Kingsolver has long written socially, politically and environmentally alert novels that engage with the wider world and its complications and vulnerabilities ... In Unsheltered, she has given us another densely packed and intricately imagined book ... On its own, this economic-disaster narrative would be a sharp, if polemical, cautionary tale, an indictment of American life at an inflection point ... But Kingsolver is a novelist with more elaborate plans ... A dual narrative needs to be not only well choreographed, but also, more important, necessary. Kingsolver’s dual narrative works beautifully here ... The stories occasionally twine together in surprising ways ... Tonally, the book can be a bit loose-beamed. From time to time Kingsolver lingers on a secondary scene for an extra beat, and dialogue between family members can feel studied. But mostly, the accretion of moments generates the feeling of being inside a fully populated house of fiction ... engaged and absorbing.
[Unsheltered] is incredibly relevant, painfully familiar, gorgeously written ... This dual storyline has the potential to be gimmicky, but Kingsolver makes certain that it isn't, especially as the parallels between the time periods and families are not overt, and it's only over time that we connect them ... Kingsolver doesn't give us solutions, but she reminds us to take comfort in one another when we can, and that hope is necessary even when all seems lost.
...a powerful lament for the American dream ... Barbara Kingsolver has proved herself a supreme craftsperson over the past three decades. She possesses a knack for ingenious metaphors that encapsulate the social questions at the heart of her stories ... She powerfully evokes the eeriness of living through times of social turmoil ... [a] striking and impressive presentation of family life ... As a work of socially engaged fiction, Unsheltered makes a decent case for escapism.
[The novel's] time shifts become progressively exhausting because both places are so crowded with characters and dialogue. It’s hectic, detailed, expository dialogue, too ... Unsheltered is researched as carefully as any Cather novel, but there is no space here: Kingsolver is so anxious to demonstrate and teach that neither characters nor story can breathe for themselves.
...earnest and ambitious ... [Unsheltered] has the virtues of her best fiction: A compassionate portrait of parenthood in all its complexity, rich historical detail and a gift for a piercing satirical line ... the novel is also Kingsolver at her most didactic ... There’s a twist in Unsheltered, though, that elevates it above its potted squabbles and artful blasts of anti-Trump fury ... it’s also a resonant call to be more alert to our social predicaments.
Barbara Kingsolver does something amazing in her new novel ... The novel alternates eras from chapter to chapter and Kingsolver has a little writerly fun ending each chapter with the word(s) that name the next one ... Uncovering and appreciating the connections is the best reason to read the book ... Both stories are compelling ... It is a novel well worth your time.
...[an] exceptionally involving and rewarding novel ... Kingsolver alternates between Willa’s droll reflections on her ever-worsening predicament, and Thatcher’s on his, subtly linking their equally compelling, alternating narratives with a repeated phrase or echoed thought, a lovely poetic device that gently punctuates the parallels between these two times of uncertainty ... There is much here to delight in and think about while reveling in Kingsolver’s vital characters, quicksilver dialogue, intimate moments, dramatic showdowns, and lushly realized milieus ... Kingsolver insightfully and valiantly celebrates life’s adaptability and resilience, which includes humankind’s capacity for learning, courage, change, and progress.
... magnificent ... Some readers will be worn out by the intensity of conversations in Unsheltered, the profusion of debates over immigration, outsiders, race, the living world and our relationship with it, cultural politics, healthcare, land rights, the unstoppable rise of the Bullhorn and the trials of home ownership. Others will be drawn to the novel precisely for this, the richness with which Kingsolver captures the Trump era and the choices it forces on ordinary Americans, the ways in which thoughtful speech can become a kind of shelter when all else is lost ... The wisdom Unsheltered offers is wry, hard-wrested and timeless, good balm when even the roof over your head seems shaky.
... a study in comparisons, contrasts, and changes. She takes a seemingly easy metaphor—a house in shambles—and mines it for its rich personal, historical, and political assets ... Much of the appeal of Kingsolver’s alluring novel is the intertwined narratives that contrast historic changes from the past with the present ... Kingsolver’s triumphant achievement is that she creates contemporary and historical families who demonstrate the need for believing in the enduring nature of truth and justice.
