Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
Release Date: January 1, 1990
Pages: 342
Source: Copy from School

Rating: 5 stars

Summary from Goodreads:
“Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.” So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd’s advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What the finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life’s largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.

When my AP English teacher handed us Animal Dreams one day, I did not think I would like it. From the title and the cover, I was expecting to hate it. What I found inside was one of the best stories I have read in a long while, and it is a story I will be sure to remember for quite a time to come.

We analysized the heck out of this book in class, and in some instances I think that can cause me to not like a book as much. In this case, I really think it only enhanced my love for it. I loved the story. It was so interesting, and so beautifully woven. Throughout the book, there were so many motifs that kept reappearing. It was really interesting to pick them all out and see where they would show up next.

The characters were another really great part of the story. Codi was a really interesting narrator – her mind was so skewed, so seeing the story through her eyes left you to interpret different things and find the truth. Loyd was my favorite character of the book. I loved every scene with him in it – except the cock fighting ones, those just made me angry.

This is something I definitely would not usually have picked up if not assigned for class. Books like this are the ones that really make me want to go outside my comfort zone of reading, and grab something new. Animal Dreams was a book I truely enjoyed, and I will definitely be checking out more from Barbara Kingsolver.