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    Animal Dreams: A Novel
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    Animal Dreams: A Novel
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    Animal Dreams: A Novel
    Ebook469 pages8 hours

    Animal Dreams: A Novel

    By Barbara Kingsolver

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “An emotional masterpiece . . . A novel in which humor, passion, and superb prose conspire to seize a reader by the heart and by the soul.” —New York Daily News

    From Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Bean Trees, and other modern classics, Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman’s struggle to find her place in the world

    "Animals dream about the things they do in the daytime just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona, to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life.

    Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments.

    This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061839948
    Author

    Barbara Kingsolver

    Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia. 

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    Reviews for Animal Dreams

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Protagonist Codi Noline returns to her small hometown in Arizona, after fifteen years, to help her aging father, the town’s doctor, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Codi felt like an outsider growing up. She and her father are not close. She is hired to teach biology at the local high school and is staying with a friend. She is concerned about her younger sister, Hallie, who has relocated to Nicaragua to assist with agricultural education, at a time when the Contras are engaged in violent civil unrest.

      The story is told in alternating perspectives between Codi, in first person, and her father, in third person. If you have read Kingsolver’s books before, you will find familiar territory – environmental activism, beautiful writing about nature, and a strong female protagonist with issues to overcome. In this case, the environment is being threatened by a large corporation harvesting natural resources to use in the manufacturing, while killing the microbiota in the area.

      The stark beauty of the American southwestern desert is elegantly evoked, with its ancestral Puebloan dwellings and natural springs. It is a slowly developing novel that relies on many simultaneous threads, including a family secret, a love story, several environmental elements, a willingness to act on one’s beliefs, and a community coming together in a common cause. Kingsolver has crafted these components into a compelling, multi-layered story.
    • 5/5
      In a letter to Codi, Hallie writes, "'What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.'" This is not a love story as the back of the book may have you believe. Sure, people fall in and out of love within its pages, but this book is really about understanding oneself amid a lifetime of memories and secrets...the risks we take not only when we cheat ourselves, but when we find ourselves, too. I read this for the first time two years ago to the month, needing it for the same reasons even though I've changed a lot, and this time got even a little more from it (which is why we should all read our favorite books multiple times!). I'm not going into a deeply personal reflection here in a public forum, but I think this is a loving book for people who've got some reckoning to do, spanning the greater good of the social and physical world to the individual soul.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Even though the world in which this story lives is realized in intricate detail, and I have to praise Kingsolver for this, it is a very introspective book. I wanted more character interaction. A lot of the time I felt trapped in Cosima's head, while lots of interesting characters revolved around. The events roll along at a slow pace. It felt a lot like the events that take place in people's lives day to day. Not many are worthy of describing in detail. The threads dealing with Cosima's sister, father, and boyfriend, could still be addressed through more character interaction, because it's the interaction where things get interesting. I wanted more of that and less introspection.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I always enjoy Kingsolver's work, and this book was no exception. I love the town of Grace, and had a hard time understanding why Codi would want to leave it!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Short stories from one of my favorite authors. I didn't like this as well as her novels.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful story, typical Kingsolver.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I cried at the end!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is a wonderful book. It does what many stories try to do: it simply tells a person's life, a snippet of time in the grand scheme of things, and in the process touches on some larger truth. Something that helps a reader with a new perspective, a new thing to think about. Many stories try to do this. Most fail to do it thoroughly.But Animal Dreams does it. It is pierced through with sorrow and love and loss and growth, all wrapped up in one special town that most see as a place to move from. Many have left Grace; few return. And yet Codi comes back, the prodigal daughter, suitcase heavy with fear, alienation, loneliness, and aimlessness. She is un-rooted, and tugged by memories she can and cannot remember. This is a story of finding oneself, of coming together inside your own skin. Of becoming. Codi holds most of the pages, but some of the most devastating passages are from the few chapters told from her father's point of view. He is how she could be. How we all can be, if we feel but don't let it out, if we hide behind histories long past but still capable of wounding.My favorite paragraph: "...people's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."I'll be reading more Kingsolver.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      An excellent immersion into place and character. It explores the struggle of Codi to find a home and meaning to her life against the struggles of her father dealing with Alzheimer's and their home town's fight with the mining company.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent fleshed-out, memorable characters, told in a
      comfortable writing style.
      What a talent Barbara Kingsolver is.
      Hard to put down

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Amazing book. Refugees and issues with destruction of countries has not changed in 30 years. She writes good books

