Monday, September 5, 2022

State of Wonder

 Fiction by Ann Patchett


Dr. Marina Singh is a research chemist at work in her lab at a big drug company when she hears that her coworker and friend Dr. Anders Eckmann has died of a fever in the Amazon rainforest. Marina is shocked by his unexpected death, and worried by the mysterious circumstances that led to it. 

Dr. Eckmann was supposed to be visiting the Brazilian jungle to check on a field scientist called Dr. Swenson; he was only meant to discover if she was making good progress on a top-secret new fertility drug the company was funding the research for. But now it's up to Marina to complete the mission, and so she goes to Brazil to discover both what has happened to her friend and what is happening with the drug research.

I thought this was a really good story and I loved it. Some reviews I have read criticized this book for the "ridiculous" science detailed in it, but I disagree. I didn't feel like it was impossible at all to believe that amazing, unprecedented things could be discovered in the rainforest. The ending was not what I expected either.

 

I also read recently by this author: Run

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