Picture This (Peaks Island Novel 2)
Jacqueline Sheehan, 2012
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062008121
Summary
Jacqueline Sheehan made serious waves with her much beloved runaway bestseller, Lost and Found (“The best book I’ve read in a long time” —Susan Elizabeth Phillips). Now she treats readers to a sequel, Picture This—a story of rebirth and personal redemption that is as moving, funny, and heart-soaring as its predecessor.
Whip-smart contemporary women’s fiction with heart and soul, in Picture This, Rocky Pelligrino is back on Peaks Island off the coast of Maine, along with Cooper the dog, the beautiful black Labrador retriever who gave her a new “leash” on life.
But this time a new wrinkle warps the fabric of her world when a young girl shows up on Rocky’s doorstep claiming to be the long-lost daughter of her late husband. (From the publisher.)
Lost & Found (2007) is the first of Jacqueline Sheehan's two Peaks Island novels. Picture This is the sequel.
Author Bio
Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist. She is a New Englander through and through, but spent twenty years living in the western states of Oregon, California, and New Mexico doing a variety of things, including house painting, freelance photography, newspaper writing, clerking in a health food store, and directing a traveling troupe of high school puppeteers.
Currently on the faculty of Writers in Progress and Grub Street in Massachusetts, she also offers international workshops on the combination of yoga and writing. She writes travel articles about lesser-known destinations and lives in Massachusetts.
Novels
Sheehan's books include Truth (2003), reissued as The Comet's Tale: A Novel About Sojurner Truth (2011); Now & Then (2009); two Peaks Island novels, Lost & Found (2007) and Picture This (2012); and, most recently, The Center of the World (2015). (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Surrounded by her Peaks Island friends, widow Rocky Pelligrino's emotional journey continues in Sheehan's sequel to Lost & Found (2007).... Sheehan uses her skills as both a psychologist and a writer to create a solid, insightful story that will leave fans eagerly awaiting another visit from the strong heroine, her dog and her friends.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Rocky is caught between wanting to start a new relationship with Hill and grieving the sudden death of her husband. Does it seem unimaginable to fall in love again after the death of a spouse, or would it feel like a second chance?
2. Rocky is instantly drawn to Natalie in a way that seems to defy her psychological knowledge. What is it that pulls Rockey to the wayward girl?
3. How does Natalie's background influence her behaviors with Rocky and with others on Peaks Island?
4. The house that Rocky buys is brimming with personality. The house makes a wish when Rockey first stands in front of it. "Give me one more go at it." How does Rocky's decision at the end of the book answer this wish?
5. How does Cooper respond to Natalie? If not for Melissa's photo, would anyone be able to detect his hesitation with Natalie? How is the micro detection of the camera like Cooper's perception of the world? What can the camera see that the naked eye cannot?
6. Tess and her granddaughter Daniel are extremely close. Aside from sharing synesthesia (even though Tess losers hers after surgery), how else are their sensibilities similar?
7. Natalie picks Daniel, the most tender spirit on the island, to include in her plan of revenge. Are there any other reasons why Natalie picks the child?
8. Melissa is immediately suspicious of Natalie? How can teenagers see each other so clearly?
9. In this story, who are the Tzadikum nistarim?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Now & Then
Jacqueline Sheehan, 2009
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061547782
Summary
Living a dog's life...now and then.
Anna O'Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she's trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them.
Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
Will every choice they make reverberate down through time? And do Irish Wolfhounds carry the soul of the ancient celts?
The past and present wrap around finely wrought characters who reveal the road home. Mystical, charming, and fantastic, New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Sheehan's Now & Then is a poignant and beautiful tale of a remarkable journey.
It is a miraculous evocation of a breathtaking place in a volatile age filled with rich, unforgettable, deeply human characters and one unforgettable dog named Madigan. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist. She is a New Englander through and through, but spent twenty years living in the western states of Oregon, California, and New Mexico doing a variety of things, including house painting, freelance photography, newspaper writing, clerking in a health food store, and directing a traveling troupe of high school puppeteers.
Currently on the faculty of Writers in Progress and Grub Street in Massachusetts, she also offers international workshops on the combination of yoga and writing. She writes travel articles about lesser-known destinations and lives in Massachusetts.
