Review: Barbara Kingsolver strikes all the right chords in her latest novel

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Set us as preferred Book ReviewPartitaBy Barbara Kingsolver Harper: 352 pages, $32If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.Barbara Kingsolver writes the type of quips you want to scribble onto a Post-it note and revisit because you’re glad someone else said it better.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.Her 19th book, “Partita,” is classic Kingsolver.The author’s grand and ambitious novels are written with warmth and a whimsical attunement to the human condition.

She tackles broad ideas by personalizing them through singular characters, as seen in her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Demon Copperhead” (2022), an Appalachian reimagining of Dickens’ “David Copperfield”; “The Poisonwood Bible” (1998), her eerie family tale of abstruse colonial evangelism; and “The Lacuna” (2009), a political tale of art and silence.Her hyper-local studies of identity, misunderstanding and discovery shine in her debut novel, “The Bean Trees” (1988), its sequel, “Pigs in Heaven” (1993), and the oft-taught tale of loss and familial discovery, “Animal Dreams” (1990).

Kingsolver’s fans appreciate her ability to play at vastly different scales.“Partita” returns readers to the author’s focused and personal realm.It starts with a phone call that upends its protagonist’s world.

Livia Cable has made a tidy life of her quiet, sensible marriage: teaching youth piano lessons in her native Tennessee, where she’s also trying to sort through her deceased mother’s belongings.Her college lover, Sigurd, calls out of nowhere and asks to see her.

Their young romance ended predictably, and poo...