I don't want to say I was disappointed, but I was surprised. Kingsolver's stories usually have compelling characters at the helm, narrators that become something like friends. But in The Lacuna, our protagonist is so distant from the reader that the work suffers to deliver us a truly satisfying story. With a passive protagonist, the question becomes "who is steering this story?", and the answer is so clearly Kingsolver's interest in history. Our protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, is a leaf on the wind of history, like Forrest Gump, but way less interesting. I'm on board with this approach, but not at the sacrifice of a character I care about to bring me through the times.
The novel is an ambitious endeavor for Kingsolver, and a return to the scene after nine years without publishing anything. I imagine much of that time was filled with research for The Lacuna, which spans across the U.S. and Mexico, the great depression, the surrealist art movement, WWII, Japanese internment, communism and the red scare. It's an ambitious stretch through History, and definitely provokes reflection upon some of the darker aspects of America's past. Many parallels can be drawn between the political environment of post WWII America and today's national climate, especially when it comes to journalism.
