Unsheltered: A Novel

I am a big fan of Barbara Kingsolver, and this book does not disappoint. Great storytelling as only she can do.

Genre: Family Sagas/Historical FictionPublisher: HarperCollinsPub. Date: October 16, 2018Barbara Kingsolver is a powerhouse of a writer and one of my preferred authors. “Poisonwood Bible” remains a favorite book of mine. In her latest novel, she sticks with her familiar themes—environment, religion, and social issues. The setting goes back and forth between America’s current troubles to America’s troubled past. In the present, we meet a fictional college-educated, middle-class family who live in the real-life city of Vineland, NJ. To their shock, a few career setbacks and an ailing parent's medical bills have caused a downgrade in their economic status. Kingsolver is at her best when asking “how could this have happened to us?…we did everything right.” She makes it easy to realize that your life too could turn on a dime. To add to the family’s woes, their centuries-old house is literally crumbling around them. Willa, the family matriarch, has learned that their house may have once been the home to real-life Mary Treat. Treat was a self-taught naturalist and correspondent with Charles Darwin. Willa begins to write a historical preservation grant in hopes that the grant will pay for the house renovations.In the past, Kingsolver takes us back to when Mary Treat was a working naturalist, which was immediately post civil war. Her reasons for this time period are clear and very clever. The troubles for the family in current times begin when Trump announced he was running for president. Donald Trump’s name never appears in the novel but it is clear that he is “the Bullhorn…who promises to restore the old order…the billionaire running for president who’s never lifted a finger in work…the candidate who brags that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and people would still vote for him.” The past is my favorite part of the book since it is such a classroom experience without the homework assignments. I was fascinated to learn that back then, Vineland was created to be a utopian community. It was founded by nonfictional Charles Landis. He was a Trumpian-like real estate developer who really did shoot someone in the middle of the street and get away with it. Landis had a strong dislike for Darwin since the opinion of the times was that Darwin was threatening religious beliefs. He did not want Darwin’s theories, or any already proven scientific facts to be taught in Vineland’s schools. Sounds familiar right? Trump’s (so-called) Christian anti-science moves are spelled out loud and clear. In an interview with Kirkus Reviews, Kingsolver states, “I chose the 1870s as my alternate world because I knew it was a really difficult, polarized moment in our history…..Racial divisions, urban/rural divisions, North/South divisions—those rifts were ripped open by the Civil War.”I left out reviewing a few very good subplots for they would be spoilers. Between the alternating timelines, I preferred the story in the past. The present-day timeline borders on preachy. How we long for careers that ultimately fail to bring happiness or sometimes not even financial stability. How spoiled we can be. How we want and waste. All true, but no one likes a lecture in the middle of a story no matter how much you may like the plot and the characters. Oddly, the past felt fresh. I enjoyed reading about young America’s growing pains. How hard the scientific minds had to fight to be heard. I do have a rather petty criticism on the writing. The words “sheltered” and “unsheltered” come up repeatedly. It felt as if Kingsolver didn’t think her audience capable of making the connections. I don’t believe that in her book ‘Poisonwood Bible,’ (which is about a missionary family in the Belgian Congo) the title words pop up at all. She trusted that her readers would make the connection that, like a poisonwood tree, religion too can become dangerous when mishandled. This does not mean that I didn’t enjoy “Unsheltered,” for I very much did. And, will not think twice about recommending the book. As usual, Kingsolver gives her readers plenty to wonder about. In this novel, she does an amazing job of penning an engaging story about human existence combined with a well-researched tale on past and present American politics.

