State of Wonder

Hello readers and welcome to the first installment of the (revamped) 2019 Reading List! Alright, so it’s technically the third month into the year but who’s counting? I’ve spent the last few months wrapping up the 2018 Reading List, reflecting on it, and posting a re-worked short story to the blog. Then I did a close read of the first book on this year’s list: Ann Patchett’s 2011 novel State of Wonder.

This book was (actually!) recommended to me by my editor, and I can see why. Patchett’s luminous sentences, coupled with radiant scene description and phenomenal character interactions (Annick Swenson was one of the best fictional people I have encountered in some time) made this a very fascinating read. The story follows Dr. Marina Singh as she travels to the Amazon region of Brazil for a large pharmaceutical company in search of her lost (and presumed dead) lab partner and friend, as well as the aforementioned Dr. Swenson, who is working on a fertility cure derived from a compound in the jungle. While it takes about a hundred pages to get to that point, once the narrative settles it is quite compelling, and Patchett throws in a few plot twists at the end I have to admit I did not see coming. The story does just seem to “end” and while I’m not sure the resolution is quite earned, it is interesting to see the end result of Dr. Singh’s journey. Now I’m going to delve into what I didn’t like about the novel before giving my ultimate recommendation.

While the story was good enough on its own merits, the gorgeous sentences were overwhelmed at times by a complete and utter over-use of adverbs. For a piece of advice that I thought was well known (still the number one thing I remember from Stephen King’s On Writing), Patchett seems to have never heard of it, making worse some lines (and speaking parts) with needless “ly” modifiers. There were also some confusing structural issues, involving Dr. Singh recalling bits of her past when I wasn’t quite sure we had shifted back. But this may have been a function of me not picking up the clues as well as I should have. The largest issues I had with the novel were the times the plot did tip-toe up to the “white savior” line. As Conrad before her, Patchett seems not to have much of a place for the native Indians of her story, except to show them using the fertility cure, braiding hair, or giving birth. Even Dr. Swenson, who has been studying the Lakashi people for most of her life is treated like a deity rather than a researcher. This all being said, Patchett also does a good job weaving in thematic notions of “Big Pharma exploiting the rainforest,” which in real life has turned into a bit of a plunderous game and is worth writing and speaking about in public.

So would I recommend this title? Overall I’d have to say yes, because it was a great read. (And while I’m not supposed to be veering in this direction anymore, there are some good lessons for writers within this novel as well.) If you can get past some of the issues in the prose you will be rewarded with a great story and characters. I hope to read another of Patchett’s books in the future.

Up next I’m continuing in the contemporary female author way by getting to a title I didn’t make time for last year: Emma Cline’s 2016 debut The Girls. Stay tuned to this here blogspace for more of the (revamped) 2019 Reading List!