State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
I'm of two minds on Ann Patchett's books. I LOVED Bel Canto and didn't want it to end. But when my old book group picked Magician's Assistant, I took the book back to the library with 10 pages left to go because I so little cared about the characters. State of Wonder falls somewhere in the middle.
It is a compelling story--I read the whole book in 2 days. But the story seems so totally implausible. In a nutshell, Anders and Marina are researchers for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. The company has an outpost along the Amazon, where a rogue scientist, Dr. Swenson, has gone incommunicado about the potentially blockbuster research she is working on for the company. Anders goes down to Brazil to find out what's going on. Word comes back that he is dead. Marina goes down to Brazil to find out what happened to him--and what's going on with the research. She comes across magic mushrooms, bark-eating women, septuagenarian pregnant women, a giant anaconda. The most implausible aspect of the story to me was that a big drug company would keep pouring a fortune into this Amazon outpost with pretty much no clue on whether the research is actually producing anything useful.
Marina is the main character but I liked Anders more because he showed some passion--about his family, birds, the Amazon. Marina is kind of passive. She doesn't want to go to the Amazon but lets herself get talked into it. She doesn't want to stay there as long as she does, but gets talked into it. She loses all her belongings--TWICE--but oh well. She just seems to bob along like a cork on the water, letting the currents push her where they will. The only time she develops a backbone is near the very end of the book, when she decides to track down a lead on what happened to Anders, but even then she lets herself get persuaded to do something she doesn't want to do. What I really wanted for Marina to do most was stand up to the truly annoying Dr. Swenson (who has a definite God complex). But Marina never does.
I think if you're new to Ann Patchett, Bel Canto would be a better choice.
It is a compelling story--I read the whole book in 2 days. But the story seems so totally implausible. In a nutshell, Anders and Marina are researchers for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. The company has an outpost along the Amazon, where a rogue scientist, Dr. Swenson, has gone incommunicado about the potentially blockbuster research she is working on for the company. Anders goes down to Brazil to find out what's going on. Word comes back that he is dead. Marina goes down to Brazil to find out what happened to him--and what's going on with the research. She comes across magic mushrooms, bark-eating women, septuagenarian pregnant women, a giant anaconda. The most implausible aspect of the story to me was that a big drug company would keep pouring a fortune into this Amazon outpost with pretty much no clue on whether the research is actually producing anything useful.
Marina is the main character but I liked Anders more because he showed some passion--about his family, birds, the Amazon. Marina is kind of passive. She doesn't want to go to the Amazon but lets herself get talked into it. She doesn't want to stay there as long as she does, but gets talked into it. She loses all her belongings--TWICE--but oh well. She just seems to bob along like a cork on the water, letting the currents push her where they will. The only time she develops a backbone is near the very end of the book, when she decides to track down a lead on what happened to Anders, but even then she lets herself get persuaded to do something she doesn't want to do. What I really wanted for Marina to do most was stand up to the truly annoying Dr. Swenson (who has a definite God complex). But Marina never does.
I think if you're new to Ann Patchett, Bel Canto would be a better choice.
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