Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver: A review

Is it my flawed memory or have there been an unusual number of new books out this year that have featured a house as a central character? It seems to me that many of the books that I've read recently have had a house as an important element in the plot. And now here comes Barbara Kingsolver's contribution to the genre.

Perhaps the emphasis on houses - shelters - is a reflection of the unsettled times in which we live when it seems only natural to long for sanctuary and asylum from the daily onslaught of ineptitude, belligerence, and outright brainlessness that seem to rule our national life. There is the understandable fear that the shelter which has always protected us is being ripped apart piece by piece. We are literally becoming unsheltered.

Then again perhaps I am projecting my own opinions onto the author.

Nevertheless, the characters in Kingsolver's book are in danger of becoming unsheltered as the house in which they live is unstable with the roof caving in and walls collapsing. It is true of two distinct sets of characters, with whom she presents us, from two different centuries.

First we meet Willa Knox and her family. It is 2016 and Willa and her husband have just lost their jobs in Virginia - Willa as a magazine editor and her husband as a professor - when both of the entities they worked for closed. The family has moved to a house that Willa inherited in the community of Vineland outside of Philadelphia where her husband has obtained a new job. The house, like their lives, is falling apart.

Our first view of Willa is at her meeting with a contractor who tells her, "The simplest thing would be to tear it down." To do the necessary renovation and repairs would be prohibitively expensive.

The more than century-old house is a shambles but it will shelter Willa, her husband Iano, Iano's Greek immigrant father Nick, Willa's and Iano's daughter Tig (Antigone), and soon their son Zeke's newborn son for whom he, as a single and destitute father after the suicide death of the boy's mother, is unable to care. Oh, yes, and their ancient dog named Dixie. The shambles of a house is matched by the shambles of their lives.

Nearly 150 years earlier, in the 1870s, another family lived on the same acreage. Schoolteacher Thatcher Greenwood and his new wife Rose, her mother Aurelia and her sister Polly along with two large hounds named Scylla and Charybdis live in a decaying house and they, too, do not have the money to do repairs and so must endure the privations.

Thatcher and Rose are poorly matched; he is a man of science and she is only interested in society and appearances. Theirs seems a doomed alliance from the start.

In time, Thatcher meets their next door neighbor, Mary Treat, a real-life naturalist who carried on extensive correspondences with Charles Darwin as well as many other scientists of the day. They are kindred spirits and she becomes a major influence on his life and work.

Willa Knox hopes to prove that their house has historical significance because of the Treat/Greenwood connection and thus to get a grant to restore and preserve it. It's the only hope she has for saving it.

The tracks of the lives of these two families run parallel in many ways. Not only do they occupy crumbling houses but they each live in a time of economic uncertainty when the truth of scientific inquiry is denied and all of its evidence dismissed because it doesn't agree with the "gut feeling" of its "very intelligent" opponents. In the case of the Greenwood family the scientific inquiry is Darwin's and in the Knox family's lives it is the conclusions regarding global climate change.

These two parallel narratives reflect each other occasionally in surprising ways, but, taken together, they present a thoroughly absorbing story of human adaptability and survival instinct. They also provide us with a cautionary tale of where fear and denialism can take us:

“I suppose it is in our nature,” she said finally. “When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.”

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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