![]() ![]() Trotsky, or "Lev" as he is called here, emerges as a twinkly, saint-like figure driven by nothing more controversial than his love for humanity. Kingsolver – or, rather, Shepherd – sketches the various outlandish personalities in the Kahlo-Rivera household: Frida, with her ruffled skirts and filthy tongue concealing a tragic array of physical and mental ailments Diego, a "big toad" who compulsively cheats on her. All the while, he records the daily goings-on in a series of journals. This is Shepherd's first step into the frontline of history – and there he stays, becoming secretary first to Rivera and then to his guest, the exiled Leon Trotsky. Following a chance encounter in a marketplace with "an Azteca queen with ferocious black eyes" – Frida Kahlo – he becomes a domestic servant in the unruly household the artist shares with her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, who is busy bringing about Mexico's cultural revolution. The story is told by Harrison Shepherd, an apparently unremarkable half-American, half-Mexican boy born to a peripatetic mother in 1920s rural Mexico. It is an admirably ambitious work spanning a fascinating period of history, but it lacks the strong characterisation that made The Poisonwood Bible such a success. ![]() ![]() The Lacuna, her first novel for 10 years, takes in the Mexican revolution, the exile of Trotsky in Mexico City, the First World War and the communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. ![]()
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