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Product Description: A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A Slice of Heaven
I just finished this book last nite. The fourth of hers I've read now.
Barbara takes her time and enjoys each scene with delicacy and sensibility. She's more than just paying attention, she's right careful with the moment, allowing all the love in it to get on the page at its own pace. There's no reason to move on until ALL of the story that's right here, right now has its chance to speak. Here's a line from the book: Cash is sitting in the the boss's office: But Cash had been thinking how sad it was there was not even a plant on the windowsill in here. Not one green thing that can sit in the sun and be quiet.
Here we have another love story. This time a little girl, Turtle Stillwater, is loved by her adopted white mom and the entire Cherokee Nation. There's a lot of love to go around for this little darling. It takes them all a while to figure out they surely want the same thing, but they did and they do.
A delightfully thoughtful look into Cherokee culture. Makes me wish I had a tribe to go home to sometimes. Family is messy alright, but damn, so are ribs and corn on the cob and a hog fry!
Barbara Kingsolver, my goodness girl. Don't stop!
Rating: - Pigs in Heaven: Individualism VS Collectivism
In Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver breaks the norms of classical or even contemporary novels by creating a complex story with no real hero or true villain. The talk can be over main characters but not one single, major persona that is in the very limelight. The extensive use of symbolism in this novel turns human relationships into philosophical issues, issues that convert the physical, tangible into abstraction, issues that awake inquisitiveness and the critical sort of mind out of the active reader, compelling the latter to think of those relationships as culturally pertinent questions that are in urgent need of culturally satisfactory answers. Characters are ridden with symbolism. But these symbolic representations, served in a plate of a relatively tangled plot, aesthetically deprive characters of being classified in a hierarchy of significance. They are almost in the same taxonomic level. For example, Barbie, as a person and a member of a culture, is as significant as Alice Greer; Annawake Fourkiller is as important as Taylor Greer. Actually, what gives this novel a position as a work of art is the fact that each character has its own place, its features, its individuality, and its life, and the writer's capability of providing a character with actual life guarantees the reader's identification with and immersion in the character. It is this deep involvement that transports the reader out of the face-to-face, physical, and tangible, to the abstract and unseen: to the cultural. The cultural in Pigs in Heaven is not the background, yet the foreground; it is the true protagonist and the source of the perceived dichotomy and the serious conflict between individualism and collectivity.
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By the end of the novel, Barbara Kingsolver aims at providing the most appropriate alternative to American, individualistic, mainstream culture. In a witty way, she could literally marry two representatives of two different cultures, and through this she metaphorically marries the cultures in question, tacitly asserting that the actual existence of American culture as a hybrid culture in a low-conflict society where individualism and collectivism are in tune can never be attained through false simulacra and distorted images produced by T.V as passive receivers, such as Harland, falsely believe ; rather, this is attainable if cultural groups have the will to be involved in close intercultural interactions that are grounded in respect and tolerance. Also, via a riveting, culture-based story, Barbara Kingsolver stresses the significance ... Read More
Rating: - She's Amazing.
I love all of Barbara Kingsolver's books, but this book and The Bean Trees are her best!
Rating: - One of the best books I've ever read
Taylor Greer never thought she'd be a mother. But, thanks to a bizarre chain of events in "The Bean Trees," she found herself raising a Cherokee child named Turtle. Now six years old, the little girl who was initially so traumatized by previous abuse that she didn't speak has made herself at home with Taylor and her boyfriend Jackson. To Turtle, they are the only parents she has ever known.
But an unexpected moment of recognition attracts the attention of an Oklahoma lawyer, Annawake Fourkiller, to Turtle. Knowing it's illegal for a Cherokee child to be adopted outside her tribe, Annawake sets out to find Taylor and Turtle, and begin the process of returning her to what she feels is her rightful place in the world. But both mother and daughter have other ideas, and with Taylor's mother Alice, they embark on a road trip intending to begin a life elsewhere.
Annawake, however, is young and determined to do what she believes is right...especially after what happened to her twin brother when they were children. In Gabe's name, Annawake swears she will "fix" another child's life.
Although starting over is a struggle -- living on Taylor's minimum wage earnings and struggling to find adequate childcare -- the two have the potential to be successful. Yet Taylor quickly realizes there's a lot more to a good life than getting by materially; without Jackson, her home and friends, Turtle is quickly reverting to her old emotional state.
Taylor finally concedes that she and Turtle can't run away from their problems forever. She only prays that Annawake and the others who have become involved in the case will see that skin color and genetics aren't the only important factors in creating a loving mother and daughter.
Rating: - A Woman's Western
Many difficult questions lie at the heart of Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. For instance, what constitutes a family? How important is it for a child to know her roots, her culture, and her history if she has love?
Taylor Greer finds an abandoned Indian baby in her car and upon seeing the "Compassion, International" look in her eyes and evidence of abuse, decides to adopt her. Fast-forward three years: on a vacation with her mother, the young child, Turtle, is the only witness to a man falling into a ditch by the Hoover Dam. Following a dramatic rescue, Turtle is lauded as a hero and finds herself on the Oprah Winfrey show.
A Cherokee lawyer named Annawake Fourkiller sees the show. Annawake stands by the belief that far too many Indian children have been displaced to white families by social workers. These children are forever cut off from their history, culture, and identity and are forced into a world that will never understand or accept them. Annawake believes Turtle should be placed in a home amongst her native people.
Singular, independent women, often a theme in western novels, rears its pretty face here with all of the major characters: Taylor, Taylor's mother Alice, Annawake, and even little Turtle. I liked the tender, maternal language and feel of the book, even in the context of the struggle between white and Native American cultures. Everyone wants the best for the little girl, and no character is villainized.
It deviates from the traditional western novel in many ways: there is no clear "hero," no thrilling action (except for an old man shooting a television set to win the heart of the woman he loves, who incidentally, hates television), and is set in the modern day.
Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates in this book why she is one of today's best-loved authors.
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