Half-Blood Blues
Esi Edugyan, 2011
Picador : Macmillan
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250012708
Summary
Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris cafe. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black.
Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film’s premier, Sid’s role in Falk’s fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey.
From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk’s incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977 or 1978
• Where—Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Education—University of Victoria; Johns Hopkins University
• Awards—Giller Prize; Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
• Currently—lives in Victoria, British Columbia
Esi Edugyan is a Canadian novelist, born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, to Ghanaian immigrant parents. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University before publishing her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, in 2004.
Despite favourable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty securing a publisher for her second fiction manuscript. She spent some time as a writer-in-residence in Stuttgart, Germany, which inspired her to write another novel, Half-Blood Blues, about a mixed-race jazz musician in World War II-era Europe who is abducted by the Nazis as a "Rhineland Bastard."
Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and Governor General's Award for English language fiction. She was one of two Canadian writers, alongside Patrick deWitt, to make all four award lists in 2011. On November 8, 2011 she won the Giller Prize. Again, alongside deWitt, Half-Blood Blues was also shortlisted for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In April 2012, Half-Blood Blues also won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
In 2018, Edugyan released Washington Black, which was long-listed for that year's Man Booker Prize.
Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is married to novelist and poet Steven Price. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The novel is narrated by…Sid Griffiths, who…speaks with a black Baltimorean accent, punctuated with a hint of German slang, and even if his voice sounds a little off…it doesn't get in the way of Edugyan's nimble storytelling. She tempers the plot's Casablanca-style melodrama…with healthy doses of quotidian banter, admirably capturing the bickering camaraderie of the young musicians.
Andrew Haig Martin - New York Times Book Review
Unforgettable…Brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed. It’s a work that promises to lead black literature in a whole new direction.
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Destined to win a wide audience… Deftly paced in incident and tone, moving from scenes of snappy dialogue, in which band members squabble and banter humorously, to tense, atmospheric passages of description…Edugyan makes fresh tracks in this richly-imagined story.… Half-Blood Blues itself represent a kind of flowering—that of a gifted storyteller
Toronto Star
A superbly atmospheric prologue kick-starts a thrilling story about truth and betrayal… [A] brilliantly fast-moving novel.
Times (London)
Shines with knowledge, emotional insight, and historical revisionism…Truly extraordinary in its evocation of time and place, its shimmering jazz vernacular, its pitch-perfect male banter and its period slang.
Independent (London)
(Starred review.) Edugyan’s second novel, shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, pays a mournful tribute to the Hot-Time Swingers, a once-legendary six-piece German-American multiracial jazz ensemble gigging in Berlin on the eve of WWII. When the pianist is picked up by the Gestapo, the remaining members flee to Paris with forged passports to meet Louis Armstrong in hopes of cutting a record. After the German occupation of Paris, “the Boots” arrest Hieronymous (“Hiero”) Falk, the band’s 20-year-old-genius Afro-German trumpet player, leaving the band with one half-finished record, one shattered love affair, and one too many secrets. The story of the band’s demise and partial resurrection, as seen through the eyes of Sid Griffiths—the upright bass player—unfolds in richly scripted vignettes alternating between 1939/1940 (when Hiero disappears) and 1992 (when Sid and Chip Jones, the percussionist, revisit Berlin for a Hieronymous Falk festival and walk down memory lane). By the book’s end, readers will have pieced together most of the truth behind Sid’s biased recounting of events, but nothing will prepare them for the disclosure of an ultimate betrayal. While the rarely explored subject adds to the book’s allure, what stands out most is its cadenced narration and slangy dialogue, as conversations, both spoken and unspoken, snap, sizzle, and slide off the page. Sid’s motivation can feel obscure, but his lessons learned are hard-won all the same.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Canadian Edugyan’s second novel jumps between Berlin and Paris in 1939–40 and Berlin in 1992 to tell the story of a German American jazz band and its star trumpeter, Hieronymous Falk.... That narrow moment in time when the freewheeling decadence of Weimar Germany gave way to jackbooted tyranny has been the subject of much fine fiction, but Edugyan is the first to overlay it with jazz history. It makes a sublime marriage. —Bill Ott
Booklist
In Edugyan's second novel...some jazz musicians find their music and lives endangered in Nazi Germany and occupied Paris. Paris 1940. Nazis everywhere. The musicians are huddled in a shabby apartment. One of them, without papers, goes out on a reckless search for milk. Bam! He's arrested and deported to a German camp. Edugyan (a Canadian of Ghanaian descent) has incorporated the novel's climax in this taut opening.... A memorable evocation of the defiant thrill of jazz at a terrible time.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. To what end does the novel take the reader back and forth in time and place, from Berlin to Paris in the 1930s and 40s and Europe in the 1990s? How does this affect the reader?
