The Lacuna: A Novel (P.S.)

 "Emotionally challenging..." 2010-07-15
By Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA)
In reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, I experienced a wide range of emotions. At times, I thought it was brilliant. Other times, it was tedious and boring. But throughout, it was beautifully written. The jury was out on this until the stunning ending, and it was then that I decided to rate this book 4 stars.

Harrison William Shepherd is 12 years old when his Mexican mother divorces his American father and they move to Mexico. Soleme' Shepherd is a kept woman and her son is forced to fend for himself. Shepherd is very smart, he loves to write and is a quick learner. When schooling fails, he finds work with the artists Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego. At first he cooks, but when Trotsky takes exile with the Mexican artists, he becomes Trotsky's secretary. After Trotsky's murder, Shepherd moves back to the United States and decides to become a writer. However, his time with Trotsky will come back to haunt him as the McCarthy-era comes into play.

The Lacuna is told in diary form, along with letters and articles from current events of the time. There are also notes from Shepherd's assistant, Violet Brown. I found this confusing at first. I enjoyed reading about Kahlo and Trotsky. But I do have a problem when fictional characters are inserted into a historic work. Kingsolver's writing is beautiful and she's an artist with words. Kahlo explains art to Shepherd "These kids who come to Diego wanting to learn, I'll tell you. They can paint a perfect tree, a perfect face, whatever you ask. But they don't know enough about life to fill a thimble. And that's what has to go in the painting. Otherwise, why look at it?" Yet, many of the journal entries were understated and hinting. It was easy to miss important facts because they were mentioned so casually.

The Lacuna is an ambitious novel and Kingsolver has garnered many rave reviews. But many reviewers have panned this book as well. I can see where both camps are coming from.

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Laguna Cove

 "Awful" 2007-05-10
By Katherine
I read this book a few months ago and let me tell you, it was so boring. The cover makes it look great but the plot was just so boring. I do not recommend it at all! =P

Laguna Beach - The Complete First Season

 "Who created Reality TV anyway?!" 2009-11-23
By Eric S. Kim (Southern California)
Laguna Beach is a beautiful resort in Southern California. It is known for its gorgeous beaches, interesting art festivals, and clean waters. I've visited it many times ever since I was a little kid, and I'm always struck at how beautiful everything is. Everything except . . . that godawful reality show! Honestly, this is one of the most horrible shows to ever hit the mainstream media. Why? Well, everything is so incredibly uninteresting. It's basically these young girls and boys talking and talking and talking and shopping and talking and talking and doing nothing and shopping and breaking up and making up and going to the beach and talking and . . . that's all they do. Come on! I'm pretty sure that not every teenager that lives in Laguna Beach is like that. They're smarter and more interesting than the ones that are on this show. And why would we be fascinated with Kristin, Jen, and everyone else? They are such a boring group of people! They do nothing productive with their own lives! Why are they doing nothing but lying around and enjoying the sunshine? Why don't we see them work? Don't they have jobs?! Good God, the creator of this show ought to be banned from television!

But I think the worst sin that this show commits is that it assumes that this is "The Real Orange County." Bull****! You actually think that this county is full of rich white people? That is false: that's only fifteen percent of the entire population. And believe me when I say that I live in Orange County (I've been living here for about fifteen years). If you go farther up north away from Laguna Beach, you can see that it's ETHNICALLY DIVERSE. Here we have Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, etc. And not only that, we have many different philosophies on life, not to mention our variable political and religious beliefs. Oh, and we work for a living. We don't always lie around the house all the time. Don't get me wrong. I still love the south side of Orange County. Huntington, Newport, and Laguna are fantastic beaches, and the suburbia in Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo are just beautiful. But why couldn't MTV focus on a city like Garden Grove or Buena Park or Santa Ana? THEY'RE the cities that showcase the Real Orange County. As a matter of fact, I would love to see a show on Fox or NBC that would show just that.

So there you have it. "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," in all its boring and inaccurate glory, sucks. It's definitely one of the worst shows of the new millennium. This is one reason why I don't watch Reality TV. God help us all.

Grade: F

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Laguna Heat

 "Parker's first" 2004-07-03
By S. Harris (Spotsylvania, VA)
T. Jefferson Parker is one of today's very best crime writers. Plotting, character, dialogue, all play out in a balanced and believable fashion in any given novel. "Blue Hour," "Silent Joe," take your pick. Parker is the kind of writer that makes other "name" writers jealous, simply because he's better. It's a shame his work has not found its way to the screen. But even fine writers have their beginnings, and for Parker "Laguna Heat," is his.

"Laguna Heat," is not a bad novel. In some ways it's a good one, but it is a first novel. Tom Shephard, the police detective hero of the novel is in an incomplete man. He has his demons - perhaps too many, since it seems like some sort of noir checklist. One demon in particular, his anguish over shooting a teenager, seems way overblown, given that same teenager had just opened up another cop with a knife. Then there's the divorce, the drinking, the dominating father, the missing mother, the murderer of the missing mother, and a whole can of Laguna worms, etc. Despite all of this, or because of all of them, Shephard's damaged state never really translates into a character one could care much about. In constast, look at "Joe," from "Silent Joe," another damaged figure of good, who is complex and cared for by the reader. More interesting are the various secondary characters, though even they have, by novel's end, a "stock" feel to them.

But "Laguna Heat" does have its moments. The best is perhaps Shepherd's night time swim in the ocean with his lover, Jane Algernon. This is a gorgeous passage, and alone make "Laguna Heat" worth a read. It also reveals perfectly the dark romanticism of noir:

"He kicked hard and pulled deeply to keep up with her, careful to leave a few meters between them.. Past the waves he felt the bottom falling away and knew that even a few yards from shore the ocean was much the same as it was many miles out: strong, unfathomable, unforgiving of all that is not part of it. And just as the first lappings of the waves had seemed to draw little parts of him away with them, he could now feel larger portions leaving too. He recalled that he had been married once but wasn't sure to whom. He believed that he rented an apartment somewhere in the town behind them but couldn't quote an address. He knew he was a cop on a murder case but couldn't remember the specifics. He wondered why he had ever quit surfing. But the regret soon vanished. He didn't know why and didn't want to know. Was it possible to continue this way to Hawaii, or perhaps to an uninhabited tropical island where he and Jane could live on fish and fruit, procreate, wildly, found a race? It seemed a possibility.

Then ahead of him, Jane Algernon's face collected in the darkness and it was smiling.

"Are you scared? The rocks are under us, not far," she said. Shephard could feel the churning of her legs as she kicked to stay afloat. Her hair was slicked back and the bones in her face caught the moonlight."

The above is just a portion from an extended passage. And it's such moments as these in "Laguna Heat," that signal, like lightning flashes, the writer Parker is to become.

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