Peter Galen Massey

Anne Tyler meets Michael Crichton in Ann Patchett’s 2011 novel, State of Wonder. Dr. Marina Singh, a 42-year-old pharmaceutical research scientist, is sent by her boss and sometimes lover deep into the Amazon to discover the circumstances of a colleague’s death and, much more importantly, measure the progress of the brilliant but difficult Dr. Annick Swenson’s work on a fertility drug with block-buster sales potential.

Patchett’s prose style is fluid, she draws her characters and settings in detail, and she keeps the wheels of the story turning nicely – but those wheels spin mostly in place. There is no mystery in the novel aside from its pleasing plot twists; and after all her adventures, Marina Singh is the same person she was at the beginning of State of Wonder. Which leaves the reader the same person, too.