2. Delilah is a major female character in an otherwise largely male populated novel. How does she push against the gender relations in the novel, and how does her romantic involvement with the other characters affect the reader’s sense of her character? Would you describe her as an early feminist?
3. Do you think that Sid, the narrator, is at the heart of Half Blood Blues? Whose novel is this?
4. Half-Blood Blues explores, among other things, the jazz era of the 1930s. In what ways does jazz affect the novel’s structure, the voice of its characters, the tone of the book?
5. One reviewer criticized the novel on the grounds that the Afro-German experience has been sidelined. How does telling Hiero’s story from the point-of-view of a different character affect it? What are the moral implications of doing so?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
How Should a Person Be?
Sheila Heti, 2012
Henry Holt and Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805094725
Summary
Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a twentysomething playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create.
When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close—sometimes too close—observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.
Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the brilliant and always innovative Sheila Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. It's a totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, which breathes fresh wisdom into the eternal questions: What is the sincerest way to love? What kind of person should you be? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 25, 1976
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—University of Toronto; National
Theatre School of Canada.
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario
Heti was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her parents are Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She studied art history and philosophy at the University of Toronto and playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada. She works as Interviews Editor at The Believer where she also conducts interviews regularly, and she wrote a column on acting for Maisonneuve. Her brother is the comedian David Heti.
Writings
Heti's novel, Ticknor, was released in 2005. The novel's main characters are based on real people: William Hickling Prescott and George Ticknor, although the facts of their lives are altered. Her short story collection, The Middle Stories, was published in 2001 Canada when she was twenty-four, and by McSweeney's in the United States, and translated into German, French, Spanish and Dutch. In 2011, she published The Chairs are Where The People Go which she wrote with her friend, Misha Glouberman. The New Yorker called it "a triumph of conversational philosophy" and named it one of the Best Books of 2011.
Heti's book How Should a Person Be? was published in 2010, (2012 in the U.S.)—in which she describes as book of constructed reality, based on recorded interviews with her friends, particularly the painter Margaux Williamson. It was chosen by the New York Times as one of the 100 Best Books of 2012 and by James Wood of The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year. It was also included on year-end lists on Salon, New Republic, New York Observer, and more. In her 2007 interview with Dave Hickey for Believer, she noted, "Increasingly I’m less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just—I can’t do it."
Other activities
Extras
• Heti is the creator of Trampoline Hall, a popular monthly lecture series based in Toronto and New York, at which people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The New Yorker praised the series for "celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness". It has sold out every show since its inception in December 2001.
• For the early part of 2008, Heti kept a blog called The Metaphysical Poll, where she posted the sleeping dreams people were having about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary season, which readers sent in.
• Heti was an actress as a child, and as a teenager appeared in shows directed by Hillar Liitoja, the founder and Artistic Director of the experiemental DNA Theatre.
• Heti appears in Margaux Williamson's 2010 film, Teenager Hamlet.
• Heti plays Lenore Doolan in Leanne Shapton's book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
I do not think this novel knows everything, but Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of.
David Haglund - New York Times Book Review
How Should a Person Be? teeters between youthful pretension and irony in ways that are as old as Flaubert’s Sentimental Education...but Ms. Heti manages to give Sheila’s struggle a contemporary and particular fee.... How Should a Person Be? reveals a talented young voice of a still inchoate generation.
Kay Hymowitz - Wall Street Journal
A perfect summer read. It is also one of the bravest, strangest, most original novels I’ve read this year…. We care about Sheila’s plight, but the souls in limbo here are, ultimately, our own. With so many references to the world outside of the fiction, this novel demands to know: Can art inform our lives, and tell us how to be?
Christopher Boucher - Boston Globe
Brutally honest and stylistically inventive, cerebral and sexy, this ‘novel from life’ employs a grab bag of literary forms and narrative styles on its search for the truth…meandering and entertaining exploration of the big questions, rousting aesthetic, moral, religious and ethical concerns most novels wouldn’t touch.
Michael David Lukas - San Francisco Chronicle
[Sheila Heti] has an appealing restlessness, a curiosity about new forms, and an attractive freedom from pretentiousness or cant…How Should a Person Be? offers a vital and funny picture of the excitements and longueurs of trying to be a young creator in a free, late-capitalist Western City…This talented writer may well have identified a central dialectic of twenty-first-century postmodern being.
