The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees / Barbara Kingsolver
New York: Harper Flamingo, 1998, c1988.
261 p.

This is my final read for my Century of Books, filling in that very last slot for 1988. I didn't have a book for this year on my list (well, I did but when I went to review Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore I was horrified to realize it was actually published in 1979! Aak!) but the joy of twitter and other readers working on A Century of Books meant I received many great recommendations. 

So I ended off my century of books with a great read. This was Kingsolver's debut novel, and shows her concerns with social justice and community which also arise in her later books. 

Marietta Greer grows up in Kentucky, and aims to leave as soon as she can. When she finally pulls up stakes she heads cross-county in her old rattletrap of a car, and decides to choose her new name (she's not fond of Marietta or her nickname Missy) from her travels: she picks Taylor, after Taylorville IL. So Taylor Greer is driving cross-country; she stops for a break and enters a bar where the atmosphere is strained. Going back out to her car, an older Cherokee woman puts a toddler in a blanket on her passenger seat and asks her to take the child with her. Then she leaves, so Taylor has no choice. She drives away with the child, dazed by what is happening. 

She reaches her final destination, chosen by the place her car gives out -- Tucson, Arizona, where she just manages to pull into Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, run by Mattie, an older woman who becomes a friend and mentor later on. 

Taylor and the baby, who she's named Turtle, settle in to their new life together in Tucson. This does take a little suspension of disbelief - young Taylor, who has avoided the fate of early motherhood shared by most of her high school classmates, takes on a strange child in a parental role and does not report any of this to any authorities. But somehow the story convinced me. It felt likely within this narrative. 

Taylor finds a roommate, finally -- a fellow displaced Kentuckian, Lou Ann Ruiz, and her new baby Dwayne Ray -- and a job, at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. She settles in and builds herself a family and a community with Lou Ann, Mattie, and neighbours Edna Poppy and Virgie May Parsons. There are unexpected elements too; Mattie runs a safe house above the tire shop for refugees from South America, who become close to Taylor as well. There are discussions of brutal South American regimes, the plight of refugees and how difficult America makes it for them to find a new and safe home (and this was written in 1988 - how times do not change) -- and a constant awareness of Native American life that Turtle represents. There are descriptions of the landscape and the neighbourhood and the way that Taylor feels that Arizona and Kentucky are so different they should be different countries. It is a funny, thoughtful read, with some hard hitting content thrown in. 

But what I liked most was the feel of the book, the warmth of the characters and their relationships. It was an easy read, a conversational novel, with some debut novel flaws but mostly just enjoyable and a book that kept me reading late into the night. Thanks to the recommendations from other readers for this one - definitely one I'd recommend to others now as well.