Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #8)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2007
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400075720
In Brief
In the life of Mma Ramotswe—a woman duly proud of her fine traditional build—there is rarely a dull moment, and in her newest round of adventures, challenges and intrigues, the same certainly holds true.
But one thing above all else is keeping her occupied—her estimable husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He has been hinting for some time now that he intends to do something special for their adopted daughter, Motholeli, and it seems that the time for this good deed has come.
Of course, good deed or not, his plan is bound to hit some snags. And that’s when he will undoubtedly consider himself doubly—perhaps even triply—lucky to be married to the ever-resourceful, ever-understanding Precious Ramotswe. (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 . . .
(Audio version.) Lisette Lecat doesn't simply portray the characters in McCall Smith's series about Botswana's No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and the Speedy Motors car repair service that improbably share a building in the nation's capitol city: she isMma Ramotswe, that robust, throaty and ever-so-kind detective. Lecat is also Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, whose rumbling pronouncements sound as if they originate in one of the beaten-down Mercedes he tenderly mends. Ramotswe's assistant, Mma Makutsi, makes her caustic comments in a pencil-sharp voice. Even Makutsi's shoes, which offer advice to their wearer from time to time, have a down-to-earth tone to them. Each volume of this series offers Lecat a few new characters to inhabit. She does especially well with a rude, shrill client who thinks her husband is cheating on her. Even though the series is becoming a bit repetitious, Lecat brings so much love and skill to her rendition of the characters that this will charm both old fans and newcomers aliketory.
Publishers Weekly
The "something special" that Mama Ramotswe's husband planned for their adopted daughter hits a snag in the eighth of the popular series
Library Journal
(Starred review.) "Traditionally built" Botswana sleuth Precious Ramotswe continue[s] to resonate with poignancy, wisdom, and wit. Fans of the series will appreciate the deeper characterizations in this eighth entry, particularly that of Mma Ramotswe.... The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series is [a]love letter to a country whose salubrious climate is matched by the warmth and humanity of its people. —Allison Block
Booklist
Everyone's a detective in this eighth peek into the files of Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Blue Shoes and Happiness, 2006, etc.). Mma Precious Ramotswe's distant cousin Tati Monyena, who's almost (but not quite) an administrator at the Dutch Reformed Mission Hospital in Mochudi, wants her to look into the thorny question of why three patients should suddenly die on the same black Friday. Although Mma Ramotswe tells him that the Agency doesn't usually get involved in such cases-"we may be detectives, but not that sort"-she agrees to question the hospital staff, only to find a disconcerting lack of evidence that there's been any foul play. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, has inadvertently intercepted a case-the suspected adultery of bossy Faith Botumile's accountant husband-he promptly claims as his own, brandishing some deductions worthy of Sherlock Holmes in support of his status. And Mma Grace Makutsi, the assistant who's shaken Mma Ramotswe by quitting the Agency for an entire afternoon, is rewarded on her return by her own investigation: chronic pilferage from Mma Teenie Magama's Good Impression Printing Company. Only Mma Ramotswe's case ends up amounting to anything. But the outpouring of mercy it provokes casts a welcome new light on Smith's beloved Botswana, where everyone is honest and polite, except for the ones who aren't.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. In what ways does the early morning scene at the beginning of the novel, with Mma Ramotswe surveying the Botswana landscape from her garden, set the tone for what is to come [pp. 4-7]? Why is the landscape an important element in Mma Ramotswe's consciousness?
2. Both Grace Makutsi and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni are restless in their current work. Why does it worry Mma Ramotswe that when she argues that all work is repetitive, her husband replies that he would like to “try something different,” and handle the case of the woman client he interviewed that morning [pp. 41-42]? Later we learn that J.L.B. Matekoni is worried about a rival for his wife, and asks himself, “How does a husband become more exciting?” [p. 81]. What elements of his character are revealed in the course of the story?
3. When Mr Polopetsi asks Mma Ramotswe to be his son's godmother, she doesn't hesitate to say yes. Yet she realizes that it will put her under various obligations to the boy. She thinks, “But we cannot always choose whose lives will become entangled with our own; these things happen to us, come to us uninvited” [p. 55]. What is the etiquette called for at a moment like this, and why?
4. When her husband first reports on interviewing Mma Botumile, Mma Ramotswe is impressed with his powers of observation [pp. 14-15]. What goes wrong with his investigation? How does the confusion about identity follow through in his mistake about Mma Ramotswe's other man [p. 176]?
5. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is amazed at the rudeness of Mma Botumile, and doesn't understand why she behaves as she does. “In his experience bad behaviour came from those who were unsure ofthemselves, those who had some obscure point to make” [p. 83]. Is there any obvious reason why this woman is so rude, particularly since she lives in Botswana, “a polite country” [p. 83]?
6. Grace is humiliated by her former classmate, Violet Sephotho, when she goes to an employment agency to seek a new job [p. 102]. How is this encounter similar to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's meetings with Mma Botumile? What is the effect, on Grace, of being treated so rudely? How does this meeting change her feelings about Mma Ramotswe and the job she has left?
7. What is the nature of the conflict between Grace Makutsi and Charlie, the apprentice [pp. 59-64]? What change does Grace have to undergo in order to behave more kindly toward Charlie? Is there any particular reason she has been able to make this change in herself?
8. Mma Makutsi sometimes has trouble controlling herself when it comes to saying what is on her mind. How does this characteristic create trouble for her, and how does it create comedy in the novel?
9. Thinking about the small-time thievery going on at Teenie Magama's printing business, Mma Makutsi realizes that some people “were governed by some impulse within them that stopped them from feeling and understanding” how their actions affected others [pp. 113-14]. How does Mma Makutsi suggest the thief be dealt with, and how does this experiment in human behavior work out?
10. “Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other-and land, of course” [p. 127]. To whom do you attribute this speech? Is there a recognizable narrative voice in the novel, and is this speech the product of the narrator's consciousness?
