What We Keep
Elizabeth Berg, 1998
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345423290
Summary
In this rich new novel by beloved author Elizabeth Bert, a reunion between two sisters and their mother reveals secrets and complexities in the lives of the women in a family.
Ginny Young is on a plane, going to visit the mother she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she was twelve years old and a series of dramatic events divided her family, separating her and her sister from their mother, seemingly forever.
Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny confronts painful choices in a woman's life—even as surprising secrets are revealed about the family she thought she understood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1948
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Education—A.A.S, St. Mary’s College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois
Before she became a writer, Elizabeth Berg spent 10 years as a nurse. It's a field, as she says on her website, that helped her to become a writer:
Taking care of patients taught me a lot about human nature, about hope and fear and love and loss and regret and triumph and especially about relationships—all things that I tend to focus on in my work.
Her sensitivity to humanity is what Berg's writing is noted for. As Publishers Weekly wrote in reviewing The Dream Lover, her 2015 portrayal of George Sand, "Berg offers vivid, sensual detail and a sensitive portrayal of the yearning and vulnerability" behind her main character.
Background
Berg was born in St. Paul Minneapolis. When her father re-enlisted in the Army, she and her family were moved from base to base—in one single year, she went to three different schools. Her peripatetic childhood makes it hard for Berg to answer the usually simple question, "where did you grow up?"
Berg recalls that she loved to write at a young age. She was only nine when she submitted her first poem to American Girl magazine; sadly, it was rejected. It was another 25 years before she submitted anything again—to Parents Magazine—and that time she won.
In addition to nursing, Berg worked as a waitress, another field she claims is "good training for a writer." She also sang in a rock band.
Writing
Berg ended up writing for magazines for 10 years before she finally turned to novels. Since her 1993 debut with Durable Goods, her books have sold in large numbers and been translated into 27 languages. She writes nearly a book a year, a number of which have received awards and honors.
Recognition
Two of Berg's books, Durable Goods and Joy School, were listed as "Best Books of the Year" by the American Library Association. Open House became an Oprah Book Club Selection.
She won the New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, and Boston Public Library made her a "literary light." She has also been honored by the Chicago Public Library. An article on a cooking school in Italy, for National Geographic Traveler magazine, won an award from the North American Travel Journalists Association.
Personal
Now divorced, Berg was married for over twenty years and has two daughters and three grandchildren. She lives with her dogs and a cat in Chicago. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Beautifully written.... [Ginny Young] crosses the country for a reluctant reunion with the mother she has not seen in 35 years. During the long hours of her flight, she returns in memory to the summer when she turned 12 and her family turned inside out.... What We Keep is about ties that are buried but not broken, wounds that are dressed but never heal, and love that changes form but somehow survives,
USA Today
Compelling... Reading [this] book is like having an intimate conversation with a friend who is baring her soul.”
Charleston Post and Courier
Berg knows the hearts of her characters intimately, showing them with compassion, humor, and an illuminating generosity.
The Seattle Times
"I don't like my mother. She's not a good person." So declares Ginny Young on a trip to California to visit her mother, Marion, whom she hasn't seen in 35 years. Ginny is only making the trip as a favor to her sister, Sharla, who has called to say she's awaiting the results of a cancer test. In flashback, Berg (Talk Before Sleep) revisits the events of the girls' childhood and the moments when their mother's problems began to reveal themselves. One night, Ginny and Sharla overhear their mother screaming at their father about her unhappiness and telling him that she never wanted children. Then she walks out with no explanations, returning briefly a few months later to explain that she's not coming back. The following years bring occasional visits that are impossibly painful for all concerned and so full of buried anger that the girls decide to curtail them altogether. When Sharla meets Ginny (now a mother herself) at the airport, and the two see their mother again, there are surprises in store, but not especially shocking ones. The reader, in fact, may feel there is less here than meets the eye: Marion's flight is never made psychologically credible. Berg's customary skill in rendering domestic details is intact, but the story seems stitched together. Crucial scenes feel highlighted rather than fleshed out, and Ginny's bitterness disappears into thin air as she reaches a facile, sentimental conclusion about her mother's needs.
Publishers Weekly
Berg excels at writing novels about the close personal relationships between women. As this new work opens, Ginny is flying to California to join her sister in a meeting with their mother, whom neither daughter has seen for 35 years. Ginny uses her travel time to reflect upon her memories of the summer when her mother withdrew from the family and became an outsider in her daughters' lives. Berg's precise, evocative descriptions create vivid images of Ginny's physical world, while Berg's understanding and perception are an eloquent testimony to Ginny's emotional turmoil. Berg cleverly examines the roles and relationships of mothers and daughters and reveals how truth, forgiveness, and understanding are possible in healing intergenerational rifts between women. Highly recommended. —Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Ontario
Library Journal
The prolific Berg's fifth novel pays an unremarkable visit to that overworked territory where mothers and daughters visit to blame and explain, this time in the story of a daughter on her way to meet the mother she hasnþt seen for 35 years. Berg has an easy style and good ear, which makes for agreeable storytelling, but, here, the story itself is less impressive. The trouble is that the plot fails to seem plausible or compelling, draining the emotion from what a supposedly dramatic meeting, with attendant explanatory revelations, of a mother and her two estranged daughters. The narrative is told in flashbacks younger daughter Ginny as she flies to San Francisco. There, she joins sister Sharla, who has persuaded Ginny to come along only by hinting that sheþs terminally ill and wants to make her peace with their mother. As for Mother, she seems a parody of a 1950s Mom: baking from scratch, dressing immaculately, even hosting a Tupperware party. Dad's also a stereotypeþa well-meaning man who works hard at a boring job, but isnþt sensitive (he doesn't get it, for instance, that his wife wants to go dancing). The two girls are happy, though: They love Mom's cooking and the way she helps them create nifty projects. And yet one summer, when glamorous free spirit Jasmine, allegedly on the run from her rich but abusive husband, moves next door, their lives fall apart. Mom gets restless and decides to leave Dad and the girls to become an artist. Which she does, and isn't forgiven until they all meet up again, realizing then just how unhappy Mom was. But why Mom had to make so extreme a gesture is never persuasively explained. An easy read, but intellectually and emotionally lite-fare, despite the suggestions of profundity ("I now believe we owe our mothers and our daughters the truth").
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Ginny possesses an extraordinary memory. In fact, she suggests that, through memory, "I become again the person I was then" (page 10) and thus captures a "true vision of the past" (page 11). What is a "true vision of the past"? Is it Ginny's twelve-year-old vision? Is it her adult vision? Does Ginny's effort to remember the past cause her to think about it differently?
2. Berg dedicates What We Keep to "women who risk telling the hard truths." What do you think of Martha Hamilton, the passenger on Ginny's flight who asks Ginny some very hard questions and makes a few tough statements? Does Martha push Ginny closer to "telling the hard truths"?
3. Martha notes that people like "differentness" (page 26) in everything except their mothers. What does Martha mean? Do you agree?
4. Throughout the novel Ginny suggests that she knows her mother intimately. In fact, Ginny's early fantasy about discovering her mother's "link with royalty" (page 17) suggests that Ginny knows her mother better than Marion knows herself. Why is this knowledge so important to Ginny?
5. When Sharla dreams that Marion has a third eye, Ginny expects that Marion will comfort Sharla: "Never mind the dream; no matter what it was, she would take it away" (page 105). Why is this dream so startling? Is Marion able to comfort her daughter? Why or why not?
6. Knowing, in retrospect, that neither shenor Sharla knew Marion as well as they thought, Ginny feels that her mother should have attempted to communicate with them that summer: "To say something about what she must have been thinking" (page 85). However, the narrative is full of moments in which Marion tries to tell her daughters about herself only to be interrupted or ignored. Stories of past boyfriends (page 66) and hints of Marion's own desires (page 89) are constantly squelched by Ginny and Sharla's demands. Why didn't the daughters listen? Why couldn't Marion communicate with her daughters successfully?
7. After her first long absence, Marion tries to tell her daughters about her experience. From the moment of its "odd beginning" (page 209), it's a story Ginny doesn't like. Marion isn't, Ginny suggests, a very good storyteller: "She would make up stories that were not very good, as this one was not" (page 211). Finally, Ginny interrupts her mother's story for another: "'I have so much history, ' I said. 'My teacher, Mr. Stoltz, he's nuts. He thinks all we have in our lives is history'" (page 214). Why is the word "history" emphasized in this way? What does Marion's story have to do with Ginny's "history"? Why does Ginny think her mother is a bad storyteller? What do you think of Marion's storytelling?
8. What We Keep is full of descriptions of houses. Ginny and Sharla sneak through Mrs. O'Donnell's dusty, empty rooms, and rifle through Jasmine's drawers. Both daughters are aware of Marion's "house folder" (page 87), and offer opinions about her furniture rearrangements (page 88), her Clear Falls apartment (page 225), and her California home (page 259). What is the significance of these spaces?
9. Marion appears to be the typical 1950s housekeeper—at ease in an apron, involved in the weekly neighborhood coffee klatch, a willing Tupperware party hostess. However, she seems to transform the ordinary meaning of even these events. For instance, why does Marion host a Tupperware party on her birthday? Why are her daughters so startled by this decision? What significance does her action have in their minds? In her own mind? In yours?
10. In what ways is Jasmine different from Marion? In what ways is she similar? How do you feel towards Jasmine initially? How do you feel about her at the conclusion of the novel? How responsible do you hold Jasmine for Marion's decisions?
11. Marion gives her daughters paintings for the first Christmas they spend apart. Ginny receives a painting of mother and child. Sharla receives a painting of a bird. What stories do these paintings tell? How are they related?
12. Sharla says that her painting "doesn't make any sense" (page 245), but the image of the bird certainly has meaning for Marion. Ginny realizes during her own flight to meet her mother that Marion freed the family parakeet, Lucky, during that summer (page 141). Ginny also remembers the moment in which she and Wayne witnessed Marion "flapping her arms like wings, and walking about in circles" (page 153), as well as the afternoon during which her Parents constructed collages with wings and airplanes. What meaning did these images hold for Marion?
13. Our earliest introduction to Ginny's father comes through her memories of him. How do you feel about Steven? Does Marion's story alter your feelings about him? Consider Steven's defense of Marion's absence: "I believe she thinks she has reasons" (page 241). Consider his silence when confronted with Sharla's conviction of her mother's lesbianism: "'What did he say?' I asked, and Sharla said, 'Nothing. He must have known'" (page 246). Do you think that his statement and his silence are defensible or not? Do you think he's a good father?
14. Wayne is the only other significant man in Ginny's life that summer. While Ginny feels a constant affection for her father, her feelings toward Wayne are rather ambivalent. She doesn't want her relationship with Wayne reduced to a "that-summer-at-the-lake story, " but suggests herself that she was acting out of a "pied-piper delirium" (page 165). Why does she describe her relationship with Wayne so ambivalently? Why is she relieved when he leaves so suddenly?
15. In what ways does Ginny's relationship with Wayne parallel her mother's relationship with Jasmine? Does her own relationship with Wayne help Ginny understand her mother?
16. Wayne tells Ginny that "people want to be fooled" (page 157). What does he mean? Do you think he's right?
17. The climax of the novel—the meeting of Ginny and her mother—is, in fact, not written. The women come face to face and, suddenly, the text stops. Ginny can't speak. Marion begins "saying syllables that are not words" (page 254). Why is this moment in the novel not written?
18. Marion confesses misgivings about her mothering while sitting on Ginny's bed: "I think I've raised you so wrong.... I did something wrong. I did everything wrong, and I'm sorry" (page 187). Do you think Marion's mothering was "wrong"? If so, was her choice to leave "right"?
19. Ginny is clearly aware of the impact that Marion's actions have had upon her own mothering. Has Ginny learned from Marion's errors? Do you consider Ginny to be a good mother?
20. Ginny herself asks the novel's most pressing questions: "I am wondering what it is that we ask of our mothers: what do they owe us? What is it that we owe them?" (page 270) How does she answer these questions? How do you answer them?
21. At the beginning of the novel Ginny acknowledges her love of science: "I would stare at formulas and admire them for their spare beauty without being able to grasp their meaning. The fact that they cleanly explained some higher law to someone else was enough for me. It comforted me" (p. 14). At the end of the novel, Marion makes a similar confession: "I would read something like the first law of thermodynamics, and just find it enormously comforting. I still do" (p. 261). What is it about science that comforts Ginny? Marion?
22. Why is the novel titled "What We Keep"? What is it that Ginny "keeps" from her experience?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Mansfield Park
Jane Austen, 1814
~ 450 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
Through Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, Jane Austen views the social mores of her day and contemplates human nature itself. A shy and sweet-tempered girl adopted by wealthy relations, Fanny is an outsider looking in on an unfamiliar, and often inhospitable, world. But Fanny eventually wins the affection of her benefactors, endearing herself to the Bertram family and the reader alike.
In her Introduction, Carol Shields writes, [Mansfield Park's] overriding theme is difficult to isolate, since the novel is about everything it touches upon: nurturing, steadfastness, belonging and not belonging, about fine gradations of moral persuasion, about human noise and silence, and about action and stillness. (From Random House edition—cover image, top right.)
Three fairly recent film adaptations include: a 2007 BBC miniseries with Billie Piper as Fanny Price, a 1999 film with Frances O'Connor as Fanny, and a 1983 miniseries with Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny. (From 2001 Modern Library edition, Random House.)
Author Bio
• Born—December 16, 1775
• Where—Steventon in Hampshire, UK
• Death—July 18, 1817
• Where—Winchester, Hampshire
• Education—taught at home by her father
In 1801, George Austen retired from the clergy, and Jane, Cassandra, and their parents took up residence in Bath, a fashionable town Jane liked far less than her native village. Jane seems to have written little during this period. When Mr. Austen died in 1805, the three women, Mrs. Austen and her daughters, moved first to Southampton and then, partly subsidized by Jane's brothers, occupied a house in Chawton, a village not unlike Jane's first home. There she began to work on writing and pursued publishing once more, leading to the anonymous publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811 and Pride and Prejudice in 1813, to modestly good reviews.
Known for her cheerful, modest, and witty character, Jane Austen had a busy family and social life, but as far as we know very little direct romantic experience. There were early flirtations, a quickly retracted agreement to marry the wealthy brother of a friend, and a rumored short-lived attachment—while she was traveling—that has not been verified. Her last years were quiet and devoted to family, friends, and writing her final novels. In 1817 she had to interrupt work on her last and unfinished novel, Sanditon, because she fell ill. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, where she had been taken for medical treatment. After her death, her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published, together with a biographical notice, due to the efforts of her brother Henry. Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Jane Austen's delightful, carefully wrought novels of manners remain surprisingly relevant, nearly 200 years after they were first published. Her novels—Pride and Prejudice and Emma among them—are those rare books that offer us a glimpse at the mores of a specific period while addressing the complexities of love, honor, and responsibility that still intrigue us today. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. Check Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Discussion Questions
1. Though it was very successful, Jane Austen deemed Pride and Prejudice, her second novel, "'rather too light."' As Carol Shields mentions in her Introduction, Austen hoped to address more serious issues in her next novel, Mansfield Park. Many readers and critics think Mansfield Park is Austen's most serious and most profound novel. How does it differ from Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice? How are her treatments of class, gender, relationships, and most especially, faith, more nuanced and more mature?
2. Describe the social positions of the three Ward sisters—Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price. How did they arrive at such different circumstances and how have their circumstances presumably affected their personalities? How do the sisters treat each other and how much of this is the result of their respective status?
3. As soon as Sir Thomas decides to accept responsibility for one of Mrs. Price's children, Fanny is put into an unusual position. Sir Bertram says, although she is to live with them, "she is not a Miss Bertram.... Their rank, fortune, rights and expectations will always be different." Describe the family's feelings for Fanny as the novel develops. How does the treatment of Fanny by Mrs. Norris and the Bertram sisters distinguish her from the rest of the children? How does Fanny feel about the Bertrams and how do her feelings change, especially for Sir Bertram and Edmund? Before her marriage, what changes take place that allow for her acceptance in the family?
