David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "barbara-kingsolver"
Unsheltered
UNSHELTERED is set in two different centuries at the same address. The house had foundation problems in both centuries and was falling down.
In the 21st century around the time Trump was campaigning for present, Willa Knox had lost her job as a magazine writer and was freelancing. Her husband, Iano, has finally found tenure as a college professor, but the college is in danger of closing and wants to sign him on a yearly basis. It's up to Willa to sell an article for a decent price to fix the house. Her daughter Tig (Antigone), all four feet ten inches, eighty pounds of her is twenty-six and could care less about money; she works as short order cook with her boyfriend, Jorge. She had suddenly appeared after being missing for several years. She was in Cuba embroiled in a romance with a married man. We learn a lot of good things about Cuba that our propaganda stations don't tell us. Education is free right on through Phd, for instance. If you need a ride anyplace, you go up to this guy wearing a yellow coat, who will find somebody to take you, usually stopping a car that's not fully occupied and asking where they're going. Willa's other child, Zeke, is a financier, trying to set up a hedge fund, but he's down in the dumps, as the mother of his child, Dusty, has committed suicide; she just never wanted a baby. Both Willa and Tig want Dusty. Zeke has yet to bond with the kid.
In the 19th century, Thatcher Greenwood is in his first year as a science teacher, trying to make it relevant to kids who could care less. But his main problem is his principal who will interrupt his class at any time and go into a religious rant, attacking science, usually Charles Darwin's contention that we evolved from apes. His wife, Rose, is into horses and the rich Dunwiddle family who let her ride their horses. Her little sister, Polly, is smitten with Thatcher and thinks he should marry her. She's just a teenager, though. The villain of this part of the story, besides the principal, is the town dictator, Landis who will remind you a lot of Henry Ford and other model city tyrants like Pullman who created working class homes for their employees, charged them rent and set up a whole string of requirements and rules you had to conform to if you wanted to live there, including periodic inspections. Landis also owned a lecture hall; he would bring in speakers for the edification of the townspeople at fifteen cents a pop. That's how Thatcher and his principal got involved in a debate on Darwin's evolutionary theory, which sealed his fate as a teacher. Thatcher did have one ally, a Mr. Carruth, who ran a newspaper critical of Landis's heavy-handed ways and of his ailing wife. That's where the climax for that part of the story arrives. Landis runs his own newspaper, which is highly complimentary of Landis's doings. Landis hates Carruth. What will he do about the insult (satirical though it is) to his wife and will he get away with it? I think we can see why the book is entitled UNSHELTERED and not only because both houses are falling down.
In the 21st century around the time Trump was campaigning for present, Willa Knox had lost her job as a magazine writer and was freelancing. Her husband, Iano, has finally found tenure as a college professor, but the college is in danger of closing and wants to sign him on a yearly basis. It's up to Willa to sell an article for a decent price to fix the house. Her daughter Tig (Antigone), all four feet ten inches, eighty pounds of her is twenty-six and could care less about money; she works as short order cook with her boyfriend, Jorge. She had suddenly appeared after being missing for several years. She was in Cuba embroiled in a romance with a married man. We learn a lot of good things about Cuba that our propaganda stations don't tell us. Education is free right on through Phd, for instance. If you need a ride anyplace, you go up to this guy wearing a yellow coat, who will find somebody to take you, usually stopping a car that's not fully occupied and asking where they're going. Willa's other child, Zeke, is a financier, trying to set up a hedge fund, but he's down in the dumps, as the mother of his child, Dusty, has committed suicide; she just never wanted a baby. Both Willa and Tig want Dusty. Zeke has yet to bond with the kid.
In the 19th century, Thatcher Greenwood is in his first year as a science teacher, trying to make it relevant to kids who could care less. But his main problem is his principal who will interrupt his class at any time and go into a religious rant, attacking science, usually Charles Darwin's contention that we evolved from apes. His wife, Rose, is into horses and the rich Dunwiddle family who let her ride their horses. Her little sister, Polly, is smitten with Thatcher and thinks he should marry her. She's just a teenager, though. The villain of this part of the story, besides the principal, is the town dictator, Landis who will remind you a lot of Henry Ford and other model city tyrants like Pullman who created working class homes for their employees, charged them rent and set up a whole string of requirements and rules you had to conform to if you wanted to live there, including periodic inspections. Landis also owned a lecture hall; he would bring in speakers for the edification of the townspeople at fifteen cents a pop. That's how Thatcher and his principal got involved in a debate on Darwin's evolutionary theory, which sealed his fate as a teacher. Thatcher did have one ally, a Mr. Carruth, who ran a newspaper critical of Landis's heavy-handed ways and of his ailing wife. That's where the climax for that part of the story arrives. Landis runs his own newspaper, which is highly complimentary of Landis's doings. Landis hates Carruth. What will he do about the insult (satirical though it is) to his wife and will he get away with it? I think we can see why the book is entitled UNSHELTERED and not only because both houses are falling down.
