Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, 1899
Penguin Group USA
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140281637
Summary
A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 3, 1857
• Where—Berdichev, Ukraine
• Death—August 3, 1924
• Where—England, UK
• Education—N/A
Joseph Conrad (Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England. Although he is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). A master prose stylist, he brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature.
Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create novels and short stories that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul. His works depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. While some of his works have a strain of Romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of Modernist literature.
His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors and inspired 10 films: Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.
Early life
Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Poland—now part of the Ukraine—into a highly patriotic, noble Polish family that bore the Nałęcz coat-of-arms. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a writer of politically themed plays and a translator of Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo from French and of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare from English. He encouraged his son Konrad to read widely in Polish and French.
In 1861 the elder Korzeniowski was arrested by Imperial Russian authorities in Warsaw, Poland, for helping organise what would become the January Uprising of 1863–64, and was exiled to Vologda, a city some 300 miles (480 km) north of Moscow.
His wife, Ewelina Korzeniowska (nee Bobrowska), and four-year-old son followed him into exile. Because of Ewelina's poor health, Apollo was allowed in 1865 to move to Chernigov, Chernigov Governorate, where within a few weeks Ewelina died of tuberculosis. Apollo died four years later in Krakow, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven.
In Krakow, young Conrad was placed in the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski—a more cautious person than Conrad's parents. Nevertheless, Bobrowski allowed Conrad to travel at the age of sixteen to Marseille and to begin a career as a seaman. This came after Conrad had been rejected for Austro-Hungarian citizenship, leaving him liable to conscription into the Russian Army.
Life at sea
In 1878 Conrad was wounded in the chest. Some biographers say he had fought a duel in Marseille, others that he had attempted suicide. He then took service on his first British ship, bound for Constantinople before its return to Lowestoft, his first landing in Britain.
Barely a month after reaching England, he signed on for the first of six voyages between July and September 1878 from Lowestoft to Newcastle on the coaster Skimmer of the Sea. Crucially for his future career, he "began to learn English from East Coast chaps, each built to last for ever and coloured like a Christmas card."
On 21 September 1881 Conrad sailed from London on the small vessel Palestine (13 hands) bound for Bangkok, finally reaching the Sundra Strait (between the islands of Java and Sumatra) in March 1883 after a series of mishaps and false starts. The Palestine is renamed Judaea in Conrad's famous story "Youth," which covers the events of the voyage and was Conrad's first fateful contact with the exotic East, the setting for many of his later works.
In 1883 he joined the Narcissus in Bombay, a voyage that inspired his 1897 novel The Nigger of the Narcissus. In 1886 he gained both his Master Mariner's certificate and British citizenship, officially changing his name to "Joseph Conrad."
A childhood ambition of Conrad's to visit central Africa was realised in 1889, when he contrived to reach the Congo Free State. He became captain of a Congo steamboat, and the atrocities he witnessed and his experiences there not only informed his most acclaimed and ambiguous work, Heart of Darkness, but served to crystallise his vision of human nature—and his beliefs about himself. These were in some measure affected by the emotional trauma and lifelong illness that he had contracted there. During his stay, he became acquainted with Roger Casement, whose 1904 Casement Report detailed the abuses suffered by the indigenous population.
The journey upriver made by the narrator of Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow, closely follows Conrad's own, and he appears to have experienced a disturbing insight into the nature of evil. Conrad's experience of loneliness at sea, of corruption, and of the pitilessness of nature converged to form a coherent, if bleak, vision of the world. Isolation, self-deception, and the remorseless working out of the consequences of character flaws are threads running through much of his work.
In 1891 Conrad stepped down in rank to sail as first mate on the clipper ship Torrens, quite possibly the British finest ship ever launched: no ship approached her speed for the outward passage to Australia. On her record-breaking run to Adelaide, she covered 16,000 miles in 64 days. Conrad made two voyages to Australia aboard her as Chief Officer under Captain Cope from November 1891 to June 1893.
In 1894 at the age of 36, having served a total of sixteen years in the merchant navy, he received a bequest from his late uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski. Conrad reluctantly gave up the sea, partly because of poor health and partly because he had become so fascinated with writing that he decided to devote himself to a literary career. He had already begun writing his first novel aboard the Torrens.