[Willa] is a successful narrator; you want to see her settled, not failing to put dinner on the table or frustrated over the rising success of an unbelievably offensive presidential candidate (who remains unnamed) ... Kingsolver again delivers exceptional storytelling, as Unsheltered is full of well-developed characters and delightful plot twists, even if brief. As history repeats itself, the symbolism is not hard to grasp, but the message remains potent nonetheless.
... immensely readable ... Kingsolver alternates chapters between the two eras and anchors the narratives by using the last words of each chapter as the apt title of the next, an enjoyable technique to watch unfold ... While Unsheltered is not a fanciful tale offering a respite from contentious issues of our day, it does remind of us that truth and compassion help us adapt and endure. We’ve been here before and we managed to find our way to better times. If Kingsolver is correct, stories like these might help us get there.
... an engrossing, inspiring, thought-provoking tale ... Kingsolver deftly uses the shifting narrative... But literary technique is only one tool that makes Unsheltered memorable ... Lacking a strong shelter forces everyone in the novel to reimagine their lives and redefine what normal is. And that’s just what a good novel is supposed to do.
Unsheltered is an ambitious addition to Kingsolver’s work and a pointed call for the liberal values she holds dear. More polemic than poetry, it will appeal to her loyal followers but probably not to those she hopes to convert.
Here comes the first major novel to tackle the Trump era straight on and place it in the larger chronicle of existential threats ... That may sound like the makings of a deadly polemical novel, a strident op-ed stretched out for more than 450 pages. But Unsheltered is not that — or it’s not just that — largely because Kingsolver has constructed this book as two interlaced stories, separated by more than a century ... there’s something a little claustrophobic about being confined within these axioms of liberal orthodoxy ... Ironically, the alternate chapters of Unsheltered, set in the 1870s, are fresher and more rewarding ... Unsheltered re-creates this post-Civil War period with wonderful fidelity to the tenor of the era ... these alternating stories about Willa and Thatcher maintain their distinctive tones but echo one another in curious, provocative ways.
Thankfully, both of these exceedingly depressing narratives, which play out largely in endless passionate dialogues — wow, can these characters talk — are redeemed by sophisticated storytelling, compelling characters and sharp humor that slides in whenever the reader is tempted to toss the book ... Kingsolver is a writer who can help us understand and navigate the chaos of these times.
The Poisonwood Bible was recently voted Britain’s favourite reading-group book. This fanbase will not be disappointed by Unsheltered, which is crammed with talking points ... Kingsolver’s power lies in her ability to expound big ideas without losing sight of life’s pulsing minutiae ... It is a wise message for turbulent times.
Kingsolver, clearly, has an agenda in the book, which includes shock at Donald Trump emerging as an increasingly viable presidential candidate in early 2016. But her contemporary narrative is laced with wry, genial humor... and the 1870s half of her tale is a gripping study of how battling schools of thought can destroy personal lives ... There’s hard-won wisdom here, and profound doubt as to where our future is taking us. Kingsolver’s voice is urgent, eloquent, wily... For some readers, that may not feel like uplift. But it could, Kingsolver hints, be one way to stay sane.
It’s got a ripe theme for Kingsolver, an unabashedly political writer, to pluck — that is, how poverty looms today for so many middle-class families ... This book also offers, at times, the easygoing pleasures of Kingsolver’s voice. When she’s on, reading her sentences is like walking on crunchy leaves; her writing can be acute and funny ... Yet Unsheltered is dead on arrival. The historical sections are delivered in starchily ornate prose ... In the present-day sections, every other conversation threatens to become an op-ed piece or a humanistic monologue out of lesser John Steinbeck or Arthur Miller ... Kingsolver’s politics, in this case, sit on the chest of her fiction and asphyxiate it ... This novel reads as if its author has been sent here, like Spock aboard the Starship Social Progress, to affirm our principles. Kingsolver wants to feed us improving ideas, as if we were moral nestlings ... She has a good feel for human stuff, for the messes we make and how we clean them up.
