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How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family's one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town's powerful men. 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.--… (more)
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Kingsolver compares the fears and insecurity experienced in the late 1800's,
There is a lot to think about, also, on how we raise our children, and how siblings can turn out so different from what their parents expected. I am so proud of Tig who looks clear-eyed at the future and works to bring the change, just as I am proud of the Water Warriors in this world.
I enjoyed how the closing words to a chapter in one century is reflected in the succeeding chapter in the other century. However, Nick, the Greek father-in-law, was a bit over the top for me. As far as I'm concerned, his only real role was to enable Kingsolver to refer to a recent president without naming him (other than Bullhorn).
In Kingsolver's latest novel she explores the topics of middle class poverty and the destruction of the earth by using two different time periods. The modern day story is of Willa Knox and her family. Willa is an out-of-work writer and her husband, Iano, has
I usually enjoy Kingsolver's work and there is certainly something in this book to appreciate, but I found the message very heavy-handed and a bit over-dramatic. I'm also not quite sure that the two timelines worked so well together. The whole thing felt a bit unfocused or forced.
I'd like to hear if others have the same opinion, but at the same time I can't recommend this as a book to run out and read immediately.
Willa Knox is caught in an inherited money-pit of a house and sandwiched between the
Thatcher Greenwood, likewise, is saddled by a disintegrating home and a disintegrating personal life. His livelihood is challenged by his insistence on teaching scientific method (including Darwin’s theories) at a school controlled by fundamentalist biblical literalists. His beautiful young wife is slowly drawing away from him, and his deepening friendship with the prominent woman biologist who lives next door, isn’t helping things any.
So far, this sounds like the set-up for any number of domestic dramas. But Kingsolver, as always, wants to dig deeper. As Willa finds herself trying to comprehend the astonishingly successful presidential campaign of a bigoted, bombastic, bully (who is unnamed but instantly identifiable), defended and championed at top volume by her father-in-law, Thatcher tries to shine the light of scientific research into cupboards locked tight in the belly of Noah’s Ark. Eventually, we realize that both are dealing with groups of people whose worlds are being threatened. They were “[b]orn under the moon of paradigm shift, [and] got to be present to a world turning over on itself.”
Both the blue-collar worker of the early 21st century and the power brokers of the mid-19th century are fighting for their existence. The contemporary working man sees the American Dream moving farther and farther out of his grasp, and looks for salvation from pie-in-the-sky promises that no one is going to cut in line in front of them. The worldview of the mid-19th century social arbiters is being overturned and their God-given supremacy challenged. And bystanders Willa and Thatcher are in danger of being “unsheltered” as the truths in which they have always believed begin to crumble under the paroxysms of that world shift.
Kingsolver manages to bring things to a hopeful ending, if not a particularly happy one, and her characters emerge from their challenges changed but not defeated.
Treat serves as a role model for her neighbor, Thatcher, who teaches science in the local school. Thatcher is frustrated by an administration that micromanages his curriculum away from science and toward religion and a family that is primarily interested in social status. Thatcher sees Treat as a person who has come to terms with a limited existence by ignoring convention and focusing on what truly excites her—studying the flora and fauna in her immediate environment.
Kingsolver asks important questions about the values that provide happiness versus those that seem to be thrust upon us by society. The novel has an interesting structure—casts of characters a century apart seeking answers to similar questions. However the parallels between the 19th and 21st Century characters and plots lack subtlety. The plot moves very slowly and tends to diverge too readily into philosophizing. With the exception of Willa and Thatcher, the characters are not particularly nuanced. The ending also seems rushed and contrived to be optimistic.
A metaphor of their personal collapse, the home is literally falling down; they are so financially strapped they have no means to repair it. Willa thinks she can possibly get grant money if the house can be determined to be historically significant. While researching she finds references to Mary Treat, a naturalist from the 19th century who may have lived in the home. Treat (an actual person) studied the flora and fauna of the region and was in communication with Charles Darwin and other notable scientists of the era.
The time period shifts to 1875 when Thatcher Greenwood, his new bride, her sister and his mother-in-law move into the home. They have moved from Boston following the death of his father-in-law. Here also, the home is falling down and Thatcher has no hope of repairing it since he has only a poorly compensated teaching job at a local academy. Thatcher becomes an admirerer and friend of Treat with whom he shares an interest in modern science, particularly Darwin's recently published theory of descent through natural selection. He is awed that she is a correspondant of Darwin and other scientists. Thatcher wants to share Darwin's work with his students, but is harshly suppressed by the school's principal, a fervant believer in the literalism of the biblical version of creation.
The chapters alternate between the present and past, each depicting the conflict brought about by powerful interests that persevere in preserving the status quo of outmoded structures and quash the emerging imperative realities of changing circumstances and factors impacting on society and the world. Willa's daughter, Tig, is of the cadre of millenials who recognize that unrestrained capitalism and the materialistic compulsions of society to consume more and more will result in the desolation of the planet. Willa senses this, but cannot abandon the hope that somehow everything will right itself, that their bad fortune will reverse. Willa understands Tig's viewpoint but cannot shed the cultural rules and norms that have governed their lives. Thatcher's struggles with his principal grow, culminating in a public debate in which his logic and knowledge of modern science humiliate the principal's inane biblical explanations of creation. Nonetheless, Thatcher loses his job and then his marriage, as his wife has become frustrated by their failure to move up in the town's society.
As Kingsolver does so well, the novel blends a fascinating story with a cautionary message about the perils to humankind and the planet brought about by our blith ignorance of the impact our materialistic behavior 0n the environment. (See also "Flight Behavior" for similar sense of her message.) Written in 2016, the book gives slightly veiled references to the distasteful"bullhorn" political candidate whose views will take us further down the wrong road.
Perhaps this work's themes are a bit too obvious and didactic, but it is nonetheless an important one. I'm surprised that "Unsheltered", while well-reviewed, did not make any of the lists of outstanding novels of 2018.
An interesting non-fiction companion book to "Unsheltered", though a few years old now, is "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America" by George Packer.
In the alternating chapters we come to know Thatcher Greenwood who has recently been hired as the new science teacher to one of the first high schools in the country. His paradox is to be a scientist while not being able to mention the name or teachings of the dreaded Charles Darwin. He seeks consolation from a neighbor next door who is his intellectual soulmate and is in fact the scientist Mary Treat. Kingsolver does a nice job intertwining the historical with the plausible to make for an educational and enjoyable read. Highly recommend.
NYT
Kingsolver’s dual narrative works beautifully here. By giving us a family and a world teetering on the brink in 2016, and conveying a different but connected type of 19th-century teetering, Kingsolver eventually creates a sense not so much that history repeats itself, but that as humans we’re inevitably connected through the possibility of collapse, whether it’s the collapse of our houses, our bodies, logic, the social order or earth itself.
Kingsolver's latest novel, is told in dueling narratives. The first focuses on Willa Knox, in modern day New Jersey, living precariously in a ramshackle old house, she inherited. She is struggling to keep her life and
It is a well-written, deeply researched book. It is a bit rambling at times, and I would have liked it a bit tighter but it is still a solid read and takes a couple of shots at the current administration, which of course I admire.
In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.
A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house is structurally unsound.
Willa Knox and her husband are relocating again. And as has happened to the couple several times before, they are moving so that Iano, Willa's husband, can chase tenure at a different college. The couple have two adult children who flew the nest a few years earlier, but the near poverty-stricken couple this time around is inheriting Iano's crotchety father. Adding to their financial problems, is the fact that Willa finds herself working as a freelance writer for the first time in years because the magazine for which she has most recently worked has folded. All that would be enough to floor many couples, but that's just the beginning of the couple's troubles in Vineland because one night the phone rings, and what their son tells them dwarfs every problem they have ever had or feared.
Kingsolver alternates chapters from the 19th and 21st centuries, contrasting and comparing life in Vineland then and now, and finding life in the two periods surprisingly similar. The 19th century chapters focus on a handful of historical figures, scientist Mary Treat; school teacher and Darwin defender, Thatcher Greenwood; Charles Landis, founder of the Vineland utopia; and the man murdered by Landis, one Uri Carruth.
My only quibble with the novel, and it is admittedly a minor one, is the often heavy-handed Trump criticism that is sprinkled throughout the book (Trump is not named, but it is very obvious that the author has him in mind). In addition, global warming is used to ridicule those who still refuse to accept that as a given, and one character gleefully explains that she can hardly wait for all the "old men" to finally die off so that her generation can take over the government. That all grew a bit tedious, and even as good a writer as Kingsolver, cannot quite pull it off. (And, yes, I realize that this was part of the author's character development, but it was unnecessary to go on and on and on about this side of those characters.)