The Appalachia-bred narrator of Kingsolver’s new novel, Partita, is wry, resilient and as forthcoming a companion as you could ask for ... Often relies on tropes...but the tropes work ... Partita has a few sluggish chapters, but they fall in the middle when the author may have been resting up for the heart-hammering final third of the novel ... The book has moments so Thomas-Hardy-sad that you feel like you’ve got rain in your veins.
A hallmark of the decorated novelist’s work is her flair for pithy sentences that illuminate the human experience, giving voice to our private longings and secret vulnerabilities ... Kingsolver brings the full weight of her experience and her other work to the page in this entirely new story. It hits the same chords, but it is full of discovery and insight. She’s different, and we’re different too.
Not all inwardness and insinuation. There is still plenty of Dickensian melodrama ... The novel’s ending...is wonderfully done. Ms. Kingsolver dramatizes it by way of a village recital, turning to music to evoke the feelings that straightforward exposition would heavy-handedly summarize.
There’s an irony in this prominent liberal writer’s lack of interest in actual politics — in any kind of collective solidarity that might extend beyond the county line. The tendency lends Kingsolver’s work an inescapable feeling of asymmetry ... An unusually sour entry in the Kingsolver canon.
A soulful lament of lives interrupted, tricked out with romantic flourishes and op-ed asides before finishing with a surprising last beat of optimism ... In the same way that Partita sits somewhat unfortunately in Demon Copperhead’s shadow, this novel struggles to escape the gravitational pull of the relationship at its core. Too much of the material around it feels supplementary.
Electrifying ... The novel first traps our attention as a romantic, coming-of-age adventure; soon turns shockingly traumatic; then morphs into a gripping family drama; and finally erupts with revelations around deeply concealed secrets. Sections slide back and forth between the younger and older Livia, the transitions wonderfully smooth and effective ... With words alone, Kingsolver conjures an incredible sensory experience; this is the rare book that will satisfy readers of all tastes.
A masterclass in structure and pacing as Kingsolver uses the elements of a partita, a baroque composition made up of a series of contrasting dance movements, to take us back and forwards in time ... Kingsolver has never been one for stripped-back narratives and sparse prose: her novels are full of pulsing, glorious life ... Without question it’s my novel of the year.
Astute ... The prose is stuffed with imaginative similes and metaphors. Occasionally some are strained...or too obvious ... But this is an enthralling novel, full of pathos, wisdom and humour.
Ravishing ... ingsolver presents an enrapturing, brilliantly plotted, deeply personal, and profoundly insightful celebration of the life of the land, the skills and struggles of farmers, and the transcendent power of art to bring us together, make us feel 'more alive,' and make us whole.
Kingsolver’s profound spiritual novels span generations in sweeping yet intimate ways, layering the literary with the real so that readers can immerse themselves in an intellectualism akin to A. S. Byatt’s and a visceral, embodied world of rawness and feeling ... Brilliant.
