The Trial
Franz Kafka, 1925 (posthumous)
Schocken Books - Random House
304 pp.
ISBN: 9780805209990
Summary
Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information.
Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.
In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written. (From the Schocken-Random House edition.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 3, 1888
• Where—Prague, Austria-Hungary
• Death—3 June, 1924
• Where—Kierling (near Vienna), Austria
• Education—Doctorate of Law, Charles-
Ferdinand University of Prague
Franz Kafka was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.
Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.
Background
Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague (now the Czech Republic). His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Kafka himself as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature." Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and came to Prague from Osek, a Czech-speaking Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Lowy, a prosperous brewer in Podebrady, and was better educated than her husband.
Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers: Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and seven months, respectively, before Franz was seven; and three younger sisters, Gabriele ("Ellie") (1889–1944), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1944) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). On business days, both parents were absent from the home. Franz's mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as many as 12 hours a day. The children were largely reared by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's relationship with his father was troubled, as described in the "Letter to His Father" in which he complained of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character.
Education
Admitted to the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, Kafka first studied chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. This offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, which organized literary events, readings and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the Civil and criminal courts.
Employment
On 1 November 1907, he was hired at the Assicurazioni Generali, an Italian insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule—from 8 a.m. (8:00) until 6 p.m. (18:00)—as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing.
On 15 July 1908, he resigned, and two weeks later found more congenial employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. The job involved investigating personal injury to industrial workers, such as lost fingers or limbs, and assessing compensation. Industrial accidents of this kind were commonplace at this time. Management professor Peter Drucker credits Kafka with developing the first civilian hard hat while he was employed at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute, but this is not supported by any document from his employer.
His father often referred to his son's job as insurance officer as a "Brotberuf," literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. While Kafka often claimed that he despised the job, he was a diligent and capable employee. He was also given the task of compiling and composing the annual report and was reportedly quite proud of the results, sending copies to friends and family.
During this time, Kafka was also committed to his literary work. Together with his close friends Max Brod and Felix Weltsch, these three were called "Der enge Prager Kreis", the close-knit Prague circle, which was part of a broader Prague Circle, a loosely knit group of German-Jewish writers who contributed to the culturally fertile soil of Prague from the 1880s till after World War I.
Later years
In 1912, at Max Brod's home, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who lived in Berlin and worked as a representative for a dictaphone company. Over the next five years they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and were engaged twice. Their relationship finally ended in 1917.
That same year, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which required frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. Despite his fear of being perceived as both physically and mentally repulsive, he impressed others with his boyish, neat and austere good looks, a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and dry sense of humor.
From 1920 Kafka developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenska. In July 1923, throughout a vacation to Graal-Muritz on the Baltic Sea, he met Dora Diamant and briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. In Berlin, he lived with Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto. She became his lover, and influenced Kafka's interest in the Talmud.
Kafka's tuberculosis worsened and he returned to Prague. He went to Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna for treatment, where he died on 3 June 1924, apparently from starvation. The condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him. He was one month shy of his 41st birthday.
(Kafka's sisters perished during During World War II. The Nazi Germans deported them with their families to the Lodz Ghetto where they died. Ottla, the oldest, was sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. On 7 October 1943 she was transferred to the death camp at Auschwitz.)
Literary career
Kafka's writing attracted little attention until after his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories. He finished the novella "The Metamorphosis," but never finished any of his full length novels. Kafka left his published and unpublished work to his friend and literary executor Max Brod with explicit instructions that it should be destroyed on his (Kafka's) death; Kafka wrote: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."
Brod decided to ignore this request and went on to publish the novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935. The remaining papers were consigned to suitcases which he carried with him when he fled to Palestine in 1939. (Kafka's lover, Dora Diamant, also ignored his wishes, secretly keeping up to 20 notebooks and 35 letters until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. An ongoing international search is being conducted for these missing Kafka papers.) Brod, in fact, would oversee the publication of most of Kafka's work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling Kafka's notebooks into any chronological order as Kafka was known to start writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last page towards the first, etc.
All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech to Milena Jesenska, were written in German. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication. When the Nazis came to power, publication of Jewish writers such as Kafka was forbidden; Kafka's writings, many of which have distinctively Jewish themes, did not find a broad audience until after World War II. (Hannah Arendt once observed that although "during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, [Kafka] will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed.") Among the current crop of Kafka heirs is Breon Mitchell, the translator of this edition of The Trial. Rather than tidying up Kafka's unconventional grammar and punctuation (as previous translators have done), Mitchell captures the loose, uneasy, even uncomfortable constructions of Kafka's original story. His translation technique is the only way to convey the comedy and confusion of this narrative, in which Josef K., "without having done anything truly wrong," is arrested, tried, convicted and executed—on a charge that is never disclosed to him.
Michael Joseph Gross - Amazon Reviews
Kafka's final work was left unfinished at the time of his 1924 death, and the original 1925 and subsequent editions were edited according to the standards of the day. This edition endeavors to restore the text as closely as possible to the original manuscript. According to the publisher, "This translation makes slight changes in the chapter divisions and sequence of chapter fragments." In addition to the text, this volume includes a bibliography and a chronology of the author's life.b
Library Journal
Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century.
Walter Abish - Author, How German Is It
Discussion Questions
The following questions are taken from a Random House Teachers Guide. Do take time to read the guide's Note to Teachers found on the Random House website.
1. “Arrest”
Analyze the novel’s first sentence, paying particular attention to the use of the passive voice (“ he was arrested”) and the lack of clear information about the origin of this slander (“someone”) or the nature of his guilt (“anything truly wrong”). In what ways does this sentence establish a pattern for Josef K.’s passivity and for what happens to him in the novel as a whole?
Discuss the significance of Josef K.’s name. Why doesn’t he have a full family name? Is “K.” a symbol for Kafka? But then why isn’t K.’s first name “Franz” (which is actually the name of one of the men who arrest him)? Discuss the other characters’ names, noting the use of family names for some characters (“Titorelli,” “Huld,” “Fraulein Burstner”) and first names for others (“Leni” or “Elsa”). Where does this place Josef K.?
Describe the men who arrest and interrogate Josef K. Are they policemen? What authority do they represent? When K. questions his arrest, he is told: “There’s been no mistake. [Our department] doesn’t seek out guilt among the general population, but, as the Law states, is attracted by guilt and has to send us guards out. That’s the Law” (pp. 8-9). In other words, “guilt” seems to precede an actual criminal act. You may want to discuss the biblical symbolism of Josef K.’s eating an apple for breakfast (p. 10), keeping in mind that the German term in the novel’s opening sentence (translated as “wrong”) can also mean “bad” or “evil.”
Why does Josef K. decide to “play along” with his arrest, even though the men who arrest him never show him any proof of their authority and he thinks it might be a “farce”? Does he behave as if he had a guilty conscience? What do we know about his past life and his family?
One of the unsettling aspects of K.’s arrest is its public nature. Strange men enter his bedroom, neighbors watch through the window while he is arrested, even his colleagues from the bank turn out to be present. Have students comment on this situation of constant surveillance. How does it influence the way K. reacts? Does he become “paranoid”?
2. Conversation with Frau Grubach / Then Fraulein Burstner
K.’s landlady, Frau Grubach, seems to know quite a bit about his arrest. Whose side do you think she’s on? What does K. think? What do we learn about K.’s private life in this chapter? about his neighbors in the boarding house? When Frau Grubach calls into question Frauelein Burstner’s morality, K. exclaims “if you want to run a clean house, you’ll have to start by giving me notice.” Why? And why does he “assault” Fraulein Burstner, a woman he hardly knows, lapping at her face like a “thirsty animal” and planting a long “vampire” kiss on her throat?
3. Initial Inquiry
How is K. summoned to his first inquiry? By whom? Describe the part of the city and the strange building in which it takes place. What are the social conditions of the people living here? Describe the meeting that takes place in the large hall and what K. gradually learns about the Court. K. accuses the examining magistrate of giving secret signals to someone in the audience; is this true? What happens to the washerwoman? How would you characterize K.’s frame of mind when he leaves the assembly?
4. In the Empty Courtroom/ The Student / The Offices
Why does K. decide to return to the courtroom the following Sunday even though he hasn’t been summoned? Contrary to his expectations, the assembly room is empty. Describe the strange, uncanny impression made by an empty room that was full of people in the preceding chapter. Discuss the significance of the room’s physical dirtiness and the lascivious books he finds there. What conclusions does K. draw concerning the nature of the Court? What does he learn from the washerwoman? K. almost passes out from the hot, stuffy air in the narrow corridors of the court? Discuss.
5. The Flogger
Describe the strange clothing worn by the flogger and the two guards that K. finds in the “junk room” of his bank. Why are they being punished? Does K. want to help the guards? How does the flogger describe their actions? Is this a sado-masochistic scene of punishment and humiliation? Does it reflect on the cruelty and submissiveness of other characters in the novel?
The day after this encounter, K. returns to the junk room and opens the door “as if by habit”; but instead of the expected darkness, he finds everything as before, with the flogger ready to beat the guards. Bring out the strangeness of this fact. How can we account for it realistically? Is it a dream?
6. The Uncle / Leni
What do we learn about K.’s family based on his discussions with his uncle? Why is his uncle worried about K.’s trial? K. and his uncle visit the lawyer Huld in the evening; the maid Leni greets them with a candle and takes them into Huld’s dark bedroom, where he is sick in bed. How do these physical details set the scene for K.’s legal defense? Why is K. disturbed to learn that Huld seems to be informed about his trial? Comment on the swiftness with which K. and Leni develop an intimate relationship. What do you make of her webbed hand and of K.’s description of it as “a pretty claw”? What does the uncle think of K.’s liaison with Leni and its effect on his trial?
7. Lawyer/ Manufacturer / Painter
The second paragraph of this chapter describing K.’s conversations with his lawyer lasts for ten full pages (pp. 110-122) and is summed up by the words “In such and similar speeches the lawyer was inexhaustible.” What is the effect on K. and the reader of this interminable paragraph? Does K.’s trial seem endless? How do K.’s worries about his trial affect his work at the bank?
What relations does Titorelli the painter have to the Court and K.’s trial? Is this his real name? Describe the section of town where Titorelli resides, his neighbors, and the building he lives in. What role do the girls play in their meeting? Does their physical deformity say anything about their moral character?
Titorelli is working on a portrait of a Court judge that has a dark figure in the background; he explains that the figure has been commissioned to represent “Justice and the goddess of Victory in one” (p. 145). What does this combination say about the nature of K.’s trial? What does Titorelli explain to K. about the possibility of winning a case?
8. Block, the Merchant / Dismissal of the Lawyer
At the beginning of this chapter K. seems ready to dismiss his lawyer. What does he discover in Huld’s house that makes him doubt his decision? How does K. behave toward the merchant Block? How do Leni and Huld treat him? What distinguishes K. from Block? Will he look and act like Block at a later stage in his trial? Can K. count on Leni’s support?
9. In the Cathedral
Discuss the importance of the cathedral setting for this chapter. What elements suggest a relationship between Josef K.’s trial and the crucifixion of Christ? The priest identifies himself as the “prison chaplain”; comment on this combination of the Church and the Court. Why does the priest describe K.’s tourist guidebook as full of “irrelevancies” and tell him to put it aside? What does he think about K.’s relations with women?
Discuss the parable “Before the Law” (pp. 215-17). Who is the “man from the country”? Describe the doorkeeper and his relationship to the Law. Why doesn’t the man from the country go in? Has he made a mistake? What does Josef K. learn about his own trial from this story? Note the complexity of the discussion between K. and the priest following the parable, which some critics have compared to rabbinical commentary of the Bible. Comment on K.’s final statement that “Lies are made into a universal system” (p. 223), and on the priest’s parting words to K. that “The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.” (p. 224) Does this mean that K.’s “trial” is self-inflicted?
