
The Lacuna
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Narrated by:
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Barbara Kingsolver
About this listen
Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
Meanwhile, the United States has embraced the internationalist goodwill of World War II. Back in the land of his birth, Shepherd seeks to remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. But political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption.
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Editorial reviews
Barbara Kingsolver's new novel of Mexico and the Cold War is centered on “accidents of history”: how things turn out, and how easily they could have turned out otherwise. Both Kingsolver and her narrator Harrison Shepherd, who is a writer himself, are interested in history not for the marquee names but for the ordinary people swept up in the momentum of events. The Lacuna is made up of Harrison's notes and correspondence, beginning with his arrival at age 12 to the hacienda of a Mexican oil magnate and continuing through a youth spent as a cook in the employ of a radical painter couple in Mexico City. It's the 1930s, and the couple is, of course, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, soon to be joined in their contentious household by Trotsky and his retinue.
Harrison watches these luminaries from the safety of the kitchen while they work, fight, and try to keep the most famous political exile in the world safe from Stalinist assassins. Kingsolver is an excellent narrator of her own story, differentiating the voices with artful touches that never seem cartoonish. Harrison is quiet and sharp, with a retiring diction nearly drowned out by strident Frida. Lev Trotsky is serious but avuncular, taking the time, despite his heavy intellectual labors, to encourage the literary aspirations of the young cook.
But this tense little world-in-exile can't last. As Frida tells Harrison again and again, the most important thing about a person is the thing you don't know. The Cold War is starting. Spies do a lot of damage, and fear of spies does more. By the time Harrison returns to the United States, an agoraphobic bundle of nerves, McCarthy is rising. No former cook for a Communist can escape the notice of Hoover's FBI. The Lacuna is an examination of history, both what of happened and of how we reconstruct it. Too often, Harrison muses, we take the scraps that come down to us for the whole, “like looking at a skeleton and saying 'how quiet this man was, and how thin.'” Harrison Shepherd, as a writer and obsessive keeper of diaries, does his best to keep flesh on the bones of the past. Kingsolver shows how impossible this undertaking is, and how important it is to try. Rosalie Knecht
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Story
Barbara Kingsolver has written these five short stories with the same wit and sensitivity that characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees. Spreading her characters over a variety of colorful landscapes, she tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance.
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Another great book by Kingsolver!
- By Rosemarie on 01-09-12
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
- A Year of Food Life
- By: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment.
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mixed feelings
- By pterion on 11-15-07
By: Barbara Kingsolver, and others
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The Poisonwood Bible
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Dean Robertson
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
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Listen to the sample first!
- By Cheryl D on 07-30-08
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High Tide in Tucson
- Essays from Now or Never
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
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With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom.
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Good book, but not unabridged...
- By Kathy Roberts Forde on 04-20-20
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Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
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Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
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Pigs in Heaven
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Abridged
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Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart.
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I didn't realize it was the abridged version
- By David Andrews on 02-27-15
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A Sand County Almanac
- And Sketches Here and There
- By: Aldo Leopold, Barbara Kingsolver - introduction
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.
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Great in some ways; in others, wtf!
- By RG on 06-22-20
By: Aldo Leopold, and others
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Japanese Lover
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Joanna Gleason
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco's parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family's Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart.
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My first negative review
- By Karen O'Byrne on 11-11-15
By: Isabel Allende
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A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
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good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
What listeners say about The Lacuna
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- MPet
- 07-01-12
My favorite novel
I relisten every year. Every sentence is a masterpiece. I cry in several places, out of sheer beauty. I’m so grateful this book exists.
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- Dilma Da Silva
- 08-25-10
Glad I ignored the warnings about the narrator
I almost decided to get the book instead of the audiobook due to the bad reviews the author got as a narrator. But I really liked her voice. The reading was not as smooth as in "Prodigal Summer", but it was competent and it did not get in the way of the story. I enjoyed the book and I'm eager to get Kingsolver's next one.
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- Susan
- 02-16-10
The Lacuna
Absolutely fabulous! The time setting is wonderful, so full of history as it probably happened, could have happened, I felt like I was there. The narration is perfect. So good, I recommend listening rather than reading!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Susan
- 12-23-09
Thoughtful and historically interesting
The history in this story is great, and well researched. Trotsky and Frida Kahlo come alive, and the accounting of our government's Communist hunting during the 1940's and early 50's is chilling. It is well read, though the story moves a bit slowly. I am a huge Barbara Kingsolver fan, and did not find this storyline as engaging as some. Its worth reading for the history.
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- srchappell
- 12-28-15
A treasure!
What an unexpected surprise! This book has many unexpected treasures hidden within a wonderful story...
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- Bridget
- 02-16-14
Love The Lacuna!
I have read or listened to a bunch of Barbara Kingsolver books over the years. This book had me hooked within about 4 minutes with it's howler monkeys and this beautiful story of a boy with is both American and Mexican and neither. I became friends with Shepard, Violate, Freda and Lev. This is a wonderful book that I will suggest to my family and friends, and I will revisit for years to come.
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Overall
- maria aguirre
- 12-09-09
Slow but worth the effort
I usually really like Kingsolver's books and was starting to wonder where this story was headed. Finally it picked up and was worth pushing through the first half.
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Overall
- Leslie Butterfield
- 04-30-10
Houston
I have long been a Kingsolver fan and was eager to read this new book. Harrison Sheppard, the main character, is highly compelling and the historical aspects of the book make it even more interesting to read. For me, getting to know Frida Kahlo was especially intriguing because I have long wondered about her appeal. The Lacuna touched me deeply will stay with me for a long time. Harry says in the book that the best part of art, including books, is what is left unsaid. So much is implied in this book and so much pertains to the political and economic situation today without actually being that.
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- Michal A. Joyner
- 01-03-10
Glad I read it
This book moves a tad slow, but I am really glad I hung in and finished it. It's a lovely story. I especially loved the time the main character spent with Frida.
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- KathyW
- 11-12-23
A compelling story, compellingly narrated
Unlike other reviewers, I loved the author's narration of her book. Because she knows her characters so well, her narration gives them life. Her voicing of Violet Brown is perfection.
That said, I found the story riveting, from the beginning discovery of the Lacuna passageway and its secrets, to the final pages of its reappearance as a central character in the story.
Kingsolver is a fine writer, a master storyteller, and a wonderful narrator of historical events through her characters' eyes.
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