11. Is it likely that Charlie's accident with the Mercedes will have an effect on his habitual irresponsibility [p. 154]? How does Mr J.L.B. Matekoni behave when Charlie returns, humiliated, to resume his apprenticeship [p. 191]?
12. The title of the novel focuses on “the good husband” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who, we learn, suffers from depression and has been treated with medication [p. 177]. Depressives, he has been told by Dr Moffat, sometimes suffer from delusional thinking, and he finds himself wondering if Mma Ramotswe would betray him with another man. Does this story develop the character of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in ways we haven't seen before? If so, how?
13. How does Mma Ramotswe deal with the discovery of who is responsible for the mysterious deaths of three patients in the intensive care ward? Why, when she breaks the news to Tati Monyena, does she offer to say grace [p. 207]? How would you describe the quality of Mma Ramotswe's spirituality, and how does it inform her treatment of others?
14. Detective stories usually have complex plots and eventually provide a solution to a mystery. McCall Smith's books, however, are not so much based on plot as on human interaction and on the fact that misunderstandings and errors are the stuff of daily life. How does Mma Ramotswe's approach to the detective's profession differ from that in other detective novels?
15. Book reviewers and fans all 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?
16. A typographic design, repeating the word Africa, follows the novel's final sentence. How does this affect your reading of the ending, and what emotions does it express?
17. No less than those of Jane Austen, the novels of Alexander McCall Smith are studies in the comedy of manners—stories based on a close observation of the foibles of human behavior and interaction. Think about how Emma's behavior is cruel and mocking toward Miss Bates, and Mr. Darcy's is condescending and rude toward Eliza Bennet at the dance. What might Mma Ramotswe have said about these situations?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Land of Painted Caves: (Earth's Children series 6)
Jean M. Auel, 2011
Crown Publishing Group
768 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780517580516
Summary
It is summer in the land of the Zelandonii, and it is nearly time for the next Summer Meeting. Ayla finds it is time to strike a balance between being a mother to her daughter, Jonayla, and a loving mate to Jondalar, while pursuing the fascinating knowledge and power of the Zelandoni, lead by the charismatic First Among Those Who Served the Mother of the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave.
With The Land of Painted Caves, Auel gives fans the epic they've been waiting for, and she does not disappoint as she continues the story of Ayla and Jondalar and their little daughter Jonayla. Once again Jean Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived tens of thousands of years ago.
The terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity, and daily lives of her characters are as real to the reader as today's news. The Land of Painted Caves is a brilliant achievement by one of the world's most beloved authors. (From the author's website.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 18, 1936
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Portland State University; M.B.A,
University of Oregon
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Jean Marie Untinen, of Finnish descent, married Ray Bernard Auel after high school, raised five children, and attended college at night while working for an electronics firm in Portland, Oregon. Shortly after earning her MBA in 1976, she was inspired by a story idea so powerful it effectively consumed her for the next few years. In a single creative burst, she conceived a sweeping epic set in prehistoric Europe and featuring a unique heroine: a young Cro-Magnon woman named Ayla, raised as a misfit in a society of inhospitable Neandertals. Auel quit her job, immersed herself in research, and began writing nearly nonstop.
At first, Auel imagined she had the makings of a single book. But when she completed her first draft (more than 450,000 words!), she realized that the story fell naturally into six parts, each one demanding a novel all its own. She worked feverishly on the first installment, revising parts of it as many as 20 and 30 times. Published in 1980, The Clan of the Cave Bear became an instant bestseller, marking the start of the thrilling, totally original Ice Age saga, Earth's Children.
The series owes much of its appeal to Auel's feminist protagonist Ayla, a preternaturally resourceful woman with all the skills and abilities of men but without their warlike qualities. She is the first to ride a horse, tame a wolf, and make fire from flint; she understands the healing power of herbs; and, as the novels progress, she develops mystical, even shamanic powers. Readers were understandably intrigued.
Although Auel writes speculative fiction, she receives high marks for historical accuracy. In the interest of creating an authentic Ice Age setting, her research has led her in interesting, unpredictable directions. She has read extensively, traveled to archeological sites around the world, and learned through various sources how to knapp flint, tan hides, construct snow caves, and prepare medicinal herbs. What emerges in her writing is a precise evocation of time and place that provides a realistic and enthralling backdrop to Ayla's adventures.
Extras
• Jean's last name is pronounced like "owl."
• Before becoming a bestselling novelist, Jean worked as a clerk, a circuit board designer, a credit manager, and a technical writer.
• Jean's extensive research into Ice Age Europe has taken her to prehistoric sites in France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Germany.
• When Jean first gazed at the Paleolithic paintings on the walls of Altamira's caves, she was so moved she began to cry.
• Jean's advice to aspiring writers of historical fiction: "Write what you love to learn about." (From Barnes & Noble and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[T]here is real sweetness in the saga’s finale, when Ayla’s legacy to the world—both hers and ours—is made clear. Myriad things have changed in the last 30,000 years, but the endurance of human love is not one of them.
Washington Post
[A] convincing portrait of ancient life. And readers who fell in love with little Ayla will no doubt revel in her prehistoric womanhood.
People
Thirty thousand years in the making and 31 years in the writing, Auel's overlong and underplotted sixth and final volume in the Earth's Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear; etc.) finds Cro-Magnon Ayla; her mate, Jondalar; and their infant daughter, Jonayla, settling in with the clan of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonaii. Animal whisperer and medicine woman Ayla is an acolyte in training to become a full-fledged Zelandoni (shaman) of the clan, but all is not rosy in this Ice Age setting; there are wild animals to face and earthquakes to survive, as well as a hunter named Balderan, who has targeted Ayla for death, and a potential cave-wrecker named Marona. While gazing on an elaborate cave painting (presumably, the Lascaux caverns in France), Ayla has an epiphany and invents the concept of art appreciation, and after she overdoses on a hallucinogenic root, Ayla and Jondalar come to understand how much they mean to one another, thus giving birth to another concept—monogamy. Otherwise, not much of dramatic interest happens, and Ayla, for all her superwomanish ways, remains unfortunately flat. Nevertheless, readers who enjoyed the previous volumes will relish the opportunity to re-enter pre-history one last time.