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I enjoy Kinsolver's descriptions of Arizona but the main character, Condi, just kept on getting the in the way of the scenery. I never grew to care about her past or her tough life or her inability to fit in. She spends the entire book wining and feeling sorry for herself when much of her trouble is of her own making!
    • 4/5
      This book has these amazing little tidbits of wisdom thrown into it. You could read it as fiction and ignore its lessons but you would be missing out, so don't. Read it as guidance. You'll get more out of it.
    • 2/5
      Codi returns to her hometown and has all the usual emotions and realizations. And she meets a hot Native American man who guides her spirit and has hot sex with her. And I believe she solves some sort of environmental mystery. Wish-fullfillment drek cloaked in "magical realism". Why was this assigned in high school?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This complex novel powerfully and movingly explores themes of love and grief, the difficult ties among family members, the bonds that can exist among people of shared cultures, and the responsibilities that humans have toward the earth. Codi Noline, a woman in her early thirties, returns to her home town of Grace, Arizona to attend to her physician father who is experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Grace is a small town in the desert populated by people with deep Hispanic roots and by native people. It is known for its orchards that are the livelihood of many and for a copper mine that is largely defunct but still in limited operation. Before arriving in Grace Codi has seen off her sister, Hallie, who has departed for Nicaragua where she will work as an agronomist assisting the rural population in improving their farming practices. Nicaragua has recently been liberated from a right wing junta’s control, but is under episodic attacks by the Contras supported by the US government. Codi and Hallie are extremely close. They were raised in Grace by their widowed father who was emotionally distant and remote from them. Growing up both girls felt like outsiders in Grace because of their intellect and height. Their father was constantly pushing them to demonstrate their superiority over their peers. Homer is driven to this by his belief that his family was never accepted by the locals; a result he claims of having relocated to Grace from Illinois.Unlike her driven younger sister, Codi is adrift. She believes she has nothing of value to offer and is despairing of finding physical, vocational or emotional roots anywhere. She trained to be a doctor, but quit the profession during her internship. She was living in Tucson, working as a clerk in a convenience store and living with a doctor boyfriend who she wasn’t particularly close to. Codi takes a temporary teaching job in the Grace High School and moves in with a girl from her school years and her family.Codi reveals that she had been pregnant as a teenager after a shallow sexual liaison with Loyd (with the missing “l”), an Apache schoolmate. Loyd was not aware of the pregnancy. Codi carried the baby secretly and lost it by miscarriage, burying it along a river bank behind her home. Her father was aware of this but never spoke of it or offered either support or reprobation.Codi becomes reacquainted with Loyd who has matured and found employment as a railway engineer. Codi grows more attracted to Loyd and they start a love affair. Loyd is closely connected with the native people on the nearby reservation and through him she learns of the deep respect that the native culture holds for the earth. While they are watching a ceremony on the reservation Loyd explains that the native people see themselves as “guests” on the earth who must behave respectfully toward their “host” and leave the land unharmed from their stay on it. In contrast, the Anglo sense of the earth is that humans are entitled to use it for their gain without regard to the consequences of their actions. This difference is seen in a catastrophe that is unfolding in Grace. The mining company is trying to extract the last bit of copper from the mine tailings by introducing chemicals that enter the river and subsequently are poisoning the orchards. Codi discovers this and brings it to the attention of the townspeople. The devastation will be made worse by the company’s plan to divert the run off by damming the river, an act that will deprive the town of any water. The women of the town, with the scientific background provided by Codi, undertake a grass-roots campaign to draw attention to the