Unsheltered: A Novel
The New York Times bestselling author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, and The Poisonwood Bible and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize—returns with a timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval. Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, 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.
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Community Reviews
I took a long time to get through this, and it ultimately took settling for skimming many passages. Usually, Kingsolver has a way of tugging at the emotional connections between her characters that resonates with me and makes me feel hopeful. This book was more of a tragedy, connections between most characters weak and brittle. A lot of what seemed important in this novel were dire messages about the state of politics and the environment, but I’m here for the characters, and so I am disappointed.
I LOVE the conversation Willa finally has with Tig about her time in Cuba - finally, a beautifully mended connection! - and I’m glad I read that part instead of giving up on the whole thing earlier on.
By the end, I thought I might have a better sense of the theme of shelter (or lack of) but this seemed more peripheral to the stretching, thinning, and breaking relationships between people. I get the idea of finding shelter in the people we love, and feeling unsheltered without them. But so many relationships in this story are just kind of in between - I guess a good comparison to the house that was falling apart almost from the beginning of its existence but somehow still standing for hundreds of years...and then is torn down on purpose. I guess the title “Badly Sheltered” didn’t sound as good.
I know I can count on Kingsolver to unearth truths about human nature, but this is the first novel I’ve read of hers where I couldn’t bring myself to care very much about most of what’s going on most of the time.
I LOVE the conversation Willa finally has with Tig about her time in Cuba - finally, a beautifully mended connection! - and I’m glad I read that part instead of giving up on the whole thing earlier on.
By the end, I thought I might have a better sense of the theme of shelter (or lack of) but this seemed more peripheral to the stretching, thinning, and breaking relationships between people. I get the idea of finding shelter in the people we love, and feeling unsheltered without them. But so many relationships in this story are just kind of in between - I guess a good comparison to the house that was falling apart almost from the beginning of its existence but somehow still standing for hundreds of years...and then is torn down on purpose. I guess the title “Badly Sheltered” didn’t sound as good.
I know I can count on Kingsolver to unearth truths about human nature, but this is the first novel I’ve read of hers where I couldn’t bring myself to care very much about most of what’s going on most of the time.
Kind of a bossy book but I can't blame her. America of today is shaped by its past. Interesting perspective on how we got to this age of Trump. I would have liked more on the characters rather than Kingsolver's interjections but well researched for sure.
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