Blue Shoes and Happiness (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #7)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400075713
Summary
Life is good for Mma Ramotswe as she sets out with her usual resolve to solve people’s problems, heal their misfortunes, and untangle the mysteries that make life interesting. And life is never dull on Tlokweng Road.
A new and rather too brusque advice columnist is appearing in the local paper. Then, a cobra is found in the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Recently, the Mokolodi Game Preserve manager feels an infectious fear spreading among his workers, and a local doctor may be falsifying blood pressure readings. To further complicate matters, Grace Makutsi may have scared off her own fiancé.
Mma Ramotswe, however, is always up to the challenge. And Blue Shoes and Happiness will not fail to entertain Alexander McCall Smith’s oldest fans and newest converts with its great wit, charm, and great good will. (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
(Audio version.) It was a shrewd idea to get the veteran actress and audiobook prize winner Lecat to perform this version of Smith's latest mystery starring the unforgettable Botswana detective Precious Ramotswe. Lecat is a native South African who grew up hearing the authentic accents of women just like Ramotswe, and she gives the character the perfect notes of a real person rather than slipping into caricature. Indeed, Lecat has as good an ear for the ethnic turf covered as the author does. She is also adept at making other female characters, such as assistant detective Grace Makutsi, different but immediately believable. It's Grace who has the title's passion for fancy footwear-in spite of her being a secret feminist afraid of letting her boyfriend know about her politics. Smith does mix in small measures of danger and mystery, but the overall feeling is one of a pleasant dream, of gentle wonder that such people can exist in a conflicted world. And Lecat is the perfect choice to read the story.
Publishers Weekly
Fans of Botswana's No. 1 lady detectives Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies) will be pleased to learn that the seventh novel in this series is just as entertaining as the previous six. Smith relates the ladies' latest adventures with his usual warmth, affection, and gentle humor. The ladies' problems this time range from the dramatic (a cobra in the office) to the romantic (a misunderstanding between Mma Makutsi and her fiance). The author digresses frequently on the charms of Botswana, as much a character as Mma Ramotswe herself. "If only more people knew, thought Mma Ramotswe. If only more people knew that there was more to Africa than all the problems they saw. They could love us too, as we love them." Highly recommended for all public libraries. —Leslie Patterson, Blanding P.L., Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) In this seventh installment in McCall Smith's delightful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, "traditionally built" Botswana detective Precious Ramotswe faces one of her toughest challenges: losing weight. Luckily, there are plenty of dilemmas to keep her mind off her girth.... Scotsman McCall Smith renders brisk, seamless tales that are both wry and profound. Amidst the mayhem...are eloquent descriptions of the serene African country that holds a special place in his heart.
Booklist
A seventh bulging file of cases for Mma Precious Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, most of them offering no hope of profit except to lucky readers. Where to begin? Poppy Maope is certain that the senior cook at her college is stealing food for her husband, but when she confronts the thief, she's threatened with losing her job. Neil Whitson, manager of the Mokolodi Game Preserve, senses widespread fear among workers who refuse to name its cause. Boitelo Mampodi, a qualified nurse, is worried because Dr. Eustace Lubega doesn't want her to take his patients' blood pressure. Mma Ramotswe's assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, may have scared off her fiance, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, by identifying herself as a feminist. And Mr. Polopetsi, the newest employee in the garage owned by Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, 2005), is exhausted by bicycling everywhere but has been denied an auto loan by his rich uncle. In Smith's quietly penetrating manner, each of these problems leads to still further problems. Perhaps Mma Ramotswe should throw in the towel and consult the advice columnist Aunty Emang, who seems to be seriously poaching on her turf. The denouement, which brings Mma Ramotswe face to face with evil, is the perfect climax to a tale as refreshing as a month in the country—the country of Botswana.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “We are all human beings, and human beings can’t really help themselves. Have you noticed that, Mma? We can’t really help ourselves from doing things that land us in all sorts of trouble” (p. 4). From this observation, spoken by Mma Ramotswe to Mma Makutsi, proceeds the plot of Blue Shoes and Happiness. How are the characters in this story responsible for creating their own problems?
2. Why does Mma Ramotswe rely so loyally upon the advice of Clovis Andersen’s The Principles of Private Detection? Consider this example: “Keep your mouth shut at all times, but at the same time encourage others to do precisely the opposite” (p. 12). What does Mma Ramotswe admire about such advice? How does she judge the quality of the advice given by Aunty Emang, the newspaper columnist? What do you think of Aunty Emang’s advice? What about Clovis Andersen’s?
