WARNING: Lots of spoilers included
Usually, I don’t read a lot of general fiction in English. General fiction is something special to me, something which should be chosen meticulously. And so—except for the classics—this kind of books in their original language do not take a lot of place on my bookshelves.
The case of me and Barbara Kingsolver was different. I felt I had to read something by her, and to get it in paper. In English. And so I bought The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna. Mesmerized, I added Unsheltered which dissapointed me a bit but didn’t diminish the former books nevertheless.
What always surprizes me about Kingsolver’s books is that for better and worse, they present problems which are up-to-date. Even her historical novels reflects the nowadaysʼ problems acutely.
It’s strange to read about the main character of The Lacuna, who is a closeted gay, accused of being a communist plotting against US. It’s strange because it’s hard to not think of ultraconservatives claiming that gays are “neo-marxists” wanting to destroy “the western civilization”. It’s strange to read of biracial kids of one of The Poisonwood Bible‘s characters who can’t find their place in US. Because then you are painfully reminded of the white extinction conspiracy theories, and of perceving two people having biracial children in the categories of genocide.
It’s strange to read of a woman who sacrified her independence for the sake of her kids in The Poisonwood Bible taking place in the fifties, and to realize that the same happens to a woman in Unsheltered, who was rearing her children in the nineties.
It’s strange and unsettling. But the books by Kingsolver are just like that—they make us aware of the things we don’t want to see and of the parallels of which we would prefer to not be aware of. The truth they give us isn’t easy.
It wasn’t easy to me, to read Unsheltered and see how an already working woman has to look after her crumbling house, after her infant grandson, and after her embittered and ill father-in-law. To read about her son who doesn’t give a damn about his own little kid but who considers himself a heroic breadwinner and blackmails the rest of the family with his money. And who gives up all his parental duties to his sister. It’s all… So true.
We think that the men are more engaged fathers and women are more financially independent nowadays, and then there is Unsheltered telling you how illusionary it is.
You may think that this book is too much about politics and not very subtle in its social diagnosis. I agree with it as long as we agree on something else—that Levin and Prince Oblonsky are not discussing politics by talking of liberalism in Anna Karenina. That the description of the conservative aristocrats and their bigotry in Illusions Perdues by Balzac isn’t actually a political comment. What I mean that the older the book, the less politics we see in it. Unsheltered seems so ideological because it’s very recent and it takes place nowadays. And here and now, one can’t afford the privilege of neutrality if one writes a general fiction book on the broader scale.
Unsheltered—too much about the politics as it may seem—grasps some social types acutely, at least. There is Zeke, a Young Man into Business. There’s Willa, a middle-aged journalist struggling to keep her house together. And there’s Tig, a girl written against all the stereotypes of a woke SJW who doesn’t know the true life and true problems—she’s the one to be more responsible than Zeke is, actually, looking after his son and after their ailing grandpa. She is doing the dirty job and she doesn’t complain.
It’s also not only about individuals, but about nature and society as well. It’s about people supporting the populists against their own interests, and about the climate changes turning the rules of the world on their head. The questions are unconvenient. And the answers are difficult.
But that’s the only one side of the story. On the other one, there’s not Willa’s family, but a nineteenth century scientist Mary Treat and her friend, a devoted teacher called Thatcher Greenwood.
On the level of the social metaphor and cultural allusions—from Darwin’s theory through Italian immigration to the bigotry of the 1870s authorities—their story is convincing and actually more subtle than the sociopolitical background of Willa’s plot. It’s also a nice parallel of the contemporary times—one may think that the whole thing with creationism vs evolutionism, authority vs the common person, hasn’t changed a lot. Just as the hostility towards immigrants who aren’t WASPish enough—once Italians, now Latin Americans. And the politics doing what they want under the guise of protecting the “good” citizens.
The characters aren’t fleshed out well, though. Or rather—they aren’t fleshed out as for Kingsolver. Mary Treat must have been a fascinating figure, but she’s portrayed plain and detached. From her point, we don’t even get as much of herstory as one may expect from supposedly “progressive” and “engaged” book. Thatcher, on the other hand, is sketched but not drawn. He lacks characterization and personal interests—except for science. And the members of his family are lacking both.