4. Fanny Price inspires strong reactions in readers; she is cast by some as a dreary killjoy, and by others as an endearing, admirable heroine. Is this dichotomy Austen's intention? Discuss the ways in which Fanny embodies both sides of this polarized debate. What is your opinion of her in relation to other well-known female protagonists of the day?
5. Mansfield Park was divided into three volumes, published separately. Why do you think Austen chose this structure, and how does it affect your reading of the book? Think about other writing that employs this structure to inform your response.
6. From the moment the idea is suggested, Edmund is against the staging of a play. Why is the play seen as inappropriate by both Edmund and Fanny? Why, once it is decided upon, does Edmund accept a part in the play, even though he would appear a hypocrite? How much of this license was taken because of the absence of Sir Thomas and how much was simply the influence of Tom? What is the significance of their choice of plays, "Lover's Vows"?
7. Describe the similarities and differences between the courtship of Edmund and Mary and that of Fanny and Henry. What are the stumbling blocks in these two courtships that cause them to fail? To what extent were the trials of these courtships responsible for Edmund's change of heart toward Fanny?
(Questions issued by Random House.)
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Riding Lessons
Sara Gruen, 2004
HarperCollins
389 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061549045
Summary
As a world-class equestrian and Olympic contender, Annemarie Zimmer lived for the thrill of flight atop a strong, graceful animal. Then, at eighteen, a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and Harry, the beautiful horse she cherished.
Now, twenty years later, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father's New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, she is bringing her troubled teenage daughter to this place of pain and memory, where ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables—and where hope lives in the eyes of the handsome, gentle veterinarian Annemarie loved as a girl... and in the seductive allure of a trainer with a magic touch.
But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Vancouver, Canada
• Raised—London, Ontario
• Education—Carleton University (Ottawa)
• Currently—lives in western North Carolina
Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants and Riding Lessons. She lives in western North Carolina with her husband, three sons, and a menagerie of rescued animals. (From the publisher.)
More
Sara Gruen is a Canadian-born author, whose books deal greatly with animals; she is a supporter of numerous charitable organizations that support animals and wildlife.
Gruen moved to the U.S. from Canada in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. A devoted animal lover, her first novel, Riding Lessons (2004), explored the intimate and often healing spaces between people and animals and was a USA Today bestseller. She wrote a second novel, Flying Changes (2005), also about horses.
Although her first two novels sold several hundred thousands of copies—and Riding Lessons was a best seller—her third release, Water for Elephants, was initially turned down by her publisher at the time, forcing Gruen to find another publisher. That book, of course, went on to become one of the top-selling novels of our time. Readers fell in love with its story of Jacob, the young man tossed by fate onto a rickety circus train that was home to Rosie, the untrainable elephant. This #1 New York Times bestseller has been printed in 44 languages and the movie version (2011) stars Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, and Robert Pattinson.
Gruen sold her fourth novel, Ape House (2010), on the basis of a 12-page summary to Random House, which won that and another of her novels in a bidding war with 8 other publishers. Ape House features the amazing Bonobo ape. When a number of apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA.
Gruen has had a life-long fascination with human-ape discourse, with a particular interest in Bonobo apes. She has studied linguistics and a system of lexigrams in order to communicate with apes, and is one of the few visitors who has been allowed access to the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where the apes have come to love her. In bringing her experience and research to bear on her fourth novel, she opens the animal world to us as few novelists have done.
Sara Gruen’s awards include the 2007 Book Sense Book of the Year Award, the Cosmo Fun Fearless Fiction Award, the Bookbrowse Diamond Award for Most Popular Book, the Friends of American Literature Adult Fiction Award and the ALA/Alex Award 2007. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Like The Horse Whisperer, Gruen's polished debut is a tale of human healing set against the primal world of horses. The Olympic dreams of teenaged equestrian Annemarie Zimmer end when her beloved horse, Harry, injures her and destroys himself in a jumping accident. In the agonizing aftermath, she gives up riding and horses entirely. Two decades later, she returns to her family's horse farm a divorcee, with her troubled teenaged daughter, Eve, in tow. There, her gruff Germanic mother struggles to maintain the farm and care for Annemarie's father, who is stricken with ALS. Although Annemarie decides (disastrously) to manage the farm's business, her attention quickly turns to an old and ostensibly worthless horse with the same rare coloring as Harry. Her long-denied passion for riding reawakens as she tracks the horse's identity and eventually discovers it to be Harry's younger brother. She must heal both horse and herself as she struggles with her father's deterioration, Eve's rebellion and her attraction to both the farm's new trainer and her childhood sweetheart Dan. Impulsive and self-absorbed, Annemarie isn't always likable, but Gruen's portrait of the stoic elder Zimmers is beautifully nuanced, as is her evocation of Eve's adolescent troubles. Amid this realistically complex generational sandwich, the book's appealing horse scenes—depicted with unsentimental affection—help build a moving story of loss, survival and renewal.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Annemarie, 18, is a world-class equestrienne who is sure to be a contender in the next Olympics. Then, a terrible jumping accident causes the death of her magnificent horse.... Fans of Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer (1995) and Jessica Bird's impressive debut, Leaping Hearts (2002), will also enjoy this emotion-packed book, which is so exquisitely written it's hard to believe that it's also a debut. —Shelley Mosley
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Riding Lessons features an Olympic-level equestrienne who suffers a devastating accident that ends both her career and the life of her beloved horse. It also sets off a chain of events that doesn't end until twenty years later, when her husband leaves her, she loses her job, and she discovers that her estranged father is dying. In an attempt to pick up the pieces, Annemarie returns to her parents' riding academy with her intransigent teenage daughter. When a mysterious striped horse shows up at a local rescue center, Annemarie begins to slide into an obsession that threatens to destroy her tenuous relationship with her parents, their life's work, and her sanity.
