The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

[Readwine]

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

 

Brief Summary from Amazon:

 

Starred Review. Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). “Employed by the American imagination,” is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.

 

Kingsolver is one of my most favorite writers: her descriptions, whether landscape, actions, or psychological ambivalence, are terrific. I was very much looking forward to reading this novel as her previous one, The Poisonwood Bible, was outstanding, and it has been nine years of waiting. Additionally, the fact that The Lacuna is set during a very dramatic time in Mexico’s history as well as deals with very true life dramatic personages (Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky), I could not wait to get started. Unfortunately, the format of the novel, narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, really interrupted the flow of the story though it is an interesting technique (maybe not for 500+ pages).

 

The story is well researched and does give the reader motivation to find out a little more about Trotsky’s time in Mexico, Stalin’s hatred of him and Frida Kahlo’s life and psychology, as well as the American era of McCarthyism (the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence). The main character, however, is Harrison Shepherd, a fictional figure. The story of The Lacuna is really his, but in the end it is the story of Trotsky, Kahlo and American McCarthyism as Shepherd never really develops into a character of any substance. He serves merely as a reporter for the other personages in the novel and he ends up being insipid and bland. I think Kingsolver forgot to give him a spine. Pity really.

 

At any rate, the novel is worth a read. I was just a little disappointed.

 

I give the book 8 out of 10

Edited December 27, 2009 by Janet
Returned to default size :)

[chesilbeach]

I'd never read any Kingsolver before this one, and to be honest, I don't think I'll bother with any more. I actually liked the letters, diary entries and newspaper articles in it, but what I didn't like was the concept of a retrospective on the impact of the McCarthy era through the eyes of a fictional character but also trying to incorporate the personal biography elements of Trotsky, Khalo and Rivera. I felt there was so much emphasis on getting the historical fact into the fictional diary that it was cumbersome - the reading equivalent of trudging through a muddy field.

 

It might have been an interesting non-fiction book to read, as I didn't have much previous knowledge of the McCarthy era, but it was just too fact and event heavy for a novel.

[Readwine]

Chesilbeach, The Lacuna was a bit of a muddy field, but I HIGHLY recommend The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver. It is not as historically detailed as The Lacuna so the story flows much better. It is a bit of a hefty tome, but I could not put it down and did not want it to finish.

 

Here is a little blurb from Amazon: The Poisonwood Bible follows an evangelical Baptist minister's family to the Congo in the late 1950s, entwining their fate with that of the country during three turbulent decades. Nathan Price's determination to convert the natives of the Congo to Christianity is, we gradually discover, both foolhardy and dangerous, unsanctioned by the church administration and doomed from the start by Nathan's self-righteousness. Fanatic and sanctimonious, Nathan is a domestic monster, too, a physically and emotionally abusive, misogynistic husband and father. He refuses to understand how his obsession with river baptism affronts the traditions of the villagers of Kalinga, and his stubborn concept of religious rectitude brings misery and destruction to all. Cleverly, Kingsolver never brings us inside Nathan's head but instead unfolds the tragic story of the Price family through the alternating points of view of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Cast with her young children into primitive conditions but trained to be obedient to her husband, Orleanna is powerless to mitigate their situation. Meanwhile, each of the four Price daughters reveals herself through first-person narration, and their rich and clearly differentiated self-portraits are small triumphs. Rachel, the eldest, is a self-absorbed teenager who will never outgrow her selfish view of the world or her tendency to commit hilarious malapropisms. Twins Leah and Adah are gifted intellectually but are physically and emotionally separated by Adah's birth injury, which has rendered her hemiplagic. Leah adores her father; Adah, who does not speak, is a shrewd observer of his monumental ego. The musings of five- year-old Ruth May reflect a child's humorous misunderstanding of the exotic world to which she has been transported. By revealing the story through the female victims of Reverend Price's hubris, Kingsolver also charts their maturation as they confront or evade moral and existential issues and, at great cost, accrue wisdom in the crucible of an alien land. It is through their eyes that we come to experience the life of the villagers in an isolated community and the particular ways in which American and African cultures collide. As the girls become acquainted with the villagers, especially the young teacher Anatole, they begin to understand the political situation in the Congo: the brutality of Belgian rule, the nascent nationalism briefly fulfilled in the election of the short-lived Patrice Lumumba government, and the secret involvement of the Eisenhower administration in Lumumba's assassination and the installation of the villainous dictator Mobutu. In the end, Kingsolver delivers a compelling family saga, a sobering picture of the horrors of fanatic fundamentalism and an insightful view of an exploited country crushed by the heel of colonialism and then ruthlessly manipulated by a bastion of democracy. The book is also a marvelous mix of trenchant character portrayal, unflagging narrative thrust and authoritative background detail. The disastrous outcome of the forceful imposition of Christian theology on indigenous natural faith gives the novel its pervasive irony; but humor is pervasive, too, artfully integrated into the children's misapprehensions of their world; and suspense rises inexorably as the Price family's peril and that of the newly independent country of Zaire intersect. Kingsolver moves into new moral terrain in this powerful, convincing and emotionally resonant novel.

 

Gosh. I might have to reread it I highly recommend it.

[chesilbeach]

The reading group I meet with had read The Poisonwood Bible in one of the months before I joined, and it was apparently one of the few books that everyone agreed was excellent and they all loved, so I think I will probably read it at some point, but it's never jumped out at me in the bookshop or the library, so it might be a while before I get to it.

[Piper]

The reading group I meet with had read The Poisonwood Bible in one of the months before I joined, and it was apparently one of the few books that everyone agreed was excellent and they all loved, so I think I will probably read it at some point, but it's never jumped out at me in the bookshop or the library, so it might be a while before I get to it.

 

I loved The Poisonwood Bible and it is one of my all time favourite reads so would definitely recommend it. I haven't read any of her others though as I think I could only be disappointed .