'The Lacuna,' by Barbara Kingsolver
THE LACUNA, by Barbara Kingsolver. Harper, 507 pp., $26.99.
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Leon "Lev" Trotsky. The Mexican painter whose flamboyant art and mangled body still nourish a multimedia industry. The adored husband 21 years her elder, muralist and Mexican national hero. And the man on the lam whom this idealistic pair sheltered under their roof: a slight, bearded, twinkle-eyed Bolshevik. Hounded into exile by Stalin, he became an emblem of humane communism to leftists the world over. The Great Might-Have-Been.
Given the current vogue for books that drape fictional flesh over the factual remains of Famous People, a novel starring any one of these figures would promise a solid hit. Put all three at the center of a saga by Barbara Kingsolver, beloved author of "The Poisonwood Bible," and you can watch a high drive into the grandstand.
"The Lacuna" gets the inside scoop on the Fiery Threesome thanks to an entirely fictional hero whose diaries form the bulk of the novel. Harrison Shepherd is the offspring of an absent American father and a Mexican-born flapper on her way down the social scale. Emerging self-educated and perfectly bilingual from the Dickensian ordeal of his childhood, the lad lands a job in Rivera's bohemian household as pastry cook, typist, general confidant and taker of dictation.
Fiction based on the lives of the famous has a special kind of suspense: One recalls more or less what has to happen (a Stalinist agent will hack the revolutionary's skull with an ice ax) but not the exact timing, or the details, or the devastation of those touched by the murder. That is the novelist's job.
"Lev held his hands away from his face and stared at the blood. There was so much of it. His white cuffs were soaked like bandages. It dripped onto the papers, this morning's typed drafts." After the death of father-figure Trotsky, Shepherd flees to the States, fetching up in Asheville, N.C.
Absent his close contact to "real" action figures, the developments of Shepherd's miraculous rise as a bestselling author and his coping with his homosexuality are only intermittently engaging. But a rescuer has been waiting in the wings. Violet Brown, a spinster and a "force: small, unadorned, unapologetic," comes down from the mountains to become Shepherd's secretary, then housemate, defender against the overwhelming forces of the Red Scare and finally the compelling voice that finishes "The Lacuna."
And the title? Lacuna is Latin for a thing missing. Certainly there is no dearth of symbolic openings, holes and gaps - including a lost notebook and Shepherd's scarcely explored homosexuality - scattered throughout. But there is no enigma. The good guys wear white hats, the villains black. This book grabs at the heartstrings, and you would give it to a 13-year-old without hesitation . . . except for that nagging problem of historical truth. Even a card-carrying leftie (a literal term from the '40s) cannot swallow the airbrushed portrait of Trotsky - in reality a boundless egotist and architect of ruthless collectivization - as a social-democratic Santa Claus.
