In the beginning were the howlers.” So begins Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, The Lacuna. Initially it's hard to see the point of paraphrasing the opening words of the Gospel of John. The “howlers,” after all, are just a bunch of monkeys who make a whole lot of fuss about nothing. They are easily riled and can turn a dim rumour into a deafening roar.
In the late 1920s, the monkeys live on an isolated island off the coast of Mexico, as do young Harrison Shepherd and his husband-hunting mother, who continually warns him that the howlers are out for blood. Harrison is a timid boy. He is either burying his head in books or he is hanging out in the kitchen with chef Leandro, his only friend in the mansion of his mother's rich oilman lover. The chef gives him a notebook, which he fills with his new recipes and old fears.
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, HarperCollins, 507 pages, $34.99
One day, encouraged by Leandro, he steels his courage and strikes out beyond the forest of howlers. He dives into the ocean and discovers a lacuna, an underwater cave, which leads to the other side of the island. But before he can explore the lacuna further, his mother pulls him away to Mexico City, in pursuit of another man.
One afternoon, as his mother is dressing for a date, she describes the new prospective husband as “richer than God.” Harrison teases back with: “Then he must have sunrise in his pockets and mercy in his shoes.” She stops in her tracks and looks at him, and gasps, “You made that up, it's a poem.” Then hastens to add: “You'd better write this in your scrapbook, the story of what happened to us in Mexico.” And she gives him his first line, “In the beginning were the howlers.” And this time, he heeds her, because she has seen him for what he is, a lover of words, a poet.
Harrison's scribblings become observations of the world around him where “everything changes, while you stand shivering in the corridor waiting to slip through one world into the next.” One moment he is living on his island, the next he is dragged to Mexico City, the next he is sent home to his father in Washington, D.C. The only constant for him are his notebooks, where he can fill in the lacunae, the gaps, with his own versions of history, where he “can live by imagination alone.”
You don't have to be larger than life to effect change; actual size will do
As it would turn out, Harrison's cooking lessons included the perfect recipe for empanadas, which also happens to be the perfect dry-to-wet ratio for mixing plaster, which, in turn, he happens to put to use when, crossing a square in Mexico City 10 years after his first cooking lesson, he comes upon the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera hollering for more plaster.
Harrison drifts from plastering for Rivera to cooking for his painter-wife, Frida Kahlo. Eventually, Kahlo discovers Harrison has been recording his experiences in his notebook, and it is decided that Harrison will become secretary to their famous house guest, Leon Trotsky.
Dwelling in the imposing shadows of his famous friends forces Harrison to realize that his mother's fear of the howlers went beyond distaste for pesky monkeys. “The howlers” is a metaphor for liars, gossips, nosey neighbours and, above all, “the yellow press ... who lie every day without hesitation.” Like the monkeys, “one starts, soon the whole forest is bellowing, loud as thunder.” The struggle for privacy hits home when, after admiring Trotsky's collection of fancy pyjamas, Harrison is told: “Most people don't have to think of dying in their pyjamas. And being photographed by the papers.”