James Wood - The New Yorker
I read this eccentric book in one sitting, amazed, disgusted, intrigued, sometimes titillated I’ll admit to that, but always in awe of this new Toronto writer who seems to be channeling Henry Miller one minute and Joan Didion the next. Heti’s book is pretty ugly fiction, accent on the pretty.
Alan Cheuse - NPR
[A] breakthrough novel...Just as Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps (written at the same age) was an explosive and thrilling rejoinder to the serious, male coming-of-age saga exemplified during her era by Sartre’s The Age of Reason, Heti’s book exuberantly appropriates the same, otherwise tired genre to encompass female experience. How Should a Person Be?’s deft, picaresque construction, which lightly-but-devastatingly parodies the mores of Toronto’s art scene, has more in common with Don Quixote than with Lena Dunham’s HBO series “Girls” or the fatuous blogs and social media it will, due to its use of constructed reality, inevitably be compared with…Like [Kathy] Acker, [Heti] is a brilliant, original thinker and an engaging writer.
Chris Kraus - LA Review of Books
Toronto-based Heti and her real-life friends, including Misha Glouberman with whom she wrote a previous book (Where the Chairs Are Where the People Go, 2011), are central characters in this meandering novel that attempts to erase the line between fact and fiction. Sheila is a recently divorced playwright...attempting to finish a commissioned play.... She spends time with her friend Margaux, an artist who lives with Misha.... For a while, Sheila and Margaux fall into a pattern of heavy partying and druggy debauchery until Margaux pulls away. Sheila worries she's a narcissist, not without good reason perhaps...[and] leaves Toronto for New York, but she's no happier there.... Pretentious navel-gazing without the humor of HBO's Girls, which covers similar terrain.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How Should a Person Be? is constructed as part fiction; part play; part confession. How has this mixture of genres shaped your understanding of the novel and how do the different elements converge to create the story?
2. Describe Sheila. What kind of person is she at the beginning of the novel, and what kind of person does she set out to be? What aae some things that she does in order to become a “complete person?” Do you think she succeeds? Why or why not?
3. Why is Sheila so drawn to Margaux when they first meet? How would you describe their relationship and what makes them such a dynamic pair?
4. The concept of beauty is highly subjective, especially in the context of this book. Margaux says that there are things that are “not ugly for the world,” but “looks like death” to her. What is your definition of "ugly?" What is the significance of the ugly painting contest?
5. Israel seems to possess an intoxicating power over Sheila. Why is she so consumed by him? How is she finally able to free herself? Why do you think it was important to Sheila to cut ties with Israel?
6. How are the ideas of fate and freedom manifested in the novel? Are our lives dictated by fate or is fate a self-fulfilling prophesy? How does Sheila reconcile her fear of her fate and her desire to live a meaningful life?
7. Religion is a major conceit throughout the novel. Sheila often finds solace in religious references and comparisons. What significance does Sheila find in these references to Moses and the Israelites? Are religion and fate bound together?
8. Margaux claims that boundaries allow you to love someone. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
9. When are human beings cheaters, and how did Sheila’s cheating affect Margaux? How do you distinguish between truly being and merely appearing to be?
10. Towards the end of the book, the author includes one chapter that is isolated from the rest of the narrative titled “The Gravedigger.” What is the significance of this story and how does it relate to the rest of the book?
11. In this novel, art takes on various forms—the conversations Sheila records with Margaux; the work done at the salon; even the actual book is a form of art. For Heti, artistry and life seem intertwined. Is art a depiction of life, or is it the other way around?
12. Does the book answer the question of how a person should be? Do you think there is an answer? How do you want to be?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
At Last (Patrick Melrose Series, 5)
Edward St. Aubyn, 2012
Picador : Macmillan
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250023902
Summary
Here, from the writer described by The Guardian as “our purest living prose stylist” and whom Alan Hollinghurst has called “the most brilliant English novelist of his generation,” is a work of glittering social comedy, profound emotional truth, and acute verbal wit. At Last is also the stunning culmination of one of the great fiction enterprises of the past two decades in the life of the English novel.
As readers of Edward St. Aubyn's extraordinary earlier works—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and the Man Booker Prize finalist Mother's Milk—are well aware, for Patrick Melrose, “family” has always been a double-edged sword. At Last begins as friends, relatives, and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, Eleanor. An Americam heiress, Eleanor married into the British aristocracy, giving up the grandeur of her upbringing for “good works” freely bestowed on everyone but her own son, who finds himself questioning whether his transition to a life without parents will indeed be the liberation he had so long imagined.
The service ends, and family and friends gather for a final party. Amid the social niceties and social horrors, Patrick begins to sense the prospect of release from the extremes of his childhood, and at the end of the day, alone in his room, the promise some form of safety...at last. (From the publisher.)
