The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

Review

I had a similar feeling about this book as I've had about previous Barbara Kingsolver books I've read. While reading it, I was drawn along nicely by the story. The writing was beautiful and evocative. The characters were well-rendered and had some real depth and heft to them. The plot took on some wonderfully complex issues. And yet, somehow, I don't find myself looking back on the book with anything like that "wow" feeling that I get when I've just finished something truly great. I think the issue with the story was that all of its dark depths are "off-screen," as it were. We hear about the terrors that Esperanza and Esteban go through in Guatemala; we reconstruct, later, the abuses Turtle suffered as a baby; we imagine the life that Mattie must lead: but the protagonist kind of floats along through them without really being tested. Taylor's greatest struggle, whether she can really be Turtle's mother, doesn't seem rendered with the same urgency and weight as the other off-screen stories, so the whole book feels a little lighter to me than it should.