Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

How could this second-rate book get such good reviews? Marina has Ph.D. and MD. degrees, but she is so self-effacing that her boss/lover is referred to throughout the novel as Mr. Fox instead of by his first name. She lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and her character is as flat and affectless as the plains of the Midwest. Frankly, she seems too dumb to hold two advanced degrees, but she's about to change - right? - because she's going to be thrust into a hair-raising adventure deep in the heart of the Amazon. Well, no. We have anacondas, magic blue mushrooms, poisoned arrows, and Marina remains throughout all this excitement flat as a pancake and dumb as a stump. Marina could make a wrestling match with King Kong boring. I think we're supposed to understand that Marina changes, because, really, how could you not be changed by an anaconda?, but the character seems to be the same plodding zombie at the end of the book that she was at the beginning. I first really began wondering about the direction of the book when we arrive in Manaus. Marina meets the Bovenders, Dr. Swenson's gatekeepers, and - guess what? - the two of them are just as dull as Marina. These three boring people have many boring conversations. It's like Night of the Living Dead. Seriously, I was quite puzzled. What is Patchett playing at here? Is this intended to be a comedy of manners, but - alas - somehow the comedy was left out? Things do not improve when we reach the jungle. For one thing, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the inherent implausibility of the entire book. A group of scientists has essentially gone rogue in the jungle and the drug company funding the whole thing doesn't care? Yeah, right. It doesn't help at all that the characters in the jungle are, once again, boring, boring, boring. In fact, Dr. Swenson is the only character among the researchers who even has a personality, and the personality she has seems to have been borrowed from old TV medical shows. The last straw for me was when the disappearance of a character was misreported. Was there some good reason to lie about this disappearance? Well, no, it was convenient for the plot, and Patchett doesn't even bother to make it plausible. Grr. Whenever an author does something like this the entire book is ruined, at least for me. But, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert is right. The cover of the book is quite beautiful.