The Listener
Taylor Caldwell, 1960
Random House
288 pp.
Summary
Nobody has time to listen to anyone, not even those who love you and would die for you. Your parents, your children, your friends: they have no time.... Here in a novel of unusual honesty and touching simplicity, Taylor Caldwell has written an inspiring story of how the desperate, the troubled and the unloved find help and inner peace.... The Listener remained concealed...but would reveal himself to those who truly suffered...the rich, the poor, the scoffing, and the faithful...discovered the real source of true happiness....
Through a series of modern parables, Caldwell shows what desperation and spiritual aridity can result when fundamental faith is lost or allowed to wither. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 7, 1900
• Where—Manchester, UK
• Death—1985
• Where—Greenwich, Copnnecticut, USA
• Education—University of Buffalo (New York)
Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) was an Anglo-American novelist and prolific author of popular fiction, also known by the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner, and by her married name of J. Miriam Reback.
She used often in her works real historical events or persons. Taylor Caldwell's best-known works include Dynasty of Death (1938), an epic story about intrigues and alliances of two Pennsylvania families involved in the manufacture of armaments, "Dear and Glorious Physician" (about St.Luke), and "Captains and Kings". Her last major novel, Answer as a Man, appeared in 1980.
Early Life
Taylor Caldwell was born in Manchester, England, into a family of Scottish background. Her family descended from the Scottish clan of MacGregor of which the Taylors are a subsidiary clan. In 1907 she emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger brother. Her father died shortly after the move, and the family struggled. At the age of eight she started to write stories, and in fact wrote her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, at the age of twelve¹ (although it was to remain unpublished until 1975). In 1919 she married William F. Combs, had "Peggy" and divorced in 1931. Between the years 1918 and 1919 she served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1923 to 1924 she was a court reporter in New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo, New York and from 1924 to 1931 a member of the Board of Special Inquiry at the Department of Justice in Buffalo.
In 1931 she graduated from the University at Buffalo. In collaboration with her second husband, Marcus Reback, she wrote several bestsellers, the first of which was Dynasty of Death. Caldwell had started to write the story in 1934. It begins from the year 1837 and focuses on the entangled relationships of two families, who control a huge munitions trust. Joseph Barbour is a servant, who becomes a successful businessman and arms manufacturer. His son Martin is not interested in money, he is an idealist and altruist. Ernest, the elder son, is an egoist and believes that money is the greatest power in the world. Ernest loves Amy Drumhill, the niece of Gregory Sessions, owner of a steel factory. However, she marries Martin, who establishes a hospital, and dies in the American Civil War. Ernest's hardness ruins Joseph, and he is cursed by his mother. Dynasty of Death attracted wide attention when it was revealed that behind the male pseudonym was a woman. The story was continued in The Eagles Gather (1940) and The Final Hour (1944).
Writing
As a writer Caldwell was praised for her intricately plotted and suspenseful stories, which depicted family tensions and the development of the U.S. from an agrarian society into the leading industrial state of the world. Caldwell's heroes are self-made men of pronounced ethnic background, such as the German immigrants in The Strong City (1942) and The Balance Wheel (1951). Her themes are ethnic, religious and personal intolerance (The Wide House, 1945), the failure of parental discipline (Let Love Come Last, 1949) and the conflict between the desire for power and money and the human values of love and sense of family, presented in such works as Melissa (1948), A Prologue to Love (1962) and Bright Flows the River (1978).
In her later works Caldwell explored the American Dream and wrote "from rag to riches" stories, among them Answer as a Man (1981). Caldwell's historical novels include The Arm and the Darkness, a fictionalized account of Cardinal Richelieu; A Pillar of Iron (1965), a fictional biography of Cicero, the Roman senator and orator; and The Earth Is the Lord's (1941), a fictional biography of Genghis Khan. Religious themes were prominent in several works. Answer as a Man begins with the clamour of the bells of a little church and ends with renewed faith.
During her career as a writer Caldwell's books sold over thirty million copies. She received several awards, among them the National League of American Pen Women gold medal (1948), Buffalo Evening News Award (1949), and Grand Prix Chatvain (1950). Caldwell was married four times altogether—the third time to William Everett Stancell, and the fourth and final time to William Robert Prestie, who was a follower of Subud (he died in 2002). She had two daughters, Judith and Mary (Judith died in 1979). She was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society's monthly journal American Opinion and even associated with the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough, appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion. Caldwell continued writing until 1980, when a stroke left her deaf and unable to speak. She died of pulmonary failure in Greenwich, Connecticut on September 2, 1985.
Insights
From On Growing Up Tough:
We, perhaps, have corrupted our children and our grandchildren by heedless affluence, by a lack of manliness, by giving the younger generation more money and liberty than their youth can handle, by indoctrinating them with sinister ideologies and false values, by permitting them, as young children, to indulge themselves in imprudence to superiors and defiance of duly constituted authority, by lack of prudent, swift punishment when the transgressed, by coddling and pampering them when they were children and protecting them from a very dangerous world—which always was and always will be. We gave them no moral arms, no spiritual armor. (Chapter - "On Hippies")
The nature of human beings never changes; it is immutable. The present generation of children and the present generation of young adults from the age of thirteen to eighteen is, therefore, no different from that of their great-great-grandparents. Political fads come and go; theories rise and fall; the scientific ‘truth’ of today becomes the discarded error of tomorrow. Man’s ideas change, but not his inherent nature. That remains. So, if the children are monstrous today —even criminal—it is not because their natures have become polluted, but because they have not been taught better, nor disciplined. (Chapter - "The Purple Lodge") (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(For older books, there are few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
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 The Listener:
1. Which story(ies) did you find most affecting? Or which did you most relate to on a personal level?
2. Take one story at a time: what is the central conflict of each visitor? Is it internal, external, or both?
3. How does each visitor achieve solace? What does each come to learn? What insights are gained?
4. What is the motiviation of the listener—why does he offer his services? What is his purpose...if he has one?
5. What does it mean to truly listen? Are most of us, any of us, capable of truly listening to others? Does anyone truly listen to us?
