The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna over Lasagna.

For November, the BBC presented The Lacuna for visual digestion on the recommendation of Andy, filled with promise after reading Barbara Kingsolvers previous offering, The Poisonwood Bible. Even an endorsement by Oprah did not dissuade him. So over Tempranillo the group met to discuss The Lacuna and its gaps.

Set in Mexico, the Lacuna follows the fate of Harrison William Shepherd from 1929 to 1951. We first meet him when he is 12 years old, living at a hacienda on Isla Pixol with his self dramatising mother , Salome, who had ditched her American husband and followed her heart and dreams back to Mexico to live with an oilman who turned out to be not quite the romantic romeo she had hoped for. Both are petrified of the howlings from perceived carnivorous demons, which they later learn to be monkeys in the trees above: “You had better write this all in your notebook”, Salome laments to Shepherd, “so when nothing is left of us but bones, someone will know where we went”.

From these roots, Shepherd’s documentary dictations capture his experiences at the incendiary revolutionary household of Diego Rivera , Frida Kahlo and later Leon Trotsky. Upon Trotsy’s assassination, he leaves Mexico for the United States, spooked by the virulent press denouncing his employers and their murdered ward “like the howlers on Isla Pixol”. There, he becomes the reclusive author of swashbuckling Mexican historical novels, until McCarthyism drags him unwillingly into the spotlight...

The tapestry of The Lacuna created many word pictures for the BBC and at times we loved its threads. Denis and Andy’s duelling analogies and anecdotes rivalled the velocity of Wild Bill Hickok, but both agreed there was a lack of narrative, and that, for the Lacuna, the 22 year journey of vignettes was the destination of the book. Leanne loved Kingsolver’s craft, the recurrent motif of the howlers which drew you back, but warned us to mind the gaps! Kevin found the lack of narrative difficult to burrow and settle into the book. Mark suggested that lovers of The Lacuna would read for the texture but not the plot. And Alena, monobrowed, dreamt of what might have been.

Collectively, the BBC conceded that we liked but not loved The Lacuna and found it difficult to recommend.

Scores:

Andy: 7 ½ -as it was hard work and the plot was too diffuse

Leanne: 8 -who would take sips but not gulp when imbibing the novel

Denis: 7 ½- overall (9 for the immediacy, 6 ½ for the narrative or lack thereof)

Kevin: 6-found the mastery of the immediate unsettling and longed for narrative

Mark and Alena: abstained

Overall score 7 ¼

The BBC’s Happy Hanukkah will be held on the 15th of December where the subject of dissection (Kosher style) will by Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Muzzletoff!

Post by Alena, image by Kevin