environmental depravation. They gain enough public attention to cause the company to cease its practices.Codi has a difficult relationship with her father who is in and out of lucidity. He has been so reserved and remote that there is no close bond between Codi and he. His insistence on high standards of behavior for the sisters Codi feels is the cause of their feelings of isolation from their peers. An interesting passage metaphorically shows Homer’s attempts at manipulating the natural nature of his daughters. He is an amateur photographer whose technique is to take pictures of natural objects and by manipulating the images in the dark room turn them into visages they are not. Homer had always intimated that the lack of acceptance of the family was because they were seen as outsiders from another state. Codi finds out that this is not true. While Homer had been in Illinois for medical training, Grace was his hometown. His family had ties there dating back hundreds of years. His perception of being shunned stemmed from his resentment that it was the low social standing of his family that drew the disdain of others. In reaction, he works to make himself and his daughters superior.Codi sees herself as having no deep connections to anyone or any place. Her low self-esteem leads to despair that she will ever make productive contributions to anything. Her self-loathing is so ingrained that she doesn't see the value she is bringing to her students, to the town’s fight against the polluter or to Loyd. She is blind to how much she is respected and loved. She is deeply drawn to Loyd who is clear that he wants a permanent relationship, but she repeatedly tells him she will not stay in Grace beyond the school year.Codi savors the letters she is receiving from Hallie in Nicaragua. Hallie’s letters are a source of advice aimed at Codi to realize her value and worth to others. Then she receives the shocking news that Hallie has been kidnapped by the Contras and later murdered. This is so devastating that Codi determines to move on at the invitation of her former boyfriend to join him in Colorado. In her flight she begins to realize that she has found a place where she’s loved and valued. Hallie’s life has brought to Codi finally to the understanding that it’s how you live your life that determines your place in the world. Hallie said, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is to live inside that hope.” Codi realizes that Hallie's life reinforces what Loyd told her when they were talking about what animals dream about – they dream about what they do every day. And it’s what you do every day that enriches your soul and creates value in your life.It is amazing to see how such diverse themes are woven so seamlessly into this fine novel. Kingsolver uses this forlorn locale to show how rich the cultural bonds of people can be. She clearly is intimately familiar with this region of the country (as she is with Appalachia in other works) and the setting adds depth to the ideas she conveys. Her training and sensibility as a scientist and an environmentalist and ecologist marvelously informs this work as it does in Flight Behavior and Prodigal Summer.
    • 4/5
      Typically for Kingsolver, this story wraps characters around environmental and related political issues. In this Cosima returns to her home town, planning to stay for a year working as the science teacher. She discovers that the river running through the town has been polluted by the mine, which dominates the town's economy. It is not Cosima alone who fights this battle. Charmingly, the local woman create their peacock feather pinatas and sell them as art work to fund a fight against the industrial powers. In the meanwhile, Cosima struggles in a relationship with her a Native American man who she had known in high school, with her aging domineering doctor father, and with concern for her sister, who has ventured off to Nicaragua to help the indigenous people survive in the midst of civil war.Overall, this is somewhat easier reading than some of Kingsolver's other books and a bit less polemic than Prodigal Summer.
    • 4/5
      This book was captivating. Kingsolver has a rare gift of painting emotion with every word. She does not spend pages writing detailed descriptions of a character's face; she spends a novel intertwining characters personalities. You can feel the passion, the heavy sadness; you can see the world in which this story lives. She wrote so beautifully of Native American life, modern city life, loss in many ways (loss of body, mind, feeling, family) but also of gaining all those things back in a true-to-life format.

