Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Madeleine Thien, 2016
W.W. Norton & Company
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393609882
Summary
Winner, 2016 Giller Prize
Winner, 2016 Governor General's Literary Award
Shortlisted, 2016 Man Booker Prize
Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations—those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square.
At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story.
Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences.
With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Simon Fraser University; University of British Columbia
• Awards—Giller Prize; Governor General's Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Montreal, Quebec
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother, she studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University and literature at the University of British Columbia.
Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (2002), is a collection of short stories, of which Alice Monroe said, "I am astonished by the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity."
Thien's first novel, Certainty (2007), has been translated into 16 languages. Her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter (2012), about the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide, has been translated into 9 languages.
In 2008, Thien was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, as well as its 2010 State Department-funded study tour of the U.S. The tour involved eight international writers who were asked to explore the unresolved legacies of American history. Thien's essay, "The Grand Tour: In the Shadow of James Baldwin," concludes the 2015 program's essay collection, Fall and Rise, American Style: Eight International Writers Between Gettysburg and the Gulf. The study tour was also the subject of filmmaker Sahar Sarshar's documentary, Writing in Motion: A Nation Divided.
From 2010 to 2015, Thien was part of City University of Hong Kong's International Faculty in the MFA Program for Creative Writing. After Hong Kong's crackdown on freedom of speech, she wrote a controversial essay about the writing program's abrupt closure for the UK's Guardian newspaper.
In 2013, Thien became the Simon Fraser University Writer-in-Residence.
Thien's 2016 novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In advance of its U.S. publication, it was longlisted (fiction list) for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence.
Thien is the common-law partner of novelist Rawi Hage.
Awards and recognition
2001 - Canadian Authors Association Award (most promising Canadian writer under 30)
2002 - City of Vancouver Book Award, VanCity Book Prize, Ethel Wilson Prize
2010 - Ovid Prize
2015 - Frankfort Book Fair's de:LiBeraturpreis
2016 - Governor General's Award, Scotiabank Giller Prize
(Author bio adaptd from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/07/2016.)
Book Reviews
[A] beautiful, sorrowful work. The book impresses in many senses: It stamps the memory with an afterimage; it successfully explores larger ideas about politics and art (the mind is never still while reading it); it has the satisfying, epic sweep of a 19th-century Russian novel, spanning three generations and lapping up against the shores of two continents…The background of Do Not Say We Have Nothing pulses with music. Ms. Thien has that rare, instinctive sense of what it's like for a person's brain to be a hostage to its inner score—the call inside these characters' heads is always louder than the call of the outside world, most fatally that of the Communist Party—and her observations about Bach and Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Debussy are some of the book's sweetest pleasures, as are her ruthless critiques of musicians.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times
A powerfully expansive novel…Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor who is as in command of the symphony’s tempo as she is attuned to the nuances of each individual instrument.
Jiayang Fan - New York Times Book Review
[A] graceful, intricate novel whose humanity threads through it like a stirring melodic line.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
A moving and extraordinary evocation of the 20th-century tragedy of China, and deserves to cement Thien’s reputation as an important and compelling writer.
Guardian (UK)
Extraordinary…It recalls the panoramic scale and domestic minutiae of the great 19th-century Russian writers…A highly suspenseful drama…as courageous and far-reaching as principled resistance itself.
Financial Times (UK)
A magnificent epic of Chinese history, richly detailed and beautifully written.
London Times
A deeply profound and moving tale where music, mathematics and family history are beautifully woven together in a poetic story…Full of wisdom and complexity, comedy and beauty, Thien has delivered a novel that is both hugely political and severe, but at the same time delicate and intimate, rooted in the tumultuous history of China.
Herald (UK)
Filled with intrigue, shifting loyalties, broken families, and unbroken resistance, this novel is beautifully poetic and as carefully constructed as the Bach sonatas that make frequent appearance in the text. Thien's reach—though epic [makes]...a lovely fugue of a book.
Publishers Weekly
[An] ambitious saga explores the upheavals in Chinese politics from 1949 to the present through several generations of friends, family, and lovers whose intersecting destinies are upturned by the sweep of events.... Mythic yet realistic, panoramic yet intimate...and deeply haunting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Mister Monkey
Francine Prose, 2016
HarperCollins
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062397836
Summary
An ingenious, darkly humorous, and brilliantly observant story that follows the exploits and intrigue of a constellation of characters affiliated with an off-off-off-off Broadway children’s musical.
Mister Monkey—a screwball children’s musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee—is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime.
