Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Oh, Barbara. Have you ever had a friend who just love, but she can't get out of her own way? This is how I'm starting to feel about Barbara Kingsolver's writing. She is so talented. She's funny and smart and insightful. And she just can't get out of her own way!! Once upon a time, Barbara Kingsolver wrote these amazing novels, exciting and emotionally powerful and page turners in the most exciting way; page turners because of the ideas inside them, not because of cheap thrills. Pigs in Heaven was a suspense novel about adoption and cultural appropriation; Poisonwood Bible about missionaries imposing their will in foreign countries. I say this because Ms. Kingsolver has always written about "politically correct' topics, she has always written with an agenda, but she used to be able to do it so skillfully that you didn't mind. And hey. I'm an easy target. I share all her beliefs! I shouldn't mind being lectured, I happily read op eds at the NY Times all the time! But her last several novels have made me so frustrated, they've barely bothered to be books at all, they've just been lectures thinly disguised. I was so so hopeful that this one would be different, the advance word promised a return to form. So I started reading with great glee. And yes. All the best of Barbara Kingsolver is there! She can create incredible worlds, in this case, two families living a century apart, sharing one disastrous house in one deeply flawed neighborhood. There is Willa, living such a perfect archeyptal life of the failing middle class family; and Thatcher, living at the dawn of the scientific age, when Darwinism and feminism are each just coming into view. The novel alternates chapters between these two stories, two families living in the same falling-apart home. (This is as subtle as the novel gets.) She also is more funny than she often gets credit for; Polly, the budding feminist in Thatcher's house, interacting with her older sister Rose, a traditionalist, is funny! Willa's befuddlement at her incredibly PC daughter, and the occasional way that she deflates her daughter's self righteousness, is also funny. And of course, Ms. Kingsolver is in her sweet spot when writing about science, and the scientific discoveries taking place in Thatcher's time frame, with the eccentric female scientist who drives much of that story. I wonder if the novel had stayed in the past, if it might have worked a little bit better. Because, sigh, in the present day scenes it just feels like a series of lectures. There is a dinner conversation in which the characters all debate the economy; another chapter dedicated to the failing health care system; another chapter dedicated to how hard it is to make a living in the gig economy; yes we get it! Everything is terrible! What feels frustrating about this is the sense that Ms. Kingsolver thinks she is teaching me something I didn't know, like a parent hiding vegetables in the mac and cheese. I would probably be okay with that if it tasted good, but it is just so obvious, that maybe that is what bothers me. Does she think I won't notice that I've been lectured to for an entire chapter? About something that I already know? Anyway. I'm giving her four stars because....well, because I guess I found it less offensive than Lacuna, and also because, to be honest, my expectations for her have declined through the years. I liked the Thatcher chapters, and I skimmed the lectures, and I also recognize that at this point, she's unlikely to change.