This is, among several other fascinating themes, a story about mentors and how they keep us in thrall long after we seem to have taken control of our lives. Swenson, the caustic director of the jungle laboratory.
That journey “to the beating heart of nowhere” takes up more than half the novel, but it’s time Patchett uses to explore Marina’s past and her anxiety about confronting Dr. On a blue aerogramme now two weeks old, the lab director has written: “Given our location, this rain, the petty bureaucracies of government (both this one and your own), and the time sensitive nature of our project, we chose to bury him here.” Eager - possibly too eager - to retrieve the body and discover what progress the lab is making toward development of a revolutionary fertility drug, the company chairman prevails upon Marina to fly to Brazil and investigate.
The tragedy of that news is compounded by the curt letter that announces his death. The story starts in Minnesota at a large pharmaceutical company, a setting at once pastoral and clinical, bright and cold - in every way different from the tropical biome of anacondas, vampire bats and yet-to-be-identified plants and animals where most of this fantastic adventure eventually plays out.Ī scientist named Marina Singh receives word that her office partner has died while visiting the company’s research lab somewhere in Brazil. Patchett’s genius here is her ability to lure ordinary people down the river of bizarre circumstances so gradually that they don’t look for an exit until the forest is thickly knotted behind them. As gripping as it is thoughtful, it burns with the low-level fever of “ Heart of Darkness,” but its most febrile moments soar into the creepiness of “The Island of Doctor Moreau.” Now, “ State of Wonder” takes her to Brazil, into the Amazon’s piranha-infested waters, and the result is another dazzling work. Like some exotic, undiscovered creature, the book resisted classification: not so much a literary thriller as a thrilling piece of literary fiction.
T en years ago Ann Patchett wrote herself onto the literary map when she took us to South America in “ Bel Canto,” a novel that improbably mingled romance, terrorism and opera to win popular and critical praise.
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