The Magus
John Fowles, 1966
Little, Brown & Co.; Random House
~650 pp. (varies by publisher)
ISBN-13: 9780316296199 (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN-13: 9780440351627 (Random House)
Summary
Filled with shocks and chilling surprises, The Magus is a masterwork of contemporary literature. In it, a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching position on a Greek island where his friendship with the owner of the islands most magnificent estate leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately confused by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life.
A work rich with symbols, conundrums and labrinthine twists of event, The Magus is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, a work that ranks with the best novels of modern times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 31, 1926
• Where—Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, UK
• Death—November 5, 2005
• Where—Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK
• Education—University of Edinburg; B.A. Oxford University
• Awards—Silver Pen Award
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times (of London) named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."
Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Gladys May Richards and Robert John Fowles. Gladys Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea during 1918, as Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in Westcliff-on-Sea during 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the World War I, they were married a year later on 18 June 1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles.
Fowles spent his childhood attended by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 years old at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16 years old.
Education
During 1939, Fowles won a position at Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was bowler.
After leaving Bedford School during 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at Edinburgh University. Fowles was prepared to receive a commission in the Royal Marines. He completed his training on 8 May 1945—VE Day. Fowles was assigned instead to Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.
During 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I...began to hate what I was becoming in life—a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."
It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Though Fowles did not identify as an existentialist, their writing, like Fowles', was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.
Teaching Career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job."
During 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island which would later serve as the setting of his novel The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But during 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.
On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown fond of Elizabeth Christy, who was married to one of the other teachers. Christy's marriage was already ending because of the relationship with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company.
It was during this period that Fowles began drafting The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth did not last long. On 2 April 1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.
Writing Career
During late 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published during 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career. The Collector became a film in 1965.
Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his most studied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.
During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema.
The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus."
The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (who would later receive a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.
Later Years
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. His wife Elizabeth died in 1990.
Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles was involved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive. In 1998, he was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation."
Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side, died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Great, good, lavish, eerie fun.... The Magus is a stunner.... It is at once a pyrotechnical extravaganza, a wild, hilarious charade, a dynamo of suspense and horror, a profoundly serious probing into the nature of moral consciousness, a dizzying, electrifying chase through the labyrinth of the soul..... Read it in one sitting if possible—but read it.
Eliot Fremont-Smith - New York Times
Mr. Fowles's narrative gift is genuine, his manipulation of suspense is of a high order.
Brian Moore - Washington Post
Fast and frightening.... An emotional maelstrom of high intrigue.
Newsweek
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 Magus
1. Talk about the significance the novel's title. A magus is a magician or a trickster—one of mythology's enduring archetypes. How does the title relate to the events of the book? (See question 13.)
2. Why does Nicholas decide to leave his life in England and take up a position as an English teacher on Phraxos?
3. What kind of person is Nicholas? What is he seeking...or running away from?
4. What are Nicholas's feelings upon visiting the cloistered elegance of Maurice Conchis's villa? What is it that draws him to return again...and again?
5. What is Nicholas to learn from the gamble with the loaded gun, the die, and the cyanide pill? When Nicholas refuses to take his own life, why does Conchis agree with his decision? (See question 14.)
6. Did you believe the twins' story about being kept as prisioners on Bouranis and made to perform at Conchis's will? What about the later one that Conchis is a psychiatrist doing research? In other words, were you continually tricked and bedazzled as was Nicholas?
7. Talk about Nicholas's reaction to the news that Allison had committed suicide. Is his response appropriate? Is he remorseful, sad, relieved, accusatory?
8. Discuss the meaning of the judgement ritual, the stripping, offer to flay Julia, and lovemaking in front of Nicholas? What is the point of it all?
9. What is the point, in the end, of Conchis's entire charade? What lesson is he attempting to teach Nicholas? What does Nicholas, for his part, learn?
10. Is Maurice Conchis's trickery benevolent or sadistic?
11. Is Nicholas wrong to demand that Allison choose "them or me"? Why does she reject his demand? What is the future of their relationship?