7. Everyone has his/her own story. How important is it to tell our stories? Does it matter to whom you tell them? What do you look for when you tell your story?
6. Is the emphasis of this work spiritual, psychological, emotional, or all three? In other words, in what arena can we find solace? (This will vary among members.)
7. Is Caldwell working with larger issues (symbols and themes) here?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther Series, #5)
Phillip Kerr, 2008
Gale Group
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143116486
Summary
Bernie Gunther, Berlin's hardest-boiled private eye, returns in this his latest outing. Moving the plot from pre-war Germany to the dangers of Argentina in 1950 and the post-war world of Hitler's most notorious war criminals, Kerr yet again delivers a powerful, compelling thriller.
Posing as an escaping Nazi war criminal Bernie Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires and, having revealed his real identity to the local chief of police, discovers that his reputation as a detective goes before him.
A young girl has been murdered in peculiarly gruesome circumstances that strongly resemble Bernie's final case as a homicide detective with the Berlin police during the dog days of the Weimar Republic. A case he had failed to solve.
Circumstances lead the chief of police in Buenos Aires to suppose that the murderer may be one of several thousand ex-Nazis who have fetched up in Argentina since 1945. And, therefore, who better than Bernie Gunther to help him track that murderer down? Reluctantly Bernie agrees to help the police and discovers much more than he, or even they, bargained for.
Redolent with atmosphere and featuring compelling portraits of real characters, such as Eva and Juan Peron, Adolf Eichmann, and Otto Skorzeny, this novel ends up asking some highly provocative questions about the true extent of Argentina's Nazi collaboration and anti-Semitism under the Perons. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—P.B. Kerr
• Birth—1956
• Where—Edinburgh, Scotland
• Education—University of Birmingham
• Currently—lives in London and Cornwall, UK
Philip Kerr is a British author born in Edinburgh. He studied at the University of Birmingham and worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi and Saatchi before becoming a full-time writer.
He has written for the Sunday Times, Evening Standard and the New Statesman. Kerr has published eleven novels under his full name and a children's series, Children of the Lamp, under the name P.B. Kerr. He is married to novelist Jane Thynne. (From the author's website.)
<Book Reviews
[Phillip Kerr] brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of post-war period in one of the most gripping and accomplished detective novels published this year.
London Sunday Times
He's in a league with John le Carre and Alan Furst.
Washington Post
One of the great achievements of contemporary crime fiction.... Powerful and impressive.
The Observer
A bleak tale but a funny and thrilling one.... Kerr digs deeper into his hero's inner life than Chandler ever did...
Daily Telegraph
(Starred review.) At the start of Kerr's stellar fifth Bernie Gunther novel (after The One from the Other), the former Berlin homicide detective seeks exile in Argentina in 1950, along with others connected to the Nazi past (one of his fellow ship passengers is Adolf Eichmann). A few weeks after Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires, a local policeman, Colonel Montalban, asks his help in solving the savage murder of 15-year-old Grete Wohlauf. Montalban has noticed similarities between this crime and two unsolved murders Gunther investigated in 1932 Germany. Another teenage girl's disappearance heightens the urgency of the inquiry. In exchange for free medical treatment for his just diagnosed thyroid cancer, Gunther agrees to subtly grill members of the large German community. A secret he stumbles on soon places his life in jeopardy. Kerr, who's demonstrated his versatility with high-quality entries in other genres, cleverly and plausibly grafts history onto a fast-paced thriller plot.
Publishers Weekly<
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 A Quiet Flame:
1. Mysteries are informed by Realism, a world view that presupposes the existence of Truth—which can be uncovered using the powers of logic and reason. (This is in opposition to, say, Romanticism or Modernism/Post-Modernism.) To what degree is realism's world view prominent in Kerr's book? What is the "truth" at the heart of the mystery?
2. Be sure to check out the discussion of literary realism in LitCourse 2, one of LitLovers' free online mini courses. The course reading is a Sherlock Holmes mystery, a perfect example of realistic fiction.
3. In terms of plot, mysteries are based on "suspended revelation" — a plot device in which writers withhold information from readers in order to build suspense. Ask yourself what does Kerr let you know...and when do you know it.
4. A skillful mystery writer embeds clues within the storyline. The revelation at the end is organic, flowing out of what comes before. (Not-so-skillful writers tack on surprise endings...which appear out of nowhere.) What clues does Kerr hide...and how well does he hide them. See also LitCourse 6 on plot and suspended revelation. The course reading is a wonderful short story/mystery by William Faulkner with a brilliant display of suspended revelation. Don't miss this one!
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Unaccustomed Earth (Short Stories)
Jhumpa Lahiri, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
333 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307278258
Summary
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.
Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 11, 1967
• Where—London, England, UK
• Raised—Kingston, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; 2 M.A's., M.F.A., and
Ph.D., Boston University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Rome, Italy
Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna but goes by her nickname Jhumpa. Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Biography
Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was two; Lahiri considers herself an American, having said, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been." Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island; he is the basis for the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "proper names". Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are." Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989.
Lahiri then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor and now Senior Editor of Time Latin America. The couple lives in Rome, Italy with their two children.