The American novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, writes stories that encourage readers to think while they’re being entertained. Her novels are concerned with the great social issues of our time, such as global climate change and political turmoil.Publishers have a variety of names for this genre, as though the lit biz can’t quite get a grip on it—social novel, social justice novel, social protest novel, political novel, the literature of social engagement. Whatever these kind of novels are called, they’re generally viewed with suspicion by critics and editors, who see little or no place for social commentary in “literature” or in sales. Happily, that attitude hasn’t stopped Kingsolver’s books from becoming best sellers, and being shortlisted for such prestigious honors as the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.Kingsolver’s eighth novel, Unsheltered, was published in October. It’s more overtly political than her previous novels, as well is should be in this Time of Trump. It’s also one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking novels I’ve read in quite some time.The plot revolves around an educated middle-class couple, a de-tenured academic and a freelance writer, as they attempt to fend off poverty and find satisfaction and fulfillment in their lives, even though they’re trapped in the gig economy and the sandwich generation. (Think boomerang children and aging parents, not mayonnaise.) What could be depressing in other hands is both humorous and enlightening. Gritty truths about how we live in Trump’s America are not Photoshopped away, but nonetheless, the characters and readers are left with a renewed sense of optimism, realistic but real.So why was Unsheltered savaged by critics in two publications that I read faithfully and respect greatly, the New York Times and the Atlantic? Dwight Garner in the Times wrote that the novel was “dead on arrival,” and that “every other conversation threatens to become an op-ed piece of a humanistic monologue out of lesser John Steinbeck or Arthur Miller.” And those are not the worst things he has to say. Merve Emre’s review in the Atlantic is headlined “Liberal Pabulum,” and goes on to say “Tackling the Trump era, she brings us the American family-novel as Sunday talk show—all sound bite, no depth.”Trying to get beneath the invective, Garner either has a personal axe to grind or he is simply defending the typical lit biz trope that “a novel isn’t an essay.” I think he’s also guilty of a bubble mentality, the bubble in question being the glamorous and wealthy Big Apple. He singles out for criticism one of the most truthful pieces of dialogue in the book, truthful except for economic outliers like Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and parts of Brooklyn and the New York suburbs: “It just seems like…I don’t know. There’s less money in the world than there used to be. I don’t know how else to put it. Like something’s broken.”Emre, who may be an American but who teaches at Oxford, picks on the same line of dialogue, but apparently for a totally different reason. She seems to think that Kingsolver has only a superficial understanding of the horror show that is America, writing that Unsheltered “fails so dramatically to capture the corrosive realities of liberal capitalism.” (Perhaps she would have been more satisfied if Kingsolver had written, “there’s no money in the world” rather than “less,” a sad truth for about fifty percent of our citizens.)Moreover, Emre takes conventional lit biz wisdom a step further, or perhaps she’s trying to explain it, by dismissing novels like Unsheltered, as a “middlebrow fantasy that stories can help us get through these dark times.” In other words, novelists, don’t bother to try.As a novelist, I despair how the lit biz seems determined to rope fence socially-conscious fiction, pooh-poohing any attempt to deal with the major issues that affect our daily lives, and that will affect the daily lives of our children and grandchildren and their children, assuming the planet is still livable. So its heartening to note that Unsheltered is an Amazon Best Book and a New York Times’ bestseller, reaching as high as #2 on the hardcover fiction list.It would be a shame if influential reviews like Garner’s and Emre’s start to take their toll in sales. My advice is don’t take their advice. Unsheltered is a really good, meaty read that will not disappoint. Buy it!

A book about families (and generations) living through societal change. Very interesting. It gives me lots to think about. A must read.

et son livre m’a enchanté ‼️

I pay attention to reviews, I really do, and early reviews of this novel suggested that Kingsolver had not exactly hit this one out of the park, so I was apprehensive when I finally picked it up. I am happy to say I loved it.There are two narratives in this novel: two families face their own disintegration in a crumbling New Jersey house more than 150 years apart. The ever-present danger of collapsing roof and walls gives the book its theme as well as its title - the lady scientist in the 1870’s narrative says to her teacher friend: “Teach them to see evidence and not to fear it, to stand in the clear light of day...Unsheltered.The 1870’s narrative is Kingsolver’s reminder to us that, however chaotic and violent our world is today, social and political upheaval is nothing new: the collision of Darwin’s theory of evolution and Bible-based creationism was equally catastrophic in the late 19th century.The social issue for the modern-day family is the danger of failing to use the earth’s resources responsibly, given the stark evidence of climate change - not the first time Kingsolver delivers that message.Two elements in particular secured my fondness for this book. First, as always with Kingsolver, there is the piercing truth and humour of the language, always a thrill to read. And second is the beautifully developed mother-daughter portrait of Willa and Tig. Raised by close and attentive parents, Tig goes her own inexplicable way but the anchoring love between her and her baffled mother remains intact.As I neared the end of the book, I really regretted having to say goodbye to these characters and this fine, perceptive writing. So please let me never again think that Kingsolver hasn’t hit one out of the park.

Dos libros por el precio de uno, ya que se trata de dos hostorias igualmente fascinantes. Soy una gran fan de B Kingsolver y no me ha defraudado

My wife and I both read this book and feel the same way -- Barbara Kingsolver never disappoints us! I believe we have every single book she has written and love them all. We love the way she researches her material to combine history with a story that has a meaning for the present. Thank you Ms. Kingsolver!!