Reading Pathways: Barbara Kingsolver | Book Riot

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Steph Auteri is a journalist who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her extra artistic work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, below the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she or he is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, “The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart,” revealed in Southwest Review, was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021. She additionally writes bookish stuff right here and on the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the founding father of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, cat snuggling, and staring on the birds in her yard feeder. You can study extra at stephauteri.com and observe her on Insta/Threads at @stephauteri.

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I can’t bear in mind the primary ebook of hers I learn — the one which made me understand that, for the subsequent 25+ years, I might observe her wherever — however that’s as a result of all of Barbara Kingsolver’s books handle to make me really feel some sort of approach. And for a time there, again once I was in my late teenagers/early 20s, I used to be studying as many as I may get my fingers on, all in fast succession.

Twenty-five years later, I can’t assist feeling validated. This previous spring, Kingsolver was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her most up-to-date novel, Demon Copperhead, and it appears everyone seems to be contemplating the title for his or her ebook golf equipment and bedside tables.

Demon Copperhead is a doorstopper of a ebook, a contemporary retelling of David Copperfield that gives a glimpse of what life is like for these touched by institutional poverty, and by the opioid epidemic, within the mountains of southern Appalachia. In this ebook, Kingsolver does what she’s at all times finished greatest: She gives a lush, sweeping, participating narrative that manages to interrogate bigger cultural and systemic points in a approach that’s not heavy-handed or overbearing.

But that’s not even what drew me to her work within the first place. Rather, I’ve at all times admired her capability to make me fall in love with locations I’ve by no means seen. As a stubbornly indoorsy particular person, her work however makes me expertise a reverence for our pure world that I discover tough to copy once I’m soaking in my very own boob sweat in my yard.

Kingsolver has revealed 17 books since 1988, and I’ve greater than half of them on my bookshelf, which made this put up extraordinarily tough to jot down. (I do know this might sound outrageous, however I’m not allowed to say, “Here! Read these 16 books first!”) After a lot deliberation, listed below are the titles I imagine present a really perfect entry level into her work.

Small Wonder

I had a bitch of a time making an attempt to determine between Small Wonder and High Tide in Tucson for this number-one slot. Both titles are private essay collections which have probably the most unbelievable sense of place, and the latter fueled a lifelong preoccupation with Arizona. But once I flipped again via my copies of each, it was Small Wonder (2002) that was stuffed with dog-eared pages and underlined passages. One such passage: “The sight of a vermilion flycatcher leaves us breathless every time—he’s not just a bird, he’s a punctuation mark on the air, printed in red ink, read out loud as a gasp.” I imply…am I obsessive about this from a writerly standpoint? Maybe. But this group of essays which might be meant as “an extended love song to the world we still have” ably introduces readers to the Barbara Kingsolver ethos, one marked by awe and marvel for the world we reside in, and a deep consciousness of all of the methods by which we’re failing it.

Prodigal Summer

Kingsolver simply strikes forwards and backwards between fiction and nonfiction. And whereas I’ve lengthy leaned towards a desire for narrative nonfiction, the novel Prodigal Summer (2000) stays my favourite of her books. This multiple-perspective novel bops forwards and backwards between its three fundamental protagonists, every of whom resides within the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. As we observe together with their loosely related tales, we’re taken on a journey of affection, loneliness, and connection — between people, sure, but in addition between people and nature. Again, that is Kingsolver’s pet subject (the methods by which we work together with the pure world, for higher or for worse), and this explicit story displays on it so skillfully, whereas additionally bringing the entire feels.

The Poisonwood Bible

My god, this closing slot was much more tough to fill than the primary one. I needed merely to throw in my different favourite of hers (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), however since this weblog sequence is meant to behave as an introduction to new-to-you authors, I lastly decided that it made extra sense to incorporate what felt just like the true predecessor to the award-winning Demon Copperhead. As together with her most up-to-date ebook, The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is an epic story that spans lifetimes and tackles large subjects. It follows a missionary household that strikes to postcolonial Africa in 1959, a transfer that proves to be their undoing. Touching upon colonialism and culpability, the ebook presents the views of the 5 members of the family who adopted their patriarch on his flawed mission.

Looking for extra really useful books from a few of our favourite authors? Check out Book Riot’s complete Reading Pathways sequence. Or for extra books to stoke your love affair with the nice outdoor, attempt my put up on how an indoorsy reader fell for the outside, or try this listing of nonfiction books about nature.