Later life
That first novel, Almayer's Folly, set on the east coast of Borneo, was published in 1895. Its appearance marked his first use of the pen name "Joseph Conrad" ("Konrad" was the third of his Polish given names). Almayer's Folly, together with its successor, An Outcast of the Islands (1896), laid the foundation for Conrad's reputation as a romantic teller of exotic tales—a misunderstanding of his purpose that was to frustrate him for the rest of his career.
In March 1896 Conrad married an Englishwoman, Jessie George, and together they moved into a small semi-detached villa in Victoria Road, Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, and later to a medieval lath-and-plaster farmhouse, "Ivy Walls," in Billet Lane. He subsequently lived in London and near Canterbury, Kent. The couple had two sons, John and Borys. Except for several vacations in France and Italy, a 1914 vacation in his native Poland, and a visit to the United States in 1923, Conrad lived out the rest of his life in England.
Although financial success evaded Conrad, a Civil List pension of £100 per annum stabilized his affairs, and collectors began to purchase his manuscripts. Though his talent was recognised by the English intellectual elite, popular success eluded him until the 1913 publication of Chance—paradoxically so, as that novel is not now regarded as one of his better ones.
Thereafter, for the remaining years of his life, Conrad was the subject of more discussion and praise than any other English writer of the time. He enjoyed increasing wealth and status. Conrad had a true genius for companionship, and his circle of friends included talented authors such as Stephen Crane and Henry James. In the early 1900s he composed a short series of novels in collaboration with Ford Madox Ford.
In April 1924 Conrad, who possessed a hereditary Polish status of nobility and coat-of-arms, declined a non-hereditary British knighthood offered by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.
Shortly after, on 3 August 1924, Conrad died of a heart attack. He was interred at Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury, England, under his original Polish surname, Korzeniowski. Inscribed on his gravestone are lines from Book I, Canto IX, stanza 40, of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: "Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, / Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please." (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Heart of Darkness has had an influence that goes beyond the specifically literary. This parable of a man's "heart of darkness" dramatized in the alleged "Dark Continent" of Africa transcended its late Victorian era to acquire the stature of one of the great, if troubling, visionary works of western civilization.
Joyce Carol Oates
Heart of Darkness (1899) is one of the most broadly influential works in the history of British literature. The novella’s diverse attributes—its rich symbolism, intricate plotting, evocative prose, penetrating psychological insights, broad allusiveness, moral significance, metaphysical suggestiveness—have earned for it the admiration of literary scholars and critics, high school and college teachers, and general readers alike. Further, its impact can be gauged not only by the frequency with which it is read, taught, and written about, but also by its cultural fertility. It has heavily influenced works ranging from T. S. Eliot’s landmark poem The Waste Land (1922), the manuscript of which has as its original epigraph a passage from the book that concludes with the last words of Conrad’s antihero Kurtz, to Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
A. Michael Matsin - Barnes & Noble Classics
Discussion Questions
(For a particularly good introduction, see the Penguin Group Introduction to this Reading Guide.)
1. Why does Conrad have one of Marlow's listeners relate the story, rather than make Marlow the narrator of the novel who speaks directly to the reader?
2. Why does the narrator note Marlow's resemblance to a Buddha, at the beginning as well as the end of Marlow's story?
3. Why does Marlow want to travel up the Congo River?
4. What is Marlow's attitude toward the African people he encounters on his trip up the Congo? In describing them, why does Marlow say that "what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar" (p. 63)?
5. What does Marlow mean when he says that "there is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies" (p. 49)?
6. Why does Marlow consider it lucky that "the inner truth is hidden" (p. 60)?
7. What does Kurtz mean when, as he's dying, he cries out, "The horror! The horror!" (p. 112)?
8. What is the significance of the report Kurtz has written for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs? Why does Marlow tear off the postscriptum, which reads "Exterminate all the brutes!" (p. 84), before giving the report to the man from the Company?
9. Why does Marlow think that Kurtz was remarkable?
10. Why does Marlow tell the Intended that Kurtz's last words were her name?
11. What does Marlow mean when he says that Kurtz "was very little more than a voice" (p. 80)?
12. What does the narrator mean when he says of Marlow's narrative that it "seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river" (p. 50)?
