Sent into the jungles of Brazil, 42-year-old research biologist Dr. Marina Singh embarks on a journey into the unknown.
Vogel, the American pharmaceutical giant for which Marina works, is funding the classified research of Dr. Annick Swenson, who for decades has been mostly left to her own devices while developing a revolutionary new fertility drug for post-menopausal women, a virtual “Lost Horizon for American ovaries.” (p.26) The formidable Dr. Swenson has cut off communication with the company, insisting that in order to protect her subjects — the primitive Lakashi tribe whose female members bear children well into old age — her remote jungle location must remain secret.
In the wake of the reported death of Marina’s colleague, Anders Eckman, who died of a fever while trying to unearth details of the drug’s progress, Vogel president Jim Fox orders Marina to Brazil to locate the elusive Dr. Swenson and report back on her research. Marina’s personal motivation for making the trip has more to do with finding out what happened to her friend and long-time lab partner.
Plagued by trepidation, yet propelled by her sense of duty, Marina journeys from her quiet home in Minnesota deep into the Amazon rainforest. Faced with an array of life-threatening perils from snake-infested rivers, to suffocating heat and a tribe of cannibals, Marina is also confronted by her own ghosts from the past. Chief among them is the eminent Dr. Swenson. As Marina’s former teacher, Swenson is the woman Marina most admired, emulated, and feared while a resident in gynecology at Johns Hopkins University. Swenson has cast a shadow over Marina’s career ever since.
We follow Marina on her interior psychological journey. With unfulfilled dreams and expectations, as well as unresolved ghosts from the past, the American pharmacologist faces painful moral choices and learns unexpected truths about herself as she journeys far from familiar territory “down a river into the beating heart of nowhere.” (p.165)
Set up as both a mystery and an adventure novel, State of Wonder is unusual in that the main character is a doctor, not a detective. The story is built around a mysterious fertility drug that would allow women to give birth well into old age. Patchett’s medical investigators offer us forensic detail about the questions, boundaries, and morality of medical research, third-world geography, environment and society, as well as the impact of intervention on both people and nature.
The setting of any novel is a deliberate choice, but in Patchett’s case, the Amazon works well because of its relative isolation. Without cell phones, the jungle location allows the ideas being offered to be seen away from other complicating factors.
As a result, we can wonder freely about what it all means.
• Ann Patchett was born in 1963 in Los Angeles and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her second husband and their dog. Also a part of her very close community are her husband’s ex-wife (a friend), her step-grandchildren, and childhood friends.
• As a child, Patchett knew she wanted to write fiction. A quiet and obedient schoolgirl with a Catholic upbringing, she has often talked about how a childhood spent praying to statues and dreaming of miracles was the perfect preparation for her life as a storyteller. Not a regular churchgoer, she describes herself as both adoring and struggling with her faith. She has written warmly of the childless nuns who taught her and has said that in a way, they were her role models.
• Patchett studied creative writing, first at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and then at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she met her first husband. They divorced a year later and Patchett returned to Tennessee, working as a waitress and at Seventeen magazine, where for nine years, her talents went largely unrecognized.
• Before her 30th birthday in 1992, Patchett made her literary mark with her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, set in a Catholic home for unmarried pregnant women. The book is intensely emotional and unusual in combining a religious theme with a deep interest in women’s psychology influenced by feminism. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of 1992 and subsequently made into a TV movie.
• Since then, Patchett has written six more novels, including the prizewinning Bel Canto (2001), a stylish, psychological thriller that mingles terrorism and opera with a hostage-taking at a lavish diplomatic party in South America. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, Bel Canto catapulted Patchett into the ranks of bestselling authors.
• Patchett departed from fiction for 2004’s Truth & Beauty, the heartbreaking account of her longstanding friendship with gifted writer Lucy Grealy, whose childhood disfigurement from cancer of the jaw precipitated a tragic descent into addiction and eventual death from a heroin overdose in 2002.
