Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

I just finished this book; actually, I'm pretty sure it's been one of the major factors, second only to post-work exhaustion, that has kept me from unpacking at my new place over this past week. I loved it! It's earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf and on my "favorites" list. There is not a single person I wouldn't recommend it to.

The book is told, mostly from the point of view of Codi Noline, a woman in her thirties with an unconventional past, who is very uncertain of what she wants in life. The book begins when her younger sister, Hallie, from whom she has been inseparable since birth, moves to Nicaragua to do humanitarian work. After her sister leaves, Codi moves back to her hometown in rural Arizona to visit/set up care for her father, who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Her father was a doctor and a single parent -- their mother died when they were little -- and he was always stern and distant. She didn't keep in touch with him in adulthood, so it's awkward for her to go back and see him now. Furthermore, when she arrives in Grace, her hometown, she discovers it's on the brink of an environmental crisis.

. . . that's really all the plot information I can share without giving too much away. I could never be a professional book reviewer. I always find it impossible to really describe why I think a certain book is good. I'm a Comparative Literature major, I can analyze books from here to next Christmas, but I can't seem to adequately describe why certain books tug on my heartstrings in ways that make me love them. I'll settle for sharing some of my favorite quotes from Animal Dreams:

"It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."

"God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much."


"'Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is as tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up hearts?'
"I shook my head. 'No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.' The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything, it's like binding a book.
"'The seat of human emotion should be the liver,' Doc Homer said. 'That would be an appropriate metaphor: we don't hold love in our hearts, we hold it in our livers.'
"I understand exactly. Once in ER I saw a woman who'd been stabbed everywhere, most severely in the liver. It's an organ with the consistency of layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed. You try to close the wound with fresh wounds, and you try and you try and you don't give up until there's nothing left."


Incidentally, two other Kingsolver books that I really enjoyed are The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees.