The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver ISBN: 9780571252657
Published by Faber & Faber on November 5, 2009
Genres: Historical Fiction, LGBTQIA
Pages: 688
Format: Audiobook
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The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s America in the shadow of Senator McCarthy.
Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile - he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution. A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; 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.
As with all Kingsolver novels, this broke my heart. But was also oddly healing, in a way. It centers on the life of a boy in the early-to-mid 1900s, who grows up in Mexico and immigrates to the US.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to tell you that he ends up working with Diego Riviera and Frieda Kahlo, and he’s an incredible wordsmith. The story isn’t about that, so much as it’s about the evolution of the US’ perspective of Mexico, and how events around WWII and the Communist witch hunts soured what was supposed to be a great nation.
The through-line of xenophobia and the rise of fascism in the wake of war, and how fear was used to manipulate, as well as a driving force behind the red scare and the unethical behavior that resulted from it. By the end of the book, my anger at the lack of truth in press was palpable. It’s amazing how whitewashed the 1940s and 50s have become, when the truth is that they were pretty horrific for many, many people in this country.
There are some fantastic lines in here, and the characters are well-developed and realistically flawed. Artie was a favorite, for me, especially with how Kingsolver narrated him in the audiobook (gotta love when the author is the narrator).
I definitely recommend this one to fans of Kingsolver, wordplay and wit, character-driven stories, and historic fiction. I went into it rather blind, but I love the way real historical figures were portrayed, and Kingsolver clearly did a lot of research for this book.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- Labyrinth TBR
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