12. Were you satisfied or dissatisfied with the ending? (When the book was first published, Fowles has said he received angry letters from readers complaining about the book's indeterminant conclusion.)
13. What ideas about the nature of life might Fowles be attempting to express in The Magus? All mentors and great teachers, in religion, history, or literature, even in pop culture, use a combination of magic, fable, and tricks to teach their proteges life's wisdom. How does Conchis fit into this tradition?
14. Finally, Fowles wrote to a reader that "to be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans." How does this apply to what Nicholas learns from his time on the island?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
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Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates, 1961, 1989
Knopf Doubleday
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375708442
Summary
From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs.
It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
(From the publisher.)
The book was adapted into a 2008 film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
Author Bio
• Birth—February 3, 1926
• Where—Yonkers, New York, USA
• Death—November 7, 1992
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama
• Education—World War II
A native New Yorker, Richard Yates was born in 1926; his first novel, Revolutionary Road, was a finalist for the National Book Award (in the same year as Catch-22). Much admired by peers, he was known during his lifetime as the foremost fiction writer of the post-war "age of anxiety." He published his last novel in 1986, and died in 1992. (From the publisher.)
More
Richard Yates, an American novelist and short story writer, was a chronicler of mid-20th century mainstream American life, often cited as artistically residing somewhere between J.D. Salinger and John Cheever. He is regarded as the foremost novelist of the post-WWII Age of Anxiety.
Born in Yonkers, New York, Yates came from an unstable home. His parents divorced when he was three and much of his childhood was spent in many different towns and residences. Yates first became interested in journalism and writing while attending Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. After leaving Avon, Yates joined the Army, serving in France and Germany during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Upon his return to New York he worked as a journalist, freelance ghost writer (briefly writing speeches for Senator Robert Kennedy) and publicity writer for Remington Rand Corporation.
His career as a novelist began in 1961 with the publication of the widely heralded Revolutionary Road. He subsequently taught writing at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, Boston University (where his papers are archived), at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, at Wichita State University, and at the University of Southern California Master of Professional Writing Program.
In 1962, he wrote the screenplay for a film adaptation of William Styron's Lie Down In Darkness. Yates was also an acclaimed author of short stories. Despite this, only one of his short stories appeared in the The New Yorker (after repeated rejections). This story, "The Canal," was published in the magazine nine years after the author's death to celebrate the 2001 release of The Collected Stories of Richard Yates.
For much of his life, Yates's work met almost universal critical acclaim, yet not one of his books sold over 12,000 copies in hardcover first edition. All of his novels were out of print in the years after his death, although he was championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever. Yates's brand of realism was a direct influence on writers such as Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford.
Twice divorced, Yates was the father of three daughters: Sharon, Monica and Gina. In 1992, he died of emphysema and complications from minor surgery in Birmingham, Alabama.
His reputation has substantially increased posthumously and many of his novels have since been reissued in new editions. This current success can be largely traced to the influence of Stewart O'Nan's 1999 essay in the Boston Review "The Lost World of Richard Yates: How the great writer of the Age of Anxiety Disappeared from Print." With the revival of interest in Yates' life and work after his death, Blake Bailey published the first in-depth biography of Yates, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (2003). (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
More than two decades after its original publication, it remains a remarkable and deeply troubling book—a book that creates an indelible portrait of lost promises and mortgaged hopes in the suburbs of America.... Writing in controlled, economical prose, Mr. Yates delineates the shape of these disintegrating lives without lapsing into sentimentality or melodrama. His ear for dialogue enables him to infuse the banal chitchat of suburbia with a subtext of Pinteresque proportions, and he proves equally skilled at reproducing the pretentious, status-conscious talk of people brought up on Freud and Marx. If, at times, we are tempted to see Frank as something of a deluded, ineffectual snob, we are also inclined to sympathize with him—so graceful is Mr. Yates's use of irony. His portrait of these thwarted, needlessly doomed lives is at once brutal and compassionate.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times (4/25/83)
(Refers to Yates's Collected Stories, 2001) At his best, Yates was a poet of post-World War II loneliness and disappointment, creating in his finest stories and in his masterpiece, Revolutionary Road, indelible, Edward Hopperesque portraits of dreamers who have mortgaged their dreams. Trapped in ill-considered marriages and dead-end jobs, they find themselves living on the margins of the postwar boom, the gap between their modest expectations and the even more modest realities of their day-to-day lives leading to rage, humiliation and alcoholic despair.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times (4/17/01)
A powerful treatment of a characteristically American theme.... A moving and absorbing story.
