The Bean Trees
Critical Overview
Source: www.enotes.com
WHAT DO CRITICS SAY
ABOUT THE BOOK?
• When The Bean Trees was published in 1988,
critics received it enthusiastically.
• Early reviews praised Kingsolver's character
development, her ear for voices and dialogue,
her portrayal of friendship and community as
necessary for survival, and her ability to
comment on serious social issues without
allowing those issues to overwhelm the story.
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
• A 1988 review of The Bean Trees in
Publishers Weekly called the novel "an
overwhelming delight, as random and
unexpected as real life."
• Focusing in part on the character of Taylor,
the review referred to her "unmistakable
voice" as "whimsical, yet deeply
insightful," and it described the novel as "a
marvelous affirmation of risk-taking,
commitment, and everyday miracles."
Karen FitzGerald
• Karen FitzGerald, in her 1988 review of
the novel in Ms., called The Bean Trees
"an entertaining and inspiring first novel.“
• She judged the novel's strength as coming
from its characters.
• She perceived Taylor—and the rest of the
characters in The Bean Trees—as
remaining "firmly at the novel's center," in
spite of "the large sweep of [its] canvas."
• FitzGerald asserted that in spite of the novel's
strong political views, Kingsolver's characters
are vivid and believable enough that they
never become "mouthpieces for the party line,"
causing politics to overshadow plot.
• She praised Kingsolver's portrayal of women's
friendships and placed her within a tradition of
women writers—such as Doris Lessing—who
have written about women's friendships and
communities as being "havens in a hard
world."
JACK BUTLER – NY TIMES
• In his 1988 review in The New York Times
Book Review, Jack Butler stated admiringly
that "Barbara Kingsolver can write" and
viewed The Bean Trees as “an accomplished
first novel” that “is as richly connected as a
fine poem but reads like realism.”
• But while he praised Kingsolver's clarity and
artistry, Butler had reservations about her
character development and her skill at creating
a plot.
• Unlike FitzGerald, Butler did not
think the characters are wholly
believable, seeing them "purified
to types" as the novel progresses,
and thus lacking depth and color.
• He was impressed, overall, with
Kingsolver's ability to write, but
maintained that the novel's
problems come from
"overmanipulation," or
Kingsolver's attempt to make
things happen.
Diane Manual - The Christian
Science Monitor
• Another early reviewer, Diane Manual, wrote
in The Christian Science Monitor in 1988 that
the novel is based upon “character
development at its richest, with Taylor growing
from happy-go-lucky hillbilly to caring friend
and parent.”
• Manual pointed to Taylor as "something that's
increasingly hard to find today—a character to
believe in and laugh with and admire" and
called the novel a "neatly constructed tale."
• Like FitzGerald and Publishers Weekly,
Manual saw the "wonderfully outrageous
characters" as being the strongest element of
the novel, but added that The Bean Trees is not
“merely laugh-a-minute fluff.”
• The novel's political views, according to
Manual, serve to deepen the characters,
particularly Taylor, as she "gradually learns
about the suffering some of her newfound
friends have endured [and] begins to make her
own significant commitment to protecting their
hard-won freedom."
Margaret Randall - The
Women's Review of Books
• Margaret Randall, writing in 1988 in The
Women's Review of Books, admired the way The
Bean Trees balances humor with serious topics.
• She considered the novel "hilariously funny" in
spite of its being “a story about racism, sexism
and dignity.”
• Like other critics, Randall pointed to Kingsolver's
ability to create realistic, human characters.
• "It's one of those old-fashioned stories ... in which
there are heroines and anti-heroines, heroes and
anti-heroes, ordinary humans all.
• …They go places and do things and where
they go and what they do makes sense for
them...and for us.”
• Randall discussed Kingsolver's treatment of
the theme of invasion—"the sexual invasion of
a child's body and the political invasion of a
nation's sovereignty"—and said that although
not new in literature, this theme in
Kingsolver's novel "occupies a new territory,
that of the commonplace, mostly undramatic,
story, told and lived by commonplace people,
most of them women."
Michael Neill - People Weekly
• Several years later, assessments of The Bean Trees
examined Kingsolver's first novel alongside some
of her later works and found trends.
• In 1993, Michael Neill compared Kingsolver's
first three novels and wrote in People Weekly that
while women's relationships are central to each of
these novels—including The Bean Trees—the role
of male characters is typically insignificant.
• Neill saw Kingsolver as writing about a different
kind of American West—more focused on women
than on men—than traditionally Western
American literature.
Maureen Ryan - Journal of
American Culture
• In a 1995 article in Journal of
American Culture, Maureen Ryan
derided Kingsolver's first three
novels, including The Bean Trees.
• Ryan called the novels conservative
at heart in spite of their apparent
"political correctness."
• She asserted that in spite of their stand against
human rights violations, they also exhibit an
unrealistic and thus dangerous belief that
devotion to family and friends can make things
all better.
• Ryan perceived this conservatism cloaked in
political correctness as being the reason for
Kingsolver's popularity: readers can feel good
about reading a socially conscious novel while
feeling secure about the novel's underlying
message of traditional values.