| Title | : | Homeland and Other Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0060917016 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780060917012 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 245 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1989 |
Homeland and Other Stories Reviews
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Leave it to my mother. Every time I get to the point where I've almost relegated her to the lands of the unenlightened, she pops out of the woodwork and shows off a surprising amount of taste; for a Baptist minister who proudly voted for George W. Bush and thinks Carrot Top is funny, my mom occasionally knows what's up. Homeland was an Easter gift, buried between chocolate bunnies and "inspirational" literature meant to soothe what she sees as my wayward soul. Like a lot of her gifts, the aforementioned Mom Stigma kept me from tearing right into it; on the contrary, it was five months before a long road trip provided the impetus to finally see what Ms. Kingsolver had to tell me.
The timing, I found, couldn't have been better. Like everyone in 11th grade AP English, I read The Bean Trees , took the quiz, wrote the essay and forgot about it, my only memories of the story being "Jesus Is Lord Used Tires" and a vague notion that I didn't hate it. Knowing that I would soon be trapped in car driving from Maine to western Kentucky, I grabbed a pile of books that I hoped would preserve my sanity- enter Homeland. By the time we'd left New England my literature stash was already half-depleted, so as the forests and fast pace of the northeast faded into the slow, rolling hills of the south I said a silent prayer that my mom didn't strike out, smoked a bit of marijuana and tackled the first story.
Give either Kingsolver or the pot credit- I've never been able to keep interested in Native American stories (am I a bad person? Likely), but "Homeland" didn't bore me one bit. In fact, for the first time, I kind of understood the allure of the culture and the people that actually care about it (and as the author presumably falls into this category, one could chalk this up as the definition of successful literature). Beautifully written, the titular tale whispers a sad message on the disintegration Native American culture without the kind of overplayed pity that usually turns similar pieces into unwitting self-parodies; instead of a feathery, face-painted Indian shedding tears at someone's discarded soda can, Kingsolver presents a character old but vibrant, stoic but sad, and the reader is left not with obligatory guilt but a soft melancholy. It's kind of beautiful.
All the stories in Homeland subscribe to a general theme of small towns and "simple" people. Rather than crafting elaborate or glamorous plot lines, Kingsolver lets her nearly-poetic words and characters carry the stories, and as our vehicle plunged into the warm drawl of the mid-south it felt like each narrative could be happening right next to me. Homeland could never be a Hollywood film. The relationships within eschew fiery breakups and dramatic, emotional reconciliations for slow, subtle declines that creak and bend like an old weathered bridge; moments of clear profundity sometimes strike the characters, but like real life these epiphanies rarely change anyone's life significantly. In Kingsolver's world, people live and love and hurt- but they still have to get up for work the next morning.
Homeland is not a Catcher in the Rye type of book; no one is going to rethink their lives or carry it with them on a trip to murder John Lennon, but that, in essence, is the point. It's hard to relate to most popular books and films, with their fantastic tales and characters that always seem to end up ok regardless of what craziness ensues. While those kinds of things hold an integral place in the artistic world, it's refreshing to see the lives of "ordinary" people brought to life in an equally entertaining way, and one could argue that the simplicity of Kingsolver's stories makes them more impressive. I'll leave that to someone else. But by golly, if you find yourself on a long drive through the heart of America, pick up Homeland and let yourself get wrapped up inside it- even if it lets you down, it'll be subtle and you might not even notice. -
I don't often read short stories, but a colleague lent this to me, and I'm so glad he did. It's beautifully written, and I will definitely go on to try Kingsolver's novels.
This is a collection of a dozen poignant stories: all quite different in plot, style, and setting (though all are in small, non-wealthy communities), but all concerning people who are somewhat marginalised, whether by society or within a relationship. In the few short pages of each story, Kingsolver conjures up whole lives... and then moves on to something different.
HOMELAND
The title story is a warm evocation of an elderly Cherokee woman. Those like her who were forced to leave their homeland "carried the truth of themselves in a sheltered place inside the flesh, exactly the way a fruit that has gone soft carries inside itself the clean, hard stone of its future". She lives with her family and tries to pass on some traditional lore to her grandchildren. This includes a visceral relationship with the environment: vines grow "with the persistence of the displaced", there are "Complicated cracks hanging like spider webs in the corner of the windshield", and in a mining area, "even the earth underneath us sometimes moved to repossess its losses", closing up "as quietly as flesh wounds".
