Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors so I was all ready to have a great review of this book. Unfortunately it just didn't grab me the way her other books have. La Lacuna follows a young man as he grows up through the years during and following WWI through is adulthood during the cold war. She chose to tell this story almost entirely through the format of diary entries, newspaper clippings and letters. This choice really left the storyline to be very disjointed and as one of my friends has said clunky. It was hard to hold interest when you were constantly trying to connect to a new writing style. I usually love good historical fiction and well established roles of the likes of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Lev Trotsky, among others could really have drawn me in, but this novel really just failed to do. I even put it down to go have lunch when I only had four or five pages left and I don't think I've ever been that close to the end of the book and not felt the need to finish before moving on. So all in all, read Barbara Kingsolver, but read The Prodigal Summer (my personal favorite), or The Bean Trees, or The Poisonwood Bible, but La Lacuna I could have taken it or left it.
I'll leave you with a little clip of what the babies are doing while I read. This is actually pretty tame, I've been working on getting this on video for a couple of weeks since they can get pretty wild, but they are apparently camera shy and like to stop moving as soon as I hit record so only Baby A really puts on a show here, but you can imagine when they all get going!
Oh thanks for sharing!! I miss that! Thought it was crazy with one but I can only imagine with three! Adore!
ReplyDeleteCan I add Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to that list of must-reads? But I agree, Lacuna just wasn't it for me, although the reviewers really liked it.
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