Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver
Two families living in the same ramshackle house in
Vineland, New Jersey – but nearly 150 years apart: in Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, she has
alternating chapters for each family, setting her stories at tumultuous times
in America’s history. The novel opens
in 2016, election year, when Willa Knox has found out the worst possible news
from the local builder: the Vineland
house she has inherited from her Aunt is ready to fall down around their
ears; in fact the next good storm (and
there are so many now, thanks to climate change) will probably finish the old structure
off completely. This is not what Willa
wants to hear, for she and her husband, university professor Iano Tavoularis
have just lost their jobs because the university lost funding and had to close. They are on the bones of their backsides and
it’s not a nice feeling.
Schoolteacher
Thatcher Greenwood and his new wife and her family settle in Vineland in the
1870’s in a rickety house belonging to his mother-in-law. Vineland has been newly established by land
baron Charles Landis, hoping to attract workers for the mills and industries
encouraged to build on his land after the Civil War. Reconstruction is booming, as are Landis’s
fortunes. Thatcher is smitten with his
beautiful little wife, but less so with his incumbent mother-in-law – both of
whom wish to keep up the kind of appearances he can ill afford on his salary,
and it soon becomes obvious that in his daily classes he will not have permission
to teach his pupils about the natural world, particularly the exciting new
ideas of Charles Darwin and his own eminent Boston educators. Vineland is Charles Landis’s fiefdom; he is its mayor, he runs its newspaper, its
high school: he is king of all he
surveys, and radical thought is dangerous thought – it must not be allowed!
Ms
Kingsolver draws the reader so expertly into Then and Now that at the end of
each chapter I felt sorry to be snatched away from that time zone – until the
next chapter grabbed me and wouldn’t let go:
Willa’s myriad problems increase with the shocking death of her son’s
English girlfriend after she has just given birth, leaving Willa literally
holding the baby; her snippy little
daughter Tig turns up on their rotting doorstep, hair in dreds and in a foul
temper after a mysterious sojourn in Cuba;
and Willa’s irascible wheelchair-bound Greek father-in-law is dying, but
in the most bad-tempered way possible.
The
political and social life and times of each century are beautifully portrayed,
including the shameful 21st century materialism and consumerism
championed by poliiticians who judge worth by wealth: 19th
century mores are exposed in all their ugliness, too, especially the yawning
gulf between profligate waste and dire poverty, proving that, as always,
nothing changes. This is a great story.. SIX STARS
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