Summary from Goodreads:

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Nothing about Marina’s assignment is easy: not only does no one know where Dr. Swenson is, but the last person who was sent to find her, Marina’s research partner Anders Eckman, died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor as well as answers to several troubling questions about her friend’s death, the state of her company’s future, and her own past.

Once found, Dr. Swenson, now in her seventies, is as ruthless and uncompromising as she ever was back in the days of Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins. With a combination of science and subterfuge, she dominates her research team and the natives she is studying with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she may still be unable to live up to her teacher’s expectations.

In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, and a neighboring tribe of cannibals, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss. It is a tale that leads the reader into the very heart of darkness, and then shows us what lies on the other side.

My Review:

State of Wonder is another home-run from Ann Patchett.  Now, granted, my favorite of her books is, and probably will always be, Bel Canto (but that’s just because it spoke to the musician in me and I could HEAR a soundtrack while I was reading it) but this is a solid, well put together, fantastic story of the choices we have to make, of challenging ourselves and of finding out where that line is, you know.. the one between fanaticism and passion for ones work.

I picked this book up yesterday after work and stayed up late finishing it.  I read it when I got home from work, read it while I ate dinner, crashed on the couch with it and tried to put it down for sleep.. but ended up turning the lights back on and finishing it.  That’s what Ann Patchett does for me, she stirs up the curiosity and gets me so involved in the story I can’t help but continue to read.

And let me talk for a moment about Marina Singh as a character.  She was so freaking brilliant.  It’s been a while since I truly connected with a character and could understand why they were doing and thinking what they were, and it happened with Marina.  I could sympathize with her insecurities, her choices made for profession, her worries, her fears and I admired her all the more for standing up to them and pushing forward to find the answers.  Even when things developed in a way that was unexpected toward the end of the book, I found myself so lost in wonder about Marina that everything else happening seemed to take a back seat.

State of Wonder is well worth the hype – so if you are put off by big starred reviews and lots of press, please… don’t let it put you off of reading this book.  Talk about it, buy it, read it and loan it out, get it from the library – whatever you have to do, just experience it.  Your time will not be wasted.

About the Author

Ann Patchett was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and raised in Nashville. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1990, she won a residential fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1992. In 1993, she received a Bunting Fellowship from the Mary Ingrahm Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. Patchett’s second novel, Taft, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best work of fiction in 1994. Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant,was short-listed for England’s Orange Prize and earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Her next novel, Bel Canto, won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in 2002, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named the Book Sense Book of the Year. It sold more than a million copies in the United States and has been translated into thirty languages. In 2004, Patchett published Truth & Beauty, a memoir of her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. It was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, andEntertainment Weekly. Truth & Beauty was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Chicago Tribune‘s Heartland Prize, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Alex Award from the American Library Association.

She was also the editor of Best American Short Stories 2006.

Patchett has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic,The Washington Post, Gourmet, and Vogue. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Karl VanDevender.

Visit Ann at her website.

For more reviews on State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, please follow the book tour.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from TLC Book Tours. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”