10. The End
Describe K.’s clothing in the opening of the chapter; how does it relate to the clothing he put on at the beginning of his trial? Describe the men who take K. away, noting K.’s description of them as “supporting actors” and its relation to his initial decision to “play along” with the “farce” or “comedy.” Do you find it odd that he seems to expect them and know what they will do to him? Describe the fleeting appearance of the woman that K. takes to be Fraulein Burstner. Discuss K.’s final questions upon noticing a human figure in the distance: “Who was it? A friend? A good person? Someone who cared? Someone who wanted to help? [...] Where was the judge he’d never seen? Where was the high court he’d never reached?” (pp. 230-31).
What makes K.’s execution so horrific? K. thinks he dies “like a dog!” Why? Discuss the importance of shame, reputation, and one’s “good name” in the novel in light of this scene. Does the execution reflect badly on K. or on the Court? Whose side are you on? Does Kafka make it clear which side we should be on?
(Questions issued by Random House.)
Snowdrops
A.D. Miller, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307739476
Summary
Finalist, 2011 Man Booker Prize
An intense psychological drama that echoes sophisticated entertainments like Gorky Park and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Nick Platt is a British lawyer working in Moscow in the early 2000s—a place where the cascade of oil money, the tightening grip of the government, the jostling of the oligarchs, and the loosening of Soviet social mores have led to a culture where corruption, decadence, violence, and betrayal define everyday life. Nick doesn’t ask too many questions about the shady deals he works on—he’s too busy enjoying the exotic, surreally sinful nightlife Moscow has to offer.
One day in the subway, he rescues two willowy sisters, Masha and Katya, from a would-be purse snatcher. Soon Nick, the seductive Masha, and long-limbed Katya are cruising the seamy glamour spots of the city. Nick begins to feel something for Masha that he is pleased to think is love. Then the sisters ask Nick to help their aged aunt, Tatiana, find a new apartment.
Of course, nothing is as it seems—including this extraordinary debut novel. The twists in the story take it far beyond its noirish frame—the sordid and vivid portrayal of Moscow serves as a backdrop for a book that examines the irresistible allure of sin, featuring characters whose hearts are as cold as the Russian winter. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University; Princeton University
• Currently—lives in London, England
A.D. Miller studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton, where he began his journalistic career writing travel pieces about America. Returning to London, he worked as a television producer before joining The Economist to write about British politics and culture. In 2004 he became The Economist's correspondent in Moscow, travelling widely across Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is currently the magazine's Britain editor; he lives in London with his wife Emma, daughter Milly and son Jacob. (From .)
Book Reviews
Compelling... Makes you see and feel the glitz, squalor, and violence of Moscow.
Boston Globe
[An] assured fiction debut.... [Miller] memorably captures Moscow's atmosphere during the glitzy, anything-goes era that succeeded Soviet Communism.
Seattle Times
Elegant and compact.... A superlative portrait of a country in which everything has its price.
Financial Times (UK)
[A]n electrifying tour ...[that] assaults all your senses with its power and poetry, and leaves you stunned and addicted.
Independent (UK)
Like Graham Greene on steroids... Tightly written.... Miller’s complex, gripping debut novel is undoubtedly the real thing.
Daily Mail (UK)
A deeply atmospheric, slow-burning examination of the effects of modern Russia on the soul of foreign visitors...beautifully drawn and mirrored in several ingenious subplots.... Miller is absolutely wonderful at evoking the seediness and cynicism of Moscow
Independent on Sunday (UK)
Strips away the layers of life in the Russian capital with subtle, pitiless grace....Paced almost ideally, with an atmosphere that scintillates with beguiling menace.
Literary Review (UK)
Things may not be what they appear, but they turn out to be exactly what readers will predict in this saggy debut about shady business deals in go-go capitalist Russia. Nick Platt, a lawyer who has traded his dull British life for pushing paper in Moscow, soon takes up with a leggy young Russian about whom he knows nothing and, at her behest, helps a babushka trade her fabulous apartment for a half-built place in the country. The deal seems like a scam, and, of course, it is, but Nick is blinded by lust and nearly always a step behind the reader. He blithely gets involved in a multimillion-dollar loan for an oil pipeline brokered by a dodgy fellow known only as "the Cossack," even after a key player goes missing. Most readers will not be so easily duped, and Nick's oft-repeated I-should-have seen-it-comings undercut any suspense that might remain, though there are interesting bits to be found in the travelogue-style writing about the new Russia.
Publishers Weekly
A sense of foreboding pervades this quietly intense novel, set in a freewheeling Russia of the early 21st century. British narrator Nick Platt describes two intersecting experiences of corruption and duplicity. One is his naive involvement in a scheme to bankrupt an innocent babushka. Distracted by his love affair with one of the con artists, Nick does not allow himself to realize that he is being used for his lawyerly skills. The other con occurs when the bank he represents is lured into releasing $500 million for a seemingly legitimate oil project. It is obvious that bad things are going to happen on both fronts, and the story becomes strangely gripping as the final details are revealed. Verdict: Martin Cruz Smith's Three Stations meets J. Robert Lennon's enigmatic but similarly paced Castle in this new work. A lesson in the art of self-delusion and the dog-eat-dog society of post-Soviet Russia, it's sure to be an instant success. Essential for committed readers of fiction and a discussion feast for book clubs. —Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Written as a man’s confession to the woman he’s going to marry, Miller’s masterful debut chronicles British lawyer Nicholas Platt’s dubious dealings in Moscow at the turn of the twenty-first century.... A mesmerizing tale of a man seduced by a culture he fancies himself above, Miller’s novel is both a nuanced character study and a fascinating look at the complexities of Russian society. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
The unbridled mayhem of the 1990s has died down a bit, but Western companies are still pouring money into the hands of newly minted Russian conglomerates, and British lawyer Nicholas Platt is writing the contracts.... Miller, formerly a Moscow correspondent for Economist, vividly evokes the no-holds-barred atmosphere of the city in its early-capitalist stage, but it's seedy rather than alluring, and as Nicholas deliberately ignores glaring signs that he's being conned, readers may well find him stupid rather than tragically deluded.... Good local color, but nothing much to care about here.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Is Nick Platt, the narrator of Snowdrops, a good man who turns bad, a bad man to start with, or neither?
2. Towards the end of the book, Nick says that Masha “had a better excuse.” Do you think Snowdrops is at heart a story about corrupt Russians or corruptible westerners?
3. How far should Nick’s behaviour be explained by his circumstances and opportunities in Moscow, and how far by his own temperament and psychology?
4. At what point did Nick begin to question his own motives and sense of ethics?
5. When Nick visits Tatiana Vladimirovna’s apartment for the first time, he says that he “liked her immediately, and…liked her right ‘til the end.” Is that true? If so, why doesn’t it affect how he behaves?
6. Do Nick’s feelings for his fiancée change as he is recounting his tale? How does the relationship implied in the framing device interact with or reinforce his Moscow story?
7. There are several plots in Snowdrops: the main drama involving Tatiana Vladimirovna; the one featuring the Cossack and the floating oil terminal; and the story of Nick’s neighbour, Oleg Nikolaevich, and his missing friend. How do these plots relate to each other?
8. At the beginning of the story, Nick tries to be kind to Oleg Nikolaevich. By the end of it, he is less kind and spends much less time with him. Who suffers most as a result?
9. “I liked the Cossack,” Nick says after their first meeting: “Something about him was endearing...It might be better to say I envied him.” What does he mean by that?
10. At the heart of the novel is Nick’s trip to the dacha in the forest with Masha and Katya: “my happiest time,” he says; “the time I would always go back to if I could”. What does Nick learn at the dacha—about the women and about himself?
11. How much, if anything, of what Masha and Katya tell Nick about themselves do you think is true?
12. The exact years that Nick lives in Moscow aren’t specified in the book. But, thinking about the attitudes of the lawyers and bankers in the story, do you think Snowdrops is amongst other things a pre-credit crunch tale?
13. At the end of Snowdrops, Nick says that when he thinks about what happened to him during his last winter in Moscow, “there is guilt”. But then he qualifies that by saying “there is some guilt”. Is Nick really sorry for what he did during his last winter in Moscow? Does he understand how serious it was?
14. At one point Nick describes the winter as an “annual oblivion…like temporary amnesia for a bad conscience”. What role do snow and the weather play in Snowdrops?
15. A snowdrop, as Nick’s friend Steve explains to him, is a body that lies buried or hidden in the snow, emerging only in the thaw. What does the image of the snowdrop symbolise in Snowdrops?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories
Megan Mayhew Bergman, 2012
Scribner
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451643350
Summary
A heartwarming and hugely appealing debut story collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.
Megan Mayhew Bergman’s twelve stories capture the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collide with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can’t be denied.
In “Housewifely Arts,” a single mother and her son drive hours to track down an African Gray Parrot that can mimic her deceased mother’s voice. A population control activist faces the ultimate conflict between her loyalty to the environment and her maternal desire in “Yesterday’s Whales.” And in the title story, a lonely naturalist allows an attractive stranger to lead her and her aging father on a hunt for an elusive woodpecker.
As intelligent as they are moving, the stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are alive with emotion, wit, and insight into the impressive power that nature has over all of us. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Gaffney, South Carolina, USA
• Raised—Rocky Mount, North Carolina
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University;
graduate degrees, Duke University, Bennington
College
• Currently—lives in Shaftsbury, Vermont
Megan Mayhew Bergman was raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She now lives on a small farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont with her veterinarian husband Bo, two daughters, four dogs, four cats, two goats, a horse, and a handful of chickens. In November 2010, Megan was elected Justice of the Peace for the town of Shaftsbury. She also teaches literature at Bennington College.
Megan graduated from Wake Forest University, and completed graduate degrees at Duke University and Bennington College. She was a fiction scholar at Breadloaf and received a fellowship from the Millay Colony for the Arts in November 2007.
Birds of a Lesser Paradise, her first collection of stories, was published in 2012. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Best American Short Stories 2011, New Stories from the South 2010, Oxford American, Narrative, Ploughshares, One Story, and elsewhere. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
In complicated ways, creatures great and small affect the lives of human characters, who treat the animals' ailments, track them in the wild or adopt them as members of the family…We want stories to stir our desires. We also want them to lead us to places we don't recognize and build us a temporary residence there. Bergman provides alluring glimpses into the strangeness, the ruthlessness, of the animal kingdom.
Polly Rosenwaike - New York Times Book Review
Megan Mayhew Bergman’s collection of stories contains all of the elements that, it could be said, make up the very best in short fiction: each story is beautiful, full of palpable pain or joy--sometimes both--all loosely connected and based on the types of figures we’ve all known in our lives. But what sets this collection of stories apart is that each sentence feels sturdily crafted, each ending feels satisfying in a way short fiction rarely does. Mayhew Bergman does something exceptional with Birds of a Lesser Paradise--she quickly constructs a world filled with animals and nature and family who hate and love and mostly need one another--and it feels complete. —Alexandra Foster (Amazon Best Book of the Month)
Amazon Reviews
Bergman’s stellar debut is set among the dense forests and swamps of her native North Carolina and rooted firmly in a crumbling and economically troubled post-crash America. These 12 short stories, all but two of which were published in journals like One Story, Ploughshares, and Narrative (and anthologized in the Best American and New Stories from the South series), may be tethered to familiar Southern gothic tropes, but Bergman deftly sidesteps cliche and sentimentality, using honest autobiographical moments to make her work unique.
Publishers Weekly
Readers will be shocked, amazed, and always entertained by the work of this accomplished writer of short fiction.
Booklist
From a young Southern writer of note, a top-notch debut collection of stories, most of them revolving around motherhood, animals and conflicting loyalties.... The collection’s second half doesn’t quite measure up to the level of the first, but that’s a minor flaw in a book that deserves big praise. The beginning, one suspects, of a fine career.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How much of a role does nature play in the lives of the heroines of Mayhew Bergman’s stories? How do their relationships with the natural world affect their decisions?
2. Whether it is an African Gray parrot or a lemur, animals are central to each of these stories. How do the characters identify with or distinguish themselves from animals? Do any of the characters share certain qualities with the animals described?
