State of Wonder

[b:State of Wonder|9118135|State of Wonder|Ann Patchett|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1299702447s/9118135.jpg|14893776] is what novels should be: completely absorbing, transporting you to another place, leaving you moist-eyed at the end. Usually, I am more taken with the writing in a book but this one was all about plot and characters as they adapted to their fantastic Amazonian world. Imaginative and interesting scientific bits about snakes, birds, fertility and malaria. I think she's topped [b:Bel Canto|5826|Bel Canto|Ann Patchett|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165551537s/5826.jpg|859342]

There is something hypnotic about this book. Normally the premise wouldn’t appeal to me; a pharmacy company sends one of its doctors into the Brazilian Amazon to check on the research progress of a miracle drug. Nothing in that sounds like something I’d love, but since it was written by Ann Patchett it was an absolute must for me. I haven’t loved all of her books, but I have enjoyed most of them a loved a few. That being said, I dove into this one with some reservations that I soon discovered were completely unfounded.

Dr. Marina Singh finds out that her colleague Anders Eckman has died in Brazil after being sent by their company to find the illusive Dr. Annick Swenson. Singh finds herself in the strange position of being sent to show more confirm Eckman’s death and finish the job he started. The novel is slow going, its pages sometimes feeling as heavy as the humidity in that tropical culture. Nothing is rushed and yet Patchett draws you in with a heady mixture of curiosity and dread. The writing in so enthralling that it’s almost easy to forget the plot in favor of discovering each new paragraph as its own entity.

The book has aptly been compared to Heart of Darkness, but unlike that novel I cared much more deeply about the characters in this one. The cold and practical Dr. Swenson was one of the most fascinating characters I’ve come across in a long time. In fact it was my love for some of those relationships that made me struggle with the ending. I didn’t dislike it; it was just hard to process.

I also want to note that everyone was right and the audio version. It’s read by Hope Davis and it was incredible. I’m not sure I would have loved it as much if I’d just read a hardcopy the first time around.

BOTTOM LINE: It’s a beautiful book and I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about these characters for a long time. It’s hard to explain exactly why it’s so powerful, but I will be trusting in Patchett’s storytelling ability as long as she is writing. show less

In State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (this is the first of her novels I’ve read) Maria Singh works for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota and the last place she wants to go is Brazil, in particular the tributary of the Amazon where her good friend and colleague Anders Eckman has just met his death. But Maria is under a double obligation – to Anders’ wife and three sons, to whom she has to relay the scant news of what happened to him, and to her boss who is responsible for sending Anders to the research outpost in the jungle to investigate why work there has stalled.

It’s already an intriguing premise, and by the time Marina is on her way a few
more layers of interest have been added. Her boss Jim Fox is also her
clandestine show more lover, and the woman she is to locate and interrogate is her former teacher and mentor Dr. Swenson, a woman both admired and feared by all her students and under whose tutelage Marina made a horrific medical blunder from
which her professional self-esteem has never recovered.

I loved this book so much it’s hard to dissect it and work out what makes it so good, except that I instantly felt ‘in the skin’ of the main character, who presents a calm and purposeful exterior to colleagues but reveals to the reader the sources of her frequent nightmares. These nightmares are heightened by taking an
anti-malarial drug that forces her to choose between the physical protection it
offers and her sanity. I particularly liked the episode on her flight to Manaus
where memories jostle with waking nightmares and the mundane irritations of air travel, revealing the mish-mash of fear and confusion in which she is trapped.

In Manaus she immediately falls victim to a fever which nearly kills her, but with her lover urging her on (from the safety of his office in Minnesota) she continues her journey to her personal heart of darkness. The fact that her luggage
is repeatedly lost or stolen means that she has to face her demons without even a toothbrush to connect her to civilisation.

The descriptions of the jungle and its discomforts are as vivid as anything in Poisonwood Bible, but seen entirely through the eyes of a woman who is terrified of being where she is and increasingly angry with those who have put her there.

Marina’s journey does eventually take her beyond fear and beyond anger to self-discovery and self-belief. But it’s her initial vulnerability and the author’s ability to put us insideMarina’s head that got this reader hooked.

For all I know the science in the book may be as far-fetched as one reviewer argues, but for me there wasn’t the slightest shadow of disbelief, and I was only sorry that a great read came to an end in a tidy 300 or so pages, when for me the story had a real epic quality. show less

In Ann Patchett’s newest novel, a reserved pharmacologist from Minnesota is sent on a mission into the Amazon to retrieve information about the unexplained death of her colleague, and about the development of a revolutionary fertility drug. After innumerable mishaps, Marina finds herself living among the Lakashi, an indigenous Amazonian tribe whose women continue bearing healthy children well into their seventies. At the helm of the scientific team researching the Lakashi and developing the drug is Dr. Annick Swenson, an imposing, dictatorial figure who has no interest in bowing to the requests of the drug company that employs her and Marina.

