State of Wonder -- Review

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett definitely lived up to its hype.
What? You haven't heard the hype?
Well, Ann Patchett weaves a wonderful spell with her words beginning in Minnestoa where Marina works in a pharmaceutical lab and finds out her lab partner who traveled to South America is dead. Amid complications of an affair with her boss and a mentoring relationship with the scientist who is working in the Amazon, Marina travels to South America to get answers about her dead friend and the miracle drug that can allow women to bear children into their 70s.
Funny that this is the second book I've read in a month about a scientist working on a miracle drug and someone needing to track the scientist down. (Hector and the Secrets of Love)
Patchett's picture of the Amazon as both wondrous and miserable had me feeling the heat and itching from the bug bites. Her characters are marvelously alive. Some of them unlikeable and others, like Easter, the deaf boy from a neighboring tribe, are so loveable that I wanted to sneak him home with me.
My favorite line in the book was about Easter. As Marina is falling in love with the little boy, she thinks, "So he had been a cannibal once, if only in another lifetime. In light of all that had happened it was hardly worth mentioning."
The book was not one to undertake in one long gulp. I spread it throughout the week and felt gratitude in the end, although some questions remained unanswered.
I definitely recommend it.

First Paragraph -- State of Wonder

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
This week, I finally got my hands on State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down a colleague and former mentor who has been working on a new, amazing drug for a pharmaceutical company. I'm struck by how similar the premise is to the book Hector and the Secrets of Love which I reviewed here. Hector was sent by a drug company to find an older, respected researcher who had gone missing too. But I get the impression these books are going in very different directions.
Here's the first paragraph:

The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the staionery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope. Who even knew they still made such things? This single sheet had traveled from Brazil to Minnesota to mark the passing of a man, a breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world. Mr. Fox had the letter in his hand when he came to the lab to tell Marina the news. When she saw him there at the door she smiled at him and in the light of that smile he faltered.

So many times I am put off by the writing in the first paragraph. This one definitely has me hooked.
What about you? Would you keep reading?