Atlantic Monthly
So much nonsense has been written on suburban life and mores that it comes as a considerable shock to read a book by someone who seems to have his own ideas on the subject and who pursues them relentlessly to the bitter end..... It is reminiscent of the popular [1999] film American Beauty in its depiction of white-collar life as fraught with discontent. Others have picked up on this theme since, but Yates remains a solid read.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the novel's title, "Revolutionary Road"? In what ways might it be read as an ironic commentary on mid-twentieth century American values?
2. Why does Yates begin the novel with the story of the play? In what ways does it set up some of the themes—disillusionment, self-deception, play-acting, etc.—that are developed throughout the novel?
3. Frank rails about the middle-class complacency of his neighbors in the Revolutionary Hill Estates. “It's as if everybody'd made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception. The hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality...and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll all get busy and pretend it never happened” [pp. 68-69]. Is Frank's critique of suburbia accurate? In what ways does Frank himself live in a state of self-deception? Why can he see so clearly the self-deception of others but not his own?
4. What ironies are involved in Frank going to work for the same firm his father worked for? What is Frank's attitude toward his job and the fact that he's walking in his father's footsteps?
5. Describing a Negro couple holding hands at the mental hospital where John Givings has been confined, the narrator writes that “it wasn't easy to identify the man as a patient until you noticed that his other hand was holding the chromium leg of the table in a yellow-knuckled grip of desperation, as if it were the rail of a heaving ship” [p. 296]. What do such precise and vivid physical descriptions—often highly metaphorical—add to the texture of the novel? Where else does Yates use such descriptions to reveal a character's emotional state?
6. Revolutionary Road frequently—and seamlessly—moves between past and present, as characters drift in and out of reveries. (April's childhood memory [pp. 321-326] is a good example). What narrative purpose do these reveries serve? How do they deepen the reader's understanding of the inner lives of the main characters?
7. What roles do Frank's affair with Maureen and April's sexual encounter with Shep play in the outcome of the novel? Are they equivalent? What different motivations draw Frank and April to commit adultery?
8. Twice Frank talks April out of an abortion, and both times he later regrets having done so, admitting that he didn't want the children any more than she did. What motivates him to argue so passionately against April aborting her pregnancies? What methods does he use to persuade her? Is John Givings right in suggesting that it's the only way he can prove his manhood?
9. What role does John Givings play in the novel? Why is he such an important character, even though he appears in only two scenes? How does he move the action along?
10. How do Frank and April feel about Shep and Milly Campbell? What do they reveal about themselves in their attitudes toward their closest friends?
11. Before she gives herself a miscarriage, April leaves a note telling Frank not to blame himself if anything should happen to her. But is he to blame for April's death? Why, and to what extent, might he be responsible?
12. The narrator writes, after April's death, that “The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy” [p. 339]. In what ways is the novel tragic? What tragic flaws might be ascribed to both Frank and April? Why are the Revolutionary Hill Estates ill-suited to tragedy?
13. What is Yates suggesting by the fact that the only character in the novel who sees and speaks the truth has been confined to an insane asylum? Does John Givings's‚ outsider status give him the freedom to speak the truth, or has his natural tendency toward telling the truth, however unpleasant it might be, landed him in a mental hospital?
