State of Wonder

If you are going to take on Heart of Darkness, one of the best books ever written (in my opinion), you better do a damn good job. To write a feminist Heart of Darkness is an interesting concept. While placing gender, a missing issue in Heart of Darkness, at the center of its inquiry, State of Wonder unfortunately loses sight of another, perhaps the crucial, element of intercultural encounter. The book constantly implies that brown lives aren't as important as white ones and, unlike Conrad, Patchett has no sense of moral outrage about that. I was on board with the book--which does a great job of mimicking the stifling, airless quality of Conrad's masterpiece for the contemporary world--until its implicit racism became explicit. And a show more truly awful ending. So good and then so inexplicably bad. What a pity. show less

Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder came up on my reading list at just the right time. I didn’t anticipate wanting to leave the setting of the book so quickly though. You see, State of Wonder primarily takes place in a jungle. I love rolling hills, forests, lakes and the beach. I do not love jungles.

The very first sentence brings news of death. Dr. Marina Singh’s pharmacological lab partner has died in the jungle while checking up on research being done by an enigmatic researcher. The widow wants more information and implores Marina to follow her deceased partner into the depths of the Amazon. Their boss also wants to find out what’s taking so long in the development of a new drug.

This isn’t my first Ann Patchett novel. I’ve read show more Bel Canto and Run. Looking back, I see that I gave them average ratings whereas many other readers and friends rate her work much higher. I did not understand Patchett’s skill as a writer until reading State of Wonder. I enjoyed this novel because of the characters, the pacing and the twists and turns. The final turn and ending will truly make you “wonder” what the heck happened. The enigmatic researcher, Dr. Swenson, is the heart of the novel and yet she doesn’t actually make an appearance until nearly halfway through the book. The mystery surrounding her and her motivations are slowly revealed. She is a manipulative woman, and I flipped back and forth a couple of times between loving and hating her.

I don’t like bugs or snakes, which is why jungles will never be on my list of places to visit. Patchett uses the jungle and its dangers as a way to create tension in the story. It’s that tension that compels you to read. show less

I’ve said this before, and it’s still true: the more I like a book, the harder it is to review it.

I don’t know what it is, exactly, about State of Wonder that I liked so much, but what I do know is that once I started it, I couldn’t put it down, and even when I wasn’t actively reading, I was often thinking about the characters.

The characters in this book are interesting and intricate, and not all of them are entirely likeable. I did quite like Marina; she was as brave as she was flawed, and I enjoyed her transition from the weary, scared American to someone who nearly fit in with the native Brazilians, living almost more comfortably with them than she did on her own in Minnesota.

I’m still intrigued by the story of the show more Martins and the Rapps, and how they allowed the Lakashi women to remain fertile for their entire lives. I was also fascinated by the description of the Lakashi and the Hummocca, and their lifestyles.

I did think that for Dr. Swenson to realize that Barbara’s vision of her father was actually Anders, still alive and being held by the Hummocca, was tenuous at best. I suppose it’s possible that she made that assumption because she was still unsure that he was even dead, but Marina certainly leapt to that conclusion and risked her own life and Easter’s on the basis of a pretty insubstantial conjecture. However, that didn’t really weaken the story for me, and I still loved it. Definitely one of my new favorites. show less

After finishing this book last night, I tried to think of titles that would be more compelling than the very bland "State of Wonder." The title tells nothing about the book and does not do justice to one of the most intriguing and thrilling novels I've read in a long time.

I wouldn't have picked up a book called "State of Wonder" had my mother not given it to me and recommended it highly.

It's a wonderful adventure story, masterfully told, about Dr. Marina Singh, a pharmacologist from Minnesota who travels to the Brazilian jungle to check up on an elusive doctor who's supposed to be developing a fertility drug.

I was seduced by the evocative description of Brazil, both of the city where Marina must wait for days, and the rain forest where show more the second half of the novel takes place. Patchett has created a rich cast of fascinating characters, including a bohemian Australian couple, a group of doctors who have devoted their lives to studying a jungle tribe, the tribal members themselves and a young deaf boy who wins all of their hearts.

The plot itself is exciting and raises ethical issues about pharmacology and colonialism. Besides trying to come up with a new title for the book, I was left with about a dozen questions about what happened to all the characters after the final page. In a good way. show less

"There was no clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it." (269)

Patchett is one of my favorite writers because she drops lines like this that carry heartfelt truths that transcend the specific narrative of the story. State of Wonder explores ethics, love, and what drives us as humans. The protagonist, Marina Singh, is on a hero's journey into the heart of the Amazon, but her return, and indeed her journey, morphs as the book progresses, making this an engaging adventure on top of a deeper character study. I do love endings that are happy, yet not ("bittersweet" doesn't really work here), but I could have done without the show more "comfort sex"

The moral high ground is a series of shifting tectonic plates in this novel, and that's what makes it such a wonderful read. show less

This is only the second book I’ve read by Patchett (the first being [Bel Canto], which I adored). While I wasn’t quite as taken with this book, it’s clear that Patchett’s a superb storyteller. Here, the first half of the book could have been shortened, the second half is stunning, and end is too abrupt and leaves just a few too many loose ends.

Somewhere in Brazil, Dr. Annick Swenson, an irascible, elusive, and brilliant physician, is hidden away in the bush working on a fertility drug which will allow woman to continue to bear children through old age. (Why the world would need this isn’t addressed except as a puzzle to be solved, for the profits to be made, and for the occasional woman who has waited too long to have show more children). The company footing the bill has sent researcher Anders to track down the doctor and pin down just how the work is going, but after 3 months they receive a curt note from Swenson that Anders has died and been buried in the jungle. Anders’s office-mate, a 40-something scientist with her own past run-ins with Swenson and a current affair with her widowed boss, is asked by said boss to follow Anders’s trail and finish his assignment. Swenson doesn’t want to be found, so this proves difficult, but eventually contact is made. That’s the first half of the book, and it does drag on a bit.

But the second half, in which Marina travels inland with Swenson to the native village she’s living with and testing, is fantastic. Herein lies a plot thick with one of my main interests: how the meeting of mutually inexplicable cultures leads to misunderstandings, disasters, and, sometimes, revelations.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the end of the story. The events themselves might make more sense if the author had taken the time to explore them as much as she did the main story, but the reader is left to reread the final few pages over and over trying to make sense, and it left a bad taste, given how the characters acted throughout the rest of the book. There is also a tiny bit of action which the careful reader will observe and understand, but its ramifications are not addressed at all, and I couldn’t tell if Patchett was leaving this as a bit of an Easter egg for the reader or just wrapped up the book too quickly to deal with it. (Sorry to be so vague, but it’s an event which would give away much too much to relate.) The reader will beg for a sequel(or even an epilogue), but I rather doubt one is planned.

Well worth the read. Patchett’s dialogue and invention of scenario are simply too wonderful to miss. show less

I know, I know, the character of Marina wasn't fleshed out and there were coincidences worthy of Dickens. And the end strained credibility. I don't care. I found this novel utterly engrossing; one of those books that makes you want to stay up all night and call in sick until you're done (a perfect choice for Do Nothing But Read Day!) Patchett's description of the Amazon jungle is so evocative that I found myself brushing bugs off my sleeves and looking under my bed for snakes. Plan to loan to a friend who is laid up; it's escapist and smart, just what the doctor ordered.