The Bean Trees (middle)

I am now officially halfway through The Bean Trees! Hooray! This book has been decent, so far.  I don't know if I would call it great, but it is enjoyable enough to read.  It is probably a 6 or 7 out of 10.  One main thing I noticed throughout the first half of the novel was the way in which Barbara Kingsolver writes.  It seems so elegant and fluid, although it is still easy to comprehend.  It mixes poetry with the common tongue and makes for a delightful read.  An example of this nice language is in the chapter How the Eat in Heaven.  Kingsolver writes, "Mrs. Parsons had on a churchy-looking dress and a small, flat white hat with a dusty velveteen bow" (Kingsolver 103).  I think it is very cool how Kingsolver uses the words "churchy-looking" while still maintaining a professional dialogue.  She engages me with her use of adjectives and sentence structure.  The main trouble I have with this book is the lack of action.  The plot so far is of a country girl name Taylor that moves to Tucson, Arizona and adopts a native-american girl named Turtle.  She rooms with a woman named Lou Ann.  Lou Ann also has a small child and they befriend a delightful woman named Mattie.  It is a story about friendship and growth, but it is not particularly exciting.  One theme that I believed to be common throughout the novel was gender equality.  This story takes place in the late 1980's, so women supposedly have equal rights, but this story sheds light on the true information in American culture.  In the beginning of the novel, Kingsolver makes it clear that being a woman is much harder than being a man.  The book states, "The Indian child was a girl.  A girl, poor thing.  That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery that I could not imagine" (Kingsolver 23).  Being a woman is very tough in this society, as made clear by the narrator, Taylor.  Kingsolver is making the statement that the girl is symbolic of women in general and how much harder being is woman is than a man.