State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder was published by Harper over a year ago, and so many thoughts have already been hanging in the ether (if thoughts can hang in the ether) about this novel.  But here are the things that stuck with me after finishing this book recently:

I was really involved in this book and was dragging out reading it because I was enjoying it, but something happened in the last 100 pages-- or maybe it was the last 70 or 80 pages.  The story started speeding up. At first I thought it was my imagination, but no, it wasn't my very active imagination. And I didn't stop enjoying the story because of this speeding up, but for a few minutes it took me outside of the story because I imagined that Ms. Patchett became tired of writing this novel and hurried things along because she simply wanted it finished.  I was relieved at my imagined scenario because, well, it was a very human scenario to imagine.  Of course, I also imagined that some outside force was telling her to hurry and get it done-- an outside force like a publisher-- but I pushed that aside because I didn't want to imagine that.

So now if you haven't read this novel and want to, you'll want to skip this paragraph and move along to the next one.  It was predictable that Dr. Singh was going to perform a c-section and not  mess it up like she did so long ago.  Yes, I had figured out that she'll get her chance to earn praise from her former teacher, Dr. Swenson, by successfully performing this operation amidst entirely difficult circumstances -- i.e. not in a hospital.  I suppose that was an easy way to show character growth, development, and change that so many readers seem to look for, especially if some of these readers are also book bloggers (i.e. amateur book reviewers).  (See my post about characters & change.)  But it was far too tidy for me.

Reproductive Technology:  Big, big issue and dealt with in a not very big way, and that's ok because preaching in a novel is a huge no no.  However, I wanted something a little more-- in terms of commentary-- about the ethics of all of this.  This = a fertility drug for women that extends the age of child bearing years for, well, forever.  Oh, there's a sentence or two about ethics, sort of, and the delicate message is (oops, here's a bit of a giveaway so you might want to skip to the next paragraph) it's not a great idea for women in their 70s to get pregnant. Not exactly a news flash, and even those who are enthusiastic about reproductive technology (and women's agency) would (probably) agree that getting pregnant at age 74 is not a great idea. In fact, if we're honest here and can temporarily put aside the political correctness surrounding women's agency, it's a really, really stupid idea to get pregnant at age 74.  And the way the pregnancy turned out (not gonna give that away totally) isn't a surprise- -which also contributed to the last 100 pages of the novel being a little disappointing.  Too many obvious things were happening in those final pages besides the speeding up of the story telling, but maybe they had to occur because of the speeding up of the story.

Anyway, I still enjoyed the novel and wouldn't discourage anyone from reading State of Wonder simply because it shows that Ann Patchett is a human with strengths and weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  Sometimes I think we expect perfection, and that's just ridiculous.  So please read State of Wonder, and if you're in Nashville be sure to stop by Parnassus Books, Patchett's bookstore.