14. Near the end of the novel, the narrator says of Nancy Brace, as she listens to Milly's retelling of April's death: “She liked her stories neat, with points, and she clearly felt there were too many loose ends in this one” [p. 345]. What is the problem with wanting stories to be “neat”? In what ways does Revolutionary Road circumvent this kind of overly tidy or moralistic reading? Does the novel itself present too many “loose ends”?
15. The novel ends with Mrs. Givings chattering on to her husband about how “irresponsible” and “unwholesome” the Wheelers were. What is the significance, for the novel as a whole, of the final sentences: “But from there on Howard Givings heard only a welcome, thunderous sea of silence. He had turned off his hearing aid”? [p. 355]. What symbolic value might be assigned to the plant that Mrs. Givings mentions at the end of the novel?
16. Revolutionary Road was first published in 1961. In what ways does it reflect the social and psychological realities of that period? In what ways does it anticipate and illuminate our own time?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Weight of Silence
Heather Gudenkauf, 2009
Mira Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778327400
Summary
It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.
Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler
Calli's mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter's voice.
Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor.
Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Wagner, South Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Edgar Award Finalist
• Currently—lives in Dubuque, Iowa
Heather Gudenkauf was born in Wagner, South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month of age, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota where her father was employed as a guidance counselor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up.
Born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment (there were many evenings when Heather and her father made a trip to the bus barn to look around the school bus for her hearing aids that she often conveniently would forget on the seat beside her), Heather tended to use books as a retreat, would climb into the toy box that her father's students from Rosebud made for the family with a pillow, blanket, and flashlight, close the lid, and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.
Gudenkauf graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent the last sixteen years working with students of all ages and is currently an Instructional Coach, an educator who provides curricular and professional development support to teachers. Heather lives in Dubuque, Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running.
Novels
2009 - The Weight of Silence
2011 - These Things Hidden
2012 - One Breath Away
2014 - Little Mercies
2016 - Missing Pieces
(Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Gudenkauf’s tightly plotted debut packs a lot of unsavory doings into a few unfortunate summer days in Willow Creek, Iowa. Seven-year-old Calli Clark hasn’t spoken a word in the three years since a particularly nasty run-in with her violent, wife-beating father, Griff. During a bender, Griff suddenly decides to haul his mute daughter into the nearby forest, where they get lost. At the same time, Calli’s best friend Petra goes missing, and a manhunt is launched, led by deputy sheriff Loras Louis, who still carries a torch for Calli’s mother. Gudenkauf moves the story forward at a fast clip and is adept at building tension. There’s a particular darkness to her heartland, rife as it is with predators and the walking wounded, and her unsentimental take on the milieu manages to find some hope without being maudlin.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. Antonia describes herself as a bad mother while Louis reassures her that she, indeed, is a good mother. What evidence from the book supports each of their beliefs? How does Louis’ history with Antonia effect his own decisions as a husband and father?
2. Antonia and Louis’ long history together is integral to The Weight of Silence. As a deputy sheriff, what, if any, ethical or moral boundaries did Louis cross in the search for Calli?
3. Ben and Calli grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father. Knowing that abuse is often passed on from generation to generation, what are Ben’s and Calli’s chances of breaking the cycle of abuse in their future relationships? What instances from the book lead you to believe this?
4. How does the death of Antonia’s mother play into the decisions Antonia made as a wife and mother? How do you think Antonia’s life would be different if her mother had lived?
5. Martin Gregory, a proper, disciplined professor of economics has always valued order, predictability, and restraint in all areas of his life. How does his decision to seek retribution against the man he was sure violated his daughter fit into his belief system?
6. Antonia, Louis, Martin, and Petra’s perspectives are told in the first person present tense point of view while Calli’s is told in third person past tense? Why do you think the author decided to write the story in this way?
7. What does the title The Weight of Silence mean to you? How does the title relate to each of the main characters’ lives?
8. Before Calli and Petra’s disappearance, the Willow Creek Woods was a haven for Calli, Ben, and Toni. Calli, fearful of the forest after her ordeal, asked her mother if she ever got scared when walking in the woods. Toni replied, “It sent you back to me, didn’t it?” What did Toni mean by this?
9. Martin Gregory had worked so hard to leave behind his farming roots by becoming a college professor, but after Petra’s abduction and serious injuries, Martin subsequently moved with his family from Willow Creek to a farm. Why did Martin and Fielda decide to do this?
10. Toni describes Calli and Petra as “kindred spirits.” What makes their friendship so special? Do you think Calli and Petra’s friendship will last into their adulthood? Why or why not? Who do you consider to be your kindred spirit? Why?
(Questions from the back pages of the novel.)
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The Rice Mother
Rani Manicka, 2002
Penguin Group USA
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142004548
Summary
Winner, 2003 Commonwealth Prize for Southeast Asia & South Pacific
At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves behind her childhood among the mango trees of Ceylon for married life across the ocean in Malaysia, and soon finds herself struggling to raise a family in a country that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful.
Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to secure a better life for her daughters and sons. From the Japanese occupation during World War II to the torture of watching some of her children succumb to life's most terrible temptations, she rises to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength.
Dreamy and lyrical, told in the alternating voices of the men and women of this amazing family, The Rice Mother gorgeously evokes a world where small pleasures offset unimaginable horrors, where ghosts and gods walk hand in hand. It marks the triumphant debut of a writer whose wisdom and soaring prose will touch readers, especially women, the world over (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Malaysia
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Commonwealth Award for South East Aisa and
Pacific Region
• Currently—London, UK; Malaysia
Rani Manicka is a novelist, born and educated in Malaysia and living in England. Infused with her own Sri Lankan Tamil family history, The Rice Mother is her first novel. It recently won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2003 for South East Asia and South Pacific region. It has been translated into 17 languages. Her second novel, Touching Earth, was published in 2005. Rani is also an economic graduate. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Manicka's luminous first novel is a multigenerational story about a Sri Lankan family in Malaysia. In the 1920s, Lakshmi is a bright-eyed, carefree child in Ceylon. But at 14, her mother marries her to Ayah, a 37-year-old rich widower living in Malaysia. When she arrives at her new home, she promptly discovers that Ayah is not rich at all, but a clerk who had borrowed a gold watch and a servant to trick Lakshmi's mother. Ayah is for the most part a decent man, however, and Lakshmi rallies and takes control of a sprawling household that soon includes six children of her own. There is a period of contented family life before WWII and the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, during which Lakshmi's eldest and most beautiful daughter, Mohini, is abducted and killed by Japanese soldiers. The family unravels as Ayah withdraws and Lakshmi falls prey to fits of rage. Mohini's twin brother, Lakshmnan, becomes a compulsive gambler, leaving his own wife and three children impoverished. The story is told through the shifting perspectives of different family members, including son Sevenese, who can see the dead; youngest daughter, Lalita, neither pretty nor gifted; Rani, Lakshmnan's fierce and beleaguered wife; and Lakshmnan's daughter, Dimple. Their voices are convincingly distinct, and the prismatic sketches form a cohesive and vibrant saga. Manicka can be a bit syrupy on the subjects of childhood and maternal love, but she also has a fine feeling for domestic strife and the ways in which grief permeates a household.
Publishers Weekly
When 14-year-old Lakshmi marries a widower of 37, she believes that she is leaving her Sri Lankan village for a life of luxury in Malaysia. Instead, she endures hardship and poverty, giving birth to six children in the years before the Japanese invasion of World War II. In this gripping multigenerational saga, the tumultuous history of Malaysia becomes the backdrop for Lakshmi's indomitable spirit. The barbarity of the Japanese, postwar prosperity, the bursting of the Southeast Asian financial bubble, the vice trades of opium, gambling, and sex-all take their toll on Lakshmi's children and grandchildren. However, while her husband and ultimately all of her children prove to be disappointments, Lakshmi continues to love them and do what's best for all of them, even if it seems cruel. First novelist Manicka's sympathetic portrait of this larger-than-life matriarch is based on her own grandmother. Her page-turner, narrated in turn by Lakshmi and various family members, is not only a portrait of one family but also a tantalizing glimpse of an unfamiliar world. Strongly recommended for most public libraries. —Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal
Graceful, engrossing, and peopled with memorable characters, this novel is sure to attract a wide audience. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Loosely autobiographical, multigenerational first novel: exotic, sensual, sometimes sentimental, often searing, and ultimately universal in its depiction of an Indian family in Malaysia. It's 1931, and 14-year-old Lakshmi leaves Ceylon in an arranged marriage to the much older Ayah. When Ayah turns out to be not the rich businessman Lakshmi expected but a lowly clerk whose sweet, simple nature keeps him from professional advancement, bright and ambitious Lakshmi quickly takes charge of their financial and domestic affairs. By the time she's twenty she has six children whom she feeds, clothes, and educates with iron-willed devotion. There are the twins, brilliant oldest son Lakshmnan and his twin sister Mohini, with her otherworldly beauty; pretty Anna; the adventurous outsider Sevenese; Jeyan, who is perhaps not as simple-minded as everyone assumes; and the homely, shy Lalita. The children all remember their early years as close to idyllic. Then WWII breaks out. When Mohini is raped and killed by the Japanese (whom Manicka, with a loss of perspective, portrays as unrelentingly monsterlike), the family begins to fall apart. Lakshmi has fits of rage that approach madness, while Lakshmnan's early promise fizzles into dissolute gambling and an unhappy marriage (his wife is an almost cartoonish villain among otherwise highly nuanced characters). Except for the happily married Anna, life does not work out as Lakshmi planned for her children. Yet they all revere her, even Lakshmnan; and Ayah's gentle love provides an emotional ballast that Lakshmi does not understand until too late. Lakshmnan's daughter Dimple, whose beauty recalls Mohini, tape-records her aunts' and uncles' (as well as her parents' and grandparents') memories—and shifting perspectives—to preserve the family legacy for her own daughter. Toward the end Manicka falters, forcing the story of Dimple's unhappy marriage into plot manipulations that feel forced, but, still, the story's richness and careful accumulation of detail are reminiscent of a very different family chronicle, Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Read this one slowly, to savor.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What was your favorite part of the birds'-nest story that introduced the novel? How did it echo throughout the novel? Give some examples.
2. Did you feel that the author's use of the first person was an effective way to tell this story? Why or why not?
3. Lakshmi says this of Mui Tsai: "I had found a friend, but it was the beginning of a lost friendship. If I had known then what I know now, I would have treasured her more. She was the only true friend I ever made." Discuss this passage and its implications. Do you think Lakshmi could have been a better friend to Mui Tsai? Why and how? Were there any authentic friendships between women in the novel?
4. Consider the scene in which Sevenese explains "Rice Mother" to Dimple, and tells her that Lakshmi is their family's Rice Mother. Give examples of how Lakshmi is a Rice Mother. Were there any other Rice Mothers in the novel? What about in your own life?
5. Rani Manicka filled her novel with symbolism and motifs. Name a few images that continually emerged—such as spiders, bamboo, and the colors black and red—and discuss what they might have meant. Did they represent different things to the various members of your reading group? What does this richness of symbols say about the novel?
6. hysically, Dimple is described as being almost a mirror image of Mohini. How do you think this altered the course of her life? What do you think drew her to Sevenese, and, for that matter, to Luke?
7. Which characters resonated most powerfully for you? Were there other characters that you would have liked to know more about? Why?
8. "It is true that your mind can float out and hover over you when it can no longer endure what is happening to your body." Dimple says this as Luke rapes her. How does this one line illuminate one of the novel's themes? What do you think the author is saying about grief, and coping with tragedy? In what ways do the characters escape their grief? Do any face it head-on?
9. What do you see in the future for Nisha? Do you think she will become a Rice Mother? Why? Has the author left any clues for the reader?
