Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
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[In the beginning were the howlers]***
(@FaberBooks, 5 November 2009, 688 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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It's official; I am a rabid Kingsolver fan. I loved this as much as her other books I've read. As I've come to expect, not a word was wasted, the characters were fantastically drawn and the language used to tell the story was dizzying at times. What I love about Kingsolver is that she doesn't something different with each book so I never quite know what I'm going to get and how things will turn out. I like to be surprised. There are a lot of real events in The Lacuna, not least the characters Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky. The main focus of the book are the communist witch hunts that took place under J Edgar Hoover of the FBI, a subject I was fascinated to learn about a few months ago in a podcast and was quite happy to revisit. There are some quite dark and chilling moments in the book, especially towards the end when Harrison realises the investigation against him for Communist activities may not be a bad joke after all. The Lacuna is breath-taking.