The four previous novels in the series—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk—have been collected in a single volume in the U.S., titled The Patrick Melrose Novels.
Author Bio
• Birth—January 14, 1960
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Betty Trask Award; Prix Femina
Etranger; South Bank Show Award;
• Currently—lives in London, England
Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of seven novels of which Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.
His first novel, Never Mind (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with Bad News (1992), Some Hope (1994), and Mother's Milk (2005) have been collectively published under the title The Patrick Melrose Novels. The series is semi-autobiographical.
His other fiction consists of On the Edge (1998), which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and A Clue to the Exit (2000).
The Patrick Melrose series
The series begins with Never Mind (1992) in Patrick’s fifth year in a mansion in the South of France. It paints a picture of his father as a monstrous member of the fading English nobility who believes in suave public school (elite English boarding school) cruelty and that a truly noble man is languid. It is revealed that Patrick was the product of rape and that at this mansion his father raped him, not for any sexual pleasure but out of mere insatiable cruelty.
In the second book, Bad News (1992), Patrick is in his early 20s, reveling in a heroin addiction, and in New York to collect his father’s ashes. The novel portrays Patrick’s searches and highs and avoidance of the significance of his father’s death and the vague pleasure he gets from it.
In Some Hope (1994), Patrick is recovering from his addiction, finally admits to a friend about his father’s actions towards him in his childhood and goes to a party which is also attended by Princess Margaret where St Aubyn gets to sketch an absurd upper class.
In Mother’s Milk (2005) Patrick has a family and children. His mother, who in his childhood victimized him through inaction, now actively victimizes him through having an insatiable need to be charitable and effectively disinheriting Patrick by giving away the family home he grew up in to a new age religion foundation. He descends to a lower class than that of his ancestors and works as a lawyer.
If Mother’s Milk is about the wonders of birth and early childhood, At Last (2012) is a meditation on death. In the final instalment of the series his midlife crisis has caused his wife to leave him and his horrible mother has died. He finally deals with and accepts his history.
In 2012 Mother's Milk was made into a feature film, opening in the UK to some excellent reviews in publications such as the Guardian, Sight & Sound and the Observer. The screenplay was written by St Aubyn and director Gerald Fox. It stars Jack Davenport, Adrian Dunbar, Diana Quick and Margaret Tyzack in her last performance. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The thing that everyone loves about this man...is that his prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching intellect. As a sketcher of character, his wit—whether turned against pointless members of the aristocracy or hopeless crack dealers—is ticklingly wicked. As an analyser of broken minds and tired hearts he is as energetic, careful and creative as the perfect shrink. And when it comes to spinning a good yarn, whether over the grand scale of three volumes or within a single page of anecdote, he has a natural talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat.... [An] amazing book.
Melissa Katsoulis - London Times
St. Aubyn’s technique is to crystallise emotional intensity into sentences of arctic beauty, which can be caustically witty or brutal. His novels are uncommonly well controlled, and thus their impact is all the more powerful…. In At Last this crystallisation and control are on glittering display…. We have reached the pinnacle of a series that has plunged into darkness and risen towards light. At Last is both resounding end and hopeful beginning.
Philip Womack - Telegraph (UK)
For fans of the Melrose cycle, At Last provides some of the exultation and relief of watching [a] sailor, so often nearly drowned, bob, gasping, to the surface…if this is, as St. Aubyn's publisher claims, the "culmination" of the Melrose cycle, we can only wish Patrick well and be thankful that his travails have furnished the material for some of the most perceptive, elegantly written and hilarious novels of our era.
Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review
[T]he final installment of a remarkable cycle of novels…which chronicle the life of Mr. St. Aubyn's alter ego, Patrick, while creating a glittering (and scathing) portrait of the upper-class British world his family inhabits. The books are written with an utterly idiosyncratic combination of emotional precision, crystalline observation and black humor, as if one of Evelyn Waugh's wicked satires about British aristos had been mashed up with a searing memoir of abuse and addiction, and injected with Proustian meditations on the workings of memory and time…the Melrose books underscore [St. Aubyn's] gift for lassoing the extremes of human experience in coolly chiseled language; for using irony and exactitude to reconfigure the raw, painful facts of life into an art that somehow manages to be affecting, alarming and, yes, amusing, all at the same time.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
St. Aubyn writes with exquisite control and a brilliant comic touch.... An intelligent and surprisingly hopeful novel, a fitting conclusion to one of the best fictional cycles in contemporary fiction.
