I have read every novel by Barbara Kingsolver and I love them all, even the less favorably reviewed Animal Dreams and Prodigal Summer. Her writing is literary, lyrical and relevant - but that's not the reason for my deep affection. It's because she is a woman of heart and mind who is unafraid of using her mind to reveal her heart.

For almost 200 pages into The Lacuna, I was worried. Some critics have said that the book starts off slowly, but actually it's just hard to tell where the story is going, and I thought perhaps Kingsolver had lost her touch, as some writers do. Suddenly, within the next forty pages, I was hooked, convinced, and entirely seduced, and it only got better from there on.

While I had early doubts about the story, the voice had me from the start. I think voice is ...

Images:
Above Top: Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, by Frida Kahlo, 1937. (National Museum of Women in the Arts)
Right: Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and Andre Breton (1938)