by Barbara Kingsolver (Author)
(5)Release Date: November 3, 2009
Buy new:
(Ranking is updated hourly. Visit the Hot New Releases in Books list for authoritative information on this product's current rank.)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
() In the beginning, there were howlers, mother and son joined In the terror of the devils stalking from above. With this metaphor, Barbara Kingsolver launches into a novel that's steeped in real historical events -- primarily the Mexican painter Diego Rivera and his mercurial and artistic sometime-wife, Frida Kahlo and the period in the 1930's when they played host to the exiled Lev Trotsky. Central to the narrative is Harrison William Shepherd, an clarified Forrest Gump character, who seems to always be in the right place at the right time to experience history in its unfolding.Harrison -- who enters into service as the Rivera/Kahlo cook and secretary -- forges an unlikely friendship with the slightly older Frida that lasts a lifetime. She encourages him to keep a journal, and by publicity these journal entries, the reader uncovers Kingsolver's truth about Trotsky -- how the and lies cast him in the role of communist villain and lead to Stalin's ultimate supremacy and eventually, Trotsky's assassination. Harrison association with Rivera and Kahlo exacts a toll: he quickly goes of becoming a novelist who is respected and admired to becoming abhored virtuallly overnight as the Joe McCarthy era and its excesses spread across America.The Lacuna is exquisitely reader written: Kingsolver's sense of place holds an almost magical lyricism where the can almost taste the red chalupas and scrambled egg torta with sugar, feel the echoes of the ancient Aztec civilization, smell the vegetables rain and see the women in long braids selling while nearby, the charlatans are selling miracles. The luscious writing brings the fresh of century Mexico boldly into life, not unlike one of Diego Rivera's make no mistake: Kingsolver's focus is not Harrison or Diego and Frida Trotsky or even Mexico. It is the lacuna -- the Spanish meaning space between two objects or in this case, the that lingers between the truth and the falsity that is perceived as fresh.but or the twentieth word the space a truth. The "howlers" that begin the novel are not the long-tailed monkeys in the Committee.Empty one all, but those who seek to persecute, including (especially) the press and the Un-American Activities is very ambitious and it works -- to a point. Kingsolver is attentive on creating a story that merges social commentary with fiction, and often errs in the side of the commentary. The dialogue between Harrison and Frida, for example, seemed forced to this reader; Frida came across as much too much one-dimensional for such an intriguing painter and figure in history. While any astute citizen realizes that there have been way too many winning lies and innuendos that comprise our so-called history ("history is written by the"), the distance the results are often more nuanced than presented. Because of the device of the journals, we relate to Harrison Shepherd, but never truly inhabits him; he is the vessel through which events are revealed.For Kingsolver, who is a true social activist, "attention must be paid." The history through the novel, she writes: "Write down the of what happened to us. So when nothing is left but bones and scraps average of clothes, someone will know where we went." That is precisely what she does in Lacuna as she details one of our most colorful collective journeys.
No comments:
Post a Comment