Margot, who plays the chimp’s lawyer, knows the production is dreadful and bemoans the failure of her acting career. She’s settled into the drudgery of playing a humiliating part...
...Until the day she receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous admirer, and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the twelve-year-old who plays the title role.
Francine Prose’s effervescent comedy is told from the viewpoints of wildly unreliable, seemingly disparate characters whose lives become deeply connected as the madcap narrative unfolds. There is Adam, whose looming adolescence informs his interpretation of his role; Edward, a young audience member who is candidly unimpressed with the play; Ray, the author of the novel on which the musical is based, who witnesses one of the most awkward first dates in literature; and even the eponymous Mister Monkey, the Monkey God himself.
With her trademark wit and verve, Prose delves into humanity’s most profound mysteries: art, ambition, childhood, aging, and love. Startling and captivating, Mister Monkey is a breathtaking novel from a writer at the height of her craft. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 1, 1947
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; PEN-America prize for translation; Guggenheim Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
When it comes to an author as eclectic as Francine Prose, it's difficult to find the unifying thread in her work. But, if one were to examine her entire oeuvre—from novels and short stories to essays and criticism—a love of reading would seem to be the animating force.
That may not seem extraordinary, especially for a writer, but Prose is uncommonly passionate about the link between reading and writing. "I've always read," she confessed in a 1998 interview with Atlantic Unbound. "I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop.... The only reason I wanted to be a writer was because I was such an avid reader." (In 2006, she produced an entire book on the subject—a nuts-and-bolts primer entitled Reading Like a Writer, in which she uses excerpts from classic and contemporary literature to illustrate her personal notions of literary excellence.)
If Prose is specific about the kind of writing she, herself, likes to read, she's equally voluble about what puts her off. She is particularly vexed by "obvious, tired cliches; lazy, ungrammatical writing; implausible plot turns." Unsurprisingly, all of these are notably absent in her own work. Even when she explores tried-and-true literary conventions—such as the illicit romantic relationship at the heart of her best known novel, Blue Angel—she livens them with wit and irony. She even borrowed her title from the famous Josef von Sternberg film dealing with a similar subject.
As biting and clever as she is, Prose cringes whenever her work is referred to as satire. She explained to Barnes & Noble editors, "Satirical to me means one-dimensional characters...whereas, I think of myself as a novelist who happens to be funny—who's writing characters that are as rounded and artfully developed as the writers of tragic novels."
Prose's assessment of her own work is pretty accurate. Although her subject matter is often ripe for satire (religious fanaticism in Household Saints, tabloid journalism in Bigfoot Dreams, upper-class pretensions in Primitive People), etc.), she takes care to invest her characters with humanity and approaches them with respect. "I really do love my characters," she says, "but I feel that I want to take a very hard look at them. I don't find them guilty of anything I'm not guilty of myself."
Best known for her fiction, Prose has also written literary criticism for the New York Times, art criticism for the Wall Street Journal, and children's books based on Jewish folklore, all of it infused with her alchemic blend of humor, insight,and intelligence.
Extras
• Prose rarely wastes an idea. In Blue Angel, the novel that the character Angela is writing is actually a discarded novel that Prose started before stopping because, in her own words, "it seemed so juvenile to me."
• While she once had no problem slamming a book in one of her literary critiques, these days Prose has resolved to only review books that she actually likes. The ones that don't adhere to her high standards are simply returned to the senders.
• Prose's novel Household Saints was adapted into an excellent film starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor in 1993.
• Another novel, The Glorious Ones, was adapted into a musical.
• In 2002 Prose published The Lives of the Muses, an intriguing hybrid of biography, philosophy, and gender studies that examines nine women who inspired famous artists and thinkers—from John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono to Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Alice in Wonderland. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Expertly constructed, Mister Monkey is so fresh and new it’s almost giddy, almost impudent with originality. Tender and artful, Prose’s 15th novel is a sophisticated satire, a gently spiritual celebration of life, a dark and thoroughly grim depiction of despair, a screwball comedy, a screwball tragedy.... It’s gorgeous and bright and fun and multi-faceted, carrying within it the geological force of the ages. It’s a book to be treasured. It’s that good. It’s that funny. It’s that sad. It’s that deceptive and deep.