3. Much of the satisfaction of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels lies in their precise observations of daily life as experienced by women: “That was part of being a woman, [Mma Ramotswe] thought; one never reached the end. Even if one could sit down and drink a cup of bush tea, or even two cups, one always knew that at the end of the tea somebody was waiting for something” (pp. 12-13). Is it at all surprising that the writer of these observations is a man? Why do you suppose that Alexander McCall Smith has so much empathy for his female characters?
4. Although the HIV/AIDS crisis is a major health problem facing Africa today Alexander McCall Smith addresses it in subtle and delicate ways in his series such as in the following exchange: “Ever since women allowed men to think that they did not need to get married, everything has gone wrong,” Mma Ramotswe tells a client. The client replies, “Look at the mess. Look at what all this unfaithfulness has done. People are dying because of that, aren’t they?” (pp. 35-36). How does the author address the crisis in this book, and if you’ve read the others, in the series? Why do you think he handles it in this fashion? How do you feel about his treatment of the crisis?
5. Charlie and the younger apprentice fail to trap a cobra that has invaded the office. Why might the chapter’s title, “Correct and Incorrect Ways of Dealing With a Snake,” also be “Correct and Incorrect Ways of Being a Man”? Why does Mma Ramotswe conclude about the incident, “Snakes were one of the tests which life sent for us, and there was no telling how we might respond until the moment arrived. Snakes and men. These were the things sent to try women, and the outcome was not always what we might want it to be” (p. 26)?
6. Grace Makutsi has several mental conversations with her shoes; see for instance pages 64-65 and 108. How do they convey a part of Mma Makutsi’s character? What do the blue shoes represent for her? How difficult is it for her to come to terms with the fact that they were not a practical purchase?
7. What is the mistake that Mma Makutsi makes when telling Phuti Radiphuti that she is feminist (pp. 54-55), and why doesn’t she see this problem in advance? What feelings does she evoke when she says to herself, “I am a girl from Bobonong, with glasses.” (p. 88)?
8. In Mokolodi a tourist asks Mma Ramotswe to take a photograph of her and a friend who, she says, is terminally ill (pp. 126-27). Discuss this incident, with regard to Mma Ramotswe’s actions and her feelings about the dying woman. Discuss also the passage on page 114, which describes Mma Ramotswe’s feelings about her father and about her baby who died. What do these scenes tell us about Mma Ramotswe’s spiritual qualities?
9. Mma Tsau, who has threatened Poppy with dismissal, turns out to be a woman who loves her philandering husband too much. How does Mma Ramotswe deal with the villains of the novel—Mma Tsau, Aunty Emang, and Dr. Lubega? What skills does she use in solving these cases? How does her attitude differ toward each of the women and why?
10. Mr. J. L. B. Maketoni’s two apprentices are representative, for Mma Ramotswe, of a larger problem with the future of Botswana: the young people are abandoning the culture’s traditional values. Regarding the promiscuity of girls and boys alike, she thinks, “One should just not do it, because that was not how the old Botswana morality worked. There was such a thing as shame…although there were many people who seemed to forget it” (p. 59). Does it seem that, according to Mma Ramotswe, relations between men and women are crucial to the structures upon which society rests?
11. The old Botswana morality is exemplified in the following passage: “So it was in Botswana, almost everywhere; ties of kinship, no matter how attenuated by distance or time, linked one person to another, weaving across the country a human blanket of love and community. And in the fibres of that blanket there were threads of obligation that meant that one could not ignore the claims of others. Nobody should starve; nobody should feel that they were outsiders; nobody should be alone in their sadness” (p. 68). Do these ethical principles of responsibility and caring still exist as a basic element of American culture? How are they reflected in this book? Do they seem as pervasive in Botswana as Mma Ramotswe believes?
12. Alexander McCall Smith has said that his novels “represent the range of things I would like to say about the world.” What are the most important ideas among the “range of things” represented by this book and others in the series?
13. Book reviewers and fans agree that the novels in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series give a great deal of reading pleasure. Does this pleasure mask their moral seriousness, or is their moral seriousness part of what makes them pleasurable?
14. A typographic design, repeating the word Africa, follows the novel’s final sentence. How does this affect your reading of the ending, and what emotion does it express?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Leftovers
Tom Perrotta, 2011
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 978031235834
Summary
What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?
That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.
Kevin Garvey, Mapleton’s new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin’s own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin’s teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she’s definitely not the sweet “A” student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he’s distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.
With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta has written a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 13, 1961
• Where—Summit, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Syracuse University
• Awards—Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference
• Currently—Belmont, Massachusetts
Tom Perrotta is the author of several works of fiction, including Joe College, Election, Little Children and The Leftovers. Both Election and Little Children were adapted to film: Election, in 1999, starred Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick; Little Children, in 2006, starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly
Perrotta has taught expository writing at Yale and Harvard University and has been called "one of our true genius satirists" by Mystic River author, Dennis LeHane. Newsweek hailed him as "one of America's best-kept literary secrets...like an American Nick Hornby." Perrotta lives with this wife and two children in Belmont, Massachusetts. (Adapted from the publisher.)
More
That Tom Perrotta struggled into his early 30s to find success should come as no surprise to fans of his work. A Yale grad, Perrotta studied writing under Thomas Berger and Tobias Wolff before moving on to teach creative writing at Yale and Harvard. It was during this period that he began work on the stories that would comprise his first release, Bad Haircut. He had finished two more novels (including Election, which would prove to be his breakthrough book) before Bad Haircut was finally picked up by a publisher in 1994.
It wasn't until a chance introduction with a screenwriter that Perrotta finally moved into the public eye. The result of that encounter was the publication of Election (1998), which was made into the much-beloved film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. At last, Perrotta was able to call himself a working novelist.
The theme of ordinary people trapped in lives they never imagined runs throughout Perrotta's novels. Success for his characters is always just out of reach, and the world is always just outside of their control. Characters that seem destined for success serve as foils to the true protagonists, constant reminders of the unfairness of life.
Which is not to say that Perrotta's novels are depressing. On the contrary, his razor-sharp observations of the human condition are often side-splittingly funny, and the compassion he exhibits in his writing makes even the most ostensibly unlikable characters sympathetic. Perotta does not create caricatures; his novels work because he has a basic understanding that life is complex, and everyone has a story if you take the time to listen.
Extras
When asked in a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview what book most influenced his career as a writer, here's his response:
I read The Great Gatsby in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love. I've reread it several times since then and have discovered lots of other layers—Nick's idolization of Gatsby, the perverse Horatio Alger narrative of Gatsby's rise in the world, Fitzgerald's keen eye for the hard realities of social class in America—and I still maintain that even if there's no such thing as a perfect novel, Gatsby's about as close as we're going to get. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Perrotta....has trouble reconciling [his] high concept platform with his talent for smaller-scale portraits of awkward adolescents and angst-ridden suburban families. The result is a poignant but deeply flawed novel.... [Yet] his affectionate but astringent understanding of his characters and their imperfections; his appreciation of the dark undertow of loss that lurks beneath the familiar, glossy surface of suburban life
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Perrotta has delivered a troubling disquisition on how ordinary people react to extraordinary and inexplicable events, the power of family to hurt and to heal, and the unobtrusive ease with which faith can slide into fanaticism. The Leftovers is, simply put, the best "Twilight Zone" episode you never saw—not "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" but "The Monsters Are Us in Mapleton." That they are quiet monsters only makes them more eerie.
Stephen King - New York Times Book Review
Perrotta's shift away from comedy has been picking up speed since Little Children, and despite some witty touches and a few broad swipes at manipulative preachers and cynical politicians, The Leftovers is not particularly satirical or even humorous. But it is certainly his most mature, absorbing novel, one that confirms his development from a funnyman to a daring chronicler of our most profound anxieties and human desires.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
October 14 looked like any other day in the leafy New England enclave of Mapleton—until it didn't. Eighty-seven townspeople and millions more around the world simply disappeared. Cars careened with no one behind the wheel, school kids were without teachers, food went uneaten on dinner tables, and lovers found themselves abandoned. The Rapture? No one knows. What we do know is that the psychological trauma for those left behind is overwhelming, and who better than Perrotta, known for his ability to zero in on the vicissitudes of middle-class America (Little Children; The Abstinence Teacher) to grapple with the impact? Three years after "The Sudden Departure," Kevin Garvey's wife has joined a cult, son Tom has ditched college to follow guru Holy Wayne, and lovely daughter Jill has shaved her head and taken up with stoners. Nora Durst's life is in a holding pattern as she awaits the return of her husband and child, while Reverend Jamison, enraged at being passed over, publishes a newsletter exposing the failings of the missing. VERDICT Perrotta has taken a subject that could easily slip into slapstick and imbued it with gravitas. Like Richard Russo, he softens the sting of satire with deep compassion for his characters in all their confusion, guilt, grief, and humanity. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL
Library Journal
A bestselling novelist returns with his most ambitious book to date.... There's even a happy ending of sorts, as characters adapt and keep going, fortified by the knowledge that they "were more than the sum of what had been taken from" them.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Leftovers:
1. What is The Leftovers about? Is this a religious, or anti-religious, book. Is it even about religion? If not...what is it about?
2. In what ways does the world change after the Sudden Departure. What affect does it have on those left behind—both devout Christians and those not so devout? How does the departure differ from the The Rapture? What about a possible parallel with the events of 9/11—do you see any overtones of what the US went through in the aftermath of that national trauma?
3. Talk about the various groups that spring up—the Barefoot People, the Guilty Remnant. In what way are their formations a response to the Sudden Departure?
4. If the Sudden Departure occured in real life, today, how do you think our society would react? How would you, or your family, react if a loved one departed? Would it the disappearances be a good thing, if you're a Christian, or difficult thing to cope with?
5. Is Perrotta's novel humorous or sad—a comedy or tragedy? Is it a satire?
6. Discuss Nora's decision to pull back from her budding relationship with Kevin. Is she justified in doing so, particularly in light of what she discovers about her husband? Is her pain too deeply felt, or might her sadness have abated had she started a new life with Kevin?
7. How well does Perrotta depict ordinary individuals dealing with loss? Are his characters realistic, believable? Or are they cartoonish and one-dimensional?
8. What larger issues, other than the Sudden Departure (or the Rapture), might be at stake in Perrotta's novel—what might he be making a broader statement about?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307386243
Summary
A sweeping, emotionally charged novel of the nature of romantic attachment and the strange allure of collecting—this is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.
It is Istanbul in 1975. Kemal is a rich and engaged man when he by chance encounters a long-lost relation, Fusun, a young shopgirl whose beauty stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo.
Fusun ends their liaison when she learns of Kemal’s engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: for nine years he tries to change her mind, meanwhile stealing from her an odd assortment of personal items, which he collects and cherishes—a “museum of innocence” that he puts on display to tell the heartbreaking story of a love that shaped a life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 7, 1952
• Where—Istanbul, Turkey
• Education—Istanbul Technical University; graduated from the
Institute of Journalism, Uiversity of Istanbul
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 2006; Milliyet Press Novel Contest;
Orhan Kemal Novel Prize; Madarali Novel Prize; Prix de la
Decourverte Europeenne; Independent Award for Foreign
Fiction; IMPAC Dublin Award.
• Currently—teaches at Columbia University (New York City)
Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing.
One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over seven million books in more than fifty languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature—the first Nobel Prize to be awarded to a Turkish citizen.
Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a wealthy yet declining bourgeois family; an experience he describes in passing in his novels, The Black Book and Cevdet Bey and His Sons, as well as more thoroughly in his personal memoir Istanbul. He was educated at Robert College secondary school in Istanbul and went on to study architecture at the Istanbul Technical University since it was related to his real dream career, painting. He left the architecture school after three years, however, to become a full-time writer, and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976. From ages 22 to 30, Pamuk lived with his mother, writing his first novel and attempting to find a publisher. He describes himeself as a "cultural" Muslim, who associates the historical and cultural identification with the religion.
Pamuk married Aylin Türegün, a historian, in 1982. From 1985 to 1988, while his wife was a graduate student at Columbia University, Pamuk assumed the position of visiting scholar there, using the time to conduct research and write his novel The Black Book in the university's Butler Library. This period also included a visiting fellowship at the University of Iowa.
Pamuk returned to Istanbul, a city to which he is strongly attached. He and his wife had a daughter named Rüya born in 1991, whose name means "dream" in Turkish. In 2001, he and Aylin were divorced.
In 2006, Pamuk returned to the US to take up a position as a visiting professor at Columbia. Pamuk is currently a Fellow with Columbia's Committee on Global Thought and holds an appointment in Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department and at its School of the Arts.
Orhan Pamuk started writing regularly in 1974. In 1983 he won the Turkish Orhan Kemal Novel Prize for Mr. Cevdet and His Sons. The book tells the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nişantaşı, the district of Istanbul where Pamuk grew up.
More prizes came his way. His second novel, The Silent House, won both the 1984 Turkish Madarali Novel Prize and the 1991 Prix de la Decourverte Europeenne (for the book's French translation). His historical novel, The White Castle, published in Turkish in 1985, won the 1990 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction and extended his reputation abroad. The New York Times Book Review wrote, "A new star has risen in the east—Orhan Pamuk." He started experimenting with postmodern techniques in his novels, a change from the strict naturalism of his early works.
Popular success took a bit longer to come to Pamuk, but his 1990 novel, The Black Book, became one of the most controversial and popular readings in Turkish literature, due to its complexity and richness. Pamuk's fourth novel, New Life, caused a sensation in Turkey upon its 1995 publication and became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. By this time, Pamuk had also become a high-profile figure in Turkey, due to his support for Kurdish political rights. In 1995, Pamuk was among a group of authors tried for writing essays that criticized Turkey's treatment of the Kurds.
Pamuk's international reputation continued to increase when he published My Name is Red in 2000. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles in a setting of 16th century Istanbul. That book won international literature's most lucrative prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award in 2003.
Pamuk's next novel was Snow in 2002, which takes place in the border city of Kars and explores the conflict between Islamism and Westernism in modern Turkey. The New York Times listed Snow as one of its Ten Best Books of 2004. In 2003, Pamuk published his memoirs, Istanbul: Memories and the City. The Museum of Innocence was first published in 2008.
Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between Western and Eastern values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion of and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting. Pamuk's work often touches on the deep-rooted tensions between East and West and tradition and modernism/secularism.
In 2006 Pumak was awarded te the Nobel Prize for Literature. His acceptance speech, given in Turkish, viewed the relations between Eastern and Western Civilizations:
What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kin.... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world—and I can identify with them easily— succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West—a world with which I can identify with the same ease—nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.
—Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Lecture (translation by Maureen Freely)
(Autho bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
An enchanting new novel of first love painfully sustained over a lifetime....The city is on exhibit: the romantic touch of decaying wooden houses, the sturdy apartments of the nouveaux riches, postcard views of the shimmering Golden Horn, Soviet tankers on the Bosporus and a Frenchified restaurant once in favor.... Part of the delight in The Museum of Innocence is in scouting out the serious games, yet giving oneself over to the charms of Pamuk’s storytelling.... Freely’s translation captures the novelist’s playful performance as well as his serious collusion with Kemal. Her melding of tones follows Pamuk’s agility, to redirect our vision to the gravity of his tale.... What’s on show in this museum is the responsibility to write free and modern.
Maureen Howard - New York Times Book Review
Startling original. Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected...spellbindingly told.... The genius of Pamuk’s novel is that although it can be read as a simple romance, it is a richly complicated work with subtle and intricate layers. Kemal’s descent into love’s hell takes him through every level of the social order, past countless neighborhoods of sprawling Istanbul, in a story that spans 30 years.
Maria Arana - Washington Post
Pamuk...is that rare thing, a creator of sophisticated, intensely literary fiction, who is also his country’s bestselling writer...in part...because of his work’s accessibility and his willingness to adapt conventionally popular genres, like historical and detective stories, into multilayered, character-driven novels...mesmerizing, brilliantly realized...[with] marvelous and transporting evocations of Istanbul...and fascinating insights into a society living very much on the unstable borders of contemporary life between the Islamic and Western worlds.... [This] engrossing tale...deeply and compellingly explores the interplay between erotic obsession and sentimentality—and never once slips into the sentimental. There is a master at work in this book.
Timothy Rutten - Los Angeles Times
A world-class lesson in heartbreak and happiness.... Pamuk’s own presence in this wily narrative is as surreptitious as passion itself.
O Magazine
Pamuk’s sensual, sinister tale is a brilliant panorama of Turkey’s conflicted national identity—and a lacerating critique of a social elite that styles itself after the West but fails to embrace its core freedoms.
Vogue
(Starred review.) Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks readers through a lengthy catalogue of trivial objects, which, though seeming mundane, hold memories of his life's most intimate, irretrievable moments. The main focus of Kemal's peculiar collection of earrings, ticket stubs and drinking glasses is beloved Füsun, his onetime paramour and longtime unrequited love. An 18-year-old virginal beauty, modest shopgirl and poor distant relation, Füsun enters Kemal's successful life just as he is engaged to Sibel, a very special, very charming, very lovely girl. Though level headed Sibel provides Kemal compassionate relief from their social strata's rising tensions, it is the fleeting moments with fiery, childlike Füsun that grant conflicted Kemal his deepest peace. The poignant truth behind Kemal's obsession is that his museum provides a closeness with Füsun he'll never regain. Though its incantatory middle suffers from too many indistinguishable quotidian encounters, this is a masterful work.
Publishers Weekly
And they say women fall crazy in love. In this latest from Nobel Prize winner Pamuk, protagonist Kemal becomes so obsessed with a shop girl he meets while buying his fiancée a purse that he ends up throwing away his entire life. Füsan is in fact a distant relative Kemal hasn't seen for some time, and they launch a passionate affair on the very eve of Kemal's engagement party. This is 1970s Turkey, and new ideas from the West would seem to bless the affair. But of course Kemal never considers breaking his engagement, and in the end a deeply bruised Füsan vanishes. As Kemal's fiancée, Sibel, rightly observes, "It's because she was a poor, ambitious girl that you were able to start something so easily." Kemal is not so enlightened as he thinks. He's also a bit of a bore, having compulsively organized an entire "museum" of artifacts pertaining to Füsan that the author repeatedly references; readers may agree with Kemal that "visitors to my museum must by now be sick and tired of my heartache." Verdict: This story is beautifully told, but at great length and in great detail; patient readers, be prepared. —Barbara Hoffert,
Library Journal
Curious and demanding new novel from Turkey's 2006 Nobel laureate, both closely akin to and somewhat less accomplished than its universally acclaimed predecessors (Snow, 2004, etc.). This is protagonist Kemal's impassioned tale of his obsessive love for a beautiful distant relative, Fusun, with whom he enjoys a rapturous sexual relationship as the day of Kemal's marriage to his blameless fiancee Sibel draws nearer. When we meet him in 1975, Kemal is the 30-year-old scion of a prosperous Istanbul family. The Basmacis are privileged people who acquire objects of beauty and value, store them away, then forget them. Not so with Kemal, whose yearning for the elusive Fusun (she's responsive only sexually) outlasts the breaking of his engagement and the years of Fusun's marriage to Feridun. During that period, Kemal is a frequent visitor to their home, from which he steals something each time, adding objects to his "collection" of artifacts commemorating ecstasies shared with his former lover (hence the compelling title metaphor). The author examines Kemal's twisted devotion with impressive cunning and inventiveness; inevitably, we think of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and his Lolita, but to Pamuk's credit, the comparison does not diminish this novel's eloquence or impact. Suggestions of a tradition-bound haute bourgeoisie unable to let go of passing traditions and values feel honestly earned, and the narrative consistently engages and surprises. It's also too long and sometimes seems more a willed production than a cry from the heart. A rather contrived climax is redeemed by a witty denouement in which a new narrator makes an unexpected appearance. Another richly woven tale suffused with life and color from one of contemporary fiction's true master craftsmen.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Museum of Innocence:
1. Kemal says he has become "with the passage of time—the anthropologist of my experience." Talk about what he means by this remark—what he collects, preserves and his reasons for doing so. What objects do all of us hold onto from our past and why? What do we want them to provide us?
2. What kind of character is Kemal? What kind of narrator is he? (Is there a difference?) How would you describe him?
3. Why is Kemal so drawn to Fusun? Why doesn't he break off his engagement with Sibel? How does his obsession with Fusun shape (or misshape) his life, perhaps stop him from grasping "the ordinary beauty of things"?
4. What kind of young woman is Fusun? And what about Sibel? What does Sibel mean when she comments, "It's because she was a poor, ambitious girl that you were able to start something so easily?"
5. What do you make of the fact that Pamuk puts himself into his story? When he shows up at Kemal and Sibel's engagement party, Kemal tells us, "Those interested in Orhan Bey’s own description of how he felt while dancing with Fusun should look at the last chapter, entitled ‘Happiness.'" What's the game about?
6. How does Kemal describe his social circle?
7. What is the political context that surrounds this story? Why does Kemal seem blind to the dire circumstances around him—the bombs, riots, crackdowns and jailings? Is it apathy, love-sickness, or innocence that distracts him?
8. What does Kemal mean when he says, "This is not simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul”?
9. Do you find the ending satisfying...or does it smack of manipulation? Do you wish for more...or does the story end as it should?
10. 1. In the book's opening pages, when Kemal and Fusun are in bed together, Kemal wonders: "had I known, had I cherished this gift, would everything have turned out differently?" Later he muses that we never understand happiness when we are in its midst, believing the future holds even brighter moments. Do you agree with that assessment? Is it part of human nature—to believe something better is on the horizon, while we pass over what is within our grasp?
11. What is the significance of the book's title? What does it refer to? Why "innocence"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
Sarah's Key
Tatiana de Rosnay, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312370848
Summary
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1961
• Where—Suburbs of Paris, France
• Education—B.A., University of East Anglia (UK)
• Currently—lives in Paris
Tatiana de Rosnay, born in the suburbs of Paris, is of English, French and Russian descent. Her father is French scientist Joël de Rosnay, her grandfather was painter Gaëtan de Rosnay. Tatiana's paternal great-grandmother was Russian actress Natalia Rachewskïa, director of the Leningrad Pushkin Theatre from 1925 to 1949.
Tatiana's mother is English, Stella Jebb, daughter of diplomat Gladwyn Jebb, and great-great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer. Tatiana is also the niece of historian Hugh Thomas.
Tatiana was raised in Paris and then in Boston, when her father taught at MIT in the 70's. She moved to England in the early 1980s and obtained a Bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich. On her return to Paris in 1984, she was a press officer, then became a journalist and literary critic for Psychologies Magazine.
Since 1992, de Rosnay has published twelve novels in French and three in English. She has also worked on the series Family Affairs for which she has written two episodes with the screenwriter Pierre-Yves Lebert. The series was broadcasted on TF1 during the summer of 2000.
In 2006 de Rosnay published her most popular novel, Sarah's Key, selling over three million copies in French and almost two million in English. In 2009 the book was adapted into French cinema, under the same title by Serge Joncour, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia; the movie was converted to English in late 2011. She published A Secret Kept in 2009, Rose in 2011, and The House I Loved in 2012.
In January 2010, several French magazines issued a ranking of the top French novelists, placing de Rosnay at number eight. In January 2011, Le Figaro magazine published a ranking of the top ten most read French authors, positioning de Rosnay at fifth. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Rich in mystery, intrigue and suspense, Sarah’s Key made me wonder and weep.
Roanoke Times
A powerful novel....Tatiana de Rosnay has captured the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of the few good people who stood up against it in this work of fiction more effectively than has been done in many scholarly studies. It is a book that makes us sensitive to how much evil occurred and also to how much willingness to do good also existed in that world..
Rabbi Jack Riemer - South Florida Jewish Journal
(Starred Review.) De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. What did you know about France’s role in World War II—and the Vél d’Hiv round-up in particular—before reading Sarah’s Key? How did this book teach you about, or change your impression of, this important chapter in French history?
2. Sarah’s Key is composed of two interweaving story lines: Sarah’s, in the past, and Julia’s quest in the present day. Discuss the structure and prose-style of each narrative. Did you enjoy the alternating stories and time-frames? What are the strengths or drawbacks of this format?
3. Per above: Which “voice” did you prefer: Sarah’s or Julia’s? Why? Is one more or less authentic than the other? If you could meet either of the two characters, which one would you choose?
4. How does the apartment on la rue de Saintonge unite the past and present action—and all the characters—in Sarah’s Key? In what ways is the apartment a character all its own in?
5. What are the major themes of Sarah’s Key?
6. de Rosnay’s novel is built around several “key” secrets which Julia will unearth. Discuss the element of mystery in these pages. What types of narrative devices did the author use to keep the keep the reader guessing?
7. Were you surprised by what you learned about Sarah’s history? Take a moment to discuss your individual expectations in reading Sarah’s Key. You may wish to ask the group for a show of hands. Who was satisfied by the end of the book? Who still wants to know—or read—more?
8. How do you imagine what happens after the end of the novel? What do you think Julia’s life will be like now that she knows the truth about Sarah? What truths do you think she’ll learn about her self?
9. Among modern Jews, there is a familiar mantra about the Holocaust; they are taught, from a very young age, that they must “remember and never forget” (as the inscription on the Rafle du Vél d’Hiv) Discuss the events of Sarah’s Key in this context. Who are the characters doing the remembering? Who are the ones who choose to forget?
10. What does it take for a novelist to bring a “real” historical event to life? To what extent do you think de Rosnay took artistic liberties with this work?
11. Why do modern readers enjoy novels about the past? How and when can a powerful piece of fiction be a history lesson in itself ?
12. We are taught, as young readers, that every story has a “moral”. Is there a moral to Sarah’s Key? What can we learn about our world—and our selves—from Sarah’s story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys, 1966
W.W. Norton & Co.
189 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393308808
Summary
A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust.
Yet he will make her pay for her ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his black British home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 24, 1890
• Where—Dominica (Caribbean)
• Death—May 14, 1979
• Where—Exeter, Devonshire, England
• Education—Perse School for Girls, England, UK
Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica. Her father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scottish ancestry.
Rhys was educated at the Convent School and moved to England when she was sixteen, sent there to live with her aunt Clarice. She attended the Perse School for girls where she was mocked because of her accent and outsider status. She also attended Cambridge from 1907–08 and spent two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1909.
The instructors at RADA despaired of Rhys ever being able to speak what they considered "proper English" and advised her father to take her away. Unable to train as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean, as her parents wished, she worked with varied success as a chorus girl, adopting the names Vivienne, Emma or Ella Gray.
After her father died in 1910 Rhys drifted into the demimonde. Having fallen in love with a wealthy stockbroker, Lancelot Grey Hugh ("Lancey") Smith (1870–1941), she became his mistress. Although Smith was a bachelor he never offered to marry Rhys and their affair ended within two years, though he continued to be an occasional source of financial help.
Distraught both by the end of the affair and by the experience of a near-fatal abortion (not Smith's child), Rhys began writing an account which later became the basis of her novel Voyage In The Dark. In need of money, she posed nude for an artist in Britain, probably Dublin-born William Orpen, in 1913.
During World War I, Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a soldiers' canteen. In 1918 she worked in a pension office.
In 1919 Rhys married the French-Dutch journalist, spy and songwriter Willem Johan Marie (Jean) Lenglet, the first of her three husbands. She lived with him from 1920 wandering through Europe, mainly in London, Paris and Vienna. They had two children a son who died young and a daughter. They divorced in 1933. She married an editor, Leslie Tilden-Smith in 1934. They moved to Devon in 1939, where she lived for many years. He died in 1945, and two years later, in 1947 she married Tilden-Smith's cousin Max Hamer, a solicitor, who spent much of their marriage in jail. He died in 1966.
Writings
In 1924 Rhys' work was introduced to English writer Ford Madox Ford and they met in Paris, Rhys thereafter writing short stories under his patronage. Ford praised her "singular instinct for form" and recognized that her outsider status gave her a unique viewpoint. "Coming from the Antilles, he declared, with a terrifying insight and...passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World." At that time her husband was in jail for eight months for what Rhys described as currency irregularities: Rhys moved in with Ford and his longtime partner, Stella Bowen and an affair with Ford quickly ensued.
In Voyage in the Dark, published in 1934, the portrayal of the mistreated, rootless woman continued. In Good Morning, Midnight, published in 1939, Rhys used a modified stream-of-consciousness technique to portray the consciousness of an aging woman.
In the 1940s, Rhys all but disappeared from public view, eventually being traced to Cheriton Fitzpaine, in Devon. After her absence from writing and the public eye she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, which won the prestigious WH Smith Literary Award in 1967.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys returned again to the theme of dominance and dependence, through the relationship between a self-assured European man and a powerless woman. Diana Athill of Andre Deutsch's publishing house helped return Rhys' work to a wider audience and was responsible for choosing to publish Wide Sargasso Sea.
Later years
In a brief interview shortly before her death, Rhys questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time. She said that: "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write.... If I could live my life all over again, and choose ...."
Rhys died in Exeter on May 14, 1979 before completing her autobiography. In 1979, the incomplete text appeared posthumously under the title Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
The novel is a triumph of atmosphere-of what one is tempted to call Caribbean Gothic atmosphere.... It has an almost hallucinatory quality.
New York Times
Working a stylistic range from moody introspection to formal elegance, Miss Rhys has us traveling under Antoinette's skin. It is an eerie and memorable trip.
The Nation
Discussion Questions
1. As a child, Antoinette Cosway wonders why the nuns at the convent do not pray for happiness. When Antoinette and Mr. Rochester arrive at their house after their wedding and journey, they drink a toast with two tumblers of rum punch. Antoinette says, "to happiness." Why does happiness elude her? When is she happy and what happens to those moments of happiness?
2. Antoinette's childhood is heavily overcast by threat. What are the threats from outside her household? What are the threats from within? To whom and to what does she turn for protection?
3. What is the racial situation as Antoinette is growing up? What does it mean that she gets called "white cockroach" and "white nigger?" How well do Antoinette and her mother understand the mindset of recently liberated slaves? What about the outsiders like Mr. Mason and Mr. Rochester?
4. How does Antoinette's experience of her mother's rejection shape her life? Is Antoinette like her mother? Could she have escaped her inherited madness? At what point is it too late? Is she really mad?
5. Sandi, Antoinette's cousin who is black, makes an appearance in each of the three sections of the novel. Were you surprised by Antoinette and Sandi's last scene together? What are the barriers that keep these two characters apart? In your opinion, could these barriers have been surmounted?
6. Mr. Rochester seems to marry Antoinette for money, or perhaps for lust, or perhaps for power. Mr. Rochester makes love to Antoinette in part to gain power over her. Antoinettte persuades Christophine to use the power of her obeah to entice Mr. Rochester to her bed. Amelie has sex with Mr. Rochester for her own purposes, and Mr. Rochester sleeps with Amelie for his. What are the relationships between money, lust, sex, and power in the novel?
7. Perspective switches two times in the novel. What is the effect of reading the same story from different people's points of view? Which narrative voice do you trust more? Why?
8. For Antoinette, England is a dream; for Mr. Rochester, the Caribbean is a dream. How do these perceptions keep them from understanding each other? Do they want to understand each other? How does it protect each of them to remain distant?
9. Many of the characters are mad and many are drunk. How do madness and drunkenness serve the characters? Do they give the characters freedom? protection? the ability to see the truth? the ability to hide from it?
10. Whose account of Christophine seems closest to the truth to you? How does her obeah work or not work under these circumstances? How good is her advice? Can Antoinette follow it?
11. Language plays an important role in the novel. Mr. Rochester cannot understand patois. Does this give his "servants" power over him?
12. Mr. Rochester starts to call Antoinette "Bertha," instead of her real name. "Names are important," she says toward the end of the novel. Does changing her name separate her from her family and her home?
13. In Jane Eyre the madwoman in the attic is a very unsympathetic character, an obstacle that stands in the way of the union of Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë portrays Mr. Rochester as a man with a dark past who nevertheless is not to blame for the burden with which he is saddled. Wide Sargasso Sea obviously sees this situation from a different angle. What are some of the factors that might have led to the difference between Charlotte Brontë's version and that of Jean Rhys?
14. Wide Sargasso Sea has two fires—one in the first section and one in the last. How are these fires related? Who dies, who goes crazy, who is set free? Is there a parallel between the parrot in the first fire and Antoinette in the second?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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