Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #3)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2001
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031368
Summary
The quick-witted, good-natured detective Mma "Precious" Ramotswe shines in this irresistible bestseller. Between intriguing new cases and troubling personal developments, Precious' hands are full.
The four Miss Beauty and Integrity pageant finalists may have questionable moral fiber, and the brother of an important government worker has allegedly been poisoned. On top of all that, Precious' reliable fiance might be hiding something. (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
In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Ramotswe tangles with a feral child, the finalists in a beauty pageant and a suspicious cook.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. The values of courtesy, respect, and politeness—proper forms of greeting and speech, in particular—are stressed throughout the Precious Ramotswe novels. Which characters in Morality for Beautiful Girls adhere to these traditional courtesies? Which characters violate them? What are the moral implications of upholding or ignoring such traditions?
2. How surprising is it that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni suffers from depression in Morality for Beautiful Girls? What might be the causes of that depression? What seems to bring him out of it?
3. Clovis Anderson, author of The Principles of Private Detection, writes that there is 'very little drama' in being a detective and that 'those who are looking for romance should lay down this manual...and do something else' [p. 59]. Most detective novels do, however, rely on adventure and 'drama' to sustain their readers' interest. What makes the Precious Ramotswe novels so engaging even in the absence of such drama?
4. In considering a friend who treated her maid badly, Mma Ramotswe thinks that 'such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding...was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain insuch circumstances would be like hurting oneself' [p. 77]. Which characters in the novel demonstrate this ability to empathize with others? Which characters fail to do so? Why, ultimately, is this kind of compassion so important?
5. Clovis Anderson also warns against making 'prior assumptions' and deciding 'in advance what's what and who's who' [p. 125]. In what instance does Mma Ramotswe make this mistake? Where else in the novel do assumptions turn out to be false? In what ways are being a reader and being a detective similar, in terms of this matter of making assumptions?
6. How is Mma Makutsi able to transform Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's lazy, irresponsible apprentices into hard-working mechanics? What qualities of character does she display in her management of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors? Why do these boys respond to her so well?
7. Early in the novel, Mma Makutsi relates an article she has read about the anthropologist, Richard Leaky, which shows that the human species originated in East Africa. Mma Ramotswe asks, 'so we are all brothers and sisters, in a sense?' To which Mma Makutsi replies, 'We are.... We are all the same people. Eskimos, Russians, Nigerians. They are the same as us. Same blood. Same DNA' [p. 12]. What are the implications, for the moral questions that the novel raises, of this statement? What does it suggest about distinctions based on race?
8. In trying to find a morally suitable girl to win the beauty contest, Mma Makutsi believes, 'the difficulty was that good girls were unlikely to enter a beauty competition in the first place. It was, in general, not the sort of thing that good girls thought of doing' [p. 204]. What does this passage suggest about the relationship between beauty and morality, or between appearance and essence? Is Mma Makutsi right about all this?
9. The later chapters of Morality for Beautiful Girls alternate between Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi and their respective investigations. What does this parallel narrative structure add to the novel?
10. What enables Mma Ramotswe to discover what is really happening with the Government Man's brother and his farm? In what ways do her intelligence, intuition, experience, and keen observation serve her in arriving at the truth of the situation?
11. The plot of Morality for Beautiful Girls revolves not around the unraveling of a crime, or the intent to commit a crime, but around discovering the absence of such intent. In most detective novels, this outcome would be a disappointment, at the very least. Why is it a satisfying and appropriate ending for this story?
12. One reviewer observed that 'for all their apparent simplicity, the Precious Ramotswe books are highly sophisticated' [The Spectator]. In what ways do these books appear simple? What accounts for their underlying sophistication? What do they teach us about ourselves?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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White Heat
M.J. McGrath, 2011
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670022489
Summary
Half Inuit and half outsider, Edie Kiglatuk is the best guide in her corner of the Arctic. But as a woman, she gets only grudging respect from the elders who ruled her isolated community on Ellesmere Island.
When a man is shot and killed while out on an "authentic" Arctic adventure under her watch, the murder attracts the attention of police sergeant Derek Palliser. As Edie sets out to discover what those tourists were really after, she is shocked by the suicide of someone very close to her. Though these events are seemingly unrelated, Edie's Inuit hunter sensibility tells her otherwise. With or without Derek's help, she is determined to find the key to this connection-a search that takes her beyond her small village, and into the far reaches of the tundra.
White Heat is a stunning debut novel set in an utterly foreign culture amid an unforgiving landscape of ice and rock, of spirit ancestors and never-rotting bones. A suspense-filled adventure story that will captivate fans of Henning Mankell's bestselling mysteries, this book marks the start of an exciting new series. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Romford, Essex, UK
• Education—University of Oxford
• Currently—lives in London and on the Kentish coast
In her words
I was born in Romford, Essex, the third of four children. My parents, Peter and Margaret, had moved out of East London some time before, looking for a quieter, more spacious life. They thought of themselves as upwardly mobile, which they were. We moved a lot during my childhood, first to Basildon in Essex, then to a village in Germany, from there Kent, then north to Lancashire, south again to Buckinghamshire and so on. I tried pretty much every kind of school, from German kindergarten through catholic convent to bog standard state grammar.
After graduating high school with a mixture of arts and science A-levels, I won a place at Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics, imagining this combination would give me a grounding in ‘real life.’ Ha! I was soon writing essays on whether I could prove I wasn’t a bat and what might happen to the price of tennis rackets if tennis ball production was moved to Mars.
After graduation, I worked in book publishing, turning to writing at first part-time then full time in my late twenties. Looking back, I wish I’d had the guts to do that when I first came out of university. I always knew I wanted to write but didn’t think that Essex girls who knew how to prove they weren’t bats, and not much else, really stood a chance.
Although I am now a full time writer, I have enjoyed teaching creative writing at Roehampton University in London, at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the USA and at The Arvon Foundation. After spells living in Las Vegas, Nevada and Nicaragua, I am for the time being settled in London and on the Kent coast.
I have had the extraordinary privilege to be able to travel widely: to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic, to Alaska, Iceland, Madagascar, Mali, Namibia, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malaysia, Russia, China, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and many other places besides. Place occupies a large part in my heart and in my work.
Currently, I am writing fiction, nonfiction and journalism. I have also written and presented for TV and radio. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
British journalist McGrath (The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal) makes her fiction debut with a solid thriller, the first in a series featuring Edie Kiglatuk, a half Inuit/half white, Arctic guide. A recovering alcoholic, Edie makes her living leading white (or qalunaat) tourists on hunting expeditions near her tiny outpost town of Autisaq on Canada's Ellesmere Island. When Felix Wagner is fatally shot during such a hunting trip, the local council of elders hurries to declare the death an accident, despite Edie's claim that she saw strange footprints near the body. After Felix's assistant, Andy Taylor, disappears during a subsequent trip while under the supervision of Edie's beloved ex-stepson, Joe Inukpuk, she suspects there's more going on than the routine perils of life in the Arctic. A picture soon emerges that includes a fight for precious natural resources and secrets that stretch back generations. McGrath captures the frigid landscape beautifully, and her heroine personifies the tension between the Inuit and qalunaat ways of life.
Publishers Weekly
Set on the islands of the High Arctic, McGrath's first novel features Edie Kiglatuk, a half-Inuit teacher and guide. She knows Craig Island like the back of her hand and is the first choice for qalunaat (southerners) who want to hunt or fish on the island. However, things go wrong for Edie when one of her charges is killed, supposedly by a ricochet from his own gun. This death is followed by another accident on Craig and the apparent suicide of Edie's stepson. Unable to accept these accidents, Edie decides to look into the deaths, and her investigations take her from Ellesmere Island to Greenland and Etah, the home of her ancestor, the famous guide Welatok. Verdict: Award-winning British journalist McGrath (The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic) shares a wealth of knowledge about life in the High Arctic that is central to her story. Well written and researched, her excellent adventure murder-mystery will hold readers' attention until the last page. —Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. First chapters of novels tend to play a key role in establishing the personality of the main character. How well do we know Edie Kiglatuk by the end of chapter one of White Heat? What character traits does McGrath highlight to create a bond between Edie and the reader?
2. Both Edie and Derek Palliser are of mixed race. How does the multiethnic background of each character influence his or her personality and perceptions?
3. Other characters in the novel frequently underestimate Edie because of her race and gender. How does she learn to use their prejudices to her advantage?
4. Some readers of White Heat have observed that the greatest character in the novel may be the Arctic itself. If one treats the Arctic as a character, then what is its personality? How does McGrath develop this personality over the course of the novel?
5. Within the world of White Heat, Edie Kiglatuk engages in many typically male activities. Nevertheless, do gender roles still exert an influence in the novel? Are there identifiable ways in which male and female behavior differs, even if the line between male and female tasks has been largely effaced?
6. How does the ethical code of the Inuit differ from the professed morality of "southerners"? Which moral system would you prefer to live under, and why?
7. Sergeant Palliser often seems more preoccupied with the social habits of lemmings than with enforcing the law. What does this say about the way southern laws are perceived in the Arctic?
8. Edie, a recovering alcoholic, resumes drinking and then stops again during the novel. How does McGrath deal with the problem of alcoholism, both as it relates to Edie and to the Inuit as a whole? Are you satisfied with her depiction of substance abuse in the novel?
9. Edie regards much of the prescribed "southern" curriculum—even the teaching of English spelling—as irrelevant, and she quietly introduces her own reforms. How should a dominant culture educate minority peoples? Should the focus fall on affirming traditional native values or preparing the minority to participate in the larger society and economy? What are the benefits and costs of each philosophy?
10. What attitudes are expressed in the novel toward Christian religious belief? What commentary is offered as to Inuit spirituality? What do you think of McGrath's approach to issues of religion?
11. Early reviews of White Heat have raved about the originality of McGrath's protagonist, Edie Kiglatuk. Apart from the obvious facts of her gender and ethnicity, what are the traits or behaviors that make Edie a somewhat unexpected, original character?
12. McGrath observes through Edie that "Inuit lives were like… Arctic rainbows, they ran not in lines but in circles" (p. 327). What does McGrath mean by this, and is her point borne out by the text of White Heat?
13. Speaking of the Inuit people, Edie tells Derek Palliser, "We can't escape our stories" (p. 322). In what ways, if any, do stories matter to the Inuit in manners that may not register as strongly with other peoples, and why?
(Questions issued by Penguin Group USA. Also, see the Inuktitut pronunciation guide on the publisher's website.)
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Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307455161
Summary
The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school—when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria—his social doom is sealed for the next four years.
But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own. Because their parents come out only on weekends, he and his friends are left to their own devices for three glorious months. And although he’s just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates the rest of the year, he thinks that maybe this summer things will be different. If all goes according to plan, that is.
There will be trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through, and state-of-the-art profanity to master. He will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy of ’85, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, with a little luck, things will turn out differently this summer.
In this deeply affectionate and fiercely funny coming-of-age novel, Whitehead—using the perpetual mortification of teenage existence and the desperate quest for reinvention—lithelyprobes the elusive nature of identity, both personal and communal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 1969
• Where—New York, New York (USA)
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Awards—PEN/Oakland Award; Whiting Writers Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York
Born in 1969 and raised in Manhattan, Colson Whitehead received his undergraduate degree from Harvard. After graduation, he went to work for the Village Voice as a book , television, and music reviewer.
Whitehead's first novel, The Intuitionist, was published in 1999 and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and a winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. In 2001, he published John Henry Days, a startlingly original retelling of the famous story from American folklore. The novel received several honors and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, a collection of his essays, The Colossus of New York, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the year.
Whitehead's writing continues to attract awards, rave reviews, and a devoted, avid readership. In between books, he produces reviews, essays, short stories, and cultural commentary for a number of distinguished publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, and Granta. He is the recipient of a coveted MacArthur Fellowship (dubbed the "genius grant") , a Whiting Writers Award, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Extras
From a 2009 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Where do I get my ideas? Usually I come across some strange fact in a book, or article, or tv show and think, That's weird, wouldn't it be kooky if...?
• I like to write in the nude—I find the gentle breezes tickle the fine hairs of creativity.
• Here are some of the things I like: staying in the house all day, screening phone calls, keeping the shades drawn. Deglazing. Oh, how I love to deglaze.
• Here's what I dislike: performance art, people who walk slowly in front of me, romantic comedies, panel discussions.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is his response:
There are many books, obviously. Today I'll go with Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, because I'm feeling nostalgic for a good, long read. I have fond memories of reading it at age 19, while flat broke, in a crappy apartment, with nothing to do but watch Quincy, cook up some cheap halibut, and read GR. I remember getting to the last 100 pages and thinking, "He's not going to end this the way I think he's going to end it, is he? It would be crazy if he did that!" And he did. The lesson being, no idea is too weird—as long as you can pull it off. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Sea-breeze buoyant....teasingly self-aware spirit.....hilariously trifling intricacies of this self-discovery process. Credit Mr. Whitehead with this: He captures the fire flies of teenage summertime in a jar....What's best about Sag Harbor is the utter and sometimes mortifying accuracy of its descriptive details....equally aware of the tiny nuances of teen culture....When this book's range encompasses kids, parents, community, tradition and history simultaneously, Mr. Whitehead's recovered memories don't seem so trivial after all.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Whitehead's delicious language and sarcastic, clever voice fit this teenager who's slowly constructing himself. Sag Harbor is not "How I became a writer"; there's no hint of Benji's destiny beyond his sharp-eyed way of looking at things, his writerly voice and his desire to provide a historical and sociological context for blacks in the Hamptons. Still, with the story meandering like a teenager's attention, the book feels more like a memoir than a traditional plot-driven novel. It's easy to come away thinking not much happens—Whitehead has said as much—but Sag Harbor mirrors life, which is also plotless. It's an inner monologue, a collection of stories about a classic teenage summer where there's some cool stuff and some tedium and Benji grows in minute ways he can't yet see.
New York Times Book Review
Detailing the life of a dorky teenager in a community that's peculiar but oddly familiar, Sag Harbor is a kind of black "Brighton Beach Memoirs," but it's spiced with the anxieties of being African American in a culture determined to dictate what that means…The novel's eight chapters are, in effect, masterful short stories, deceptively desultory as they riff on the essential quests of teenage boys: BB guns, nude beaches, beer and, above all, the elusive secret to fitting in. But plot is the least of Whitehead's concerns here. Charm alone drives most of these chapters, the seductive voice of a narrator as clever as he is self-deprecating, moving from one comic anecdote to the next with infectious delight in his own memories.
Washington Post
In his ebullient, supremely confident fourth novel….offers such pleasures only a grump would complain….Debates and disquisitions about the timeless ephemera of pop culture appear in realistic proportion, and the resulting humor feels earned rather than easy, because of its thematic relevance and, above all, Whitehead’s skill with voice and character….come off the page with energy and pathos.
San Diego Union
The inventive, gifted Whitehead….registers the minutia of ‘80s culture….effortlessly readable….masterful at re-creating the organized chaos of the teenage mind. Sag Harbor moves between vignettes with the urgency and awareness of a kid still mesmerized by the mundane….offers a loving exploration….By opting to show, rather than describe, their innocence, Whitehead recalls its allure. And what better time to reminisce over that than summer?
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Whitehead's most enjoyable book--warm and funny, carefully observed, and beautifully written, studded with small moments of pain and epiphany....Whiehead seems to be having the time of his life; one can almost feel him relaxing into this book as if it actually were the summer home of his youth....The humor of Sag Harbor—which reaches its apex in a scene involving seminal mid-'80s hip hop group UTFO's appearance at the local waffle cone emporium, where the rapper known as Dr. Ice provides some astute medical advice--is twinned by pain. It is Benji's uncertainty about everything that gives him such perspective, imbues even his most casual observations with a sheen of elegiac wisdom....tense, lush, poignant—Sag Harbor at its most satisfying.
Boston Globe
In what Whitehead describes as his "Autobiographical Fourth Novel" (as opposed to the more usual autobiographical first novel), the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist John Henry Days explores the in-between space of adolescence through one boy's summer in a predominantly black Long Island neighborhood. Benji and Reggie, brothers so closely knit that many mistake them for twins, have been coming out to Sag Harbor for as long as they can remember. For Benji, each three-month stay at Sag is a chance to catch up with friends he doesn't see the rest of the year, and to escape the social awkwardness that comes with a bad afro, reading Fangoria, and being the rare African-American student at an exclusive Manhattan prep school. As he and Reggie develop separate identities and confront new factors like girls, part-time jobs and car-ownership, Benji struggles to adapt to circumstances that could see him joining the ranks of "Those Who Don't Come Out Anymore." Benji's funny and touching story progresses leisurely toward Labor Day, but his reflections on what's gone before provide a roadmap to what comes later, resolving social conflicts that, at least this year, have yet to explode.
Publishers Weekly
Fifteen-year-old Benji has spent every summer since he can remember in Sag Harbor, NY. The rest of the year, he's a black preppie from Manhattan, with a doctor father and a lawyer mother and a younger brother, Reggie. It is 1985, and Reggie gets a job at Burger King, leaving Benji (who would prefer to be called Ben) to hang with his summer friends (the term posse wasn't invented yet), other black prep school refugees. Not a lot happens during those three months. Or does everything happen, all that matters to an insecure, nerdy teen just beginning to recognize the man he might become? Scooping ice cream at Jonni Waffle, riding to the "white beach" with the one guy who's got a car, trying to crash a Lisa Lisa concert at the hip club, and kissing a girl and copping a feel are significant events in a life that encompasses generations of folks who called Sag Harbor home. Wonderful, evocative writing, as always, from Whitehead (Apex Hides the Hurt); male readers especially will relate. Highly recommended.
Bette-Lee Fox - Library Journal
For all the range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity [Faulkner's works] are withouAnother surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice. Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work-in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)-he'll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family's summer retreat of New York's Sag Harbor. "According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses," writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There's an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist's eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary. Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead's earlier work,but a whole lot of fun to read.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does each of Benji’s comrades (Reggie, NP, Randy, Bobby, Marcus, Clive) contribute to the group? What challenges do they face as friends?
2. Explain the differences between Benji’s age group and that of his sister. During these years, why is the disparity between high school and college so acute?
3. Benji comments that “the rock” on the beach near his beach house serves as a racial barrier. White people won’t walk much further past it. What similar examples can you think of that exist today or in your own community? How have racial barriers changed in the last 20 years? How are they still the same?
4. The emergence of hip-hop is a strong influence in the lives of Benji and his friends. In what ways does music affect their generation? In what ways has music affected your own life?
5. Benji grapples with his identity throughout the novel. At one point he states:
“According to the world we were the definition of a paradox: black boys with beach houses. A paradox to the outside, but it never occurred to us that there was anything strange about it.” (Pg. 57)
How is this community a paradox? How is Benji’s identity shaped by the two worlds he inhabits, both during the school year, and then during the summer season?
6. Benji often refers to the handshake, song, and/or dance he will surely conquer by the “end” of the summer. To what degree is he constantly trying to reinvent himself?
7. What do you think are the characteristics of a typical 1980’s adolescent? How does Benji fit the stereotype? How is he different?
8. Benji clearly realizes toward the end of the summer that what he loves, is perhaps not the girls he pines after, but his beach home and “what he put into it.” He reflects back on a tender moment with his family and the fond memories of being a child. What is it about our childhoods that evoke such special memories within us? Is there a place from your own past that touched your life as Sag Harbor touched Benji?
9. Throughout the novel there looms a hint of darkness behind the relationship between Benji’s father and his family. His father seems to have a violent strain. How does this affect Benji and his family? What is the role of the father in a young man’s coming of age?
10. From Catcher in the Rye to Stand By Me, the coming-of-age novel is a perennial in American literature. What do you think is so appealing and universal about this genre?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
The Kalahari Typing School for Men (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #4)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2002
Knopf Doubleday
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031801
In Brief
Mma Precious Ramotswe is content. Her business is well established with many satisfied customers, and in her mid-thirties (“the finest age to be”) she has a house, two adopted children, a fine fiancé.
But, as always, there are troubles. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has not set the date for their marriage. Her able assistant, Mma Makutsi, wants a husband. And worse, a rival detective agency has opened in town—an agency that does not have the gentle approach to business that Mma Ramotswe’s does. But, of course, Precious will manage these things, as she always does, with her uncanny insight and her good heart. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• 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.)
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Critics Say . . .
Simply charming in the extreme.... This series’ huge appeal lies in its mannerly folk wisdom and wry, gentle humor, full of wit, nuance and caring. It’s an oasis in a genre that too often seems a desert of violence and inhumanity.
Chicago Sun Times
This loosely woven novel is as beguiling as Alexander McCall Smith’s earlier books about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. His prose is deceptively simple, with a gift for evoking the earth and sky of Africa.
Seattle Times
The fourth appearance of Precious Ramotswe, protagonist of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and two sequels, is once again a charming account of the everyday challenges facing a female private detective in Botswana. In his usual unassuming style, McCall Smith takes up Ramotswe's story soon after the events described in Tears of the Giraffe. Precious and her fianc , Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, still have not set a wedding date, but they continue to nurture the sibling orphans in their care, as well as the entrepreneurial ambitions of Precious's assistant, Mma Makutsi, who sets out to open a typing school for men. Along the way, Ramotswe handles a few cases and negotiates the arrival of a rival detective in Gaborone. The competition, a sexist detective who boasts of New York City street smarts, proves a delicious foil to his distaff counterpart. A moral component enters the story in the person of a successful engineer who wishes to atone for his past sins. He enlists Ramotswe to help him find the woman he has wronged, and this case comes to a satisfying yet hardly sentimental conclusion. But the real appeal of this slender novel is Ramotswe's solid common sense, a proficient blend of folk wisdom, experience and simple intelligence. She is a bit of a throwback to the days of courtesy and manners, and casts disapproving glances at the apprentices in her fianc 's auto shop who obsess about girls instead of garage protocol. A dose of easy humor laces the pages, as McCall Smith throws in wry observations, effortlessly commenting on the vagaries his protagonist encounters as she negotiates Botswana bureaucracy. This is another graceful entry in a pleasingly modest and wise series.
Publishers Weekly
Owner of the (until recently) only detective agency in Botswana, portly Precious Ramotswe, known courteously as "Mma," leads a quietly successful though busy life. Engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (an auto repair person); she fosters two troubled orphans, mentors her assistant, Mma Makutsi (a would-be typing school owner); and agrees to help a rather secretive man (who raises ostriches) right some old personal wrongs. Ramotswe takes everything as it comes, reacting to most events with quiet courage and resourcefulness. The fourth title in an internationally popular series first published in England, it features an exotic African setting and charming, memorable characters. Recommended for most collections.
Library Journal
It's a good thing that Precious Ramotswe (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, 2001, etc.) has consolidated the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in anticipation of consolidating her personal life—moving its headquarters back of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the establishment owned by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, her fiancé—because the not-so-mean streets of Gaborone are teeming with problems only she can solve. Mr. Molofelo, a prosperous civil engineer from Lobatse, throws himself on her as a confessor, then asks her to find two women he wronged when he was a young man years ago: Tebogo Bathopi, the nursing student whom he insisted have the abortion he made necessary, and Mma Tsolamosese, the landlady whose radio he stole in order to finance the abortion. While Mma Ramotswe looks for the women, her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, looks for men: if not the gentleman friend she pines for, then prospective students for her new typing school aimed at men who want to learn secretarial skills without embarrassing themselves in front of a classful of women. Bumptious Cephas Buthelezi, who's opened the rival Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency across town, has no chance against these women's patient resolve—since although men may be tougher than women, they're clearly not interested enough in other people to make good detectives. Inspector Ghote meets Mr. Parker Pyne. Readers who haven't yet discovered Mma Ramotswe will enjoy discovering how her quiet humor, understated observation, and resolutely domestic approach to detection promise to put Botswana on the sleuthing map for good.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. What themes and situations recur throughout the Precious Ramotswe novels? In what ways are the books similar? What new characters and developments keep the stories fresh?
2. Mma Ramotswe observes, 'The trouble with men, of course, was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. Sometimes Mma Ramotswe wondered whether men actually wanted to see anything, or whether they decided that they would notice only the things that interestedthem' [p. 17]. Is this an accurate assessment? What other statements about the differences between men and women occur in The Kalahari Typing School for Men? What perception about male psychology allows Mma Makutsi to open the typing school?
3. What prompts Mr. Molefelo to seek out Mma Ramotswe's help? In what ways is his request different from what most people would ask of a private detective?
4. In considering the changing morality of modern times, Mma Ramotswe suggests that people are now 'far too ready to abandon their husbands and wives because they had tired of them. . . . And friends, too. They could become very demanding, but all you had to do was to walk out. Where had all this come from, she wondered. It was not African, she thought, and it certainly had nothing to do with the old Botswana morality. So it must have come from somewhere else' [p. 107]. Where might such changes in attitude have come from? What are the consequences of this weakened sense of loyalty, in the novel particularly, and in society more generally?
5. How does Mma Ramotswe respond to Motholeli's unhappiness? Why is she able to sympathize with the orphan girl's pain so strongly? What important message does Mma Ramotswe give her?
6. Discussing the relationship between education and experience, Mma Potokwani says that 'You don't have to read a book to understand how the world works. . . . You just have to keep your eyes open.' Mma Ramotswe agrees but feels a 'great respect for books. . . . One could never read enough. Never' [p. 130]. How does Mma Ramotswe herself embody a balance between knowledge gained from direct experience of life and knowledge gained from books?
7. Why does Mr. Cephas Buthelezi, the arrogant detective who tries to usurp Mma Ramotswe, decide to quit? Why do all his experience, training, and travels fail to serve him in Botswana? What does he lack that Mma Ramotswe has in abundance?
8. As Mma Ramotswe confronts Mr. Sleleipeng about his behavior toward Mma Makutsi, she refrains from lecturing him. 'I could never be a judge, she thought; I could not sit there and punish people after they have begun to feel sorry for what they have done' [p. 178]. Where else in the novel does she exhibit this ability to listen without judging? How does this ethos differ from the typical ways of dealing with the guilty in American detective fiction and American life more generally? Why is Mma Ramotswe able to feel such compassion even for those who have clearly hurt others?
9. In place of violence and revenge, the Precious Ramotswe novels substitute understanding and forgiveness. How is Alexander McCall Smith able to make this reversal of values so satisfying, in both the literary and moral senses?
10. Near the end of The Kalahari Typing School for Men, as the novel's various problems are being resolved, Mma Ramotswe observes, 'It was astonishing how life had a way of working out, even when everything looked so complicated and unpromising' [p. 183]. Does the novel resolve its problems too easily? Or do these resolutions faithfully reflect the degree to which Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr J.L.B. Maketoni, Mma Potokwani, and other characters live in harmony with their world?
11. Mr. Buthelezi trumpets his 'toughness' and police-force experience in dealing with serious criminals, along with his knowledge of how detective work is done in New York and other big cities. Is Alexander McCall Smith poking fun, through the character of Mr. Buthelezi, at the kind of detective who appears in more conventional mystery novels? Why is Mr. Buthelezi so ill suited to the needs of the people of Botswana?
12. What is so appealing about the world in which Mma Ramotswe lives? In what ways is it different from contemporary American society? Are the values and attitudes of Mma Ramotswe translatable to North American soil?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
144 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307700001
Summary
Julie Otsuka’s long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine (“To watch Emperor catching on with teachers and students in vast numbers is to grasp what must have happened at the outset for novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird” —The New York Times) is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ nearly a century ago.
In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.
In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 15, 1962
• Where—Palo Alto, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Guggenheim Fellowship; Asian| American Literary Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale University she pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She received her MFA from Columbia.
Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine (2002), is about the internment of a Japanese-American family during World War II. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers finalist. The book is based on Otsuka's own family history: her grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. When the Emperor Was Divine has been translated into six languages and sold more than 250,000 copies. The New York Times called it "a resonant and beautifully nuanced achievement" and USA Today described it as "A gem of a book and one of the most vivid history lessons you'll ever learn."
Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic (2011), is about a group of young Japanese 'picture brides' who sailed to America in the early 1900s to become the wives of men they had never met and knew only by their photographs.
Otsuka's fiction has been published in Granta and Harper's and read aloud on PRI's "Selected Shorts" and BBC Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime." She lives in New York City, where she writes every afternoon in her neighborhood cafe.
Extras
When asked what book most influenced her life or career, here is what she said:
When I first started writing I read all of Hemingway's short stories, beginning with the Nick Adams stories in In Our Time. I remember thinking, 'oh, so that's how you do it.' Now I'm much less convinced, however, that there's a right way to do it. Still, he was the writer I first imprinted myself on, and I go back to his stories often, if only for the pleasure of listening to the sound of his sentences, his cadences. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
n the Japanese art of sumi-e, strokes of ink are brushed across sheets of rice paper, the play of light and dark capturing not just images but sensations, not just surfaces but the essence of what lies within. Simplicity of line is prized, extraneous detail discouraged. Although Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California...she seems perfectly attuned to the spirit of sumi-e.... Proof arrived almost a decade ago...with the publication of her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, a spare but resonant portrait of one Japanese-American family's daily life, at home and in the internment camps, during World War II. Now she returns with a second novel, also employing a minimalist technique, that manages to be equally intimate yet much more expansive.
Alida Becker - New York Times
Poetic.... Otsuka combines the tragic power of a Greek chorus with the intimacy of a confession. She conjures up the lost voices of a generation of Japanese American women without losing sight of the distinct experience of each.... An understated masterpiece . . . The distillation of a national tragedy that unfolds with great emotional power.... The Buddha in the Attic seems destined to endure.
Jane Ciabattari - San Francisco Chronicle
Spare and stunning.... Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen stokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they’d never see again.” Celia McGee - Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) In the early 1900s, numerous Japanese mail order brides came to America seeking better lives. Otsuka's (When the Emperor was Divine) latest novel paints a delicate, heartbreaking portrait of these women. Using a collective first-person narrator ("On the boat we were mostly virgins."), Otsuka looks at the experiences of these "picture brides," organizing their stories into themes which include: their arrival in America; their first nights with their husbands; their interactions with white people; their children; and finally, the experience of World War II. Each section is beautifully rendered, a delicate amalgam of contrasting and complementary experiences. Readers will instantly empathize with these unnamed women as they adjust to American culture, a remarkable achievement considering Otsuka's use of the collective voice. Otsuka's prose is precise and rich with imagery. Readers will be inspired to draw their own parallels between the experiences of these women and the modern experience of immigration. By the time readers realize that the story is headed toward the internment of the Japanese, they are hopelessly engaged and will finish this exceptional book profoundly moved.
Publishers Weekly
In her acclaimed When the Emperor Was Divine, Otsuka wrought third-person narratives of a northern California Japanese family facing internment and alienation during World War II. Now she gives us a luminous second novel, setting off from the early 20th century on a ship of "picture brides" headed from Japan to San Francisco to meet Japanese workers who have arranged to marry them. Otsuka works an enchantment upon her readers—no Sturm und Drang here—and leaves us haunted and astonished at the powers of her subtlety and charms. This time she employs a choral-like narrative expressed in the third-person plural, with a gentle use of repetitive phrasing ("One of us..."; "Some of us...") punctuated by small, italicized utterances representing individual voices. The results are cumulatively overwhelming, as we become embedded in the hope, disenchantment, courage, labor, and resignation of these nameless women and their families across four decades. Did they think all their compromises, their search for community, meant that they had found a place here in America? Or, just as they had been upon their arrival in California, were they mistaken about what this land had to offer them? Verdict: Unforgettable and essential both for readers and writers. —Margaret Heilbrun
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An incantatory and haunting group portrait.... Drawing on extensive research and profoundly identifying with her characters, Otsuka crafts an intricately detailed folding screen depicting nearly five decades of change as the women painstakingly build meaningful lives, only to lose everything after Pearl Harbor. This lyrically distilled and caustically ironic story of exile, effort, and hate is entrancing, appalling, and heartbreakingly beautiful. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Otsuka, whose first novel (When the Emperor Was Divine, 2003) focused on one specific Japanese-American family's plight during and after internment, takes the broad view in this novella-length consideration of Japanese mail-order brides making a life for themselves in America in the decades before World War II. A lovely prose poem that gives a bitter history lesson.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Buddha in the Attic is narrated in the first person plural, i.e., told from the point of view of a group of women rather than an individual. Discuss the impact of this narrative decision on your reading experience. Why do you think the author made the choice to tell the story from this perspective?
2. Why is the novel called The Buddha in the Attic? To what does the title refer?
3. The novel opens with the women on the boat traveling from Japan to San Francisco. What does Otsuka tell us is “the first thing [they] did,” and what does this suggest about the trajectories of their lives?
4. What are the women’s expectations about America? What are their fears? Why are they convinced that “it was better to marry a stranger in America than grow old with a farmer from the village”?
5. Discuss Otsuka’s use of italics in the novel. What are these shifts in typography meant to connote? How do they add to our knowledge of the women as individuals?
6. Otsuka tells us that the last words spoken by the women’s mothers still ring in their ears: “You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.” What does this mean, and how does the novel bear this out?
7. In the final sentence of “First Night,” Otsuka writes, “They took us swiftly, repeatedly, all throughout the night, and in the morning when we woke we were theirs.” Discuss the women’s first nights with their new husbands. Are there particular images you found especially powerful? How did you feel reading this short chapter?
8. Why was the first word of English the women were taught “water” ?
9. In the section entitled “Whites,” Otsuka describes several acts of kindness and compassion on the part of the women’s husbands. In what ways were the husbands useful to them or unexpectedly gentle with them in these early days? How does this reflect the complexity of their relationships?
10. What are the women’s lives like in these early months in America? How do their experiences and challenges differ from what they had been led to expect? How are they perceived by their husbands? By their employers? Discuss the disparity between the women’s understanding of their role in the American economy and what Otsuka suggests is the American perception of the Japanese women’s power.
11. Later in this section, the women ask themselves, “Is there any tribe more savage than the Americans?” What occasions this question? What does the author think? What do you think?
12. Discuss the passage on p. 37 that begins, “We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God.... I fear my soul has died.... And often our husbands did not even notice we’d disappeared.” What does Otsuka mean by “disappeared”? What is she suggesting about their spiritual lives, their inner selves? Do the women reappear in this sense in the course of the novel? When?
13. Throughout the novel, Otsuka uses the phrase “One of us....” Why? What is the effect of this shift in point of view? What does Otsuka achieve through this subtle adjustment?
14. Otsuka writes, “They gave us new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl.” Discuss how this mirrors the names taken by the women’s children later in the novel.
15. Discuss the complexities and nuances of the relationship between the Japanese women and the white women. Was it strictly an employer/employee relationship, or something more?
16. What is J-town? Why do the women choose J-town over any attempt to return home?
17. The section called “Babies” is just six pages long but strikes with unique force. What was your reaction to the experiences of the women in childbirth? Take a close look at the last six sentences of the chapter, with a particular emphasis on the very last sentence. On what note does Otsuka end the chapter, and why? What does that last sentence reveal about Otsuka’s ideas about the future and about the past?
18. “One by one all the old words we had taught them began to disappear from their heads,” Otsuka writes of the women’s children. Discuss the significance of names and naming in The Buddha in the Attic. What does it mean for these children to reject their mother’s language? What point is Otsuka making about cultural inheritance?
19. How do the the dreams of the children differ from the dreams of their mothers?
20. Why do the women feel closer to their husbands than ever before in the section entitled “Traitors”?
21. How is the structure of the penultimate section, called “Last Day,” different from the structure of all the sections that precede it? Why do you think Otsuka chose to set it apart?
22. Who narrates the novel’s final section, “A Disappearance”? Why? What is the impact of this dramatic shift?
23. Discuss themes of guilt, shame, and forgiveness in The Buddha in the Attic.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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