Unsheltered
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.7
(278)
Barbara Kingsolver
New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek“Kingsolver brilliantly captures both the price of profound change and how it can pave the way not only for future generations, but also for a radiant, unexpected expansion of the heart.” — O: The Oprah MagazineThe acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters—returns with a story about two families, in two centuries, 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.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.A timely and "utterly captivating" novel (San Francisco Chronicle), Unsheltered interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.
Historical Fiction
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More Details:
Author
Barbara Kingsolver
Pages
480
Publisher
HarperCollins
Published Date
2018-10-16
ISBN
0062684744 9780062684745
Community ReviewsSee all
"DNF. I love Barbara Kingsolver and have ached over the sheer perfection in all her other novels. This one seemed well written, and I enjoyed the older narrative and storyline dating back to the 1800s, but I think the present day story hit a little too close to home emotionally and politically. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again in 10 years for nostalgia and a sense of completion, but for now it’s a traumatic look at contemporary politics that I worry about daily, with no real suggestion to solve it so far. I’m not in it for a warning or a woe is me, so I’ll go back and re-read her other novels.<br/><br/>Also. I appreciate her tone and writing style usually, so much so that when I saw she had something new, I ran home to start it, but this felt too “old” and out of touch for me."
"Rounded up from 4.5 stars. Originally I thought this was going to be a 3-4 star book because it didn’t grip me like Prodigal Summer did - the plot was wandering (especially in the present-day storyline) and the characters sort of unlikeable. But the final quarter or so of this book really redeemed it. I think I struggled because this is much more literary nonfiction than I’m used to reading, honestly. In the end this is worth five stars because of how it made me think and feel. Kingsolver tackles less sense of intimate place than in some of her other works, instead focusing on larger themes around shelter, hope, science, consumerism, leadership, marriage and parenthood, and petty despots. Somehow she’s drawn all these really profound threads of climate change and ambition and failures of democracy and the small-mindedness of the masses and the folks who feel left behind in a changing world - drawn it all together and presented a story that is mostly not preachy. I was left in the end feeling that small things matter more than I think and reminded that social networks (real life ones, not virtual!) are more profound than stuff."
T P
Teresa Prokopanko
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