State of Wonder

Starred review from April 4, 2011
Patchett (Bel Canto) is a master storyteller who has an entertaining habit of dropping ordinary people into extraordinary and exotic circumstances to see what they're made of. In this expansive page-turner, Marina Singh, a big pharma researcher, is sent by her married boss/lover to the deepest, darkest corner of the Amazon to investigate the death of her colleague, Anders Eckman, who had been dispatched to check on the progress of the incommunicado Dr. Annick Swenson, a rogue scientist on the cusp of developing a fertility drug that could rock the medical profession (and reap enormous profits). After arriving in Manaus, Marina travels into her own heart of darkness, finding Dr. Swenson's camp among the Lakashi, a gentle but enigmatic tribe whose women go on bearing children until the end of their lives. As Marina settles in, she goes native, losing everything she had held on to so dearly in her prescribed Midwestern life, shedding clothing, technology, old loves, and modern medicine in order to find herself. Patchett's fluid prose dissolves in the suspense of this out-there adventure, a juggernaut of a trip to the crossroads of science, ethics, and commerce that readers will hate to see end.

The audiobook equivalent of "couldn't put it down" must be "couldn't pause it." There was little pause time during this reviewer's amazing experience of Patchett's new novel. Hope Davis astutely paces the suspenseful odyssey from a sedate Minnesota pharmaceutical lab to the darkest Amazonian jungle. Researcher Marina Singh is dispatched to remote Brazil to investigate a colleague's death while conducting research on a new fertility drug. Davis intuits each of the powerful personas and is particularly memorable as Marina's forceful and didactic 73-year-old mentor, Dr. Swenson, who has remained deliberately incognito as she studies the Lakashi tribe and their medical miracles for decades. Davis expresses a vivid vocal range of ages, as well as Australian, German, and Brazilian accents. Patchett's exquisite prose immerses the listener through the novel's striking climax, which shatters the jungle's ferociously guarded mysteries. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine