Kingsolver
weaves two parallel stories separated by almost 150 years; in both plots,
people find themselves living in a collapsing house, with insufficient income, and in
a world where familiar beliefs are threatened.
In
Vineland, New Jersey, in 2016, Willa Knox lives with her multi-generational family
in a collapsing house. While her husband
works for less than his qualifications should earn, she cares for her infant
grandson and her infirm father-in-law. Their
adult daughter lives with them, while their son struggles with crushing student
debt. Willa asks, “How could two
hardworking people do everything right in life and arrive in their fifties
essentially destitute” (11)? Hoping to
access grant money to help restore their historic house, Willa starts
researching Mary Treat, a naturalist who may have lived in the home.
In the same
area, in the 1870s, Thatcher Greenwood, a new science teacher, also living in a
house in need of major rehabilitation, finds himself torn between providing
financial security for his wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law and staying
committed to his staunchly-held principles of scientific inquiry. He feels his students should learn about
evolution but if he teaches the theory, he will lose his job. He becomes friends with a like-minded neighbour,
Mary Treat.
The novel
combines fictional and historical figures.
Mary Treat was a real person, a self-taught naturalist who corresponded with
Charles Darwin, and Vineland as depicted in the novel was a real place founded
by Charles Landis who promised a Utopian existence to those who lived by his
rules. Landis, in 1875, was accused of
killing a man but pleaded innocence because of temporary insanity, the first
time in American judicial history where a person claimed insanity as a reason
for being not guilty.
The two
stories are intricately woven together.
The last phrase of one chapter dealing with one plot serves as the title
of the following chapter about the other plot.
Besides the multigenerational families living in precarious financial circumstances
in a house that should be torn down, there are other parallels. People find themselves unsheltered in that
the old beliefs about how the world works are being challenged. In 1870, Americans recovering from the civil
war, find their beliefs threatened by new scientific knowledge. In 2016, Americans find the American dream
being upended: hard work is not guaranteeing success and prosperity.
Donald
Trump appears as an unnamed character in the novel. Willa speaks of The Bullhorn, “a crazy
presidential candidate” (100) who said “he could stand in the middle of Fifth
Avenue and shoot somebody, and people would still vote for him” (345). His parallel in 1870 is Charles Landis who
promises a utopia he does not deliver, though he becomes apoplectic when challenged
by anyone. Hillary Clinton is even
evoked. Thatcher says, “’I wonder what
service is possible, Mary. When half the
world, with no understanding of Darwin at all, will rally around whoever calls
him a criminal and wants him hanged.’”
He mentions seeing a “murderous crowd chanting Lock him up!” around an effigy of Darwin (205).
Mary Treat
offers an explanation for those who follow Landis: “’When men fear the loss of what they know, they
will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order’” (206). Tig, Willa’s daughter explains Trump’s
appeal: people think “’this dude must
have put in the time and gamed the system to get his billions, because that’s
how it works in America. . . . There’s a lot of white folks out there hanging
on to their God-given right to look down on some other class of people. They feel it slipping away and they’re
scared. This guy says he’s bringing back
yesterday, even if he has to use brass knuckles to do it, and drag women back
to the cave by their hair. He’s a bully
everybody knows that. But he’s their bully’” (248-249).
The book is
very much a social commentary. A number
of subjects are discussed by Willa and her family: climate change, the American health care
system, education, and consumerism. The problem
is that Kingsolver’s opinions are often delivered in a heavy-handed
manner. In a chapter that references
both the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the spread of the Zika virus
northward, the reader is told, “The Supreme Court had put the EPA’s carbon rule
on hold, siding with industry groups that wanted to do as they pleased while
fighting a legal battle against regulation.
Shares had dropped in several solar power companies as they fell short
of their installation goals” (349).
Members of
Willa’s family are intended to represent different political ideologies. Nick, Willa’s father-in-law, was a blue-collar
worker who was forced to take early retirement because “’The laws changed so
plant owners could break strikes and bust up the unions . . . [so] the pay
scale collapsed’” (102) but he blames immigrant workers for his lack of job
security and has become a supporter of The Bullhorn. Zeke, Willa’s son, is the capitalist willing
to abandon his family to chase the almighty dollar. Tig is an adherent of left-wing politics who
bemoans “the global contempt for temperance and nurture, the fierce entitlement
to every kind of consumption” (370). Tig
is very much Kingsolver’s mouthpiece; she is the one to explain things to her
confused mother who feel anxious and overwhelmed by the collapse of social
order she sees around her.
Unfortunately, Tig comes across as the lecturer.
Despite its
occasional didactic tone, I enjoyed this book.
There is rich storytelling behind the commentary, a commentary that is
certainly relevant, though a reader’s enjoyment of the book will definitely be
determined by his/her political leanings.
The novel certainly offers food for thought: how should we react when our assumptions
about the world are challenged? And
though its subject matter is serious, the book offers hope: humans have survived upheavals in the past
and have adapted and survived. First we
must face the truth, “stand in the clear light of day . . . unsheltered” (205).
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