"State of Wonder" by Ann Patchett

Many of us have wondered at one point or another what it would be like to undertake a trip in the insect-infested Amazon forest. Many of us imagine the exotic flora with a number of majestic and vividly-colored animals to be found at every turn.

However, most of us do not stop to wonder as to the psychological impact such a trip would have one us, especially considering that we would be in unknown territory with there being hundreds of things out there which can kill us.

Well, it can be said that Ann Patchett went the extra mile in her book titled State of Wonder in which Dr. Marina Singh goes on an odyssey in the Amazon on a mission to find her former mentor, Dr. Swenson.

Naturally, not all is clear with this disappearance as it happened in a crucial period during which Dr. Swenson was working on a valuable new drug. As Marina goes deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness she will not only have to deal with the immediate sacrifices she is making to achieve her goal but also with demons from her past who simply cannot let her go.

While at its core the story can described as a textbook cliché, the book goes much further than that. Apart from providing a breath-taking description of the Amazon forest, Ann Patchett also devotes many of her pages to examining Marina’s state of mind as she battles onward, into the unknown.

The contrast created by the lush scenery and the cruel challenges is especially interesting to observe. All in all, the book makes for a very enthralling read and should really be a pleasure to anyone who enjoys stories which can be classified as a character study.




Ann Patchett (Author)

Ann Patchett


Personal site

Ann Patchett is a writer of American origin. She received numerous awards and accolades, the most prominent ones being the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her masterpiece, and some say her magnum opus, Bel Canto.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

“The Locked Door” by Freida McFadden – Roots of a Lost Innocence

Image
  Freida McFadden has been quietly writing some exciting and original thrillers in her spare time from being a practicing physician, and The Locked Door is one of her latest offering in the genre.  It tells the story of Nora, a surgeon and daughter of a serial killer now in jail, who sees her life assaulted from the dark as someone begins to recreate her father's work with the exact same signature.
Read more

“The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle – A New Home Among the Stars

Image
A.G. Riddle's Long Winter Trilogy Series is one many of us will remember for the amazing story it brings of humanity's last stand against an overwhelming enemy in times of hopelessness. In The Lost Colony , the third book in the series, we follow James and Emma on their own respective struggles as humanity tries to settle itself on a new planet with an unseen danger none could have foreseen.
Read more

“Winter World” by A.G. Riddle – Ice Age from the Void

Image
A.G. Riddle is a true literary explorer seeking to push humanity to its limits and beyond, setting them on a desperate collision course with something beyond its understanding in Winter World . With a sudden ice age dawning on humanity entire swathes of land become uninhabitable and people begin dropping like flies, with anarchy reigning supreme. Looking to the stars for a miraculous solution, the remnants of humanity find a massive mysterious object floating near Mars ...whatever it is, our civilization's hopes of survival rest entirely in its hands.
Read more

“The Girl on the Stairs” by Barry Ernest – The Small Thorn you Can’t Ignore

Image
Girl on the Stairs , by Barry Ernest and with a foreword written by David Lifton, is an exploration of one specific aspect of the JFK assassination. More precisely, it looks into what a little girl by the name of Victoria Adams saw on that day while standing in the staircase of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly making his escape.  Actually, it is more about what she didn’t see than what she did see. Victoria was on the staircase Oswald supposedly used, at the exact same time he supposedly used it. If he were to be there, even the little girl she was, Victoria would have noticed a nervous man quickly running down the stairs. However, she says that on that day, she was alone there, with nobody to be found, especially Oswald.
Read more

“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Other Side of the Barricade

Image
The two World Wars have been documented, discussed and depicted from virtually every perspective imaginable, ranging from small children caught in a crossfire all the way the leaders of each country. However, it seems that here is a startlingly small amount of attention dedicated to the small hiatus period between the two wars, a time during which many changes came to pass in Germany in a very short amount of time.
Read more