**Book Club Pick** I believe I'm becoming a crotchety old woman because I didn't really like this one either. To save time, here are the elements of the plot: three women, moths, coyotes, chestnut trees, and the mountains of Kentucky. Prodigal Summer is a very well-structured novel. The stories of the three women are intertwined just enough for the parallels of their lives to be obvious but not overt, and their stories aren't wrapped up too neatly, which always bothers me.
As for plot, though, I'm reminded of the Catherine MacKinnon essay where she talks about the two dominant approaches to feminism as being like point and counter-point in a chorale, with the sopranos singing, "we are the same, we are the same" and the altos singing "we are different, we are different," and neither one of them getting anywhere, and neither one sufficient in explaining the practical problems women face.
Prodigal Summer is clearly in the "we are different" camp.
Weird. As I'm writing this, though, I'm realizing that Kingsolver had this whole emphasis on biological/gender determinism, but the three main characters were involved in very masculine pursuits and were faced with their own biology as outside of their experiences in the novel. Crap, she's not in the "we are different" camp, she's in both camps. We totally should have discussed this at book club . . .