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What book did you just start?
By Stephanie · 3501 posts · 467 views
By Stephanie · 3501 posts · 467 views
last updated Feb 27, 2024 08:11PM
What Members Thought
I really liked the first part (roughly half) of this book about a boy (Harrison)who is being raised by a mother who eeks out an existence by sponging off the men she manages to ensnare. The setting is 1930's Mexico. Mexican artists Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo are an integral part of the story, as is Lev Trotsky (leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and Rivera's friend and houseguest).
The second half of the book completely switches gears. The setting is Asheville NC where Harrison is liv ...more
The second half of the book completely switches gears. The setting is Asheville NC where Harrison is liv ...more
Kingsolver painted a colorful landscape of Mexico and the United States, which depicted the cultural and political climate of the years leading up to and following WWII. Kingsolver laid the foundation of her story by using actual news clippings to establish "facts" about the political times. She then artfully created the fictional character of Harrison Shepard, a poor young man of mixed Mexican/American descent, who dreamed of writing epic historicals; and placed him in the household of artists,
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I really enjoyed the story - we have Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Lev Trotsky, glimpses of Mexican and American history in the 1920's thru the early 1950's. I also loved the writing - and the insights into freedom of the press, the politicaql relationships between communism and not communism in those eras, even into variations of communism in the early days. I think the book allows great insight into current politics - not that they are at all the same, but the ideas of freedom of the press and pa
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enjoyed other kingsolver books much more, sadly this one didn't really do it for me :(
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Dec 17, 2009
Wallace
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