Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and the Nature of the Historical Novel

Abstract

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna is a novel concerned with the life of Harrison Shepherd, an introverted observer who prefers to slip into the background and record events rather than be a part of them. Kingsolver unfolds his life in its entirety from birth to death, from a childhood spent mainly in Mexico trailing his flamboyant but volatile mother as she embarks on a series of torrid relationships with solvent older men, to his teenage years and early twenties spent as a cook and typist in the household of Diego and Frida Rivera, before his eventual emigration to the United States, where he achieves prominence as a successful writer in his own right. At this point, his life is unravelled by the sinister and claustrophobic event of McCarthyism and the purges of suspected communists.