Small Wonder: Essays - Hardcover

Kingsolver, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060504072 ISBN 13: 9780060504076

Publisher: Harper, 2002

Synopsis

“Soulful and soul searching. . . a passionate invitation to readers to be part of the crowd that cares about the environment, peace, and family.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

In this moving essay collection, the acclaimed author of bestselling works such as Demon Copperhead and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world.

Whether Barbara Kingsolver is contemplating the Grand Canyon, her vegetable garden, motherhood, genetic engineering, or the future of a nation founded on the best of all human impulses, her writings are grounded in the belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers may lie in both those places.

Sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive, Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, The Bean Trees, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and Coyote’s Wild Home, a children’s book co-authored with Lily Kingsolver. She also collaborated with family members on the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received numerous awards and honors including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Demon Copperhead, the National Humanities Medal, and most recently, the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and its Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.

From the Back Cover

In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us out of one of history's darker moments an extended love song to the world we still have. From its opening parable gleaned from recent news about a lost child saved in an astonishing way, the book moves on to consider a world of surprising and hopeful prospects, ranging from an inventive conservation scheme in a remote jungle to the backyard flock of chickens tended by the author's small daughter.

Whether she is contemplating the Grand Canyon, her vegetable garden, motherhood, adolescence, genetic engineering, TV-watching, the history of civil rights, or the future of a nation founded on the best of all human impulses, these essays are grounded in the author's belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers may lie in those places, too. In the voice Kingsolver's readers have come to rely on—sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive—Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.

Reviews

This book of essays by Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, etc.) is like a visit from a cherished old friend. Conversation ranges from what Kingsolver ate on a trip to Japan to wonder over a news story about a she-bear who suckled a lost child to how it feels to be an American idealist living in a post-September 11 world. She tackles some sticky issues, among them the question of who is entitled to wave the American flag and why, and some possible reasons why our nation has been targeted for terror by angry fundamentalists and what we can do to ease our anxiety over the new reality while respecting the rest of planet Earth's inhabitants. Kingsolver has strong opinions, but has a gift for explaining what she thinks and how she arrived at her conclusions in a way that gives readers plenty of room to disagree comfortably. But Kingsolver's essays also reward her readers in other ways. As she puts it herself in "What Good Is a Story": "We are nothing if we can't respect our readers." Respect for the intelligence of her audience is apparent everywhere in this outstanding collection. Illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Don't be misled by the foreword and opening subject in novelist and essayist Kingsolver's new collection: this work is not all about our continuing anguish over September ll. Some of the essays do concern themselves with that fateful day and her reactions to it, but most are pieces on varied subjects written since her 1995 collection High Tide in Tucson. Some have been published before, like the three little gems Kingsolver co-wrote with her husband, Steven Hopp. The topics range from television to the homeless, Columbine to problems of writing about sex, poetry to the meaning of the flag. Throughout, Kingsolver seamlessly combines the personal and the political. Thus, an essay about her daughter Lily's chickens comments on world agriculture; watching a hummingbird build its nest becomes a springboard for informed and impassioned thinking about evolution and genetic engineering. Recommended for most collections in both academic and public libraries. Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Cherished novelist Kingsolver, author most recently of Prodigal Summer (2000), trusts in the power of the parable, an ancient and noble form that she uses with great skill and wisdom in her first essay collection since High Tide in Tucson (1995). This set of 19 penetrating autobiographical musings on humankind and how we treat each other and the rest of nature coalesced in the stunned aftermath of September 11. Grief, the struggle for understanding, and the recognition of the need for "reordered expectations" underlie each bracing reverie. Trained as a biologist and gifted in the art of storytelling, Kingsolver is able to draw on her knowledge of the wild--of evolution and biodiversity--as well as her feel for archetypes to bring into focus and dramatize the biological and social impact of our unexamined habits of consumption. Food, motherhood, gardening, literature, television, homelessness, globalization, scientific illiteracy, selfishness, and forgiveness all come under sharp and revelatory scrutiny. As does love of country: "Americans who read and think are patriots of the first order." Amen. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060504072
• ISBN 13: 9780060504076
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288