Anthony Domestico - Boston Globe
[O]ne of the most amazing reading experiences I've had in a decade. After all the suffering and torment and despair that Patrick Melrose has been through over the years, [St. Aubyn] leaves him in a very interesting place, and he does it all with his incredible examination of the sweep of time and the way our understanding of people changes over decades. All of that is done with this incredible, biting, witty, hilarious prose style, the elegant, classic English sentences that he writes and these amazing put-downs, and he's great at dissecting an entire social world with a really wicked scalpel.
Michael Chabon - Los Angeles Times
St. Aubyn’s skill with characterization, his dissection of how a personality warps, settles, or improves over time, is nowhere more evident than in his aging of Patrick, whose mood and mental state are a gauge for the tone of each novel.... At Last is far less dramatic than any previous Melrose book, although the humor and perfectly observed dialogue remain. Its calm is entirely suited to the wisdom Patrick Melrose has painfully, finally earned.
Victoria Beale - New Republic
It's tough competition for the most-underrated writer in the English language—there's plenty of neglect to go around—but if you put a Colt Commander to my head, I might well say it's St. Aubyn, the chronically under-published chronicler of abuse, dysfunction, alcoholism and worse in the English upper classes. At Last is the final novel, one thinks, in his series about his alter ego, the neurotic Patrick Melrose. It's pretty much a lock to be one of the funniest, saddest, most beautiful books of the year.
Lev Grossman - Time
In this fifth and final book in St. Aubyn's "Patrick Melrose" series, ...Patrick attends the funeral of his mother, who died after a lingering illness.... As his story ends, we find him reexamining his life. Can he connect with his sons? He would never hurt them as his father hurt him, but he is hurting them just the same by being so remote. Verdict: This well-written work has dark undertones and subtle, cutting humor, like an Augusten Burroughs novel with less zaniness and more cruelty. For those willing to tackle an emotionally difficult, unflinching narrative. —Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
With this title, St. Aubyn caps his five-volume cycle of Melrose novels. ...[E]vents in At Last take place over the course of a single day; in this case, the day of Patrick’s mother’s funeral. Despite his loss and his reduced circumstances...Patrick has “at last” found a measure of peace. With lacerating humor and razor-sharp imagery, St. Aubyn continues to work out his themes: the follies of the British upper class, “the psychological impact of inherited wealth,” the complex dynamics between parent and child. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
A London funeral stirs up a lot of memories but few epiphanies in this British author's latest, which concludes [the Patrick Melrose] trilogy.... Now, after two mute years in a wheelchair, his mother Eleanor has died, making Patrick a 45-year-old orphan. The action, such as it is, covers the crematorium funeral and subsequent reception; mixed in are family memories.... Patrick, more forgiving now, sees his "supposed persecutors," his parents, as "unhappy children" themselves. It's a curious conclusion. St. Aubyn tries for a Muriel Spark kind of black comedy but lacks her finesse.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Edward St. Aubyn describes Patrick as being torn between the lure of consolation and the lure of disappointment. Why does he find those options alluring? What aspects of a powerful, albeit masochistic, bond are captured in the fact that he mourns not the loss of his mother but the loss of longing for closeness to her?
2. Why does Nicholas derive pleasure from being snarky? In the book's opening scenes, was it fun or annoying to see him creating tension, on what should have been a somber occasion? At the end of the novel, do people react to his closing chapter with phoniness or candor?
3. Discuss Eleanor's marriage to David and what we learn about it in this novel. Why was she unable to choose between being his collaborator and his antagonist when it came to raising Patrick?
4. Patrick contemplates Eleanor's emotional legacy throughout her funeral. What legacies will he leave for Robert and Thomas? How is he able to break the cycle of his family's cruelty?
5. Discuss Annette's observations about Eleanor's spiritual side, delivered in a fairly lengthy eulogy. How does Annette's depiction compare to other impressions of Eleanor? What would Eleanor have thought of these spiritual philosophies, and those that Erasmus continues to ponder throughout the service?
6. What does Nancy's spending say about her memories of Jean, her stepfather? Why can't Nancy simply accept the reality of her situation? Why is the myth of endless wealth important for her to uphold?
7. St. Aubyn has spoken candidly with interviewers about the horrific incidents from his own life that inspired aspects of Patrick's story, including being brutalized by his father and recovering from drug addiction. How does it affect your reading to know that the plot is partially autobiographical?
8. What makes St. Aubyn a master of the art of gallows humor? Why are morbid subjects and despicable people often the best material for comedy?
9. On page 262, the author describes Patrick as getting comfortable with Keatsian mysteries, finally open to questions that can't necessarily be answered. What questions in your life and legacy can't really be answered? How could you make peace with this uncertainty?
