The Lacuna (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

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.

`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.

I've read Kingsolver's PoisonWood Bible a couple of books before reading this one, so was really looking forward to it as I loved her use of different narrators and styles.

There are a lot of political references here and I would say that unless you have more than a passing interest in Communism / American History then this may not be the book for you. But as I like learning things from books I am reading ( Much like learning about the Congo and Belgian Colonisation from TPB ) I found this a brilliant mix of fiction and real historical events - the newspaper articles are shocking.

I found myself drawn into the world of Shepherd and Kahlo and also VB, and reading about them through diary inserts and letters made them seem much realler to me. So much so I was sobbing by the end.

The literary passages are stunning - like another reviewer I found myself re-reading passages, but you do need to invest both time and concentration to read the book and get the most from it.

I loved it, wil definitely read more of Kingsolver's books and this will stay with me for a long time. Very informative and a pleasure to read.