For Further Reflection
13. Is it possible to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized societies?
14. Is complete self-knowledge desirable? Is it possible?
(Questions issued by Penguin Group publishers.)
Blue Asylum
Kathy Hepinstall, 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547712079
Summary
Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman.
Iris knows, though, that her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property. On this remote Florida island, cut off by swamps and seas and military blockades, Iris meets a wonderful collection of residents—some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some charmingly odd, some dangerously unstable. Which of these is Ambrose Weller, the war-haunted Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon to Iris.
The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its methods, particularly the dreaded "water treatment." She must escape, but she has found new hope and love with Ambrose. Can she take him with her? If they make it out, will the war have left anything for them to make a life from, back home?
Blue Asylum is a vibrant, beautifully-imagined, absorbing story of the lines we all cross between sanity and madness. It is also the tale of a spirited woman, a wounded soldier, their impossible love, and the undeniable call of freedom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—state of Texas, US
• Education—M.A., University of Houston
• Currently—lives in California
As a baby, Kathy Hepinstall was once thrown out with the bath water. This experience shaped her life and art. She grew up in Texas but eventually escaped after earning a Master's at the University of Houston. Later, she worked for in various advertising agencies located in Los Angeles, California, then freelanced for a number of years, during which she wrote her first two novels, The House of Gentle Men (2000) and The Absense of Nectar (2001).
The House of Gentle Men was a finalist in the Penn Faulkner Awards West. A perfect storm of serendipity and good timing made it #1 on the LA Times Bestseller list.
Kathy was also a partner/creative director at Martin Agency/San Francisco from 2000—2001 and creative director at Chiat Day in Los Angeles from 2001 – 2002.
Her third novel, Prince of Lost Places, was published in 2003 and has been optioned as a movie, along with The House of Gentle Men. Her fourth novel, Blue Asylum, came out in 2012.
Kathy’s ad work has appeared in One Show, CLIOS, Cannes, Calif, NYAD, Kelly Awards, Time Magazine's "Ten Best Campaigns of the Year," and also in Archive magazine. Her short film, "Pee Shy" (directed by Deb Hagan) won first place in the national No Spot Advertising Awards and was sold to HBO Latin America.
She was a writer-at-large at Team One from 2003-2005. She has freelanced from 2005 to the present. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Hepinstall exquisitely illustrates the fate of societal outsiders in this richly compelling Civil War–era tale of the former mistress of a Virginia plantation, now confined to a beautiful island asylum, and her burgeoning love for a traumatized Confederate soldier... Deftly interweaving past and present, Hepinstall sets the struggles of her characters against the rigidity of a traditional Southern society and the brutality of war in an absorbing story that explores both the rewards and perils of love, pride, and sanity itself.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Iris Dunleavy must be mad. Why else would she have accompanied slaves trying to escape from her husband's Virginia plantation? When she arrives at the asylum on Florida's Sanibel Island in 1864 after being declared insane by a doctor and a judge, she tries to convince her captors of her sanity. Although the patients generally receive humane treatment, Dr. Cowell, the superintendent, applies the "water treatment" to those like Iris who remain defiant. As Iris's friendship with Ambrose Weller, a Confederate soldier who cannot cope with battlefield memories, deepens, Dr. Cowell's own attraction to the rebellious Iris grows. Determined to escape with Ambrose, Iris enlists the help of Dr. Cowell's 12-year-old son. Memories and revelations of events that led to the incarcerations of Iris and Ambrose slowly emerge and call into question what constitutes madness. Verdict: Hepinstall's (The House of Gentle Men) fourth novel features excellent pacing and strong character development that animate not only the inmates at the Sanibel Asylum but the characters from the preasylum lives of Iris and Ambrose. A first-rate choice for fans of intelligent historical romances. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato
Library Journal
A deep sense of the natural world, often-lyrical prose, and some touches of southern Gothic help carry along this tale of obsession and redemption.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. When you first meet Iris, Wendell, and Ambrose in chapter 1, do they seem mad to you? How do they see one another, and how true do you think their first impressions turn out to be? Use examples from the novel to support your opinion.
2. Throughout Blue Asylum, attempted rescue is a recurring theme: Wendell and the lamb, Iris and the baby, Iris and Ambrose, Dr. Cowell and Iris. Do you think Iris had any influence over whether Ambrose lived or died? What lessons do you think she learned by the end of the story?
3. Describe Dr. Cowell’s criteria for a “sane” wife. Then, compare Dr. Cowell’s relationship with his wife, Mary, to what the doctor tells his women patients they should be to their husbands. How well does his own marriage hold up to his proposed ideal? How do these expectations, fairly representative of Americans in the late nineteenth century, influence the behavior of the women in this novel? How did it make you feel to learn some of the circumstances under which women were committed to asylums during this time period?
4. The United States found itself grappling with major shifts in the way people were measured toward the end of the nineteenth century: the abolition movement considered whether African slaves were as equally human as their white masters and what role they should play in society; the women’s suffrage movement challenged men to see their wives, sisters, and daughters as intellectual equals who deserved a voice in government; the Civil War raised questions of states’ rights versus the need for national identity via federal oversight, and pit American against fellow American based on little more than geography. In what ways does Blue Asylum address these issues? Identify the opinions expressed by various characters throughout, and imagine yourself in their shoes. Do you sympathize more strongly with one “side” than another? Why or why not?
5. When Iris undergoes the water treatment, she tells Dr. Cowell, “This is not treatment. This is torture” (p. 83). He believes she is insane, and yet he can’t let go of her accusations. He tells his wife, “She called it torture! As though I were some kind of monster!” Why do you think he is so disturbed by Iris’s words, even as his wife reminds him that his patients have taken leave of their senses (and by extension, their opinions of his treatment aren’t worth his regard)?
6. On page 115, Dr. Cowell finds himself feeling that he “somehow returned to his youth, as though if he had turned to a mirror in mid-rant he’d see a man with a smooth, young face and a black beard with no hint of grey.” Contrast this moment with his feeling expressed on page 47 that the island was taking his youth: “Were he not trapped here, with the lunatics and his moody, attention-demanding wife and son, he’d have been able to remain a younger man.” Do you feel any sympathy for Dr. Cowell? Why or why not?
7. Wendell is obsessed with the memory of his first childhood love, Penelope, a teenage inmate of the island who commits suicide before the opening of Blue Asylum. How does his unrequited love of Penelope affect Wendell’s feelings for Iris? What first draws him to her? If his parents had been more involved in his life, do you think Wendell would have felt the same about the two women? Why or why not?
8. In what ways does Wendell identify with the inmates at Sanibel? How does he set himself apart from them?
9. The relationships in this novel are beautifully and authentically rendered—they are complicated and complex and rarely what they first appear to be. Discuss Dr. Cowell’s relationship with his wife and child, and also with the inmates collectively. Do you think the Cowells love each other? Do you think Dr. Cowell loves his work more or less than his family, and why? Use examples from the novel to justify your opinion.
10. Lydia tells Iris that the latter’s love for Ambrose means “God still sees you not as a lunatic but as His child” (p. 123). Identify the role that religion plays in the novel, including the characters’ expressions of faith and religious feeling.
11. When Iris first asks Wendell to help her escape from the island, he hesitates. With what is he struggling? Why does he first refuse to help Iris and Ambrose? Do you think he’s right, or is it like Iris says, that he’s just like his father? What ultimately changes his mind?
12. It’s fairly clear early in the novel that Iris was unfairly committed to the asylum, and the social issue of people (women in particular) being sent off to asylums for simply being “different” shines through the narrative. But what about other inmates, like the man whose feet are too heavy, or the woman who intensely feels for every living creature? Who does and doesn’t belong in the asylum? Where do you think one properly draws the line of madness?
13. Dr. Cowell changes his mind about Iris several times throughout the novel. What prompts him to consider for the first time that Iris might be telling the truth—that she is the victim of her husband’s lies and base character? What changes his mind again?
14. When he finally catches up with her, Dr. Cowell kindly tells Iris that she has made Ambrose “as happy as he could have been” (p.262). Do you agree or disagree? Was Iris wrong to take Ambrose with her? What elements factored into Ambrose’s eventual breakdown during the war? Why do you think his discovery of Seth's true identity sent him over the edge? Do you think he
ever could have recovered from his trauma?
15. The color blue plays a significant role in the novel. Identify the ways in which the author uses the color to evoke certain moods or meanings. What various meanings does the color have for each character?
