“State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett
Hype plus a slot in this year’s Tournament of Books put Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder on my TBR list. Years ago, a writer friend recommended Patchett’s Magician’s Assistant, which I loved. After I read Bel Canto, which everyone I knew loved (but I found a bit remote and chilly) I talked with my friend about it. She and I agreed that we admired Bel Canto, but didn’t love it in the way we did Magician’s Assistant.
In the meantime, Patchett lost some credibility with me with her piece on travel writing “Did I Kill Gourmet Magazine?”, which came off to me as snobby rather than tongue in cheek. Nonetheless, when the good reviews poured out on State of Wonder, I hoped for another Magician’s Assistant. Alas, no.
Marina Singh is a 42yo scientist employed by a big pharmaceutical company. In the first sentence, we learn her co-worker, Anders Eckman, has died, and soon learn that he was in the remote jungle trying to persuade a crotchety researcher to come in from the field. Marina is asked by both Eckman’s wife and the head of the company to go down and find out what happened. Things are complicated because Marina is having an affair with the much older head of the company, and she was a student of the missing researcher.
One of my pet peeves is characters who don’t grow and learn. While people like that exist in real life, I don’t care to spend time with them fictionally, either. To me, Marina was a dud of a main character, flat and uninteresting. Ditto for the plot, which seemed like it would be full of thrilling plot development. Instead, to me, it plodded, and by the time I got to this or that reveal, I was so exhausted from getting there that I didn’t care much. Or, in a few cases, the reveal had been expected by me so long that I no longer felt any satisfaction from having called it. Marina does some strange things at the end, and some other plot points are left unresolved. But again, I didn’t care that much. I neither liked nor admired this book. I experienced schadenfreude when Wil Wheaton slammed it during the Tournament of Books as:
a story that demands so much suspension of disbelief it may as well have asked us to accept sailing down a river flowing with unicorn tears.
For a character-driven medical thriller, I’d recommend Intuition by Allegra Goodman instead.
April 2nd, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Not to mention that gaffe with our airport.
April 2nd, 2012 at 1:08 pm
I’m willing to forgive the airport gaffe, since THE OTHER FOUR TIMES the airport was mentioned it was correct, but I can’t forgive the book for being boring and irritating. Even if it was trying to be a female homage to Heart of Darkness.
April 2nd, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Yes, but see, before that got to the FIRST GAFFE, she’d already screwed up Eden Prairie. For me, it was the last straw–and that was pretty early on in the book to be hitting a last straw.
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:00 am
First Wil Wheaton slams it then you give it a negative. Not for me.
April 3rd, 2012 at 5:38 pm
I liked State of Wonder while I was listening to it and then suddenly it was over and I thought, that’s IT? I haven’t read Magician’s Assistant. Also found Bel Canto chilly.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:51 pm
I found the endings really bizarre–the main character does 2 very strange things, then there is an abruptness, and a bunch of things are left hanging. And what struck me most was that I didn’t care that they were left hanging.