3. In “Housewifely Arts,” what did her mother’s parrot represent to the narrator while her mother was still alive? How did the parrot’s importance change after her mother passed away?
4. How did you react to the veterinarian husband in “The Cow That Milked Herself” examining his pregnant wife in the same way he examines animals? Do you think his clinical take on his wife’s pregnancy reveals any universal truths about motherhood?
5. “For centuries people had used the swamp to hide from their problems” (41), says the narrator of the title story. Does Mae use the swamp to hide from her own problems? If so, how? How does her father’s scare in the swamp change her priorities?
6. Lila feels ugly and damaged after her face is disfigured in “Saving Face,” and goes to great lengths to isolate herself. How do you think her experience with Romulus and the sickly calf will change her? Can she reclaim the person who she was, despite her new challenges?
7. Lauren, the population control activist in “Yesterday’s Whales,” has a crisis of faith when she becomes pregnant. Have you ever experienced an event that’s challenged your long-held convictions? Is there any way to reconcile two wildly different points of view?
8. Do you think the narrator of “Another Story She Won’t Believe” realizes the mess she’s made? What do you think propelled her to self-destruct? Do you think her treatment of the lemurs represents an insurmountable character flaw?
9. What does it take to forgive yourself after an act of negligence? What kind of mother do you think the narrator of “The Urban Coop” will turn out to be, if she can become pregnant?
10. “My mother once told me: Never underestimate avoidance as an effective coping mechanism,” says the narrator of “The Right Company” (146). Is her retreat to the small Southern town of Abbet’s Cove an effective way to deal with the collapse of her marriage? When she tries to free Mussolini’s dog, the animal refuses to make an escape. What does this juxtaposition say about the narrator’s circumstances?
11. In “Night Hunting,” a young girl must come to terms with her mother’s declining health. How does her walk through the cold Vermont night force her to confront her fears? Do the ever-threatening coyotes represent a more primal danger than her mother’s cancer?
12. Could a hunter and an animal lover ever have a functional relationship? Do you think the woman in “Every Vein a Tooth” uses her relationship with animals to avoid the messiness of human intimacy? Or does her extreme devotion to the animals she rescues come from a purer, more optimistic place?
13. “The Artificial Heart” is the only story in Birds of a Lesser Paradise that’s set in the future. How do you think it fits in with the rest of the stories in the collection? Do you think it’s a natural impulse to want to prolong life, even if the quality of that life becomes less than ideal? Or do we become lesser versions of ourselves if we try to cheat death?
14. The narrator of “The Two-Thousand Dollar Sock” is a fighter, as is her husband, and ultimately her dog, Vito, who attacks a bear to protect the family. Do you think humans have a similar compulsion to fight and defend?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Chaperone
Laura Moriarty, 2012
Penguin Group USA
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487019
Summary
The Chaperoneis a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both.
Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.
For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.
Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 24, 1970
• Where—Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.S.W. and M.A., University of Kansas
• Currently—Lives in Lawrence, Kansas
Laura Moriarty received her master’s degree from the University of Kansas, and was awarded the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. She lives in Maine. (From the publisher.) The Center of Everything is Moriarty's first novel. Her second, The Rest of her Life, was published in 2007, While I'm Falling in 2009, and The Chaperone in 2012.
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• There are other Laura Moriartys I shouldn't be confused with: Laura Moriarty the poet, and Laura Moriarty the crime writer. If it helps, I'm Laura Eugenia Moriarty, though I've never used my middle name professionally.
• I got my first job when I was sixteen, cooking burgers at McDonald's. I've been a vegetarian since I was ten, so it was a little hard on me. I'm also technically inept and kind of dreamy, so I frustrated the guy who worked the toaster to the point where he threatened to strangle me on a daily basis. I kept that job for two years. I gave Evelyn a job at McDonald's too, and I made her similarly unsuccessful.
• Another job I was really bad at was tending bar. I was an exchange student at the University of Malta about ten years ago. I thought I wanted to go to medical school, so I signed up to take all these organic chemistry and physiology classes. In Malta. It was terrible. The Maltese students were into chemistry. I had a lab partner named Ester Carbone. There was a rumor my instructor had his house built in the shape of a benzene molecule. I couldn't keep up. I dropped out in February, and I needed money. Malta has pretty strict employment laws, and the only job I could get was an illegal one, working at a bar. I don't know anything about mixed drinks, and I don't speak Maltese. I think I was supposed to stand behind the bar be American and female and smile, but I ended up squinting at people a lot, so eventually, I was in the back, doing dishes. That was the year I started writing.
• The Center of Everything has a few autobiographical moments, but not many. I grew up with three sisters in Montana. When you say you're from Montana, people get this wistful look in their eyes. I think they've seen too many Brad Pitt movies. I saw A River Runs Through It, which is set in my hometown, Bozeman. That movie drove me nuts: I don't think anyone is even wearing coat in the whole movie. They can't keep filming up there in August and tricking everyone. Of course, now I live in Maine.
• I have tender hands, and the worst thing in the world, for me, is going to an event that requires a lot of hand shaking. Some people shake nicely, but some people have a death grip, and it's really painful. The thing is, you can't tell who's going to be a death gripper and who isn't. Big, strapping men have shaken my hand gently, but an elderly woman I met last month almost brought me to my knees. She was smiling the whole time. I went to a hand shaking event a month ago, and I went along with the shaking, because I didn't want to look rude or standoffish or freaky about germs. But hand shaking just kills me. I'm not sure what to do about it. I went back to Phillips Exeter a month ago, and a very polite student reintroduced himself to me and extended his hand to shake. I actually tried to high five him. He looked at me like I was a crazy person. My sister told me I should take a cue from Bob Dole and carry a pen in my right hand all the time, so I might try that.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
It's difficult to pick just one, of course. But I will say that while I was writing The Center of Everything, I read Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, and it made a strong impression on me. I only knew about Sagan from watching the Nova Channel when I was a kid, but I happened upon an essay he'd written before he died. I was so impressed I went to the library and checked out some of his books. In The Demon Haunted World, Sagan stresses the importance of skepticism and rational reasoning when considering the mysteries of the universe.