Cathleen Schine - New York Times Book Review (front cover review)
Everybody involved in the show loathes it and with good reason. It sounds dreadful.... Prose has plenty of fun mocking her invented disaster, but her real interest is the web of people connected by Mister Monkey.... Like some earlier storyteller, Prose suggests that "all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players." In a sense, we’re all cast in what she calls "the collective nightmare of Mister Monkey," condemned to play out this ghastly farce of material existence. Masterful....a lovely tribute to the transformative value of imagination.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
[A] comic novel vastly more entertaining than the sad production of the children’s musical, Mister Monkey, she so hilariously pillories.... Juggling multiple points of view, she presents an indelible cast of characters.... Some are reliable narrators, some self-deluding, but all intersect in surprising and remarkable ways..… In this strong, humane, and funny novel, Prose has treated us to an enthralling entertainment both on and off stage.
Boston Globe
Beautifully crafted, incisively written…Engaging and accessible…What elevates this novel is Prose’s ability to let us see into the heart of each character, to render each so vulnerably human, so achingly real in just a few short paragraphs.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mister Monkey' Channels Disappointment.... [A] dark comedy about the mainly sad, disappointing lives of everyone involved in a woeful way-off-Broadway revival.... What's remarkable is how much wit and pathos Prose manages to wring from this wildly unpromising jumping-off point.... That said, I can't pretend that I was as taken with all the monkey business.... [Still, Prose] shares...her considerable talent for ventriloquy: She is the Meryl Streep of literary fiction.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
As absorbing and three-dimensional as each character is, the development of the actual novel feels awkwardly formulaic, and the strangeness of the play itself...s stilted, despite the genuine intrigue of each scene in the novel.
Publishers Weekly
The Off-Off Broadway children's musical Mister Monkey has been running too long, as Margot, who plays the chimp's lawyer, surely knows. Witty mayhem ensues when she receives a letter from a secret admirer....
Library Journal
(Starred review.) With her customary sure hand....Prose hilariously nails the down-at-the-heels milieu.... Wickedly funny and sharply observant, in the author’s vintage manner, with a warmth that softens the satire just enough.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Faithful
Alice Hoffman, 2016
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476799209
Summary
A soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.
Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.
What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky?
Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world.
A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.
Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.
Alice Hoffman’s "trademark alchemy" (USA TODAY) and her ability to write about the “delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary” (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi University; M.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston ,Massachusetts.
Beginnings
Hoffman’s first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become Property Of, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff’s magazine, American Review.
Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published a total of twenty-three novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.
Highlights
♦ Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights.
♦ Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
♦ Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools.
♦ Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.
♦ Blackbird House is a book of stories centering around an old farm on Cape Cod.
♦ Hoffman’s recent books include Aquamarine and Indigo, novels for pre-teens, and the New York Times bestsellers The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, and The Ice Queen.
♦ Green Angel, a post-apocalyptic fairy tale about loss and love, was published by Scholastic and The Foretelling, a book about an Amazon girl in the Bronze Age, was published by Little Brown. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.
♦ More recent novels include The Third Angel, The Story Sisters, the teen novel, Green Witch, a sequel to her popular post-apocalyptic fairy tale, Green Angel.
♦ The Red Garden, published in 2011, is a collection of linked fictions about a small town in Massachusetts where a garden holds the secrets of many lives.
Recognition
Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People magazine. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.
She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay "Independence Day," a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts.
In 2011 Alice published The Dovekeepers, which Toni Morrison calls "... a major contribution to twenty-first century literature" for the past five years. The story of the survivors of Masada is considered by many to be Hoffman’s masterpiece. The New York Times bestselling novel is slated for 2015 miniseries, produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, starring Cote de Pablo of NCIS fame.
Most recent
The Museum of Extraordinary Things was released in 2014 and was an immediate bestseller, the New York Times Book Review noting, "A lavish tale about strange yet sympathetic people, haunted by the past and living in bizarre circumstances… Imaginative…"
Nightbird, a Middle Reader, was released in March of 2015. In August of 2015, The Marriage Opposites, Alice’s latest novel, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. "Hoffman is the prolific Boston-based magical realist, whose stories fittingly play to the notion that love—both romantic and platonic—represents a mystical meeting of perfectly paired souls," said Vogue magazine. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The sweet-natured latest novel from Hoffman ambles along pleasantly enough.... The novel, with its hopeful message and well-intentioned characters, will appeal for the relatability of Shelby’s slow coming-of-age, romantic difficulties....
Publishers Weekly
Shelby Richmond loves Chinese food, bookstores, and cocky, bad-boy types, so maybe her move from Long Island to New York City makes sense. But she's still a lost soul.... Hoffman being heartbreaking and magical.
Library Journal
[A] young Long Island woman afflicted by survivor guilt.... With Hoffman, it’s a safe bet deus ex machina or mild enchantment is going to enter the plot.... A novel full of people—flawed, scarred, scared—discovering how to punish themselves less and connect with others more.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. As a group, listen to Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem.” After you’ve completed the song, discuss why Alice Hoffman opened Faithful with the following lyrics: “Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” How do you think this connects to the novel? To Shelby?
2. Love manifests in a few strong ways: the love between a mother and daughter (Shelby and Sue, Maravelle and Jasmine); the love between partners (Ben and Shelby; Sue and Dan); friendship (Shelby and Maravelle). Which love brings the characters the most faith or hope? Is there a sort of love in the novel that you find destructive to the characters?
3. Discuss the title, Faithful. In which ways do the characters show their faith? How does this faith differentiate from religious faith? At what point do you think Shelby finally begins to have faith and hope again? Is there another title you and your group members would have selected for the novel?
4. Over the course of the novel, Shelby rescues three dogs, a cat, and steals a poodle for her mother. Discuss the different caretakers that appear in the novel. What compels Shelby to save these animals? What compels Ben to care for Shelby? Shelby for Maravelle?
5. Discuss Shelby’s relationship with Ben. In what ways is this relationship a healthy next step for Shelby? Do you think he has a positive or negative affect on her life? Why or why not?
6. While browsing books in the Strand Book Store, a young boy says to Shelby, “That’s why the best heroes used to be villains and vice versa” (page 222). Consider this quote in relation to Shelby’s survivor’s guilt and redemption by the end of the novel. Does she forgive herself for Helene’s death? Why or why not?
7. In the first chapter, Shelby says, “I believe in tragedy . . . not miracles” (page 11). Does her opinion change by the novel’s end? What miracles does she experience?
8. The theme of trust is prevalent in Faithful. Discuss the characters who struggle most with trust. Consider the level of trust Maravelle puts in Shelby to watch her kids, Shelby’s father’s infidelity, Shelby’s lack of self-trust, and others who appear in the novel. Where does the lack of trust or ability to trust stem from for the various characters in the novel?
9. On page 201, James says to Shelby, “What they say about saving a life is true . . . You’re responsible for that person forever.” Discuss what James means here and the different ways Shelby’s, or another character’s, life is saved in Faithful. Do you agree with James? Why or why not?
10. To further the question above, discuss Shelby’s visit with Helene toward the novel’s end. What “miracle” do you think she experiences during the visit? What kept her away for so long?
11. As a group, compare the various sayings on all the postcards James left for Shelby throughout the years, as well as when they appear in Shelby’s life. What would your reaction be to these notes? Do you think James knew where Shelby was, both physically and mentally, at the time he was writing them?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Years That Followed
Catherine Dunne, 2016
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501135668
Summary
Revenge is sweeter than regret…
Dublin. Calista is young, beautiful, and headstrong. When she falls in love with the charming, older Alexandros and moves to his native Cyprus, she could never imagine that her whirlwind courtship would lead to a dark and violent marriage. But Calista learns to survive. She knows she will find peace when she can finally seek retribution.
Madrid. Pilar grew up with very little means in rural Spain and finally escaped to a new life. Determined to leave poverty behind her, she plunges into a life of working hard and saving money. Enchanted by an older man, Pilar revels in their romance, her freedom, and accruing success. She’s on the road to achieving her dreams. Yet there is one thing that she is still searching for, the one thing she knows will make her truly happy.
Sweeping across the lush European backdrops of Spain, Greece, and Ireland, The Years That Followed is a gripping, modern telling of a classic story. As two wronged women plot for revenge, their intricately crafted schemes send shockwaves through their families that will echo for many generations to come. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., Trinity College
• Awards—Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize (Italy)
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland
Catherine Dunne is the Irish author of ten novels including, most recently, The Years That Followed (2016). Her novel 2013, The Things We Know Now, won the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. In 2015, Dunne was recently long-listed for the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into several languages.
She studied English and Spanish at Trinity College in Dublin and went on to teach, publishing her first novel, In the Beginning, in 1977. The Years that Followed is her U.S. debut. Dunne lives in Dublin. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]he parallel lives of two women.... Though the two women never meet, their lives are intertwined in ways they could never guess, culminating in a surprising, grisly discovery.... [B]oth women are nuanced, sympathetic characters whose lives and loves are well developed throughout this darkly compelling story.
Publishers Weekly
In this page-turner that’s both poignant and satisfying, Dunne knows how to write the woman scorned, betrayed, and eventually reborn.
Booklist
[An] intricate saga.... Calista and Pilar are wonderful characters to watch develop...as they work to define and enrich themselves against steep, cruel odds. Lived-in, hard-earned feminism swirled with a noir tone and dark turns makes for a great read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Calista and Pilar come from very different backgrounds. The former has grown up with all the comforts of affluence; the latter with all the particular challenges of poverty. In what ways might Calista’s wealth have influenced the choices she makes as a young woman? And how has poverty helped to shape Pilar’s view of the world?
2. The novel takes the ancient story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as its inspiration. Clytemnestra lived in an age when women’s voices were rarely heard in the public sphere. Their individual and collective stories were regarded as unimportant. Her modern counterpart, Calista, imposes a similar kind of silence on herself, regarding the difficulties she has in her relationship with Alexandros, particularly when he turns violent. How is this tradition of female silence dealt with in the novel? Calista begins to find her voice eventually, through her own independent work. How significant is the notion of work and economic independence for both Calista and Pilar?
3. Calista hears, at a distance, about the new movement in California for women’s liberation in the 1970s. In what ways is her life different from the life of a twenty-something young woman in 2016?
4. Pilar, on the other hand, knows nothing about the movement for women’s liberation. In the novel, she strikes out for her own freedom in many different ways. How does she achieve her goals, and what makes her life so different from Calista’s?
5. Maroulla and Petros are both products of their upper-class, privileged existence. In what ways do their behavior help to perpetuate the values of their social class?
6. Alexandros is a violent man and Calista suffers extreme domestic abuse at his hands. What do you understand about the dynamic of domestic violence, as illustrated by their relationship within the novel? Why does Calista feel that she is somehow to blame? What is it that often traps women in such relationships, making them stay much longer than they should?
7. Motherhood is a central theme in the novel: the joy of having children and the grief of losing them. How powerful a motivating force is motherhood in Calista’s search for revenge? And what is your view of the other mothers in the novel—specifically María-Luisa and Maroulla?
8. The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius said that if one is bent on seeking revenge, then one “must dig two graves.” How do you view this in relation to what becomes of Calista by the end of the novel?
9. Pilar performs the function of the Greek Chorus in this novel. In what ways does the trajectory of her life shed light on the choices made by Calista? In what ways might her life be seen as a commentary on the fate of Calista?
10. Childhood is a formative time, psychologically and emotionally. How would you describe the childhood influences on the characters in the novel, and in what ways are these influences visible in the adults they later become? And what, in your view, will be the fate of Omiros as he steps across the threshold into adulthood?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Mr. Willy and Arthur
Fairleigh Brooks, 2016
Smashwords
48 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781310034541 (e-book)
Summary
Mr. Willy & Arthur is a novella about an imagined meeting between Boo Radley and Willy Loman.
I took the liberty of giving Boo the gumption to escape Maycomb, and of extending Willy's life five days.
Boo becomes an itinerant field hand. His new life takes him in and out of functioning families, and he finds this satisfying. Willy finds himself with $500 in severance pay, and decides to return to Florida, where he had been on vacation recently.
North of Raleigh one rainy night the two meet. This is the story of their few days together.
Author Bio
• Birth—November 20, 1953
• Where—Louisville, Kentucky, USA
• Education—B.S., Spalding University
• Currently—lives in Louisville, Kentucky
Fairleigh Brooks is the author of the novel, Notes of a Would-Be Astronaut, and a collection of short stories, Lady Chatterley's Pool Boy. His e-books include the novella, Mr. Willy & Arthur, and another short story collection, A Presentation of Short Stories Without Regard to Marketing.
Brooks has written feature stories for a local alt weekly, LEO. For several years, he was a commentator for a local National Public Radio affiliate WFPL. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Boo Radley, somewhere and at some level, could have been prodded into finding the fortitude to leave Maycomb and strike out on his own?
2. Since the story is based on already existing characters from earlier writers, did you find each character, in new situations, remaining connected to his original portrayal?
3. Do you think Boo, however simple his life, found a real freedom, perhaps of the sort some of us might like to have?
4. Did you find a sense of Southern and Northern culture meeting?
5. Did you have any doubt, while reading, about Willy's fate?
6. Today's lives are radically different from Willy Loman's, obviously. Still, how alike with Willy's are our present lives in terms of drive, achieving what we want, and achieving what really matters?
7. What did you both learn outright and infer from both characters that perhaps you hadn't from the original works?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)