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terrimarshall 's review for:
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
This book. Whoa. It took a lot out of me. I was well over halfway through the book before I really knew where she was going with the story. The long section when the main character is with Trotsky, I just about gave up on that section. Then about halfway through, the story started to come together. And once again, Barbara showed her brilliance at storytelling. By the end of the story, I was sold on it. I really love Kingsolver's writing. She always seems to take a very ordinary kind of story and make it into something special, and I can never pinpoint exactly how she does it. This particular book was probably "smarter than me," which is something I say often about books written by brilliant authors whose subtle points are probably being lost on my dull brain. But after finishing this book, I want to say to Barbara, "Once again, well done." She is a brilliant writer, and I would read anything she writes. Another thing that made this book more enjoyable to me is that the last half of the book takes place in Asheville, NC, a place I love well. I thought about giving this book 5 stars for brilliance, but I gave it 4 because I like my ratings to be entirely personal to me. So 4 stars because it took a lot out of me to get through it.
ADDENDUM: I was thinking about what this book had to say about McCarthyism and how it affected innocent people's lives. In this book the press kept printing inaccurate statements about the main character in order to make it appear that he was a Communist. This made me realize how the press today is really no different in the fact that it conflates things to cause alarm or make things look a certain way. Ironic how some things never change, and this is not a new thing. Also ironic how I find these themes recurring in books throughout history and how many problems we have today are not new at all.
ADDENDUM: I was thinking about what this book had to say about McCarthyism and how it affected innocent people's lives. In this book the press kept printing inaccurate statements about the main character in order to make it appear that he was a Communist. This made me realize how the press today is really no different in the fact that it conflates things to cause alarm or make things look a certain way. Ironic how some things never change, and this is not a new thing. Also ironic how I find these themes recurring in books throughout history and how many problems we have today are not new at all.