Even as I coordinated home health aid visits, physical therapists, nurses, and meals on wheels, we had long hours to talk. Memory is a slippery thing. Some are picture-perfect in their specificity, others are dubiously shadowy. And thus, I am reminded of literature at its best, where writers play with point of view, when a narrator's truth is questionable, where families interact under stressful circumstances and shine - or not. And that brings me to Barbara Kingsolver's "Unsheltered," a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed even as I harbored the nagging feeling that she was trying to throw everything but the kitchen sink into it.
Science vs. faith, the sandwich generation, the financial crisis and its aftermath, the lost dream of home ownership, racial prejudice, the demise of journalism, all find a place on Kingsolver's soapbox.
The setting is Vineland, New Jersey, and an historical old home that's barely standing. Two families, a century apart, struggle to find physical and emotional shelter in this house that's just too costly to tame. In the 1870's it's the local science teacher, Thatcher Greenwood, whose fascination for the exciting new teachings of a man called Darwin may cost him his job. Today, it's Willa and Iano. She is an unemployed journalist, he is a professor chasing a tenure-track job that no longer exists. They are caretaking his father, still paying off their kids' college loans, and suddenly they also have a motherless grandchild to raise. It's not the life they imagined for themselves!
Early on in the book, Willa despairingly asks herself, "How could two hardworking people do everything right in life and arrive in their fifties essentially destitute?"
That is the question that boggled my mind throughout. The plot feels like a setup to me, a plot that allows Kingsolver to rail against the injustices in the world - and don't get me wrong, I agree with her - but in a way that's just a bit too pat. After all, her husband does have a PhD in global politics, and her son, though he's an economist, has to come home to live. Really?
It's the story from the 1800's that captured my imagination. Kingsolver's research unearthed the existence of the real woman, Mary Treat, an amateur scientist who enjoyed a life-long correspondence with Charles Darwin. In Vineland she was considered a crank by most, with the exception of her next door neighbor, the fictional teacher, Mr. Greenwood. Their developing friendship, based on a shared love of the natural world and their political leanings, is a joy to read about.
What you have here is basically two novels told in alternating chapters. They could theoretically be read independent of each other. The question is whether or not the author has convincingly tied the two together. "Unsheltered" hits the shelves today. I'll be anxious to hear your opinions. My copy is going out to Pat Abosch in tomorrow's mail but I have several more give-a-ways to dispense of in the next couple of weeks.
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