Werther's Original

Old man on the Tube
Originally uploaded by christinaa

I was sitting in the Tube, on my way to work after a morning workout, when I noticed an old man enter the carriage. He had a cane so I made eye contact and stood up while gesturing for him to take my seat. He rushed down the aisle and grabbed my hand as I was moving away. "Just a minute, just a minute," he said sitting down, one hand in his brown winter coat's pocket. He fished out three wrapped candies.

"Oh no," I said but he insisted. So I smiled, feeling myself going red (how quickly a scene like that turns into a spectacle for the other commuters), and thanked him. I zipped the candy in my jacket's pocket and went back to my book.

Of course, I thought about the LJ post I'd write about this encounter. Something which would end with the sentence: "Mama always said not to accept sweets from strangers."

A few stops later he stood up and whispered in a slightly bad smelling brogue that I now had candy for my good deed. I wished him a good day and he replied "every day is a good day at my age" before leaving the train.

Lacking Nothing

Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna, 2010
Remember the last time you read a novel that gripped you in a way you didn't want it to finish? Its characters alive on the page - their destinies more important to you than your commuter train's next stop? Two novels did that for me these last ten years: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I can now add Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna to this very small list and hope it's a sign of more great reads to come.

I was prepared to hate this novel: it's written entirely as the collected diaries, letters, book reviews and other documents by a Harrison Shepherd, and the first hundred pages are his journals as a young boy - writings that are a little too expository for someone that age. (Reminded me of the annoying and completely unsympathetic character in the twee-as-hell Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). But then - suddenly - Harrison matures, Frida Kahlo shows up and the novel rights itself. Harrison is the cook in her Mexican home, witness to her tempestuous relationship with Diego Rivera and the arrival of Leo Trotsky and his wife. Harrison is also gay and aware that his love for literature may be the only way he can express himself in a world that can't accept him for what he is.  In Kahlo he finds a  friend and confidante who will stick by his side for the rest of his life. (If there was an Oscar for best supporting female character in a novel, I'd give it to her.)

The lacuna is the underwater cave young Harrison loves to swim to by the cliffs, the space left behind in the Soviet Union by Trotsky's exile, the gap in America filled with hate and fear of what is beyond its borders, the place in our hearts we try to fill with words, love and art.  The Lacuna is also a warning to present day America that the Tea Baggers rise is an irrational mood blind to its own twisted morality - not unlike the hysteria whipped up by the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, complete with its potential to destroy the lives of innocent people.