I started reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver on October 14th (if you haven’t heard of her or read her works, some of the best known titles she’s written include The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, The Prodigal Summer and a lot more). I bought this book last year and having moved towns, I stumbled upon the box of books labelled “UNREAD” and it was at the very top.

“A story is like a painting. It doesn’t have to look like what you see out the window.”

Frida to Soli, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

About the book: The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

And so Sòli goes on to write, of his life as a young boy as Harry, plucked from the United States to Mexico because his mother was restless and while there, he got to meet Lev who opposed Stalin, worked for the painter-Diego, and Frida Kahlo and served as a good cook, typist, secretary, confidant and observer…and then had to return to America because Frida wanted him alive.

🤫: I’d recommend this to anyone who loves stories written in journal format, memoirs, confessions…observations because that’s what I loved most about this book. The stories are not centered around Harry/Soli, but more about what happens daily, the conversations, the turmoil, the love, the people.

Two phrases from the book that I couldn’t help but jot down are:

🖤: “Fury demands fire.”
🖤: “The most important thing about any person is what you don’t know.”

I gave this a 4-star rating on Goodreads.

About the Author: She was born in Annapolis, Maryland, The United States April 08, 1955

Website: http://www.kingsolver.com/