The Lacuna: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
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Review
"Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite writers. The Lacuna is a fascinating, compelling book" --Kate Atkinson
'Even more engrossing [than The Poisonwood Bible].' --Daily Mail
'Every few years, you read a book that makes everything else in life seem unimportant ... Tender, tragic, always compelling.' --Independent on Sunday
'Kingsolver keenly explores the links between big historical events and individual lives.' --Financial Times
'Kingsolver stands up for the enduring and redemptive power of a good story.' --The Times
'An epic tale ... This remarkable novel is a finely crafted story of identity and loyalty.'
--Daily Express
'Breathtaking ... dazzling ... Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence.' --New York Times Book Review
'Kingsolver hasn't lost her touch ... A rich, sprawling saga ... teems with dark beauty.' --People Magazine
'A refresher course in the richly drawn characters and tangled cultural crossings of Kingsolver's fiction.' --O, The Oprah Magazine
'Her most ambitious, timely, and powerful novel yet. Well worth the wait.' --Library Journal
'Kingsolver masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.' --Publishers Weekly
'Stupendously good.' --Marie Claire
'I was both smiling and crying when I reached The Lacuna's conclusion ... A novel worth waiting a decade for.' --Literary Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
'Even more engrossing [than The Poisonwood Bible].' --Daily Mail
'Every few years, you read a book that makes everything else in life seem unimportant ... Tender, tragic, always compelling.' --Independent on Sunday
'Kingsolver keenly explores the links between big historical events and individual lives.' --Financial Times
'Kingsolver stands up for the enduring and redemptive power of a good story.' --The Times
'An epic tale ... This remarkable novel is a finely crafted story of identity and loyalty.'
--Daily Express
'Breathtaking ... dazzling ... Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence.' --New York Times Book Review
'Kingsolver hasn't lost her touch ... A rich, sprawling saga ... teems with dark beauty.' --People Magazine
'A refresher course in the richly drawn characters and tangled cultural crossings of Kingsolver's fiction.' --O, The Oprah Magazine
'Her most ambitious, timely, and powerful novel yet. Well worth the wait.' --Library Journal
'Kingsolver masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.' --Publishers Weekly
'Stupendously good.' --Marie Claire
'I was both smiling and crying when I reached The Lacuna's conclusion ... A novel worth waiting a decade for.' --Literary Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
The Orange Prize-winning novel from the bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
157 of 173 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating political novel with a great cast,
By
This review is from: The Lacuna (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Ten years ago, Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible revealed the grim politics in the Congo. The Lacuna has a similarly political theme, this time turning her focus on Mexico and The US in the 1940s and 1950s.I have to confess that I had to look up "Lacuna" in the dictionary. For the benefit of anyone as dumb as me, then it means a gap or missing piece. The title is apt on a number of levels. The book is told as if written by the fictional young boy and later writer Harrison Shepherd, initially though his diaries and later in newspaper articles and letters all compiled by the equally fictitious VB whose identity and relationship to the narrator are revealed later in the book. Harrison grows up in Mexico (his flapper mother is divorced from his American father who still lives in "gringolandia". Always drawn to writing his experiences, after briefly attending a school in the US (where some parts of the diary are missing - one example of a Lacuna) he returns to Mexico and encounters the muralists and political activists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo joining their household as a cook and mixer of plaster for Rivera. Harrison forms a connection with Frida (though unlike most of her male connections, Harrison is clearly gay and is more of a confidant to Frida) and through this connection gets to work with the exiled Lev Trotsky. Later in the book more real life characters are introduced including the hunt for communist sympathisers led by J Edgar Hoover. Another interpretation of the Lacuna is some of the "missing" history of the US - much of it political history that it would perhaps rather ignore. The first instance is when Harrison is at school and encounters the WWI veterans who camp in Washington DC to protest at being denied their bonus payments, and then onto the blindness to the actions of Trotsky's great adversary Stalin and later onto the communist paranoia that gripped the US. Kingsover brings her talent for political fiction onto both the US and Mexico in ways that are unsettling. While some of the articles quoted as press are indeed fictional, the reader gets a cold chill when they check some of the most scary ones and finds that they are in fact genuine - particularly in the tone taken against the Japanese in the mid 1940s - with not even the poor Japanese Beetle safe from Life magazines xenophobia. Once or twice the clash between fiction and reality is clunky - Harrison asks Trotsky `so what really happened with Stalin' - but mostly it's a fascinating read and reveals much about the effective birth of the modern (ie post war) American ideal as well as the nature of imperialism in Mexico and the relationship between art and politics. I loved it and recommend it highly. It's a mark of great credit that the fictional characters are as interesting as the real ones - particularly given the cast of Rivera, Kahlo, Trotsky et al.
71 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating but flawed,
By
This review is from: The Lacuna (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
`In the beginning were the howlers. In the first hour of dawn they begin their maroon-throated bellows, just as the hem of the sky begins to whiten.'The novel opens in Isla Pixol, Mexico, in 1929. `The boy and his mother' have moved there on his mother's promise that they will be living a storybook life - but we are told that the story book is the Prisoner of Zenda, not a happy story. The opening chapter is fascinating. As a reader I relaxed; the narrative is in the hands of a master storyteller. And then? After just one chapter there is the archivist's note. Harrison William Shepherd left just these pages as the start of his memoir. The rest of the narrative will be pieced together by `VB' from diaries and letters. Of course Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favourite writers, does this well. This novel is always engrossing and well written. The Poisonwood Bible is Kingsolver's masterpiece; after ten years here is a novel on the same grand scale but unfortunately not as successful. Its subject matter covers Frieda Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera `The Painter', the death of Leon Trotsky, the McCarthy era in `50s USA. Oh yes, and the writer is only thirty or so when he dies after being dear friend of one, apprentice to another, secretary to the third. A bit much. Look, it's Barbara Kingsolver, so of course you should read it and you will enjoy it.. but I can't help feeling that there is more than one novel here. Structurally, the parts that are woven together from old newspapers, journals etc, real and imagined are ok and this is a gripping read - so much better than most novels you will be seeing this year. But this isn't the Barbara Kingsolver I have adored since The Bean Trees and have been in awe of since The Poisonwood Bible. I was engrossed and found myself thinking about the novel a great deal when I wasn't actually reading it despite its structural flaws. I read it in a concentrated way so perhaps these were more apparent. I then waited about three weeks before writing this review because I just didn't want to admit that this isn't the masterpiece I hoped we were going to get. And sadly, I think this would have been a better book with less. The subject matter is fascinating but after the opening Harrison William Shepherd fails to convince as a character. The title is La Lacuna, the gap. This book, despite many delights, doesn't quite fill it.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My most enjoyable read in five years!,
This review is from: The Lacuna (Paperback)
Tuck yourself away somewhere peaceful and allow a little time for this epic tale to draw you into a world of glorious technicolour, where memorable larger than life characters, both real and fictional, will soon enchant you as their story unfolds in dazzling prose. Meticulously constructed, with a vivid and compelling narrative that informs, amuses and tugs at your heartstrings, this book is a delight; for me a long-anticipated new novel from Barbara Kingsolver that didn't disappoint on any level. It's up there with her best work, written with love and passion and truly deserving of the Orange Prize. I felt I was there in the hazy heat of Mexico, witnessing the excesses of Kahlo and Rivera, seeing Trotsky in a sympathetic new light, feeling for Harrison, the little boy with no roots and a dysfunctional family life. Although sorry at first to leave Mexico for North Carolina, I soon fell under the spell of the remarkable Violet Brown, and lapped up the story as it continued until the surprising but totally satisfactory ending. Stunning.
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