16. This novel takes a look at the effects of betrayal on multiple levels. Iris and Lydia betray their husbands’ and society’s expectations of proper, married women. Dr. Cowell betrays his sacred oath to heal and never harm his patients. Wendell betrays his father’s trust. And all of these are set against the backdrop of perhaps America’s first and worst betrayal—the war in which she turned on herself, where brother fought against brother. Identify each instance of betrayal in the >novel and discuss each character’s motivations. Do you feel anyone is 100% justified in their actions? Why or why not?
17. Though the main action of the story takes place in a setting so far removed it may as well be another country, the effects of the Civil War still cast a shadow on almost every aspect of the novel. From the restriction of goods to the posttraumatic stress haunting Ambrose, identify and discuss how the war influences the characters and events of Blue Asylum. Consider how this influence differs or is similar to the effects of war on Americans today.
18. Discuss the ending of the novel. Why do you think the author chose to end with Dr. Cowell back at the asylum, waiting for the mad old woman to come in for her appointment, and with the image of the woman dancing on the beach with her imagined husband? What is the significance of the birds’ perspective of the scene?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
21 Aldgate
Patricia Friedberg, 2010
Rainbow Books
Digital
ISBN-13: 9781568251424
Summary
A story of love and war. When young Clara Simon suddenly quit her steady job in Ernest Maxwell Abbott's law firm over his increasingly shabby treatment of Jewish clients, she soon realized the seriousness of her actions. Giving up any job in struggling, post-WWI London meant taking a chance.
Clara knew her family at 21 Aldgate would not be supportive. With that in mind she did the only thing a Londoner could do: she looked for a quiet place to have a cup of tea and think over her hasty decision. A coincidental meeting with a former Abbott employee resulted in the suggestion of a job offer in Chelsea.
Clara, reluctant to consider venturing into affluent Chelsea, finally agreed to meet with the important French artist, Paul Maze, who needed an assistant to help write his memoir of his work as a field artist during WWI. Her experiences in his employ left her profoundly changed by the ghosts of war, the Nazis—and by Paul Maze.
A story of class distinction, a people and their traditions, a family and its fate, a country and its fight against Fascism, and a woman with a secret she must take to her grave. Set in 1930s and 1940s in London, England, France and Germany in the chaotic time between World War I and into World War II.
Based on true-life characters and events, 21 Aldgate is a story about a place in time that no longer exists—except in rapidly fading memories. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 4, 1935
• Raised—London, England, UK
• Education—London School of Journalism; Marquette University (USA)
• Currently—lives in Bradenton, Flordia, USA, and London, England
Patricia Fridberg was born in London, attended The Henrietta Barnett School and continued her studies at The London School of Journalism. At nineteen she married a South African doctor furthering his studies in London and immediately following the wedding, the young couple left for Southern Africa and the then, Rhodesias, both North and South, first to Wankie, renamed Hwange and later in Salisbury, renamed aafter independence Harare, Zimbabwe.
While living in Wankie, Rhodesia she worked as Clerk of the Court in the Office of the Native Commissioner where she dealt with tribal and European law. The Friedbergs briefly returned to England where their first child was born, before relocating in Africa in the city of Salisbury (Harare) in Rhodesia where Patricia wrote for the local newspaper and joined the newly formed TV station RTV (Rhodesian Television).
Her experiences as Clerk of the Court in Hwange allowed her to travel freely into the rural/bush taking along a photographer. From those interviews she produced a number of Tribal Documentaries and wrote articles for the Rhodesian Herald.
Political unrest intensified in Rhodesia and for the safety of their children the family reluctantly left to settle in the United States, first in Baltimore, and then in Milwaukee. In the years that followed she travelled extensively with her husband, a Professor of Cardiology, who lectured in major cities in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.
Patricia attended a playwriting course at Marquette University where her first play, "Masquerade" won the playwriter’s award.
She was moderator at WMTJ TV (NBC affiliate) Milwaukee’s, then weekly show, "People of the Book” and interviewed major celebrities, politicians, including the Israeli ambassador, Golda Meir, U.N. representatives and various personalities in the fields of art and music.