10. How resilient is the human spirit? Does time heal all wounds? Do we do the best with the skills we've been given? In your opinion, could the lives of the characters in The Rice Mother have been any different? Or, even if Mohini had lived, would they have fallen prey to the same vices that consumed them in the end?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Wench
Dolen Perkins-Valdez, 2010
HarperCollins
293 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061706547
Summary
An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses
wench 'wench n. from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.
Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret.
Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don't bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory-but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change.
To run is to leave behind everything these women value most-friends and families still down South-and for some it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds that bind them to their masters. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the most inhuman, brutal of circumstances-all while they arebearing witness to the end of an era.
An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, with an unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Memphis, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Washington, DC, and Seattle Washington
Dolen Perkins-Valdez's fiction and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2009, The Kenyon Review, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, North Carolina Literary Review, and "Richard Wright Newsletter."
Born and raised in Memphis, a graduate of Harvard, and a former University of California postdoctoral fellow, Perkins-Valdez teaches creative writing at the University of Puget Sound. She splits her time between Washington, DC and Seattle, Washington. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In her debut, Perkins-Valdez eloquently plunges into a dark period of American history, chronicling the lives of four slave women—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu—who are their masters’ mistresses. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio. There, they see free blacks for the first time and hear rumors of abolition, sparking their own desires to be free. For everyone but Lizzie, that is, who believes she is really in love with her master, and he with her. An extended flashback in the middle of the novel delves into Lizzie’s life and vividly explores the complicated psychological dynamic between master and slave. Jumping back to the final summer in Ohio, the women all have a decision to make—will they run? Heart-wrenching, intriguing, original and suspenseful, this novel showcases Perkins-Valdez’s ability to bring the unfortunate past to life.
Publishers Weekly
In this memorable first novel by Memphis-born Perkins-Valdez (English, Mary Washington Coll.), four friends meet each summer at a resort in Ohio but can share only snatches of time. Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu are black slaves brought to the resort each year by their vacationing Southern masters as personal servants and sexual companions. Their presence discomfits the Northern whites and black servants in the free state of Ohio, but the real angst lies within each woman's struggles: Mawu is determined to escape her sadistic master; Lizzie admires Mawu's independent spirit but concentrates her efforts on wheedling her master into granting freedom to her own children. VERDICT Readers of historical fiction centering on Southern women's stories like Lalita Tademy's Cane River or Lee Smith's On Agate Hill will be moved by the skillful portrayal of Lizzie's precarious situation and the tragic stories of her fellow slaves. —Laurie A. Cavanaugh, Brockton P.L., MA
Library Journal
A striking debut intimately limns a Southern slave's complicated relationship with her master. Perkins-Valdez (English/Univ. of Puget Sound) builds a convincing, nuanced portrait of Lizzie, a slave on Nathan Drayle's Tennessee plantation. Nathan took Lizzie as his mistress (if such a word can be used for the enslaved) as an adolescent; by the age of 16 she had borne him a son and daughter. He shows unguarded favor to Lizzie, moving her into the guestroom across from his wife's bedroom, teaching her to read and speak like a lady, seeming to need and care for her. In addition, her two light-skinned children are his only offspring. In the summer of 1852 Nathan takes his favored slave Philip and Lizzie to Tawawa House, an Ohio resort where Southern men bring their slave women. Ohio is a revelation to Lizzie. Free black men and women are employed at the hotel, and Lizzie sees a nearby resort catering to well-to-do African-Americans. For Lizzie and the other slaves she befriends that summer, this seems like the world turned upside down. The Southern men spend much of their time hunting, leaving Lizzie the opportunity to imagine a life away from slavery with Sweet (pregnant and doomed), Reenie (defeated by her master, who is also her white half-brother) and Mawu (redheaded, fierce and possessing voodoo charms). They meet Glory, an abolitionist Quaker who is the first white woman to speak to Lizzie as an equal. Mawu, Reenie and Philip talk of escaping, but Lizzie, fearing the slave catchers might hurt them, tells Nathan of their plan. The next summer, barely forgiven by the others for her betrayal, Lizzie begins to wonder why she loves Nathan, her protector and tormentor since childhood. This wondering is her first step toward freedom, and the potential of what the next summer may bring. Compelling and unsentimental.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Lizzie is a house slave. How does this position differ from working in the fields? How does this status affect her day-to-day existence? What impact does it have for her children?