BLUEPRINTS
This is about a couple in their thirties, though they seem older. He is a carpenter and she is a science teacher with an interest in animal behaviour and imprinting - hence the title. In a clever way I can't quite pinpoint, the writing conjures up the detatchment of the couple, with each other and their former home and friends in a larger town. "After so many years together it's as if they've suddenly used up all their words... and are now using the last set over and over."
COVERED BRIDGES
A couple ponder whether to start a family, while visiting the covered bridges typical of the area: possibly crossing from one type of life to another.
QUALITY TIME
"Organisation is the religion of the single parent", and guilt is the price.
STONE DREAMS
The husband loves and studies rocks as a hobbly; the wife "clings to steady things, like a barnacle clings to a boulder", but it is a strained relationship. "We stayed together because he didn't seem to have other plans, and because I couldn't picture myself as being husbandless".
SURVIVAL ZONES
A teenage girl is faced with deciding whether to stay in the small, dull town she has grown up in (and that had been designated for evacuees in the event of nuclear way).
ISLANDS ON THE MOON
This story had the most plot. A 28 year old single mother lives in the same trailer park as her estranged 44 year old mother. The daughter is embarrassed by her mother's weirdness (artistic, eco, hippie): she "just has to ooze out a little bit of art in everything she does, so that no part of her life is exactly normal", such as "painting landscapes on her tea kettles". She also resents her mother's freedom, "When it comes to men, she doesn't even carry any luggage" and ability to attract attention away from her. The daughter equates talking to her mother as being "like quicksand", but when they finally do have a meaningful conversation, the title is perhaps apt.
BEREAVED APARTMENTS
There is a touch of curtain-twitching mystery about this one, which sets it apart from the others. The title refers to houses that have been split into apartments, so that each is missing something - as the inhabitants themselves might be.
EXTINCTIONS
A woman takes her young sons back to her family home in a small town, bringing back all sorts of memories (but leaving gaps as well) and tensions. "X accuses Y of putting on airs since she moved away... but Y has never tried to put the past behind her. Large pars of her childhood just seem to erase themselves quietly while she's not looking."
JUMP-UP DAY
This is set in the Caribbean, where a jumpy is a zombie. The difficult daughter of an English doctor is raised by nuns. She "asked for little and seemed to need so much", so you know there will be trouble.
ROSE-JOHNNY
This is about difference: the burden it can be in a small town, compared with the open-minded acceptance of a child.
WHY I AM A DANGER TO THE PUBLIC
Union politics, prejudice (sex, race and class) and righteous indignation, with a twist near the end.
MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES
* "When the going gets rough you fall back on whatever awful things you grew up with."
* "We are driven to duty and hoard happiness by taking photographs."
* "Palm trees, newly transplanted [to a trailer park], looking frankly mortified by their surroundings."
* "Bob, who associated processed foods with intellectual decline."
* "a new house that is too large and dramatic for a family of three... the drama of the house gets to us, forcing us to rise to occasions we'd all rather just let pass."
* Children are sent to an estranged grandmother every supper to appease her "the way the Aztecs every so often offered up to the grumpy gods a human heart". (I'm not keen on the structure of that sentence, but I like the analogy.)
* Such low expectations: "we were in love by modern standards"!
* Pondering a film that has been censored for TV, a woman "feels that her own life has been like that, with the exciting parts cut out".
* A woman not fully accepting of her pregnancy, "just doesn't think about what's going on there other than having some vague awareness that someone has moved in and is rearranging the furniture of her body".
* On being something of a misfit and comparing the lives of neighbours, "A feels permanently disqualified from either camp, the old-fashioned family or the new. It's as if she somehow got left behind, missed every boat across the river, and now must watch happiness being acted out on the beach of a distant shore". -
Kingsolver is nothing if not political. She writes stories with a purpose. Lots of poetry, but no puffery. Her characters are strugglers not stragglers. She is of the South, but fights its good ole boy ways.
In each story, the main character, most always female, fights, fights as if her life depends upon it. It does. Indigenous people, Appalachians, native Americans, Latinas all need to balance right and wrong, familial love, racism, unionism, etc.
Each story is powerful and no issue is resolved. Kingsolver writes about real life problems which are rarely solved. This is a serious read. The heroines of these stories are torn, tugged at and sometimes tempted, but they are not toadies. Kingsolver is like a ventriloquist, creating tableaux for her characters to speak from her heart.
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I was so conflicted about how to rate this book: some of the stories were definitely 5 star quality, while others I would rate at a 2 or 3.
In the end, I decided that the great stories outweighed the meh stories, and so it got four stars.
The title story, "Homeland" is extrememly good, although my favorites were "Covered Bridges" and "Rose Johnny"
A theme of these stories is an "incomplete" or sort of abrupt ending. At first, this bothered me, until I realized it's a perfect statement about life and relationships-- it never really "ends" one story just stops. However, some of the stories, like "Jump Up Day" and "Extinctions" feel unfinished in a "how do I end this damn story? I'll just stop writing," kind of way.
Overall though, a really great book with some beautiful writing that really worms its way permamnently into your brain.
For example, my favorite part:
"As I looked at her there among the pumpkins I was overcome with the color and the intesity of my life. In these moments we are driven to try and hoard happiness by taking photographs, but I know better. The improtant thing was what the colors stood for, the taste of hard apples and the existence of Lena and the exact quality of the sun on the last warm day in October. A photograph would have flattened the scene into a happy moment, whereas what I felt was rapture. The fleeting certainty that I deserved this space I'd been taking up on this earth, and all the air I had breathed." -
Not all books are meant to be audiobooks, but those that are, absolutely must be listened to and then listened to again to catch the nuanced, beautiful language that can be missed the first time. Such is the case with Barbara Kingsolver’s Homeland and Other Stories, read by Kingsolver. She reads her stories with the soft, sweet accent of rural Kentucky, where she grew up.
It put me in mind of other books I’ve listened to that I categorize as “gentle reads”, like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce and Paddington Bear by Michael Bond. They are all books that soothe the soul by the very nature of the narration.
Unfortunately the edition that I had turned out to be abridged, so there were far fewer stories than in the unabridged edition. I am not even certain that the stories themselves weren’t abridged. Two of the five were unusually short. No matter, the first story, the book’s title was told by a young girl about her “great-mam” (great-grandmother)
who was a member of the bird clan, one of the fugitive bands of Cherokees who resisted capture. Great-mam had a way of sharing her wisdom that sometimes seemed to be caught only by her great granddaughter.
Barbara Kingsolver is among my favorite authors and I’ve read about 5 of her books. She’s a magician with language, but never was her use of language more beautiful than in these short stories. -
Very early Barbara Kingsolver, stories published in 1989. I liked most of these, especially Rose-Johnny and Bereaved Apartments.
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I have just recently returned from a my first trip to Europe, and I toured many of the major museums. It struck me as funny the way people would literally run up to one of the great masterworks of Western Art and get their picture taken, and the way folks would elbow their way to get as close as possible to the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh's Self Portrait. I think people want, even if just for a few second to be in the presence of greatness. Standing in front of the Mona Lisa is as close as you will ever get to being in the presence of one of the greatest minds in western culture. For my own part, I felt that way as I stood in front of the original Bust of Nefertiti. It was just an amazing experience to be in the presence of such great artistic ability and an object of such beauty. Which brings me to Barbara Kingsolver.
I have not read every book of Barbara Kingsolver's as of yet, but I have read many. When you read a Barbara Kingsolver work it is like being in the presence of the master for 8 or 10 hours or however long it takes you to read her book. I will never cease to be amazed at the technical skill, the ability to evoke a picture, the ability to write dialogue BK possesses. Homeland is a collection of short stories that range in subject matter from the descendants of a Cherokee woman who seem not to realize that their great-grandmother is an Indian, a woman having an affair and on a camping trip with her lover, a little girl's first encounter with a lesbian in her small town, a union leader trying to get her folks through a strike, two thieves that live in two connected apartments, and more. The dialogue includes the accents without being patronizing of the people who possess the accents. There was not a single story in here I disliked; all of them are excellent. The main theme of this collection is that people are people now matter which station of life they come from and what they do with their time, no matter their color, their gender, their orientation, etc. These characters all have a story to tell and lucky them, the modern day master of story-telling is doing the work for them. -
I recommend this to those who can pick up on the subtle things as many of these stories are more impressions or snapshots of life -- what people are like, how they feel, what they want, etc -- rather than big, exciting plots.
This book was lovely. I could relate to every single character in this book, be they young, old, man, woman, happy, miserable, and so on. Kingsolver's writing is so poetic while conveying such REALITY. I am full of admiration for her as a writer and have yet to find anything by her that I didn't love.
I feel as though having at least some experiences in the South (southwest and south south) are necessary to fully understand some of the scenes and characters' motivations and beliefs, but I'm sure it would be fine without.
The title story is the first story in the book and probably one of the best. I read it and then put the rest of the book down for a few weeks as I just kept thinking about it.
