A richly satisfying portrait of Mexico gives way to a preachy, padded and predictable chronicle of Red Scare America.
Unapologetically political metafiction from Kingsolver (Prodigal Summer, 2000, etc.) about the small mistakes or gaps (lacunas) that change history.
Set in leftist Mexico in the 1930s and the United States in the ’40s and ’50s, the novel is a compilation of diary entries, newspaper clippings (real and fictional), snippets of memoirs, letters and archivist’s commentary, all concerning Harrison Shepherd. In 1929, Harrison’s Mexican-born mother deserts his American father, a government bureaucrat, and drags 11-year-old Harrison back to Mexico to live with her rich lover on a remote island. There Harrison discovers his first lacuna, an underwater cave that leads to a secret pool. As his mother moves from man to man, Harrison learns to fend for himself. His disastrous two-year stint at boarding school back in America is marked by his awakening homosexuality (left vague thanks to the lacuna of a missing diary) and his witnessing of the Hoover administration’s violent reaction to a riot of World War I homeless vets. In 1935, Harrison returns to Mexico, where he becomes first a lowly but beloved member of the Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo household, then secretary to Leon Trotsky until Trotsky’s assassination. Kingsolver is at her best in the pages brimming with the seductive energy of ’30s Mexico: its colors, tastes, smells, the high drama of Trotsky and Kahlo, but also the ordinary lives of peasants and the working poor. When Harrison returns to the States, however, the novel wilts. His character never evolves, and the dialogue grows increasingly polemic as his story becomes a case study of the postwar anticommunist witch-hunt. Harrison moves to Asheville, N.C., writes fabulously popular novels about ancient Mexico, hires as his secretary a widow whom the reader knows already as his archivist, and is then hounded out of the country by the House Un-American Activities Committee, with fateful results.
A richly satisfying portrait of Mexico gives way to a preachy, padded and predictable chronicle of Red Scare America.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-085257-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
Sometimes more interesting for its revelation of little-known aspects of Cuban history than for its revelation of...
García’s third (after The Aguero Sisters, 1997, etc.) again lyrically portrays several generations of a Cuban family, this one with Chinese roots.
In 1857, a Westerner in Amoy fools 20-year-old Chen Pan into signing on for indentured labor in Cuba, where “the women were eager and plentiful [and] . . . even the river fish jumped, unbidden, into frying pans.” After the horrific sea voyage disabuses him of such fantasies, Chen Pan survives more than two years on a sugar plantation, befriending some of the African slaves before escaping to Havana, where he prospers as a merchant and buys a young black woman who becomes his lifelong companion. Interwoven with the couple’s history are narratives about their granddaughter, Chen Fang, born in 1899 during her father’s brief sojourn in China, and their great-grandson, Domingo Chen, who immigrated to New York with his father in 1967. Chen Fang becomes a victim of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and Domingo falls in love with a prostitute while serving in Vietnam, but their stories are sketchy and pallid compared to the richness of Chen Pan’s experiences in Havana, a city with a multicultural vigor drawn from the clamor of different cultures and races. In 1867, in Havana, “the vendors hawked fresh okra and star apples, sugarplums, parakeets, and pigs’ feet . . . [and] from the moment he arrived, [Chen Pan] knew it was where he belonged.” His descendants in China and America never belong in the same way, and their tales are left unfinished, though the novel hints at sad ends. Chen Pan, by contrast, survives the loss of his beloved Lucrecia to see dramatic changes in now-independent Cuba, and he dies drinking the red wine a friend had promised would make him immortal.
Sometimes more interesting for its revelation of little-known aspects of Cuban history than for its revelation of characters, but Chen Pan lingers in the memory as a brooding, contemplative patriarch.Pub Date: April 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41056-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
An interesting World War II narrative is dragged down by a less-engaging present-day story.
A woman who can see ghosts becomes tangled in a mystery involving European war brides who crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary.
Brette has had the sight since she was a little girl. The ability to see the dead runs in her family, but ever since an aunt told her she was better off ignoring the ghosts she encounters, that’s exactly what she’s done. That is, until an old classmate needs her help and Brette inadvertently becomes drawn into the lives of three women from the past. As Brette communicates with a spirit and tries to unravel the mystery behind one of the ship’s tragedies, Meissner (Secrets of a Charmed Life, 2015, etc.) also tells the stories of two of the ship’s passengers: Annaliese Lange, who is escaping from a marriage to a Nazi, and Simone Devereux, who lost her family in the war. Annaliese's and Simone’s stories are engaging and heartbreaking; Brette’s point of view, though, is less interesting and never seems as urgent. Also, the multiple points of view are occasionally hard to keep track of, especially when it isn’t yet clear how they intersect. Although the stories of Annaliese and Simone are captivating and well-researched, readers may find themselves wishing Meissner had devoted more of the book to the women on the ship and less to Brette and her ability to see ghosts.
An interesting World War II narrative is dragged down by a less-engaging present-day story.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-451-47600-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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