The local Border's offered several clubs, each with a particular focus. There were clubs that read mysteries, clubs that read romances, and clubs that read science fiction, but all of those seemed too limiting. Then we stumbled upon the "Eclectic" group. This sounded like a great idea! We could read classics, modern fiction, biography, it didn't matter!
The group met once a month, at Border's, and a Border's employee led the group. We were technically allowed to pick the books, but sometimes indecision within the group allowed the Border's guy, whose tastes leaned toward science fiction and fantasy, to exert undue influence on the selection. However, for the most part we chose our own books, and though the process was often fraught with bickering and multiple elimination votes, we managed to pick some pretty good selections.
One of the more memorable books, at least for me, was a book by Barbara Kingsolver called The Poisonwood Bible. It is the story of an evangelical Baptist family that travels to the Belgian Congo to preach the gospel to the heathen locals. The family is almost destroyed by the trials that they face, and they gain a new understanding of this country and it's culture, as it struggles to be an independent nation. I found this book to be riveting, and promised myself that I would read another one of her books one day. This brings us to today's review:
Book 25 - The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, where the text is missing or illegible. It can also refer to a small pit, or a hollow cavity. In Barbara Kingsolver's book The Lacuna, it is both. Harrison Shepherd is the son of a Mexican woman and an American man. His parents estranged, he spends his youth with his mother in Mexico. His mother's main interest seems to be bagging a wealthy man before time takes away her youth, so to pass the time Shepherd reads voraciously. One day he is given a pair of diving goggles by one of the employees of the house they are staying in, and he spends many hours swimming and observing the ocean life. Eventually he finds a cave, a lacuna, that is only visible at certain times, when the tide is just right. At the other side of this cave is a hidden cove that can only be reached by those who can make the long journey.
Eventually, Shepherd returns to America, and while attending a boarding school in Washington, DC, he finds himself in the middle of the Bonus Army riots. Leaving the school under mysterious circumstances which become clear later, he returns to Mexico, and begins working for the famous muralist Diego Rivera and his fiery wife Frieda Kahlo. Initially a plaster mixer, he becomes the house cook. Later when Rivera offers asylum to Lev Trotsky, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Shepherd becomes one of his assistants, typing up manuscripts, helping with translations, and recording much of what transpires in his journals.
Under tragic circumstances, Shepherd eventually returns to America, this time to Asheville, North Carolina, where after a while he settles into a career writing books which romanticize ancient Mexican civilizations. He is enormously successful, until his past associations with communist sympathizers draw the attention of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Kingsolver constructs the book as a series of Shepherd's journal entries, letters, various newspaper articles, and book reviews, which gives the story a choppy feel. This seems to be intentional. I've read a few reviews that complain about the weakness of the central character, but this seems deliberate as well. In both of these cases Kingsolver seems to be saying what Shepherd said throughout the book. That it is the part that is missing - the lacuna - that is the most important part of the story.
While this is probably not Kingsolver's best work, I still found it to be an enjoyable read. However, if you were only going to read one of her books, I'd make it The Poisonwood Bible.