It's easy for us today to see the insanity of the witchcraft trials, but Sagan gives a sympathetic account of how frightening the world must have seemed in those times, and how quickly our ability to reason can be dismissed in the face of fear and superstition. Today, Sagan points out, we have crop circles, alien abductions, and religious fundamentalism; the book has a great chapter called "The Baloney Detection Kit," an important tool for any open-minded skeptic. What I like most about Sagan is that he seems skeptical without coming across as cynical. He looks at the vastness of the universe and the intricacy of the natural world with so much wonder and awe, and he's able to translate it to a reader who isn't a scientist, such as myself. I also noticed how he refrains from making fun or putting down his opponents; there's such a generosity of spirit in his writing. I tried to put a bit of Sagan in Evelyn, the narrator of The Center of Everything. (Author interview from Barnes & Noble.).
Book Reviews
Throughout The Chaperone, her fourth and best novel, Laura Moriarty mines first-rate fiction from the tension between a corrupting coastal media and the ideal of heart-of-America morality. . . . . Brooks's may be the novel's marquee name, but the story's heart is Cora's. With much sharpness but great empathy, Moriarty lays bare the settled mindset of this stolid, somewhat fearful woman—and the new experiences that shake that mindset up.
San Francisco Weekly
Film star Louise Brooks was a legend in her time, but the real lead of The Chaperone is Cora Carlise, Brooks' 36-year-old chaperone for her first visit to New York City in 1922. As Cora struggles to tame Louise's free spirit, she finds herself moving past the safety of her own personal boundaries. In this fictional account of Cora and Louise's off-and-on relationship, Laura Moriarty writes with grace and compassion about life's infinite possibilities for change and, ultimately, happiness.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Chaperone is the enthralling story of two women...and how their unlikely relationship changed their lives.... In this layered and inventive story, Moriarty raises profound questions about family, sexuality, history, and whether it is luck or will—or a sturdy combination of the two—that makes for a wonderful life.
Oprah Magazine
In her new novel, The Chaperone, Laura Morirty treats this golden age with an evocative look at the early life of silent-film icon Louise Brooks, who in 1922 leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York City in the company of 36-year-old chaperone, Cora Carlisle... A mesmerizing take on women in this pivotal era.
Vogue
With her shiny black bob and milky skin, Louise Brooks epitomized silent-film glamour. But in Laura Moriarty's engaging new novel The Chaperone, Brooks is just a hyper-precocious and bratty 15-year-old, and our protagonist, 36-year-old Cora Carlisle, has the not-easy mission of keeping the teenager virtuous while on a trip from their native Kansas to New York City. After a battle of wills, there's a sudden change of destiny for both women, with surprising and poignant results.
Entertainment Weekly
With her bobbed black hair and strikingly red lipstick, Louise Brooks was a femme fatale in early Hollywood movies. In this latest novel from Moriarty (The Center of Everything), a teenage Louise heads to New York City in 1922 from her home in Wichita, chaperoned by proper Kansas matron Cora Carlisle. Once in New York, Louise is accepted by the renowned Denishawn School of Dancing and is on her way to fame. An innocent young adult she is not—hard as nails, she is both self-promoting and self-destructive. The real story here, however, is about Cora, a kind soul despite the shocks she has endured at several crucial times in her life. Cora's visit to New York gives her a new perspective and changes her life in unexpected ways. The novel, which spans the next six decades of Cora's life, also reminds us how dramatically American life changed over the 20th century. Verdict: Moriarty is a wonderful storyteller; it's hard to put this engaging novel down. Fans of the Jazz Age and sweeping historical fiction will likely feel the same way. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal
The challenges of historical fiction are plentiful—how to freely imagine a person who really lived, how to impart modern sensibility to a bygone era, how to do your research without exactly showing your research. And yet, when this feat is achieved artfully (we’re talking Loving Frank or Arthur and George artfully), it can transport a reader to another time and place. Laura Moriarty’s new novel, The Chaperone, falls into this category.
Bookpage
[Moriarty] imagines the life of the actual Wichita matron who accompanied future silent film star Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 as a favor to Brooks' parents. Although Louise Brooks was a larger-than-life personality whose memoir LuLu in Hollywood is held in high critical esteem, she's given short shrift by Moriarty, whose interest lies in Cora Carlisle.... Cora seems to represent the history of women's rights in the 20th century. An early suffragette, she applauds the end of prohibition and champions birth control and racial equality. She also gives Louise good advice during a rocky period in her career. Unlike the too-infrequently-seen Louise, the fictional characters seem less alive or important than the issues they represent.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Chaperone opens with Cora Carlisle waiting out a rainstorm in a car with a friend when she hears about Louise Brooks for the first time. What do we learn about Cora in this scene? What does it tell us about her and the world she lives in? Why does Laura Moriarty, the author, choose to open the novel this way? Why do you think she waits to introduce us to Brooks?
2. When we first meet Louise Brooks, she seems to be the complete opposite of Cora, but the two women form an unlikely bond anyway. Are they really so dissimilar? What does Cora learn from Louise? Do you think Louise learns anything from Cora?
3. When Cora arrives in New York, the city is worlds away from her life in Wichita. How much do you think Cora actually embraces New York? When she returns to Wichita, what does she bring back with her from New York? What parts of her stayed true to Wichita all along?
4. The limits of acceptable behavior for women were rapidly changing in the 1920s, and both Cora Carlisle and Louise Brooks, in their own ways, push against these boundaries. Discuss the different ways the two women try to change society’s expectations for women. Is one more successful than the other? What are the values involved in each woman’s approach?
5. Cora becomes frustrated with the hypocrisy of the women in her Wichita circle of friends and yet she herself chooses to keep details about her own life secret. Do you think she should be more open about her life choices? What are the risks for her if she were to be more open?
6. Cora Carlisle hopes to find the secret of her past in New York City but discovers that the truth doesn’t align with either her expectations or her memory of the past. Why do you think Laura Moriarty has chosen to leave Cora’s history ambiguous? What does this tell you about Cora? How has Cora’s attitude toward her past changed by the end of The Chaperone?
