Alphabet Authors ~ K is for Kingsolver

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc.

When I read my first book by Barbara Kingsolver, I knew I had found something great, an author I would love.

- "The Bean Trees" - 1988
- "Demon Copperhead" - 2022
- "Flight Behaviour" - 2012
- "The Lacuna" - 2009
- "Pigs in Heaven" - 1993
- "The Poisonwood Bible" - 1998 
- "Prodigal Summer" - 2001 
- "Unsheltered" - 2018

Ever since, I have read several of her books, as you can see, and loved every single one of them. The Poisonwood Bible, the first one, is still one of my favourites, though The Lacuna certainly is just as great.

Facts about Barbara Kingsolver:
Born    April 8, 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland, US
Married Joseph Hoffmann (1985–1992)

and Steven Lee Hopp (1994–present)

She has one daughter each by her two husbands, Camille born 1987, and Lily born 1996.
Apparently, she never wanted to be famous.

She received several prizes, The Women's Prize for Fiction for The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead plus many other prizes for literature and her activism for civil liberties and humanities.

* * *

This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022

I must have mentioned this a hundred times. I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan. I really love Barbara Kingsolver's books, so this was just the book for me, a modern version of my favourite Dickens book, "David Copperfield".

I am not necessarily a fan of rewritten classics. I always say, authors should have their own idea for a story and not pick up that of another one. However, this is just a story that deserves to be picked up and looked upon with fresh eyes. It's easy to say that was so long ago and isn't part of our lives anymore. But what if it is?

Barbara Kingsolver managed it perfectly to transform the story into the 21st century. We follow Demon aka David through his sad life where he slides from one problematic situation to the next - or is pushed.

So, even if you know "David Copperfield" inside out and know exactly what must be coming next, it still is a highly suspenseful novel, or maybe even because of that. You know what is coming but you wonder how she transformed the story. Brilliant.

I think this gives us a good view about today's problems, even in so-called first world countries, and a lot to think about. Something that Barbara Kingsolver does so well.

This might even become my favourite book of the year.

From the back cover:

"Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between."

Kingsolver, Barbara "Pigs in Heaven"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Pigs in Heaven" - 1993

This is a follow-up of the novel "The Bean Trees", not necessarily my favourite by Barbara Kingsolver, whose stories I usually really like. But I think the main reason that was not my favourite, and this one won't be either, is what happens to the protagonists.

First, a baby is left with a young woman who then tries to bring her up without much help from outside. A couple of years later, someone finds she shouldn't have been able to adopt the child after all because the little girl is Cherokee. Well, I understand the native Americans but I really feel for the mother who fears having to give up her child. Such an impossible dilemna which doesn't seem to be so rare, after all, the story is based on true-life stories.

I like to read about different cultures, I like to read about problematic scenarios, maybe this was just a little too much for me, I don't know. I still liked the writing and will read more books by Barbara Kingsolver.

From the back cover:

"When six-year-old Turtle witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, her insistence, and her mother's belief in her, leads to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity quickly draws her into a conflict of historic proportions that will envelop not only Turtle and her mother but everyone else who touches their lives."

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.  She remains one of my favourite authors.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Most Anticipated Books

 

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week, our topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022

I am still waiting for a few books to be released as a paperback or to be translated into a language known to me but I have posted about them before (see here). I have some of those books, some of them books are still not out the way I like them (paperback and preferably the original language) but I'm still waiting for these.

Falcones, Ildefonso "Painter of Souls" (El pintor de almas) (Goodreads)
(waiting for translation)

Jonuleit, Anja "Das letzte Bild" (Goodreads)

Pamuk, Orhan "Nights of Plague" (Veba Geceleri/Die Nächte der Pest) (Goodreads)
(waiting for translation)

Rimington, Celesta "The Elephant's Girl" (Goodreads)

Zeh, Juli "Über Menschen" [About People] - 2021

Then there are a few new books by some of my favourite authors that will be published until the end of the year. Can't wait.