Novels
Sheehan's books include Truth (2003), reissued as The Comet's Tale: A Novel About Sojurner Truth (2011); Now & Then (2009); two Peaks Island novels, Lost & Found (2007) and Picture This (2012); and, most recently, The Center of the World (2015). (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[S]pellbinding.... Anna O'Shea becomes a time-traveling ex-wife when she returns from a vacation in Ireland and is enlisted to pick up her brother Patrick's son from jail in Newark.... Throw in loyal Irish wolfhound Madigan, and you've got an altogether enjoyable romantic adventure.
Publishers Weekly
Sheehan basically transforms a contemporary novel into a historical one, with all the period detail and sense of place for which such works are judged and appreciated. She reminds us that those who came before were no less savvy...and that by accepting the past, we might just change the future. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Anna and Joseph’s time traveling experience is dreamlike, with aquatic and primal overtones. Their journey to the past leaves them barely alive. Did the descriptions of time travel in Now & Then surprise you? What notions of time travel do you have that Now & Then either defied or complied with?
2. Glenis says to Anna, ‘You say yes or no like the English do, as if all the world fits only one way or the other. We don’t think that way. You see, the hope can’t be scratched out of us. There is always a place where a thing is mostly not, or tis, but for a wee bit. We Irish are much more specific about what is and what is not.” How do you think living in the ‘modern world’ has shaped our relationship with language as a society, and for you as an individual?
3. In the past, Anna “had started to adjust to the interminable pauses between sentences that people of this time used. No one talked over the middle of someone else’s sentence. And they were profoundly good listeners… No one was multitasking here.” Do you think, with the role technology plays in our lives today, that we’ve lost a bit of our ability to communicate with each other, or that our quality of communication has changed?
4. Anna and Joseph find themselves in vastly different circumstances upon their ‘rescue’ in Ireland. Anna must quickly conform to a hard-scrabble existence of living off the land, while Joseph falls into the lap of luxury living at the colonel’s estate. What do they learn from their experiences on the end of the quality-of-life spectrum? How do you think the story would have been different if Anna had been rescued by the colonel’s men, and Joseph had to pull his weight on Glenis and Tom’s farm?
5. Anna and Joseph both find love in the past. What do their romances in Ireland teach them about the people they were, and the people they can become?
6. Taleen’s outburst sheds new light onto the O’Shea’s troubled family line, where fathers and sons are incapable of expressing love toward each other. What is revealed about Joseph’s peculiar place in his lineage? Do you believe curses can run through families?
7. It’s mentioned several times that there are severe penalties facing Irish who are caught speaking Gaelic, their native language. What other ways does the English rule try to break the spirit of the Irish people?
8. All of the women Anna and Joseph encounter in Ireland are strong and willful in their own way --- Glenis, Deidre, Taleen, Biddy Early. What do Anna and Joseph --- strangers from another time --- admire most about them, and what are the important lessons they learn from them?
9. What aspects of life in 1844 Ireland struck you as most surprisingly different from how we live today? What would you miss most if the modern amenities we are used to suddenly weren’t at your disposal?
10. What significance do the Irish Wolfhounds and Madigan have in Now & Then? Do you feel the magical and mystical elements in the story seem more believable in the story that takes place in the past versus the present-day plot?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
My Brilliant Friend (Neopolitan Novels 1)
Elena Ferrante, 2012 (U.S. ed., 2015)
Europa Editions
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781609450786
Summary
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship.
The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other.
They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.
Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a trilogy, she proves herself to be one of Italy’s great storytellers.
She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction. (From the publisher.)
Books in the series
This is the first of Ferrante's four Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name (2012) is the second, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2013) is the third, and The Story of a Lost Child (2014) is the last.
Author Bio
Elena Ferrante is the pen-name of an Italian novelist whose true identity is not publicly known. Though heralded as the most important Italian novelist of her generation, she has kept her identity secret since the publication of her first novel in 1992.
Works
Ferrante is the author of a half dozen novels, the most well-known of which is Days of Abandonment. Her four "Neapolitan Novels" revolve around two perceptive and intelligent girls from Naples who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and stultifying culture. The series consists of four novels: My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015), which was nominated for the Strega Prize, an Italian literary award.
Two of Ferrante's novels have been turned into films by Italian filmmakers. Troubling Love became the 1995 feature film Nasty Love, and The Days of Abandonment became a 2005 film of the same title.
Her nonfiction book Fragments (2003) discussion her experiences as a writer.
Identity
In a January 21, 2013, article in The New Yorker, James Woods wrote that Ferrante has said, "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors." Perhaps that is one reason for her pen-name.
