By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
Sprawling, ambitious but often somewhat impersonal, Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, The Lacuna, lacks the warmth and sweetness of Prodigal Summer and the staggering, tragic brutality of The Poisonwood Bible. It's a solid book but feels a little too grand for its own good.
Kingsolver opens in Mexico, and the protagonist is a half-American boy named Harrison William Shepherd, who lives with his saucy Mexican mother and her ruthless lover in the lush, tropical Isla Pixol.
He's a lonely, lost boy alienated from his surroundings. And while his mother flings herself from man to man in pursuit of passion and money, Harrison detaches himself from life, becoming an observer.
After getting booted from military school, Harrison embarks on a journey that takes him into the Mexican household of Diego Rivera and his painter wife, Frida Kahlo, and their pal Leon Trotsky in the 1930s. In this section the novel shines, depicting in intimate detail the tumultuous relations between the couple.
Harrison returns to the USA and becomes a writer of pulp adventure novels. And it's here that Kingsolver tries to take on too much, as Harrison's life touches on some of the darkest episodes in American history, including his dealings with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The novel takes a good while to get going, and it demands a reader's full attention as Kingsolver gallops through history. She gives a bristling, colorful glimpse of American life as the country dealt with the Great Depression, World War II and communist witch hunts.
Had Kingsolver made Harrison a stronger character, he might be have been able to hold his own against such mighty events. But he's too detached, too wispy a guy, especially when compared with figures that leap off the page in Kingsolver's other novels. He's too a pale an observer in a book blazing with color.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2009-11-19-kingsolver19_ST_N.htm?csp=books
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