Atwood, Margaret "Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering" - 2022 (Goodreads) *

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022

Oates, Joyce Carol "Extenuating Circumstances - 2022 (Goodreads)

Oates, Joyce Carol "Babysitter" - 2022 (Goodreads)

Tellkamp, Uwe "Der Schlaf in den Uhren" - 2022 (Goodreads)

* Funnily enough, the English cover is to be revealed, but the cover of the German translation has been made public already.

I am sure I will find many more books I should look forward to when I see what others have posted.

📚 Happy Reading! 📚

#ThrowbackThursday. The Lacuna

 

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna" - 2009

A wonderful book about politics (especially the evil side of it), prejudices, art, love - and cooking.

This certainly is one of my favourites by Barbara Kingsolver, though I love them all.

Read more on my original post here.

#ThrowbackThursday. Prodigal Summer

 

Kingsolver, Barbara "Prodigal Summer" - 2001

I like all the Barbara Kingsolver's books I've read. I like her style, the way her characters come alive. This one involves a lot of family history, the different people in the book all seem to have some links to each other, but there is also quite a bit about nature protection which I liked a lot.

Read more on my original post here.

#ThrowbackThursday. The Poisonwood Bible

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Poisonwood Bible" - 1998

One of my favourite books ever. The story about a preacher who takes his wife and four daughters to Africa, all five of them have different experiences and see the country with different perspectives.

This book doesn't just tell the story of a family and different women but also the history of the Belgian Congo and the differences of the cultures.

Still one of my all time-favourites. And the first of many books by Barbara Kingsolver that I have read since.

Read more on my original post here.

Kingsolver, Barbara "Unsheltered"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Unsheltered" - 2018

This was my sixth book by Barbara Kingsolver. My favourite is probably "The Lacuna", closely followed by "The Poisonwood Bible".

As in her other books, the author addresses well-known problems. In this case, why do people work hard all their lives, do everything right, and still end up in dire straits?

We get to know two couples who live in the same house, about two centuries apart. And yet, they end up with similar problems, the house is old and decrepit but there is no money for the restoration, the characters are in danger of losing their jobs or have lost them already, the society is not ready for changes that need to be made.

We wonder how people could not understand Charles Darwin but overlook the fact that we get ignorant people like that even today. People who don't "acknowledge" science. How can you not?

Anyway, I like the way Barbara Kingsolver tackles the trials of our generation. I like the way she makes us compare the two generations. I like her writing style. And I like the book. It's a good one.

I will definitely have to read her other three novels.

From the back cover:

"How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.

In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men.

Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future."

Kingsolver, Barbara "Flight Behaviour"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Flight Behaviour" - 2012

I am a fan of Barbara Kingsolver and her novels. I love her writing style, I love her stories, I love the subjects she talks about. She is a very environmentally oriented person who knows how to write about this highly important subject that is far too often dismissed by people who think they can save some money and disregard the impacts it has on our future and, even more, the future of our children. Yes, I am, as a friend once put it, a "damn environmentalist", I have been wondering what is going to happen to our world for decades, people have been laughing at me for sorting my trash long before it was "fashionable".

What is so great about this novel? Barbara Kingsolver brings the impact of environmental pollution, of climate change to the most rural area you can imagine, to a part where people think if they don't pay attention to the big bad world, nothing bad is going to happen to them. Even though the setting is in the United States, this could happen anywhere. But that is not the only subject she addresses, she talks about friendship, poverty, education, religion, science, intolerance.

The characters, everyday people, a farmer living with his family on the grounds of his parents, the parents just next door, a normal life for a lot of people living in rural environments. They want to sell their forest to make money and then they discover butterflies that never were in that area and that shouldn't be in that area.

But the author also keeps a close look on the family and their lives, the interaction they have with the local people and the visiting biologists. I like her way of describing her characters, I have come to love many of them in her books.

As the story progresses, so does our understanding that something is tremendously wrong, that something needs to be done but that it is already too late, as a lot of actions come at least thirty years too late.

