The other Patchett book I read recently (in addition to the one discussed below, The Patron Saint of Liars) is her newest one, State of Wonder, just out and already on the bestseller lists. Patchett’s publicist calls this book “her best one yet,” but it’s no Bel Canto. Hard to imagine anything can beat Bel Canto. The students in my Hot Off the Press class liked this book, but my feelings are more lukewarm.
It’s a Heart of Darkness of a book, a fraught voyage down the Amazon to a deep, dark outpost where scientists are studying the amazing long-lasting fertility of a particular tribe. To this place goes Dr. Marina Singh, sent by her pharmaceutical company employer (whose president is also her lover) to a) find out what happened to the guy they sent before who never came back (Mr. Kurtz, he dead), and to find out what’s happening on the promised drug development front down there. The company wants a return on its extensive investment!
Why send Marina? Well, because she has to go, of course. That’s how the plot works. Never mind that she’s just some obscure scientist toiling away on researching lipids for a cholesterol drug, hardly an Amazonian warrior. Besides, it turns out (ta da!), that M’s deep dark secret is her mistake in medical school, a botched delivery while studying obstetrics, studying under the fearsome Dr Swenson—the very doctor now ensconced in said Amazonian outpost.
Marina goes, descends Orpheus-like to hell, and lives to tell the tale. On the way we meet doctors and scientists, local tribesmen, gatekeepers and hangers on-ers. An anaconda is wrestled, a baby is successfully and dramatically delivered (to make up for past mistakes), and the missing man’s whereabouts are accounted for. We also chew some tree bark and there’s the requisite Patchett tie-it-all-up-neatly twist near the end, but hey, I’ll leave you a surprise or two.
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