Her previous books, The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna, have everything, though —vivid characterization and description, moving metaphors and acute social and historical context. If they were praised and acclaimed, they were praised deservedly.
Both of them are more retellings than anything else—the retellings of 1930s and 1950s, the retellings of American values and American superstitions about the Other, either the Latin American or the African one. Or the progressive one. Or simply one who doesn’t fit into the traditional sexuality. Or doesn’t have a “typical” family.
They show the world where “decency” and “hierarchy” are the key words and where the symbolic power is so terrific that it erases entire events and silences entire social groups. The said world, though, isn’t a place of opression and calamity only. There are safe spaces there—female solidarity in The Poisonwood Bible, friendship in The Lacuna. Neither the silenced groups—like LGBT people—are presented like “Look what a discovery I’ve made! They existed even back then!” nor their problems are introduced as kind of “Injustice!#1#!1!”. It’s all very subtle and woven into the plot in an unaffected way.
In The Lacuna, the parallels and premonitions accompany the reader from the very beginning. The outcasted lepers from Mexico City foreshadow the fate of Harrison Shepherd, the main character—who’ll be an outcast one day, too—and of his friend, the painter Frida Kahlo, who’ll end as a disabled and severelly ill person. The vividly described murals of Diego Rivera remind both of socialist postulates and of the native history of Mexico; over years, Harrison will be inspired by both. The homonym of laguna/lacuna refers both to the Harrison’s diving passion and to the need of oblivion—which, in the end, will become his doom and his rescue alike. It refers also to the lost part of his diary, the one describing his first gay love—an affair with a schoolmate. It refers to his love life overall—to the silence and discretion surrounding his orientation out of necessity. Because he lives in damnably homophobic times and Kingsolver doesn’t forget about it while writing his character.
Harrison’s sexuality isn’t about “look, he was queer even BACK THEN” or about “it wasn’t so bad, people were quite fine about him”. In his life, there are safe spaces—his friendship to Frida Kahlo and then to his secretary, an Appalachian Violet Brown—who is, by the way, a character out of any stereotypes about intolerant country people. But overall, he must hide his true self from the society. It doesn’t mean that his personality is about gayness; because it isn’t. He’s much more fascinating character than a figure of an average persecuted gay in the historical times. Nevertheless, he suffers from homophobia. He’s expelled from school, his mother doesn’t even know that he can be gay. And in the end, his country is against him, treating him as somebody thwarted and subversive. And he can’t even call his relations “love”—full of all the romantic patterns as they are.
As I’ve mentoned, his personality isn’t about gayness—it’s about being an observant, the bridge between US and Mexico, the person between. Harrison lives with the life of other people—those for whom he works and those whom he creates in his novels. He lives with the life of the servants on the fictional Isla Pixol, with the life of Frida Kahlo and Leo Trotski and their friends and spouses. Through his diaries, their personalities and the very land of Mexico are painted so vivid and captivating that the closing of the Mexican plot left me in mourning, actually.
Harrison seems almost translucent, but always wry, cunning and observant; until he leaves for Northern Carolina and, suddenly, out of necessity, his life becomes so much of his own. There, he can’t be a detached observant anymore, gradually engaging into the life of the local community. Guess to what it will lead in the times of Red Panic.
The Poisonwood Bible evokes the suffocating atmosphere of the fifties as much as The Lacuna, but it’s a book very different in technique, setting and pace. Told from the perspective of a mother—the wife of Nathan Price, a Baptist minister choosing a mission in Congo—and four daughters, it follows their relation to Africa and their life there. Each of them has an unique voice and perceives Congo and its local people in a specific way. Each of them is already hurt or would be hurt this way or another. And each of them remains under Nathan’s influence—even years after the family ties have been severed. For the figure of the father and the husband casts a long shadow over the life of the Price women; those who’ve survived. A figure of the man who—under the guise of piety and religious devotion—terrorized his family emotionally and sometimes even abused physically.