In Florida Patricia wrote for the Longboat Observer, became a collector of art and held monthly Salons for writers and artists. Her thoughts often returning to the African years, she wrote the film script "Journey from the Jacarandas" a feature film which began filming in Zimbabwe but was interrupted and unfinished due to civil disobedience and government sanctions.
Beginning with her novel 21 Aldgate and the recently released memoir Letters from Wankie, she is now completing the trilogy with Journey From the Jacarandas. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Anyone with a tie to London's East End is likely to enjoy Patricia Friedberg's latest novel. Endorsed by historian Sir Martin Gilbert, 21 Aldgate is set in the pre-WWII Jewish East End and Chelsea. It is the story of a young Jewish woman who goes to work for the French artist Paul Maze, and the relationship that ensues. Mrs Friedberg, a great grandmother, has already been in touch with a production company about developing it into a film. .
Jewish Chronicle
Discussion Questions
1. What did you think 21 Aldgate is about?
2. How does it compare to other books of the same genre?
3. Which part of the story held your interest most?
4. Which of the characters would you like to meet? Why?
5. With which (if any) of the characters did you identify?
6. Some of the characters had to make a choice that had moral implications, would you have made the same decision? Why or Why not?
7. How does the setting figure into the book? Did you feel you were experiencing the time and place in which the story was set?
8. What are some of the book's themes? How important are they?
9. How are the book's images symbolically significant? Do the images help to develop the plot and help to define the characters?
10. Did the book end the way you expected?
(Questions used with permission of author.)
The Long Walk Home
Will North, 2008
Crown Publishing
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307383037
Summary
The miracle of love after loss and longing
The Long Walk Home is a story about grief and hope, about love and loss, and about two people struggling with the agonizing complexities of fidelity–to a spouse, to a moral code, to each other, and to a passion neither thought would ever appear again.
By turns lyrical and gripping, set amid a landscape of breathtaking beauty and unpredictable danger, this is a story you will not soon forget. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
His own words:
I think we can safely blame it on Margaret D’Ascoli, though I suppose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may bear some responsibility as well.
Mrs. D’Ascoli was my eighth grade English teacher, Longfellow was the author of—among other things—the epic poem, Evangeline, about which we had to write a critical essay. When the day came for the papers to be handed back, the class was awash in anxiety. Mrs. D’Ascoli was one tough cookie, and an even tougher grader. She walked through the aisles returning the essays to everyone but me, then went back to the front of the room and stood before the class until the rustle of papers ceased. Holding one last paper in her hand, she said, “As you know, I always give grades for both style and content. I have here a paper to which I have awarded not two, but three A’s: one for style, one for content, and one for something I cannot begin to explain to you. Then she handed me my essay. There was a silence like death, followed by excited whispers. I wanted to crawl into a hole and quietly die from embarrassment.
It wasn’t until later, on the walk home from school, that I felt excited, and it wasn’t because of the three A’s. It was because, at an age when you know with absolute certainty that you’re a totally worthless speck in the universe, I’d learned there was something I could do better than anyone else I knew: I could write.
Ever since then, writing’s been my “meal ticket.” It was my ticket out of a chaotic and sometimes frightening family in a steadily deteriorating neighborhood in Yonkers, just over the New York City border. It was my ticket to scholarships for an undergraduate degree in English, and then a graduate degree in journalism. It carried me through a series of jobs and ultimately, at the tender age of 30, to an appointed position in the Carter Administration. Much as I loved that job, one of the best things that ever happened to me was the election of Ronald Reagan, who promptly fired me and forced me to choose between holding a job and becoming an author. I chose the latter.
Over the years, I’ve written more than a dozen books, all non-fiction. Initially, they were about what might be called “progressive public policy issues.” Somewhere along the line, I also became a ghostwriter—for a President, a Vice-President, a famous mountaineer and explorer, a team of Everest climbers, a group of dinosaur-hunters, and a couple of pioneering doctors. I also wrote a series of off-the-beaten-track guidebooks to the place I love most in the world: Britain.
And I married. Twice. And divorced. Twice—though I remained friends with both of my ex-wives. I have an achingly wonderful son and a splendid grandson (yikes!) and daughter-in-law.
One last thing: If you Google “Will North” you won’t find any of my nonfiction books. “North” is my pen name. I’m not trying to be mysterious; my real surname is nearly unpronounceable unless you have a lisp, and virtually impossible to remember—not a good thing for a novelist. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Long Walk Home movingly conveys the life-changing effects of love between two middle-aged people with a lot of unshared history.