The novel seems to know that we exist in a state of desperate inequality and looming environmental catastrophe from which there is no obvious escape. Yet, also like a Sunday-morning talk show, Unsheltered is so busy flaunting its timeliness that it misses the underlying political and economic strains that have brought the country to this pass ... [Kingsolver's] novels specialize in self-congratulatory gestures of empathy: the clumsy representation of characters whom she finds obviously distasteful but wants to redeem, modeling the respect and understanding that she believes can open our hearts and minds and subdue our partisan acrimony. The result is not a bad novel—it is perfectly competent at the level of the sentence—but a novel that fails so dramatically to capture the corrosive realities of liberal capitalism that it just might deflate, once and for all, the middlebrow fantasy that stories can help us get through these dark times.
If Barbara Kingsolver’s best novels (The Poisonwood Bible,” “The Lacuna) magically transported us to other times and places, it was with a less obvious agenda. In those novels, she provided context with historical/political events, but not at the expense of character development and cinematic adventure. For that reason, I prefer the chapters set in the 1800s in “Unsheltered” where she vividly brings the historical characters to life. Most of the modern characters feel too much like 'types' ... This novel has much to say about motherhood — honest, heartfelt observations about its struggles and rewards ... Ms. Kingsolver fans are legion, and they should be pleased with her latest effort. But ultimately, one’s enjoyment will be determined by political leanings. Either way, we are left with much to ponder about the future.
Kingsolver lays out [the property's] background information too neatly in a conversation Willa has with a contractor who warns her about the house's 'nonexistent foundation' and the expensive repairs it will require. But the novel quickly gains momentum thereafter ... Kingsolver sometimes tries too hard to remind us that America's current period of strife is hardly unprecedented ... The comparison of a fractured society being akin to a crumbling house may not be subtle, but it's apt. In its best moments, Unsheltered highlights the difficulty of all forms of repair, whether of one's home or the ripped fabric of society.
...thank God for Barbara Kingsolver, one of America’s hardiest novelists (The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, etc.), who has also stumbled upon the lost history of Treat. Kingsolver went into the archives and got her hands on Treat’s papers and correspondence with Darwin, emerging with Unsheltered, a gripping novel ... Kingsolver ably navigates the problematic white privilege of the family, which is refreshing to read in a contemporary novel about white middle-class issues.
...an ambitious project that seems to have been written with Thackeray or George Eliot in mind ... moments of hand-wringing have led some critics to argue that Kingsolver, like Willa, is a latecomer to truths progressive Americans have been broadcasting for decades. But this criticism is already built into the novel ... Unsheltered does succeed, at times, as a faithful representation of our era. But it rarely moves beyond mimesis to analysis, and when it does, the conclusions it draws are familiar. Many of the characters are too representative of their ideologies to be convincing ... Although political debates abound, the novel is oddly lacking in political consciousness—or any consciousness for that matter.
Kingsolver's prose is as deft as ever, and her characters are authentic and engaging, whether they are upstart teens in the 1880's or Dumpster-diving millennials.
Barbara Kingsolver’s legions of fans have waited six years for her new novel, and Unsheltered delivers double the pleasure ... As always, in Unsheltered [Kingsolver] tells a deeply engaging story populated by intriguing characters, built upon careful research and brightened with wry humor. And as always she imbues that story with larger social and environmental concerns ... [Kingsolver's] understanding of evolution in this book applies not just to ferns and wolves but to human beings and their societies, from the intimate level of families to the broad scope of politics.
As always, Kingsolver gives readers plenty to think about. Her warm humanism coupled with an unabashed point of view make her a fine 21st-century exponent of the honorable tradition of politically engaged fiction.
Kingsolver's meticulously observed, elegantly structured novel unites social commentary with gripping storytelling ... Kingsolver artfully interweaves fictional and historical figures and gives each narrative its own mood and voice without compromising their underlying unity. Containing both a rich story and a provocative depiction of times that shake the shelter of familiar beliefs, this novel shows Kingsolver at the top of her game.