Read: "When the seasons changed, it never occurred to us to think to ourselves, "This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden." She was like an old pine, whose accumulated years cause one to ponder how long it has stood, not how soon it will fall."
These lines are indicative of how thoughtful and beautiful her writing is. Is there anyone who can't relate to those lines? Is there anyone doesn't take a moment to realize just how carefully she must have chosen every word. Consider -- the verb 'to ponder' rather than 'to think' or 'to muse' or anything like that. Doesn't it just reiterate this idea of the pine tree to you? (It makes me imagine the ponderosa pine.) Ahhhh, her writing is, simply, exquisite.
Other favorites within the collection: Blueprints, Stone Dreams, and Rose-Johnny.
Warning: Sometimes these stories and characters are so real and relatable that it hurts to read them. -
If I were teaching a fiction workshop to undergraduates, I think this would have to be on my reading list. Kingsolver waltzes with those story components so gracefully and each story has range; the reader does not feel as if she is reading the same story with slight shifts. With each story, I felt comfortable with it as a whole entity, though with many, I wish there were more, wanting to live in that world a bit longer.
The only issue I took were a good handful of her endings--they felt as if she were wrapping things in the last paragraph. It wasn't that there was a twist or even always a neat conclusion; the plot line with denouement was not always there, which is fantastic. But the last few sentences might give a reflection to the protagonist on the situation, and I expected something more complex from a writer of this caliber.
Some pieces of writing I loved the most:
"Most of the men I knew thought of their children as something their wives had produced, nurtured, and given to the world like tomatoes grown for the market."
"I showed her how brussels sprouts grow, attached along the fat main stem like so many suckling pigs."
"'When the seas first learned to breathe oxygen, a carpet of rust was laid down over the face of the earth.' I made fun of his way of talking but in sixteen years I'd picked up his penchant for dramatizing things, and I did it better."
"Prehistoric rock carvings, he said, were the aesthetic bridge between humans and the earth."
"On weekdays you could see her there drawing out sodas with no expression on her face, or standing at the juicer making orange juice, stacking up the emptied-out halves like a display of bright beanies, their cheerfulness lost on her."
"... they had no business calling this a forest. It reminded me of a Biblical disaster area--a tribe of toppled-over women who'd all looked back and got turned into pillars of salt."
"She'd never even known to count, like sheep or blessings, the days of her life that almost didn't happen."
"It was dangerous even to walk without shoes in the back garden where invisible infections were drawn up like cricket songs along the wet grass." -
I didn't expect this book. I read Prodigal Summer years ago, but this book is entirely different. Fifty percent percent of the stories are awesome. The rest are interesting but nothing stunning. The thing that is impressive about this book is the range of voices. As a collection of short stories it showcased Kingsolvers' ability to write convincingly from lots of different perspectives: the Latina strikebreaker, the white trash theif, the unhappily married woman - all female voices from different walks of life,occupations, concerns, countries. I enjoyed seeing her tackle all hese different stories. I particularly liked Homeland, Blueprints, Bereaved Apartments, and Why I Am A Danger to the Public.
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I am a bit embarrassed to admit I've never really read anything by Kingsolver before; I started Flight Behavior when Hannah was a baby, and my e-book library loan ended before I could really get into it. On the flipside, I am happy to have "discovered" a new author whose books I can pick up without much worry about whether or not the writing will be good. I enjoyed each of the stories in this collection and was impressed by Kingsolver's range in voice, point of view, character, and style. There are two stories that I think would be interesting and appropriate to read with my students, "Homeland" and "Rose-Johnny".
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A very interesting collection of short stories that introduce the reader to women in a variety of situations and at various stages of life. Kingsolver has a fine ear for dialog and seems able to dive straight to the heart of all manner of issues that confront our understanding of what it means to be a woman. Each of these women proves heroic in some small way and her remarkable ability to draw us into the story is on brilliant display. This reader came to care about each of these women in some fundamental way. That is the power of her art.
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Phenomenal. I'm adding this to my list of reasons to love Barbara Kingsolver.
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These delicious stories are another reason I adore Barbara Kingsolver. She never fails to woo me with her simple, yet intriguing storytelling. I return to her time after time.
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Maybe 3.5. A few excellent stories and a few pretty good ones. Kingsolver fans should read it for sure.
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Barbara Kingsolver is a gem. I’ll be pondering these stories...and the meaning of home...for a good long time.
