Book Review
By Derryll White
Kingsolver, Barbara. Homeland and Other Stories.
Barbara Kingsolver is perhaps one of the most sensitive writers I have ever read. Her treatment in ‘Homeland’ of that thing we broadly label “the human condition” literally makes me weep. When Great Mam say of the small Tennessee town where she grew up “I’ve never been here before,” all of the change that has been forced onto the world comes crashing in on me. Barbara Kingsolver takes the most useful tool, memory, and forces it to articulate a feeling for our responsibility for the environment.
I believe most of us have forgotten how innate that burden is as we lust after more and more material things. ‘Homeland’ is an incredibly powerful opening story for this collection, reading almost as poetic myth. Kingsolver continues with ‘Blueprints,’ writing evocatively of how we manage our relationships with each other. Her words remind me that I have to work harder and not be lazy.
How does a scientific mind deal with the chaos of life? There are, I think, two options – phenomenal organization or procrastination. In several of these stories Kingsolver opts for order – planning, scheduling, designing to keep the chaos of the world at bay. And inevitably with this author, out of that work comes love.
Barbara Kingsolver’s sensibilities are so sharp that she regularly astounds me. She has the grace to be able to combine illicit love in the middle of a Boy Scout jamboree with parenting and child rearing – and not miss a beat. I cannot figure out how she does it – so gracefully divides her mind between the glow of physical love and motherhood, without appearing at all contrived. When it comes to human relationships I would pick her work even over that of Carl Jung.
With Kingsolver life is a miracle of every day. It is so much more than what I normally permit myself to see. She is without doubt one of the best Tricksters practicing in the English language. Everyone simply must treat themselves to a couple of her books. She takes the hardest subjects – racism, sexism, violence – and turns them to thoughts that will change the way you see things. Be good to your souls and read some Barbara Kingsolver.
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Excerpts from the book:
MEMORY – She must have been very young, too little to understand even the basics of gravity. He told her it would be fun. When she jumped off the chair, he said, she would swing to and fro in the breeze… She can feel the knot against her jaw and his eyes on her, alive and quiet, as she prepares to end her life. The memory comes down on her like an ice storm, stiffening her to the center with cold rage. If her mother hadn’t looked out the window, Grace thinks… She would have spent these decades as a photograph, smiling it’s dead child smile on her parent’s mantelpiece, or just put away in a box somewhere. Even tragedies get forgotten.
UNION – But this was around the fourth or fifth week so, everybody knew by then who was striking and who was crossing. It don’t take long to tell rats from cheese, and every night there was a big old fight in the Big Dipper. Somebody punching out his brother or his best friend. All that and no paycheck, can you imagine.
SENSES – She was wearing purple, a color that nearly glows when she puts it on. A purple sweater, and a turquoise and lavender scarf. As I looked at her there among the pumpkins I was overcome with color and the intensity of my life. In these moments we are driven to try and hoard happiness by taking photographs, but I know better. The important thing was what the color stood for, the taste of hard apples and the existence of Lena and the exact quality of the sun on the last day in October. A photograph would have flattened the scene into a happy moment, whereas what I felt was girl rapture. The fleeting certainty that I deserved the space I’d been taking up on this earth, and all the air I had breathed.
PARENTING – According to Janice, parenting was three percent conscious effort and ninety-seven percent automatic pilot. “It doesn’t matter what you think you’re going to tell them. What matters is they’re there watching you every minute, while you tell the lady with just two items go ahead of you in the line, or when you lay on the horn and swear at the guy that cuts you off in traffic. There’s no sense kidding yourself, what you see is what you get.”
FAMILY – “You want to trade?” she routinely asks. “You want my mother?”
“What’s wrong with your mother?” Annemarie wants to know.
“What’s wrong with my mother,” KayKay answers, shaking her head. Everybody thinks they’ve got a corner on the market, thinks Annemarie.
- Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.