The Transatlantic Book Club discussion

Thoughts on The Lacuna? I'm still working on it, but I'm enjoying it so far, particularly the portrayal of Frida Kahlo.

I really enjoyed it, I thought the characters were very well written, I found the bits about Trotsky particularly interesting, but I liked Frida as well. I want to find out more about both of them, I might look round for that film that was released a few years ago - I think it was Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina. I also liked the lawyer later on, don't know if you've got to him yet.

I was struck by the imagery, I think Kingsolver has a wonderful gift for it, there was a bit early on where she describes boats in the harbour, and a couple of other things later on, which really stuck with me.

I also found I engaged with Shepherd a lot, I really cared what happened to him most of the way through. The length of the book didn't bother me (it didn't feel padded out at all), the only times I struggled to go on with it was when I could see things weren't going to go well for him. Although once I'd put it down I couldn't leave it alone for long.

All in all it gave me pretty much everything I could want in a novel, and I want to read more of her. I've read on of hers before, Prodigal Summer, which was good too, but I think I liked this one more.

I loved Frida, more than I expected to, and even a tiny bit more than I did Harrison and Violet favourite. I've studied Kahlo's and Rivera's work before, but this is the first time that their ideas really came alive for me, even though I liked the film with Hayek well enough when I saw it a few years ago. I don't know whether it was the author's intention to provide a commentary on the artwork of the period as well as the historical and political events of the time, but it really made me think differently about the works I'm familiar with, gave them much more depth for me. I'm not a huge fan of much twentieth century art, so that made me happy.
What I most interesting in the book, however, was the exploration of the impact of national public opinion on the personal lives of Harrison and Violet, and the parallels between the political atmosphere of the 1950s with some recent political trends today. It was disheartening, thinking that such ignorance is of an older vintage than I had really been aware of, but Kingsolver is undoubtedly a master of her art, to pack so much into a novel that felt so short in the reading of it. (That's one of the things about reading books on my Kindle that I find strange at times--not being conscious of how many pages long a book is gives me a far different conception of pacing than I'm accustomed to.) I'll have to read The Poisonwood Bible soon, that's another one that's been on my shelf for a couple of years waiting for me to make time for it.

* "What I most interesting" should be "What I found most interesting." I'm currently getting over a cold; evidently my brain is not functioning at full capacity this morning...