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chrysemys 's review for:
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
3.5*
I'm of two minds about this book.
The first half, which I'll loosely describe as "Mexico with Frida, Diego, and Lev" was great, albeit a kind of obvious milieu in which to set a novel. The Poisonwood Bible is one of the best books I ever read (so good that I only read it once, fearing repeated reading would diminish my high regard) and I have been reading Kingsolver's work ever since, always disappointed that it didn't measure up. The first half of The Lacuna--which I don't know how I failed to read until now--nearly does meet that standard. I was prepared to be awed.
The second half of the book, however, which I summarize as "Asheville and the Red Scare" dragged. I don't think it is only because the material was rather grim, nor because I'm currently a bit tired of the subject, having just consumed a fair amount of material about the Rosenbergs. The inclusion of so many newspaper articles--both actual and fictional--became quite tiresome by the second half, as did the slow downward spiral of the protagonist's life. I understand that drawing the story out in this section was done to help the reader feel the excruciating powerlessness and fatalism of the situation. Increased empathy or no, it is prolonged unpleasantness, heightened by the fact that the reader knows how history plays out. The (literarily better) ending did not make up for the slog through the Red Scare.
I'm of two minds about this book.
The first half, which I'll loosely describe as "Mexico with Frida, Diego, and Lev" was great, albeit a kind of obvious milieu in which to set a novel. The Poisonwood Bible is one of the best books I ever read (so good that I only read it once, fearing repeated reading would diminish my high regard) and I have been reading Kingsolver's work ever since, always disappointed that it didn't measure up. The first half of The Lacuna--which I don't know how I failed to read until now--nearly does meet that standard. I was prepared to be awed.
The second half of the book, however, which I summarize as "Asheville and the Red Scare" dragged. I don't think it is only because the material was rather grim, nor because I'm currently a bit tired of the subject, having just consumed a fair amount of material about the Rosenbergs. The inclusion of so many newspaper articles--both actual and fictional--became quite tiresome by the second half, as did the slow downward spiral of the protagonist's life. I understand that drawing the story out in this section was done to help the reader feel the excruciating powerlessness and fatalism of the situation. Increased empathy or no, it is prolonged unpleasantness, heightened by the fact that the reader knows how history plays out. The (literarily better) ending did not make up for the slog through the Red Scare.