7. Cora narrates the events of the book from a perspective of many years later. What juxtapositions does this allow her? By placing Cora’s narration at a time of radical social change, what parallels is Moriarty making?
8, Think about Louise Brooks’s behavior. How much of it would be considered scandalous today? What values has society held on to? In what ways has society changed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Blue Nights
Joan Didion, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307387387
Summary
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter.
Richly textured with memories from her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion is an intensely personal and moving account of her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness and growing old.
As she reflects on her daughter’s life and on her role as a parent, Didion grapples with the candid questions that all parents face, and contemplates her age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profound. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 5, 1934
• Where—Sacramento, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California at Berkeley
• Awards—National Book Award, 2005
• Currently—New York, New York
For over forty years, Joan Didion has been widely renowned as one of the strongest, wittiest, and most-acerbic voices in journalism, literature, and film. With such fierce works as Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Salvador, and The White Album, she exposed shifting cultural and political climates with humor and unflinching clarity. In classic novels such as A Book of Common Prayer, Democracy, and The Last Thing He Wanted, Didion further explored American culture and politics through the veil of fiction.
Together with her husband John Gregory Dunne, she co-wrote films like The Panic in Needle Park and Play It As It Lays. Firmly established as a heavy hitter in the field of sober political criticism, contemporary literature, and cutting humor, no one could have been more unnerved by Didion's psychological unraveling in the wake of a pair of tragedies than Didion herself — a fact she conveys in her brilliant, shattering latest work.
The Year of Magical Thinking chronicles an exceptionally unforgiving period in Didion's life. Her recently married daughter Quintana had been stricken with pneumonia and fell into a coma. Only a week later, her husband and partner of 40-years died of a heart attack. Battered by these events, Didion felt her grip on reality suddenly slipping, expecting her husband to return home at any moment. "Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it," Didion later told New York magazine, "which was the interesting aspect of it to me — how really tenuous our sanity is."
As a means of dealing with her intense grief, Didion found herself unconsciously composing the book that would help her work through the pain of losing a husband while watching a daughter slowly fade away. As she told Barnes & Noble.com...
When I began doing it, I was just writing down notes on what the doctors had said, and their telephone numbers, and their recommendations for other specialists, and then I realized that I was writing other stuff down too — and then I thought, well, I'll just write it all down, and then I realized I was thinking about how to structure it, which was kind of a clue that I was writing something.
What she was writing was The Year of Magical Thinking. She explained to New York magazine that she structured her book so that it served as a parallel to the grieving process, "the way in which you obsessively go over the same scenes again and again and again trying to make them end differently." The book ultimately fuses her finely crafted, sardonic prose with a story more personal than any she had ever told before. As Robert Pinsky of the New York Times Book Review wrote, "As in Didion's previous writing, her sense of timing, sentence by sentence and in the arrangement of scenes, draws the reader forward. Her manner is deadpan funny, slicing away banality with an air that is ruthless yet meticulous." Pinsky is not alone in his praise of Didion's latest; The Year of Magical Thinking has also received well-deserved raves from publications such as the Washington Post and Library Journal.
Most important of all is the role the book has played in Didion's own recovery from her disastrous year. "It became very useful to me," she says, "useful in terms of processing and trying to figure out what had happened."
Blue Nights about the death of her daughter...and her own impending demise was published in 2012. Kirkus Reviews called it "a slim, somber classic."
Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:
• "My first (and only, ever) job was at Vogue. I learned a great deal there—I learned how to use words economically (because I was writing to space), I learned how to very quickly take in enough information about an entirely foreign subject to produce a few paragraphs that at least sounded authoritative.
• "I would like my readers to know that writing never gets any easier. You don't gain confidence. You are always flying blind."
• Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, co-wrote seven screenplays, including: The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Play It As It Lays (1973), A Star Is Born (1977), True Confessions (1982), Hills Like White Elephants (1990), Broken Trust (1995) and Up Close and Personal (1995).
• She is the sister-in-law of author Dominick Dunne and the aunt of actor/director Griffin Dunne.
• When asked about which book influenced her most as a writer, here is her response:
It's hard to limit this to one book, but the book from which I learned the most as a writer was Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I taught myself to type by tying out passages from a lot of Hemingway, but that book especially—it taught me the importance of absolute precision, of how every word and every comma and every absence of a word or comma can change the meaning, make the rhythm, make the difference.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Review
Exemplary...provocative.... [Didion] comes fully to realize, and to face squarely, the dismaying fact that against life’s worst onslaughts nothing avails, not even art; especially not art.
John Banville - New York Times Book Review
Profoundly moving.... This is first and last a meditation on mortality.
San Francisco Chronicle
Ms. Didion has created something luminous amid her self-recrimination and sorrow. It’s her final gift to her daughter—one that only she could give.
Wall Street Journal
A beautiful, soaring, polyphonic eulogy.... What appears on the surface to be an elegantly, intelligently, deeply felt, precisely written story of the loss of a beloved child is actually an elegantly, intelligently, deeply felt, precisely written glimpse into the abyss, a book that forces us to understand, to admit, that there can be no preparation for tragedy, no protection from it, and so, finally, no consolation.
New York Review of Books
Ms. Didion has translated the sad hum of her thoughts into a profound meditation on mortality. The result aches with a wisdom that feels dreadfully earned.
Economist
For the great many of us who cherish Joan Didion, who can never get enough of her voice and her brilliant, fragile, endearing, pitiless persona, [Blue Nights] is a gift.
Newsday
Exquisite.... She applies the same rigorous standards of research and meticulous observation to her own life that she expects from herself in journalism. And to get down to the art of what she does, her sense of form is as sharp as a glass-cutter’s, and her sentences fold back on themselves and come out singing in a way that other writers can only wonder at and envy.
Washington Independent Review of Books
Yes, this is a book about aging and about loss. Mostly, though, it is about what one parent and child shared—and what all parents and children share, the intimacy of what bring you closer and what splits you apart.