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What a lovely collection. I admire Kingsolver's versatility with her character voices. She writes things she is knowledgeable about but does it engagingly. I often read authors who write what they know but don't consider most readers' unfamiliarity with the subject and give no explanation, so you have to google everything. Kingsolver tells you all you need to know, and she gives you STORY as opposed to some authors who think good writing is tons of DESCRIPTION.
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One of my aunts once wrote a postcard to Barbara Kingsolver after reading Animal Dreams and she responded to it so kindly. I like to think of my mom and some of her sisters, when they were just a little older than me, reading Barbara Kingsolver and thinking about how to take some of her messages along with them in their lives
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I read this when I was 13, not in one go but in bits and pieces on trips to a particular rental house in Dauphin Island where it was located. It left a strong impression, and the memories of that time run deep.
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I never forget how much I love Barbara Kingsolver but I do forget how much I love short stories until I read another book of short stories and remember. And Barbara’s short stories are among the best!
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Once again, Barbara Kingsolver does not disappoint. While I prefer her novels over short stories, this collection of stories was special. Her writing is lovely, as usual, and over the course of these twelve stories, she touches on topics that any human could related to. I chose to read this book during a time when I was working hard in a storage unit, sorting through 50 years-worth of my mother's and father's possessions. It was physically- and emotionally-draining work, and I wanted to come home and curl up with a book that wouldn't tax me further. I knew I'd be "safe" with Barbara Kingsolver. Her writing has a lightness in it, an underlying current of sensitivity and joy and hope, even when her writing is about heavy issues. I particularly enjoyed three stories: Homeland, Bereaved Apartments, and Rose-Johnny.
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Barbra Kingsolver knows how to encapsulate feelings of isolation better than nearly any other writer I’ve read in this short story collection. Whether it’s isolation through societal pressures, regret from stagnating in the same place, racial tensions, or by cultural differences, every story focuses on characters in the act of becoming ostracized or realizing they’ve been alone all along. Kingsolver doesn’t waste words; her poetic prose is concise but breath taking in how it can capture heart breaking moments and the wonder therein as characters either drown in these realizations or continue to struggle beautifully against them.
Favorite Stories: “Covered Bridges”, “Stone Dreams”, “Extinctions”, “Rose-Johnny” -
Again, another leap of faith I took on a Barbara Kingsolver piece. Not usually a short story reader but I had to try. Not my favorite of hers but just as satisfying as her other works.
What I found most amazing about this collection of short stories was how raw and loud her political and social voice came through in these stories. More so than her novels. This would make sense since one has less time in which to lull the reader into a sense of what you the writer are trying to say so the message comes quickly and suddenly.
For that reason, it was a great read. It is one I would go back to again. Highly recommend it. -
So excited to see how this goes... is Barbara Kingsolver even capable of short stories?
Wonderful characters, not surprisingly. Is it weird to say that my biggest complaint was that I would get to love the characters then on to the next story? Sorry, Barbara, but you do that to me. Every story was so unique, I really enjoyed each. The main characters were pretty much always women (no surprise there). But I still feel weird reading short Kingsolver stories. There was this one very small character I found in three of the stores, if only lightly mentioned, so I have no idea what that could be about... -
It's always difficult to rate a collection like this. I feel like four stars is an insult to the awesomeness of the several stories I loved, stories that I will return to again and again--both as a writer and a teacher of writing. Still, I can't in good conscience give the whole book five stars--it wouldn't be fair to my favorite stories to imply that the less-great stories could hang with them.
Regardless of ratings, Kingsolver is a gifted short story writer. I'm surprised this is her only short story collection given her prolificness since it was published in 1989. I hope she has another short story collection in the works. -
Sad stories about sad people, beautifully written. In truth, there were some very funny moments in the book and some people who, although facing difficult circumstances, did not come across as sad or pitiable, but for me the overarching impression left by the book is how difficult it is to find happiness in life and how we seldom achieve our dreams. It is less preachy than some of Kingsolver’s books and more just an series of insights into the lives of various women. It contains a lot of truths and tells them in a very engaging and beautiful manner. Still, I am now looking around for something a little more uplifting to read as my next book.
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This collection of short stories all have women as the protagonist. What makes the book interesting is the variety of characters. Kingsolver portrays people as diverse as a native matriarch,couples at various stages of their marriages who have lost the ability to communicate or trust, a single mom,a union supporter. Unconventional women,ordinary women, but all strong women. Her stories made me wish that she had written a novel about each one; I wanted to get to know them better and see them in many aspects of their lives. The quality of good writing, I think.
