Barbara Kingsolver
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver alternates between the first-person voice of Codi Noline and the third-person voice of her father, Doc Homer. Codi returns to her small home town in Arizona, ostensibly to take care of her father who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer. In reality, she has come home seeking to find herself. Hired to teach at a local high school, she prefers to live in the home of a close school friend rather than with her father. Meanwhile, her younger sister, Hallie, has gone to Nicaragua to work with farmers and their families. Hallie is determined to make a positive difference in their lives even at the cost of putting her own life at risk since Nicaragua is in the throes of violent civil unrest. We hear Hallie’s voice through Codi’s flashbacks and through the letters she sends to Codi.
Codi’s narrative describes her feelings of estrangement. Her mother died shortly after Hallie’s birth and she and her sister were raised by their father. Codi struggles to come to terms with her past. Her relationship with her father is strained; their conversations are at cross purposes. Codi revives a relationship she had with Loyd Peregrina, a high school boyfriend. Loyd shares stories about his culture, his people, and the history of the land. She is embraced by the women of the town when she joins forces with them to combat the devastating environmental pollution caused by a corporation stripping the land of its natural resources. Kingsolver successfully establishes a strong and palpable sense of community among the town’s inhabitants.
Initially, Codi comes across as a self-obsessed whiner with a tendency to interpret everything she sees and hears as reflecting on her or her childhood. Although in her early thirties, she frequently sounds like a teenager suffering from existential angst. She idolizes her sister who rejects any attempt to idolize her. She is directionless and is determined not to form permanent attachments to anyone, including her native American boyfriend. Eventually, however, she comes to recognize she is supported by a community and feels welcomed in its embrace.
The Arizona landscape, the ancestral Puebloan homes carved out of rocks, and the natural springs are vividly evoked. Dotted within the desert are bursts of color in the form of flowers, peacocks, and rocks. The detail is immersive; the changes in weather and its impact on the land is fully realized; the sheer beauty of the southwestern landscape is writ large.
Kingsolver ties the different threads to a satisfactory conclusion. The town compels the corporation to submit to its demands; Codi learns the family secrets her father had kept buried from her and her sister; and she starts a new life for herself in her home town with Loyd. The prose is clear and descriptive. The narrative is compelling. But the characters feel contrived—more character types than real. Codi is the lost soul who ran away from home only to find herself by going home; Loyd stereotypically imparts native wisdom about the land and his culture’s mythology; and Hallie is the idealist who runs off to save the peasants in a war-torn country.
Other than the quibble with characterization, this was an enjoyable and easy read.