Seattle Times
North's bittersweet, romantic novel has invited some early comparisons with the bestselling work of Nicholas Sparks and Robert James Waller.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In this lyrical first novel about love and loss by a ghostwriter for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Alec, a former speech writer for Jimmy Carter, walks like a pall bearer from Heathrow Airport to North Wales to scatter the ashes of his late wife. Along the way, he meets and begins an affair with Fiona Edwards, the spirited and married operator of a Welsh bed-and-breakfast. Fiona's marriage to her shepherd husband David is foundering on the shoals of mutual lack of interest and David's pesticide-related illness that keeps him relegated to separate quarters. There are moral dilemmas aplenty, most notably when Alec discovers David near death in the same treacherous region where he just released his wife's remains. North offers vivid descriptions of the Welsh countryside, capturing its local dialect, flora and fauna, and wild weather, but his romantic boomer tale—which includes some overwrought poetry and a few witty words on Carter's handling of the Iran hostage crisis—is sometimes too idyllic. If Nicholas Sparks set a novel in North Wales, it would read a lot like this.
Publishers Weekly
How we perceive love and acknowledge its obligations is at the core of this first novel by ghostwriter North.... If visions of Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep come to mind, which they did briefly for this reviewer, the similarity to Robert Waller's The Bridges of Madison County ends there. Fi and Alec do share an immediate connection, but their witty exchanges and the fascinating descriptions of climbing, cooking (yes, Alec can do it in the kitchen), and lambing are absorbing from the very first. Alec has experienced loss and doesn't want any more of it; Fi accepts that her dreams might have to remain just that.... A joy to read.
Library Journal
New Yorker Alec Hudson is a man with a mission. Determined to fulfill his ex-wife's dying request to have her ashes scattered on a remote Welsh mountain, the site of one of their happiest times in life, Alec decides to work through the mourning process by walking from Heathrow to North Wales. There he meets Fiona Edwards, the proprietor of a quaint farmhouse bed-and-breakfast. Prevented from scaling the mountain by inclement weather, Alec is drawn into life on the farm, helping out with lambing season and falling into an easy companionship with the outgoing Fiona, whose reclusive husband is suffering the ill effects of poisoning from a cleansing agent used on the sheep. When Alec and Fiona finally recognize and act on their mutual attraction, lifelong notions of loyalty and duty endlessly complicate their relationship. With its exploration of love at midlife, this debut novel will remind readers of the megahit Bridges of Madison County. —Wilkinson, Joanne
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Alec and Gwynne have been divorced for years, yet when she becomes ill he cares for her. Do you know of someone who has been called upon to care for a dying former spouse? Can you imagine yourself in such a situation?
2. When Alec decides to walk to Wales with Gwynne’s ashes, what do you think he’s trying to accomplish? Have you ever done anything for similar motives? Can you see yourself ever doing something extreme like that?
3. When Alec arrives at Fiona’s farm, he is a man of few words. What is it about Fiona that changes him? What is it about Alec that changes Fiona—unlocking her own pain and her own capacity to love fully?
4. Fiona and Alec share a central emotional characteristic: they are both caretakers by nature and upbringing. Because of this, what do they bring to, and bring out of, each other?
5. Fiona and Alec both lost a parent when they were young: Fiona’s father drowned, Alec’s father drank himself to death. How has each of them been affected?
6. British-born novelist Jonathan Raban has said of The Long Walk Home that it is the mountain, “capricious Cadair Idris,” to which the reader must look “for the story’s deeper implications.” What do you think he means by that? Is the mountain itself a character in the story?
7. Will North admits to being, well...a guy. Do you think he succeeds in understanding and revealing Fiona’s head and heart?
8. Ultimately, despite the fact that she is married, Fiona and Alec become lovers. Both of them understand that this is wrong...and yet believe it is also utterly right. How can that be? And why do we find ourselves rooting for them?
9. Fiona has been caring for her ailing husband for three years. Do you think she should have anticipated his attempted suicide?
10. When Alec discovers David dying on the mountain, he knows that one option is to do nothing. There must be a moment, a fraction of a second, when Alec sees how life would be made simpler by David’s death. Given what happens to David—given what happens to Fiona and Alec—do you think he made the right decision?
11. Fiona’s daughter, Meaghan, is so close to and protective of her father that she sometimes behaves as if she believes she would be a better caretaker for him than his own wife. Does that ring true to you? How well do you think Fiona handles Meaghan’s possessiveness?
12. The Long Walk Home is a book about fidelity. Beyond its most obvious form—fidelity to a spouse—what other issues of fidelity do these characters wrestle with? If you were Alec, how would you choose? If you were Fiona, what would you do?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Fifty Shades of Grey (Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy)
E L James, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345803481
Summary
When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating.
The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.
Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.
Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever. (From the publisher.)
See our Reading Guides for the next two books in the Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades Darker, the second book; and Fifty Shades Freed, the third.
See the 2015 film version with Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the movie and book.
Author Bio
E L James is a former TV executive, wife and mother of two based in West London. Since early childhood she dreamed of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career. She finally plucked up the courage to put pen to paper with her first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This is a book that will spark converstion like no other—on many levels, for many reasons and it's not just about the sex. It's a fresh witty look about courtship and compromise, written in a delightful style. It's about how the past shapes our present and how one person challenges another in a relationship. The characters are endearing and unpreidictable making it a fun enchanting read.
Princeton Review (online)
Odds are also that each woman [reading Fifty Shades of Grey] is in a state of arousal, amusement, or, at the very least, amazement at the ingenuity and imagination with which the pseudonymous James...has made steamy female-centric erotica out of what began as Twilight fan fiction. If Bella Swan had more gumption and sexual curiosity, she might be Anastasia Steele
Lisa Schwarzbaum - Entertainment Weekly
So is it worth picking up a copy? Yes, if you come prepared to wade through pages of treacly cliche. James’s subject matter may be hard-hitting, but her writing is as hackneyed as the hoariest Mills & Boon. Words like “Adonis” circle round almost every mention of Gray, who can’t stop “flashing his grey eyes” at the smitten Steele; and she, for her part, talks repeatedly and irritatingly of her “inner goddess."... In fact it's the definition of a page-turner: even if anyone unfamiliar with the world of BDSM [bondage, discipline, sado-masochism] is likely to turn the pages more out of horrified fascination than engagement with the characters.
Telegraph (UK)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fifty Shades of Grey:
1. How would you describe this book: as erotica, porn, soft porn, romantic fiction, comedy...or something else?
2. How do you feel about the portrayal of sex, particularly Christian's prediliction for sado-masochism: do you find it overly graphic, refreshingly frank, disturbing, amusing, offensive, arousing?
3. Does this book place women in a degrading light, as some have claimed?
4. Are you surprised that a woman would/could write about submissive-dominant relationships so openly? Does her feminine perspective bring a different view on sexuality than a male writer's might?
5. What about the characters, Anastasia and Christian? Are they fully developed as three-dimensional characters, complete with emotional and psychological complexity—or are they flat and one-dimensional? Are you able to see beyond the sexual encounters to become sympathetically engaged with the two? Do you come to think of them as real people?
6. Why are Ana and Christian drawn to one another in the first place?
7. As more of his character and background are revealed, does your attitude toward Christian change?
8. Is Ana the submissive partner in the relationship, sexual or otherwise? Would you say she's an equal partner...or is she dominated by the older, more powerful Christian?
9. What about Ana's mother? What role does she play in all this? What role should she have played? What about some of the other secondary characters—do you have a favorite?
10. What is the metaphorical significance of the see-saw? How might it suggest the book's resolution?
11. What does the title refer to?
12. Many have described the book as a page turner—did you have trouble putting it down? What do you think explains the run-away success of Fifty Shades, first published as an ebook? What is the audience (aside from you!), and who should, or should not, read the book?
13. What do you think of the author's writing—E L James's frequent use of Adonis to describe Christian, the way Christian continually flashes his gray eyes, or Ana's numerous references to her inner goddess? Does the style engage you, amuse you, put you off, help delineate character...?
14. Do you plan on reading the other two installments of the Fifty Shades Trilogy? Have you read other books similar to Fifty Shades of Grey?
15. Who would you like to see play the lead roles in the film version?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)