Sunday, May 29, 2022

Book Review: Unsheltered (2019). Barbara Kingsolver.

Unsheltered is a beautifully woven tale of parallel lives in a small rust belt town, one thread in the late nineteenth century and the other in modern times. 

Certain themes tie the two stories together across time: the physical location and the two different slowly disintegrating houses that stand on it, the family lives and their struggles with financial survival despite educations, intelligence and good will, and the small-mindedness and irrationality of some of their neighbors in each time and place.

Kingsolver is wonderful at capturing the internal monologues and feelings of characters, and the ebbs and flows of events and emotions within individuals and communities.   I definitely will go explore some of her other novels.  Recommended.

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