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vitalbeachyeah 's review for:
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
I got 60 pages into this back in 2015, but it never hooked me, and I moved onto other things. I liked it a lot better second time around, although it requires some patience and persistence early on.
The protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, deliberately obscures his own personality and rarely betrays any strong emotions or compelling opinions in his diary, excerpts from which make up most the novel. So, on the one hand, you have a notably dull-seeming central character and are given little incentive to care about his wellbeing as he stumbles through a series of significant historical moments, meeting Trotsky, Kahlo and Nixon along the way. On the other hand, this dullness is a deliberate ploy by the author, which is interesting. The chief reason for her decision, I would say, lies in the final 200 pages of the book, when Shepherd finds himself under investigation as part of Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witchhunt. Kingsolver wants to show us how even someone who has spent their whole life striving not to commit to any particular political doctrine, someone who hopes to be unobtrusive and innocuous, could be found guilty by these ludicrous show-trials. She ties this into some broader ideas about the dangers of blind patriotism, and of ignoring history and context.
Once the McCarthy trials enter the picture, the book becomes much more compelling, because there's something at stake; a source of tension; Harrison is actually threatened. Until that point it's quite engaging, because you get some illuminating and colourful accounts of actual events and a sense of what it was like to live through those times (it's clearly a book which has been meticulously researched). But it feels, for the first 450 pages, somewhat directionless; you're left unsure what the shape of the story is, or why Kingsolver wants to tell this particular story.
So: I liked it, but understand why it has some 1-star reviews, and a lot of people will bounce off it hard. Not for everyone, but it's an unusual book with a lot of qualities.
The protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, deliberately obscures his own personality and rarely betrays any strong emotions or compelling opinions in his diary, excerpts from which make up most the novel. So, on the one hand, you have a notably dull-seeming central character and are given little incentive to care about his wellbeing as he stumbles through a series of significant historical moments, meeting Trotsky, Kahlo and Nixon along the way. On the other hand, this dullness is a deliberate ploy by the author, which is interesting. The chief reason for her decision, I would say, lies in the final 200 pages of the book, when Shepherd finds himself under investigation as part of Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witchhunt. Kingsolver wants to show us how even someone who has spent their whole life striving not to commit to any particular political doctrine, someone who hopes to be unobtrusive and innocuous, could be found guilty by these ludicrous show-trials. She ties this into some broader ideas about the dangers of blind patriotism, and of ignoring history and context.
Once the McCarthy trials enter the picture, the book becomes much more compelling, because there's something at stake; a source of tension; Harrison is actually threatened. Until that point it's quite engaging, because you get some illuminating and colourful accounts of actual events and a sense of what it was like to live through those times (it's clearly a book which has been meticulously researched). But it feels, for the first 450 pages, somewhat directionless; you're left unsure what the shape of the story is, or why Kingsolver wants to tell this particular story.
So: I liked it, but understand why it has some 1-star reviews, and a lot of people will bounce off it hard. Not for everyone, but it's an unusual book with a lot of qualities.