Oprah.com
Breathtaking.... With harrowing honesty and mesmerizing style, Didion chronicles the tragic death of her daughter, Quintana, interwoven with memories of their happier days together and Didion’s own meditations on aging.
Newsweek
Darkly riveting.... The cumulative effect of watching her finger her recollections like beads on a rosary is unexpectedly instructive. None of us can escape death, but Blue Nights shows how Didion has, with the devastating force of her penetrating mind, learned to simply abide.
Elle
In this supremely tender work of memory, Didion is paradoxically insistent that as long as one person is condemned to remember, there can still be pain and loss and anguish.
Christopher Hitchens - Vanity Fair
Loss has pursued author Didion relentlessly, and in this subtly crushing memoir about the untimely death of her daughter, Quintana Roo (1966–2005), coming on the heels of The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicled the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion again turns face forward to the harsh truth. “When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children,” she writes, groping her way backward through painful memories of Quintana Roo’s life, from her recent marriage in 2003 to adorable moments of childhood moving about California in the 1970s with her worldly parents and learning early on cues about how to grow up fast. While her parents were writing books, working on location for movies, and staying in fancy hotels, Quintana Roo developed “depths and shallows,” as her mother depicts in her elliptically dark fashion, later diagnosed as “borderline personality disorder”; while Didion does not specify what exactly caused Quintana’s repeated hospitalizations and coma at the end of her life, the author seems to suggest it was a kind of death wish, about which Didion feels guilt, not having heeded the signs early enough. Her own health—she writes at age 75—is increasingly frail, and she is obsessed with falling down and being an invalid. Yet Didion continually demonstrates her keen survival instincts, and her writing is, as ever, truculent and mesmerizing, scrutinizing herself as mercilessly as she stares down death.
Publishers Weekly
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion wrote about her reaction to the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Here she addresses the death shortly thereafter of her 39-year-old daughter, Quintana, who died of complications from pneumonia. Adopted at birth and apprised of this at a young age, Quintana had feelings of abandonment her entire life. Didion wonders here whether her handling of her daughter's early years contributed to those feelings and generally questions her suitability as a parent. At the same time, she discusses her own attempts to cope with aging and the onset of frailty. Didion's spare style of writing gets right to the point. She ponders Quintana's utterances and writings to try to better understand her and how she herself might have responded differently, but ultimately, there are no answers. Verdict: This worthwhile meditation on parenting and aging by a succinct writer, while at times difficult to read and a bit self-centered, is well worth the emotional toll. —Gina Kaiser, Univ. of the Sciences Lib., Philadelphia
Library Journal
Didion’s bravest work. It is a bittersweet look back at what she’s lost, and an unflinching assessment of what she has left.
BookPage
Didion delivers a second masterpiece on grief, considering both her daughter's death and her inevitable own.... Like Magical Thinking, this book is constructed out of close studies of particular memories and bits of medical lingo. Didion tests Quintana's childhood poems and scribblings for hints of her own failings as a mother, and she voices her helplessness at the hands of doctors.... Didion's clipped, recursive sentences initially make the book feel arid and emotionally distant. But she's profoundly aware of tone and style...and the chapters become increasingly freighted with sorrow without displaying sentimentality.... A slim, somber classic.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Blue Nights is a deeply elegiac, heartrending book. What are some of its most emotionally powerful moments? What makes these moments so moving?
2. Didion’s style in Blue Nights is clipped, austere, emotionally restrained. What is the effect of the short sentences, short chapters, and paragraphs that often consist of a single sentence? In what ways is Didion’s tone and style appropriate to her subject?
3. A number of italicized statements recur throughout Blue Nights, consisting most often of things that Quintana said—“Let me just be in the ground”; “Like when someone dies, don’t dwell on it”; “After I became five, I never ever dreamed about him.” What is the emotional effect of these repetitions? Why would Didion keep repeating these lines?
4. Didion writes: “My cognitive confidence seems to have vanished altogether. Even the correct stance for telling you this, the ways to describe what is happening to me, the attitude, the tone, the very words, now elude my grasp. The tone needs to be direct. I need to talk to you directly, I need to address the subject as it were, but something stops me.... Am I no longer able to talk directly?” [p. 116]. Is the tone of Blue Nights direct or indirect? Why might Didion find it difficult to be as direct as she wants to be about her subject?
5. Didion quotes Euripides: “What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead” [p. 13]. In what ways does Blue Nights bear out this truth? Of all the griefs that humans might be forced to endure why is this the most painful?
6. What kind of child was Quintana? What was most remarkable about her and most painful about her loss?
7. Thinking back to Quintana’s wedding, Didion writes: “I still see from that wedding day at St. John the Divine: the bright red soles on her shoes. She was wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, pale satin with bright red soles. You saw the red soles when she kneeled at the altar” [p. 69]. What is the effect, on Didion and on the reader, of these minute but vividly remembered details? What other details seem especially poignant?
8. Didion says she knows very few people who think of themselves as having succeeded as parents, that most parents instead “recite rosaries of failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies” [p. 93]. What does Didion most regret about her relationship with Quintana? What does she see as her failures?
9. Why might Quintana have seen her mother as “frail,” as needing her care, rather than the reverse? [p. 101].
10. Didion says that she had initially wanted to write a book about children but that after she started it became clear her true subject was “the failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death” [p. 54]. What does the book say about these essential human themes? Does Didion fail to confront them?
11. Blue Nights is filled with digressions—about movie shoots, changes in parenting styles over the past fifty years, her own work in the theatre, Sophia Loren, etc.—but keeps circling back to the death of her daughter and to her own illness and aging. Why might Didion have chosen this kind of structure, rather than a more straightforward chronological approach?
12. Didion describes her own illnesses and medical emergencies in a remarkably matter-of-fact way. Why is this understated approach more powerful than a more dramatic rendering might be?
13. What is so powerful about Didion’s quandary over who to list as an emergency contact on a medical form? What reveries does this question lead to?
14. Why does Didion end the book with a series of single, short sentences? Does she achieve here the kind of emotional directness she earlier felt was beyond her?
(Questions issued by publisher.)