This novel is even better that Patchett’s excellent Bel Canto; the earlier book suffered show more from her seeming inability to create an unlikable character. In Dr. Swenson, Patchett has created a deliciously mean antagonist whose steely gaze and cold immorality will make you squirm in your seat. But even Swenson becomes human in Patchett’s complex rendering; she is a tremendous character who devours the scenery around her. This is a gorgeously detailed book, and Patchett’s great strength is in her ability to make the mundane feel exotic, and the exotic mundane. State of Wonder begins at a leisurely pace but picks up quickly midway through, until you find yourself in its final, thrilling chapters, unable to put it down. show less

There's a lot to like in this book. The writing is beautiful and sections of it are almost seductive in a way that leaves you soothed and calm. There's a mixture of hope and expectation and also melancholy.

Marina Singh gets sent to the Amazon to chase up on a researcher who's being paid by her company and isn't quite so keen on keeping them updated. She's also trying to trace her colleague, who was sent on the same mission some months ago, but has now been reported dead. the first section is told very much with Marina & her company's view point in prominent position - Dr Swenson isn't playing ball, the company is paying her (not quite from the goodness of its heart, but with honourable intentions projected) and she's not telling them show more what's going on. Dr Swenson also has a past connection with Marina, which Marina fails to mention, partly as it doesn't reflect well on her either.
but once Marina gets to the Amazon, she's held up by a couple that are clearly protecting Dr Swenson and keeping her location secret. Now the dynamic shifts and it's the big bad pharma company trying to rape the Amazon of its riches and the poor, hard working, noble Dr Swenson is doing her best.
Again the scene shifts once Marina actually gets to the research site. And this is where I think the book really shines. There are so many laers gradually revealed, and each shows the previous positions as fabrications, the truth is always more complicated. There are moral and ethical issues at play here, with some vastly conflicting views being presented. Marina takes a proactive view of what a doctor should do in this situation, whereas Dr Swenson is very much more distant, but has a justifiable reason for taking that stance.

I felt the ending was, if anything, rushed. Suddenly you're from the jungle to Minnesota in a few pages and some things are left hanging in the breeze. It wasn't the ending I expected, I also thought it was, in some regards, a bit too neat and tidy, but I certainly didn't see it coming. I liked this, in places I liked this a lot, but I didn't love it. show less

Magical realism meets the Heart of Darkness in Ann Patchett''s latest novel about a research scientist working for a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh, who ventures into the Amazon in search of the reasons for a colleague's death. The keeper of the secret is one Dr. Annick Swenson a 70-something researcher (and once our heroine's instructor in medical school) who is part altruist, part monster & a full-time narcissist whose vision of a drug that will not only infinitely prolong fertility among women, but will also provide protection from malaria, drives her every action.

Marina finds herself living in a landscape right out of H. Rider Haggard, replete with cannibals brandishing poison arrows, magical mushrooms and a tribe of native show more inhabitants who charm as well as exasperate. Her journey from wanting to get out as fast as possible, to almost considering to remain forever reveals how a person can get charmed by a magical idea until reality sets in. show less

”…{H}er desire for the impossible eclipsed every piece of science she had ever known.” (page 3)

And here, at the very beginning, the reader is presented with a central tension of the book: science and creativity, the objective and subjective, rationality, emotion, empiricism, feeling… How do we reconcile two sides of a dichotomy? Can we even do such a thing? No plot summary from me (it’ll make it sound boring!), instead, I will laud Patchett’s gorgeous writing and her lush, evocative language.

Describing the air in Brazil: ”The outside air was heavy enough to be bitten and chewed. Never had Marina’s lungs taken in so much oxygen, so much moisture. With every inhalation she felt she was introducing unseen particles of plant show more life into her body, tiny spores that bedded down in between her cilia and set about taking root.”

Describing the impenetrable darkness before her eyes adjust: ”In an instant the veil of insects lifted and Marina saw nothing as she had never seen nothing before. It was as if God Himself had turned out the lights, every last one, and left them in the gaping darkness of His abandonment… Beyond the spectrum of darkness she saw the bright stars scattered across the table of the night sky and felt as if she had never seen such things as stars before. She did not know enough numbers to count them, and even if she did, the stars could not be separated one from the other, the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts. She saw the textbook of constellations, the heroes of mythology posing on fields of ink. She could see the milkiness in everything now, the way the sky was spread over with light.”

Where Joseph Conrad’s Marlowe ventures into the heart of darkness and finds brutality, Patchett’s feminist re-telling of the ancient quest myth leads to the opposite. Conrad depicts man’s ultimate power as the subjugation of one to another; Patchett sees ultimate power in the ability to bring forth life and the unstoppable turning of the circle of creation. But [State of Wonder] is far from an empty paean to the superiority of women, native tribes, and pristine environments. Patchett raises fascinating questions of right and wrong, situational ethics and moral subjectivity, and what it means to see the world in black and white. Good stuff. show less