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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
This was a fascinating book for many reasons. I loved the style it was written in - mostly in journal entries by a man more interested in capturing the world around him than capturing his own thoughts - and I loved that the style evolved over time. The book was also interesting because it taught me a lot about the time - Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Trotsky, and communism in Mexico (and America) were all important parts of the main character's life journey, and Barbara Kingsolver stayed true to history as she wrote about them. I learned a lot about history, and I appreciate the very real, raw perspective that she was able to give that you do not always find in history books. Great book! Only 4/5 because it was at times slow.
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This might be the most boring book I’ve ever read.
I’m okay with slow introspective books. One of my favorite authors is Dostoyevsky and you don’t get much slower or more introspective than that. But this is just boring.
I’m not sure why I should care about the main character. There is an interesting, even funny, scene near the end. It’s a transcript of his testimony when he is accused of being a Communist. He verbally banters with the questioner, showing the absurdity of the whole thing. There are a few other dialogues which are similar, pointing out the shallowness of the whole American idea of communism at that time (and makes the reader think of similar shallowness in our mindset now)
But overall, it’s not enough to make for a good read. Overall it’s just boring.
I’m okay with slow introspective books. One of my favorite authors is Dostoyevsky and you don’t get much slower or more introspective than that. But this is just boring.
I’m not sure why I should care about the main character. There is an interesting, even funny, scene near the end. It’s a transcript of his testimony when he is accused of being a Communist. He verbally banters with the questioner, showing the absurdity of the whole thing. There are a few other dialogues which are similar, pointing out the shallowness of the whole American idea of communism at that time (and makes the reader think of similar shallowness in our mindset now)
But overall, it’s not enough to make for a good read. Overall it’s just boring.
This is my second attempt at reading this book. I read it on the strength of reading The Poisonwood Bible, one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. But this...I can’t...I just can’t. I’ve rarely put down a book midway but this time I just have to. The narrator feels like a disembodied voice speaking to the ether and not me. I feel no connection to any of the characters apart from Leandro at the beginning and even the thought of crossing paths with our beloved Frida is not enough to have me persist.
It’s a ‘meh’ for me.
It’s a ‘meh’ for me.
About an American/Mexican boy who grows up both in the US and Mexico. He never seems at home in either country because of that. He falls in with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, eventually working as their chef and secretary. He lives with Trotsky for a while, also as his secretary, and is their when Trotsky is assassinated. He eventually moves back to the US, where he becomes a successful author, but is then caught up in the McCarthy commission. It's interesting to read this story now, given what is going on in the US at the moment. This McCarthy trials seem super scary, that once you were in their focus there was nothing you could do. And it was so meaningless, the US was Stalin's friend, until they weren't.
I loved the first half of the book set in Mexico but the 2nd half dragged on too long.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I thought this was a great twist on historical fiction. It was beautifully written. I thought she did an excellent job of putting some political issues in the book without being pushy. It was thought-provoking but still an engrossing novel.
Good historical novel with a well written story and interesting characters - united by the theme if the Lacuna - a hole - represented in different ways. Interesting historically (communism, Mexico/US relations, world of art).
I'm discovering that I'm not much into epistolary novels. I had a hard time dragging through the first part of this book even though the subject was interesting. Once she switched out of the diary style for the second half, I got much more into the book.
Work meant sitting in his library running both hands through his slick hair, drinking mezcal, and sweating through his collar while working out colonnades of numbers. By this means he learned whether he had money up to his moustache this week, or only up to his bollocks
Any doubts about The Lacuna were dispelled by the phrase that ended with “..or only up to his bollocks”
The words of Harrison Shepherd, whose acerbic wit and unflinching descriptions of the people, places and situations around him, drive this juggernaut of a novel, and which are drip fed to the reader in the form of diaries and letters, and intersped (in the second half) with newspaper articles.
Dragged south of the border by his moth like mother, Salome, who flits between men as bulbs, attracted by their money and power, she seems to believe that when her scheming finally pays off, Harrison will benefit as much as she will.
It was such a monument of accusation, even Mother had to bow her head a little as she crept past it, sins dripping from her shoes as we walked round the nave, leaving invisible puddles on the clean tiles. Perhaps God said her name was mud. He would have to yell more than three times, for her to hear.