Publishers Weekly
Auel's prehistoric series debuted to rave reviews and a movie deal in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear. Nine years after The Shelters of Stone, the final book will be released accompanied by a massive promotional blitz (including academic and library marketing). Ayla is the mate of Jondalar, the mother of Jonayla, their infant daughter, and an acolyte of the First of the Zelandonii, the spiritual leaders of the caves of her husband's people. But all is not well with Ayla. She is separated from her husband and daughter while training for her new position, which takes a terrible physical toll on her health, and her innovative ideas and unusual history create conflict among the people. Long, well-researched, sometimes repetitive descriptions of cave paintings, food gathering, hunting, family relationships, and religion will appeal to those with an interest in prehistory. Others may wish there was a bit more story and a bit less anthropology. Verdict: Though one must occasionally suspend disbelief that one young woman, no matter how intelligent, can really be responsible for introducing concepts such as animal husbandry, sign language, and the role of men in sexuality and conception, the book is compelling and will be in high demand by Auel's fans. —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal
What began 30 years ago with Auel's best-seller The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) comes to an end in the sixth installment.... There's not a lot of urgency in this final volume, but the millions of readers who have been with Ayla from the start will want to once again lose themselves in the rich prehistoric world Auel conjures and see how this internationally beloved series concludes. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
(Starred review.) As with her other books, Auel spins her tale with credible dialogue, believable situations and considerable drama. More than that, she deftly creates a whole world, giving a sense of the origins of class, ethnic and cultural differences that alternately divide and fascinate us today. Among modern epic spinners, Auel has few peers.
KirKus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did you find Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children ® Series? How long have you been reading the series? Have you shared the experience of reading these books with other people in your life?
2. The author’s research is acclaimed by experts, and she takes great pains to get the details correct. What does this authenticity contribute to The Land of Painted Caves? Do you feel that you have learned facts and aspects about ancient cultures you might not have otherwise known?
3. If you could ask Jean Auel anything, what would you ask her? If you have read the entire six-novel series, what questions do you feel were answered in this book? What questions do you still have?
4. How has Ayla’s tendency to think as a medicine woman shaped who she has become? What does her devotion to helping others who are hurt or ill say about her, and how does it affect how she is perceived in her home cave and along her travels?
5. The Sacred Cave is based on real caves and drawings. What does the ancient art tell us about the people who made it? What is the value of these caves to us today? In the novel, some who visit the caves are moved to participate; what do you think causes that impulse?
6. Ayla is a constant source of change and innovation for which she is both rewarded and punished. What difficulties does she face because of her tendency to challenge the status quo? What is the difference between Ayla, a woman, initiating change, versus a man introducing it? Do you think people today adapt differently to change?
7. When Balderan had to be punished for his crimes, did you agree with the decision of the Zelandonia (see chapter 25)? Ayla’s feelings about being directly involved are mixed, but the intended punishment was not carried out; what did you think about the mob’s reaction? Has justice evolved?
8. Sex is an important part of social interaction in The Land of Painted Caves and the earlier books in Auel’s Earth’s Children® series. How are our society’s thoughts about sex different or the same as the Zelandonii’s?
9. How does the tension between Ayla’s role as a wife and mother and her training to become one of the Zelandonia impact the events of the novel? Does this struggle resonate with you today? How? Why?
10. One of the themes in this book is jealousy. Jondalar confronts the most extreme jealousy of his life when Ayla turns to someone else, and Ayla experiences jealousy for the first time. What were some causes and results of jealousy between the characters in this novel? Why do the Zelandonii condemn jealousy and work so hard to eradicate it?
11. Ayla has had to deal with immense losses in her life, and a great sacrifice is required during her calling. What did you feel about her loss? What is the connection between losing her baby and learning the end of the Mother’s song?
12. What makes Ayla risk concocting the root brew she learned to make in The Clan of the Cave Bear again? What did she discover by using the roots to travel to the spirit world? Do you think her decision was inevitable?
13. How has Ayla’s and Jondalar’s relationship changed since they first met? How has it stayed the same? Does this reflect the rhythm of a modern relationship? If so, how, and if not, why? What remains their greatest challenge as a couple?
14. What are some of the implications of Ayla’s revelation that men and women are equally involved in creating children (distinct from the Neanderthal society’s belief that the individual’s totems vie for dominance and the Cro-Magnon society’s belief that the Mother chooses the man’s spirit to mix with the woman’s spirit when She blesses a woman)?
15. At the end of The Land of Painted Caves author Jean M. Auel has illuminated many aspects of her characters’ stories, begun thirty years ago in The Clan of the Cave Bear. What most surprised you? What most satisfied your? And do dedicated readers still have any questions?
16. Jean M. Auel has stated that when she ends this series, she will miss Ayla's character who she claims to know better than some of her friends. Other than Ayla, which character featured in The Land of Painted Caves will you miss most, or which character remains most clearly etched in your mind?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Saturday
Ian McEwan, 2005
Random House
289 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400076192
Summary
From the pen of a master — the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement — comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable.
There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.
On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne’s day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug.
To Perowne’s professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him — with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 21, 1948
• Where—Aldershot, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Sussex; M.A. University of East Anglia
• Awards—(see blow)
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Ian Russell McEwan is an English novelist. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (nee Moore). His father was a working class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major. As a result, McEwan spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve.
McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson's pioneering creative writing course.
Career
McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its alleged obscenity. His second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, was published in 1978.
The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his two earliest novels, both of which were adapted into films. The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed "Ian Macabre." These were followed by The Child in Time (1987), winner of the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award; The Innocent (1990); and Black Dogs (1992). McEwan has also written two children's books, Rose Blanche (1985) and The Daydreamer (1994). His 1997 novel, Enduring Love, about the relationship between a science writer and a stalker, was popular with critics and adapted into a film in 2004.
In 1998, he won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam. His next novel, Atonement (2001), received considerable acclaim; Time magazine named it the best novel of 2002, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, the critically acclaimed movie Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was released in cinemas worldwide. His next work, Saturday (2005), follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon. Saturday won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 2005, and his novel On Chesil Beach (2007) was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.
McEwan has also written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.
In 2008 at the Hay Festival, McEwan gave a surprise reading of his then novel-in-progress, eventually published as Solar (2010). The novel includes a scientist hoping to save the planet from the threat of climate change and got its inspiration from a 2005 Cape Farewell expedition. McEwan along with fellow artists and scientists spent several weeks aboard a ship near the north pole.
McEwan's twelfth novel, Sweet Tooth (2012), is historical in nature and set in the 1970. In an interview with the Scotsman newspaper, McEwan revealed that the impetus for writing the novel was a way for him to write a "disguised autobiography." McEwan's 13th novel, The Children Act (2014), is about a high court judge.
Controversy
In 2006 McEwan was accused of plagiarism, specifically a passage in Atonement that closely echoed one from a 2012 memoir, No Time for Romance, by Lucilla Andrews. McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work; in fact, he had included a brief note at the end of the book referring to Andrews's autobiography, among several other works. Writing in the Guardian in November 2006, a month after Andrews' death, McEwan professed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt to the author.
The incident recalled critical controversy over his debut novel The Cement Garden, key plot elements that closely mirrored some of those in Our Mother's House, a 1963 novel by Julian Gloag, which had also been made into a film. McEwan denied charges of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of the earlier work.
In 2011 McEwan caused controversy when he accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In the face of pressure from groups and individuals opposed to the Israeli government, specifically British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP), McEwan wrote a letter to the Guardian in which he said...
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics, and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra—surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If BWISP is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other.
He announced that he would donate the ten thousand dollar prize money to Combatants for Peace, an organization that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters.
Recognition
McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), Atonement (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Longlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). McEwan also received nominations for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2005, he was the first recipient of Dickinson College's Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Program Award, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. In 2008, McEwan received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College, London, where he used to teach English literature. In 2008, The Times (of London) featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Personal
McEwan has been married twice. His 13-year marriage to spiritual healer and therapist Penny Allen ended in 1995 and was followed by a bitter custody battle over their two sons. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, was formerly the editor of the Guardian's Review section.
In 2002, McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during World War II when his mother was married to a different man. After her first husband was killed in combat, McEwan's mother married her lover, and Ian was born a few years later. The brothers are in regular contact, and McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir. (Excerpted and adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)
Book Reviews
Though Saturday is too indebted to Mrs. Dalloway to resonate with the fierce originality of the author's last book, Atonement, it's clear that with this volume, Mr. McEwan has not only produced one of the most powerful pieces of post-9/11 fiction yet published, but also fulfilled that very primal mission of the novel: to show how we—a privileged few of us, anyway—live today.
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times
There's little question that McEwan is supremely gifted and knows all the tricks and sleights of fiction. His latest novel, Saturday, might be a textbook example of how to generate a growing sense of disquiet with the tiniest finger-flicks of detail — a broken mirror, a flash of red, two figures on a park bench. Slowly, readers may start to guess what will happen, but not how or when or to whom. McEwan makes us wait, lulls us into thinking we might be mistaken, and then — just as we're feeling relaxed, bathed in well-being as after a big glass of wine — he springs.
Michael Dirda - The Washington Post
An increasingly mellowed but no less gripping McEwan (Atonement, 2002, etc.) portrays a single day in the life of a well-off upper-middle-class Londoner, blessed in every conceivable way. While crowds mass to protest the coming invasion of Iraq, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon at the top of his game, intelligent and self-aware, goes about a Saturday that's by turns mundane and marvelous. We follow his reflections on surgeries, so well detailed as to be med-porn; lazy lovemaking upon awakening, and restorative sex at the end of the day with smart, devoted, lawyer wife Rosalind (he notes his unusual luck in still wanting no one else); a sometimes savage squash game with friend and partner Jay; a sad visit to his senile mother; and shopping for dinner. A chance encounter with Baxter, an intelligent young thug, provides the small plot; Henry escapes a mugging when he recognizes early signs of Huntington's in the lad and takes control. That evening, at Henry's well-appointed townhouse, in the warm glow of gathered family-father-in-law John Grammaticus, towering poet turned to drink; son Theo, a gifted young blues guitarist; daughter Daisy, a poet visiting from Paris, newly published and newly pregnant-Baxter returns and holds Rosalind at knifepoint. Terrorized and terrified, the family, through their various strengths, overcome Baxter, who lands in the hospital requiring emergency surgery from the forgiving Henry. Comprised by an active awareness of his place in the world, of his love for family and work, and of the contingencies that make his life his own, and that make Baxter's life his own, Henry's thoughts—especially since they're informed also by a matter-of-fact understanding of the neurological processes that emerge as behavior and look like choice—envelop us in a total immersion experience. A sort of middle-class humanist manifesto: when you find yourself fortunate beyond all measure in a random universe, gratitude, generosity, and compassion are a decent response.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Saturday's epigraph comes from Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow, whose novel Herzog features an academic facing the shortcomings of his life. The novel was published in 1964; how might the history of the early Sixties have influenced Bellow's perspective? Forty years later, how does Ian McEwan's protagonist embody current events?
2. At the end of the Saturday's first paragraph, as Henry wakes too early, McEwan writes, "And he's entirely himself, he is certain of it, and he knows that sleep is behind him: to know the difference between it and waking, to know the boundaries, is the essence of sanity." To what else does Henry awaken as the novel progresses? In the book and in the world, who remains asleep (and unaware of their slumber)?
