One of Kingsolver’s better efforts at preaching her politics and pulling heartstrings at the same time.
A young woman discovers her rural Tennessee community has been invaded by monarch butterflies in this effective tear-jerker cum environmental jeremiad from Kingsolver (The Lacuna, 2009, etc.).
At 17, English honor student Dellarobia thought she would escape a future of grim rural poverty by attending college. Instead, she got pregnant and married. Now 27, feeling stifled by the responsibility of two young children she loves and a husband she tolerates, Dellarobia is heading to her first adulterous tryst when she happens upon a forested valley taken over by a host of brilliant orange butterflies that appear at first like a silent fire. She skips the tryst, but her life changes in unexpected ways. Soon after, Dellarobia leads her sweet if dim husband, Cub, to the butterflies, and they become public knowledge. The butterflies have landed in Tennessee because their usual winter habitat in Mexico has been flooded out. The local church congregation, including Dellarobia’s mother-in-law, Hester, embraces the butterflies’ arrival as a sign of grace. Influenced by her beloved preacher, usually antagonistic Hester (a refreshingly complex character) becomes a surprising ally in convincing Dellarobia’s father-in-law not to cut down the forest for much-needed cash, although she is not above charging tourists, who arrive in increasing numbers to view the spectacle. Soon, a handsome black scientist with a Caribbean accent has set up in her barn to study the beautiful phenomena, which he says may spell environmental doom. Dellarobia is attracted to the sophisticated, educated world Dr. Byron and his grad school assistants represent. When she takes a job working with the scientists, the schisms in her already troubled marriage deepen. Yet, she is fiercely defensive against signs of condescension toward her family and neighbors; she really goes after a guy whose list of ways to lower the carbon footprint—“bring your own Tupperware to a restaurant,” “fly less”—have no relevance to people trying to survive economically day-by-day.
One of Kingsolver’s better efforts at preaching her politics and pulling heartstrings at the same time.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-212426-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.
A woman whose life has been knocked off balance by her daughter’s absence struggles to regain her equilibrium.
At first glance, Sarah would seem to have it all: a devoted husband, a Brooklyn brownstone, money, good looks (attracting attention even in her late 40s), privilege, the dregs of a successful career as a filmmaker, an agent waiting to support her next project. However, as Hershon’s novel unspools over the course of a long weekend, in which Sarah and her husband, Matthew, are violently mugged in Prospect Park and then travel upstate to reconnect with old friends—a couple named Kiki and Arman—we learn that Sarah’s life is far from perfect. Sarah and Matthew’s troubled 24-year-old daughter, Leda, has vanished from their lives; the stress caused by her yearslong absence has nearly cost Sarah her marriage (she and Matthew have reconciled after a two-year separation) and her career (she can’t write about Leda, yet neither can she write about anything else). Kiki and Arman, too, have their problems as well as a new baby daughter who stirs memories—both pleasant and painful—for Sarah. In clear, compassionate prose, Hershon (A Dual Inheritance, 2013, etc.) conjures characters readers may initially assume they know and then gently and gradually subverts those assumptions, revealing the emotions and difficulties with which these nuanced characters are grappling. Ultimately the author offers notes of hope—that the secrets and sadnesses, disappointments and distress that can damage relationships, derail pursuits, and erode lives when they are held inside and in isolation can resolve when shared; that sometimes finding a way back to one another is the best way to find a way forward.
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-26814-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
A round-Robbins on the themes of scent, so-called "floral consciousness," and immortality—skipping through time and space, but offering a little old-fashioned storytelling charm along with the usual cute/hip doodling. In one of the two parallel plot-lines here, Robbins juggles the separate attempts of various parfumiers around the world to come up with a perfume (upon a jasmine base) that will outenchant any previous concoction: Madame Devalier in New Orleans is feverishly experimenting; so is her adopted daughter Priscilla in Seattle; and the megs-company LeFever is also hard at work in Paris. Meanwhile, in the other main plot, we follow King Alobar—a Dark Ages hero—through his global wanderings: he eventually reaches India, meeting a widow named Kudra; both of them are in flight from Death; and both eventually, through the direct intervention of the decrepit god Pan, actually achieve immortality—even learning how to capture the immortality-essence in bottled-liquid form. So ultimately, of course, these two plot-strands will link up—as Alobar time-travels up to the present, providing the evolutionary missing-link to "floral consciousness". . . and teaming up with a Timothy Learylike outlaw scientist, Dr. Wiggs Dannyboy, who adds a bit of new-age theory to Robbins' usual flower-power rhetoric. ("Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.") As in all of Robbins' novels, there is much that's juvenile and insufferable here: terminally cute asides and many, many groaners—e.g., "a populace that was beginning to put Descartes before des horse." Still, the mundane/exotic enterprise of making perfume offers a rich basis for Robbins' half-credible, half-cartoonish explorations. And, thanks to its lively sweep through time and geography, this may be his most agreeable book ever: relaxed, readably sequential, goofily lyrical—with some feather-weight appeal for non-fans as well as the usual Robbins readership.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0553348981
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1984
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
