Evan Sarah Epstein

I had a love/hate relationship with this book.  I’ve been slowly reading it between other books, 20 pages here, 50 pages there.  In the end I enjoyed it, but it was a rocky road getting there.

It seemed like Barbara Kingsolver got a free pass from her editor in the first couple chapters.  As if her name alone meant everything she wrote was amazing.  It was not – it was, simply poorly written.  But I trudged through because I’d heard so many good things about it.  And I am glad I did.  After a while, Kingsolver started to hit her stride and collect her thoughts in many an amusing chapter.

My biggest beef with the book as a whole were her daughter and husband’s sections.  Her daughter was 18 or 19-years-old when she contributed her sections… and it reads that way: Like a smug, know-it-all freshman in college (Hey, I’m not saying I would have done better at 19).  So, I decided to skip those sections.  Her husband’s sections, while well thought out, seemed to be kicking a dead horse so to speak.  I can appreciate that he and his family wanted to make sure the good readers of their book got the message, but as someone who was already clued into the situation prior to opening the book, it just started to sound preachy.  So I skipped those sections as well.

I did really enjoy reading about Kingsolver’s adventures in her garden, getting turkeys to mate and the realization that there are some things we just can’t grow in the northern hemisphere – and we really don’t want to live without, like coffee.  The chapter on tomato season was great and really made me want to can tomatoes.  I just might this year…

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