Revisiting Heaven

Pigs in Heaven is Barbara Kingsolver's sequel to The Bean Trees, which is my favorite of her books and possibly my favorite book ever. In The Bean Trees, we meet the fabulous characters of Taylor and Turtle Greer, along with a host of other quirky yet wholly real people. Pigs in Heaven continues the stories of many of those people and adds in a few more, this time giving more attention to Taylor's mother, Alice. Kingsolver's writing always works to promote social justice and environmental awareness, and some readers perceive this as preachy. While I wouldn't call it preachy, Pigs in Heaven does get a bit too dragged down into teaching us what is right, and at the same time it wraps things up just a little too neatly -- that said, the ending still made me cry. When I read it the first time, I loved this book, and thought it's not as strong as some of her other fiction, it remains enjoyable and satisfying.

Connected

I put Prodigal Summer on my to-be-reread list after reading somewhere (maybe on her website?) that this was Barbara Kingsolver's favorite of her books. I had read it shortly after it was first published, but I didn't remember it as being one of my favorites. So I wanted to go back and see what made her so proud of it. As a piece of literature, the book is rather lovely -- beautifully intertwining stories, plenty of symbolic elements, and a nice selection of observations on nature and human nature. I enjoyed the plot, though I still wouldn't call it my favorite of hers. I laughed out at several points, thanks to my favorite character, Garnett Walker (though I liked Lusa's storyline better), and other moments were heart-wrenchingly sad. So not yet a favorite, but I did gain a new appreciation of the novel's structure and complexity.