Winner of the prestigious 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.
The Poisonwood Bible was a very special book, this one, her first in ten years, is a very worthy book. You need stamina and time to tackle it and you do need to finish it for the tragic-comic conclusion is extraordinary.
“What’s wonderful about this novel is not only the exquisite writing, but the way it makes the reader very active. You have to put the story together. Lots of mystery and a very passionate investigation of what love is.”Michèle Roberts (Orange Prize for Fiction 2010 judging panel)
The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man's search for safety of a man torn beween the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America.Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption. A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World.