3. When Henry hears about the cargo plane's safe landing, McEwan observes, "Schrödinger's cat was alive after all." How does Schrödinger's thought-experiment, allowing two outcomes to co-exist during a period of uncertainty, apply to Henry's daily life? How does it express the nature of human thought during times of anxiety?
4. Was the collision between Henry's car and Baxter's an accident? What visual cues (the type of car Henry associates with criminals, the "scarecrow" clothes that make him look like something other than a doctor) stoke the fire? What class conflicts are projected as the men argue? What determines who has more power in that situation?
5. Discuss the irony of the novel's title. Henry intended to spend the day relaxing; does the modern world allow for any true respite from worry?
6. In your opinion, what accounts for the bliss between Henry and his wife? When he met her, did her vulnerability (through illness) feed their attraction, or was it merely a means for them to find one another? What accounts for Henry's uneasy relationship with his father-in-law?
7. In researching Saturday, Ian McEwan spent months observing brain surgery. What parallels exist between a writer's craft and a surgeon's? What is the effect of McEwan's decision to cast Henry in the specialty of neurosurgery (as opposed to thoracic or orthopedic surgery, for example)? How does Henry's ease with medical terminology, but discomfort with the vocabulary of literature, influence your reading experience?
8. Jay Strauss moved to the U.K. in part because of his enthusiasm for socialized medicine. How would you describe the healthcare system presented in the novel?
9. Do you think Jay personifies most or few Americans? Is he more competitive than Henry?
10. As Henry watches his mother's dementia worsen, he labels the physiological reasons for her decline. Does his familiarity with science ease or aggravate the sadness of losing her?
11. One of Henry's last errands in the novel is to listen to attend a performance by Theo's band. What does blues music, along with its American flavor, mean to Theo? Does Henry experience this art differently from the way he hears Daisy's work?
12. Why was Baxter's invasion of Henry's house essential to this novel? In what way can this scene be explored as a metaphor for politics, war, even global economics? Why was it also necessary for Henry's security system to be proven ineffective that night?
13. Using an anthology or website, read Matthew Arnold's nineteenth-century masterwork "Dover Beach" in its entirety. What caused it to resonate with Baxter's memories? Can you think of any contemporary poems in free verse that would have served Daisy's purpose so well?
14. What saves Henry's family from Baxter and his cohorts: Poetry? Pregnancy? Bravery? Intelligence? Luck? Divine intervention? Baxter's illness? How would you have reacted in a similar situation?
15. As Henry returns to the hospital that night, he realizes this is where he feels most comfortable—even more so than when he's in the world of alleged leisure. Earlier in the novel, McEwan describes how orderly Henry's mother was; Henry wishes he had just once invited her to the operating theater. Is this sense of order and belonging innate to Henry's profession, or is it something Henry has ascribed to it? In what locale do you personally feel you're at the top of your game? Is this the same locale that puts you at ease?
16. Why is Henry willing to perform surgery on Baxter? What keeps Henry from craving the revenge Rosalind anticipated? Would you be able to drop the charges, as Henry hopes to do? How do you respond to McEwan's questions: "Is this forgiveness? Or is [Henry] the one seeking forgiveness?"
17. Can Henry's surgery on Baxter be called revenge? Is his probing of Baxter's brain a violation? Or, is Henry's magnanimous act a victory of enlightened liberalism over Baxter's primal power politics?
18. During Henry's reunion with Daisy, they waver between words of affection and a rapid-fire ideological debate about Iraq. How would such a debate have unfolded in your household?
19. Four generations are presented in Saturday, including Daisy's child. What does each generation bestow, or hope to bestow, upon the next? What spurred such an exceptional level of accomplishment among the members of the Perowne family?
20. Discuss the element of storytelling itself in Saturday. Do the stories disseminated within this novel-by the broadcasters, the protesters, the lawless, the keepers of family legacy-all describe the same reality? Who or what has the power to influence what we believe? What literary devices did Ian McEwan use to evoke realism in this novel?
21. Examining the works of Ian McEwan as a continuum, how does Saturday enrich the portrait of life he has been crafting throughout his career?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Gregory Maguire, 1995
HarperCollins
406 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061350962
Summary
Following the traditions of Gabriel García Marquez, John Gardner and J.R.R. Tolkien, Wicked is a richly woven tale that takes us to the other, darker side of the rainbow as novelist Gregory Maguire chronicles the Wicked Witch of the West's odyssey through the complex world of Oz—where people call you wicked if you tell the truth.
Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or to overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. But Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters the university in Shiz, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz' most promising young citizens.
Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Even wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.
In Wicked, Gregory Maguire has taken the largely unknown world of Oz and populated it with the power of his own imagination. Fast-paced, fantastically real and supremely entertaining, this is a novel of vision and re-vision. Oz never will be the same again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 9, 1954
• Where—Albany, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York, Albany; M.A., Simmons College; Ph.D., Tufts
University
• Currently—lives near Boston, Massachusetts
Gregory Maguire is an American novelist. Most famously, he is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; After Alice; and more than 30 other novels for adults and children.
Education
Maguire, born and raised in Albany, New York, is the middle child of seven. Schooled in Catholic institutions through high school, he received a B.A. in English and Art from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.A. in Children's Literature from Simmons College, and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Tufts University. His doctoral thesis was about English-language fantasy written for children between 1938 and 1988.
Early career
Maguire was 24 when, in 1978, he published his first novel for children. He has since published more than 20 books for young people and, alongside his creative work, has devoted much of his professional life to literacy and literature education.
In 1979, Maguire began teaching at Simmons College, where he became co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature. He remained at Simmons until 1986.
In 1987, he co-founded a nonprofit educational charity, Children's Literature New England, Inc., and served as co-director for twenty-five years.