Speculation about Ferrante's identity is rife. In the same New Yorker article, Woods also wrote:
In the past twenty years or so, though, she has provided written answers to journalists’ questions, and a number of her letters have been collected and published. From them, we learn that she grew up in Naples, and has lived for periods outside Italy. She has a classics degree; she has referred to being a mother. One could also infer from her fiction and from her interviews that she is not now married. (“Over the years, I’ve moved often, in general unwillingly, out of necessity. . . . I’m no longer dependent on the movements of others, only on my own” is her encryption.) In addition to writing, “I study, I translate, I teach. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
(These reviews refer to the other works in Ferrante's Neapolitan series, not just My Brilliant Friend.)
Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time. Her voice is passionate, her view sweeping and her gaze basilisk.... In these bold, gorgeous, relentless novels, Ferrante traces the deep connections between the political and the domestic. This is a new version of the way we live now—one we need, one told brilliantly, by a woman. (From a 2014 review of Those Who Stay Those Who Leave)
Roxana Robinson - New York Times Book Review
Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it. (From a 2012 review of My Brilliant Friend)
Eugenia Williamson - Boston Globe
Compelling, visceral and immediate . . . a riveting examination of power.... The Neapolitan novels are a tour de force. (From a 2014 review of Those Who Leave Those Who Stay)
Jennifer Gilmore - Los Angeles Times
Ferrante writes with a ferocious, intimate urgency that is a celebration of anger. Ferrante is terribly good with anger, a very specific sort of wrath harbored by women, who are so often not allowed to give voice to it. We are angry, a lot of the time, at the position we’re in—whether it’s as wife, daughter, mother, friend—and I can think of no other woman writing who is so swift and gorgeous in this rage, so bracingly fearless in mining fury. (From a 2012 review of My Brilliant Friend)
Susanna Sonnenberg - San Francisco Chronicle
The through-line in all of Ferrante’s investigations, for me, is nothing less than one long, mind-and-heart-shredding howl for the history of women (not only Neapolitan women), and its implicit j’accuse.... Ferrante’s effect, critics agree, is inarguable. (From a 2013 review of The Story of a New Name.)
Joan Fran - San Francisco Chronicle
Ferrante’s novels are intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader. (From a 2013 overview of Ferrante's works)
James Wood - The New Yorker
One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory. (From a 2013 review of My Brilliant Friend)
Megan O’Grady - Vogue
Elena Ferrante may be the best contemporary novelist you’ve never heard of. (From a 2013 review of The Story of a New Name)
Economist
When I read [the Neapolitan novels] I find that I never want to stop. I feel vexed by the obstacles—my job, or acquaintances on the subway—that threaten to keep me apart from the books. I mourn separations (a year until the next one—how?). I am propelled by a ravenous will to keep going. (From a 2013 review of the Neapolitan series.)
Molly Fischer - The New Yorker
[Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels] don’t merely offer a teeming vision of working-class Naples, with its cobblers and professors, communists and mobbed-up businessmen, womanizing poets and downtrodden wives; they present one of modern fiction’s richest portraits of a friendship.
John Powers - Fresh Air, NPR
An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends Lila and Elena, Bright and passionate girls from a raucous neighborhood in world-class Naples. Ferrante writes with such aggression and unnerving psychological insight about the messy complexity of female friendship that the real world can drop away when you’re reading her.
Entertainment Weekly
This is both fascinating—two girls, their families, a neighborhood, and a nation emerging from war and into an economic boom—and occasionally tedious, as day-to-day life can be. But Lila, mercurial, unsparing...is a memorable character. (From a 2012 review of My Brilliant Friend.)
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Why is Don Achille such an important character? His presence looms over the whole novel;
what does he represent?
2. Throughout the novel, Lila earns her reputation as "the misfit," while Elena comes to be known as "the good girl." How do the two live vicariously through one another, and what is it about their differing personalities that makes their relationship credible? Which girl, if any, do you most easily identify with?
3. Domestic life in the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s is depicted as conservative, challenging, and at times, even severely violent. Ferrante uses the girls’ early "child play" to emulate the callous undertones of the town. Why is this analogy so successful? What is so important about Tina and Nu?
4. Why is Elena so invested in her education? Is it a means to an end, or an end unto itself? If a means to an end, what end? And if a means, is she being realistic or is she fooling herself?
5. What is revealed of the girls’ characters on the day they decide to skip school? Do these discoveries surprise you? How does this effect their relationship (or our sense of their relationship)?
6. Ferrante returns to the theme of "mother-daughter relationship" in My Brilliant Friend. What are the abiding characteristics of this relationship? Who do you feel suffers the most—mother or daughter? Why?
