Unsheltered – Barbara Kingsolver

Willa’s rambling house on Plum Street is falling down, slowly but inexorably. It is not her fault. The property, inherited from an aunt and pressed into service at a time of her family’s financial stress, seemed to offer an opportunity. Now it seems to be more of a threat.

The family likewise is a hotchpotch of unused potential. The magazine that Willa edited has gone bust; her academic husband, has had to take a low paid lecturer post locally; her wayward daughter works a few hours at a community café; and her invalid father-in-law needs full time care but is contemptuous of the state welfare that could help the family cope. And now her son, emerging from a promising but unremunerated internship in the city, has been left with sole responsibility for his months-old baby.

One hundred and fifty years previous, the same plot on Plum Street is occupied by Thatcher Greenwood, a science teacher recently married to a young wife who came with dependents – widowed mother and young sister – and this house put up by her father. It has only been built a few years, part of the Vineland community developed (and now run as a fiefdom) by a Captain Landis, but already there are issues with the structure for Thatcher to deal with. A more pressing concern is job security. His contract renewal is in the hands of the headteacher, who is a Darwin-denier. Thatcher’s scientific integrity is under pressure but is bolstered when he discovers his next-door neighbour is a respected amateur biologist and regular correspondent of the Origin of Species author.

Lots happen in the two, time sundered households. Characters and relationships develop with a pleasing richness. Both settings exude authenticity and Kingsolver seamlessly slips in some persuasive, liberal-leaning socio-political points of view. Overarchingly, do the crumbling houses serve as a metaphor for the materialism of their times? Is the effort to shore up the edifice worth the candle, or is it better to let it fall and move on?

Can Willa and Thatcher come to embrace the concept that unsheltered at least you can see the sky, you can let the daylight in?

An interesting, engaging and thought-provoking read, highly recommended.