- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (Mar 29 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812971396
- ISBN-13: 978-0812971392
- Product Dimensions: 13.4 x 1.5 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 200 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #806,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Kate Talkingtree, the 57-year-old writer protagonist of Walker's latest concoction, is a lifelong seeker after enlightenment in the carnal, political and religious realms. After dreaming of a dry river, she decides to take this as a spiritual clue and makes two river-centric spiritual quests. In one, she embarks on an all-female white-water rafting trip down the Colorado River, coming home to her boyfriend, Yolo, a painter, with potentially startling news. She has decided that it is time to give up her sexual life and "enter another: the life of the virgin." Yolo, a feminist-friendly guy, takes this as well as he can. Soon Kate is off on another quest, this time in the Amazon rain forest, where she hopes to heal herself through trances induced by yag‚ administered by an Amazonian shaman, Armando Juarez. Yag‚, a hallucinogenic beverage, is also known as Grandmother to the native peoples. Indeed, it turns out that Kate's Grandmother archetype-representing the Earth, the ancestors and those violated by patriarchy and racism-has been calling out to her. Meanwhile, Yolo, on vacation in Hawaii, encounters a transsexual Polynesian shaman, or Mahu, who charges him with the mission of giving up addictive substances. A subplot involving corporations conspiring to patent yag‚ creates an unintended irony: isn't the mindset that exploits native wisdom for Western corporate greed similar to the mindset that exploits native rituals for the sake of Western spiritual "healing"? Luckily, followers of the goddess, and presumably Walker's readers, are not very keen on irony. Those who retain some affection for that hopelessly outdated and patriarchal trope are advised to bypass this inflated paean to the self.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Kate, a successful author fearful of aging and uncertain about continuing her relationship with Yolo, an artist, sets off on a journey of spiritual discovery. She has been profoundly unhappy for some time, dreaming of rivers, until she takes off for rivers--the Colorado and the Amazon. Among strangers, Kate is able to distance herself from her life and her relationship. Yolo, on his own separate journey, meets a former lover, a Hawaiian woman now overweight and weighed down with the recent loss of her son to a drug overdose and a sense that she--like her son--has lost her way. Kate finds growing intimacy among a group of disparate souls who unburden themselves of their pasts under the influence of yage, a South American medicinal herb. Kate finds that the herb allows her to reveal her innermost secrets and puts her in touch with the elders. Despite their frictions, Kate and Yolo have similar reawakenings about the land as mother, overcoming personal and ethnic oppression, and dismantling barriers between the sexes, the races, and young and old. Walker's dreamlike novel incorporates the political and spiritual consciousness and emotional style for which she is known and appreciated. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
PURE ALICE,
By Julie Potter (Richmond, Va.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is a good novel if you're already a big Alice Walker fan and are "familiar" with her philosophy about life. Because I've been reading her for years, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.Something more groundbreaking and really fantastic to pick up is the new novel by Walker-wannabe Kola Boof. Her "Flesh and the Devil" is powerful, cutting edge and daring like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison's earlier works. I highly recommend that book in addition to this one. The new one from Barbara Chase-Riboud "Hottentot Venus" was even better. That one deserves the pulitzer prize, but I was also really impressed by "Flesh and the Devil". It's nice to be able to lose one's self in another world. The mark of great literature.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Walker!,
By Mahogany Book Club "Mahogany Media Review" (Albany, N.Y.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Hardcover)
Kate Nelson is a writer with many books under her belt. She feels that she can no longer find a purpose in life, she feels she has lost direction and she is not sure if it is the end for her and her lover Yolo.Plagued with dreams about rivers Kate sets off on a journey rafting down the Colorado River and then to a retreat in the Amazon RainForest. Her lover Yolo sets out on his own journey to Haawii where he runs into an old lover and Yolo too is unsure if it is the end for him and Kate. As a fan of Alice Walker I was pleased with this latest novel. I enjoyed the spiritual journey with Kate, the people she met and the whole walking with the ancestors feel. This spiritual journey to one's self discovery is a classic by Walker. Kate was named after Walker's paternal Grandmother, who was killed when her father was a young boy. reviewed by: Dawn Mahogany Albany, N.Y. 2004
4.0 out of 5 stars
Following your heart,
By
This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Hardcover)
I fully enjoyed following the journeys of Kate and Yolo while they were figuring out their place in this world, as we all are. This is the first book I have read by Alice Walker, and she is to be commended for writing an inspiring novel. This is a wonderful book for those of us who are "soul searching." I would recommend it to anyone who is contemplating or starting out on their own spiritual journey.
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