Ann
Patchett's new tragicomedy,
State of Wonder (Harper), is perfect holiday family book-club
fodder—no children or dogs die, no long-term marriages break up, and
just about everybody finds an idea or two worth discussing by the fire (for
example, healthcare, politics and international travel). She dares to send
women into decidedly masculine territory—violence and corruption in
the jungle—but with a 21st-century twist. Here the quest is not for
military might but for marketplace dominance: An American pharmaceutical
company hopes to develop "the equivalent of
Lost Horizon for American ovaries" to prolong fertility in
aging women. Plucked from her placid Minnesota lab, Marina Singh is ordered to
the Amazon to find her former mentor, doctor-turned-researcher Annick Swenson,
who discovered the potential elixir but has since gone rogue (think Linda Hunt
in Marlon Brando mode).
The scenes of
Marina languishing in Manaus, Brazil, waiting for the elusive Dr. Swenson,
offer tropical comedy filled with torpid heat, lost luggage and colorful
locals. Then comes the inevitable trip up the river to a native village far
from civilization where Dr. Swenson is "the uncontested kingpin," who
challenges Marina, and readers, to consider the unintended consequences of
choosing whether to disturb the world around us or to let it go on "as if
you had never arrived." The large canvas of sweeping moral issues, both
personal and global, comes to life through careful attention to details,
however seemingly mundane—from ill-fitting shoes and mosquito bites
to a woman tenderly braiding another woman's hair. Ultimately Marina learns to
put aside her predisposition to quantify everything with scientific data,
especially where affairs of the heart are concerned. "In this life we love
who we love," Patchett writes. "There were some stories in which
facts were very nearly irrelevant."