Editorial reviews

Barbara Kingsolver's new novel of Mexico and the Cold War is centered on “accidents of history”: how things turn out, and how easily they could have turned out otherwise. Both Kingsolver and her narrator Harrison Shepherd, who is a writer himself, are interested in history not for the marquee names but for the ordinary people swept up in the momentum of events. The Lacuna is made up of Harrison's notes and correspondence, beginning with his arrival at age 12 to the hacienda of a Mexican oil magnate and continuing through a youth spent as a cook in the employ of a radical painter couple in Mexico City. It's the 1930s, and the couple is, of course, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, soon to be joined in their contentious household by Trotsky and his retinue.

Harrison watches these luminaries from the safety of the kitchen while they work, fight, and try to keep the most famous political exile in the world safe from Stalinist assassins. Kingsolver is an excellent narrator of her own story, differentiating the voices with artful touches that never seem cartoonish. Harrison is quiet and sharp, with a retiring diction nearly drowned out by strident Frida. Lev Trotsky is serious but avuncular, taking the time, despite his heavy intellectual labors, to encourage the literary aspirations of the young cook.

But this tense little world-in-exile can't last. As Frida tells Harrison again and again, the most important thing about a person is the thing you don't know. The Cold War is starting. Spies do a lot of damage, and fear of spies does more. By the time Harrison returns to the United States, an agoraphobic bundle of nerves, McCarthy is rising. No former cook for a Communist can escape the notice of Hoover's FBI. The Lacuna is an examination of history, both what of happened and of how we reconstruct it. Too often, Harrison muses, we take the scraps that come down to us for the whole, “like looking at a skeleton and saying 'how quiet this man was, and how thin.'” Harrison Shepherd, as a writer and obsessive keeper of diaries, does his best to keep flesh on the bones of the past. Kingsolver shows how impossible this undertaking is, and how important it is to try. Rosalie Knecht

Publisher's summary

From the Mexico City of Frida Kahlo to the America of J. Edgar Hoover, The Lacuna tells the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations.

Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.

Meanwhile, the United States has embraced the internationalist goodwill of World War II. Back in the land of his birth, Shepherd seeks to remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. But political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption.

©2009 Barbara Kingsolver (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Glad I stuck with it

I found the first three sections of the book to be very hard to follow. The whole thing is told through conversations taking place. Identifying who was speaking was difficult for me. It wasn’t until part 4 that I started to really enjoy the book. The ending was very satisfying. The plot very effectively brings home what went on in the 50s during the McCarthy era, and what people had to live with then, which puts our own times into perspective. Definitely worth the listen.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Hang in there until the. it's worth it.

I loved the historical references and the opportunity to review times I'd forgotten. I think of where we are today as a nation and have a fuller context into which to place recent events and trends. The part I disliked was the confusion and seeming lack of reference point in the first part of the book. Some of my fellow readers never made it past it, so didn't read the book

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

a great book in every way

"The Lacuna" is a wonderful book.
A sensitive, powerful, interesting story,
With themes of important matters of human civilization and history, it never is idealized or didactic.
Despite these large issues the book like the main character Harrison Shepherd always modestly comes back to the life of one person.
The author's skill and judgement and intelligence are daunting.
Most of all it is superb entertainment with the luxury of being performed by the author as audiobook.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Not Kingsolver's Best

Barbara Kingsolver reads this herself - Beautiful language. The book is hard to get into, so I put it down for a bit. Then returned a month later. That would never have happened with previous Kingsolver novels. I found the writer's technique of a book as a series of journal entries and letters off-putting, hard to follow and disjointed. I finally 'got into it' the last third of the book. The part I found least interesting (the time spent with Freida Kahlo) ended up being central to the end of the book. Worth persevering to the end, but not worth more than 3 stars.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Violet Brown in Kingsolver's Voice Is Brilliant!

I would give this book more than 5 stars if I could. I loved every minute of it. This is one of those experiences where I couldn't wait to get back to listening to see what would happen next, yet wanted to savor the story and the language, and not have it end. Kingsolver does a surprisingly good job reading (surprising because she is a writer, after all, not as far as I know a narrator, and also because there are a LOT of very different characters in this book). Far and away the best part of her narration is the voice she gives to Violet Brown. Don't miss this!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful

Best book I've ever purchased on Audible.com! Barbara Kingsolver is a fantastic story teller.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

A good story after a confusing beginning

The story had a difficult beginning. The narration by the author was not an asset. But I have listened to most of the story 3 times and have enjoyed it more with each listen.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

A Glimpse of Trotsky's exile and murder in Mexico

The book is an interesting insight into the murder of Lev Trotsky in Mexico, the use of troops against the WWI veterans in Washington, and the Anti-Communist mania in the U.S. following WWII. The book is a little slow in the middle sections, after the main character returns to the U.S. from Mexico, but the characters and the settings are interesting and the ending is quite good. Not quite as special as the author's best known book, "The Poisonwood Bible."

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

CLEVER story - well written - Bad narration

I LOVED the story - cleverly written - DESPITE the narration by the author - Writing and reading (performing) are not the same art and Kingsolver writes well - but I would have much preferred to hear a professional read the story... but excellent story - I really enjoyed it!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful and interesting

though a bit slow to start with, it is beautiful, rich and full of history and color

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