Lacuna

I've just finished reading Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver which appears to have had mixed reviews in the press - with many questioning why she was awarded the Orange prize.

For the first few chapters I found myself lamenting the limited visual imagery that was being conjured up to describe the Mexican setting. I'd just finished reading Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne (who I feel derserves to be more widely read).

I felt that Barbara Kingsolver created the character of Harrison Shepherd very effectively - his lack of childhood security & love - the inner creativity that emerges through his capacity to imagine and `tell' a good story - the trauma at seeing Tolstoy's horrific injuries (the only man that ever called him `son'). His sexuality - which he doesn't really know how to handle openly and honestly. I think the retiring man that we see in suburban North Carolina is probably a realistic portrayal of someone who is retreating from the events he encountered in Mexico.

What I really found engaging though was the way the whole `un-American' activities investigation is built up - for me this is the main point of the novel - we move from the acceptable face of communism in Mexico to the hysterical anti-communism in the States where we are shown the narrow-minded bigotry that destroyed so many people's lives. In some ways it actually put Guantanamo in perspective for me. And it's not just in the US - here we currently have the communist frightener being applied by some sections of the press - as in `Red-Ed'.

To link back to a Washington Post quote - I certainly don't think the book `shocked' me but I do feel changed as a result of reading it. This has opened up a whole period of American history for me and has done so through my empathetic engagement with the characters in the story - something that is unlikely to have happened if I'd tried a non-fiction way in.