ollie! i fear that i am woefully ignorant of the Actual Bible (bad english major, bad!) and so missed a lot of really fascinating things that you listed here in your brief summary. so i'm glad to be able to learn from what you know, but i am afraid my responses to the novel so far are basically, wow this is totally beautiful and i can't wait to figure out what happens to them. pretty shallow.

my answer to your question:
i am very attached to both twins, though i think adah appeals to me more because she is less naive and lives a vibrant mind-life complete with a mildly-bitter feminist ethic i can relate to. she's brilliant, isn't she? i was talking to my sister about the novel and read her a few pages of adah's and leah's sections in the car on the way home from atlanta over the holiday. she pointed out that for an author to write such brilliant characters, she herself must be brilliant. i know that seems sort of obvious, but it really struck me at that moment how vast kingsolver's intellect is, because i so admire adah's.

rachel and ruth mae tie for my least favorite of the daughters. rachel because i find her predictable and unrelatable and ruth mae because she is a child and so her narrative, so far, is almost too simple to enjoy.

what about you?

and my question for you: what do you think, so far, of the girls' mother?