In this story, Nathan Price isn’t all a villain; his character is explained by his war trauma. He is bossy and insensible, though, and utterly sexist. He considers his wife Orleanna and their daughters “silly” females and doesn’t appreciate the work Orleanna does for him; a lot of tedious daily work. He thinks he knows the best about everything—he’s a paternalist convinced that Christianity (and abandoning of the local traditions) is the only way to save and redeem the “stupid” and “primitive” Congo people. He doesn’t see their own ways and their own methods of dealing with various things—from gardening to mourning. He is, actually, the symbol of white paternalism; the intention may not seem all bad but it’s contemptuous at its very roots, and the resolution is ignorant and domineering.
The most terryfying thing about him is the wrongdoing he does to his family. He is no “flash” type of an abuser, the one to rape his own children and beat his wife with a belt. His relation to his daughters doesn’t need to be incestuous to be utterly toxic, and the physical harm he does to Orleanna seems even more terryfying because it’s sporadic. And wrapped up in the pack of psychological abuse, of diminishing and gaslighting. Nathan Price isn’t your Openly Dysfunctional Daddy Figure. Oh, not. He’s a Respected Figure, a Man Devoted to His Case and burying his secrets deeply. And the worst is that taking into account the whole setting of the 1950s, such a type of an abuser looks disturbingly probable. After all, officially the US women were happy, weren’t they? What harm could come to them from a Decent Male?
The four daughters of him and Orleanna, meanwhile, are not only well-drawn but symbolize the several ways of approaching Africa.
Rachel, the eldest, is not only as much a paternalist as her father; she’s even more contemptuous. She stays in Africa only to abuse its people and accursing them of being lazy, stupid and cruel. She is to run a big hotel, the symbol of the colonial domination still prevailing on the continent. And the worst is that she considers herself benevolent.
Adah, a girl with physical disability, doesn’t speak, but it doesn’t mean that the conclusions she draws from her observation aren’t interesting. She lives in the slanted world full of puns and ambiguous words, where “God’s love” becomes “Evols’ dog” and “left behind” means “left behind” literally. She sees how everything grows thwarted on the Congo’s soil—from Scripture to the very flora, both lush and dangerous. She’s wry and cynical but—unlike her father—possess some hidden instinct of compassion, embracing not only human beings but the whole nature too.
Leah, her twin, as the one devoted to God, can gain some understanding from her father—at least as we meet her. Soon, though, she’ll start to oppose social conventions, gender roles and Nathan’s orders. She’ll start to defy God as her father understand Him to become a woman centered on the earth, not on the heaven. She’ll be also the only one of the sisters to have kids—but, oh wait, Rachel won’t consider them her nephews. Too coloured, you know.
And Ruth May… Well, Ruth May is doomed. You may not see it at once, but it’ll soon become clear.
The Poisonwood Bible—like The Lacuna—is the book where the different culture is neither exotized nor fetishized. Mexico or Congo aren’t exotic guises in Kingsolver’s writing, and neither their people are. She points out things which may seem strange to a Westerner—like the folk beliefs of the Mexicans or the child-adult dychotomy at Congo with nothing between—but she never does it in the way of “Look how remote and weird it is!” She actually seeks similarities, not differences. She shows, for example, that no matter Congo or US, the women do the tough job—like cleaning, child-rearing or gathering crops—while men do the spectacular job—like hunting—and claim that the spectacular one is not only the more important one, but allowed to be done only by them. And because the tough job is more demanding and absorbing, the women often can’t decide about the outer problems or free themselves from this circle of hard work or (even) abuse—there’s simply too little time.
In The Poisonwood Bible, there are other themes, of course, not only gender, colonialism and domestic abuse. There’s the great history seen from the perspective of the ordinary people. There’s nature and its symbolism. There’s the role of language. There’s race and culture clash. There’s sisterly and motherly love. And all this entwined together like the web of human fate.
In Kingsolver’s novels, everything is connected. Patrice Lumumba and Leo Trotsky are equally doomed. A middle-aged journalist is as much confined to her family as a young housewife. Latin American people and Congo people are misunderstood and exotized alike. Immigrants are held in contempt no matter the period. The nature is both beautiful and cruel—just as the very life is.
Left Hand of Fiction 