Animal Dreams — Barbara Kingslover
This book is awesomely well written, deeply human, and ultimately also a little bit of a disappointment to me.
It’s basically the study of a woman trying to find a home in the world. After failing at or tiring of several different things, Codi Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona to care for her ailing father. There’s a former boyfriend, secrets from her past, reconciliation with her father, etc. It’s all very chick-lit, I must say, but also realistically modern very well written. Certain passages are almost painfully maudlin, yet the author is sufficiently talented to make them work:
When he gets them home they sit hugging each-other on the davenport, wrapped in the black-and-red crocheted afghan. They won’t stop shaking. They want to know if the baby coyotes died. If animals go to heaven. He has no answers. … The tears stream out until the afghan is wet and he thinks there will be no more fluid in them to run the blood cells through their veins. He makes them drink orange juice. God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
And yet, as a story of belonging, it all falls somewhat flat for me. The twists and turns as Codi rediscovers her past are wonderful, if slightly contrived in places. That’s all fine, and good and emotional reading. What I cannot forgive is the revealation that Codi is quite literally family, descended from the original settlers of Grace.
I held the two [baby] photographs up to the light, mystified. … [My father] was doing exactly the opposite of setting himself apart. He was proving we belonged here, were as pure as anybody in grace. Both sides. Our mother’s name was Althea….
“We’re puro,” I said out loud.
I object to this for two reasons. First, all our protagonist has factually discovered is that she shares some DNA, distantly, with the other inhabitants of the town. Second, even you you are of the mind that shared genetic material makes you family, I still think the author has greatly lessened her work by taking the easy way out. Protagonist returns to hometown. Protagonist feels she doesn’t belong anywhere. Protagonist discovers she has relatives in town. Wow, complex emotional problem solved!
In real life, it doesn’t work like that. Things seldom wrap up so neatly in reality. Instead, each person must learn to how to belong despite all the reasons why not. True, family, friends and community are all important, but one can be groundless in the midst of love just as easily as one can be rich and miserable. Belonging is within, not without, and it is one of the very hardest skills to learn, but when you know how to be at home you can do it almost anywhere. By stacking the deck so that everything works out, the author has cheated us out of seeing how belonging really happens.
Still, most of the rest of the novel is wonderful; Codi does learn some interesting lessons, and her reconiciliations with her senile father are lovingly rendered. Most poignant of all, perhaps, is Codi’s struggle to find some sort of deeper meaning, to come to terms with all the horrible things that are happening in the world and discover how she might possibly live with them. Codi wants a purpose in life. The author illustrates this most deftly through the character of a greatly admired younger sister, who we know only through flashbacks and letters. The sister has gone off to work with Nicaraguan refugees and is ultimately killed in American-supported violence there. One of her last letters reads:
I am like God, Codi? Like GOD? Give me a break. If I get another letter that mentions SAVING THE WORLD, I am sending you, by return mail, a letter bomb. Codi, please. I’ve got things to do.
You say you’re not a moral person. What a copout. Sometime, whne I wasn’t looking, something happened to make you think you were bad. … You think you’re no good, so you can’t do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It’s the other way around, it’s what you dothat makes you who you are.
…You’re thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the underside of leaves to see what’s been there, figuring out what to do that won’t clear a path for worse problems next week. Right now that’s what I do. You ask why I’m not afraid of loving and losing, and that’s my answer. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. That daily work– that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children’s bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don’t get lost.
Codi, here’s what I’ve decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope, not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
…I can’t tell you how good it feels. I wish you’d stop beating yourself up for being selfish, and really be selfish, Codi.
I want to edit this book, to cut out the idealization of small town life and the too-perfect romance and the unrealistic coincidences. Still, it has so much honesty, in places, that I feel it was certainly worth my time to read. And it really is beautifully written.
