Product Description

"The Lacuna" is the heartbreaking story of a man's search for safety of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption. This is a gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. "The Lacuna" is as deep and rich as the "New World".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #712 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

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

About the Author
Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in eastern Kentucky. Her books include poetry, non-fiction and award-winning fiction, and in 1999 she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for The Poisonwood Bible. She lives with her husband and daughter in southwestern Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating but flawed
`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 there - 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. 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 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 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 read this novel in a day and have 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 some delights, doesn't quite fill it.

Disapointed
I love Kingsolver's other books and have devoured them. I'm slogging through this one - last night I even read the end to see if that would motivate me to finish it. I'm not connecting with any of the characters and am getting tired of being hit over the head with CAPITALISM IS BAD! COMMUNISM IS GOOD! I haven't spotted an ounce of humor or tenderness - things I loved in her other books. I'm on page 135, can't remember the name of the main character and would be incapable of describing any kind of a plot. I regret having bought the book.

Marvellous
Haven't read a Kingsolver book since The Poisonwood Bible and good gosh does this live up to that legacy.

It moves from an intimate portrait of a young boy's increasingly fraught life in Mexico and blooms into an utterly spellbinding, provocative and evocative epic. The book explores attitudes to Communism in the Americas after the Wars, and delivers a striking picture of the human impact of McCarthyism by situating in the middle of the furore a reclusive writer who once took letters for Trotsky...

And yet this is very far from a dry, didactic paperweight. Kingsolver's real intelligence is in framing the character and showing the threads that bind the joys and woes of life. Cause and effect: Harrison Shepherd's mistakes and triumphs echo through every minute of this book, where some actions snowball and others stall, and all the while he wades onward.

It's a challenging book in many ways, emotionally volatile and occasionally cerebral, but it's also very witty and beautifully evocative and thought-provoking.

It's also about censorship, dictation and omission, and is in itself told through a series of diaries which the fictional author intended never to be published. You're constantly aware of the omissions and the hidden or repressed moments that make a life. The book manages to make these omissions part of the story; the gaps in the very fabric of the book tells you as much about the character as the parts that make it in; and at the same time, the technique reflects a harsh light on the deliberate reductiveness of newspaper clippings and kangaroo courts.

Everyone in the book is trying to build an image of Harrison, and I'd well recommend you have a go yourself.