Unsheltered

Oh, Barbara.

Have you ever had a friend who just love, but she can’t get out of her own way? This is how I’m starting to feel about Barbara Kingsolver’s writing. She is so talented. She’s funny and smart and insightful. And she just can’t get out of her own way!!

Once upon a time, Barbara Kingsolver wrote these amazing novels, exciting and emotionally powerful and page turners in the most exciting way; page turners because of the ideas inside them, not because of cheap thrills. Pigs in Heaven was a suspense novel about adoption and cultural appropriation; Poisonwood Bible about missionaries imposing their will in foreign countries. I say this because Ms. Kingsolver has always written about “politically correct’ topics, she has always written with an agenda, but she used to be able to do it so skillfully that you didn’t mind.

And hey. I’m an easy target. I share all her beliefs! I shouldn’t mind being lectured, I happily read op eds at the NY Times all the time! But her last several novels have made me so frustrated, they’ve barely bothered to be books at all, they’ve just been lectures thinly disguised. I was so so hopeful that this one would be different, the advance word promised a return to form.

So I started reading with great glee. And yes. All the best of Barbara Kingsolver is there! She can create incredible worlds, in this case, two families living a century apart, sharing one disastrous house in one deeply flawed neighborhood. There is Willa, living such a perfect archeyptal life of the failing middle class family; and Thatcher, living at the dawn of the scientific age, when Darwinism and feminism are each just coming into view. The novel alternates chapters between these two stories, two families living in the same falling-apart home. (This is as subtle as the novel gets.)

She also is more funny than she often gets credit for; Polly, the budding feminist in Thatcher’s house, interacting with her older sister Rose, a traditionalist, is funny! Willa’s befuddlement at her incredibly PC daughter, and the occasional way that she deflates her daughter’s self righteousness, is also funny. And of course, Ms. Kingsolver is in her sweet spot when writing about science, and the scientific discoveries taking place in Thatcher’s time frame, with the eccentric female scientist who drives much of that story. I wonder if the novel had stayed in the past, if it might have worked a little bit better.

Because, sigh, in the present day scenes it just feels like a series of lectures. There is a dinner conversation in which the characters all debate the economy; another chapter dedicated to the failing health care system; another chapter dedicated to how hard it is to make a living in the gig economy; yes we get it! Everything is terrible! What feels frustrating about this is the sense that Ms. Kingsolver thinks she is teaching me something I didn’t know, like a parent hiding vegetables in the mac and cheese. I would probably be okay with that if it tasted good, but it is just so obvious, that maybe that is what bothers me. Does she think I won’t notice that I’ve been lectured to for an entire chapter? About something that I already know?

Anyway. I’m giving her four stars because….well, because I guess I found it less offensive than Lacuna, and also because, to be honest, my expectations for her have declined through the years. I liked the Thatcher chapters, and I skimmed the lectures, and I also recognize that at this point, she’s unlikely to change.

I used to love Barbara Kingsolver’s writing. The Poisonwood Bible, Bean Trees, and Animal Dreams are some of my favorite novels. But then she started getting very preachy, using her novels for what I interpret as authorial interjection. I feel lectured by her on a variety of subjects that must be close to her heart. In fact, many of her causes are close to my own heart. Despite this commonality of social consciousness and politics, that is not what I want to find in a novel. I want to be transported, have my mind filled with glorious images, feel like I’ve left the real world behind and I’m in the pages of magic, the throes of a book.

In ‘Unsheltered’, Ms. Kingsolver makes a case about the fragility of what we consider our most important and significant asset – our homes or feeling sheltered in a precarious world.. The novel takes place in two timelines. The first one is current. A family has moved back to their ancestral home in Vineland New Jersey and realize that it is falling apart.. The very first sentence of the book says it very well: “‘The simplest thing would be to tear it down’, the man said. ‘ The house is a shambles'”. The people who lived in the home during the 19th century dealt with the same issues. “If it were only the roof, we wouldn’t be in for so much trouble. But I’m afraid the whole house is at odds with itself.”

