Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

I gave Melissa Prodigal Summer for Christmas 2010, which she loved. I hoped she would! I read it about every other summer and enjoy it every time. This book set Melissa on a path of other Kingsolver work. So, she asked me if I would be interested in borrowing Lacuna when she was done with it. "Yes!" I said, enthusiastically. I eagerly started in...and, surprisingly, found it hard-going. It was hard on several levels. First of all, I wasn't sure I understood what was going on. The structure was hard to figure out. And what in the heck did "VB" mean? The sentences were short, yet very descriptive. It wasn't at all the usual lyrical Kingsolver I was used to. And yet occasionally, there were glimpses of insights that were powerful. So I soldiered on.

About two weeks after she lent it to me, Lu asked how I liked it. I said I found it kind of depressing! I didn't enjoy the setting at all, found it all a little cryptic, and was surprised at how I wasn't loving it. I was determined to stay with it, though, and she agreed I should. She liked the setting...the craziness of Mexico and life with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera...I found it weird and couldn't relate at all. I was half-way through the book and still wondered if I would ever like it.

Then, about the time Violet Brown entered the scene, it all changed for me. The descriptions came alive and I fell in love with the characters. Something about Harrison Shepherd had grown on me...his utter humility and poverty of advantages. The second half of the book, I savored. Since most of it is written in Shepherd's voice, it was dawning on me how "his" writing and personality were developing over the course of the novel. I marveled at Kingsolver's subtlety! I also grew to love and appreciate the characters of Kahlo and Trotsky. Amazing how these are portrayed and would often cause me to laugh out loud or shed tears. The conversations were truly wonderful to read. It also makes me want to study Rivera's and Kahlo's art...

Other amazing things about this book are the way she teaches history...the level of detail and research that went into this are incredible. And how did she capture the mind and heart of a gay man in such a sympathetic, understanding, and heart-wrenching way? And how did she ever capture the patter of Tom Cuddy, the hep cat??? The closing years of this epic overlap with the year of my birth. It's crazy to read of the political realities that were extant in that era--the witch-hunting of Communists. Kingsolver brings this despicable chapter in our history into reality in a very painful way. Americans being unamerican and all that meant. I will definitely reread this book, and probably enjoy the first half more, now that I know what is going on. The structure is so unique...part diary, part letters, part editor additions...

A sampling:
Violet Brown: "It's true I lost a husband in the flood of the French Broad River in '16, Freddy Brown, and that broke a young girl's heart. But this was worse. My heart had grown older, with more in it to break. I can't put words to that afternoon. He would know words for the feelings I bore, but I only knew the feelings."

"Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives."

There is a whole deeper level of understanding one would get from the humor and pathos if one understood Spanish. There's plenty in the book; not all of it translated. That is a layer that eludes me. An evocative book. 
Read in February 2011