2. Unlike many slaves, Lizzie learned to read. Why did Drayle teach her? What does this ability offer her? Does her ability influence the other slaves she lived with?
3. When Mawu asks Lizzie about Drayle, Lizzie hears the question, "Is he good to you?" Later she comes to understand that Mawu wanted to know, "Is he God to you?" How would you answer both questions? How do these questions relate to one another in the context of Lizzie's life?
4. Lizzie claims that she loves Drayle. Does she? Does he love her? How would you describe their bond? Can love truly exist when there is such an imbalance of power between two people? What about Drayle and his wife, Fran? Talk about their marriage and compare it to the relationship between Lizzie and Drayle.
5. How would you describe Drayle? What kind of a slave owner is he? What does Lizzie mean to Drayle? How does he treat her? How does he treat their children? Lizzie begs Drayle to free their son and daughter. Why won't he?
6. Describe the relationship between Drayle's wife, Fran, and Lizzie. How do the women view each other? How are their positions similar?
7. When Drayle receives an offer to sell Phillip he refuses. Why? What eventually makes him change his mind? What does Lizzie think about Phillip's chance at freedom? Why does she refuse to help him when she is first asked—and what changes her mind?
8. Compare and contrast the four women at the heart of the novel: Lizzie, Mawu, Sweet, and Reenie. Though they are all slaves, are their experiences the same? What accounts for any differences?
9. How did Lizzie feel about going to Tawawa? What did the resort offer her that her life in Tennessee did not? How do her experiences at the resort change her over the course of the summers she is there?
10. What was Lizzie's opinion of Mawu when she first met her? Describe the arc of their relationship. What events changed they way they saw each other?
11. Describe the women's white masters. What are their relationships like with their slaves? Do these relationships offer any benefits to the women? Are these women entirely powerless? If not, what power do they have?
12. Why does Lizzie tell Drayle about Mawu's plan to escape? Is she surprised by Mawu's punishment? Why doesn't Mawu hate Lizzie for what she did? When Mawu finally escapes, she stays behind, waiting for Lizzie? Why does she risk herself for Lizzie? What do they all see in Lizzie—why is she special?
13. Tawawa was very near to where free colored folk also vacationed, a place called Lewis House. What do the slaves think of Lewis House? Why didn't more slaves try to escape when freedom was so near? Why do you think the Northern whites who also summered at Tawawa didn't help them find freedom?
14. What role does the white woman, Glory, play in the novel? When they first meet her, they are startled by her behavior. "These slaves had been around Northern whites long enough to recognize one who didn't understand the rules." Why doesn't Glory seem to "understand the rules?" How does meeting her influence the slaves, especially Lizzie?
15. Many events happen during Lizzie's visits to Ohio, from the discovery of the abolitionist pamphlet to the trip to Dayton to meeting Glory and Phillip's fiancé. Talk about the significance of each and explain how they shaped Lizzie's outlook about her life and herself. How does she change by the novel's end? What about the other characters?
16. What does freedom mean to you? What does it mean to Lizzie and the other slaves?
17. Lizzie lived a life defined by indignity and degradation. How did she cope and overcome her pain?
18. After Sweet learns that all of her children have died from cholera, she tells her friends that she wants to die. Is death better than a life in chains?
19. Discuss the evils of slavery. How does it degrade the soul of both the enslaved and their masters?
20. Unlike the characters in the story, you, the reader, know that the Civil War will occur in less than a decade. How does the knowledge shape your experience reading the story? Does it give you hope for Lizzie and her children?
21. What did you learn from reading Wench? What affected you most about the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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