The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I marvel at the author’s depth and range of the extensive research done prior to writing a novel on such a grand scale. Her stories have been set in Africa, South America, various regions of America and all with unique themes – it’s remarkable! This book is a tour de force of Mexican history (the Aztecs and Mayans specifically); Mexican artistes (a tribute to the tortured genius of Frida Kalho and the virtuosity of Diego Riverera);

the convoluted Mexican politics; the vilification campaign of Hoover and McCarthy against professed and imagined Communists post-WWII. The protagonist is a self-deprecating, agoraphobic gay author of mixed parentage (in sharp contrast to the ambitious Youngblood Hawke). The boundaries of fact and fiction blur in the engaging bildungsroman. I loved the evocative poetic descriptions – a market-day in a Mexican village

A man leading his pregnant wife on a burro, like Joseph and Mary. Three long-legged girls in dresses straddling one gray mare, their legs hanging down like a giant insect. A peevish rooster that ought to have been in a better mood, because look here my friend: at the roadside butcher stand, all your comrades hang upside-down ready for roasting. Sausages also were slung over the line like stockings, and a whole white pig skin just hanging, as if the pig went off and left his overcoat. His wife the sow was alive, tied to a papaya tree in the yard with her piglets rooting all round. They could be free to run away, but don't, because of their mother chained on the spot.

… a sleepy afternoon in a Mexican town

In the afternoon when the sun lights the stucco buildings across the street, it's possible to count a dozen different colours of paint, all fading together on the highest parts of the wall: yellow, ochre, brick, blood, cobalt, turquoise. The national colour of Mexico. And the scent of Mexico is a similar blend: jasmine, dog piss, cilantro, lime. Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes. The pebble thrown into the canyon bumps and tumbles downhill. Here life is strong-scented, overpowering. Even the words. Just ordering breakfast requires some word like toronja, triplet of muscular syllables full of lust and tears, a squirt in the eye. Nothing like the effete "grapefruit," which does not even mean what it says.

Here is the irrepressible Frida

"Everyone will say horse shit smells like flowers," she stated, "if they want to be popular with a horse's ass."
Natalya takes Phanodorm morning and night, and cups of tea one after another: drowning her sorrows, as Frida would say, until the damn things learn to swim. But maybe some sorrows can't be borne.

The protagonist’s self-effacing amanuensis

"Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down."

This is the weird and famous house designed by the architect who was le Corbusier’s disciple

When he stops to rest, that poor old man has to raise his eyes to this modern mess of glass and painted cement that looks like a mistake. It looks like a baby giant was playing with his blocks when his mother called him, so he ran away and left his toys lying in Calle Altavista.

Two blocks: the big pink one and small blue one standing separately, each with rooms stacked one above the other, screwed together by a curved cement staircase. The big pink block is the Painter's domain, and his studio on the second floor is not so bad. That window is the size of a lake, a whole wall of glass looking down at the neighbour's trees. The planks of the floor are yellow, like sun on your face. That room feels like someone could be happy in it. Everything else feels like being shut up inside a crate. The small blue block is meant to be for the small wife.

Viva Frida!


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