I have been traveling through Mexico with a guy called Harrison Shepherd for the past couple of weeks and it has been glorious! I had dinner with Diego, lunch with Frida and breakfast with Lev, walked through the ancient ruins of the Aztecs and experienced the Anti-Communist purge under Truman and Eisenhower during the Cold war. Unfortunately I woke up in my own bed every morning, but the journey was invigorating non-the-less.
This work of fiction, cleverly and seamlessly melts into historical reality. Sóli, as he is affectionately called by his employer and eventual friend – Frida Kahlo, lived a life of poverty and rejection in the slums of Mexico city during the class struggle of the early 20th century. He entered The Kahlo/Riviera household as a kitchen boy, became stenographer and eventually left to return to his country of birth-America-after witnessing the murder of Lev Trotsky, who had become a dear friend in his make shift safe-house in Mexico.
The naivety and sincerity with which Sóli lives his life, comes to a sudden halt when he is suspected of being a Communist sympathiser. He is quickly stripped of his anonymity and finds all the relationships he had nurtured with such care, the grounds for political treason.
Even-though this is a beautifully crafted narrative filled with captivating characters both real and invented, Kingsolver calls us as readers to action – to question our sense of identity, nationhood, bias and privilege. She positions herself as an author with a vivid conscience, especially as it relates to the responsibility of the arts as socio-political commentator and activator and she calls us as the consumers of these arts, to do the same.
If I had to write as a critic, I’m sure there were moments that were not quite perfect, but I’m not a critic and I really enjoyed this book. It was an epic undertaking, with painstaking attention to detail and historical references.
I would recommend it to any person who loves, History, Art and Literature, as it is a book honouring the Arts for it’s role as a voice to the people, as well as a heartfelt story about a young man, who like many of us is trying to find his place and his voice in the world.