Children's novels
Starting with that first book in 1978, The Lightning Time, Maguire has published over 20 books for young readers, including his well-known "The Hamlet Chronicles." That seven book series includes Seven Spiders Spinning (1994), Six Haunted Hairdos (1997), Five Alien Elves (1998), Four Stupid Cupids (2000), Three Rotten Eggs (2002), A Couple of April Fools (2004), and One Final Firecracker (2005). Though he is best known as a fantasy writer, Maguire has also written picture books, science fiction, realistic and historic fiction.
Adult novels
In 1995, Maguire turned to adult novels with the first book of his "Wicked Years" series: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995). That book transforms the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaption into the misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba Thropp. The novel became the blockbuster Broadway musical Wicked and, at its height, had nine companies running simultaneously around the world.
Next in "The Wicked Years" line-up came Son of a Witch (2005), A Lion Among Men (2008), and Out of Oz (2011).
Maguire's other adult novels, most of which were also inspired by classic children's tales, include Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), Lost (2001), Mirror, Mirror (2003), and After Alice (2015), which was published on the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Other
Maguire is an occasional reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He has contributed and performed original material for NPR's All Things Considered and has lectured widely around the world on literature and culture.
In addition to his writing, Maguire has been a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance. He has also served on boards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Board of Associates of the Boston Public Library, and the Concord Free Press, among others.
Personal
Maguire met the American painter Andy Newman in 1997, and in 1999 they adopted the first of their three children. Two others followed in 2001 and 2002. Maguire and Newman were married in June 2004, shortly after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts. Maguire and his family were featured on Oprah, and he was the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile by Alex Witchel. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/29/2015.)
Book Reviews
Listen up, Munchkins. Stop your singing, stop the dancing. The Wicked Witch is no longer dead. But not to worry. Gregory Maguire's shrewdly imagined and beautifully written first novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, not only revives her but re-envisions and redeems her for our times.
Newsday
It's a staggering feat of wordcraft, made no less so by the fact that its boundaries were set decades ago by somebody else. Maguire's larger triumph here is twofold: First, in Elphaba, he has created (re-created? renovated?) one of the great heroines in fantasy literature: a fiery, passionate, unforgettable and ultimately tragic figure. Second, Wicked is the best fantasy novel of ideas I've read since Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast or Frank Herbert's Dune. Would that all books with this much innate consumer appeal were also this good. And vice versa.
Los Angeles Times
Children—children of all ages, as Maguire reminds us in this splendid novel—need witches. Gregory Maguire has taken this figure of childhood fantasy and given her a sensual and powerful nature that will stir adult hearts with fear and longing all over again. It's a brilliant trick—and a remarkable treat.
New Orleans Times - Picayune
Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying?and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years. Dorothy appears only near novel's end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas—as well as the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion—and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy.
Publishers Weekly
(Young Adult) Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, has gotten a bum rap. Her mother is embarrassed and repulsed by her bright-green baby with shark's teeth and an aversion to water. At college, the coed experiences disapproval and rejection by her roommate, Glinda, a silly girl interested only in clothes, money, and popularity. Elphaba is a serious and inquisitive student. When she learns that the Wizard of Oz is politically corrupt and causing economic ruin, Elphaba finds a sense of purpose to her life—to stop him and to restore harmony and prosperity to the land. A Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, and an unknown species called a "Dorothy" appear in very small roles... The story presents Elphaba in a sympathetic and empathetic manner-readers will want her to triumph! The conclusion, however, is the same as L. Frank Baum's. The book has both idealism and cynicism in its discussion of social, religious, educational, and political issues present in Oz, and, more pointedly, present in our day and time. The idealism is whimsical and engaging; the cynicism is biting. Sometimes the earthy language seems appropriate and adds to the sense of place; sometimes the four-letter words and sexual explicitness distract from the charm of the tale. The multiple threads to the plot proceed unevenly, so that the pace of the story jumps rather than moves steadily forward. Wicked is not an easy rereading of The Wizard of Oz. It is for good readers who like satire, and love exceedingly imaginative and clever fantasy. —Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Introduction: It's hard to pin down the aspect of Gregory Maguire's Wicked that is likely to fascinate book clubs the most. Is it the detail with which the author reimagines L. Frank Baum's fantasy world of Oz? The care with which Maguire takes the classic work and uses it to explore modern issues like justice and equal rights, superficial notions of beauty and ugliness, ecological concerns and domestic violence? Or, perhaps, is it the sheer delight in watching an immensely gifted writer take a set of familiar characters and imbue them with an entirely new life.
Of course, it is the Wicked Witch of the West herself who dominates this time around: Elphaba, as she is called, is now the complicated centerpiece of a story that once seemed to belong to the relatively simple Dorothy. Brilliant, troubled, passionate, and powerful, Elphaba stands in marked contrast to the girl from Kansas, who, on the whole, takes a backseat to the natives of Oz in this version. Maguire's method with Elphaba's tale is to unpack the simple idea of a "wicked witch" and ask the question, How do you get to be "wicked"? The novel offers the possibility that what from one perspective is a simple case of villainy could be, from another point of view, a life that doesn't resolve into a simple set of "good" or "bad" actions. Book clubs will be particularly interested in following how, as a heroine, Elphaba is a strong, deeply modern woman, whose intelligence is both her great strength and a curse almost as powerful as her more fantastic features, emerald skin and monstrous teeth.
Beyond the issues of moral character raised by Elphaba's story, Wicked provides readers with a host of delights, some of which echo the original Oz books and some of which are completely original. Reading groups will find that Maguire's language, and particularly his facility for making the world of Oz both contemporary yet fairy tale–like, provides fertile grounds for conversation about just where the difference between the "fantastic" and the "realistic" can be drawn, a skill which may invite comparisons to writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie.
Reading groups will perhaps find their greatest pleasure in discussing what Maguire has taken from the original book, and how he has altered or mutated Baum's world. Book clubs may even be interested in comparing the famed film version of The Wizard of Oz with the novel, to see what the author has borrowed from that source. In this sense Wicked is far more than a cleverly twisted tale about good and evil witches, Munchkin society, and talking animals — it is a book that shows how a children's story can become a larger myth for an entire society. Maguire invites us to think about how and why we read fantasy, what we take from it as children, and what we can see in it as adults. Wicked may be "updating" L. Frank Baum's original work, but it also reveals how the original remains so captivating to generations of readers, young and old. —Bill Tipper for Barnes & Noble Reviews
_______________
1. When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?
2. Gregory Maguire fashioned the name of Elphaba (pronounced EL-fa-ba) from the initials of the author of The Wizard of Oz, Lyman Frank Baum-L-F-B-Elphaba. Wicked derives some of its power from the popularity of its source material. Does meeting up with familiar characters and famous fictional situations require more patience and effort on the part of the reader, or less?
3. Wicked flips the Oz we knew from the classic movie on its head. To what extent does Maguire's vision of Oz contradict the Oz we're familiar with? How have Dorothy and the other characters changed or remained the same? Has Wicked changed your conception of the original? If so, how?
4. The novel opens with a scene in which the Witch overhears Dorothy, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and theTin Woodman gossiping about her. She's "possessed by demons," they say. "She was castrated at birth...she was an abused child...she's a dangerous tyrant." How does this scene set the stage for the story, and what themes does it introduce?
5. What is the significance of Elphaba's green skin? What are the rewards of being so different, and what are the drawbacks? In Oz — and in the real world — what are the meanings associated with the color green, and are any of them pertinent to Elphaba's character?
6. One of Wicked's key themes is the nature and roots of evil. What are the theories that Maguire sets out? Is Elphaba evil? Are her actions evil? Is there such a thing as evil, a free-floating power in the universe like time or gravity? Or is evil an attribute of the actions of human beings? (Hint: Turn to pages 231 and 370 for scenes that will draw you into the conversation.)
7. Discuss the importance of the Clock of the Time Dragon. Does the Clock simply reflect events, or does it shape them? Why is it significant that Elphaba was born inside it? That Turtle Heart was killed by it? What revelations does it offer to Elphaba and the reader when she reencounters it at the end of the book?
8. The first section of the book ends powerfully but enigmatically when the young Elphaba is discovered under the dock, cradled in the paws of a magical beast as if sitting on a throne. How do you interpret this scene, and what do you think it foretells, if anything?
9. The place of Animals in society is an important theme in Wicked. Why does Elphaba make it her mission to fight for Animal rights? How else does social class define Oz, and why?
10. [Galinda] reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet" (page 65). Discuss the transformation of Galinda, shallow Shiz student, to Glinda the Good Witch. How does she change — and by how much? What is her eventual "significance," both in Oz and in the story?
11. Discuss the ways in which Elphaba's determination and willfulness lend purpose and order to her life, and the cost of being such a strong character. Elphaba isn't the only strong female character in Wicked. How do Nessarose, Glinda, and Sarima deal with the issues of power and control? Where do each of them draw strength from? Is the world of Maguire's Oz more or less patriarchal than millennial America?
12. Wicked is an epic story, built along the lines of a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy, in which the seeds of Elphaba's destiny are all sown early in the novel. How much of Elphaba's career is predestined, and how much choice does she have? Do you think that she was no more than a puppet of the Wizard or Madame Morrible, as she fears?
13. Early in their unlikely friendship, Galinda catches a glimpse of Elphaba and thinks she "looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life" (pages 78-79). Discuss the dual, and sometimes contradictory, nature of Elphaba's character. Why does Elphaba insist that she doesn't have a soul?
14. Who or what is Yackle? Where does she appear in the story, and what role does she serve in Elphaba's life? Is she good or evil — both or neither?
15. Was Elphaba's story essentially a tragedy or a triumph? Did she fail at every major endeavor, and thus fail at life; or because she refused to give up or change to suit the opinions of others, was her life a success? Is there a possibility that Dorothy's "baptismal splash" redeemed Elphaba on her deathbed, or was this the final indignity in a life of miserable mistakes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Miracle at Speedy Motors (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #9)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616880309
Summary
Investigating her latest case, Mma Ramotswe has to trek to a game preserve, where she rediscovers the breathtaking beauty of her beloved Botswana. She is there to uncover the truth about an elderly American traveller whose safari proved to be his last journey. What she discovers is a surprise to everyone concerned.
Meanwhile, problems are also brewing back at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: Mma Makutsi has instituted the Complaint Half Hour in order to air her grievances—which works well for her until Mma Ramotswe decides to institute her own version. And life is no less complicated at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, where Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—Mma Ramotswe’s estimable husband—has suddenly decided to mortgage the garage.
But without a doubt—and after several cups of bush tea—Precious Ramotswe will make sure, as only she can, that everything turns out as it should. (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
Before this touching case is solved—with the twist of folk humor that makes the whole series irresistible—there will indeed be miracles.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
(Audio version.) This ninth "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" novel is one of the strongest entries in a consistently strong series. Like its predecessors, it is a gentle, warmhearted mix of loosely interwoven narrative threads that reaffirm Botswana detective Precious Ramotswe's philosophy of serving others. The book also offers enough intrigue, mystery, and uncertainty to keep listeners guessing-particularly about what the title's "miracle" will be. The answer is at once surprising and wholly believable. As always, South African reader Lisette Lecat brings a perfect accent and intonation to her narration, making Smith's books a treat to hear. With a new BBC miniseries adapted from the novels coming to HBO, American interest in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency should soon be greater than ever.
Kent Rasmussen - Library Journal
(Starred review.) The ninth installment in McCall Smith’s beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series finds Botswanan Precious Ramotswe musing upon more mysteries of life. —Allison Block
Booklist
Mma Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's foremost detective, witnesses a miracle, though not the one she was hoping for. In their deceptively quiet way, things are bustling at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Mma Manka Sebina, an adopted woman from the village of Ootse who does not know her blood relatives, begs Mma Ramotswe: "Please find me a birthday, and find me some people." Mma Grace Makutsi, the formidable assistant who clearly has her heart set on becoming the No. 1 Agency's Chief Detective, arranges with her fiance Phuti Radiphuti, owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, to have a connubial bed-and what a bed!-delivered to her house. Mma Ramotswe's husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is excited to hear Dr. Mwata suggest that, against all earlier medical opinion, he may be able to help the couple's foster daughter Motholeli to walk again. Although Motholeli has always accepted with rare grace the spinal injury that has kept her in a wheelchair, she can't keep herself from hoping too. The only cloud on the horizon is a series of spiteful anonymous letters in which Mma Ramotswe is warned: "Fat lady, you watch out!" If there are fewer funny moments than in Mma Ramotswe's previous cases (Good Husband of Zebra Drive, 2007, etc.), there's a deepening gravity and sweetness you won't find anywhere else in the genre.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. After Mma Makutsi protests about the agency's address being “in care of” Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mma Ramotswe thinks about the meanings of the phrase. “Yes, we were all care of one another in the final analysis, at least in Botswana, where people looked for and valued those invisible links that connected people, that made for belonging” [p. 5]. Would you consider this idea central to the book? To which characters or events in the story does this phrase “in care of” seem most pertinent?
2. Mma Sebina comes to the agency in the hope that Mma Ramotswe will find her relatives: “Please find me a birthday, and find me some people” [p. 24]. So the novel begins like a Victorian orphan story—something like Jane Eyre—with a character seeking an identity. How else do the themes of family and identity arise in the novel?
3. Puso jumps out of the car when Mma Ramotswe mentions his Bushman background, of which he is ashamed [pp. 33–34]. She tells him, “You mustn't be cross with your mummy” [p. 35], and realizes she has called herself his mother for the first time. What progress does this family of two foster children and two nonbiological parents make throughout the course of the novel in strengthening their bonds of love and trust?
4. In Chapter Four, Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni discuss Mma Makutsi's impending marriage and the question of whether men should have to pay the bogadi for their wives [pp. 45-50]. What is unsettling for Mma Ramotswe about this conversation? What details help to create the quiet comedy of the situation?
5. In her visit to Mma Sebina's village, Mma Ramotswe tells the woman under the tree, “I am a lady first and then I am a detective. So I just do the things which we ladies know how to do—I talk to people and find out what has happened. Then I try to solve the problems in people's lives. That is all I do” [p. 71]. Is it true that Mma Ramotswe is “a lady first”? How relevant or necessary is the fact of her being a woman to her success in solving problems for people?
6. As in all of the books of this series, the land plays a silent but important role in the lives of the characters. Mma Ramotswe, watching rainclouds gather, thinks “we Batswana are . . . dry people, people who can live with dust and dryness but whose hearts dream of rain and water” [p. 76]. Why are conditions of the land and the weather so central for Mma Ramotswe? Is it ironic that the rainclouds, “stacked in towering layers; so sudden, so welcome” [p. 74], cause the disaster that befalls Mma Makutsi's new bed?
7. Mr. Polopetsi becomes a suspect in the case of the threatening letters. Does it seem that Mma Ramotswe has become less generous in her attitude toward him [pp. 89–90]? What character traits bring him under suspicion? When the writer of the threatening letters is revealed, Mma Ramotswe's assumption that the writer was a man [pp. 14–15] is proven wrong. Is it unusual that Mma Ramotswe was wrong in her thinking on this matter?
8. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni meets a doctor who promises him that Motholeli's paralysis can be reversed [p. 96]. What difficulties does this unexpected development cause for Mma Ramotswe? Why does she come up with the money, given her lack of faith in the treatment? How does she behave when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Motholeli return home [p. 211]? What is exceptional about her handling of the whole predicament?
9. Why is Mma Makutsi reluctant to tell her fiancé the truth about what happened to the new bed? What does it suggest about their relationship that she doesn't feel she can tell him? Why is his eventual response surprising to her [p. 187]?
10. In most detective fiction, readers seek the identity of the criminal or the resolution of a mystery. Who are the criminals, and where is the mystery, in The Miracle at Speedy Motors? In what ways does Mma Ramotswe differ from most fictional detectives? How do plot and pace differ, and what unique features distinguish The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series from conventional mystery novels?
11. Reflecting upon Motholeli and the suffering of Africa in general, Mma Ramotswe considers that “fundamental unfairness seemed to be a condition of human life. . . . What could one say to the poor, who had only one life, one brief spell of time, and were spending their short moment of life in hardship? And what could she say to Motholeli?” [pp. 145–46]. Does she have words of comfort for Motholeli?
12. What qualities make Precious Ramotswe such an unusual person? How would you describe the quality of her insight or wisdom? Do you find her inspirational, and if so why?
13. In the delicate matter of the health of Mma Ramotswe's van, Mma Potokwane is uncertain of how truthful she can be. Do you agree with her list of the matters that, even between close friends, cannot be criticized [p. 148]?
14. Why is Mma Makutsi shocked at the letter Mma Ramotswe dictates for Violet Sephotho [pp. 202–03]? What do you think of Mma Ramotswe's resolution that “we must answer her hatred with love” [p. 204]?
15. What is puzzling about Mr. Sekape and his attitude toward his newly discovered sister? Why is he so excited if, as he says, he dislikes women [p. 184]? Once it turns out they are unrelated, does it seem likely that Mma Sebina will succeed in marrying him [pp. 207–08]?
16. What miracles does Mma Ramotswe observe, in place of the large miracle her husband has hoped for? What is the significance of the title [p. 213]?
17. A typographic design, repeating the word Africa, follows the novel's final sentence. How does this affect your reading of the ending, and what emotions does it express?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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