Keely's Reviews > Small Wonder

If you listen to Small Wonder on audio, read by the author, you'll learn that Kingsolver sounds an awful lot like the actress Mary Steenburgen. Whatever format you choose, you'll learn a lot about a wide array of topics, including the 9/11 attacks, true patriotism, climate change, eating locally and seasonally, the concept of placefulness, endangered species and environmental stewardship, our need for wild places, motherhood and family, feminism, rape culture, the decline in independent booksellers, short stories, poetry, Kingsolver's science background and literary beginnings, and more.

Kingsolver is such a good writer. I was happily swept along from one topic to the next. Very occasionally, her perspectives felt uncomfortably dated in the way that only writing from the relatively recent past can. But mostly, these essays from the early 2000s are prescient and uncannily predictive of the upheaval we've been living with since 2016. All in all, it's a great read by one of the great American writers of the past 30+ years, and a very worthwhile dip into our not-so-distant past.