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Listening to Joseph Bottum’s Send My Roots Rain again.  You can hear another selection here.  Go ahead.  You’ll be glad you did.  I am, as I noted yesterday, addicted.  While having a cup of coffee, hypnotized by the song in the link above, I stared at the pile of books awaiting review and realized it was time to write about the book I have been conspicuously avoiding when the Muse strikes and a blog post is composed.  As I noted Bottum’s album is very much about being tied to place.  So is the book soon to be mentioned.  Presumably writing about said book while listening to Send My Roots Rain will result in some sort of Cosmic Harmony.

But, first, why the aforementioned avoidance?  Two worlds are about to collide and I have been leery of having those two worlds meet.

First, there is my day job: you know, that professor thing.  As I have noted here before, one of the virtues of teaching at a small liberal arts college is that I get to know many of my students very well.  Some of them become friends.  Good friends.  Some of them, when graduating, give me a gift.  I am always very honored and touched by those gifts.  My office décor consists of two things: books and gifts from my students.  I love my office and those gifts are a big part of what I love about it.  Sometimes, a student marries those two things and gives me a book as a gift.  Sometimes the book so given is a book from the country from which the student hails.  Sometimes the book is a deeply personal book.  Sometimes it is both of those things. 

Second, there is this blog: you know, that thing you are reading.  It is one of the conceits of this blog that there is no audience.  That has a certain liberating effect.  Not only does it allow for wandering ruminations about nothing, it allows for snarky, snide remarks about books as well as a-bit-to-enthusiastic praise for books. It allows for variation of style.  It allows unmediated honesty.

One of the things about the two worlds above is that they can usually be kept separate.  I can enjoy the friendships I have with students and appreciate the gifts the have given me.  I can also be honest about what I thought about books. 

But: what happens if I am given a book by a student who is gradating and said student is also a reader of this blog?  And what happens if after the book is given there is a conversation about how there will be a review of the book on this blog? 

That is not a hypothetical.  It happened.  I was afraid to read the book.  What if it was a lousy book?   What if my honest opinion was that nobody should ever like the book?  What would I do then?  Before reading the first page, I desperately wanted to like the book so that I could honestly say I liked it.  But, then, what if I liked it?  How would I say that without the giver of the book thinking I was just being kind and not being honest? 

Yeah, I think this sort of quandary is fodder for the Great American Novel.  Someone should write that book.

It can’t be avoided any longer.  Deep breath.  Here goes:

Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

The book is set in Appalachia.  That is the most important fact about the book.  This is a book about Appalachia.  Sure, there are people and animals and plants, but the book is really about the place.  It is the sort of place where Send My Roots Rain is, or should be, a bestselling album.  It is a place which is rooted, deeply rooted, in the soil, in history, in tradition, in everything which creates Culture.  An outsider to Appalachia has no hope of understanding Appalachia.  An outsider to Appalachia reading this book will discover that Appalachia is a beautiful place which no outsider, including the outsider reading this book, will ever understand.  Understanding is not the same thing as knowing the facts about a place.  Understanding is something which happens in the bones, in the roots of the soul.  At best, the outsider reading this book can only stare at the beauty of Appalachia.  And Appalachia is surely a beautiful place, even if the outsider will never understand it.

I was recently having a conversation with an Easterner.  It came up that I was from California, so the conversation turned to being a Californian in the East.  I noted that it was just different out here, that California was a different (and better) place, that whenever I am back in California, it feels like home, and that no place else feels like that.  The person to whom I was talking was recently married; his wife was from California.  He looked a bit surprised when I was talking about California.  He said that his wife also talks about how California is different than the East, but every time he asks her how, she can never really articulate it.  So he asked me.  I tried to articulate it.  I failed miserably.  I cannot explain California.  It is just different, Other.  And if you aren’t from California, I don’t think you will ever understand. 

Appalachia is like that.  Prodigal Summer makes that clear.  After reading this novel, I am a bit in awe of Appalachia.  I can understand why someone from there would be in love with the place.  But, if this novel is any indication, such love can be a bit of a love/hate relationship.  What if you are from Appalachia, deeply in love with Appalachia, but don’t feel quite at home in Appalachia because you aren’t just like the rest of the Natives.  What if you love Appalachia, but think Appalachia is just too small, too narrow, a stage on which to play?  You want Appalachia to change, to become modern, but then again, the idea of Appalachia changing, become more modern, would destroy everything that you love about Appalachia, everything that makes Appalachia Appalachia.  There is no solution to this problem.  And an outsider, someone from, say, California, has no hope of ever really understanding the conflict.  But, nonetheless, said person from California can say that Appalachia sure is a beautiful place.  I learned that in Prodigal Summer.

Prodigal Summer, the novel, is really three separate interwoven stories.  The stories don’t meet much—characters from one story occasionally show up as minor background characters in other stories—until the end at which point the three stories become somewhat one.  The meeting at the end isn’t terribly important, however.  The stories can be taken on their own.  First, there is the story of a Park ranger and an itinerant hunter (“Predators”); second there is the story of a young widow who has just inherited the family farm which her husband had inherited (“Moth Love”); third there is the story of an Old Timer and his interaction with his neighbor who has strange new ideas (“Old Chestnuts”).  None of those description, by the way, really describes the stories—but, it would take too long in an already too long blog post to elaborate.

The honest review of the novel: the three stories are not equally good.  I really liked “Old Chestnuts”—charming and witty.  “Moth Love” was pretty good.  “Predators” was tedious, very tedious. I found myself stopping every time I got to a “Predators” section.  Picking up the book again, I would plow through that chapter, looking forward to the other two stories.   Kingsolver writes well when she isn’t preaching—she preaches too much—yeah, yeah, I get it: hunting wolves is bad.  Killing things at the top of the food chain is bad.  Can we please just get back to the part which make me think Appalachia is a beautiful place?

And, that in the end is what makes this book worth reading.  The stories aren’t really the point.  The point is the location is a wonderful, enchanting, and somewhat maddening place.

I do hope the giver of the book will forgive me for what is undoubtedly a painfully insufficient review.

And, can I end on a personal note?  Thank you for the book.  It means a lot to me that you gave me this particular book.