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The Lacuna [Kindle Edition]

Barbara Kingsolver (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: £6.86 What's this?
Print List Price: £8.99
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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

Review

"[Kingsolver] hasn't lost her touch...she delivers her signature blend of exotic locale, political backdrop and immediately engaging story line...teems with dark beauty."--People
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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 723 KB
  • Print Length: 681 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0571252672
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber Fiction (5 Nov 2009)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B002TVSF9Q
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #7,431 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Barbara Kingsolver
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
161 of 177 people found the following review helpful
By Ripple TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.
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71 of 84 people found the following review helpful
By purpleheart TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Possibly the best book I've ever read
Like everyone and his uncle, I am an aspiring author. When I first started reading The Lacuna I felt like I was being kicked in the gut in a creative sense. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Chris Cope
Just couldn't get into It
From the onset I would state that I am a great admirer of Barbara Kingsolver's work, rating The Poisonwood Bible as one of my favourite reads and having also enjoyed Prodigal... Read more
Published 1 month ago by S. Jones
A Book of Two Halves
How does an author manage to portray Trotsky, Rivera and Kahlo as rather uninteresting? The first 300 pages needed more editing, as the plot plods along at a funereal pace. Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. Daly
Interesting but can be tedious
I dithered for a long time before getting this book on my Kindle, even though I lived in Mexico for several months and knew somethng about Rivero and Kahlo. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Pamanti
Lacuna
There's nothing I can say, about this author, that I haven't already said in the past. Go out and buy or borrow from your library. Read more
Published 4 months ago by bykerbill
The Lacuna
Book received within the time frame indicated and in very good condition.The purchase was specified for a Literature group reading project so there was no need to know anything... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Carole
I only thought to look for a home
This is the only book I have read by Barbara Kingsolver, so I can't compare it with her other work. I can see why she has a high reputation from her command of English, but I think... Read more
Published 5 months ago by D. J. H. Thorn
Wonderful characterisation
Kingsolver manages to create utterly believable characters (whether you like them or not) and her sense of time and place transports you. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Cuillen7
Political Trotsky Story
I'm afraid I was one of the ones who didn't really get on with this book. It is well written and researched and I can see some great moments but they were so few and far between... Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. Rose
Fantastic!
A book that deals with resilience and chance, inequality and the effects of changes in politics. A history lesson in the journey of an young boy, who took the chances offered him... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Aspiring Bookworm
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Popular Highlights

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&quote;
Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary. &quote;
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Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down. &quote;
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Sóli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you dont know. &quote;
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