Unsheltered
Ratings26
Average rating3.9
The acclaimedauthor of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize—returns with a story about two families, in two centuries, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.
How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family's one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.
In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town's powerful men.
A timely and "utterly captivating" novel (San Francisco Chronicle), Unsheltered interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.
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Every time I start reading a book I love I find myself slowing down, setting the book down in the middle of a chapter, rereading a page or two, going back and reading an earlier chapter again—-doing anything, in short, in order to prolong the experience, to avoid the inevitable last page.
That's how I felt about Unsheltered.
There is so much to admire about this book. The structure of the novel is brilliantly constructed. Kingsolver tells two stories, one in present day, and one just after the Civil War, both set in the same location. In both stories, the people living in the house find that at the same time their lives are collapsing around them, their house is also collapsing. Both sets of characters live in times in which rational thought, scientific thought, faces off against thought weakly supported yet widely believed, and both sets of characters struggle to stand on scientific high ground. The characters are deeply human, with both great strengths and great flaws. The dialogue between characters is snappy and clever, full of thoughtfulness. But the book is even more than just brilliant structure, fascinating characters, and snappy dialogue; it's a book that leaves its readers thinking about the big ideas in life, thinking about relationships where two people are unevenly yoked, thinking about how a ne'er-do-well child can sometimes show strength of character greater than the shining star child, thinking about the importance of struggle in life, thinking about so many things....A fabulous book that everyone who feels the deep dismay about the world so common today among thoughtful people needs to read.
This is one of those novels that I wanted to read again as soon as I finished. It takes a back-and-forth approach in plot from the late 1800's to modern day, both families on the same plot of land. The characters in the past plot are based on real individuals. One of the subplots from the 1800's section is about the first trial in which the insanity defense was used. I heard about the case on the podcast “The Thread” that dedicates an entire season tracing the insanity defense in our history. So fascinating and so fun to realize the connection! Oh, and some cool references to Greek mythology in the “present” plot. I LOVED this book.
