The Lacuna: Deluxe Modern Classic

Barbara Kingsolver

Nov 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, and Kansas City Star • Winner of the Orange Prize

“Breathtaking. . . dazzling.”  — New York Times Book Review

“Her best novel yet. . . both epic and deeply personal. . . . This is thought-provoking, and potentially thought-changing, historical fiction at its best.” — Dallas Morning News

In this powerfully imagined, provocative novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is the poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as well as an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself.

Born in the United States, raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd lacks a sense of home in either. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen; from errands he runs in the streets; and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There, in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America’s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. Through darkening years, 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.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Kingsolver has created a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.

Ratings and reviews

I had to stop after trying to stomach the first 50 pages of badly used and misspelled Spanish words. It's embarrassing someone would release a book with such amateur research on the Mexican culture. I'll never read any of her books again.

My well-read peer, Ulrike Balistreri, recommended this novel to me. At the beginning, I thought it might be written in the elusive genre I love so well—magical realism. Perhaps I suspected this because the opening scenes are set in the Caribbean, Gabriel Garcia Marquez style. I was gently let down as I was immersed into the rich fabric of the life and times of Soli, whose mother is Hispanic and divorced from a government accountant who practices in Washington, D. C. the mother is a highly colorful opportunist who is attracted to rich oil men, and that is how she and her young son end up living on an island where the sounds of howler monkeys demonize the beginning of each of their days. I felt sorry for Soli. His flirtatious mother essentially leaves him to be raised by the hired help, who do teach him to become an expert cook, a saving grace, as we discover later on. Soli’s salvation comes in the form of the multiple diaries he keeps, little notebooks that document his thoughts, travels, and frequently, colorful contacts. These exploits become the fodder for his future best-selling novels. However, before this interesting albeit unexpected career as a novelist begins, he ends up as a cook for none other than communist extraordinaire Leon Trotsky. Yes. In fact, the novel becomes a treatise against what happened to communists in America. Lev (aka Leon) is exiled by Stalin. He and his entourage move to Mexico at the bequest of a famous artist, and his eccentric wife. This is where the book gets long in the tooth. Enough about communism, already!! Leon ends up with an ax in his skull, and Soli goes to North Caroline. Strangely, the artists wife has packed his precious journals disguised as a going-away portrait in a large case, and he uses the journal to write popular novels. His secretary is an interesting character who adds color—an old mountain-type with strong morals, an interesting juxtaposition against Soli’s latent homosexuality. The ending is the book is excellent indeed, and redeems a lot of the communist manifesto portion of the book which weighs it down at time, an anchor in a stormy literary sea. Overall, an excellent, if challenging book to read. ***** Five Stars

What can I say......? I love every word Barbara Kingsolver has ever written.

About the author

Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides. Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna (2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), and coauthored with Lily Kingsolver, Coyote's Wild Home (2023). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001. Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest, and in 2023 won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Demon Copperhead. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have been adopted into the core curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. Critical acclaim for her work includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, a James Beard award, two-time Oprah Book Club selection, and the national book award of South Africa, among others. She was awarded Britain's prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) for both Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna, making Kingsolver the first author in the history of the prize to win it twice. In 2011, Kingsolver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996). She and her husband, Steven Hopp, live on a farm in southern Appalachia where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep.