Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #2)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2000
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031351
Summary
Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunning proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana.
In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers an unscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappeared into the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolving uncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kind man, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talented secretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with a mark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 24, 1948
• Where—Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
• Education—Christian Brothers College; Ph.D., University
Edinburgh
• Honors—Commandre of the Order of the British Empire
(CBE); Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE)
• Currently—lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Alexander (R.A.A.) "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues. He has since become internationally known as a writer of fiction. He is most widely known as the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.
Alexander McCall Smith was born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. His father worked as a public prosecutor in what was then a British colony. He was educated at the Christian Brothers College before moving to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh, where he received his Ph.D. in law.
He soon taught at Queen's University Belfast, and while teaching there he entered a literary competition: one a children's book and the other a novel for adults. He won in the children's category, and published thirty books in the 1980s and 1990s.
He returned to southern Africa in 1981 to help co-found and teach law at the University of Botswana. While there, he cowrote what remains the only book on the country's legal system, The Criminal Law of Botswana (1992).
He returned in 1984 to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he lives today with his wife, Elizabeth, a physician, and their two daughters Lucy and Emily. He was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh at one time and is now Emeritus Professor at its School of Law. He retains a further involvement with the University in relation to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
He is the former chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee (until 2002), the former vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, and a former member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO. After achieving success as a writer, he gave up these commitments.
He was appointed a CBE in the December 2006 New Year's Honours List for services to literature. In June 2007, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at a ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh School of Law.
He is an amateur bassoonist, and co-founder of The Really Terrible Orchestra. He has helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House, for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta.
In 2009, he donated the short story "Still Life" to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project—four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. McCall Smith's story was published in the Air collection. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
There's a good deal of bustle in the series' first volume, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but hardly any suspense. And by the time you've made your way through the second, Tears of the Giraffe, and landed in the third, Morality for Beautiful Girls, you've realized that all this activity is much less about whodunit than why. It's also very much about the variety and resilience of a nation to which Smith (who grew up in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana) seems utterly devoted. As, of course, is Mma Ramotswe, who recognizes the difficulties her country faces—poverty, disease and drought, to name just a few—but would never choose to live anywhere else. Not even America.
Alida Becker - New York Times Book Review
Smart and sassy...Precious’ progress is charted in passages that have the power to amuse or shock or touch the heart, sometimes all at once.
Los Angeles Times
Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) offers the second .... installment of his dignified, humorous Botswanan series. In Tears of the Giraffe, PI Precious Ramotswe tracks a missing American man whose widowed mother appeals to Ramotswe; meanwhile, the imperturbable detective is endangered at home by her fiance's resentful maidts.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. What distinguishes Tears of the Giraffe from most other mysteries? What qualities make it such a charming and affirmative book? In what ways does Mma Ramotswe differ from such archetypal detectives as Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, and Philip Marlowe?
2. Mrs. Curtain says that when she first came to Africa, she had 'the usual ideas about it—a hotchpotch of images of big game and savannah and Kilimanjaro rising out of the cloud ... famines and civil wars and potbellied, half-naked children staring at the camera, sunk in hopelessness' [p. 27]. How does her experience of Africa alter these ideas? Why does she feel that 'everything about my own country seemed so shoddy and superficial when held up against what I saw in Africa' [p. 29]? What deeper and truer understanding of Africa does the novel itself offer readers who might share Mrs. Curtain's preconceptions?
3. Mma Ramotswe knows that Mrs. Curtain's case—finding out what happened to her son ten years ago—is what is referred to in The Principles of Private Detection as 'a stale enquiry' [p. 61]. Why does she accept the case, in spite of that? What special empathy does she feel for Mrs. Curtain?
4. When Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wonders why his apprentice mechanics take everything for granted, a friend explains, 'Young people these days cannot show enthusiasm.... It's not considered smart to be enthusiastic' [pp. 80-81].Is this an accurate observation? Where else does the novel demonstrate this kind of understanding of human behavior?
5. Why does Mr J.L.B. Matekoni allow himself to be talked into adopting the orphans? What specific memory enables him to open his heart to them? What does this act say about his character?
6. Mma Ramotswe thinks that 'the Americans were very clever; they sent rockets into space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind' [p. 113]. What is it that she thinks Americans are blind to? Is she right? How do her own values differ from those of mainstream America?
7. Tears of the Giraffe poses some difficult moral dilemmas for Mma Ramotswe. Should one always tell the truth, or is lying sometimes the better choice? Does a moral end justify immoral means? Which cases raise these questions? How do Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi answer them?
8. When Mma Ramotswe prepares her accounts for the end of the financial year, she finds that 'she had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. That figure in her accounts would be a very large one, she thought' [p. 225]. What enables Mma Ramotswe to live happily? How would most American CEOs and CFOs respond to the accounting innovation she suggests in the above passage?
9. How is Mma Ramotswe able to solve the mystery of Mrs. Curtain's son's disappearance? What role does her intuition play in figuring out what happened to him? Why is this information so important for Mrs. Curtain?
10. When Mma Potokwane tells Mr J.L.B. Matekoni that their pump makes a noise, 'as if it is in pain,' he replies that 'engines do feel pain.... They tell us of their pain by making a noise' [p. 77]. Later, he tells his apprentice, 'you cannot force metal.... If you force metal, it fights back' [p. 198]. What do these statements reveal about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's character? About his approach to being a mechanic? Are his assertions merely fanciful or do they reveal some deeper truth about the relationship between the human and the inanimate world?
11. One of Mma Makutsi's classmates at the Botswana Secretarial College tells her that 'men choose women for jobs on the basis of their looks. They choose the beautiful ones and give them jobs. To the others, they say: We are very sorry. All the jobs have gone' [p. 109]. In what ways does Tears of the Giraffe suggest ways around the stifling roles dictated by 'brute biology'? What examples does it provide of girls and women overcoming the restrictions placed on them and assuming traditionally male roles?
12. The housemother of the orphanage explains to Motholeli, 'We must look after other people.... Other people are our brothers and sisters. If they are unhappy, then we are unhappy. If they are hungry, then we are hungry' [p. 124]. In what ways does the novel demonstrate this ethic in action? How is this way of relating to other people different from the starker examples of American individualism?
13. In what ways are Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe well-suited to each other? How do they treat each other in the novel? How do they complement each other?
14. In what ways is Tears of the Giraffe as much about family relationships as it is about solving crimes? How does the novel provide emotionally satisfying resolutions to the parental pain that both Mrs. Curtain and Mma Ramotswe have suffered?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach, 2011
Little, Brown & Company
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316126694
Summary
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.
Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.
As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.
Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment—to oneself and to others. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1975-76
• Where—Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.F.A.,
University of Virginia.
• Currently—lives in Brookly, New York, New York.
Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and was educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder and coeditor of n+1. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Not only a wonderful baseball novel—it zooms immediately into the pantheon of classics, alongside The Natural by Bernard Malamud and The Southpaw by Mark Harris—but it's also a magical, melancholy story about friendship and the coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer.... Mr. Harbach has the rare abilities to write with earnest, deeply felt emotion without ever veering into sentimentality, and to create quirky, vulnerable and fully imagined characters who instantly take up residence in our hearts and minds. He also manages to re-work the well-worn, much-allegorized subject of baseball and make us see it afresh, taking tired tropes about the game (as a metaphor for life's dreams, disappointments and hopes of redemption) and interjecting them with new energy. In doing so he has written a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting.... You don't need to be a baseball fan to fall under this novel's spell, but The Art of Fielding possesses all the pleasures that an aficionado cherishes in a great, classic game: odd and strangely satisfying symmetries, unforeseen swerves of fortune, and intimations of the delicate balance between individual will and destiny that play out on the field.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Chad Harbach makes the case for baseball, thrillingly, in his slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel.... It seems a stretch for a baseball novel to hold truth and beauty and the entire human condition in its mitt, well The Art of Fielding isn't really a baseball novel at all, or not only. It's also a campus novel and a bromance (and for that matter a full-fledged gay romance), a comedy of manners and a tragicomedy of errors...Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Now get out there and play.
Gregory Cowles - New York Times Book Review
all in all the most delightful and serious first book of fiction that I have read in a while.... Baseball matters desperately in this novel. But so does physical affection and, whether felt by a freshman or a college president, the unquenchable desire to know another human being in a deep and important way before the end of things. In this regard, the novel takes its place among a few charmed works of art that deal with the national pastime in the context of human yearning - books by superb writers such as Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Mark Harris. It also stands among the best school novels we have, from This Side of Paradise to A Separate Peace.
Alan Cheuse - Chicago Tribune
Delightful debut... Erudite enough to reference Herman Melville, Homer and T.S. Eliot, yet sufficiently geeky to pay homage to the epic struggles of ill-fated ball-players such as Steve Blass, Steve Sax and Mackey Sasser.... [A] showcase for...Harbach's mad skills, his humor and above all, the humanity with which the author infuses each of his characters....The author's observations about baseball can be both pithy and witty... wonderfully insightful. And the writing throughout, as Walt Whitman once said of the game itself, is glorious...a natural talent, one who has the potential to become a Hall of Famer.
Adam Langer - San Francisco Chronicle
Dazzling debut.... The Art of Fielding might be the best book you'll read this year.... Harbach's debut novel has a succulent heft to it—a growing weight of love and devotion that is comprised of Harbach's deft and boundlessly emotive writing. The remarkable sincerity with which he develops characters renders their conflicts and complexities so authentic it's impossible not to care about them. The Art of Fielding is youthful, invigorating and fiercely intelligent writing.... [It] is not really a book about baseball. Westish College sports are a backdrop as life's more prevalent struggles--doubt, romance, grief and determination--collide and merge marvellously.... This is a book about love, family and dedication...A nearly flawless construction of dazzlingly clear sentences... The most enjoyable aspect of The Art of Fielding is the true-to-life humanity Harbach's characters are infused with. Their heartache, loss and yearning are palpable. The Art of Fielding brims with its author's extraordinary talents. It's going to be hard waiting to see what Harbach does next.
Alex Lemon - Dallas Morning News
His first time at bat, Harbach wins. Confident and deliberate, Art imitates baseball.... The Art of Fielding is an old-fashioned novel in the very best way—unhurried , engrossing, a universe unto itself.... It's that rare, big social novel with the quiet confidence not to overreach for grand statements on the times, and a debut that never feels like it's straining to impress. There's just quiet confidence in honest storytelling—Harbach is all Derek Jeter, not Alex Rodriguez.... Harbach's images are so lively and surprising, his characters so intoxicatingly engaging, that The Art of Fielding becomes something special and unique, a complete and satisfying fictional universe....Harbach, in his first time at bat, has made the near-impossible act of writing a very good American novel feel almost effortless.
David Daley - USA Today
Debut novel hits a grand slam... Resplendent... Ambitious and accomplished... Harbach's characters are well developed and eminently realistic. The rich portrayals of their psychological struggles and interactions add a warmth and dept to the already colorful narrative....Harbach's novel is mature, compelling, graced with both charm and humor, and shaped as much by his expressive prose as by its memorable and substantive characterizations. Harbach is a gifted storyteller and his debut novel may well herald a fresh, new talent in the realm of contemporary American fiction. The Art of Fielding, like baseball itself, is beautiful in its simplicity, yet made great by the effortless subtlety of its many nuanced intricacies.
Jeremy Barber - Sunday Oregonian
Recalling works as disparate as Chaim Potok's The Chosen, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Scott Lasser's Battle Creek, Harbach's big-hearted and defiantly old-fashioned debut demonstrates the rippling effects of a single baseball gone awry. When college shortstop phenom Henry Skrimshander accidentally beans teammate Owen Dunne with a misplaced throw, it starts a chain reaction on the campus of Westish College, "that little school in the crook of the baseball glove that is Wisconsin." Owen is solicitously visited in the hospital by school president Guert Affenlight, a widower, who falls in love with the seductive gay student, a "serious breech of professional conduct" that sends potentially devastating ripples through the school. Affenlight's daughter, Pella, after a failed marriage in San Francisco, returns to become part of a love triangle with Henry and Mike Schwartz, the team captain and Henry's unofficial mentor. And just when Henry's hopes of playing for the St. Louis Cardinals come within reach, he suffers a crisis of confidence, even as his team makes a rousing run at the championship. Through it all, Henry finds inspiration in the often philosophically tinged teachings found in The Art of Fielding ("Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does"), by a fictional retired shortstop. Harbach manages incisive characterizations of his five main players, even as his narrative, overlong and prone to affectation, tests the reader's patience.
Publishers Weekly
In this deft first novel, a baseball prodigy comes to Westish College, a small school in upper Wisconsin. Henry Skrimshander is recruited by Mike Schwartz, who plays at Westish and recognizes Henry as one of the greatest shortstops ever. Henry's roommate, the pot-smoking, gay, African American Owen Dunne, also joins the team. College president Guert Affenlight develops a passionate crush on Owen, with whom he improbably begins a clandestine relationship. Unfortunately, as Henry closes in on a fielding milestone, he loses his confidence and falls apart. Guert's long-lost daughter, who has returned to Westish after the collapse of her marriage and hooked up with Mike, tries to help Henry find his throwing arm again. Meanwhile, the ongoing affair between Owen and Guert becomes increasingly difficult to hide as the book climaxes at the Division III national championship. Verdict: Succeeding on many levels, this highly enjoyable and intelligent novel offers several coming-of-age tales set against the background of an exciting and convincing baseball drama. Harbach paints a humorous and resonant portrait of a small college community while effectively portraying the Wisconsin landscape and a lake that provides an almost mystical source of solace and renewal. —Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Does male friendship always involve competition? In what ways? Can men ever be just friends? Are their relationships more competitive than those between women?
2. After a long streak of errorless games, why does Henry lose his once-effortless throw? What has changed in Henry? Do you think this sort of crisis is unique to athletics? Could, say, a painter go through a similar crisis?
3. Harbach never writes from Owen’s point of view. In what ways did this affect your understanding of Owen’s character? Of his feelings toward Guert? Is their relationship one-sided, or perfectly reciprocal?
4. Mike devotes much of his time and energy to mentoring and helping Henry. Does he give Henry too much of his time and energy? Can someone give too much?
5. After hitting Owen and losing his accuracy, Henry immerses himself in grueling physical activity: running the stadium steps, racing Starblind, doing endless chin-ups, swimming in the lake. Why does he do this? Is his body to blame for his throwing problems? Discuss the relationship between the body and the mind in The Art of Fielding.
6. Are Pella and Henry in love? What brings them together? Why do they stay together?
7. Guert is decades older than Mike, Henry, Owen, and Pella, but in what ways is he similar to the students, despite his age?
8. “Monomania”—the obsessive pursuit of a single thing—is one of the major themes of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Is it also a major theme of The Art of Fielding? If so, for which characters, and in what ways?
9. The athletes talk about sacrificing their bodies to get better, and the "sacrifice bunt" is a baseball term that comes up frequently. Is Henry sacrificing himself when he stops eating? Why? Is his last at bat a sacrifice?
10. Are Mike, Henry, and Pella all striving for perfection? Is perfection possible? Is it worth striving for, even if it’s impossible? Why or why not? Do their desires evolve over the course of the novel? In what ways?
11. When Affenlight is confronted about his relationship with Owen, he thinks: "What kind of conversation would they be having if Owen were a girl? Bruce would be using the same legalese, the expression on his face would still be stern, but he’d be pouring himself a scotch. The gleam in his eye would say, Good for you, Guert. Still got it, eh?" Do you think this is true? Would you have seen Guert differently?
12. Why does Pella exhume her father’s body and bury it in the lake?
13. In Aparicio Rodriguez's The Art of Fielding, he writes: "There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being." He adds: "Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few." What do you think this means? How does it relate to Chad Harbach’s book?
14. It has been said that baseball is a metaphor for life. Do you agree? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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My Latest Grievance
Elinor Lipman, 2006
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618872350
Summary
My Latest Grievance introduces us to Frederica Hatch. Sixteen years old and accustomed to being the center of attention, Frederica has been raised in a dorm on the campus of Dewing, a women's college just outside Boston. It's 1978, and her parents are intensely PC (before the term was coined)—two bleeding hearts that beat as one. Aviva Ginsburg Hatch is a union grievance commitee chairperson and perennial professor of the year, and, to Frederica's frustration, she's the only mother around who doesn't own a jewelry box and makeup. Frederica's father, David Hatch, shares his wife's political passions and agrees with her about almost everything. Chafing under the care of the "most annoyingly evenhanded parental team in the history of civilization," Frederica is starting to feel that her life is stiflingly snug.