1. Following her accident, Annemarie puts her riding days behind her and moves her life in a completely different direction. Yet the accident and the loss of Harry haunt her and influence her life in ways she doesn't even initially comprehend (e.g. she names her dog Harriet). Do you think we can ever truly leave the past in the past, or does it always follow us? Do you think some people are better-equipped to move on from tragedy than others, and why?
2. The mother-daughter relationship can be a very complicated one, and it is a theme that runs throughout the book. Annemarie's relationship with her mother is strained, just as her relationship with her own teenage daughter is. Annemarie says that motherhood never came naturally to her. Do you think that she let her unresolved problems with own mother affect the way she dealt with Eva? Do you think such cycles always repeat themselves in families, or can they be broken? Why do you think the mother-daughter relationship in particular can be such a volatile one?
3. Mutti helps her ALS-stricken husband end his life. Do you think she did the right thing? Even if it was understandable in this case, should she have been punished for breaking the law? Is helping a seriously ill person die the ultimate act of compassion, or is it playing God?
4. During a steamy encounter with Jean-Claude, which she initiates after he comforts her about Hurrah being taken away, Annemarie stops things before they go too far. Do you think that acting on lustful feelings is a typical reaction for someone going through a difficult time? Annemarie knows, even when she approaches Jean-Claude, that she really loves Dan. Do you think the power of love is ultimately stronger than that of lust?
5. Do you think Annemarie does the right thing when she dyes Hurrah's stripes in order to hide his identity once it is finally revealed? What would you have done in that situation?
6. Annemarie had a relationship with Harry that is unlike any she ever has with a human being, and she forms an equally strong bond with Hurrah. Eva also thrives when she is around horses, particularly Flicka. Do you think that people can have a stronger bond with animals than they do with other humans? What is it that animals can give to us that other people cannot?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal)
Zoe Heller, 2003
Macmillan Picador
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312421991
Summary
More than a decade ago, Kazuo Ishiguro wowed readers with The Remains of the Day, a novel requiring readers to see past the self-deceptions of an uppity English narrator to understand the true significance of the story. In the same vein, Zoe Heller offers a riveting story of friendship, jealousy, and betrayal, with a narrator as unreliable as Ishiguro's infamous butler.
Heller's narrator is Barbara Covett, a British schoolteacher who lives a quiet, solitary life with an aging cat as her sole companion. For reasons she cannot comprehend, Barbara has never been good at making friends. But she is drawn to Sheba, a pretty new pottery teacher, and jealously tries to edge out the other teachers to win Sheba's friendship. When Sheba begins an inappropriate relationship with a young male student, it is Barbara in whom she confides. Soon, Barbara begins a written account of Sheba's illicit affair, detailing the actions of a woman caught in the grip of an obsession larger than herself.
As Barbara continues to infiltrate Sheba's life, their friendship acquires a dangerous undercurrent. And although the book title ostensibly refers to Sheba, readers might ask themselves the same question of Barbara, as this psychologically rich, complex tale unfolds. In penning her wickedly wonderful second novel, Zoe Heller certainly had her head squarely on her shoulders. (From Barnes & Noble.)
The novel was made into the 2006 film, Notes on a Scandal, staring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1965
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford,; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Zoe Heller was born in London and lives in New York City. She is the author of the novel Everything You Know; What Was She Thinking? and The Believer.
Extras
Excerpts are from a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• My very first job was as a milkman's assistant on an electric milk float in London. (This was in the days when British homeowners got their milk delivered to their front doorsteps. I was 14 at the time. It was an okay job, but the smell of stale milk tended to linger horribly on my clothes.
• I wish I could have been a jazz singer.
• I am extremely fond of manatees.
• When asked about what book influenced her most as a writer, here is her response:
Perhaps Middlemarch by George Eliot? I read it when I was 17 years old and at that time, it seemed to me to be the wisest, most truthful piece of fiction I'd ever read. Eliot's account of her heroine's life is remarkably unsentimental and grown-up. I also loved Eliot's stately, slow narration and her long, windy digressions. It was one of the first books that really made me want to be a writer. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble)
Book Reviews
In the end, What Was She Thinking? isn't so much about the standard student-teacher affair as it is about the complicated weights and balances of female friendships. Some of the novel's funniest scenes show the women adopting a posture of honesty and ''supportiveness'' while privately judging or dismissing one another. It's a recognizable snit-fit of ''enough about you, what about me'' that pushes Barbara into her final betrayal. In a way, Barbara risks more for friendship than Sheba does for romance. The plot twist may not be a huge surprise, but Heller handles it with wry grace, managing to mock her characters without allowing their story to tip into farce.
Lisa Zeidner - New York Times
In literature as in life, one of the most dangerous turns of events is to get what you want, and for all its surface tawdriness and chatty asides, What Was She Thinking? achieves some worthy literary aims indeed.
Chris Lehmann - The Washington Post
Barbara Covett, a sixtyish history teacher, is the kind of unmarried-woman-with-cat whose female friends sooner or later decide she is "too intense." Thus when a beautiful new pottery teacher, Sheba Hart — a "wispy novice with a tinkly accent and see-through skirts" - chooses Barbara as a confidante, she is deeply, even rather sinisterly, gratified. Sheba's secret is explosive: married with two kids, she is having an affair with a fifteen-year-old student. The novel, Heller's second, is Barbara's supposedly objective "history" of the affair and its eventual discovery, written furtively while she and her friend are holed up in a borrowed house, waiting for Sheba's court date. Barbara has appointed herself Sheba's "unofficial guardian," protecting her from the salivating tabloids. Equally adroit at satire and at psychological suspense, Heller charts the course of a predatory friendship and demonstrates the lengths to which some people go for human company.
The New Yorker
Subtitled "Notes on a Scandal," Heller's engrossing second novel (after Everything You Know) is actually the story of two inappropriate obsessions-one a consummated affair between a high school teacher and her student, the other a secret passion harbored by a dowdy spinster. Sheba Hart, a new 40ish art teacher at a London school for working-class kids, has been arrested for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student, Steven Connolly. The papers are having a blast. Sheba is herself the object of fascination for her older colleague and defender, Barbara Covett, whose interest in Sheba is not overtly romantic but has an erotic-and at times malevolent-intensity. Barbara narrates the story of Sheba's affair while inadvertently revealing her own obsession and her pivotal role in the scandal. The novel is gripping from start to finish; Heller brings vivid, nuanced characterizations to the racy story. Sheba is upper-class, arty, carelessly beautiful in floaty layers of clothing, with a full life of her own: doting older husband, impossible adolescent daughter, a son with Down's Syndrome, real if underdeveloped talent as a potter. She never got a driver's license, she tells Barbara, because she is always given rides; people want to do things for her. Barbara's respectable maiden-lady exterior hides a bitter soul that feasts on others' real and imagined shortcomings: one colleague's carelessly shaved armpits, another's risible baseball jacket. Even characters on stage for a minute (a Camden barman who hams it up for Barbara) live and breathe. Verdict: Some readers will pass this up as yet another take on the shopworn theme of student/teacher romance, but Heller's light touch will win over others and please reviewers.
Publishers Weekly
Ansay takes us on the dark, emotional journey of a mother's losing a child and brings us out on the other side into forgiveness and redemption. Meg and Rex Van Dorn's comfortable life in Meg's home town on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan ends when their young son is killed in a car accident as Meg is driving him to school. Cindy Ann, the driver who caused the accident, was Meg's best friend in high school. Meg and Rex file a civil suit against Cindy but drop it when they find that bitterness is dominating their lives. Trying to start over, they buy a sailboat and move to the Caribbean. Their seafaring life, which Ansay depicts authentically in all its drudgery and danger, seems exotic but offers them little comfort. In time, Meg's feelings about Cindy evolve into something like a supernatural connection. When she learns that Rex is secretly pursuing the civil suit, the differences in how they cope with grief begin to pull their marriage apart. For all popular fiction collections; buy to please the many fans of Ansay's Oprah selection, Vinegar Hill. —Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
After Everything You Know (2000) comes the tale of a London art teacher, married with children, who has an affair with a student of 15. When Sheba (Bathsheba) Hart comes to St. George's school, she's completely inexperienced-as clueless about disciplining hormone-driven students as she is about how to dress, inclining toward the sheer, diaphanous, and fey when corduroy or tweed would be in order. More expert, however, is experienced faculty member Barbara Covett-40ish, single, lonely-who casts a cool eye on the exotic Sheba, gradually is drawn closer, and ends up an intimate friend: kind of Wuthering Heights's Nelly Dean to Sheba, making notes, keeping a timeline, and writing a narrative (this novel) of the whole debacle of Sheba's affair. Barbara's tale is often stiff and clumsy ("I daresay we shall never know for certain the exact progress of her romantic attachment"), but it neatly limns the contrast between Barbara's drab, spinsterish life and Sheba's charming, fecund, expansive domesticity, with her academic husband (though he's a snob), and her two healthy children (the older, though, a fiercely troubled teenager and the younger, doted on by Sheba, a victim of Down's syndrome). There's a major disconnect between all of this on the one hand and, on the other, Sheba's letting herself be seduced by the callow working-class Steven Connolly, then continuing the affair for months, keeping it a secret even from Barbara, until inevitable exposure and with it the promise of loss, penalty, breakup, dislocation, perhaps even imprisonment, though the story (wisely) ends with this last yet to come, leaving us only with a powerful sense of the piercing loneliness of Barbara of the inexplicably self-invited ruin of the charming and yet utterly lost Sheba—her family ruined, her future depraved. Unbelievable yet compelling: it's almost as if Heller tried for a salacious potboiler and ended up—her talent refusing not to intrude—with a portrait that remains indelible. Watch for her next, whatever it may be.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. There has traditionally been a taboo on older women/younger men relationships. In the novel, the news media describes the affair between Sheba and Connolly as "despicable" and "unhealthy." Why do you think it has historically been viewed this way, and do you agree?
2. Heller expertly captures the insulating and sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere of academia. Give examples of this, and discuss the differences and similarities between Sheba and Barbara that brought them to teach at the same institution.
