I was finding 1993 quite difficult to fill in my century of books, and I asked people on Twitter which of my 1993 books they’d recommend that I pick up. It turned out that I didn’t have one of them on my shelves any longer, a biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, but I did have Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. For some reason I wasn’t especially keen to read it, but enough people on Twitter convinced me that I should give it a go that I took it away on holiday and, guess what – it’s amazing.
This isn’t the first Kingsolver novel I’ve read, in fact it’s the third. One of those is her most famous, The Poisonwood Bible, which I actually didn’t like as much as most people seem to have done. I suppose my problem was with her painting this ogreish portrait of the patriarchal missionary, and then implying (or at least I inferred) that he was intended to represent the whole world of missionaries. It felt a little lazy. But before that I read The Bean Trees, I think before I started blogging, and it turns out that Pigs in Heaven is a sequel to that. I should say from the outset that it’s fine to read this novel independently, and in fact I couldn’t remember very much about The Bean Trees that except for the fact that I liked it. Pigs in Heaven tells you everything you need to know about what came before.
The main thing you need to know from that novel is that Taylor adopted young Native American girl called Turtle, given to her by a stranger in a car park. The years have passed, and Taylor is a devoted mother, unable to imagine a life without her young daughter. She is also in a relationship with a musician-of-sorts, called Jax. I rather loved reading their conversations, which were believably affectionate while maintaining a constant undercurrent of uncertainty – just how much are they joking and how much are real tensions coming to the surface? It is something dramatic that starts to change the life Taylor has made for herself, even though that dramatic thing happens to somebody else. While on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, her daughter sees a man fall into a dangerously deep cave – being so young, Turtle doesn’t realise the gravity of this until afterwards, and assumes her mother knows what has happened and is unconcerned. It is only when bringing its to Taylor’s attention that a rescue mission is mounted – despite police initially being reluctant to believe that the 4 year old has not imagined the whole thing.
The man is rescued, and Turtle becomes something of a celebrity – at least temporarily – and is invited onto an episode of Oprah for children who have saved lives. This catches the attention of a lawyer, Annawake, who decides to intervene. She is from the Cherokee Nation herself, and knows that the adoption which Taylor describes is not legal. With her own history of a brother who was taken away from family and community, Annawake sees it as her responsibility to reunite Turtle with her heritage – even if that means taking her away from her mother. (The pigs in Heaven, incidentally, are stars – a constellation you may know as the Seven Sisters.)
There are plenty of novelists who use a moral quandary as the centre of a narrative, to greater or lesser levels of success. To be honest, I am likely to run from a novel that describes itself as issue-driven – and the great thing about Kingsolver is that it never feels as though the ‘issue’ is the driving force. Nor is there any sense that there is a correct answer – as a white person myself, I am very likely to be drawn towards the argument that a child should not be separated from her adoptive mother, but Kingsolver has characters like Annawake who can vocalise that this sense of priorities is not any more objective than those which might make somebody wants to reunite a child with her ancestral community. And so what drives this novel, perfectly, is character.
Unlike The Poisonwood Bible, there are no cartoonish villains. There are simply people who are trying to do the right thing – or, with some of the more incidental characters, have lost any sense of what the right thing might be.
Women on their own run in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark.
That is the opening paragraph of this multi-generational novel. Alice is Taylor’s mother, and has recently made her own possibly ill-advised marriage. The family do not have the ingrained traditions of the Cherokee Nation, but they have their own localised one of women being alone – though none of the women in this book are alone as it starts, it hangs over them like a threat, or occasionally like a happy promise. Taylor’s fear of losing Turtle means they go on the run together, and Kingsolver masterfully weaves a road trip novel into this multifaceted narrative – with the possibilities that brings for funny or strange or poignant temporary characters.
As I say, it is character that is foremost – with their reflections on anything from their choice of words to their ultimate fate. Kingsolver uses her premise to give us a rich, rich portrait of many different people – even when they’re not the most pleasant people, she makes us want to spend time with them. It is riveting, as well as beautifully written. It is also evocative, not just of place but of being. I suppose what I mean by that is that it is wholly immersive.
I read a lot of books, as do we all, and it’s not often that I miss the world that I have been in once it is finished. But I wish I were back in Kingsolver’s world – and I think I might be left in the curious position of wanting to reread the original to this sequel, just to stay in that world. Hopefully that won’t leave me in an indefinite loop, but if it does, there are worse places to be. (And, to escape that loop, which Kingsolver novels would you recommend?)
1.) The link – is the first in a series called ‘Books By My Bed‘, in Boundless (from Unbound). Dan Kieran talks through the books on his bedside table, and it’s generally a nice piece about the joy of books.
