Overview

With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara Kingsolver explores her trademark themes of family, community and the natural world. Defiant, funny and courageously honest, High Tide in Tucson is an engaging and immensely readable collection from one of the most original voices in contemporary literature.

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9780571179503

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Reviews

"""Kingsolver's essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend.... [She] speaks in a language rich with music and replete with good sense.""""--New York Times Book Review""""A delightful, challenging, and wonderfully informative book."" ""--San Francisco Chronicle""""The acclaimed novelist's extraordinary powers of observations and understanding of character serve her beautifully in this collection of essays."" ""--Entertainment Weekly""""Ms. Kingsolver possesses the rare ability to see the natural world with the keenness of both the poet and the naturalist."" ""--Washington Times""""A book full of discoveries.""""--Cleveland Plain Dealer""""Whether cultural, personal, or theoretical, Kingsolver's nonfiction is a delight.""""--Seattle Times""""Brilliant...lucid, well thought-out, and remarkably sensitive. Kingsolver's power will linger long after you've finished ""High Tide in Tucson.""""--Kansas City Star""""Clever...magical...beautifully crafted. Kingsolver spins you around the philosophic world a dozen times.""""--Milwaukee Sentinel"""

In this collection of essays, novelist Kingsolver (Pigs in Heaven, 1993, etc.) displays considerable nature-writing talent, punctuated by stretches of smarmy self-reflection and hit-or-miss musings on issues ranging from biological determinism to the Gulf War. Kingsolver was educated as a biologist and is an inveterate traveler (some of these pieces appeared in the New York Times's Sophisticated Traveler section and elsewhere) - her piquant observations are, therefore, well founded. Her prose is particularly vivid and enticing in those essays where she describes the javelinas, coyotes, and roadrunners that share her desert domain on Tucson's outskirts. A backpacking trip within the crater walls of a massive, extinct Hawaiian volcano and a sojourn in the West African country of Benin make for exciting and colorful travelogues. A nice touch is when she returns with her daughter to the Kentucky countryside of her childhood and visits the forests and riverbanks where she first developed her appreciation of nature. Elsewhere, unfortunately, Kingsolver's writing treks through less attractive regions. Her visit to an abandoned nuclear missile silo launches a tired diatribe against war; her opposition to the US involvement in Iraq is superficially propounded; an essay that begins with a man watching basketball on television evolves into a familiar discussion on sex-role stereotyping, criticism of The Bell Curve, and the male fear of female equality in sports. Kingsolver seriously begs the questions in a discussion on violence in the electronic media versus violence in literature when she avers that researchers have known for decades that watching violence causes violence. Kingsolver aficionados (and they are praised and petted in this volume) will welcome these writings, but newcomers might reject her serf-righteous chattiness. Mined selectively, however, this will reveal some beautiful gems. (Kirkus Reviews)

Kingsolver's essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend.... [She] speaks in a language rich with music and replete with good sense. --New York Times Book Review A delightful, challenging, and wonderfully informative book. --San Francisco Chronicle The acclaimed novelist's extraordinary powers of observations and understanding of character serve her beautifully in this collection of essays. --Entertainment Weekly Ms. Kingsolver possesses the rare ability to see the natural world with the keenness of both the poet and the naturalist. --Washington Times A book full of discoveries. --Cleveland Plain Dealer Whether cultural, personal, or theoretical, Kingsolver's nonfiction is a delight. --Seattle Times Brilliant...lucid, well thought-out, and remarkably sensitive. Kingsolver's power will linger long after you've finished High Tide in Tucson. --Kansas City Star Clever...magical...beautifully crafted. Kingsolver spins you around the philosophic world a dozen times. --Milwaukee Sentinel

Author Information

Barbara Kingsolver's thirteen books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction include the novels The Bean Trees and the international bestseller The Poisonwood Bible which, amongst other accolades, won the 2005 Penguin/Orange Reading Group Book of the Year award. Her most recent novel The Lacuna, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010.

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