I am not sure what I felt was missing from this novel. I liked the story, a woman returning to her small hometown to restart her messy life and also take care of her estranged father. Her sister on the other hand has just left for Nicaragua to fight against injustice. All the characters were believable, the story was nuanced and unique. But the novel to me read like the account of a friend and not like a literary piece. And even though this made me feel invested in the lives of the characters, to me it was missing another layer. The novel was written in the 90’s and it does very much feel rooted in that time, both in what the story is about and in the way that it was written. Maybe I’m used to a more modern writing style or maybe I have read too many books exactly like this but I did not like it as much as I wanted to. To me, this was a very good book in theory but when it actually came to reading it I felt a disconnect.
I read this for #theunreadshelfproject2018 and it had been on my shelf for at least two years. I had been reintroduced to Kingsolver after listening to a podcast about her, mainly about her garden. It reminded me that I had read The Bean Trees in Highschool when I was living in Canada. But after I had purchased the book it was only now that I had gotten around to reading it.
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