7. It can be assumed that Elena’s voice is behind the title of the novel, referring to Lila as "her brilliant friend." However, toward the end of the girls’ story, it is Lila who praises Elena, and encourages her to be "the best of all, boys and girls" (pg. 312). Is this dialogue between the two girls symbolic of Lila’s surrender? Are you surprised by Lila’s words?
8. Lila’s rustic personality and crude comments sometimes come off as hurtful and malicious. Furthermore, although both families struggle with poverty, it is the Cerullos who appear to be the underprivileged of the two. Why, nonetheless, does Elena remain a highly devout friend? What does this say about Elena?
9. What do the shoes that Lila designs and makes represent symbolically? What undertones do the shoes help to evidence in the latter half of the novel?
10. How would the book be different if told from the point of view of Lila or another character? Is Elena's point of view the most appropriate? Why or why not? Explain.
11. Page 282: "Do you love Stefano?" She said seriously, "Very much." "More than your parents, more than Rino?" "More than everyone, but not more than you." Lila’s personality seems to have grown warmer by the end of the novel. What can we attribute this change to?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Mapmaker's Children
Sarah McCoy, 2015
Crown Publishers
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385348904
Summary
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings.
Sarah boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children. But as the country steers toward bloody civil war, she faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 14, 1980
• Where—Fort Knox, Kentucky, USA
• Raised—Frankfurt, Germany; states of Maryland, Kansas, Virginia
• Education—B.A., Virginia Tech; M.F.A., Old Dominion University
• Currently—lives in El Paso, Texas
Sarah McCoy is an American author of bestselling novels in the U.S. and internationally.
The daughter of a career Army officer, McCoy was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky but grew up on or near military installations—in Frankfurt, Germany; Aberdeen, Maryland; Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and various cities in Virginia. She attended Virginia Tech where she received her BA in Journalism and Public Relations. She earned her MFA in English Creative Writing from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Writing
McCoy's master's degree thesis was her debut novel The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, published by Random House in 2009. Her second novel The Baker’s Daughter, published in 2012, became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, as well as an international bestseller. Her novella The Branch of Hazel is included in the 2014 WWII anthology Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion. The Mapmaker's Children, her third novel, was released in 2015.
McCoy's writing has also appeared in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, and the Huffington Post. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Personal
McCoy and her husband, an Army orthopedic surgeon, live in El Paso, Texas. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2015.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
McCoy deftly intertwines a historical tale with a modern one… lovingly constructed… passionately told.... The Mapmaker’s Children not only honors the accomplishments of a little-known woman but artfully demonstrates how fate carries us in unexpected directions, no matter how we might try to map out our lives.
Washington Post
El Paso writer Sarah McCoy mined the archives for information about Brown’s daughter Sarah, an artist who is the titular character of her latest novel, The Mapmaker’s Children. The lacing of the two plots is seamless.... [McCoy]’s unquestionably a gifted author.
Dallas Morning News
[A] journey into the past that reveals the hidden depths of the lives of two very different women separated by more than 150 years.... McCoy carefully juxtaposes the past and the present, highlighting the characters’ true introspection, and slowly revealing the unusual similarities in the two woman’s lives, which leads to a riveting conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
Interspersed with Eden [Anderson's] contemporary tale are vignettes of the life of Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown.... [An] engaging examination of dark and hopeful times in our collective national history and in our lives...[and a] rich and textured depiction of characters possessing strength and grace. —Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast
Library Journal
In vibrant yet unassuming prose, McCoy tells a story of womanhood past and present, asking big questions about family, courage and love. Readers will enjoy solving the historical puzzle of the doll's origins, but the book's true strength is its portrayal of Eden and Sarah: two brave women bound together by the difficult, noble work of building worthwhile lives.
Shelf Awareness
A fascinating peek into the personal life of the legendary John Brown and keep the pages turning. The Mapmaker’s Children serves as a reminder of how objects persist, such as Sarah’s doll, and how memories connected with those objects can last through generations.
BookPage
[S]low to begin, the women's stories are engaging and emotionally charged....and reading about the Underground Railroad and the Civil War from a woman's perspective breathes new life into a familiar era. McCoy's descriptive writing catches the reader up in both time periods.... [I]t satisfies.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Have any you ever moved into a house that had a mysterious past or an unexplained component—a trapped door, a secret closet, attic or basement that gave you the heebie-jeebies for reasons you couldn’t explain? Perhaps you found an artifact like Eden. Did you try to determine the historical significance of it? If so, what did you discover? If not, did you have a reason for leaving the past a secret?
