The Lacuna

From Strand Bookstore

hidr in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico - from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City - Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, 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 meets 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 & revolution - and more.

From the Publisher

Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he his caught up in the patriotism of World War II--in a gripping story about identity and the power of words by the best-selling author of The Poisonwood Bible. 600,000 first printing.

From the Publisher

Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he his caught up in the patriotism of World War II--in a gripping story about identity and the power of words by the best-selling author of The Poisonwood Bible. 600,000 first printing.

Review

Liesl Schillinger - New York Times Book Review
"[B]reathtaking....THE LACUNA can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver's novel lies in its call to conscience and connection."

Review

Monica Hesse - Washington Post
"As with all of [Kingsolver's] books, it's lyrical and vivid, meticulously reported and innovatively structured."

Review

Kai Maristed - Los Angeles Times
"A lavishly gifted writer, Kingsolver has not let success breed complacency. This novel, her first in nine years, feels prodigiously researched. Its confident pacing mines roughly a quarter-century in two countries, landing the hero in the midst of events that cast long shadows toward our own time....[Though she] resorts to lengthy expository dialogue....[w]hat saves these pages from pure artificiality is Kingsolver's wonderful ear for the quirks of human repartee. THE LACUNA is richly spiked with period language."

Review

Ron Charles - Washington Post
"Barbara Kingsolver's...novel, THE LACUNA, is the most mature and ambitious one she's written during her celebrated 20-year career, but it's also her most demanding....[The] central, though oddly faint, character is Harrison Shepherd, a popular writer of romantic adventure novels. Kingsolver neatly weaves this quiet, watchful man through tumultuous events that rocked two countries, and one of the most impressive feats of THE LACUNA is how convincingly she tracks his developing voice..."

Review

Ophelia Field - Literary Review
"THE LACUNA....is a novel worth waiting a decade for....Page after page of this novel tingles with obliquely witty yet deadly serious conversation that is a joy to read....I was both smiling and crying when I reached THE LACUNA's subtle, tragicomic conclusion--moved, in part, simply by Kingsolver's vast imaginative achievement, spanning several decades of Mexican and American history."

More about the book

After several works of non-fiction and poetry, Barbara Kingsolver (THE POISONWOOD BIBLE) returns from a nine-year hiatus to the novel form with THE LACUNA, a tale of cultural and political displacement in the first half of the 20th century. Harrison Shepherd is the son of an American father and a Mexican mother, who grows up in Mexico as a housekeeper in the famous artist household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. His exposure to the politics of Leon Trotsky turns him into a committed leftist--views that come back to haunt him when he moves back to the United States in the aftermath of World War II and must face the paranoia and witch-hunting of the McCarthy era. Kingsolver has crafted a rich and layered story, full of powerful political sentiment, that vividly evokes the tension and hopes of the Americas. Selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2009.