Currently, I can only think of three, and my brain is being too slow and stupid, so I'll just post those at the moment. It's a bit harder to do this for nice, compact, probably insanely edited and revised books. ;)
1. Adah doesn't understand when Nelson explains to her Kilanga concepts of being. Maybe I really am taking my own education for granted and forgetting what it's like to be 14, but Adah's supposed to be a genius. It irks me every single time I come across the chapter where she and Nelson are "talking" and this comes up. She understand it eventually, and I understand that Kingsolver wanted to get these thing out into the narrative and Adah is the only character that would have bothered to find it out, but it drives me nuts when she supposedly can't figure out that, according to Kilanga precepts, things like trees or rocks can be considered people. Maybe I'm also missing something about what a deep Southern Baptist upbringing might do; I realize I was raised in a much more open religious atmosphere than she might have, but still. She's a smart girl. It seems so unrealistic that she wouldn't be able to understand, even if she didn't agree.
2. Orleanna "justifies" her means. In one chapter, we have Orleanna explaining all the things that lead them to the point in which they stand at the end of the Africa ordeal: how we can never understand because we've never been in her shoes, how things were different when she got married so she could only be submissive to Nathan (despite the fact that she proves, when she was younger, that she was anything but a submissive type), that blah blah blah. No, Orleanna, you're just a selfish cow who finds it easier to blame others for your misfortunes than take personal responsibility, and I kind of hate you for it. I don't know if Kingsolver intended for us to totally see through her or not, but, ugh. I just want to shake her and tell her to STFU.
3. Nathan and Anatole's fight. A little one, but, for me, it's always read extremely clunky, I don't know.
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1. Adah doesn't understand when Nelson explains to her Kilanga concepts of being. Maybe I really am taking my own education for granted and forgetting what it's like to be 14, but Adah's supposed to be a genius. It irks me every single time I come across the chapter where she and Nelson are "talking" and this comes up. She understand it eventually, and I understand that Kingsolver wanted to get these thing out into the narrative and Adah is the only character that would have bothered to find it out, but it drives me nuts when she supposedly can't figure out that, according to Kilanga precepts, things like trees or rocks can be considered people. Maybe I'm also missing something about what a deep Southern Baptist upbringing might do; I realize I was raised in a much more open religious atmosphere than she might have, but still. She's a smart girl. It seems so unrealistic that she wouldn't be able to understand, even if she didn't agree.
2. Orleanna "justifies" her means. In one chapter, we have Orleanna explaining all the things that lead them to the point in which they stand at the end of the Africa ordeal: how we can never understand because we've never been in her shoes, how things were different when she got married so she could only be submissive to Nathan (despite the fact that she proves, when she was younger, that she was anything but a submissive type), that blah blah blah. No, Orleanna, you're just a selfish cow who finds it easier to blame others for your misfortunes than take personal responsibility, and I kind of hate you for it. I don't know if Kingsolver intended for us to totally see through her or not, but, ugh. I just want to shake her and tell her to STFU.
3. Nathan and Anatole's fight. A little one, but, for me, it's always read extremely clunky, I don't know.