Weekend reading: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

My book club was captivated by Patron Saint of Liars.  I couldn’t really understand why the character did what she did several times in her life, first as a pregnant woman who leaves her husband and lives in a home for unwed mothers. Then, when her past threatens to meet up with her presence, why she would just walk away from the family she had chosen so many years before. But the characters grew on me, and I felt the poignancy of her fear of being committed or caught.

With State of Wonder, Ann Patchett has written another compelling tale. Dr. Marina Singh, who works in a lab outside Minneapolis researching  statin development for their cholesterol drug program, is transplanted down to the jungles of the Amazon to speak some sense into Dr. Annick Swenson, about the timetable of her research for studying breakthroughs of the Lakashi tribe on fertility. The CEO, who is also secretly Dr. Singh’s lover, sends her to follow on the heels of her lab partner who ended up dead with a fever.  

By the time she reaches the research camp, she has lost all her luggage, then the clothes get stolen off her back and she has to subsist on two dresses she gets from the tribal women.  She has to battle an anaconda coiled around a boy, brave flying arrows and a tribe of cannibal and perform a Caesarian section, something she hasn’t done since medical school.   But what she ends up discovering in the jungle, changes her irrevocably and forces her to finally make a stand. 

State of Wonder is currently on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list.  It is available in National Book Store in paperback for P729.00