Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 10, 1991 TAG: 9102130015
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOAN SCHROEDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Barbara Kingsolver's second novel is rich in myth and symbol, narratively intricate, thematically ambitious, political and very brave. Fulfilling the promise of her first novel, "The Bean Trees," "Animal Dreams" takes on large moral questions and quite unapologetically turns them into literature: no small undertaking.
"I am the sister who didn't go to war," narrator Codi Noline says at the start of the novel. "I can only tell you my side of the story. Hallie is the one who went south, with her pickup truck and her crop-disease books and her heart dead set on a new world." Left behind by her younger sister, 6-foot Codi has come home to Grace, Ariz., to make peace with her father, Doc Homer, who is struggling with Alzheimer's disease.
She has a lot to sort through. Codi and her sister grew up in an eccentric household, wearing orthopedic oxfords and being "the smart girls" at school, outsiders in a tightly knit community tracing itself back to nine Spanish sisters. In addition to her preoccupied, detached physician-father, Codi left behind a dead baby, which she miscarried and then buried in her mother's black shawl at 16.
The baby's handsome father, Loyd Peregrina, remained in Grace, coming and going on the train he engineered. Inevitably he and Codi rekindle their relationship. Loyd gives to Codi a broad, much-needed root system as he shares with her his Navajo, Pueblo and Apache heritage. Some of the best writing in the novel is descriptive, as Codi and Loyd visit the Santa Rosalia Pueblo, making a snowy journey across several tribal reserves to reach the multilevel mesa village.
The novel has several back stories. One - Doc Homer's illness - is largely suggested rather than told about. Kingsolver allows Codi's father to recall his own past through the obscuring veil of warped memory; Codi herself, the reader suspects, does not have the emotional energy to intercede. The few scenes in which Codi and her father interact are painful in their futility as Doc Homer becomes increasingly confused. The struggle to make sense of her past, Kingsolver suggests, is as difficult for Codi as for her father.
"Animal Dreams" also touches on environmental and political exploitation. The town, dependent on orchards for its livelihood since the nearby copper mine shut down, is threatened by sulfuric-acid water pollution and river diversion. Not willing to leave their fate to political gamesmanship and state agencies, the women of the town (members of the Stitch-and-Bitch Club) begin making and selling fabulous peacock pinatas to finance their lobbying and attract publicity.
One wishes that Kingsolver had been less rushed and neat about resolving the economic and political questions. Sister Hallie's struggle to bring horticultural assistance to Nicaraguan farmers is revealed through her correspondence with Codi. It almost seems that the writer feels uncomfortable stepping too far away from Codi's internal narrative. But given the wide scope of the novel, perhaps she chose wisely.
One has to admire Kingsolver's ambition in taking on both intensely personal and broadly socio-political themes in the novel. That she gives several of the latter themes short shrift and facile wrap-up is unfortunate. But the passion with which she writes of them is enviable. Life, Kingsolver suggests, cannot be lived apolitically or detached from others. The struggle, then, is that of balance. There's little doubt that in books to come, Kingsolver will continue to refine - perhaps redefine - the literary/political novel.
Joan Schroeder is a Roanoke writer.
by CNB