216. State of Wonder
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by: Julie Horowitz
Author: Ann Patchett
Genre: Fiction, Foreign
353 pages, published June 7, 2011
Reading Format: Audio Book on Hoopla
Summary
State of Wonder chronicles the journey of Dr. Marina Singh into the insect-infested Amazon jungle in attempt to find out what happened to her longtime professional colleague Anders Eckman. Anders, who was sent to Brazil by his pharmaceutical company employer to track down Dr. Annick Swenson, is presumed dead after contracting a mysterious illness. Marina must find Dr. Swenson, who was her professor in medical school, and report on the status Dr. Swenson’s research on a drug that will allow women to maintain lifelong fertility. Along the way, Marina will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice.
Quotes
“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.”
“Everyone knows everything eventually.”
“No one tells the truth to people they don’t actually know, and if they do it is a horrible trait. Everyone wants something smaller, something neater than the truth.”
“In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.”
“There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.”
“It is said the siesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.”
“The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived. That is how one respects indigenous people. If you pay any attention at all you’ll realize that you could never convert them to your way of life anyway. They are an intractable race. Any progress you advance to them will be undone before your back is turned. You might as well come down here to unbend the river. The point, then, is to observe the life they themselves have put in place and learn from it.”
“Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one’s partner on both the left and the right.”
“Questions are for the benefit of every student, not just the one raising his hand. If you don’t have the starch to stand up in class and admit what you don’t understand, then I don’t have the time to explain it to you. If you don’t have a policy against nonsense you can wind up with a dozen timid little rabbits lined up in the hall outside your office, all waiting to whisper the same imbecilic question in your ear.”
My Take
This was my second time reading State of Wonder (by the wonderful novelist Ann Patchett), although this time I listened to the audio version. With respect to this book, I must say that Gretchen Rubin’s axiom “the best reading is re-reading,” certainly is true. The voice work by Hope Davis (an actress that I have always liked) brings State of Wonder to life in a way that I didn’t get with the book. This time around, I particularly enjoyed the character of Dr. Annick Swenson, an extremely self-confident, domineering woman who charts her own path with little regard to the impact on others. She has most of the best lines of the book and it was a treat to once again visit the Amazon jungle in my second reading of State of Wonder.
