Notes from the Shelf

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Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver is a 464-page historical/literary fiction novel. The story follows two different time periods of families who live in the same run-down house. Here is the book blurb:

Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development.

In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.

A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house is structurally unsound.

Brilliantly executed and compulsively readable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred—whether family or friends—and in the strength of the human spirit.

I very much enjoyed Unsheltered, and I liked the alternating time periods, although I would say I liked following the present time period (2016) more interesting. The one set in the 1860’s was a bit slow at times. I found it fascinating as Willa discovered more about her house, and I liked that it would go back to Thatcher who made some of those decisions that Willa is now dealing with, and why he chose to do what he did. I don’t often read literary fiction, but the story sucked me in, but I mostly wanted to know what would happen to the house. Also, Willa is dealing with a lot, which I did find to be realistic, although maybe at times it was too many problems at once. I really felt for Willa the most out of the characters and found her two adult children to be really annoying. I didn’t really like Thatcher from the 1860’s time period, but I enjoyed his interactions with Mary Treat as well as his sister-in-law Polly.

Overall, I give Unsheltered 4 stars.

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