If this novel has made at least a few of the readers aware that we should change things, not just complain about gas prices going up but looking at what we, the little men and women, can do to improve our environment, it has fulfilled its purpose. I guess those who don't want to understand, those who dislike scientific findings and rather go on like their ancestors, will not like this book anyway.

I have said before that I want to read all of her novels, a few are still missing, they are still on my wishlist and I will make sure to get there soon. I also hope that she is still going to write many more beautiful novels.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

'Flight Behaviour' takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world."

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Bean Trees"

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Bean Trees" - 1988

After having read "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Prodigal Summer" with the book club, I just had to read more of this fabulous author's novels. I only learned later that this had been her very first one. Quite an interesting plot about a girl who ends up with a baby that is just left to her. But a lot of other people appear in the novel, abused women and children, illegal immigrants, people who help and people who don't.

I think Barbara Kingsolver can write about any subject, whatever she chooses is interesting, she has a way about her that just makes you want to keep on reading.

There is a follow-up to this story: "Pigs in Heaven".

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

Book Description:

"Plucky Taylor Greer grows up poor in rural Kentucky with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get away. She succeeds on both counts when she buys an old car and heads west. But midway across the country motherhood catches up with her when she becomes the guardian of an abandoned baby girl she calls Turtle. In Tuscon they encounter an extraordinary array of people, and with their help, Taylor builds herself and her sweet, stunned child a life."

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.  She remains one of my favourite authors.

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna"

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna" - 2009

Another great novel by Barbara Kingsolver. This one stretches from Mexico over the United States to Russia, describes the lives of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and Russian leader Trotsky, all woven together by the life of one Mexian-American guy who is thrown into their lot.

Wonderful book about politics (especially the evil side of it), prejudices, art, love - and cooking.

This certainly is one of my new favourites.

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.

From the back cover:

"In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. 'The Lacuna' is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico - from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City - Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach--the lacuna--between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist--and of art itself. 'The Lacuna' is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Kingsolver, Barbara "Prodigal Summer"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Prodigal Summer" - 2001

"Three interwoven love stories set in the Appalachian farmlands, US. The first - involving a reclusive wildlife ranger and a young hunter, the second, a young widow taking over her husbands farm, and the third - between two old cantankerous farmers, one a traditional farmer and the other organic. As always with Kingsolver, nature and the environment rule!"

So far, I liked all the Barbara Kingsolver's books I've read. I like her style, the way her characters come alive. This one involves a lot of family history, the different people in the book all seem to have some links to each other, but there is also quite a bit about nature protection which I liked a lot but some other book club members have found a little "too much".

Anyway, if you are a fan of Barbara Kingsolver and similar writers, you will like this one, as well. A book that gives you a nice feeling.

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.

We discussed this in our book club in January 2003.

Book Description:

"Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.
From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbours tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. Prodigal Summer demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama and ideas that is characteristic of Barbara Kingsolver's finest work."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Poisonwood Bible"

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Poisonwood Bible" - 1998

One of my favourite books ever. This story is told in diary form by the wife and four daughters of a preacher. He takes them to Africa where all five of them have different experiences and see the country with different perspectives. The father is quite abusive, not what you would expect a religious man to be (though one of my friends says she knows a guy exactly like him and that's why she doesn't like the novel).

This book doesn't just tell the story of a family and different women but also the history of the Belgian Congo and the differences of the cultures.

We discussed this in our book club in December 2001.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2021.

Book Description:

"The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of an American family in the Congo during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. This tale of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against one of history's most dramatic political parables. The Poisonwood Bible dances between the darkly comic human failings and inspiring poetic justices of our times. In a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, Barbara Kingsolver has written a novel of overwhelming power and passion."

I have read several other Kingsolver novels in the meantime and liked all of them, you can find my reviews here. Although this one is still my favourite next to "The Lacuna".

Barbara Kingsolver was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Poisonwood Bible" in 1999.