When Willa takes her father-in-law, Nick, to a clinic for treatment, they are turned away. “Unsheltered”: Everything is awfulĪctually, in Unsheltered’s contemporary US, everything is beyond awful. These are more dangerous times than we have ever known.”

“ If that is our nature, then nature is madness.

“ I suppose it is in our nature… when men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.”.

Take this speech by the scientist Mary Treat (a real historical character): The linking of developments in the 1870s, such as oppressive capitalism and the fight against Darwin, to events in the present day, is sometimes heavy-handed. 9 reasons why “Unsheltered” drove me (half) crazyĭespite its undoubted excellence, the book drove me half crazy. We learn that Willa, faced with a grisly task,

The melon of belly expanding, contracting.Įach chapter ends with the title of the following chapter.

She lay with her chin on her forearms admiring the baby’s wren-feather eyelashes and delicate nostrils, the bottom lip tucked into the infant overbite.

Willa Knox, the hero of the contemporary cycle, admires her grandson:

Her eyes flared like a struck match before she looked away.Īs the cover says, the book is – in many ways – magnificent.

When Thatcher Greenwood, the hero of the 1870s cycle, scolds his wife Rose, we hear that: Unsheltered pulses with exquisite prose about two families living in a crumbling house in Vineland, New Jersey, 150 years apart. “Unsheltered” shows Barbara Kingsolver is a great writer

“Unsheltered”, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a beautiful book that expresses eloquently the mood of contemporary America.

Unsheltered book review