." That's fine! It doesn't threaten me that we have different, legitimate, beliefs. The point is that we both, as she states, "risk belief." When she describes the glory of nature, the earth, and the Natural World, she gives credit to "Mother Nature," or "Mother Earth," or "Natural Selection," while I give credit to "God, the Creator." This is what life's all about. This is what this collection of essays is about, having an opinion and explaining it thoroughly, and listening to others opinions. It's "high tide" we must live this life we're given for the best, the best we know how, and not let another person's disagreement with us stop us. We must acknowledge and learn about the past, and honor the future as well. So, fill up the atomic bomb silos with concrete to be excavated later, collect shells on the beach, keep a journal, tell lies, honor life and nature and the earth, don't turn away from painful things in this chaotic world, look, acknowledge, help, believe, hope, it's high tide.
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Summary: insightful view of society
Review: barbra kingsolver is a brilliant women with outstanding writing abilities. her books give you an insightful view to the problems in society and undue the myths about american culture. she give people new stories to believe in one that say "family and children are the future", not "work hard and you will be sucessful" which is often not true. i recomend her essays to anyone who needs a place where common beleifs of society are torn down and woven into a new fabric of life.
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Summary: Kingsolver's book of gripes...
Review: Having read the remarkably interesting recent publications by Kingsolver, "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer," I was shocked and dismayed to have experienced "High Tide in Tucson." The book is a collection of "essays" and should not be confused with "short stories." Unfortunately, Kingsolver has chosen to use these essays to find audience for all that displeases her in the world. Or at least the part she could cram into 270 pages and sell. For the first two thirds of the book, she rattles on about the trials and tribulations of being a single parent, admitting that she was surprised to learn that the divorce she agreed to left her with a significantly reduced household income. Clearly, math is not her strong suit. I can only surmise that she is trying to justify her divorce to her audience and the world. Frankly, Barbara, I don't give a hoot. She immediately steps to her next platform and gripes about the perils of being an author on a book tour, suffering through participation in a strange musical group of authors, havalinas invading her Arizona house garden, the injustice and necessity of the arms race during the 1960's, corruption of the environment and a whole host of other conveniently broad-brushed and artistically-licensed slants on the history and happenings of the world. I hope that she didn't fall when she got off of her soapbox. In a way I'm glad that she got this out of her system, because it has been years since she has written this embarrassment. Her recent publications prove that she has an incredible gift for story-telling and I sincerely admire it. I can only conclude that practice has made perfect and she has certainly excelled in every right. I encourage dear reader to consider purchasing her newer works, as she has certainly found her writing niche and it is our pleasure to enjoy it.
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Summary: Barbara Kingsolver is a righteous Annie Dillard.
Review: High Tide in Tucson was my introduction to Barbara Kingsolver. After a first, late-night, reading of this essay collection, I say this: Kingsolver is a righteous Annie Dillard, without quite so much self in the way. (Such extremes of consciousness as Dillard's sometimes can create two sufferers, author and reader.)
Kingsolver hails from Kentucky and there is something in her written prose and her voice that shows it. Kingsolver's observations on her adopted desert home and her travels are as familiar to me as those of my mother, a native West Virginian and a naturalist at heart who gathers molly moochers and can identify trees and plants for me even over the telephone. Dillard herself, in childhood, was profoundly affected by visits to a friend's old family farm in Paw Paw, West Virginia. Living in Appalachia instills an enthusiasm, a determination not to miss the beauty, the wretchedness, and the strangeness of life.
Kingsolver has the thoughtful spirit of one who esteems the world, whether she is doing her appreciating in Arizona or in Africa, reflecting on the meaning of old missile silos or of hermit crabs. Her politics are like her nature study: both announce a highly observant eye that sees the apparent as well as the hidden.
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Summary: Compilation of life experiences and the resulting beleifs.
Review: High Tide in Tuscon was a very slow reading book that did not appeal to me. The various thoughts included by the author were food for thought but did not compensate for the boring text in the book. Barbara Kingsolver used so many adjectives in her descriptions it seemed as if she was trying to confuse the reader instead of creating an image.
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Summary: It's great! Both what she has to say and how she says it..
Review: I am an admitted, biased Barbara Kingsolver fan. I loved her books, Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven and Animal Dreams. I bought High Tide in Tuscon in an effort to learn to like short stories after my efforts with Alice Munro failed miserably. (I guess I'm the only one who never figured out how any of her stories ended. . . or did they?) Ms. Kingsolver has made a believer out of me. She provides a lot of food for thought while she "illustrates" what may be "simple" truths. I take time between stories to savor her thoughts. My favorite short story is "In case you ever want to go home again," about returning to her hometown after first getting published. We can all relate to the insecurity and enjoy the pleasure she took from being Homecoming Queen for a day. I liked what she had to say about the art of writing. She believes that the secret is "attitude," that it's "hope" and a matter of keeping a clear fix on what you believe is true.
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