He ends up working in the household of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, and as his mum flits around in the background, Frida becomes almost the centre of the novel, the core that Harrison winds around as he grows up. The arrival of Lev Trotsky enthralls Harrison, and his time with the exiled Bolshevik leader is dutifully recorded in his journals. Following his time with Lev Harrison moves back to the US during the second world war, and despite my initial interest in the book being it’s Mexican setting, it is the second half of the book that gripped me more.
After the end of the war, the US and Russia square up to each other and Harrison, by now a successful author, comes under scrutiny by the Committee of Un-American Activities and his diary entries fill with his bewilderment and comment on the state of the US, from it’s emerging economy driven by snazzy advertisments to the newspapers, whose fawning adulation turns to persecution as he is painted by a communist. His fear of the media, and of engaging with them ultimately harms him, as they take free rein to paint their own picture of the communist in the heartland.
I read this at the time of the release of the Leveson inquiry report in the UK, and this book demonstrates the power of words, and through them the power of newspapers and others who wield them. A paranoid government driving a paranoid population, condemning a man, in the end, on words he wrote in a story. It is out of this one sided narrative that The Lacuna emerges, the hole, the other side, the part you don’t know about the man in the newspapers.
“Of course we do” she said, sighing deeply as if to say “men do this.” And that is a fact, men do, unable to resist the same impulse that built the thing in the first place: senseless ambition.
The format of The Lacuna makes it a rolling read, you can read as much or as little as you like in small chunks and Harrison’s diary entries are genuinely funny at times, even in his most dire situations he finds humour, and paints the other characters of his life with both wit and compassion, while holding an honest account of himself and his life.
People contort themselves around the terror of being alone, making any compromise against that. It’s a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.
(blog review here)
Any doubts about The Lacuna were dispelled by the phrase that ended with “..or only up to his bollocks”
The words of Harrison Shepherd, whose acerbic wit and unflinching descriptions of the people, places and situations around him, drive this juggernaut of a novel, and which are drip fed to the reader in the form of diaries and letters, and intersped (in the second half) with newspaper articles.
Dragged south of the border by his moth like mother, Salome, who flits between men as bulbs, attracted by their money and power, she seems to believe that when her scheming finally pays off, Harrison will benefit as much as she will.
It was such a monument of accusation, even Mother had to bow her head a little as she crept past it, sins dripping from her shoes as we walked round the nave, leaving invisible puddles on the clean tiles. Perhaps God said her name was mud. He would have to yell more than three times, for her to hear.
He ends up working in the household of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, and as his mum flits around in the background, Frida becomes almost the centre of the novel, the core that Harrison winds around as he grows up. The arrival of Lev Trotsky enthralls Harrison, and his time with the exiled Bolshevik leader is dutifully recorded in his journals. Following his time with Lev Harrison moves back to the US during the second world war, and despite my initial interest in the book being it’s Mexican setting, it is the second half of the book that gripped me more.
After the end of the war, the US and Russia square up to each other and Harrison, by now a successful author, comes under scrutiny by the Committee of Un-American Activities and his diary entries fill with his bewilderment and comment on the state of the US, from it’s emerging economy driven by snazzy advertisments to the newspapers, whose fawning adulation turns to persecution as he is painted by a communist. His fear of the media, and of engaging with them ultimately harms him, as they take free rein to paint their own picture of the communist in the heartland.
I read this at the time of the release of the Leveson inquiry report in the UK, and this book demonstrates the power of words, and through them the power of newspapers and others who wield them. A paranoid government driving a paranoid population, condemning a man, in the end, on words he wrote in a story. It is out of this one sided narrative that The Lacuna emerges, the hole, the other side, the part you don’t know about the man in the newspapers.
“Of course we do” she said, sighing deeply as if to say “men do this.” And that is a fact, men do, unable to resist the same impulse that built the thing in the first place: senseless ambition.
The format of The Lacuna makes it a rolling read, you can read as much or as little as you like in small chunks and Harrison’s diary entries are genuinely funny at times, even in his most dire situations he finds humour, and paints the other characters of his life with both wit and compassion, while holding an honest account of himself and his life.
People contort themselves around the terror of being alone, making any compromise against that. It’s a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.
(blog review here)