• In her latest novel, State of Wonder, Patchett shares a number of similarities with her central character, Marina:
o Both women are in their 40s and have a much older partner with a previous wife and grown-up children.
o Both come from families of divorce and, as children, lost regular contact with their fathers.
o Both are childless, by choice.
• Although Patchett has reached an age where most people have stopped questioning their decision not to be a mother, she remains indignant at the memory. “I never wanted children, never, not for one minute, and it has been the greatest gift of my life that even as a young person I knew. It freed me up tremendously. Children are wonderful but they’re not for everybody, and yet it never stopped. To constantly have people tell me that I didn’t know my own mind and I didn’t know my body was kind of outrageous.” (Rustin)
• Much research goes into Patchett’s novels. For Bel Canto, she immersed herself into opera and made friends with superstar Renee Fleming. In State of Wonder, she makes use of her operatic knowledge, setting a pivotal scene in the renowned opera house in Manaus. For the medical details and issues in State of Wonder, Patchett had help from her husband, step-father, step-daughter, and mother, all of whom are medical professionals.
• Usually a child follows in the footsteps of the parent, but in Patchett’s case, there is a twist on parental influence. Her mother, a working nurse, took up writing at age 60 and has now successfully published her fifth book, Calling Invisible Women, a smart and hilarious story about women of a certain age who become invisible to those around them.
• With each of her books, Patchett’s reputation grows. Her friend, Pulitzer Prize–winner Robert Olen Butler, describes her as “a genius of the human condition. I can’t think of many other writers, ever, who get anywhere near her ability to comprehend the vastness and diversity of humanity, and to articulate our deepest heart.” (Lit Lovers)
Can Ann Patchett’s novel be compared to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? Why or why not?
Novels:
• The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)
• Taft (1994)
• The Magician’s Assistant (1997)
• Bel Canto (2001)
• Run (2007)
• State of Wonder (2011)
Non-fiction:
• Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (2004)
• What Now? (2008)
• Manaus, which means “the mother of the gods,” is the capital of the state of Amazonas in northern Brazil. It was founded in 1669 as the Fort of Sao Jose do Rio Negro, built to ensure the predominance of Portugal in the region, especially against an influx of Dutch. The population of Manaus is 1.8 million, with 2.2 million residing in the metropolitan area. (IBGE 2010)
• During the late 19th century, Manaus was the centre of the Amazon region’s rubber boom. For a time, it was said to be one of the gaudiest cities in the world.
• With a tropical monsoon climate, the Amazon is a popular eco-tourist destination.
• Brazil’s Amazon basin represents over half of the planet’s remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. More than one third of all species in the world live in the Amazon rainforest.
• First written in 1607, L’Orfeo, a story based on the Greek legend of Orfeo, is one of the earliest music dramas still regularly performed. A story of the power of love and its ability to bridge the gap between life and death, it tells of Orfeo’s descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Euridice back to the living world.
• As Marina listens to the performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at the Manaus opera house, not only does the music soothe her soul but she begins to think of the opera as “the story of her life.” (p.124)
• Marina sees herself as Orfeo and Anders as Euridice, dead from a snake bite. She is sent to hell to find and bring back her friend. After rescuing Anders and gaining his freedom by leaving Easter behind with the Hummocca, “she understood that in life a person was only allowed one trip down to hell. There was no going back to that place, not for anyone.” (p.345)
• The opera venue Amazon Teatro was built during the Belle Epoque (1800 to 1914), a time when fortunes were made in the rubber boom. Designed to be a jewel in the heart of the rainforest, it had its opening performance in January of 1897.
• The theatre is housed in a Renaissance-style building with a domed roof made up of 36,000 ceramic tiles and set in the colors of the Brazilian flag. It also has 198 chandeliers sent from Italy, including 32 made of murano glass.
Consider how the setting reflects the various themes of the novel. Which theme(s) are impacted by the setting the most and least?