But then Frederica's path crosses that of the glamorous new dorm mother at Dewing, Laura Lee French, the antithesis of the Hatches. And with Laura Lee comes the best gossip in the history of the college—she is David Hatch's ex-wife. When Frederica learns the surprising news, she can't stop imagining the maternal road not taken, wondering if she was born into the wrong side of the divorce. Fearing scandal, the three Hatches and Laura Lee are forced to keep their history a secret, and havoc and hilarity ensue. The New York Times Book Review compared Lipman to "an inspired alchemist," and the magic continues with My Latest Grievance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 16, 1950
• Where—Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—A.B. Simmons College
• Awards—New England Books Award For Fiction
• Currently—lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York, New York
Elinor Lipman is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, known for her humor and societal observations. In his review of her 2019 novel, Good Riddance, Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Lipman "has long been one of our wittiest chroniclers of modern-day romance."
The author was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston where she studied journalism. While at Simon, Lipman began her writing career, working as a college intern with the Lowell Sun. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, she wrote press releases for WGBH, Boston's public radio station.
Writing
Lipman turned to fiction writing in 1979; her first short story, "Catering," was published in Yankee Magazine. In 1987 she published a volume of stories, Into Love and Out Again, and in 1990 she came out with her first novel, Then She Found Me. Her second novel, The Inn at Lake Devine, appeared in 1998, earning Lipman the 2001 New England Book Award three years later.
Lipman's first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a 2008 feature film—directed by and starring Helen Hunt, along with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick.
In addition to her fiction, Lipman released a 2012 book of rhyming political tweets, Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. Two other books—a 10th novel, The View from Penthouse B, and a collection of essays, I Can't Complain: (all too) Personal Essays—were both published in 2013. The latter deals in part with the death of her husband at age 60. A knitting devotee, Lipman's poem, "I Bought This Pattern Book Last Spring," was included in the 2013 anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting.
Lipman was the Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College from 2011-12, and she continues to write the column, "I Might Complain," for Parade.com. Smith spends her time between North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Works
1988 - Into Love and Out Again: Stories
1990 - Then She Found Me
1992 - The Way Men Act
1995 - Isabel's Bed
1998 - The Inn at Lake Devine
1999 - The Ladies' Man
2001 - The Dearly Departed
2003 - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
2006 - My Latest Grievance
2009 - The Family Man
2012 - Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus
2013 - I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays
2013 - The View From Penthouse B
2017 - On Turpentine Lane
2019 - Good Riddance
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/27/2019.)
Book Reviews
A lovable, psychologically intricate novel.... As Lipman's bittersweet farce unfolds, she uncovers a family romance of an unusual kind, delving into the stories parents tell each other about child-rearing—and the stories children tell themselves about parenting. Digging still deeper, her spade hits something hard. What is the root that links the parents? How solid is the bond joining one parent to another, and both parents to their daughter? Lovable, psychologically intricate...
Janet Maslin - New York Times
May be Lipman's best work so far.... Every page offers laugh-out-loud dialogue.... So entertaining you're sorry to see it end.
Seattle Times
Frederica Hatch—the articulate, curious, and naive narrator of Lipman's eighth novel—proves the perfect vehicle for this satiric yet compassionate family portrait. It's 1976, and psych professors David and Aviva Hatch are honest with their daughter to the point of anatomically correcting Frederica's Barbie dolls. In all their years as a dorm family at a small women's college outside Boston, though, no one mentioned Laura Lee French, David's first wife (and distant cousin). Frederica, now 15 and ready for rebellion, delights in Laura's arrival on campus as a new dorm mother; David and Aviva look on nervously as the two become fast friends. In contrast with Frederica's right-thinking, '60s radical parents, Laura Lee becomes the delicious embodiment of all the moral and psychological complexities of a flawed world beyond campus. Meanwhile, campus itself looks very little like an ivory tower as major scandal brews amid petty gossip. As in previous novels, Lipman addresses sensitive issues (anti-Semitism, adultery, dementia) with delicacy and acerbity. She also nails the shifts and moods of an angry teenager, a grandmother in denial, a philanderer in hiding and a campus in shock. By the end, a smart young girl learns compassion for a world that can be grotesquely, hilariously, disturbingly unfair.
Publishers Weekly
In the late 1970s, Frederica Hatch is the enchantingly outspoken daughter of brilliant college professors at a minor all-girls college in Massachusetts. Her temperate, mildly eccentric, and lovely parents, also union activists for the faculty of Dewing College, serve as houseparents at one of the dorms, where Frederica has lived her whole life. Wise beyond her years, Frederica takes it in stride when she discovers that her father was married once before and that Laura Lee French, the smashingly solipsistic first wife of Dr. David Hatch, has just been hired as housemother of one of the other dorms. Within hours of her arrival, French seduces the new president of Dewing in a flagrant affair that provides rich fuel for Frederica's hilariously dry wit and searing analysis of adult foibles. Lipman (The Pursuit of Alice Thrift) creates that rare blend of no-nonsense compassion and believable, offbeat innocence that is completely irresistible. Expect demand for this novel and renewed interest in Lipman's previous seven. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
All hell breaks loose when a new dorm mother arrives at a second-rate New England girl's college in Lipman's eighth romantic comedy (The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, 2003, etc). In 1977, 16-year-old narrator Frederica Hatch lives on the campus of Dewing College with her mother and father, David and Aviva, who serve as houseparents as well as professors of psychology and sociology. Frederica's only friend on campus, sort of, is Marietta Woodbury, daughter of Dewing's new president; the girls have formed an uneasy relationship encouraged by Mrs. Woodbury, who gives Frederica rides to the public high school they both attend. David and Aviva are stereotypical academics: dowdy, painstakingly rational, and committed to liberal causes, particularly those related to employee-management relations on campus. So their daughter is shocked to discover that David was previously married to his distant cousin, Laura Lee French, whom he left for Aviva, his soulmate. Thanks to Frederica's conveniently (if unconvincingly) interfering grandmother, Laura Lee takes a job at Dewing as a dorm mother. Frederica, already chafing at being raised as a kind of college mascot, is initially enchanted by the new arrival's flamboyant style, but Laura Lee is clearly a troublemaker, if not a sociopath. She enjoys making David and especially Aviva uncomfortable. After Frederica introduces her to the college president (in the cafeteria, where the Hatches eat all their meals), Laura Lee and Dr. Woodbury carry on a brazenly open affair, which so humiliates his wife that she attempts suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning. She survives, but with brain damage—a decidedly unfunny situation for a supposedly comic novel. Lipman ties up the rest of the plot in typical sprightly fashion: David becomes college president; Laura Lee has a baby who grows up to be a delight; Frederica returns to work at Dewing as an adult. It's as though Mrs. Woodbury's ruined life is just a minor contrivance. Not one of this popular author's best.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book is narrated by the adult Frederica Hatch as she looks back at a tumultuous teenage year. Does the author make the combined sensibility—age sixteen viewed through the eyes of the narrator's present self—work?
2. Why do you think the author made Dewing a lackluster institution rather than a top-notch college?
3. Frederica asks on page 1, "Were they types, my parents-to-be? From a distance and for a long time, it appeared to be so." Does this serve as a warning? A prediction? A wink from the author? An apology?
4. Laura Lee French's ex-husband is a distant cousin. Would the story have unfolded in the same way if she had not been a relative?
5. Marietta Woodbury and her mother are rude to Laura Lee upon first speaking to her on campus. Did this meeting resonate with you and signal trouble ahead?
6. The affair between Laura Lee and President Woodbury is anything but discreet. Did their public carrying on amuse or offend you?
7. The professors Hatch are passionately committed to righting wrongs and to each other. In what ways do they let their daughter down?
8. What turning point triggers Frederica's more sympathetic and respectful view of her parents?
9. One could say that the Blizzard of '78 is a character in My Latest Grievance. Did the author succeed in conveying the power of that historic storm and effectively put you there?
10. Did you find any character less than fully developed? What else did you want to know about him or her?
11. Laura Lee French, narcissist extraordinaire: is it possible to feel sympathy for this character?
12. Chapter 33, "Emeriti," the epilogue, brings the reader to the present. How well does the jump forward in time wrap up the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Sacrifice of Tamar
Naomi Ragen, 1995 (U.S. printing, 2010)
St. Martin's Press
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312570224
Summary
From the author of Jephte's Daughter and Sotah comes The Sacrifice of Tamar, a powerful novel that examines with unflinching honesty the dark heart of racism and the surprising capacity of the human spirit to soar above its sordid consequences.
Tamar Finegold is twenty-one years old, the happy, beautiful bride of a rising young Rabbi in one of Brooklyn's insulated, ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Having married the man of her dreams and taken her place as a wife—and hopefully soon-to-be mother—in her community, Tamar feels as though the world is at her feet.
But her secure, predictable existence is brought to an abrupt end when she is raped by an intruder. Fearing the unbearable stigma and threat to her marriage that could result from telling the truth, Tamar makes a fateful decision that changes her life forever.
Her feeling that she did the only thing she could under the circumstances explodes when years later a shocking, undreamed of turn of events finally forces her to confront her past, once and for all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1949
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Brooklyn College; M.A., Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
• Currently—lives in Jerusalme, Israel
Naomi Ragen is the author of seven novels, including several international bestsellers, and her weekly email columns on life in the Middle East are read and distributed by thousands of subscribers worldwide. An American, she has lived in Jerusalem for the past thirty-nine years and was recently voted one of the three most popular authors in Israel. (From the publisher.)
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Ragen’s first three novels, which described the lives of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel and the United States, dealt with themes that had not previously been addressed in that society's literature: wife-abuse (Jephte’s Daughter: 1989), adultery (Sotah: 1992) and rape (The Sacrifice of Tamar: 1995). Reaction to these novels in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities was mixed. Some hailed her as a pioneer who for the first time exposed and opened to public discussion problems which the communities had preferred to pretend did not exist, while others criticized her for “hanging out the dirty laundry” for everyone to see, thus embarrassing the rabbis who were believed by many to be effectively dealing with these problems “behind the scenes” and also putting “ammunition in the hands of the anti-Semites.”
Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) told the story of a Sephardic family brought back from the abyss of assimilation by the spirit of their ancestor Gracia Mendes (a true historical figure), a 16th century Portuguese crypto-Jew who risked her life and her considerable fortune to practice her religion in secret.
Chains Around the Grass (2002) is a semi-autobiographical novel of the author’s childhood which dealt with the failure of the American dream for her parents.
In The Covenant (2004) Ragen dealt with the contemporary theme of an ordinary family sucked into the horror of Islamic terrorism.
The Saturday Wife (2007), the story of a rabbi's wayward wife, is loosely based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and is a satire of modern Jewish Orthodoxy.
Ragen is also known as a playwright. Her 2001 drama, Women’s Minyan, tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox woman who, upon fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband, finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident. Women’s Minyan ran for six years in Israel's National Theatre and has been staged in the United States, Canada and Argentina. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Returning to familiar terrain in her third novel (after Jephte's Daughter and Sotah), Ragen again examines the lives of ultra-orthodox Jews and the severe consequences that can befall even the most faithful when they take a serious, albeit human misstep. Most of the story takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood resembling Borough Park, although, as in her previous books, dramatic fanfare occurs in Israel, too. Pious Tamar both adores and is in awe of her warm and brilliant husband, Josh. She is looking forward to an intimate evening after her ritual visit to the mikvah (here Ragen offers a tediously detailed description about Jewish conjugal laws), but that evening she is raped by a black man. She does not tell her husband about the attack, and when she discovers she is pregnant, she does not abort the fetus, because she is not sure whether the rapist or Josh is the father. In trying to make the reader understand why Tamar would choose silence and sustain the pregnancy, Ragen flashes back to Tamar's youth, particularly her relationship with two friends who play pivotal roles throughout her life: Hadassah, the beautiful, rebellious daughter of the neighborhood's primary religious leader, and Jenny, who comes from a secular background but easily adapts to Orthodox observance. The interplay between the girls as they take tentative steps into the secular world of the late 1960s provides some charming scenes, and the final chapters prove moving and dramatic when later consequences of Tamar's deceptive silence shatter her family's life. While Ragen is an able storyteller and handles dialogue deftly, her plots are becoming hackneyed. It's an insular and provincial world that she has chosen to portray, and here she adds little that is new or eye-opening to the reader.
Publishers Weekly
Ragen (Jepthe's Daughter) continues to describe life in the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities of the United States and Israel. After being raped, Tamar, the young wife of a brilliant rabbi, chooses to conceal the crime. Soon, she discovers that she is pregnant and wrestles with a moral decision she is ill equipped to make. "What's not nice we don't show" is the modus operandi of Tamar's world, a creed to which she adheres until 20 years later when she must step forward or see innocent lives destroyed. The author paints a picture of a rigid, unyielding people for whom true tolerance and understanding is a luxury only the most saintly can afford, and she juxtaposes the more worldly modern orthodox as a positive alternative. Although Tamar is not a truly lovable heroine, and her transformation is difficult to accept, the author's fluid writing and fascinating descriptions of an exotic community will make this an attractive title for public libraries. —Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal
The rape of a young, ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman and her ultimate redemption are at the very heart of Ragen's latest novel....The author handles this complex and moving story with a deft touch as Tamar's outwardly perfect life must finally be reconciled with her long-kept secret. —Alice Joyce
Booklist
Classic urban-Jewish myth replaces Bible stories in this latest chaste offering from Ragen (Sotah, 1992). Ultra-Orthodox, 21-year-old Tamar Finegold is raped by a black man while babysitting her nephew. Unwilling to become an object of pity and gossip in her tightly knit Brooklyn community, Tamar resolves to hide the fact from her family, friends, and neighbors. She even keeps the incident a secret from her pious husband, Josh, afraid that he will divorce her if Jewish law commands him to. When Tamar discovers that she is pregnant, however, she must reevaluate. The child could be the rapist's, but it might also be Josh's, with whom she slept that very same night. After soul-searching and sleeplessness, Tamar finally confides in her two best friends from childhood: Hadassah Mandlebright, the fallen only daughter of the revered Kovnitzer Rebbe, and born-again Jew Jenny Douglas. The three women meet at Hadassah's apartment in Manhattan and Tamar leaves the next morning determined to go through with her pregnancy. Eight months later she gives birth to a white child, Aaron. Tamar believes that the episode is finished; for the next 20 years she lives a spotless—if troubled—life, giving birth to two more children, becoming a respected matron in the community. But when Aaron's wife is punished for Tamar's sins of omission, Tamar must again make a decision, this time one her conscience can live with. Although Ragen exposes herself to charges of racism here, the black rapist is more important as a plot device than a representative of his race. More central is Ragen's typically harsh judgment of the insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, although she does create some saintly religious characters. As in Sotah, Ragen's moral is that fulfillment can be found outside the rigid boundaries of community but within the teachings of the commandments. Cliche-ridden and predictable, but also strangely affecting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The social code of the ultra Orthodox world serves not only as the background for The Sacrifice of Tamar, but as one of its most controversial elements. How would you define that code, and in what way is it a catalyst for the behavior of the characters?
2. In discussing this book, the author said portraying Tamar sympathetically was extremely challenging. In what way does Tamar’s behavior evoke antagonism in the reader? What events and information does the author supply that help evince sympathy for her decision and her plight?
3. Describe Josh. What do you think his reaction would have been had Tamar told him the truth immediately?
4. Tamar hides the truth. How would the community have reacted had Tamar let the truth about the rape be known? Her family? Was Tamar’s sacrifice in vain?
5. Tamar’s cousin Zissel appears only briefly in the story. Why is Zissel important to the story?
6. At the beginning of the book, Tamar has the simplistic belief that “God treated you the way you treated others.” What happens to this belief by the end of the book? Is it still intact? Has it changed? In what ways?
7. What, exactly, is the sacrifice Tamar makes? Or is it Tamar herself who is sacrificed? What does she gain from her behavior, and what does she lose?
8. The Sacrifice of Tamar has an important racial element. Is Tamar a racist? How does the book portray racism?
9. In Tamar, Jenny, and Hadassah, the book presents three models of religious adherence. What are they? How would you describe the positive and negative role religion plays in each of their lives?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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White Teeth
Zadie Smith, 2000
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375703867
Summary
Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation.
A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”).
Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.
Set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 27, 1975
• Where—Hampstead, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, and London, England
Early Life
Zadie Smith was born as Sadie Smith in the northwest London borough of Brent—a largely working-class area—to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne Bailey, and a British father, Harvey Smith. Her mother had grown up in Jamaica and emigrated to Britain in 1969. Zadie has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers, one of whom is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown and the other is rapper Luc Skyz. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager.
As a child Smith was fond of tap dancing and as a teenager considered a musical theater career. When she was 14, she changed her name to "Zadie."
Education
Smith attended Cambridge University where she earned money as a jazz singer and, at first, wanted to become a journalist. Despite those earlier ambitions, literature emerged as her principal interest. While an undergrad, she published a number of short stories in a collection of new student writing called The Mays Anthology. These attracted the attention of a publisher, who offered her a contract for her first novel. Smith decided to contact a literary agent and was taken on by A.P. Watt.
Career
White Teeth was introduced to the publishing world in 1997—long before completion. The partial manuscript fueled an auction among different houses for the publishing rights, but it wasn't until her final year at Cambridge that she finished the novel. When published in 2000, White Teeth became an immediate bestseller, praised internationally and pocketing a number of awards. In 2002, Channel 4 adapted the novel for television.
In interviews Smith reported that the hype surrounding her first novel had caused her to suffer a short spell of writer's block. Nevertheless, her second novel, The Autograph Man, came out in 2002. It, too, achieved commercial success although the critical response was not as positive as it had been to White Teeth.
Following publication of The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States as a 2002–2003 a Fellow at Harvard University. While there, she started work on a book of essays, some portions of which are included in a later essay collection titled Changing My Mind, published in 2009.
Her third novel, On Beauty came out in 2005. Set largely in and around Greater Boston, it attracted acclaim and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It won the 2006 Orange Prize.
Following a brief spell teaching fiction at Columbia University, Smith joined New York University as a tenured professor of fiction in 2010. That same year, The UK's Guardian newspaper asked Smith for her "10 rules for writing fiction." Among them, she offered up this:
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand—but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
During 2011, Smith served as the New Books editor at Harper's magazine, and in 2012, she published NW, her fourth novel, this one set in the Kilburn area of north-west London (the title refers to the area's postal code, NW6). NW was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Swing Time, Smith's fifth novel, was released in 2016, again to solid acclaim. The novel, a coming-of-age story, follows the fate of two girls of color who became fast friends through their mutual love of dance.
Personal Life
Smith met Nick Laird at Cambridge University, and the couple married in 2004. They have two children, Kathrine and Harvey, and are based between New York City and Queen's Park, London.
Awards and recognition
♦ White Teeth (2000): Whitbread First Novel Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award.
♦ The Autograph Man (2002): Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize
♦ On Beauty (2005): Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award, Orange Prize
♦ NW (2012): shortlisted for Ondaatje Prize and Women's Prize for Fiction
♦ General: Granta′s Best of Young British Novelists, 2003, 2013; Welt-Literaturpreis, 2016.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/31/2016.)
Book Reviews
It's a novel that announces the debut of a preternaturally gifted new writer — a writer who at the age of 24 demonstrates both an instinctive storytelling talent and a fully fashioned voice that's street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time. This, White Teeth announces, is someone who can do comedy, drama and satire, and do them all with exceptional confidence and brio...In what will surely rank as one of her generation's most precocious debuts, Ms. Smith announces herself as a writer of remarkable powers, a writer whose talents prove commensurate with her ambitions.
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
Smith has much to say about threats to ethnic identity in the modern world, but her book's real strength lies in the way she says it. Her characters drawn with a commanding sense of detail, her writing style wonderfully sly and often downright funny, and her plot both rollicking and heartfelt, Smith makes a smashing debut on the literary scene. White Teeth just may be the first great novel of the new century.
David Wiegand - San Francisco Chronicle
This is a strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language, and for the rich tragicomedy of life.... [Smith's] characters always ring true; it is her ebullient, simple prose and her generous understanding of human nature that make Zadie Smith's novel outstanding. It is not only great fun to read, but full of hope.
Sunday Telegraph
The scrambled, heterogeneous sprawl of mixed-race and immigrant family life in gritty London nearly overflows the bounds of this stunning, polymathic debut novel by 23-year-old British writer Smith. Traversing a broad swath of cultural territory with a perfect ear for the nuances of identity and social class, Smith harnesses provocative themes of science, technology, history and religion to her narrative. Hapless Archibald Jones fights alongside Bengali Muslim Samad Iqbal in the English army during WWII, and the two develop an unlikely bond that intensifies when Samad relocates to Archie's native London. Smith traces the trajectory of their friendship through marriage, parenthood and the shared disappointments of poverty and deflated dreams, widening the scope of her novel to include a cast of vibrant characters: Archie's beautiful Jamaican bride, Clara; Archie and Clara's introspective daughter, Irie; Samad's embittered wife, Alsana; and Alsana and Samad's twin sons, Millat and Magid. Torn between the pressures of his new country and the old religious traditions of his homeland, Samad sends Magid back to Bangladesh while keeping Millat in England. But Millat falls into delinquency and then religious extremism, as earnest Magid becomes an Anglophile with an interest in genetic engineering, a science that Samad and Millat repudiate. Smith contrasts Samad's faith in providence with Magid's desire to seize control of the future, involving all of her characters in a debate concerning past and present, determinism and accident. The tooth—half root, half protrusion—makes a perfect trope for the two families at the center of the narrative. A remarkable examination of the immigrant's experience in a postcolonial world, Smith's novel recalls the hyper-contemporary yet history-infused work of Rushdie, sharp-edged, fluorescent and many-faceted.
Publishers Weekly
Smith has written an epic tale of two interconnected families. It begins with the suicide attempt of hapless, coin-flipping Archibald Jones on New Year's Day, 1975, and ends, after a 100-year ramble back and forth through time, on New Year's Eve, 1992, with his accidental (or preordained?) release of a poor mutant mouse programmed to do away with the randomness of creation. Smith evokes images of teeth throughout the novel. Do they symbolize some characteristic shared by all of humanity in this novel about ethnicity, class, belonging, homeland, family, adolescence, identity, blindness, and ignorance? Or are they meant to distract the reader from the all-encompassing theme of fate? Smith's characters are tossed about by decisions made deliberately, rashly, or by the flip of a coin. As Smith pieces together this story with bits of fabric from different times and places, the reader must contemplate whether our choices determine our future or whether fate leads us to an inevitable destiny. This fine first novel from Smith is most highly recommended for all libraries. —Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. White Teeth generated enormous interest within the publishing world, in part because it is an unusually assured first novel, produced by a writer who is still very young. What aspects of White Teeth—in terms of either style or content—strike you as most unusual in a debut novel? How is White Teeth different from other first novels you have read?
2. A few days before Archie tries to kill himself because his first wife has left him, Samad tries to console him: "You have picked up the wrong life in the cloakroom and you must return it...there are second chances; oh yes, there are second chances in life" [p. 11]. Does Archie's marriage to Clara constitute a second chance that improves greatly upon the life he had before he met her? Why does the chapter title call the marriage "peculiar" [p. 3]?
3. Why does Archie like to flip a coin in moments of indecision? What does it say about him as a person? How does the opening epigraph, from E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread [p. 1], relate to Archie and his approach to life? Does chance play a more powerful role than will or desire in determining events for other characters in the novel too?
4. Archie "was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble: Beach. Raindrop: Ocean. Needle: Haystack" [p. 10]. Does the fact that Archie is so humble, so lacking in ambition or egotism, make him a more comical character than the serious and frustrated Samad? Is Samad's character ultimately funny as well?
5. Samad imagines a sign that he would like to wear at his restaurantjob, a sign that proclaims "I am not a waiter. I have been a student, a scientist, a soldier..." [p. 49]. Why, in all the years that pass during the novel, does Samad not pursue another job? Is it surprising that Samad doesn't seek to change his life in more active ways? Does Islam play a part in this issue?
6. Why is what happened to Samad and Archie during the war more meaningful to them than anything that will happen in their later lives? Why does Samad expect Archie to kill Dr. Sick for him? What exactly has happened in this village—what has the doctor been doing there? Why does Samad feel that the doctor must die? Would it have been out of character for Archie to execute this man?
7. The narrator notes that "it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears—dissolution, disappearance" [p. 272]. Magid and Millat both shirk their Asian roots, though in different ways. Magid begins to call himself Mark Smith while he is still a schoolboy, while Millat models himself on Robert De Niro's character Travis Bickle in the film Taxi Driver. Irie, on the other hand, is drawn to what she imagines is the "Englishness" of the Chalfens. Is the gradual loss—or active rejection—of one's family heritage an unavoidable consequence of life in a culturally mixed environment?
8. Samad and his wife, Alsana, had a traditional arranged marriage in Bangladesh. Is love irrelevant in a relationship such as theirs? Does the novel indicate that love is a simpler issue for those of the younger generation, who are sexually and emotionally more free to pursue their desires?
9. What is the effect of juxtaposing Alsana with Neena, her "Niece-of-Shame, " who is an outspoken feminist and lesbian? Why is Neena one of the novel's most pragmatic—and therefore contented—characters? Why does Alsana ask Neena to act as an intermediary with the Chalfens for Clara and herself?
10. What opportunities for self-expression and community does the sparsely attended but lively pub run by Abdul Mickey offer? Does Smith use the pub as a sort of stage for the everyday comedy and the various ironies of ethnic identity and assimilation in North London? What is funny about the timeline on page 204?
11. Fed up with her own family, Irie goes to stay with her grandmother Hortense, and begins to piece together the details of her ancestry. Does what she learns about her family's history make a difference in her sense of identity or in her ideas about the direction her life should take?
12. What effect does the introduction of the educated, middle-class Chalfen family have on the novel? Why is it significant that Marcus Chalfen comes from a Jewish background? Why are the Chalfens so patronizing toward the Iqbals and the Joneses? Considering Joyce's relationship to Irie and Millat, what is wrong with the liberal sentiments that the Chalfens represent?
13. Why does Smith include an episode in which Millat travels to Bradford with other members of KEVIN to burn copies of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses? Does the fact that none of the boys have actually read the book make their ideological zeal more comical, or more frightening?
14. Why does Smith set up the circumstances of Irie's pregnancy so that it will be impossible for her to know which of the twins is the child's father? How does what we learn about Irie and her daughter on the novel's final page relate to the genealogical chart that appears on page 281?
15. Various characters, from various families in the novel, collide in the novel's climactic scenes leading up to the FutureMouse convention. What are the motivations and beliefs that have put these characters in conflict? Do the issues of religion, science, and animal rights relate to the novel's interest in personal fate and family history?
16. In an interview, Smith says of White Teeth, "I wasn't trying to write about race.... Race is obviously a part of the book, but I didn't sit down to write a book about race. The "Rabbit" books by Updike.... I could say that [these are] books about race. [Those are] book[s] about white people. [They are] exactly book[s] about race as mine is. It doesn't frustrate me. I just think that it is a bizarre attitude. So is [it that] a book that doesn't have exclusively white people in the main theme must be one about race? I don't understand that."* What are some of the indications in White Teeth that Smith is not as interested in race as she is the juxtaposition and interaction of people from different ethnic groups living their daily lives?
17. Do the children of Archie and Samad experience their ethnic or racial identities in different ways than their parents do? If so, why? Is Smith suggesting that there is a rising trend in intermarriage between members of different races and ethnicities, so that these issues become of less interest, or meaning, as time passes? Is Alsana right when she says, "you go back and back and back and it's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe" [p. 196]?
18. With White Teeth, Zadie Smith shows herself to be a brilliant mimic of the sounds of urban speech. In which parts of the novel does she display this skill to the greatest effect? How does her prose style work to convey the busy, noisy soundscape of a multicultural metropolis?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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