2. Women’s roles have come a long way over the last 150 years, and yet, we still battle stereotypes of how to live and define our families. What similarities do you see in Sarah and Eden’s worlds and what major differences? How do you see yourself as compared to them and to the women of past generations in your family?
3. Were you previously familiar with the Underground Railroad, John Brown’s Secret Six Committee, the Raid on Harpers Ferry, slave quilt codes and songs, and the greater Abolitionist Movement? As a book group, discuss what elements you’d heard before and what elements you discovered after reading the novel.
4. Sarah Brown was a courageous artist of her time. Her paintings, the process of creating them, the people she aided, and the mode in which she distributed her artwork were all dangerous and unconventional for anyone, but particularly for a woman during the Civil War. In what ways do you see the arts influencing politics and challenging societal parameters today? Who are some artists that have broadened your worldview and how?
5. On page 267, Eden discusses bereavement: “Friends, neighbors, acquaintances feared it was catching like a virus, so they’d put on sterile gloves to hand out the ‘Our thoughts are with you’ when really their thoughts were sprinting away as fast as possible. It was too painful to recognize: mortality.” Do you agree or disagree with Eden? Share your personal experiences of losing a loved one, flesh and fur.
6. Do you have a pet? If so, do you consider those animals family members? What’s your pets’ name(s), your favorite memory with them, and how have they impacted your life and/or the lives of your family members?
7. Producing, corporeally and creatively, is a major theme in this novel. Does one supersede the other? Is leaving a legacy of children nobler than a legacy of art, courage, social change, or other historical fingerprints?
8. Baking and passing on recipes is another branch of the Creating Tree. How does Eden develop her maternal side through cooking? What are some of your favorite family recipes, and how have they played a role in your traditions and history?
9. Eden is furious when she finds Jack’s incoming texts from Pauline. Is omission of information lying? How would you respond to discovering texts such as these from an unknown person to your significant other?
10. Eden and Sarah discover great nurturing power in their communities. How do you see it made manifest in the 1860s New Charlestown? How do you see it in present-day New Charlestown? How do both of those compare to the broader social spheres outside their city limits?
11. Ms. Silverdash’s bookstore serves as the heartbeat of New Charlestown. The stories, fictional and real, are gathered and shared there. Do you have a favorite local bookstore or library in your community? If so, what’s your most cherished memory involving it?
12. At the conclusion of the book, how do you see Eden and Sarah creating and defining their own unique families? Do you believe there exists a social stereotype of the “perfect family”? If so, discuss the positive and negative qualities, and why you believe people have adhered to these social constructs now and 150 years ago.
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
The Power of One
Bryce Courtenay, year
Random House
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345410054
Summary
Based on Bryce's own childhood experiences in South Africa this is his debut novel celebrating the power of one individual to profoundly change a life.
In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a white South African boy is born. When his mother suffers a breakdown, the boy is taken to his grandfather's farm where he is raised by his beloved Zulu nanny, Mary Mandoma.
Eventually the youngster is sent to an Afrikaans boarding school. As the only English-speaking student, he is bullied and beaten by an older student known as The Judge. It is there he is given the name"Pisskop," a derogatory term used by Afrikaaners during the Boer War. Later he adopts the name P.K.—or Peekay—the name he calls himself throughout the book
Despite the hardships, Peekay manages to become a gifted student, musician, and boxer. His precocious talents are nurtured by a series of teachers, mentors, and friends, who introduce him to a world of magic, myth, and inspiration.
When he wins a scholarship to an exclusive secondary school, Peekay befriends Hymie Levy (Morrie in US editions), a wealthy loner and the school's "token Jew." Drawn to help the downtrodden Peekay and Hymie, found a school for Black South Africans. Hymie also joins Peekay in several scams and becomes his boxing manager.
Throught his early years, which have been marked by humiliation and abandonment, Peekay embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one. (Adapted from the publisher and the author's website.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 14, 1933
• Where—Johannesburgh, South Africa
• Death—November 22, 2012
• Where—Canberra, Australia
• Education—N/A
Bryce Courtenay was a South African novelist who also held Australian citizenship. He is one of Australia's best-selling authors, notable for his book The Power of One.