10. Discuss the author's notion that those who appear to deserve the most blame actually deserve the most help. When is this true in the novel, and in your own life?
11. Why was it easy for Eleanor to give charitably to strangers but not to her own family and staff? What does her generosity say about her personality? What were some of the most striking differences between her public and private personae?
12. How does the transatlantic connection enhance At Last? What is Patrick's perspective on America, and how is his identity shaped by knowing about Eleanor's grandfather Jonson? Why was Southern culture meaningful to Eleanor? Did her image of it extend very far beyond the stereotypes of Porgy and Bess?
13. In At Last, how do Patrick's interactions with Mary, his wife, compare to his interactions with Julia, his former girlfriend? Is his attitude toward women different now that his mother is gone?
14. Discuss the transformations that Patrick has experienced in the Melrose novels you have read previously. He has evolved from anger and addiction to middle-age crises; what has he become in this final portrait?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Miss Timmins' School for Girls
Nayanna Currimbhoy, 2011
HarperCollins
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061997747
Summary
A murder at a British boarding school in the hills of western India launches a young teacher on the journey of a lifetime.
In 1974, three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, Charulata Apte arrives at Miss Timmins' School for Girls in Panchgani. Shy, sheltered, and running from a scandal that disgraced her Brahmin family, Charu finds herself teaching Shakespeare to rich Indian girls in a boarding school still run like an outpost of the British Empire. In this small, foreign universe, Charu is drawn to the charismatic teacher Moira Prince, who introduces her to pot-smoking hippies, rock -n' roll, and freedoms she never knew existed.
Then one monsoon night, a body is found at the bottom of a cliff, and the ordered worlds of school and town are thrown into chaos. When Charu is implicated in the murder—a case three intrepid schoolgirls take it upon themselves to solve—Charu's real education begins. A love story and a murder mystery, Miss Timmins' School for Girls is, ultimately, a coming-of-age tale set against the turbulence of the 1970s as it played out in one small corner of India. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Nayana Currimbhoy was raised in India where she attended an all-girls boarding school in a fairly remote hill station. She moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s, and has been a businesswoman and a freelance writer. She has written books, film scripts and articles about many things, including architecture and design, and a biography of Indira Gandhi. This is her first novel. Nayana lives in New York City with her husband, an architect, and their teenage daughter. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Currimbhoy's fiction debut is an absorbing atmospheric thriller set at a girl's boarding school in Panchgani, India. In 1974, Charu Apte is an impressionable 21-year-old new to teaching. Instead of conforming to the school's strict religious guidelines, she finds herself drawn to a fellow teacher, and renegade, Moira Prince, a larger than life British woman with plenty of secrets and a puzzling relationship with the school's administration. Charu and Moira begin a passionate affair, but one night during monsoon season, in a mountainous outlying area known as "table-land," Moira is murdered. The tragedy divides the town along an "English fault line" and fills the school with rumors of burning jealousy, salacious lesbian affairs, and vendettas. As arrests are made, Charu and some of the schoolgirls work to get to the bottom of what happened. Almost everyone is a suspect, including Charu, in Currimbhoy's gripping tale.
Publishers Weekly
The intimate portrait the novel offers of India at this specific point in its history is compelling, as is the dramatic relationship between Charu and the deeply troubled Moira.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. In Miss Timmins School for Girls, young Charu, fresh from a conventional Brahmin upbringing, is suddenly exposed to Christian British-run boarding school, as well as to the iconoclastic hippie culture of the 1970s. “I watched my worlds collide,” says Charu, “not in fire and brimstone as I had feared, but in comic relief.” Do you think this is true of the book? What are the main cultural conflicts our heroine faces? Are they all resolved through humor?
2. The British Missionaries are in this remote corner of India to spread Christianity. What else do they spread as evidenced by the daily life in the school?
3. Charu’s parents have tried to protect their beloved only child from a world they consider cruel. Do you think they did her a disservice by limiting her exposure to the world at large? In what way do you think her cloistered upbringing led Charu to be seduced by Moira Prince?
4. In spite of her erratic behavior and dark past, do you think Moira Prince is presented as a sympathetic character? How does the author do this?
5. Charu, has a disfiguring mark on her face. This has made her into an intense, sensitive and secretive person, a watcher. How do you think this influences her actions, and ultimately, the resolution of the murder mystery?
6. When Charu mourns Prince, she finds herself humming “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones. Do you find this incongruous? The soundtrack of the book is rock 'n' roll: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and Jethro Tull. In your opinion, does this make the foreign landscape and culture more familiar to you? Does it resonate with a coming of age in America in the seventies?
