I picked up this book because I thought it was ambitious - an attempt to recast Heart of Darkness in the modern day. Anyone who tries to adapt Joseph Conrad has some pretty serious ambition, so you’ve got to give Ann Patchett some credit there. And indeed, many of the parallels are nicely done: the concept of a doctor gone mad in the midst of the jungle; the role of commerce in imperialistic adventures; the mechanism of a river cruise as a way of traveling into the heart of the wilderness; and even the descriptions of the jungle are borrowed almost untouched from Conrad. The anti-parallels are also quite interesting: State of Wonder is not so much about the imposition of European morals on native life (as was Heart of Darkness), but an attempt to export native customs and practices into the first world. Read in this way, I think the book is quite fascinating and worthwhile. However, the ending is exceedingly disappointing; it’s entirely too neat and easy to be satisfying.