Unsheltered: In Times of Paradigm Shift

The truth is that I've never previously read anything by Barbara Kingsolver.  I thought I'd read and loved The Bean Trees, but I wondered if perhaps it might have once had another somewhat different title that included a reference to a town in Maine. When I ran a search, it turned out that I was trying to recall a different book called The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute.  I read it so long ago that I'd forgotten the name of the author.  Aw Chute! 😬 Carolyn Chute isn't an author I should have forgotten, and I've just re-discovered her. I'll be picking up on that lost thread as soon as I can manage it, but it probably won't be until next year.

This time I'm blogging about the first book I've ever read by Barbara Kingsolver,  Unsheltered.  It's her most recent novel, and I won it in a Goodreads giveaway.  The last Goodreads giveaway win that I reviewed was an Amish romantic suspense novel called Her Fear.  That review is here.  I have four more 2018 Goodreads giveaway wins to fit in to my schedule.  I'm sorry that I continue to fall behind.  I have committed myself to giving each one an honest review that will appear on Goodreads at the very least.  Unsheltered  merits a longer review because it's a complex book, and my reaction to it is also complicated.  That's why it's appearing here.

                               

It seems to me that there are two different perspectives on the concept of being "unsheltered" in this book.

 First, there's contemporary protagonist Willa's perspective.   Willa still believes in the American Dream.  I perceive this as a middle class sense of entitlement.  A key part of this American Dream is that Americans should all be able to own homes.   Her home is falling apart.  So she feels "unsheltered".  It makes her uneasy.

Another perspective is that being "sheltered" means that you don't understand what the world outside your own protected bubble is really like.  You have the illusion that all Americans have access to achieving the American Dream. Willa's daughter Antigone feels that her mother has been sheltered from the realities of existence, and considers the American Dream unsustainable.  Antigone wears her "unsheltered" status as a badge of honor.

If you get the impression that I am more in sympathy with the views of Antigone, you'd be right.  While reading Unsheltered, I alternated between feeling sorry for Willa with being annoyed with her.  A continuing source of annoyance was her calling Antigone by the nickname Tig.  Many parents affectionately nickname their children, but this one felt trivializing to me. Willa's Greek husband had named their daughter.  Antigone is one of my favorite plays in the classical Greek canon.  Willa disliked the name and didn't seem to realize that the classical Greek Antigone might be significant.

I've always seen Antigone as a symbol of resistance to unjust authority.  French playwright Jean Anouilh must have felt the same about her.  He portrayed Antigone as a French Resistance figure in his 1944 play based on the original Greek tragedy by Sophocles.  There's an essay by Alexa Rae Burk that discusses the Anouilh play, and what Antigone represents in a modern context which appears on Burk's blog here.  I was also struck by a link in Burk's bibliography to an NPR article about a performance of Antigone by female Syrian refugees in Beirut which I am also hyperlinking here.  The Syrian refugee women identified with Antigone.  It bothered me that a writer like Willa was so clueless about this cultural icon.

If Barbara Kingsolver had made Antigone the central character of the contemporary story line instead of Willa, I would have loved it. I think that Antigone's life from her own perspective instead of  Willa's uncomprehending one, would have made this a much stronger book.  I particularly would have wanted to know more about Antigone's experiences in Cuba.

The historical narrative dealing with the real woman scientist, Mary Treat and the 19th century opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution, worked much better for me.  Mary Treat was a rebel against conventional expectations in the 19th century just as Antigone was in the contemporary narrative.

 For me, Antigone and Mary Treat run parallel to each other. They both grasped the need for a re-examination of  worldviews in their respective times of change. Willa perceived Mary Treat as having been "born under the moon of paradigm shift" toward the end of the book, but didn't see her own daughter in the same light.  Why choose a protagonist who lacks insight?  I think this was a discordant decision that caused me to view Unsheltered ambivalently.