7. One part of the book is narrated by Nandita, a 15-year-old school girl. How does the author use Nandita’s voice to move the story further? Does Nandita’s vision change your opinion of Charu? If so, how?
8. Nandita and Charu, the two main narrators of the book, are very different personalities. In the end, who do you think proves to be the stronger, more heroic person, Charu or Nandita?
9. The principal of Miss Timmins’, Miss Shirley Nelson, puts her reputation in the school above the life of her own daughter. What is it about the relationship between them that makes this believable?
10. The novel begins and ends on the same day, twelve years after the actual events take place. In the end of the prologue, Merch is planning to do something that night. What do you think he plans to do?
11. At the very end of the book, when Charu says, “It’s all over now,” what does she mean? In your opinion, what is Merch thinking of, when he asks “What is all over?” Do you think she is still thinking of the murder 12 years ago? Write one paragraph after the last line, to continue the conversation between Merch and Charu that night.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Death of a Schoolgirl: (Jane Eyre Chronicles, 1)
Joanna Campbell Slan, 2012
Penguin Group USA
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425247747
Summary
In her classic tale, Charlotte Bronte introduced readers to the strong-willed and intelligent Jane Eyre. Picking up where Brontë left off, Jane’s life has settled into a comfortable pattern: She and her beloved Edward Rochester are married and have an infant son. But Jane soon finds herself in the midst of new challenges and threats to those she loves.
Jane can’t help but fret when a letter arrives from Adele Varens—Rochester’s ward, currently at boarding school—warning that the girl’s life is in jeopardy. Although it means leaving her young son and invalid husband, and despite never having been to a city of any size, Jane feels strongly compelled to go to London to ensure Adele’s safety.
But almost from the beginning, Jane’s travels don’t go as planned—she is knocked about and robbed, and no one believes that the plain, unassuming Jane could indeed be the wife of a gentleman; even the school superintendent takes her for an errant new teacher. But most shocking to Jane is the discovery that Adele’s schoolmate has recently passed away under very suspicious circumstances, yet no one appears overly concerned. Taking advantage of the situation, Jane decides to pose as the missing instructor—and soon uncovers several unsavory secrets, which may very well make her the killer’s next target. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— June 22, 1953
• Raised—Vincennes, Indiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Ball State University
• Currently—lives in Jupiter Island, Florida
Joanna Campbell Slan started storytelling—and winning awards for her writing—at an early age. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Joanna grew up in Vincennes, Indiana, and graduated cum laude from Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) where she majored in journalism. Today she's the author of eleven non-fiction books, a mystery series featuring Kiki Lowenstein, a spunky single mom who loves to scrapbook, and a new series featuring Charlotte Bronte's classic heroine Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth.
Joanna's first novel—Paper, Scissors, Death—was a 2009 Agatha Award finalist. The Kiki Lowenstein series has been praised by the Library Journal as "topically relevant and chock-full of side stories." Publisher's Weekly calls them, "a cut above the usual craft-themed cozy." RT Book Review has said that Kiki Lowenstein is that she is "our best friend, our next-door neighbor and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous." Once you've met Joanna, you can guess where the outrageous comes from.
Ready, Scrap, Shoot, the fifth book in the Kiki Lowenstein series, was released in 2012, along with short stories featuring Kiki. A sixth book in that popular series has been scheduled. In addition, Joanna is writing a new historical mystery series featuring Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth. Death of a Schoolgirl, released also in 2012, marks the first entry in The Jane Eyre Chronicles; it was followed by the second, The Death of a Dowager in 2013.
In her ongoing quest to never see snow again, Joanna lives with her two dogs and her husband on a nearly deserted island—Jupiter Island, Florida. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Fans of historical cozies will best appreciate Slan’s first in a new series featuring Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Soon after the birth of Jane and Edward Rochester’s first son, Jane receives a troubling plea for help from her former pupil, Adele Varens, now at London’s Alderton House School for Girls. Jane travels from Yorkshire to London, where she poses as a German teacher to gain entry to Alderton House, which she discovers is a hotbed of bullying, theft, laudanum drugging, and long-held grudges. The death of one of Adele’s schoolmates and a possible connection to George IV add to the intrigue. Slan (Ready, Scrap, Shoot and four other Kiki Lowenstein mysteries) captures neither the voice of Jane Eyre nor the timeless appeal of its heroine, but she credibly recreates Regency London and the era of the Bow Street Runners.
