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Lacuna

Author
Barbara Kingsolver
Genre
Media
Book
Publisher
Faber & Faber
ISBN
978-057125267
Reviewer
Wendy

Synopsis

The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man's search for safety of a man torn beween the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption. A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World.

Review

The main character in this story is a chap called Harrison Shepherd who is a popular writer and his autobiographer
written by his stenographer Violet Brown.I found this a sad book in many ways becouse one of the things it shows, is that people from unstable backgrounds can find it difficult to form lasting relationships in later life.

After the second World War Russia devolped her own Atom Bomb much to the horror of the Americans who felt extremly vulnerable, so anyone with Communist connections was a suspect of plotting against America. The author brilliantly shows how the Press and media can whip up the public to such a fenzy that anything is believable.

A beautifully written thought provoking book I enjoyed it very much.

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