Review of 'The Bean Trees'

Just read this, having read lots of her later work. This reads very much like a first novel - it's not terrible, but it's not as good as what comes after. Some of the same themes and characteristics are already present - giving a voice to what we would now call the 'left behind' - blue-collar workers (or would-be workers) usually unrepresented in literature, and the nature writing, and the kinds of insight into ecosystems that it properly informed by science. The plot and the characters just sort of ramble along, though, and eventually it just ends. I'm glad this wasn't the first Kingsolver I read, or I might not have bothered with the rest.