The Bean Trees - Chapters 2 & 3

No, I didn't forget. I just had a mostly offline day.

We're reading The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver.

Here's the link to the post on Chapter 1.



Is this like when you learn a new word and suddenly start hearing it everywhere?

I swear I didn't remember anything about Angel - or even Lou Ann - when I picked this book. But there it is. A whole chapter about the ending of a marriage.

She had been thinking about herself and Angel splitting up for even longer than she had been pregnant, but didn't particularly do anything about it. That was Lou Ann's method. She expected that a divorce would just develop, like a pregnancy--that eventually they would reach some kind of agreement without having to discuss it.

I can identify with that. Her attitude is more purposeful and "it'll happen eventually" than mine ever was. But I did sometimes wonder if we would somehow drift apart or separate.

And I can certainly relate to her method: A) Notice a relationship issue (a funny noise in the car, a loose toilet seat, an idea for a quilt, the fact that the family will probably want something for dinner on any given night) and B) Proceed to go on living with it indefinitely, figuring it'll either resolve itself, I'll get used to it, or it'll be handled when it really has to be.

It's not a method that I recommend, mind you, but it's certainly a familiar one.

She wandered around the house with her grocery bag looking at the half-empty house. After four years there was very little, other than clothes, that she thought of as belonging clearly to one or the other.

This is where Lou Ann and I part ways. It may be different when it comes to actually dividing our things between two households, but after 14 years of marriage (and even more of living together) I can still look at most of our possessions - pictures on the walls, music, books (obviously, because we read in different languages), even some of the furniture - and know whose is whose.


Okay. The whole "talking about a book" think is really meant to have more to do with the actual book, isn't it?

...Except I don't really have anything to say. I missed my morning window of alertness (when I wrote the first part) so I think I'll leave you to talk amongst yourselves about how awesome Mattie is, and what you think that priest might have wanted at the tire shop, and whether you think Taylor will take a job at the burger place and leave Turtle with Sandi's son at Kid Central Station.


Let's read Chapters 4 & 5 for next week, since they're both pretty short.