First up, we’re talking STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett.
Caveat: We’re going to spar, bitterly, over the end of the State of Wonder—which means we’re going to reveal the grand finale completely. So, if you’ve already read it or if you’re someone who likes spoiled things, you may continue. If that’s not you, catch us the next time with Molly Ringwald.
Jennifer: Okay, so there’s this big pharmaceutical company in Minnesota and Dr. Annick Swenson is their employee doing research in the Amazon. Apparently, she’s discovered this unbelievable fertility miracle. Two crazy problems: First, she’s gone all Kurtzian on them, and she never communicates with anyone. She’s, like, disappeared into the heart o’ darkness, and the drug company wants their medical miracle now! Second, the last pharmacy guy they sent out to find Swenson ended up dead. So Dr. Marina Singh, another one, heads out. Here’s my State of Wonder review.
Get ready for the spoiler: It turns out the guy isn’t dead. A lot of fabulous things happen. But something not-so-fabulous happens too: Marina, our heroine, and the missing dead guy who is actually alive (Anders) have sex. Then they fly back to the States. To his wife.
I haven’t been this incensed since the end of “Lost.” The book was nearly fabulous and then she blew it at the end with the sex. She blew it.
Lara: Whoa, whoa. WHOA. She does not blow it. You are making it sound like it was paltry and dirty (although both of them had been without a real bath for months), and like a one-night stand and it wasn’t. Anders was lost and essentially kidnapped by this native tribe, and was probably resigned to the fact that his life was over. Here comes Marina, who has also been consumed by the Amazonian culture and is essentially out of touch with what it meant to be “her,” and she finds Anders. Someone like her. Someone who speaks and eats and drinks like her. Their sexual act was more about connection, a sort of communion. They were alive and they needed to feel that. They needed to connect with each other. It was like a return to humanity before actually returning to humanity. And here’s my review of State of Wonder.
Jennifer: Nice try, but sex is sex. Infidelity is infidelity. Anders was headed home to Karen, the longsuffering wife who always believed her husband was still alive. Do you mean to tell me that he couldn’t wait for the “connection” for one or two more days? Before I go off on the misinterpretation of human sexuality, however, allow me to say that this wondrous Patchett—who I greatly admire—expertly strung us all along, only to undercut or sabotage her own happy ending.
Lara: I’m glad she didn’t go for everything tied up in a pretty bow at the end. Life is complicated and painful and full of good people who make bad choices—and they are still good people. I loved the ending. It felt real and right, even though the decisions they made were wrong. Of course they were wrong. Kind of like your opinion on this matter. I value it, but it’s wrong. The book is flawless.
Jennifer: So the book is flawless, but the characters are flawed? (I’m just trying to make sense of your bombastic outcry.)
Lara: Exactly. Just like real life. Flawlessly flawed. Perfectly imperfect.
Jennifer: I’m all for flawed. I’m all for complex characters with moral shortcomings. What I don’t like is how this particular moral failure—you’d agree that it’s a moral failure?—is not discussed in such terms. The pretty bow you don’t want at the end is there. Patchett presents it all as a-okay, as if they (Marina and Anders) can just go on without any consequence. He goes back to his wife and kids. They never mention the sex in the jungle. Really? I ask you, Lara, is sex ever something so inconsequential?
Lara: I think it can mean everything and yes, unfortunately, sometimes nothing. It can be all emotional and spiritual or just a physical act. Does that make it right or wrong? I don’t know. I believe that Patchett felt it meant something: that Anders and Marina were found—they were alive. And I am certain there will be repercussions; but the story can’t go on forever. What is Patchett supposed to do? Take us to Anders going home, Karen elated with his return and then destroyed when she learns of his transgression? Does Patchett end it there? Or wait, how about this… Marina realizes her true feelings for Anders and is unable to go on without him and so she attempts a relationship with him or kills herself over the idea of ruining a marriage? Does Patchett end it there? Where does it end?
Jennifer: Where an author ends is, of course, the BIG question. And, for me, the end really is everything. I like closure; I like redemptive ends (by that, I do not mean happy or religious ends; rather, I mean that I like meaningful ends that resolve things—resolution). It has to make sense. You know, I’ll bring up another choice Patchett made in this book. In order to secure Anders’ freedom from a tribe of possible-cannibalists, Marina “trades” Easter for Anders. Easter is the boy she was going to adopt and take back to the States with her! We’re devastated. I was devastated. I didn’t want for that to happen. I wished it weren’t so. But I get it. I see why Patchett did it. Even though I didn’t like it, it made sense. The sex didn’t make sense. How should she have ended it? I don’t know. I would’ve been okay with her ending it with that devastating “trade,” Easter for Anders. I would’ve been okay with that.
Lara: Oh, God, Easter! Yes, I was very upset about that. I agree with you on that. I think his trade and how quickly Marina recovered from it was my only beef with the book. I wanted more pain from that loss. I felt it so deeply and Marina felt it so quickly. Too quickly, I think. But let’s get back to the sex, because, really that’s why anyone out there has read this far, right?
The sex IS the closure. It closes the chapter on that fascinatingly bizarre journey that Marina and Anders just endured. The sex is what bridges the gap between the crazy Amazon world and wide expanse of Eden Prairie. I think Patchett is one of the only writers who could have pulled off an ending like this. Her writing is exquisite. I mean, I dream of being able to write like her. I really have an affinity for her writing. But I get that this specific act is going to bother a lot of people. More than just you, I am certain.
Jennifer: Funny, you should say that. Whenever I have sex, I like to think of it just like that—as some kind of bridge between the Amazon and Eden Prairie, crazy meets heavenly (I did not just write that). Hi, mom!
Well, okay, I cannot concede on the sex thing. But I’ll give you this: Patchett’s writing is exquisite. I find myself stuck in a quagmire of my own making. I hate her ending. I love her writing. Since the end is so important to me, will I write off the whole book? I mean, it was a long journey. It was a great journey. I loved reading this book.
Alas, like “Lost,” I think it’s worthy of attention, a lesson to be learned: here’s the potential of the narrative, here are the possibilities of the story, and here are its failures. Here are its failures.
Oh, Ann! Don’t hate me!
Lara: Fair. And I don’t think you need to worry about Ann hating you. Me? Now, that’s another matter.
This was really fun to read!
Hi, Lara and Jennifer.
I also loved this book. Exquisite writing. The ending did not bother me, in fact, I felt it to be entirely in keeping with the rest of the story. Life is messy. Of course Anders and Marina will not go on as if nothing happened, but not because they had sex. Look what they had been through! Anders’ return begins with the rescue, and in part that connection to Marina is a part of making his way back, literally and also psychologically, emotionally. As I said to Jennifer earlier, I saw their physical connection through sex as not unlike Easter’s need to sleep next to Marina, to be comforted by her bodily presence, after the trauma of nearly being killed by the snake. We are mammals. We huddle and cling. We sustain one another through physical contact.
There is an important bit you left out above in arguing about the “trade” of Easter for Anders. The fact that Easter had been taken from his parents in the first place! (by Dr. Swenson, who, ironically, tells Marina why she should not take Easter out of his culture believing she can give him a “better” home in America- Dr. Swenson did as much by telling Easter’s parents he had died when in fact he had not. Then she kept him. Patchett also does not discuss this in terms of moral failure). One can also see the “trade” as the return of Easter to his family. What Patchett describes before they “trade” Easter is the recognition of a mother for her lost child. Easter’s parents recognize him. They get him back. But what about Easter? He had no idea this was his family as he had no memory of them. He is terrified when handed over to them by Marina and Anders. So is this “right” or “wrong?” I found this part way more shocking and disturbing that the sex. With no clear answer- except that most might agree Dr. Swenson had no right to keep the child in the first place. But she did.
Questions about ethics and morality are all over this book without being labelled as such. What about Dr. Swenson going on with the research on fertility with no intention of delivering the goods, because she feels justified in continuing to use the company funds to do her secret research on malaria- unbeknownst to the un-consenting research subjects (“yikes” says the western trained physician in me), nor to the company funding it. There are other examples. What is brilliant is that Patchett has no pat answers but allows us to see all the ambiguity in the circumstances and decisions and allows us to see that characters often act contrary to their own ideas of how one should/would act. In fact, I think she invites us to see (whether explicitly or not) none of us knows, really knows, what we would do in extreme circumstances.
Keep me posted! I love book reviews and recommendations.
Thanks Anastasia!
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I love you Siobhan! And, yes, the trade of Easter is super complicated and morally wrong at the outset, morally right at the end and painful on all sides of the argument.
Thank you all for your comments! We very much appreciate them–and a discussion on this book could go in so many different directions. It is, indeed, full of very complicated ethical issues!
Love this whole conversation- I almost ditched this book a third if the way in with the wandering around in the city and that annoying couple, but itreally grew on me despite – yes, the disconnect – of the affair – and the heartbreak of Easter. The snake wrangling was outlandish and fantastic all at once. Well worth the read!
I thought Patchett did a wonderful job describing the reaction of Easter’s mother when she saw him on the boat and her running out to embrace him even though Easter didn’t recognize her. I understood that those were his parents who had long ago lost him and presumed him dead, and were now being reunited, so I didn’t find the “handing over” of him as heart-breaking as everyone else. Yes, it was sad because he didn’t remember them and didn’t know why his friends would abandon him, but he’d learn the truth eventually, and given the inevitability of the situation … the tribe would have NEVER allowed Marina and Anders to leave with him … it made good sense to me. Anders and Easter were both going back where they truly belonged.
As far as the sex, I understood the need for human connection and why that would happen, so the act itself didn’t disturb me. What I disliked was the way Patchett just sort of “threw it out there”. With very little lead-up she just jumps right into “When they made love …” as if it were already a foregone fact, which just felt jarring and dismissive to me. It’s understandable that they would share the only cot available, and in such tight quarters why they would sleep wrapped in each others’ arms, (and both of those could even be justified by the traumatic events and their need for human contact) but I would’ve liked a little more description building up to that, helping to establish the emotional connection. Looking into each others’ eyes, describing their fear, maybe Marina describing how she realized how much he meant to her once she heard he was dead. Maybe him describing a bit of his experience while he was MIA and how he felt, most likely that he would die without ever seeing a friendly face again. Something to better validate that need to cling to each other at that deeper level rather than just platonically holding each other for comfort. I think Patchett dropped the ball on that a little bit, most likely in an attempt to prevent it from sounding like a romance novel, but I think she overcorrected and made it too matter-of-fact. I felt it it ended up portraying the sex as more of just a physical act to be brushed under the rug rather than allowing the reader to really empathize. The reader had to infer all that emotion on their own, and I think those who were appalled by the infidelity needed Patchett to help them identify with the emotional aspect.