The Lacuna

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Adult Cd Book Kingsolver


Kingsolver reads this beautifully written book herself, and while her voice is a bit soft, she does the book justice in an understated, non-dramatic way. I like her way of letting the book speak for itself without over dramatization. Kingsolver actually performs many of the accents very well, North Carolina and Mexican especially. Her Russian is serviceable. Kingsolver's greatest narration is for the character Violet Brown, Harrison Shepherd's stenographer, thanks to whom this story was not burned, but was instead locked away for 50 years.

The book is a saga of a boy who grew up in Mexico with his flighty Mexican mother who had left his American father in Washington, D.C. for an oil man who lived on an island. While that affair didn't last long, it provided Harrison days of pleasure of diving into water and finding a cave full of fish, that he discovered had another entrance on the ocean side that could be accessed at low tide. He loved to see how long he could stay under.

Later they move to Mexico City where he attends a church school, this in the days when the church is banned from pretty much everything; it is a school for the slow witted, though Harrison is very bright. He happens upon Frida Kahlo in the marketplace one day and offers to help her carry her bundles, thus coming into the employ of Diego Rivera as a plaster mixer. Harrison spends years in the Rivera household as cook, typist for guest Leon Trotsky, but after the brutal murder of Trotsky he returns to the States. There, in Ashville, N.C. he has a successful career as a writer of romantic novels about the Aztecs, until the House of un-American Activities begins to pursue him. It is a chilling reminder of our past 50 years ago, and a warning of what seems to be brewing in some circles today. Spectacular novel.