As the novel opens, in present time, Willa, the family matriarch, finds out that her son Zeke’s partner has taken her own life. Zeke is left with an infant to care for and, despite being the graduate of ivy league schools, has no job and is $100,000 dollars in debt from student loans. For some reason his parents claim they didn’t realize he was in such debt. Though Zeke and his partner Helene were not married, she was a lawyer and it seems that neither of them thought to prepare a will or get insurance. Zeke was completely dependent on Helene’s work for financial security. I understand postpartum depression very well, but the novel seems to want to blame the obstetrician for the suicide Willa says to Zeke, “Helene died of depression. A medical condition caused by pregnancy and an OB-GYN who cared more about the baby than the mother”. How does the reader know this is true? We don’t. We are expected to believe that Helene’s doctor is ignorant and as cold as an iceberg. Nothing is said about Helene reaching out for help or telling her doctor about her emotional state.

Then there is Nic, Willa’s cranky father-in-law, who lives with them. I was so annoyed at the Healthcare 101 lecture when Nic sought medical care that I could have thrown the book across the room. It felt like Ms. Kingsolver was going on ad infinitum about the horrible insurance companies, the medicare rules and regulations, the easy ways that clinics deny services, and all the loopholes that exist to prevent one from getting the medical care they need. It’s not that I don’t agree with her but none of this was fluid to the narrative. It was an appendage, an authorial assertion that did not feel organic or necessary.

Ms Kingsolver also takes on academia, student loan debt, the crumby job market, and how difficult it is to earn a living wage in this country. Yes, it does feel like the house is falling down around us. But does this a novel make? I say no. Zeke could have worked if he wanted to. He was highly educated but didn’t seem all that motivated. Ms. Kingsolver blames a job market that has the lowest unemployment rate in decades. Yes, student loans are untenable but again all of this was authorial intrusion and inorganic to the flow of the book.

I could outline the plot but basically the novel deals with two families, both living in the same house at different times . The family living in the house currently consists of Willa and her husband, their two grown children, Tig and Zeke, Zeke’s infant, and Willa’s ill and cantankerous father-in-law. Willa is a contract journalist, Zeke is out of work and has no clue about how to care for a baby. Willa’s husband was a tenured professor at a college that closed down and is now on a one year teaching assignment. Tig (short for Antigone) is a free spirited young woman trying to grab the world by its coat tails. The inhabitants of the house during the 19th century period are exceedingly boring. The only interesting character is Thatcher, a newly hired science teacher who believes in the theory of evolution. He befriends the woman next door who has a very scientific curiosity and a correspondence with Darwin.

I hate being lectured to in novels. I read non-fiction and, even then, a good writer will let the reader draw some conclusions of their own. I felt that Ms. Kingsolver was desperate to get her disparate opinions across and over-compensated so much that it left the novel floundering. I realize that she cares deeply for her causes and respect that. She founded the Bellwether award for novelists who write books about social consciousness. However, there is a time and place for lecturing. Ms. Kingsolver is not a debut author. She is a fine and accomplished writer. I wish this novel had reflected her talents.

This book was atrocious.
Its not a novel or a story – its just preaching about politics.
Conservatives are portrayed by Willas angry, scared and very rude father-in-law. Of course, he was the Evil right. This author needs to get over her own political beliefs and just write a novel without taking on the burden of enlightning all of us of our evil ways.
Yet, the main character, Willa, is portrayed as a wise, but beaten down liberal – but she was simply whiny. Shes in her 60s and has inherited a house, but all she can do is feel sorry for herself because she doesnt have the money to fix it up?!? How many of us are fortunate enough to even inherit a house in our lifetime? Geez.
Ive had it with this entitled adittude and I certainly dont want to be lectured to when Im trying to escape and read a novel.
Skip this book unless you want to read a poor, poor me monologue. I only finished it because its my book club book this month and I cant wait to hear everyone elses opinion! Forget the characters- there is no feeling of any depth to them.

I dont know how I read this. I actually skipped from 70% on my Kindle and read the last page. I didnt care about one character, I couldnt even tell what this book was about or why it was written. I have loved Kingsolver-Poisonwood Bible is one of my favorite books and several of her others are my top 20 books. But this book? I wish I could get my money back.

I really love this author and was delighted at the prospect of a new novel at last. However I have found it really disappointing – I haven’t quite finished it yet which says a lot; I’ve raced through the previous ones and re-read them with no less pleasure. This book does have several glimpses of the usual clever prose but, on the whole it is turgid, there isn’t a single character with any more depth than a postage stamp and the general effect is that of a very long and involved lecture. I actually regret buying it which is something I thought I would never say about this author.

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