Literary career
Lahiri's early short stories faced rejection from publishers "for years." Her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was finally released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation United States immigrants. Lahiri later wrote,
When I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life.
The collection was praised by American critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately enthusiastic and upset Lahiri had "not paint[ed] Indians in a more positive light." However, according to Md. Ziaul Haque, a poet, columnist, scholar, researcher and a faculty member at Sylhet International University, Bangladesh,
But, it is really painful for any writer living far away in a new state, leaving his/her own homeland behind; the motherland, the environment, people, culture etc. constantly echo in the writer’s (and of course anybody else’s) mind. So, the manner of trying to imagine and describe about the motherland and its people deserves esteem. I think that we should coin a new term, i.e. “distant-author” and add it to Lahiri’s name since she, being a part of another country, has taken the help of "imagination" and depicted her India the way she has wanted to; the writer must have every possible right to paint the world the way he/she thinks appropriate.
Interpreter of Maladies sold 600,000 copies and received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award).
In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her first novel. The story spans over thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents emigrated as young adults to the United States, where their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The Namesake was released in 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa".
Lahiri's second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was released in 2008. Upon its publication, Unaccustomed Earth achieved the rare distinction of debuting at number 1 on the New York Times best seller list. The Times Book Review editor, Dwight Garner, wrote, "It’s hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction — particularly a book of stories — that leapt straight to No. 1; it’s a powerful demonstration of Lahiri’s newfound commercial clout."
Her fourth book and second movel, The Lowland, was published in 2013, again to wide acclaim. The story of two Indian born brothers who take different paths in life, it was placed on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize.
Lahiri has also had a distinguished relationship with The New Yorker magazine in which she has published a number of her short stories, mostly fiction, and a few non-fiction including "The Long Way Home; Cooking Lessons," a story about the importance of food in Lahiri's relationship with her mother.
Since 2005, Lahiri has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center, an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers. In 2010, she was appointed a member of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities, along with five others.
Literary focus
Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home. Lahiri's fiction is autobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior.
Unaccustomed Earth departs from this earlier original ethos as Lahiri's characters embark on new stages of development. These stories scrutinize the fate of the second and third generations. As succeeding generations become increasingly assimilated into American culture and are comfortable in constructing perspectives outside of their country of origin, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the constraints of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants.
Television
Lahiri worked on the third season of the HBO television program In Treatment. That season featured a character named Sunil, a widower who moves to the United States from Bangladesh and struggles with grief and with culture shock. Although she is credited as a writer on these episodes, her role was more as a consultant on how a Bengali man might perceive Brooklyn.
Awards
• 1993 – TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
• 1999 – O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 1999 – "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2000 – "The Third and Final Continent" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2000 – The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut "Interpreter of Maladies"
• 2002 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2002 – "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
• 2008 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
• 2009 – Asian American Literary Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/12/13.)
Book Reviews
[T]he fact that America is still a place where the rest of the world comes to reinvent itself—accepting with excitement and anxiety the necessity of leaving behind the constrictions and comforts of distant customs—is the underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri's sensitive new collection of stories.... Lahiri handles her characters without leaving any fingerprints. She allows them to grow as if unguided, as if she were accompanying them rather than training them through the espalier of her narration. Reading her stories is like watching time-lapse nature videos of different plants, each with its own inherent growth cycle, breaking through the soil, spreading into bloom or collapsing back to earth.
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times Book Review
As she did in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and her dazzling 2003 novel The Namesake, Ms. Lahiri writes about these people in Unaccustomed Earth with an intimate knowledge of their conflicted hearts, using her lapidary eye for detail to conjure their daily lives with extraordinary precision: the faint taste of coconut in the Nice cookies that a man associates with his dead wife; the Wonder Bread sandwiches, tinted green with curry, that a Bengali mother makes for her embarrassed daughter to take to school. A Chekhovian sense of loss blows through these new stories: a reminder of Ms. Lahiri's appreciation of the wages of time and mortality and her understanding too of the missed connections that plague her husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and friends.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
The eight stories in this collection revolve less around the dislocation Lahiri's earlier Bengali characters encountered in America and more around the assimilation experienced by their children—children who, while conscious of and self-conscious about their parents' old-world habits, vigorously reject them in favor of American lifestyles and partners. Lahiri, who was raised and educated in the United States and whose parents are Bengali, is adept at showing us these cultural and generational conflicts. The stories she generates from these clashes appear true to life, and while a few lack nuance and at times feel familiar, they are never predictable. Lahiri is far too accomplished and empathic a writer to relax her gaze; she excels at uncovering character and choosing detail.
Lily Tuck - Washington Post
Stunning. [Lahiri] delves deeply and richly into the lives of immigrants. [But though] immigrants may be the stories’ protagonists, their doubts, insecurities, losses and heartbreaks belong to all of us. Never before has Lahiri mined so perfectly the secrets of the human heart.... In part, Lahiri’s gift to the reader is gorgeous prose that bestows greatness on life’s mundane events and activities. But it is her exploration of lost love and lost loved ones that gives her stories an emotional exactitude few writers could ever hope to match.
Carol Memmott - USA Today
Profound.... Powerful.... Haunting.... Lahiri’s prose here is deceptively simple, its mechanics invisible, as she enters into her characters’ innermost journeys. [In the title story,] the moment-to-moment rendering of Ruma’s vulnerability and her father’s rising panic at all that he’s keeping secret sweeps the reader into a compelling emotional landscape.... Lahiri invests [her characters] with great depth. [She is] a writer working at the height of her powers.
Lisa Fugard - Los Angeles Times Book Review
The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children-and that separates the children from India-remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen's reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals.
Publishers Weekly
Four years after the release of her best-selling novel, The Namesake , the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri returns with her highly anticipated second collection of short stories exploring the inevitable tension brought on by family life. The title story, for example, takes on a young mother nervously hosting her widowed father, who is visiting between trips he takes with a lover he has kept secret from his family. What could have easily been a melodramatic soap opera is instead a meticulously crafted piece that accurately depicts the intricacies of the father-daughter relationship. In a departure from her first book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies , Lahiri divides this book into two parts, devoting the second half of the book to "Hema and Kaushik," three stories that together tell the story of a young man and woman who meet as children and, by chance, reunite years later halfway around the world. The author's ability to flesh out completely even minor characters in every story, and especially in this trio of stories, is what will keep readers invested in the work until its heartbreaking conclusion. Recommended for all public libraries.
John Hiett - Library Journal
Lahiri extends her mastery of the short-story format in a collection that has a novel's thematic cohesion, narrative momentum and depth of character. The London-born, American-raised author of Indian descent returns with some of her most compelling fiction to date. Each of these eight stories, most on the longish side, a few previously published in magazines, concerns the assimilation of Bengali characters into American society. The parents feel a tension between the culture they've left behind (though to which they frequently return) and the adopted homeland where they always feel at least a little foreign. Their offspring, who are generally the protagonists of these stories, are typically more Americanized, adopting a value system that would scandalize their parents, who are usually oblivious to the college lives their sons and daughters lead. Ambition and accomplishment are givens in these families, where it's understood that nothing less than attending a top-flight school and entering an honored profession (medicine, law, academics) will satisfy. The stunning title story presents something of a role reversal, as a Bengali daughter and her American husband must come to terms with the secrets harbored by her father. The story expresses as much about love, loss and the family ties that stretch across continents and generations through what it doesn't say, and through what is left unaddressed by the characters. Even "Only Goodness," the most heavy-handed piece in the collection, which concerns a character's guilt over her brother's alcoholism, sustains the reader's interest until the last page. The final three stories trace the lives of two characters, Hema and Kaushik, from their teen years through their 30s, when fate (or chance) reunites them. An eye for detail, ear for dialogue and command of family dynamics distinguish this uncommonly rich collection.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the relevance of the epigraph from Hawthorne’s “The Custom House” not just to the title story but also to the collection as a whole. In which stories do the children successfully “strike their roots into unaccustomed earth”? Why do others find themselves unable to establish roots? How do their feelings of restlessness and insecurity stem from growing up in two cultures? What other more universal problems do they experience? In what ways does their lack of attachment to a place or culture reflect a more general trend in society?
2. In “Unaccustomed Earth,” what underlies the tension in the relationship between Ruma and her father as the story opens? What aspects of the family’s history inhibit their ability to communicate with each other? How do their memories of Ruma’s mother and the life she led influence the paths they choose for the next stages in their lives? Do you feel more sympathy for either character’s point of view?
3. In what ways does “Heaven-Hell” echo the themes explored in “Unaccustomed Earth”? How does the way the story unfolds add to its power and its poignancy? What parallels are there between the narrator’s mother’s “crush” on Pranab and her own infatuation with him and Deborah?
4. What is the significance of the title “A Choice of Accommodations”? What does it imply about Amit and Megan’s marriage? Why do you think Lahiri chose to set the story at Amit’s old prep school? Do you think the events of the weekend bring Amit a better sense of who he is, what he wants and needs from Megan, and his role as a husband and father? Will the weekend change anything for Amit and Megan and their relationship?
5. “Only Goodness” traces the impact of parental expectations on a sister and brother. Why did Sudha and Rahul develop in such different ways? Discuss such factors as the circumstances surrounding their births and earliest years; the obligations Sudha takes on both as the “perfect daughter” and in response to the combination of love, envy, and resentment Rahul’s attitudes and behavior arouse in her; and the siblings’ awareness of and reactions to the “perplexing fact of [their] parents’ marriage” [p. 137]. Compare and contrast the siblings’ choice of partners. What attracts Sudha to Roger, and Rahul to Elena?
6. Why does Paul, the American graduate student in “Nobody’s Business,” find his roommate, Sang, the recipient of frequent marriage proposals, so intriguing? Does Paul really want to help Sang, or does he get involved in her relationship with Farouk for more selfish reasons? Why do you think Lahiri titled this story “Nobody’s Business”–and what does the title mean to you?
7. In “Once in a Lifetime,” Hema addresses Kaushik directly as she recalls the time they spent together as teenagers. How does this twist on the first-person narration change your experience as a reader? Does it establish a greater intimacy between you and the narrator? Does it have an effect on the flow of the narrative? On the way Hema presents her memories? Is it comparable, for example, to reading a private letter or diary? Are the same things true of Kaushik’s narrative in “Year’s End”?
8. In an interview with Bookforum, Lahiri, whose parents immigrated to London and then to the United States, said, “My parents befriended people simply for the fact that they were like them on the surface; they were Bengali, and that made their circle incredibly vast. There is this de facto assumption that they’re going to get along, and often that cultural glue holds them, but there were also these vast differences. My own circle of friends is much more homogenous, because most of my friends went to college—Ivy League or some other fine institution—and vote a certain way.” How is this mirrored by the friendship between the two sets of parents in “Once in a Lifetime,” who are close friends despite the differences in their backgrounds? Why does this attachment deteriorate when the Choudhuri family returns from India? Which of their habits or attitudes do Hema’s parents find particularly reprehensible and why? What is the significance of Kaushik’s breaking his family’s silence and telling Hema about his mother’s illness?
9. How would you describe the tone and style of Kaushik’s account of his father’s remarriage in “Year’s End”? Does his conversation with his father [pp. 253-255] reveal similarities between them? Why does Kaushik say, “I didn’t know which was worse—the idea of my father remarrying for love, or of his actively seeking out a stranger for companionship” [p. 255]? Does the time he spends with his father’s new family offer an alternate, more complex, explanation for his father’s decision?
10. What role do his stepsisters play in Kaushik’s willingness to accept his father’s marriage? Why is he so outraged by their fascination with the pictures of his mother? He later reflects, “in their silence they continued to both protect and punish me” [p.293]. In what ways does their silence and the reasons for it mirror Kaushik’s own behavior, both here and in “Once in a Lifetime”?
11. How do “Once in a Lifetime” and “Year’s End” set the stage for “Going Ashore,” the final story in the trilogy? What traces of their younger selves are visible in both Hema and Kaushik? In what ways do the paths they’ve chosen reflect or oppose the journeys their parents made as immigrants?
12. Why does Hema find the idea of an arranged marriage appealing? How has her affair with Julian affected her ideas about romantic love? What does her description of her relationship with Navin [pp. 296-298] reveal about what she thinks she wants and needs in a relationship? What role do her memories of her parents’ marriage play in her vision of married life?
13. What motivates Kaushik’s decision to become a photojournalist? In what ways does the peripatetic life of a photojournalist suit his idea of himself? In addition to the many moves his family made, what other experiences make him grow up to be an outsider, “away from the private detritus of life” [p. 309]?
14. What does the reunion in Rome reveal about the ties that bind Hema and Kaushik despite their many years of separation? What does it illustrate about their attempts to escape from the past and their parents’ way of life? What do they come to realize about themselves and the plans they have made as the intimacy between them escalates? Why does Lahiri introduce Hema’s voice as the narrator of the final pages?
15. In what ways does “Going Ashore” bring together the themes threaded through the earlier stories? What does the ending demonstrate about realities of trying to find a home in the world?
16. The stories in Unaccustomed Earth offer a moving, highly original perspective on the clash between family and cultural traditions and the search for individual identity. How does the sense of displacement felt by the older, immigrant generation affect their American-born children? What accommodations do the children make to their parents’ way of life? In trying to fit in with their American friends, do they sacrifice their connections to their heritage? In what ways are the challenges they face more complex than those of their parents?
17. Several stories feature marriages between an Indian-American and an American—and in once case, English—spouse. What characteristics do these mixed marriages share? In what ways does becoming parents themselves bring up (or renew) questions about cultural identity? What emotions arise as they contemplate the differences between the families they’re creating and those in which they grew up?
(Questions from publisher.)
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Love Walked In
Marisa de los Santos, 2006
Penguin Group USA
307 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452287891
Summary
A tribute to classic film and true romance, Love Walked In tells the story of two women—one older, one younger—and the unexpected ways in which their lives are forever changed by chance.
For thirty-one-year old Cornelia Brown, life is a series of movie moments, and "Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up."
So imagine Cornelia's delight when her very own Cary Grant walks through the door of the hip Philadelphia cafe she manages. Handsome and debonair, Martin Grace sweeps Cornelia off her feet, becoming Cary Grant to Cornelia's Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable to her Joan Crawford. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbes must learn to fend for herself after her increasingly unstable mother has a breakdown and disappears.
With no one to turn to, Clare seeks out her estranged father, and when the two of them show up at Cornelia's cafe, the lives of Cornelia and Clare are changed in drastic and unexpected ways. A cinematic and heartfelt debut that pays homage to the classic Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, Love Walked In is sure to win over critics and readers of contemporary fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 12, 1966
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Virginia; M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College; Ph.D., University
of Houston
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, Delaware
Marisa de los Santos achieved her earliest success as an award-winning poet, and her work has been published in several literary journals. In 2000, her debut collection, From the Bones Out, appeared as part of the James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series.
De los Santos made her first foray into fiction in 2005 with the surprise bestseller Love Walked In. Optioned almost immediately for the movies, this elegant "literary romance" introduced Cornelia Brown, a diminutive, 30-something Philadelphian with a passion for classic film and an unshakable belief in the triumph of true love.
In her 2008 sequel, Belong to Me, de los Santos revisited Cornelia, now a married woman, newly relocated to the suburbs, and struggling to forge friendships with the women in her new hometown.
Her third novel, Falling Together, released in 2011, recounts the reunion of three college friends, whose friendships dissolve as everything they believed about themselves and each other is brought into question.
The Precious One, published in 2015, follows the two half-sisters who meet for the first time as they struggle to please their narcissistic, domineering father.
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• De los Santos' love affair with books began at a young age. She claims to have risked life and limb as a child by insisting on combining reading with such incompatible activities as skating, turning cartwheels, and descending stairs.
• I'm addicted to ballet, completely head-over-heels for it. I did it as a little kid, but took about a thirty year hiatus before starting adult classes. I do it as many times a week as I can, but if I could, I'd do it every day! In my next life, I'm definitely going to be a ballerina.
• I'm terrible with plants, outdoor plants, indoor plants, annuals, perennials. I kill them off in record time. I adore fresh flowers and keep them all over my house all year round because they're beautiful and already dead, but you won't find a single potted plant in my house. So many nice people in the world and in books are growers and gardeners, but the sad truth is that I'll never be one of them.
• I'm an awful sleeper, and the thing that helps me fall asleep or fall back to sleep is reading books from my childhood. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy series and her two Gone Away Lake books, all of the Anne of Green Gables books, Little Women, The Secret Garden, the Narnia books, and a bunch of others. I have probably read some of these books twenty, maybe thirty times. I read them to pieces, literally, and then have to buy new ones.
• I am crazy-scared of sharks and almost never swim in the ocean. Yes, I know it's silly, I know my chances of getting bitten by a shark are about the same as my chances of becoming president of the United States, but I can't help it.
• My favorite way to spend an evening is eating a meal with good friends. The cheese plate, the red wine, the clink of forks, a passel of kids dancing to The Jonas Brothers and laughing their heads off in the next room, food that either I or someone else has cooked with care and love, and warm, lively conversation-give me all this and I'm happy as a clam.
• I adore black and white movies, particularly romantic comedies from the thirties and forties. I love them for the dialogue and for the whip smart, fascinating, fast-talking, funny women.
• When asked what book that most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was ten, I can't count how many times I've read it since, and every single time, I am utterly pulled in. I don't read it; I live it. I'm with Scout on Boo Radley's porch and in the colored courtroom balcony, and my heart breaks with hers at Tom Robinson's fate. Over and over, the book lifts me up and sets me down into her shoes. I remember the wonder I felt the first time it happened, the sudden, jarring illumination: every person is the center of his or her life the way I am the center of mine. It changed everything. I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. That empathy is the greatest gift fiction gives us, and it's the biggest reason I write. (Author bio and interview adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos, is the kind of book that makes you want to hunker down on a chilly day in a comfy chair and read straight through 'til dark. The beginning is light, entertaining and inviting, the middle grows more serious, and then, toward the end, the violins really start to play in this poignant, heart-tugging story about a single woman and a little girl who develop an unlikely bond.
Susan Adams - Washington Post
Philadelphia cafe manager Cornelia Brown drifts effortlessly through her unattached life, unapologetic for idealizing romance and breathlessly recommending The Philadelphia Story-to the reader and everyone else. Eleven-year-old Clare is a child of divorce whose mother, a successful party planner, is quickly going to pieces. In alternating chapters of Cornelia's first person and Clare's free and direct third, poet de los Santos, making her novel debut, tells the story of their finding each other. That Cornelia, early on, immediately falls for Cary Grant doppelganger Martin Grace is no surprise; his relation to Clare, revealed a third of the way in, isn't really either. As she discovers maternal instincts she wasn't sure she had, Cornelia works up the courage to face her own feelings for Clare with honesty. As Martin exits, Cornelia's childhood friend Teo enters, but neither makes much impact, and Clare's rather serious issues get reduced to Clare-did-this, Clare-thought-that episodes. The two main characters exist for one purpose: to enact a cross-generational, strong-but-vulnerable-and-loving, screenplay-ready femininity. Chick lit? You bet: with rights sold in at least eight countries, and, indeed, to Paramount-Sarah Jessica Parker will star and coproduce with Sideways's Michael London. The book is fine, but for this property, it's a case of waiting for Carrie to walk in.
Publishers Weekly
Cornelia would be the first to admit that she has turned her life into a series of movie moments. She moved to Philadelphia because she fell in love with a movie—The Philadelphia Story—and there she waits for her leading man. When Martin, the handsome stranger in a perfectly cut suit, opens the door of the coffee shop Cornelia manages, she is all too ready to be swept off her feet and into the arms of her Cary Grant, her Clark Gable, her Jimmy Stewart. But is Martin her real love? Will he be the one to transform her fantasies into reality? Across town, eleven-year-old Clara struggles to hold her life together as her mother becomes increasingly unstable. When her mother disappears, abandoning Clara on the side of a road, Clara turns to her estranged father for help. And when Clara and her father show up on Cornelia's doorstep, Clara's and Cornelia's lives are changed forever. This is a novel about love between men and women, friends and strangers, mothers and daughters. There are a few (very few) obscenities, and the intimate moments between some of the characters are discrete. A choice for older teenage girls although many—if not most—will not be familiar with the leading men and the romantic movies of the past.
Anita Barnes Lowen - Children's Literature
Cornelia is a sprightly little thing who's stuck in a rut managing a coffee shop and watching her beloved film classics in her spare time. Then, right out of the movies, "love walked in," looking just like a modern-day incarnation of Cary Grant. Martin seems to be perfect for Cornelia, until she meets his ten-year-old daughter, Clare, whom he had failed to mention. When Cornelia learns that Clare's mother, Martin's ex-wife, has disappeared, she steps right into the situation. Narrated by Cornelia and Claire in alternating chapters, this is the story of how two lives intersect and a great relationship blooms from an unexpected seed. Poet de los Santos's debut is a light, sweet read with just a bit of substance underneath. Sarah Jessica Parker is slated to star and coproduce the film version with Sideways producer Michael London, and it seems like a good match. This may be one of those books that will be even better on the big screen. Recommended. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Library Journal
Two heroines, Clare Martin and Cornelia Brown, discover the power of friendship and the meaning of love in this remarkable tale. De los Santos crafts two irresistible characters in her debut novel. First we meet Cornelia, a hopeless romantic, addicted to classic films in which dashing men like Carey Grant bedazzle glamorous leading ladies like Grace Kelly. Cornelia is a 30-something underachiever whiling her time away as the manager of a Philadelphia coffee shop. While she neglects her interior life, Cornelia keeps her intellect sharp by engaging in clever repartee with the eccentrics who patronize Cafe Dora. But everything changes when Martin Grace strolls through the cafe's door. Martin is matinee-idol perfect-the witty banter, the impeccable clothes, the air of mystery. Cornelia is hooked. The relationship whizzes along, bringing Cornelia an offer of marriage. But before she gets to live happily ever after, Cornelia delves deeper into her feelings for Martin. Is she willing to settle for a safe and reliable relationship with a weak physical and emotional connection? Maybe chemistry only exists on movie screens and sparks don't fly for mere mortals. As Cornelia struggles to find her romantic bearings, our other heroine is facing tragedy. Clare, a tenderhearted pre-teen, is devastated when her mother experiences a mental breakdown and abandons Clare during the holidays. Through serendipity, Clare and Cornelia cross paths at the cafe, and the author deftly interweaves their stories. These two fragile souls instinctively cling to one another and share their dreams. Clare longs for a safe and secure home life and a reunion with her mother; Cornelia hopes to create a family of her own and find love. De los Santos's writing engages throughout this powerful story. It's impossible not to cheer for these characters as they search for happiness. A timeless gem.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Clare's attraction to fictional orphans. Why is she so fascinated by them, even before her mother leaves? Why can she relate to them? In what ways is she abandoned even before she is actually abandoned?
2. Cornelia claims that she doesn't fantasize about living in an old Hollywood movie but it becomes clear that she does. In what ways does she try to keep her own desires for the perfect Hollywood romance at bay? Why does she think she'll never have it? Does she harbor false or unrealistic expectations about love? In what ways, in the end, is Cornelia's story "old Hollywood?"
3. Why do you think Cornelia is so immediately drawn to Martin Grace? What does he represent to her? In what ways does he live up to her expectations? In what ways does he fail?
4. Discuss Martin's reaction to Clare's situation. Why do you think he never told Cornelia about Clare? Once Clare reappears in his life, what do you make of his actions and reactions to both Clare and to the missing Viviana? Do you think he handles it well? Try to imagine his perspective. Discuss.
5. In what ways are Cornelia and Clare alike? Why does Cornelia immediately feel the need to comfort Clare? How do they fill empty places in each other's lives? Also, why does Clare take to Teo so quickly when she can't do the same for her father? What about Cornelia and Teo together comforts Clare?
6. Clare realizes quickly that her father does not love her. Do you think that she's correct in her assessment? Do you think, in general, she is fair to Martin? Is Cornelia? When Martin told Cornelia he loved her, did you believe him? Why or why not? Do you think it's possible that he could love Cornelia but not his own daughter?
7. Why does Cornelia insist on taking Clare to her own house for Christmas? Do you think that was a mistake? In what other ways does Cornelia try to accommodate Clare? Why do you think she does these things? In what ways does returning to the house help Cornelia to better understand Clare? Why is this so important later on?
8. On p. 184, Clare thinks about love: "What she came to was that even if someone wasn't perfect or even especially good, you couldn't dismiss the love they felt. Love was always love; it had a rightness all its own, even if the person feeling the love was full of wrongness." Do you think Martin is a bad person? Do you think he deserves Cornelia's love? Clare's? Why or why not?
9. What do you make of Clare's reaction to Martin's death? Discuss the conversation she has with Teo on p. 204. Why does Clare think she's evil? Do you think she is? Why do you think she can have such open conversations with Teo? What about him makes him so trustworthy to her? Why are his opinions so important? What void does he fill in her life?
10. Throughout the novel, Linny is a very stabilizing force. What about her soothes Cornelia? Why are both Clare and Cornelia so relieved when Linny arrives just after Viviana? What role does Linny's character play in the novel? In what ways is she the opposite of Cornelia? Why is that something both Clare and Cornelia need so badly?
11. Were you surprised by Viviana's return? Did you believe that she would return? Do you think Cornelia's plans for herself and Clare were realistic?
12. What does Mrs. Goldberg represent to Cornelia? How do her memories of Mrs. Goldberg help her through difficult situations? How do her stories about Mrs. Goldberg help Clare? What does Mrs. Goldberg's house represent to Cornelia? To Clare? Why does Clare want so badly to stay there?
13. In the end, do you think Cornelia makes the right decision to leave Clare with Viviana? How is leaving them at Mrs. Goldberg's different than them returning to their own home? Why does it seem safer to all of them? Do you think Clare will really forgive Cornelia for leaving her?
14. Why is Cornelia surprised to discover that she is in love with Teo? Were you surprised? Why or why not? In what ways is he exactly what she was looking for? In what ways is he not? What do you make of his relationship with Ollie? Do you think he and Cornelia have a chance? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow, 1975
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812978186
Summary
This classic novel, published in 1975, chronicles the lives of three families in early twentieth-century New York. Three tales are relayed as separate stories initially, then are interwoven gradually.
The families' stories: that of rich white people, blacks from Harlem, and immigrant Jews, capture the spirit of the country in this era (1906-1915), and examine the shimmering, shattering forces that converged, evoking wonder as well as terror, in an age when everything seemed possible. Doctorow reminds readers that our life is not one "story." Rather, we are who we are because of the combination of our experiences.
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1931
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—A.B., Kenyon College; Columbia University
• Awards—3 National book Critics Circle Awards; National
Book Aware; PEN/Faulkner Award
• Currently—lives in the New York City area
E. L. Doctorow, one of America's preeminent authors, has received the National Book Critics Circle Award (three times), the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation For Fiction, and the William Dean Howells medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also published a volume of selected essays Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution, and a play, Drinks Before Dinner, which was produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival. (From the publisher.)
More
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author whose critically acclaimed and award-winning fiction ranges through his country’s social history from the Civil War to the present. Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo, where he published his first literary effort, The Beetle, which he describes as ”a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading of Kafka.”
He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. He began the work as a parody of the Western genre, but the piece evolved into a novel that asserted itself as a serious reclamation of the genre before he was through. It was published to positive reviews in 1960
Doctorow had married a fellow Columbia drama student, Helen Setzer, while in Germany and by the time he had moved on from his reader’s job in 1960 to become an editor at the New American Library, (NAL) a mass market paperback publisher, he was the father of three children. To support his family he would spend nine years as a book editor, first at NAL working with such authors as Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand, and then, in 1964 as Editor-in-chief at The Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines and William Kennedy, among others.
In 1969 Doctorow left publishing in order to write, and accepted a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel, a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Published in 1971 it was widely acclaimed, called a “masterpiece” by The Guardian, and it launched Doctorow into "the first rank of American writers" according to the New York Times.
Doctorow’s next book, written in his home in New Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), since accounted one of the hundred best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library Editorial Board
Doctorow’s subsequent work includes the award winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989), The March (2005) and Homer and Langley (2010); two volumes of short fiction, Lives of the Poets I (1984) and Sweetland Stories (2004); and two volumes of selected essays, Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993) and Creationists (2006). He is published in over thirty languages. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Pre-internet works have few, in any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
[It] is in this excellent novel, whose silhouettes and rags not only make fiction out of history but also reveal the fictions out of which history is made. It incorporates the fictions and realities of the era of ragtime while it rags our fictions about it. It is an anti-nostalgic novel that incorporates our nostalgia about its subject. It is cool, hard, controlled, utterly unsentimental, an art of sharp outlines and clipped phrases. yet it implies all we could ask for in the way of texture, mood, character and despair.
George Stade - New York Times (Books of the Centiury)
Ragtime is as exhilarating as a deep breath of pure oxygen... At times, the swift, short sentences suggest the pristine flicker of silent film; at others, the sharp angles and sardonic deployment of detail in Citizen Kane... The grace and surface vivacity of Ragtime make it enormous fun to read. But beneath its peppy, bracing rhythms sound the neat, sad waltz of Gatsby and the tunes of betrayed promise. History resonates with special clarity here. Doctorow has found a fresh way to orchestrate the themes of American innocence, energy, and inchoate ambition.
Newsweek
Discussion Questions
1. When the story opens, the narrator describes life in the early 1900s, noting that “There were no negroes. There were no immigrants.” Is this description accurate? What might this statement propose about the accuracy of historical accounts?
2. Why might the author have chosen to name the characters as he did? Why do some of the characters have general names such as Mother’s Younger Brother while others have proper names like Coalhouse Walker, Jr.? Does this affect the way we relate to them?
3. Describe the narrator of the story. Can we be certain of who it is, or does the point of view shift throughout the story? How does Doctorow’s method of narration relate to historical texts?
4. Why did the author choose the title "Ragtime" for this novel? What is ragtime music? What are its origins and how does it relate to other genres of music? What does it reveal about the society in which it was created? What literary devices does the author use to reference or re-interpret ragtime?
5. Why might the author have chosen not to use quotation marks? Does this affect the rhythm of the story?
6. Describe the setting of Ragtime. When and where does the story take place? Why might an author have chosen to write about this time period and these places and events?
7. When was Ragtime written? What was happening at the time? How might readers then have related to the story? How do we relate to it today? Is it simply a historical narrative or does it reveal things about contemporary society?
8. Why do you think that Mother’s Younger Brother chose to help Coalhouse Walker, Jr.?
9. Doctorow chooses to incorporate historical figures in a fictional context. Who does he include? Why might he have chosen to include these people? Does his portrayal of them match historical accounts?
10. The story takes place during a time of technological progress and industrialization. What are some of the innovations represented in the book? How does their presence affect the characters? Is the impact good or bad? Explain.
11. The quest for freedom and peace is a key theme of Ragtime. How does the author use Harry Houdini to illuminate the complexity of this quest?
12. While the characters represent different classes and races, they share much in common. Discuss some of these commonalities. How are the characters different?
13. What imagery does the author use in the first chapter to set the scene? What does it tell us about life in the early 1900s? What might the purpose be in revealing the murder of the architect Stanford White? Does it change our initial impression of American life during this time?
14. When Evelyn Nesbit meets The Little Girl in the Pinafore, she is tied with rope to her father’s wrist so she won’t be stolen. How does the author make connections between Evelyn, The Little Girl, and Mameh? Why is Evelyn drawn to Tateh and The Little Girl?
15. When Father returns to New Rochelle, the mirror “gave back the gaunt, bearded face of a derelict, a man who lacked a home.” What does this mean? What has changed since Father left home? How does he adapt to these changes?
16. Why might J.P. Morgan be so fascinated with Egyptology? Do his fortune and his collection of valuable objects bring him peace? Why do you think he invites Henry Ford to meet with him?
17. The notion of value is prominent in the book. What do each of the characters value? What consequences does this have for them?
18. Does Coalhouse Walker, Jr. obtain justice? What does he sacrifice in the process? How do his actions affect those around him? How does this scenario relate to the justice system and civil rights struggles in today’s society?
19. Why does Tateh reinvent himself as a baron? What does it mean for his identity? How does the style and imagery of the novel relate to the advent of cinema? How does this invention change our perception of history?
20. Many of the characters struggle for what they believe is right. Are they successful? How are these struggles tied in to the notion of identity or societal definitions of identity?
21. )The author uses his characters allegorically. What groups are represented? Do you feel the portrayals are accurate? Why or why not?
22. The author presents many representations of family and relationships. Describe some. Which are most successful? Why do you think this is?
23. Why do you think that Mother and Tateh end up together? What draws them together? How would this relationship have been viewed in the early 1900s? How would it be viewed today?
24. Why do you think that the author chose the quotation by Scott Joplin as the novel’s epigraph? What does it signify?
(Questions from Random House "Teacher's Guide.)