Publishers Weekly
In 1820, Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre Rochester have settled into the Yorkshire countryside and welcomed a son. Their quiet retreat is shattered when Adele, Mr. Rochester's ward who is now enrolled in a London boarding school, sends a desperate plea for help.... Verdict: It's difficult to know why the author of the Kiki Lowenstein "Scrap-N-Craft" cozy series chose Jane Eyre as the basis for this amateur sleuth mystery.... Readers without strong feelings about Charlotte Bronte's classic may enjoy this spin-off but should be prepared for a slow-paced investigation and out-of-the-blue solution. —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal
(15 to Adult.) This piece is a work of fiction, based upon the work of Charlotte Bronte. The novel begins when Jane and her husband, Rochester, both happily in love, take care of their infant son. Rochester has a daughter named Adele who is living in a girls’ boarding school. A strange letter arrives from Adele, containing cryptic messages of a foreboding nature.... Jane decides she must embark on an important quest to the boarding school.... Will she be able to save Adele from the strange circumstances at her school? This is a wonderful novel for young adults who are interested in the classics of Great Britain in the 1800s. For readers who love Jane Eyre, she lives on through Joanna Campbell Slan.
VOYA
A cry of distress from a schoolgirl takes Jane Eyre Rochester far from her sheltered life.... Although Jane may seem meek, the formidable intelligence behind her demure exterior stands her in good stead as she attempts to uncover a murderer. In a radical departure from her scrapbooking series (Ready, Scrap, Shoot, 2012, etc.), Slan refashions a beloved heroine as a surprisingly canny detective. Her stylistic imitation of Charlotte Bronte is seasoned with a dash of social commentary and plenty of suspects to mull over.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Charlotte Brontë called her work “a plain tale,” but 165 years later, her novel Jane Eyre still enchants readers. What do you think is the secret to this book’s popularity? Do you think it is still relevant today? Does Death of a Schoolgirl make you want to re-read the classic?
2. The author begins Death of a Schoolgirl close to where Jane Eyre left off, with Jane and her beloved Edward Rochester happily married. But while Jane is still the same person—curious, cerebral, observant, and unobtrusive—in some important ways she has changed. The struggling orphan of the classic is now a wealthy wife of a country squire and the mother of a little boy. It what other ways has Jane changed? Do you approve of these changes? Why or why not?
3. At various times in the book, Jane has different motivations for staying at Alderton House School for Girls. At first, she is there to see to Adèle. Then she feels she must protect the other schoolgirls. Later, she worries about Miss Miller being accused wrongly. What other motivations does she have? What is it about Jane’s past that makes her feel so strongly that she must do something? Do you think she should have just taken Adèle and left the school?
4. Jane is less than truthful in many ways. One is the manner in which she dresses. Another is allowing herself to be mistaken for an errant German teacher. These are only two examples. Can you think of other ways in which she is duplicitous? How about the other characters? Is dishonesty ever justifiable? Why or why not?
5. Lucy Brayton is a new addition to the original cast of Jane Eyre. How does she serve as a foil to Jane? What strengths does Lucy bring to their friendship? What weaknesses in Jane’s personality does Lucy spotlight? What do you learn about Jane because their interactions?
6. The author has a bit of fun with the reader by locating the home of Captain and Lucy Brayton at #24 Grosvenor Square. What is the symbolism of that address?
7. Lucy Brayton understands how to use her social standing and wealth to achieve her aims. Can you give examples of this? Do you think she is right or wrong to take advance of her position?
8. Bruce Douglas is also a new character to the original Jane Eyre cast. What does he add to the story? How does he help Jane in her quest? How does he contrast with Edward Rochester?
9. Characters in the book show their prejudices toward others in a variety of ways, such as bias regarding national origin, social pedigree, education, age and gender. Did you notice them throughout the text? Do these still exist today?
10. Throughout Death of a Schoolgirl, there are many subtle themes. One is how we judge people by outward appearances; a second is responsibility to others; and a third theme is how our assumptions about others can be wrong. There is also the question of what accommodations marital/romantic partners make for each other. What other examples can you find of these themes in the text?
11. On the trip into Millcote, Jane sees her role as Edward’s wife differently. At the end of the book, Edward views his position as country squire in a new light. What events cause the Rochesters to re-examine their responsibilities?
12. In the original Jane Eyre, the imagery of birds is very important. Can you point to places where birds or bird-like behavior is likewise woven into Death of a Schoolgirl?
13. Jane seems ideally suited to understand and employ the science of ratiocination. What makes her such a good amateur sleuth?
14. Many of the characters in the book are seeking redemption or trying to rebuild their lives in one way or another. Which of them have your sympathy? Which do not? Why?
(Questions from author's website.)