3. Connolly's unabashed admiration and innocence prove irresistible to Sheba. How are Connolly's attentions much different from the oglings of her academic colleagues since both indicate that they find her sexually attractive. Why is one so much more flattering?
4. What makes a woman like Sheba behave so irresponsibly? How easy was it for her to risk everything for the danger of the relationship? Does Sheba really think about the consequences of her actions?
5. Why does Sheba's friendship with Sue Hodges seem so ill-founded to Barbara? Why would Sheba choose Sue her as her confidant—she never mentions Connolly's visits to Sue. How does Barbara seduce Sheba away from Sue?
6. Barbara observes that Connolly's overt effort to please Sheba is like "the cynicism of all courtship." Discuss what she means by this.
7. Barbara asks why Sheba insists on seeing Connolly as gifted and extraordinary in a sea of fairly ordinary, untalented students. Does the element of class exacerbate the forbidden nature of the relationship? Is Connolly exploiting this? What is his culpability in the situation?
8. Why, when Barbara seems like such a prim and formal person, is she initially so sympathetic to Sheba's predicament? Why is she not appalled? She says she thinks that Connolly is actually benefiting from the relationship, not being abused by it. Is it her desire for Sheba's friendship or pure feminist support? Does she take vicarious pleasure in it?
9. Sheba is presented throughout the first portion of the book as a very appealing character, seeking few of the advantages her money and class could provide. She bemoans her own lack of ambition. How much do her feelings of insecurity, boredom, and her problems with Polly affect her vulnerability to Connolly?
10. What is Barbara's reaction when she finally finds out about the affair? Is this the cause of her betrayal? Does it lead to her punishment at St. George's? Does Barbara have the right to set down the events in writing? Discuss how their friendship provides as fertile ground for mutual misunderstanding, jealousy, and treachery as does the illicit love affair.
11. At the end which woman is more sympathetic? Is Barbara friend, guardian, foe, jailer, interloper, predator? Is Sheba a victim of circumstances, an understandably bored housewife, or a selfish woman spoiled by privilege?
12. The story is finally about the two women, and the many facets of female friendship. Discuss the ways in which Heller's device of having Barbara tell the story serves to enrich the novel by revealing both women's emotional lives.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene, 1948
Penguin Group USA
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142437995
Summary
Set in a small British colonial outpost in Sierra Leone during World War II, The Heart of the Matter occupies and comments on the ambitious subjects of war, espionage, love, adultery, treachery, and betrayal. But at its core—at the heart of The Heart of the Matter—it is a novel of moral dilemmas. Its plot, its psychological and spiritual depth, even its political intrigues turn around two basic moral questions: Is it possible to make others happy? Is suicide ever the right choice? The novel's enigmatic protagonist, police officer Henry Scobie, even wonders if Christ's death might be understood as an act of suicide, since He allowed Himself to be sacrificed.
Before he reaches the climactic decision of his own moral crisis, Scobie struggles to make his poetry-loving and deeply unhappy wife, Louise, happy. Fed up with the ghastly climate, the remoteness, and, in her case, friendlessness of village life in Sierra Leone, Louise lets her husband know the full depth of her misery. And Henry Scobie is not a man who can bear the thought that he has caused another to suffer. When he is passed over for the job of Commissioner of Police, Louise feels humiliated in the eyes of the other British officers and their wives, and her unhappiness is brought to a fever pitch. She decides she must leave, and Henry makes a fateful promise to send her to South Africa, even though he lacks the funds to do so.
Thus begins a series of decisions and bargains that push Scobie into a terrifyingly unfamiliar moral terrain. Though Scobie wonders if any human being can arrange another's happiness and even considers the desire to be happy in a world so filled with pain and suffering to be impossibly foolish, he still tries to make Louise happy. To raise the money to pay for his wife's passage, Scobie strikes a bargain with Yusef that leads to Scobie's corruption after many years of honest service. And once Louise is gone, Scobie begins an affair with the recently widowed Helen and soon finds himself responsible for the happiness of two people, rather than just of one. When Louise returns, hoping to restore their strained marriage, she suggests that they receive communion together, which requires a full confession, and the cage door swings shut on Scobie and his deceptions.
Only one way of escape presents itself to Scobie, and he believes that eternal damnation awaits him if he chooses it. But he convinces himself that by sacrificing his own life, he can spare both Helen and Louise further misery at his expense. And it is here that the crucial question of the novel is asked most poignantly: how far should one sacrifice oneself for the happiness of others? Henry Scobie provides one answer but the novel itself leaves the question open for its readers to ponder. (From the publisher.)
This is the third of four in what are considered Graham Greene's explicitiy Catholic novels. The other three are Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), and The End of the Affair (1951).
Author Bio
• Birth—October 2, 1904
• Where—Berkhamstd, England, UK
• Death—April 3, 1991
• Where—Vevey, Switzerland
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Hawthornden Prize; Companion
of Honour; Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour; Order of Merit.
Known for his espionage thrillers set in exotic locales, Graham Greene is the writer who launched a thousand travel journalists. But although Greene produced some unabashedly commercial works—he called them "entertainments," to distinguish them from his novels—even his escapist fiction is rooted in the gritty realities he encountered around the globe. "Greeneland" is a place of seedy bars and strained loyalties, of moral dissolution and physical decay.
Greene spent his university years at Oxford "drunk and debt-ridden," and claimed to have played Russian roulette as an antidote to boredom. At age 21 he converted to Roman Catholicism, later saying, "I had to find a religion...to measure my evil against." His first published novel, The Man Within, did well enough to earn him an advance from his publishers, but though Greene quit his job as a London Times subeditor to write full-time, his next two novels were unsuccessful. Finally, pressed for money, he set out to write a work of popular fiction. Stamboul Train (also published as The Orient Express) was the first of many commercial successes.
Throughout the 1930s, Greene wrote novels, reviewed books and movies for the Spectator, and traveled through eastern Europe, Liberia, and Mexico. One of his best-known works, Brighton Rock, was published during this time; The Power and the Glory, generally considered Greene's masterpiece, appeared in 1940. Along with The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair, they cemented Greene's reputation as a serious novelist—though George Orwell complained about Greene's idea "that there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only."
During World War II, Greene was stationed in Sierra Leone, where he worked in an intelligence capacity for the British Foreign Office under Kim Philby, who later defected to the Soviet Union. After the war, Greene continued to write stories, plays, and novels, including The Quiet American, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, and The Captain and the Enemy. For a time, he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, producing both original screenplays and scripts adapted from his fiction.
He also continued to travel, reporting from Vietnam, Haiti, and Panama, among other places, and he became a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in Central America. Some biographers have suggested that his friendships with Communist leaders were a ploy, and that he was secretly gathering intelligence for the British government. The more common view is that Greene's leftist leanings were part of his lifelong sympathy with the world's underdogs—what John Updike called his "will to compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist. Its unit is the individual, not any class."
But if Greene's politics were sometimes difficult to decipher, his stature as a novelist has seldom been in doubt, in spite of the light fiction he produced. Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and R. K. Narayan paid tribute to his work, and William Golding prophesied: "He will be read and remembered as the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."
Extras
• Greene's philandering ways were legendary; he frequently visited prostitutes and had several mistresses, including Catherine Walston, who converted to Catholicism after reading The Power and the Glory and wrote to Greene asking him to be her godfather. After a brief period of correspondence, the two met, and their relationship inspired Greene's novel The End of the Affair.
• Greene was a film critic, screenwriter, and avid moviegoer, and critics have sometimes praised the cinematic quality of his style. His most famous screenplay was The Third Man, which he cowrote with director Carol Reed. Recently, new film adaptations have been made of Greene's novels The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. Greene's work has also formed the basis for an opera: Our Man in Havana, composed by Malcolm Williamson. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Mr. Greene has wrestled brilliantly with [his themes. He] is a profound moralist with a technique to match his purpose. From first page to last, this record of one man's breakdown...makes its point as a crystal-clear allegory—and as an engrossing novel.... The novel never labors...[as] Mr. Greene's triumph is not that he makes his doomed policeman human but that one sympathizes with this roges and weaklings as well..
William Du Bois - New York Times (1948)
Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations.... For experience of a whole century he was the man within.
Norman Sherry - Independent (UK)
Discussion Questions
1. How relevant is the setting to the action of The Heart of the Matter? How do the climate, the war, and the indigenous people of this remote colonial outpost affect Scobie, Louise, Helen, and Wilson? Is the novel implicitly or explicitly anticolonial?
2. Scobie thinks that "no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness" (p. 75). What are the fateful consequences of Scobie's trying to make others happy? In what ways does the novel reveal the limits of our ability to understand one another?
3. What kind of woman is Louise? Why is her love of literature so often regarded with derision in the novel? Why is she so upset when Scobie is passed over for the commissionership? To what extent is she responsible for Scobie's downfall?
4. What role does Yusef play in the novel? By what means does he entice Scobie into a corrupt relationship? Are we meant to see him as a diabolical character or merely as someone working the colonial occupation to his best advantage?
5. In discussing mercy and damnation, Father Rank says, "The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart" (p. 254). To what extent can The Heart of the Matter be read as a critique of the Catholic Church? In what ways does the novel show the workings of the human heart to be beyond the comprehension of Catholic doctrine?
6. Early in the novel, Scobie promises to find a way to send Louise to South Africa, and we read that "He would still have made the promise even if he could have foreseen all that would come of it" (p. 50). What are the consequences of this promise? Why would Scobie still have made it, even if he could foresee the ruin that it would cause?
7. In what ways is Wilson a foil for Scobie? How are the two men different? For what reasons does Wilson wish to destroy Scobie?
8. How has the death of his only child affected Scobie and the decisions he makes throughout the novel?
9. Why is Scobie so drawn to Helen? Why do they feel so "safe" in each other's presence? Why does this sense of safety turn out to be so dangerous?
10. In what ways do the subplots of spying and diamond smuggling parallel the novel's central concern with relationships? In what ways is the novel about the tensions between openness and secrecy, honesty and deception?
11. At the end of the novel, Father Rank says of Scobie, "It may seem an odd thing to say—when a man's as wrong as he was—but I think, from what I saw of him, that he really loved God." To which Louise replies: "He certainly loved no one else" (p. 255). Are these statements about Scobie true? Does he love God and no one else? If so, how can we explain the choices he has made—to commit adultery and finally suicide?
12. After Pemberton's suicide, Scobie thinks: "Suicide was for ever out of his power—he couldn't condemn himself for eternity—no cause was important enough" (p. 83). Why does Scobie kill himself, even when he believes it will bring eternal damnation? How does he rationalize his suicide to himself? Should his suicide be considered self-sacrifice for the well-being of Helen and Louise? Is suicide his only choice? What else might he have done?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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