The Lacuna / Barbara Kingsolver

I had been intending to read this novel for a bit. I think I've read everything by Barbara Kingsolver, but I kept postponing reading this 500 pager. It came out in 2009, but it was the opening of the new exhibit Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting across the street at the High Museum of Art that finally motivated me to buckle down and read it. I'm sorry I waited so long. The history was fascinating, not only of the portrayal of the Kahlo-Rivera household at the time of their greatest fame, but of Trotsky's Mexican exile and eventual assassination, the Bonus Army riots of Washington D.C., and the Red Scare in the United States after the end of the war. Plus there was all the cultural geography of Xochimilco, Teotihuacan, and Chichen Itza. After reading about it, I wanted to plan a visit to Mexico City to visit the Bauhaus inspired Kahlo-Rivera house and see Rivera's murals at the Palacio Nacional.

The narrative revolves around the character of Harrison Shepherd who spends time in Mexico in the employ of Frida and Diego and then returns to the United States to settle in Asheville, North Carolina. Kingsolver uses the device of reconstructing his story from notebooks and clippings, some of which are real historical documents, which give the book an air of authenticity. This structure of this novel is really quite clever, and though it's not a story only about Frida and Diego, it really holds the reader's interest even when these two larger than life characters are not center stage. This is more Tracy Chevalier than typical Kingsolver fiction, I would say.

Now I'm ready to visit the art exhibit across the street (and pick up Kingsolver's latest-- I'm not putting it off this time!)

Barbara Kingsolver won the 2010 Orange Prize for fiction for The Lacuna.

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