Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

A novel well worth the wait

"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver; Harper ($26.99)

It's been nearly a decade since Barbara Kingsolver's last novel, "Prodigal Summer," was published, and her readers have been antsy. "The Lacuna" was certainly worth the wait - it's her best novel yet.

Before reading it, I would have sworn that 1998's "The Poisonwood Bible" was her masterpiece, not to be surpassed; it was as close to a truly perfect book as I've ever read. This one's even closer to that lofty goal. It's both epic and deeply personal, with Kingsolver masterfully interlacing one man's journey from houseboy to acclaimed writer with the equally tumultuous mid-20th-century courses of the United States and Mexico.

The story is told through journals, letters, newspaper articles and congressional testimony. Harrison William Shepherd, son of a Mexican mother and an American father, goes to Mexico as a youngster with his mother after his father takes off. A serendipitous meeting with artist Frida Kahlo lands him, as a teenager, a job as plaster-mixer for Kahlo's husband, the painter Diego Rivera. Shepherd's cooking technique for making nonlumpy pan dulce, it seems, also works great for making perfectly smooth plaster.

He ends up staying on with Rivera and Kahlo and is still there when the exiled Leon "Lev" Trotsky arrives. Shepherd eventually goes into the Trotsky household as a cook and translator. At one point he tells his worried mama, "And you can put this in your hat, Mother. Washing the dishes of pinkos doesn't make someone a pinko. It's not like an influenza."

Actually, it turns out, it is. Years later, that bug comes back to bite when Shepherd is living in the United States again and comes to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Kingsolver's brilliance here is in her passionate, exquisitely timed doling out of details that didn't make the history books, or the daily newspapers, but completely change the complexion of the story. The lacuna of the book's title refers to a space between objects, a cave, a missing piece - or, especially, the yawning gap between truth and perception.

When Shepherd, who has become a successful author, comes under suspicion of being a Communist, the press picks up on a particular quote, parroting it over and over like a call to arms: "Our leader is an empty sack. You could just as well knock him over, put a head with horns on a stick, and follow that. Most of us never choose to believe in the nation, we just come up short on better ideas." No one bothers to mention that the quote is actually not from Shepherd, but from a character in one of his books.

Kingsolver also brings historical figures to vivid life, especially the vivacious, mercurial Kahlo. Fretting over the dissolution of her marriage, she remains a stubborn fashionista. "Even in her disconsolate state she looked like a peacock, perfectly dressed in a green silk skirt and enough jewelry to sink a boat. Even drowning, Frida would cling to vanity," Shepherd writes.

"The Lacuna" is not a happy read, but I can't think of a book published this fall that is more worth your time. This is thought- provoking, and potentially thought-changing, historical fiction at its best. I'm not going to say it's her masterpiece, because she's fooled me before. But I'll happily wait another 10 years, if necessary, for the next one.