      I could not put this book down. It is the story of Cosima [Codi] returning to her small, environmentally-threatened town of Grace, Arizona. Where she must deal with her distant father's worsening Alzheimer's, seeing the high-school sweetheart whose baby she miscarried without his knowledge and confront the rush of long-lost memories of childhood that consume her. It is the story of loss, of re-discovering a place she thought was lost to her, family secrets coming to light..

      The story is also told through the eyes of Cosima's ailing father, Homero. His sections are brief but poetic, beautifully pained, delicate and encompassing.


      Favorite quotes of the book:

      1). "You don't ask questions of an attic"

      2.) "[...] There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief."

      3). "The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows"
    • 4/5
      August 2008 COTC Book Club selection.

      So sad, yet I wanted to know these people, these characters; I wanted to see the small town of Grace. Kingsolver's passion for the earth and for peace really shine through in this novel. I kept waiting for Codi to wake up and realize that she actually had it pretty great - a fabulous friend in Emelina, a new family in Loyd and his family, a meaningful job, a community she could care about and love. Not that these things could ever replace those she lost, but they make the loss far more bearable. Barbara Kingsolver really does amazing things with words.
    • 5/5
      Utterly, utterly FANTASTIC! This novel nearly knocks The Poisonwood Bible from it's number one spot on my Kingsolver list of favorites! I was pleasantly surprised with how simply erotic and insanely interesting this novel is. I would read it again in a heart beat. If this is the only book of Barbara's that you pick up, you won't be disappointed!
    • 5/5
      1996: I finished reading ANIMAL DREAMS by Barbara Kingsolver, which was excellent -- I like it even better than her other two books. This one really touched me -- it was about a woman who never felt like she belonged, who always felt like an outsider. She wanted someone to tell her they wanted her, wanted people to tell her they needed her and she was good at what she did. She also was looking for a cause, looking for a good way to live life. These feelings that she had came in part from losing people she loved, from a sense of loss.
    • 4/5
      The book was given to me by a dear friend who believed it would touch my soul and she was so correct! I cried at the end of the book because the characters of Codi and the entire town of Grace, AZ became my faux neighbors. Life in a small town where the majority of the population can trace their lineage back to a family of sisters who traveled from Spain to marry is way too confining for Codi and her Sister Halle who were outsiders and motherless. They were strangers in a strange land.Codi has been running from the town of Grace since the day she left for college but now her father, Doc Homer needs her. Codi takes a job as a science teacher to be close to her father who is fighting dementia. The reader is swept into this novel of soul touching emotions by the characters and the landscape of Arizona. I have the opportunity to travel to Arizona and even attended a wedding on a Native America reserve but never truly knew the history and traditions of the native americans of this state. Discovering the traditions of another culture be it in the United States or a foreign country makes a fascinating read for this LibraryThing member. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend why readers found this book boring because it was complex, witty and full of love of the land and the human spirit.
    • 5/5
      I liked this book a lot. I was originally put off by reading that it was a book with a "political" story. Sure, it has political implications, but it's primarily a book about personal relationships, like Kingsolver's other books (the ones I've read, anyway). There are, however, multiple levels in the story, and the reader can choose to focus on the aspect which holds most interest. I found the father-daughter relationship to be of particular interest, because I am an aging, decaying father myself, but all the characters seemed quite real to me, notwithstanding the fact that I know nothing about native americans.
    • 5/5
      An all-time favorite!
    • 4/5
      For me, the jury is still out on Kingsolver. While I did enjoy Animal Dreams, I haven't quite decided whether this is chick lit or something more substantial. Codi Noline hesitantly returned to her childhood home in Arizona to care for her ailing father. She thought she had been done with the place, so as she returned, she promised herself to leave within the year. Meanwhile, her beloved sister is headed to Nicaragua on a dangerous philanthropic mission. Codi rekindles the passion she had previously shared with Loyd Peregrina, an Apache trainman, and she is challenged to face the memories that she thought she'd hidden away forever. Kingsolver's characters are real, and the regional descriptions are extremely vivid; the reader gets a clear picture of the setting and is able to share the strong emotions that Codi experiences as she makes every attempt to find herself. 
    • 5/5
      This is a true gem of a story. While I followed along with the story of Codi I found myself looking at my own life and what truth means to each individual. It is a woven embroidery of love, family, faith, truth, mystery, and so much more. It is captivating and inspiring. The main character Codi Noline takes an odyssey to find herself when she returns to her hometown Grace, Arizona and finds that she never had to go so far away to find the answers that she had longed for. Kingsolver does not disappoint.
    • 4/5
      Still my favourite of all her books, with Prodigal Summer and The Bean Trees coming in a close second. Love the heroine, love her father, and adore the romantic hero. My kind of guy.
    • 4/5
      So what exactly constitutes "chick lit"?Is it a preoccupation with women's themes, a focus on relationships, a personal (in this case melancholy)writing tone?Since "Animal Dreams" contains each of these elements, and seems unlikely to be read by very many straight men, it must be chic lit.Yet while the chick lit label has a"fluffy" connotation, possibly due to its association with cheap romance novels, this is unfortunate because "Animal Dreams" is undoubtedly a well written and poignant book..Kingslover has an elegant writing style, despite employing too many similes. Her characters are all multi-dimensional (though the protagonist's emotional issues may come across as whiny). Finally, the ecological theme sometimes felt forced, as if the author needed a more substantial topic to throw into the chick-lit mix. But despite some reservations, the story did tie nicely together in the end.
    • 2/5
      Another solid book from Barbara Kingsolver. She writes so convincingly with such detail about such a wide range of topics. Fascinating stuff.
    • 5/5
      I got this book for Jr. year accelerated English class. When (one of the) narrator(s) says "sisters are more precious than eyes" I understood exactly what she meant. And I've always loved New Mexico.
    • 5/5
      I don't remember anymore how many times I have read this book. Every time I pick it up, it's like visiting with old friend - that's how good it is. Kingsolver's characters here are interesting and sympathetic, and I love how the setting is really a character all by itself. Also, the historical part of the story that weaves through the current parts of the story make it even more interesting. I love parts of the story, especially where Cody meets Loyd's family... and discovers bread. Ah yes, bread junkies unite!