The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 June 2021
by Barbara Kingsolver
The past several years have sharpened Americans' notions of their own security and insecurity. Aside from the conventional threats from without, our adversaries, terrorism and the like, there are domestic insecurities to a greater or lesser extent tied to scary global influences. In the face of an essentially disfunctional government, or actors within that government for whom acting by and for the community is tantamount to tyranny, Americans find themselves largely on their own against powerful forces of inequality. Government assistance is structured to keep you from accessing government assistance. Health care dominates our economy and is crippled by a baroque system of rules, regulations, financial incentives and impenetrable bureaucracy. The ACA has helped only a little. Our educational system is wildly politicized and higher education, once the realm of learning for learning sake, is denigrated as elitist and crippled by high costs. It's a popular trope, but it remains true: in a nation in which a single earner family could once afford to buy a house, that right has become the privilege of those with cash on hand. And, for the poor, practically a fantasy. How did we let ourselves come to this point? Do we really choose to live in an every-person-for-themselves society? Looking back far enough, before the days of the New Deal, that is our heritage. But in the 21st century, when climate change threatens us all, it is a bleak way to run a country.
Barbara Kingsolver, a brilliant writer who has long worn her politics on her sleeve, knows all of this and manages to encapsulate much of this fundamental anxiety into a gentle, accessible and quietly beautiful novel about change and acceptance in the face of such realities. But by that she does not intend for us to accept our miserably broken social network, but she turns to family, community and the need to try to see things as they are rather than the way we might have once wanted them to be.
Willa and Iago are an early-middle-aged couple newly moved to the New Jersey town of Vineland after Iago was denied tenure at the university where he taught. Now, he is starting again at another school. Willa's own writing career is on hold. Money is tight and Willa has just learned that the house is in a tear-down condition, far too expensive to make it worth repairing. They're on shaky ground. But Willa's daughter in law has also just committed suicide after giving birth and leaving her widower, Zeke also on unstable financial ground. Daughter Tig is also recently returned from an adventure in Cuba. Father-in-law Nick is ailing through his last months, and requires the kind of help the family takes on when they, too, can't afford any kind of professional in-home care. In other words, Willa's family is living within the cracks of what social care there is available here. They're largely on their own, and the ACA (Obamacare) is there to support Nick, while he crows right-wing rants fed by his consumption of the grievance media. It's a scary place to be. Willa desperately seeks some aid for saving her house as it progressively collapses around her. There's hope that there is some historic significance of one long ago resident. Or the one next door.
Which brings us to the 1870s and Thatcher Greenwood, a local school teacher trying to bring the brand new theories of evolution to a school based in a Utopian religious community. His next door neighbor, a real historical figure, is Mary Treat, a curious woman who carries on a correspondence with Charles Darwin. Thatcher isn't making much money, his house is in poor repair, his views are radical in his time, and he can't support his wife in the manner in which she desires.
These parallel stories have the house in common, a house in similar states of collapse more than a century apart. Thatcher is in a world changing because of Darwin's theories. How we saw ourselves in the universe was transformed by his insight, but there were powerful forces of tradition that fought back against this new truth. Willa is living within a structure in which the middle-class dream of home and possessions is changing in dramatic and powerful ways. She is forced to face the notion that fighting for stability in the home draws away her energy for living. Daughter, Tig, holds the moral center for this story. She lectures her mother on how her generation sees the world transforming around them. As Darwin transformed the 19th century, the facts of climate change and inequality transform the expectations of the newest generations. That big house in the suburbs has become an anachronism, but there are powerful forces of tradition that are now fighting back against the truths of how our planet is changing. Ultimately, for both these stories, Kingsolver's story is about acceptance of change, embracing life and passion, and moving on from outdated ways of living. While Tig is perhaps a little idealized, Kingsolver's work is beautifully realized, bringing home the immediate and personal urgency of facing the world as it is, seeking a path in life that is accepting as well as aspiring. Ultimately, the gift is in the letting go.
Also by Kingsolver: