The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi, 2009
Night Shade Books
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781597801584
Summary
Winner, 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winner, 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko…
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism’s genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of “The Calorie Man” (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner and Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and “Yellow Card Man” (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these important questions. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 6, 1972
• Raised—Paonia, Colorado, USA
• Education—Oberlin College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Paonia, Colorado
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and was nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers including the Idaho Statesman, Albuquerque Journal, and Salt Lake Tribune. He was a webmaster for High Country News starting in 2003.
His short fiction has been collected in Pump Six and Other Stories (2008). His debut novel The Windup Girl (2009) won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2010. It was also named by Time as one of the Top 10 Books of 2009. Ship Breaker (2010) was awarded the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult novel and was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
The Windup Girl, along with many of his short stories, explores the effects of bioengineering and a world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Bioengineering has ravaged the world with food-borne plagues, produced tailored organisms as mimics to both cats and humans, and replaced today's fossil-fuel reliant engines with megodonts (an elephant-like beast), which convert food energy into work. Energy storage is accomplished through the use of high-capacity springs, as well as simply transporting food to feed either megodonts or human labourers. His writing deals with the ethics and possible ramifications of genetic engineering and western dominance, as well as the nature of humanity and a world in which, despite drastic changes, people remain essentially the same.
Awards
2006: Theodore Sturgeon Award for "The Calorie Man" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2005)
2009: Locus Award for Best Collection, for Pump Six and Other Stories (2008)
2009: Locus Award for Best Novelette, for "Pump Six"
2010: Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl (tied with China Mieville's The City & the City)
2010: John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Locus Award for Best First Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl
2011: Michael L. Printz Award for Best Young Adult Novel for Ship Breaker
2012: Seiun Award for The Best Translated Novel for The Windup Girl
2013: Seiun Award for The Best Translated Short Story for "Pocketful of Dharma"
(Author Bio brom Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/10/2014.)
Book Reviews
Not since William Gibson's pioneering cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.… Readers of science fiction will recognize multiple influences on this excellent novel: Cordwainer Smith, J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, China Mieville and even, possibly, Margaret Atwood…Clearly, Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer to watch for in the future. Just don't wait that long to enjoy the darkly complex pleasures of The Windup Girl.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
(Starred review.) Noted short story writer Bacigalupi proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation.... This complex, literate and intensely felt tale...is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.
Publishers Weekly
In a future of rising water levels, bioengineered plagues, widespread food shortages, and retrotechnology, calories have become currency.... [A] captivating look at a dystopic future that seems all too possible. East meets West in a clash of cultures brilliantly portrayed in razor-sharp images, tension-building pacing, and sharply etched characters.... [A] cautionary thriller.
Library Journal
This highly nuanced, violent, and grim novel is not for every teen. However, mature readers with an interest in political or environmental science fiction or those for whom dystopias are particularly appealing will be intrigued. If they are able to immerse themselves completely into the calorie-mad world of a future Bangkok, they will not be disappointed (adult/high school). —Karen E. Brooks-Reese, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
School Library Journal
Bacigalupi is as unflinching in his examination of the unthinkable cruelty, humiliation and banal evil that humanity inflicts on the Other as he is on the bleak future that our mass consumption society will inevitably unleash.... The Windup Girl will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year for its willingness to confront the most cherished notions of the genre, namely that our future is bright and we will overcome our selfish, cruel nature.
BookPage
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)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Joshua Ferris, 2014
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316033992
Summary
A big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel about the mysteries of modern life by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris, one of the most exciting voices of his generation...
Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God.
Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual.
At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Raised—Florida and Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Iowa; M.F.A., University of
California, Irvine
• Awards— PEN/Hemingway Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Joshua Ferris is an American author best known for his debut 2007 novel Then We Came to the End. Ferris graduated from the University of Iowa in English and Philosophy in 1996. He then moved to Chicago and worked in advertising for several years before obtaining an MFA in writing from UC Irvine.
His debut novel Then We Came to the End is a comedy about the American workplace. It takes place in a fictitious Chicago ad agency experiencing a downturn at the end of the '90s Internet boom. The novel was greeted by positive reviews from the New York Times Book Review, New Yorker, Esquire, and Slate. It received the 2007 PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
An August, 2008, issue of The New Yorker published his short story "The Dinner Party," which earned him a nomination for a Shirley Jackson Award. Other short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Best New American Voices 2007 and New Stories from the South 2007. Ferris's nonfiction has appeared in the anthologies State by State and Heavy Rotation. The New Yorker included him in its 2010 "20 Under 40" list.
His next novel The Unnamed was published in 2010. Fiametta Rocco, Editor of Books and Arts at The Economist, called it "the best new novel I have read in the past ten years." His third novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour came out in 2014.
Joshua Ferris lives in New York (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
Ferris depicts Paul’s difficulties: in the workplace, he struggles to say good morning, has problems with the office manager.... [He's] an appealing—albeit self-involved—everyman, but Ferris’s effort to take on big topics...feels more like a set of thought experiments than an organic or character-driven story.
Publishers Weekly
As in his earlier novels, Ferris is both laugh-out-loud funny and even profound, often on the same page. [Paul O'Rourke's] journey to self-awareness is designed to be both amusing and thought provoking, allowing readers to take their own existential ride.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Utterly compelling....Ferris brilliantly channels the suburban angst of Yates and Cheever for the new millenium.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A bizarre case of identity theft forces a dentist to question his beliefs in this funny, thought-provoking return to form by Ferris.... Smart, sad, hilarious and eloquent, this shows a writer at the top of his game and surpassing the promise of his celebrated debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the book's opening paragraph, Paul O'Rouke tells us that...
The mouth is a weird place: "not quite inside and not quite outside...but something in between...admitting access to an interior most people would rather not contemplate—where cancer starts, where the heart is broken, where the soul might just fail to turn up.
What kind of thematic concerns does this paragraph hint at for the book as a whole. Consider a later statement Paul makes that he is always "on the outside looking in."
2. How do the conditions of his patients' mouths affect, or perhaps simply correspond to, Paul's general view of humanity?
3. How would you describe Paul, his attitudes toward people and life, his relationship with women—in fact, his overall engagement in life? Betsy Convoy, his dental hygienist, accuses Paul of having a low opinion of humanity. Is that a fair assessment?
4. How has Paul's father's suicide affected his life as an adult?
5. What does baseball represent to Paul? Why is he such an avid Red Sox fan, and at the same time, why does he despair after the Sox finally win the World Series? SPOILER ALERT: Consider, too, the final pages of the book when Paul buys the Chicago Cubs cap...and agrees to play cricket with the Nepali kids in the street.
6. How would you describe Paul's relationships with women, primarily Samantha Santacroce and Connie Plotz. What does he want from them and from their families?
7. Paul tells us, "Everything is always something, but something—and here is the rub—could never be everything. What does he mean?
8. Why doesn't Paul believe in God? He tells us that he would have liked to: "Now there was something that could have been everything better than anything else." Why does he doubt?
9. What are the blog posts and Tweets in Paul's name about? How do they affect Paul? At first he is angry but becomes less and less so as the messages progress—why the change? Why do the posts offend Connie's Uncle Stuart? Are they antisemitic?
10. Who are the Ulms...and the Amalekites...and the Edomites? What is their relationship to the Hebrews in the Bible? The Ulms believe God has commanded them to doubt his existence. How is it possible to doubt the existence of God, who has revealed his existence to you?
11. What were Paul's reasons for not wanting to have children with Connie? SPOILER ALERT: He changes his mind toward the end of the book—why? What revelation does the pregnant patient elicit in Paul? Contrast his reaction to the expectant mother with his reaction to the marketing executive who just earlier had delayed treatment of his three cavities.
12. In what way is the billionaire hedge fund manager Pete Mercer a foil for Paul O'Rourke? How are they similar—and how are they different? SPOILER ALERT: Why does Mercer shoot himself after learning about Mirav Mendelsohn and Arthur Grant? How does Paul react o Mirav's story?
13. What is your reaction to the story of Arthur Grant and his desire to convert to Judaism? Consider how Paul O'Rouke's story parallels (to some degree) Grant's. What about Mirav—why after so many years has she returned to the fold?
14. Is this book religious...or anti-religious? Does Paul end up believing in God or not?
15. How has Paul changed by the end of the book? What do you predict for him?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry, 2005
Penguin Group (USA)
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143035091
Summary
History is made up of memory, and memory is a storyteller. Sebastian Barry knows this, and knows that the vast movement of history, politics, and war is a cloth woven of the threads of personal experience, of the ways in which we come to cherish personal beliefs.
In A Long Long Way, Barry uses his exceptional gifts to tell the story of Ireland’s entry into the First World War through the heart and mind of one young soldier.
Willie Dunne, brother of Annie from Barry’s previous novel Annie Dunne, joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at age seventeen because he is less than six feet tall. Six feet is the height requirement for becoming a policeman. Willie’s father is a policeman and is disappointed that his son cannot follow in his footsteps. Willie becomes a soldier instead. While many around him are willing to fight because of the promise of home rule for Ireland, such beliefs are still foggy in Willie’s young mind. Like so many young men, he wants to please his father and prove himself a man. One of the many truths revealed in this story is the way in which the relentless violence of war is fueled by such simple motivations.
The history of Ireland’s role in the Great War is not well remembered, and Barry is a master at embodying political issues in the hearts of his characters, with all the ambivalence and emotion of the human heart. Willie’s father is devoted to king and country while Willie must question many familiar assumptions as he develops the ability to hold his own opinion. The hideous daily violence of war and the larger political beliefs that seem to make it necessary are the raw material that Barry uses to ask a more fundamental question: How does a person come to think for him- or herself?
As one character says to Willie, "The curse of the world is people thinking thoughts that are only thoughts which have been given to them. They’re not their own thoughts. They’re like cuckoos in their heads. Their own thoughts are tossed out and cuckoo thoughts put in instead" (p. 9). Barry is asking what makes people think and behave as they do. Almost one hundred years after the events in this novel, with the world still engaged in war after war, could any question be more important?
Barry, who is also a poet, writes with a lyrical power that makes this lost world pulse with reality. The music and beauty of Irish speech is everywhere here and is all the more poignant when brought to bear on the terror and madness of life in the trenches.
Barry’s knowledge of his characters is deeply felt, and their story is shared by all of us who live in a world continually threatened by war and by unexamined beliefs. A Long Long Way is a work of profound sadness and beauty that rings with the truth of what it is to be human. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1955
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Catholic University School and Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Book of the Year; James Tait Black Memorial Prize;
Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE (France); Walter Scott Prize
• Currently—lives in Wicklow, Ireland
Sebastian Barry, an Irish playwright, novelist and poet is considered one of his country's finest writers, noted for his dense literary writing style. Born in Dublin, his mother was the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side (2011) was longlisted for the Booker, and his most recent novel was published in 2014, The Temporary Gentleman.
Novels and plays
Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in 1988 at the Abbey theatre, Boss Grady's Boys.
Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom (1995). The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913–1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.
Both the play The Steward of Christendom (1995) and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
He also wrote the satirical Hinterland (2002), based loosely on former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, called it "feeble, puerile, trite, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive", while The Telegraph called it “as exciting as a lukewarm Spud-U-Like covered in rancid marge and greasy baked beans.”
Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way (2005) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One city one book event. The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. (Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in his 1995 play The Steward of Christendom.)
His novel The Secret Scripture (2008) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (the oldest such award in the UK), the Costa Book of the Year; the French translation Le testament cache won the 2010 Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE. It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English (2010), inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes.
On Canaan's Side (2011), Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from (the 2005 novel) A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from (the 1995 play) The Steward of Christendom, who emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.
His most recent novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency.
Academia
Barry's academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996).
Personal
Barry lives in County Wicklow with his wife, actress Alison Deegan, and their three children. (From Wikipedia. Retreived 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
After four years of brutal trench fighting, Willie Dunne...is still a "long long way" from home.... Barry lingers too long on the particulars of the battlefield... [and the book] often lacks the nonsoldier human faces necessary to fully counterpoint the coarseness of military conflict.
Publishers Weekly
This novel of Ireland and World War I wears a cloak of gloom and doom.... Those not familiar with British-Irish history may find some of the personal conflicts and politics in the novel confusing, but nevertheless a compellingly sad, if difficult, read. —Marta Segal
Booklist
Barry's prequel to the fine Annie Dunne (2002) turns to WWI for the story of a young Dublin soldier who loses love, crown, country, and family in the war-torn desolation.... Willie's end will be alone—and utterly, utterly pointless. Flawless, honest, humane, moving.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Gretta’s father, Mr. Lawlor, tells Willie, "I don’t care what a man thinks as long as he knows his own mind," (p. 90) and he is also the character who talks about "cuckoo thoughts," as quoted in the introduction above. Does Willie come to know his own mind in the course of this story? What is it that he comes to know? Is it a matter of knowing what his political opinions are or something more?
2. Willie enlists because he isn’t tall enough to become a policeman, and other characters reveal their motivations for joining the war to be just as personal: poverty, family circumstances, a wife’s burned hand. Does this mean that these young soldiers are not affected by the larger issues of the war or by the question of home rule for Ireland? How do they come to terms with these larger political questions? How do personal motivations interact with political beliefs for these young men?
3. Willie’s father is loyal to England, and as a teenager Willie has no reason to question his father’s viewpoint. But as he begins to see more of the world and its politics, he must struggle to make sense of ambiguity and conflicting emotions. Barry writes, "The Parliament in London had said there would be Home Rule for Ireland at the end of the war; therefore, said John Redmond, Ireland was for the first time in seven hundred years in effect a country. So she could go to war as a nation at last—nearly—in the sure and solemnly given promise of self-rule. The British would keep their promise and Ireland must shed her blood generously" (p. 14). How does Barry represent the complexities of this historical struggle through his characters? Are they naïve? Are they exploited by political forces beyond their understanding?
4. Barry’s descriptions of life in the trenches are detailed and vivid. He writes, "When they came into their trench he felt small enough. The biggest thing there was the roaring of Death and the smallest thing was a man" (p. 24). Willie spends most of the war in these trenches, where one can’t see out, can’t see the enemy, has little or no idea of what is happening, and has only one’s immediate neighbors for comfort or sources of information. Is this a useful metaphor for war itself? How does Willie’s experience in these trenches influence his developing ideas about the war, the enemy, nationalism, and his own life?
5. The larger issues in this novel are all based in history: The Royal Dublin Fusiliers are real, and the story of Ireland’s role in World War I, and of the war’s influence on Ireland’s struggle for Home Rule, is true. How does Barry represent these historical events through his characters’ thoughts and emotions? Is this an effective way of revealing deeper truths about historical events? Do the personal struggles of these characters add to an understanding of what happened in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century?
6. Willie and his father are different in many ways, as they come to hold very different beliefs about the war and about Ireland. In what ways are they the same?
7. One of the most powerful passages in the novel describes Willie’s first encounter with mustard gas and its horrible effects. Part of what makes it so fearful is the fact that the soldiers have no idea what it is or what it will do to them. And after they learn what it is, they consider it a sign that the Germans do not respect the rules of war. "Now they knew it was a filthy gas sent over by the filthy Boche to work perdition on them, a thing forbidden, it was said, by the articles of war. No general, no soldier could be proud of this work; no human person could take the joy of succeeding from these tortured deaths" (p. 51). Why would one form of killing be considered more respectable than another? Why is this form of attack considered less "human" than direct combat? Would it be seen in the same way today?
8. Why does Jesse Kirwan want to talk to Willie before he dies? What is the significance of this character in this story? What does he know that Willie does not know, and what does Willie learn from him? What meaning does Kirwan’s execution have, both to Willie personally and to the Irish army?
9. In what ways are women important in this story? How do Gretta and his sisters influence Willie? What do they represent to him? How does the war affect the roles of men and women in Irish society?
10. As the war approaches its end, Willie wonders how to go on in life when so many of his cherished ideals have been undermined. "How could a fella go out and fight for his country when his country would dissolve behind him like sugar in the rain?....How could a fella like Willie hold England and Ireland equally in his heart, like his father before him, like his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, when both now would call him a traitor, though his heart was clear and pure, as pure as a heart can be after three years of slaughter?" (p. 282). What kinds of answers might Willie’s story suggest to these questions? Does the novel resolve any of the ambiguity it raises in the conflict between the personal and the political? What kind of meaning seems important to Barry in the face of the bleak suffering of this story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Temporary Gentleman
Sebastian Barry, 2014
Viking Adult
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143127123
Summary
A stunning new novel from the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture.
In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all the extraordinary events that he has seen.
A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in World War II, an engineer, a UN observer—has brought him to this point. But the memory that weighs heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan, and their tempestuous, heartbreaking marriage. Mai was once the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman who, after sharing a life with Jack, gradually slipped from his grasp.
Award-winning author Sebastian Barry’s The Temporary Gentleman is the sixth book in his cycle of separate yet interconnected plays and novels, which brilliantly reimagine characters from Barry’s own family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1955
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Catholic University School and Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Book of the Year; James Tait Black Memorial Prize;
Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE (France); Walter Scott Prize
• Currently—lives in Wicklow, Ireland
Sebastian Barry, an Irish playwright, novelist and poet is considered one of his country's finest writers, noted for his dense literary writing style. Born in Dublin, his mother was the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side (2011) was longlisted for the Booker, and his most recent novel was published in 2014, The Temporary Gentleman.
Novels and plays
Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in 1988 at the Abbey theatre, Boss Grady's Boys.
Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom (1995). The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913–1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.
Both the play The Steward of Christendom (1995) and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
He also wrote the satirical Hinterland (2002), based loosely on former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, called it "feeble, puerile, trite, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive", while The Telegraph called it “as exciting as a lukewarm Spud-U-Like covered in rancid marge and greasy baked beans.”
Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way (2005) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One city one book event. The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. (Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in his 1995 play The Steward of Christendom.)
His novel The Secret Scripture (2008) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (the oldest such award in the UK), the Costa Book of the Year; the French translation Le testament cache won the 2010 Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE. It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English (2010), inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes.
On Canaan's Side (2011), Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from (the 2005 novel) A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from (the 1995 play) The Steward of Christendom, who emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.
His most recent novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency.
Academia
Barry's academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996).
Personal
Barry lives in County Wicklow with his wife, actress Alison Deegan, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retreived 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
[A] lyrical but ironic period story. Jack McNulty...is living in self-imposed exile in Ghana, recalling his days as a soldier and civil servant, and as a suitor, lover, and husband to the haunting and haunted Mai Kirwan.... Barry again proves himself a prose artist and a skilled navigator of the rocky shoals of modern morality and Irish heritage.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Expanding on characters and events in his preceding novels, Barry tells the story of Jack McNulty, a "temporary gentleman" because his commission in the British Army during World War II wasn't made permanent.... [A] bold lyricism, unforgettable characters, and epic historicism. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
Barry’s prose has a dreamlike quality....The raw elegance of his storytelling has its own beauty.
Booklist
Pensive, quietly lyrical.... [T]he strongest part of Barry’s tale is in its visitation of the past, when McNulty falls deeply in love with Mai Kirwan, the rose of Sligo. There, Barry falls into Joycean reveries.... Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1.The Temporary Gentleman opens just before Jack is plunged into the sea. How does this scene set the stage for the rest of the novel?
2. Jack is considered a “temporary gentleman” because of his status as an Irishman with a temporary officer’s commission in the British army. Does your understanding of the phrase change over the course of the book?
3. If Mai adored her father as much as Jack believed, why did she ignore his pleas to end her relationship with Jack? What does Mai’s obsession with the cinema tell you about her character?
4. After Mai and Jack have their first child, Mai’s brother—also named Jack—signs Grattan House over to them. Could Jack McNulty have maintained the family home if he hadn’t been a gambler and a drinker?
5. Is it really possible that Jack could live with Mai and not realize she had begun to drink?
6. Discuss the way in which Jack’s red hair is used as a symbol for his relationship with Mai.
7. Jack’s parents provided a loving and supportive home for their children. Yet, each of their sons encounters mostly tragedy and heartbreak. Was their generation somehow damned by the era in which they lived?
8. One night on the battlefield, Jack McNulty meets the other Jack McNulty—his distant cousin from the Protestant branch of the McNultys. What is the significance of their encounter?
9. Why does Sebastian Barry make Tom Quaye the same age as Jack and give him the same name as Jack’s brother and an Irish accent?
10. Does Jack do all he can to protect Maggie and Ursula? Does he deserve their forgiveness?
11. After Mai’s death, Jack makes it his mission to solve the mystery of his mother’s parentage. And in Ghana, he works to reunite Tom Quaye with his estranged wife. Do these acts atone for the pain he inflicted on Mai?
12. Why does Jack plan to burn the memoir that he so painstakingly wrote?
13. Does Jack truly want to return to Ireland? Or does he invite his own death?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry, 2008
Penguin Group (USA)
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143115694
Summary
In the beginning, Dr. William Grene’s interest in the almost impossibly old woman is merely professional, tinged perhaps with a hint of curiosity.
Roseanne McNulty, one hundred years old, was one of the most beautiful girls in County Sligo, Ireland, in her youth. She has been confined in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, where Dr. Grene is the senior psychiatrist, since the days of World War II.
Now, in compliance with a change in government policy that has decreed the closing of the hospital, Dr. Grene is evaluating the facility’s patients to make dispassionate recommendations about which ones are mentally fit to resume life in society.
As he interviews Roseanne to determine her mental state his neutrality evaporates. Reluctant to cooperate but curiously compassionate toward him, the ancient woman impresses him as "a formidable person," and indeed she is. Cleverly, carefully, she keeps the doctor at bay, denying him access to the deepest secrets of her past.
All the while, however, Roseanne is at work on a personal narrative of the very facts she withholds from her doctor—the "secret scripture" of the novel’s title. Over a period of years, holding almost nothing back, she has patiently recorded the details of her preconfinement life, including her father’s ill-starred attempt to give comfort to a band of Irish rebels, a cataclysmic fire at a local orphanage, and the descent of her mother into derangement.
Her narrative becomes a chronicle not only of her deep emotions, but also of a turbulent era in her nation’s history, from the upheavals of the Irish civil war to the German bombing of Belfast during World War II. It also speaks personally and poignantly of the struggles of Roseanne’s Protestant family to live a peaceful, unmolested life in the midst of religious prejudice.
Slipping continually into her story is a dark and ominous specter: a Catholic priest named Father Gaunt who is committed to preserving the perceived purity of his flock and the values of his religion, even if it means destroying the lives and families of those who hold dissenting views.
As Roseanne scribbles out her testament, Dr. Grene also prepares a journal, intended at first to contain his professional findings but soon expanding to contain his reflections on history, the human condition, and the failure of his relationship with his wife. Gradually, the two lonely diarists forge a bond, which, in the end, proves far closer than either could possibly have imagined.
A finalist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and winner of the Costa Award for Best Novel, The Secret Scripture encompasses not only some of the most painful episodes in Irish history, but also delves deeply into the emotions of love, passion, and soul-destroying prejudice. Casting doubt upon the reliability of human perceptions and, indeed, the very nature of truth, it also upholds the possibilities of dignity and redemption. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1955
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Catholic University School and Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Book of the Year; James Tait Black Memorial Prize;
Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE (France); Walter Scott Prize
• Currently—lives in Wicklow, Ireland
Sebastian Barry, an Irish playwright, novelist and poet is considered one of his country's finest writers, noted for his dense literary writing style. Born in Dublin, his mother was the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side (2011) was longlisted for the Booker, and his most recent novel was published in 2014, The Temporary Gentleman.
Novels and plays
Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in 1988 at the Abbey theatre, Boss Grady's Boys.
Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom (1995). The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913–1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.
Both the play The Steward of Christendom (1995) and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
He also wrote the satirical Hinterland (2002), based loosely on former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, called it "feeble, puerile, trite, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive", while The Telegraph called it "as exciting as a lukewarm Spud-U-Like covered in rancid marge and greasy baked beans."
Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way (2005) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One city one book event. The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. (Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in his 1995 play The Steward of Christendom.)
His novel The Secret Scripture (2008) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (the oldest such award in the UK), the Costa Book of the Year; the French translation Le testament cache won the 2010 Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE. It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English (2010), inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes.
On Canaan's Side (2011), Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from (the 2005 novel) A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from (the 1995 play) The Steward of Christendom, who emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.
His most recent novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency.
Academia
Barry's academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996).
Personal
Barry lives in County Wicklow with his wife, actress Alison Deegan, and their three children. (From Wikipedia. Retreived 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
[Barry writes] in language of surpassing beauty.... It is like a song, with all the pulse of the Irish language, a song sung liltingly and plaintively from the top of Ben Bulben into the airy night.
Dinitia Smith - New York Times
Barry recounts all this in prose of often startling beauty. Just as he describes people stopping in the street to look at Roseanne, so I often found myself stopping to look at the sentences he gave her, wanting to pause and copy them down.
Margot Livesey - Boston Globe
Luminous and lyrical.
Oprah Magazine
The latest from Barry pits two contradictory narratives against each other in an attempt to solve the mystery of a 100-year-old mental patient.... Written in captivating, lyrical prose, Barry's novel is both a sparkling literary puzzle and a stark cautionary tale of corrupted power.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [M]asterfully and with intense emotionality that nevertheless refuses to become maudlin. Another notable part of Barry’s artistry is the sheer poetry of his prose, now heart-stoppingly lyrical, now heart-poundingly thrilling. An unforgettable portrait of mid-twentieth-century Ireland. —Patricia Monaghan
Booklist
Barry writes vigorously and passionately about his native land. The story is told antiphonally, alternating narratives between a secret journal...and the "Commonplace Book" of...psychiatrist Dr. Grene.... Barry beautifully braids together the convoluted threads of his narrative
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Although Roseanne is very reluctant to converse with Dr. Grene about her past, she pours her recollections into her secret journal. Why do you think she is so reticent with regard to the psychiatrist and so blatant in her private revelations?
2. Do you think that The Secret Scripture is specifically intended as a story about Ireland and the Irish psyche, or is it a more universal story about issues that affect oppressed people everywhere?
3. The theme of woman as a sexual transgressor and outcast has long engaged writers of fiction from Hawthorne to Hardy and beyond. In what ways, if any, did The Secret Scripture contribute to your understanding of women who are punished for their sexual behavior?
4. Early in the novel, Joe Clear calls Father Gaunt "a good man." Subsequent events call this judgment gravely into question. Playing devil’s advocate, can you think of reasons for calling Father Gaunt a good man? If so, then why does his "goodness" have such disastrous effects?
5. Father Gaunt’s account of Roseanne’s life is clouded by his prejudices. Roseanne’s autobiographical testament is rendered unreliable by her age and her suspect mental condition. Which version of events do you find more trustworthy? Is either account completely untrustworthy?
6. How does Dr. Grene’s relationship with his wife, Bet, relate to the principal plot of the novel?
7. Early in the novel, Joe Clear drops feathers and hammers from a tower in a botched attempt to explain the force of gravity to his daughter. Why do you think Barry inserts this curious vignette into the book?
8. What character names in The Secret Scripture do you think serve a symbolic function? What, specifically, do these names suggest?
9. Although Roseanne Clear is plainly victimized by those around her, she also makes some very poor choices, like going to meet John Lavelle on Knocknarea and seeking help from Mrs. McNulty when she is on the verge of giving birth. Is she in some strange sense complicit in her own suffering?
10. The novel explores the risks inherent in seeking truth. Have your own searches for truth sometimes had unforeseen consequences?
11. In the end, do you find Roseanne’s story tragic or triumphant? Explain.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)