Background
Arthur Bryce Courtenay was born in Lembombo Mountains, South Africa, the son of Maude Greer and Arthur Ryder. Ryder was married with six children, and lived with his family, but also maintained a relationship with Greer, with whom he already had a daughter, Rosemary. Maude Greer gave the surname Courtenay to both her children. Bryce spent most of his early years in a small village in the Lebombo Mountains in the Limpopo province. He later attended King Edward VII School.
In 1955, while studying journalism in London, Courtenay met his future wife, Benita Solomon, and they emigrated to Sydney in 1958. They married in 1959 and had three sons.
Courtenay entered the advertising industry and, over a career spanning 34 years, was the Creative Director of McCann Erickson, J. Walter Thompson, and George Patterson Advertising. His award-winning campaigns included Louie the Fly, the original Milkybar Kid commercial and the Australian Labor Party's 1972 election campaign, It's Time.
Along with Geoff Pike, Bryce Courtney invented the Cadbury Yowie, a chocolate that contained a children's toy, typically an Australian or New Zealand native animal.
On 1 April 1991, his son Damon, who was born with the blood condition haemophilia, died at age 24 from AIDS-related complications, contracted through a blood transfusion.
Courtenay and Benita divorced in 2000, ending their 42-year marriage. Benita Courtenay died on 11 March 2007, at the age of 72, four months after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. Bryce later lived in Canberra with his second wife, Christine Gee.
Writing
His novels are primarily set in Australia, his adopted country, or South Africa, the country of his birth. His first book, The Power of One, was published in 1989 and, despite Courtenay's fears that it would never sell, quickly became one of Australia's best-selling books by any living author. The story was made into a film, and was being re-released in an edition for children.
Courtenay was one of Australia's most commercially successful authors. He built up this success over the long term by promoting himself and developing a relationship with readers as much as marketing his books; for instance, he gave away up to 2,500 books free each year to readers he met in the street.
The Power of One is the only one of his books published in the United States. Courtenay claimed this was because "American publishers for the most part have difficulties about Australia; they are interested in books in their own country first and foremost. However, we receive many e-mails and letters from Americans who have read my books, and I am hoping in the future that publishers will recognize that there is a market for all my books in the U.S."
Death
In September 2012, Courtenay announced that he was suffering from terminal gastric cancer and that his last book would be Jack of Diamonds. He died in November at his Canberra home. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/15/2015.)
Book Reviews
The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.
New York Times
Marvelous.... It is the people of the sun-baked plains of Africa who tug at the heartstrings in this book. . . . [Bryce] Courtenay draws them all with a fierce and violent love.
Washington Post Book Wor
Unabashedly uplifting...asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–"the power of one"–can prevail.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Totally engrossing...[presents] the metamorphosis of a most remarkable young man and the almost spiritual influence he has on others.... Peekay has both humor and a refreshingly earthy touch, and his adventures, at times, are hair-raising in their suspense.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Episodic and bursting with incident, this sprawling memoir of an English boy's lonely childhood in South Africa during WW II pays moderate attention to questions of race but concerns itself primarily with epic melodrama.
Publishers Weekly
(Grade 6-up) The book packs a powerful emotional punch, evoking horror, laughter, and empathy. It is a condensed version of the first part of Courtenay's adult book of the same title, and the ending feels artificial and unresolved. In all, this is an extraordinary and unusual survival story. — Sue Giffard, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, New York City
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Power of One:
m. Talk about the the book's title. Author Bryce Courtenay once commented that...
[People] think it's all about the individual discovering a wonderful inner strength, the mantra of 'the power of one.' But the title comes from and is for the power of one teacher. It is about how one teacher can lift a child out of an impossible environment and allow him or her to have an education, to change their life.
But according to "reader theory," readers' interpretations are not necessarily incorrect; in fact, they are often entirely valid ways of seeing literature. It turns out that words mean different things to different people—even authors have no monopoly on how people read and interpret their writings. So...how do YOU interpret the book's title: what does "the power of meaning" signifiy to you?
m. In what way does Peekay's childhood shape the young man he becomes? How wold you desccribe him as a character? What do you admire about him?
m. The book pits poses two distinct visions of life—the mystical vs. logic and rational. What are the benefits of each way of seeing the world? How do the book's characters line up in representing this dichotomy. Does Peekay choose one approach over the other? How do you approach your own life?
m. Follow-u to Question 3: Talk about the ways in which Doc influences Peekay. At one point we are told that "Doc was calm and reason and order." Yet Doc tells Peekay that mystery should trump logic when truth is not at stake. What does he mean?
m.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off with attribution. Thanks.)