Pigs in Heaven. By Barbara Kingsolver

Pigs in Heaven

Barbara Kingsolver

Published in 1993 by HarperCollins

Nice book! Well written story, set I think in the late 80s (Oprah Winfrey and her show are prominently featured at the start of the story), that deals with a serious moral issue. A child is adopted at the age of say three, when it's old enough to remember its pre-adoption life. Several years later, when it is completely integrated and loved in its new life, people from the past want to reclaim it - they are also decent people, and the child has some loving memories of them too. In this book, further complications arise because the child is from the American Indian Cherokee tribe, the adoptive single mother is white, and there are laws which say that the Indian tribe has a decisive say in matters of adoption of Indian children - this in order that Indian culture be preserved and that the Indian tribes don't loose children to whites - also of course, the well being of the child itself will be linked to a clear understanding by it of its identity, especially because of its facial features and skin colour. The argument is not fully convincing -  yes, adopted children would have these kinds of problems, but no more that natural children have other types of problems. Every child has some problem, some lack of privilege or the other, and this particular burden would be that of the adopted child.  Anyway, Kingsolver doesn't spend too much time or effort arguing back and forth, but goes ahead with the story. There are some interesting characters throughout the book, some important, some peripheral, some nice, and a few nasty. There is some description of Cherokee customs, but I would get the feeling now and then that she was writing about blacks - not Indians. Maybe the two groups had/have similar experiences and reacted in similar ways. The book resolves all these issues in a kind of movie style ending, with the child's adoptive grandmother and natural grandfather falling in love and marrying. The writing is terrific, very readable, though slightly uneven. Oh yes, it's completely in the present tense, but though I usually don't like that, in this case I did not mind, and most of the time did not notice it. Some quotes --

" But the kids don't stay with you if you do it [bringing them up] right. It's one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run"

" Everybody else on the plane is behaving as though they are simply sitting in chairs a little too close together. But Turtle [the adopted 7 year-old girl on her first flight] is a child in a winged tin box seven miles above Planet earth."

" 'I don't have children,' she says finally. 'I suppose I don't know that kind of love.' 'I suppose I don't either,[he says.] To put yourself second, every  time,  no questions  asked?  Sounds  like  holy communion.' "

"[And a man is] somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary"