Ann Patchett
State of Wonder
New York: Harper Perennial, 2012.
“The news of Anders Eckman’s death came by way of Aerogram .
. . begins the novel State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett. So, also begins, the
quest of Dr. Marina Singh, failed resident, gifted research for a major drug
company. Yet, this novel is not so much
about Dr. Singh as it is about Dr. Annick Swenson, a Kurtz-like character who
leads a tribe of diverse and interwoven Natives and researchers through a dance
as mysterious and tangled as the tropical vines and giant anaconda snakes that
weave their way through the jungle.
I had a dear friend who used to write me about twice a
month, for 14 years from England. She used Aerograms. The last Aerogram was from her daughter,
telling me that my friend had died. Good
news apparently does not come in flimsy, near transparent envelopes. But, they do lead Marina on an Odyssey up and down the Amazon
in search of Dr. Annick Swenson, her old professor, and in search of the truth
of what really happened to Anders Eckman.
The similarities to Heart
of Darkness do not end there; in fact, Dr. Swenson is even more enigmatic
than Kurtz, though Marina, who suffers from malaria and drug induced
nightmares, is a far cry from Marlowe and the Narrator of Conrad’s classic.
Yet, Marina’s
mission is similar; she is supposed to find the elusive Dr. Swenson, check on
the progress of the research she is doing, and bring back Dr. Anders Eckman,
presumably dead and not alive. By the end, she has more in common with the
people who make the jungle their home, and with a small, deaf native boy who
arouses maternal instincts in her in ways that working with newborns could not.
Dr. Swenson, who rules her tribe, the Lakashi, a little like
Dr. Moreau ruled the creatures on his island, is at best, an ambivalent
character, at worse, a cruel despot and renegade doctor, the kind malpractice
lawsuits are meant to save us from. She
is researching the bark of a certain tree, and certain magic blue mushrooms
that, among other things, make it possible for women of the tribe to bear
children into their 70s. By the end of
her study, she queries whether her hypothesis should not be whether women over
50 can have children, but whether they should. She can quell the Lakashi with a
mere look, and she is as pale and Scandinavian as they are swarthy and
indigenous to the jungle. Coleridge might recognize her as his creation, Death
in Life from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
Conrad would say it was their “restraint” that made the Lakashi care for
her, cater to her, tolerate her and her researchers, and take part in her
experiments. Another nearby tribe “rains arrows” directly on the characters
come to find Dr. Swenson and rescue Marina,
and the raining arrows could have been shot directly from the pages of Heart of Darkness. This tribe is known
to practice cannibalism, and is not as tolerant or enamored of Dr. Swenson and
her entourage. They are hostile, in
part, because she has taken something that belongs to them, something that Marina must give to them
later to save another character.
The novel’s plot, too, twists like the tropical plants that
can ensnare innocent bystanders, if there are any innocent bystanders in this
book. The tension among the characters
is palpable, enough to form a giant spiders’ web of lies and deceit based
against the endeavors of a corporate drug company, accused at least by cliché,
of, well, lies and deceit.
In one of the surrealistic scenes that are typical to the
plot, Marina,
who keeps having her Western clothes and cell phones stolen from her, dresses
in Lakashi smocks, wears Native jewelry, and chews the bark as they do in
ritualistic style each morning.
Throughout the book, chapter by chapter, the characters’
individual horrors come to claim them, sometimes without reason. Marina’s
horror is the ambivalence of her own life, the fear that Dr. Swenson will
remember she was her student who failed in an operation and maimed a baby, or
that she will not remember her. Marina
also fears for the future of the romance she is having with her employer Mr.
Fox. When he arrives by boat at Dr.
Swenson’s jungle compound, Marina
is not sure if he is there to rescue her, or to check on the progress of the
expensive research his company has been funding. The reader keeps waiting for someone to pass
the grape Kool-Aid.
There also shades of Cry the Beloved Country, since several
characters follow each other into the Amazon to find Dr. Swenson, then Marina,
then Eckman, only to disappear, and have someone else go into the jungle to try
to find them.
In one memorable scene, one almost expects one of the
characters to paraphrase something on the order of, “Dr. Livingstone, I
presume!”
Yet, I still have to say this is a good novel. My criteria for calling a book a good novel
is that I can’t predict the ending.
Poetic language coupled with riddles that are not easy to solve are
irresistible to me. The combination of
genres, Sci-Fi, mystery, suspense, poetry, horror, scientific nonfiction,
medical discourse, and classic hero’s quest are as varied as the plants,
animals, and people that live in the jungle.
This book is not for literary tourists, just as the heart of the jungle,
the heart of darkness itself, is not for casual folks on vacation.
Jodi Picoult
The Pact [a love
story]
New York:
Quill-William Morrow, 1998
Don’t be fooled by the title; this so-called love story
should require “saying your sorry” about a million times.
Picoult often takes on subjects that other writers shy away
from, and then has her characters live them in such a way that her readers
respond to them the way they might respond to the prince and princess who live
happily ever after in a fairy tale.
In The Pact, one
of the most important personalities in the book is dead. Death notwithstanding,
she is also one of the most controlling, and the cruelest character.
As far as the plot itself, it does not appear at first to be
that unusual. Two affluent families,
once close, are driven apart and thrown together in bizarre ways after the
apparent murder/suicide involving their children, who have been together since
infancy.
As babies sharing a bassinet, Emily Gold falls asleep
clutching Christopher Harte’s tiny hand.
But, don’t be deceived by this almost saccharine sentimental
imagery. Picoult uses it not as a
portent of good things to come for these child sweethearts, but as a harbinger
of the choking hold Emily will have on Christopher, a hold so tight, that he
cannot refuse her anything, even if her desire is deadly and destructive.
As with Salem Falls
and House Rules, the law and
courtrooms become characters in themselves.
Picoult has an admirable command of the criminal justice system, from
arrest to trial and judgment. I’m not
sure she likes lawyers and law enforcement officials; they seem to be terribly
obtuse and single-minded in her books.
Yet, I went to law school, and I have to say I sometimes share the same
opinion. Real people defy legal
profiling, and motives are simply not that easy to understand. If they were, we might not have crime at all,
at least not the way it is defined in our statute books.
No horrible stone is left unturned in these pages;
pedophilia, murder, teen suicide, brutality behind bars, prisoners’ rights
violations, and family tragedy are all fodder for her pen. Yet, what keeps The Pact from descending into a cheap 21st century
retelling of Romeo and Juliet or soap
opera melodrama is that none of her characters end up acting the way we might
predict. The best TV shrink would be
stumped and left speechless by the turn of events, and the pact itself, the
other silent character in this complicated plot, is not necessarily between the
“star-crossed” teen lovers.
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