Although her last full-length novel released in 2000, it’s
not as if Barbara Kingsolver has just been sitting around for the
past nine years. As her avid readers know, she recently moved to a
new part of the country, took up farming, only ate local cuisine
for a year, and wrote about the experience in her bestselling
memoir, ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE. And, apparently, Kingsolver has
been spending a great deal of time researching the history of North
America in the 20th century in preparation to write her splendid
new novel, THE LACUNA.

At the center of the book is Harrison William Shepherd, son of
an American man and a Mexican woman of Spanish descent. His
beautiful, glamorous mother disdains the Indians and mestizos who
populate the Mexican household where she moves with her young son
in the late 1920s, after separating from her husband. During the
course of Shepherd’s childhood, his mother is the mistress of
a long string of prominent married men, many of whom regard
Shepherd as a nuisance at best. The boy retreats to the kitchen,
where he learns how to make dozens of varieties of bread, and to
the ocean, where he teaches himself how to hold his breath for up
to two minutes. This is the length of time required to swim through
an underwater cave --- or “lacuna” --- to a mysterious
hidden cenote, or flooded sinkhole. Both these skills will serve
Shepherd well over the course of his life, but none will define him
as much as the ability to effectively make himself invisible both
in his life and in his writings.

As a young boy, Shepherd takes up the habit of journaling,
recording virtually everything his mother and the household staff
do or say --- a process that at times infuriates his mother.
What’s notable about Shepherd’s writings is that he
manages to, more often than not, erase his own identity from the
narrative. As the “editor” of his journals points out
in an introductory essay, “Anyone else would say in a diary,
‘I had this kind of a supper,’ but to his mind, if
supper lay on the table it had reasons of its own. He wrote as if
he’d been the one to carry the camera to each and every one
of his life’s events, and thus was unseen in all the
pictures.” This curious absence results in a challenging
reading experience as one must piece together Shepherd’s life
largely through not only what is said about him but also through
what is missing (appropriately enough, the word
“lacuna” also means something that is left out). One
whole section of Shepherd’s life is left out, since (as
Shepherd’s editor helpfully tells us) the journal in question
was burned, for reasons that readers will soon discern.

Following a life-altering but ultimately disastrous stint at a
military boarding school back in the States, Shepherd returns to
Mexico, where he revives an earlier acquaintanceship with the
tumultuous duo of painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The
famously volatile, brilliant pair have enough personality of their
own to make up for Shepherd’s lack. As the couple’s
cook and typist, Shepherd is also an astute witness to their
artistic gatherings, political intrigues and sexual liaisons.
Particularly, when the exiled Lev Trotsky and his wife show up on
the scene, the bohemian, nationalistic Rivera household is
vibrantly framed through Shepherd’s carefully observant
lens.

These years form the heart not only of Shepherd’s life but
also of the novel. Later, when he returns to America to become a
successful novelist in his own right, the novel loses a bit of its
exciting edge. It would be hard for anyone --- especially a writer
whose tendency is to lose himself in his own narrative --- to live
up to the dynamic personality of Diego and Frida, so this change in
tone isn’t too surprising. What’s remarkable, however,
is Kingsolver’s ability to consistently maintain
Shepherd’s self-erasing authorial voice nested within her own
energetic prose. Shepherd is the consummate observer, the
supporting player in his own life, which is in itself notable
primarily because of its proximity to historical change and
cultural figures, its unique positioning on the border of two
increasingly intertwined cultures.

As Kingsolver’s title suggests, the narrative is composed
not only of what is written but also of the space between, space
that the reader feels compelled to fill, creating a complicit
partnership between author and reader and a most satisfying reading
experience.