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Title: Too flawed to recommend--an immature novel which shows the author's promise
Review: Animal Dreams is the early work of a talented author. Kingsolver knows her way around a phrase, and foreshadows the talents she later put to much better use. But, in Animal Dreams, she lapses into a overly sentimental view of the world. Good and evil are cut from fairly obvious cloth. Women and men fall slightly into this pattern: women have more depth and compassion while the men are emotionally limited people. What I enjoyed most of all were the forays into the non-rational mind of Homer: to me these were the work of a true writer, whose talents had yet to manifest in full. I haven't read Kingsolver's other novels yet, but I will likely do so, thanks to the promise she showed in this mediocre novel.
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