I particularly appreciated that Deanna is not a lonely spinster type, and that she loves the solitude – or, rather, the human solitude. Each of the characters has enormous depth, including most of the many secondary characters, and Kingsolver unfolds this in a leisurely way over the course of the book. He has an ongoing enmity with his neighbour Nannie, who grows organic apples and hates pesticides.

Garnett, an old and widowed man whose remaining passion is cultivating chestnut trees to try to restore the lineage of the extinct American Chestnut.

As the oldest brother, he has the most land – and Lusa is used to an urban life, where she was an entomologist. Lusa (pronounced Luther) has recently moved to the area, living with her husband Cole and feeling ostracised by his extensive family.Her role is to protect the area, and she is very content without human intervention – which is, of course, exactly what she gets in the form of a passing young man… Deanna, a woman who lives alone in the mountains, working as a park ranger, fascinated by predators.It covers a single summer, transformative for each of them in different ways. Rather, these are tales of three people living different lives in the same broad area in Virginia. Unlike many books with multiple narratives, these weren’t separate perspectives on the same central story. I didn’t know a lot about it, except that it had multiple narratives.

Well, I ended up kicking myself for that, didn’t I?Īfter asking around, I decided to give Prodigal Summer (2000) a go – and I also decided (shelf space still an issue) to listen to the audiobook, read by Kingsolver herself. Mostly because they’re usually chunksters, and take up too much room on my limited shelves. I wouldn’t have read Pigs in Heaven if it weren’t for A Century of Books, and I was glad to find it still on my shelf – as I’d got rid of a few Kingsolver novels when I moved house. Having surprised myself by how I loved Pigs in Heaven last year, I was keen to read more by Barbara Kingsolver.

The prodigal summer