The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385534635
Summary
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Reves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.
Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Marshfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—lives Massachusetts
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and artist. Most of her writings and paintings are fairy tales, in one way or another. She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
In her words
I’m a Cancerian with a Leo Moon and Taurus rising and, yes, I know what all of that means.
I studied theatre & studio art at Smith College.
I grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Steve Carrell now owns the store where I bought penny candy and blue raspberry Slush Puppies as a child. This both amuses and disturbs me.
I was reading Stephen King at age 12 and J.K. Rowling at age 21. This likely speaks volumes about my literary development.
I currently live in Salem, Massachusetts & will be relocating to Boston in the foreseeable future. Kittens are looking forward to the impending influx of cardboard boxes. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[E]ven if you're not ready for clown shoes, you'll enjoy escaping into Erin Morgenstern's enchanting first novel…more than merely re-creating the Greatest Show on Earth, Morgenstern has spun an extravaganza that makes P.T. Barnum look smaller than Tom Thumb.... Morgenstern manages to conjure up a love story for adults that feels luxuriously romantic.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
[A] dark and extravagantly imagined debut.... The plot follows the separate and then intertwining lives of Celia and Marco, both forced to spend their lives pitting their unusual talents against each other in a cruel competition. But their world is Morgenstern's most vivid creation, a fantastical circus featuring illusionists whose powers transcend mere sleight of hand; like those performers, the author entices her audience to suspend disbelief and rewards its members with captivating pleasure.
People
Debut author Morgenstern doesn't miss a beat in this smashing tale of greed, fate, and love set in a turn of the 20th-century circus. Celia is a five-year-old with untrained psychokinetic powers when she is unceremoniously dumped on her unsuspecting father, Hector Bowen, better known as Le Cirque des Reves' Prospero the Entertainer. Hector immediately hatches a sinister scheme for Celia: pit her against a rival's young magician in an epic battle of magic that will, by design, result in the death of one of the players, though neither Celia nor her adversary, Marco, is informed of the inevitable outcome. What neither Hector nor his rival count on is that Celia and Marco will eventually fall in love. Their mentors—Marco's mentor, Alexander, plucked him from the London streets due to his psychic abilities—attempt to intervene with little success as Celia and Marco barrel toward an unexpected and oddly fitting conclusion. Supporting characters—such as Bailey, a farm boy who befriends a set of twins born into the circus who will drastically influence his future; Isobel, a circus employee and onetime girlfriend of Marco's; and theatrical producer Chandresh Christophe Lefevre—are perfectly realized and live easily in a giant, magical story destined for bestsellerdom. This is an electric debut on par with Special Topics in Calamity Physics.
Publishers Weekly
To enter the black-and-white-striped tents of Le Cirque des Reves is to enter a world where objects really do turn into birds and people really do disappear. Even though visitors believe the performances are all illusion, they are obsessively drawn to this extraordinary night circus. Those who run and perform in the circus are its lifeblood. Marco Alisdair runs the operation from London as assistant to the eccentric proprietor. Celia Bowen holds it all together from her role as illusionist. As magicians, Marco and Celia are bound to each other in a deadly competition of powers, creating ever more fantastical venues for circus goers to marvel at. But falling in love was never part of the game, and the players struggle to extricate themselves from this contest while keeping the circus afloat. Verdict: Debut novelist Morgenstern has written a 19th-century flight of fancy that is, nevertheless, completely believable. The smells, textures, sounds, and sights are almost palpable. A literary Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, this read is completely magical. —Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA
Library Journal
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.... Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with a quote from Oscar Wilde:
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
How is this sentiment explored in The Night Circus? Who in the novel is a dreamer? And what is their punishment for being so?
2. The novel frequently changes narrative perspective. How does this transition shape your reading of the novel and your connection to the characters and the circus? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story from varied perspectives?
3. The narrative also follows a non-linear sequence—shifting at times from present to past. How effective was this method in regards to revealing conflict in the novel?
4. There are a number of allusions to Shakespeare throughout the text: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and As You Like It. Explain these references—how does each play reveal itself in the novel?
5. What role does time play in the novel? From Friedrick Thiessen’s clock, to the delayed aging of the circus developers, to the birth of the twins—is time manipulated or fated at the circus?
6. How does the following statement apply to both Le Cirque des Reves and the competition? Which audience is more valuable: one that is complicit or one that is unknowing?
Chandresh relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. A show without an audience is nothing, after all. In the response of the audience, that is where the power of performance lives.
7. Chandresh is portrayed as a brilliant and creative perfectionist at the beginning of the novel, yet he slowly unravels as the competition matures. Is Chandresh merely a puppet of the competition—solely used for his ability to provide a venue for the competition—or do his contributions run deeper?
8. Marco asserts that Alexander H. is a father figure to him (though his paternal instincts aren’t readily noticeable). In what ways does Alexander provide for Marco and in what ways has he failed him?
9. Celia emphasizes that keeping the circus controlled is a matter of “balance.” And Marco suggests that the competition is not a chess game, but rather, a balancing of scales. However, both the circus and the competition get disordered at times—leaving both physical and emotional casualties in their wake. Is the circus ever really in “balance,” or is it a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next?
10. From the outside, the circus is full of enchantments and delights, but behind the scenes, the delicate push and pull of the competition results in some sinister events: i.e. Tara Burgess and Friedrick Thiessen’s deaths. How much is the competition at fault for these losses and how much is it the individual’s doing?
11. How do you view the morality of the circus in regards to the performers and developers being unknowing pawns in Celia and Marco’s competition? Do Celia and Marco owe an explanation to their peers about their unwitting involvement?
12. Friedrick Thiessen asserts that he thinks of himself “not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to the circus.” He is a voice for those unable to attend the circus and suggests that the circus is bigger than itself. What role do the reveurs play in keeping the spirit of the circus alive outside of the confines of the circus tents?
13. What is Hector’s role in determining the final fate of the competition? He lectures Celia about remaining independent and not interfering with her partner, but ultimately, Hector largely influences the outcome of the competition. Explain this influence.
14. Poppet and Widget are especially affected by the lighting of the bonfire. How crucial are their “specialties” to the ongoing success of the circus?
15. Isobel is a silent, yet integral, partner in both the circus and the competition. She has an ally in Tsukiko, but seemingly no one else, especially not Marco. How much does Marco’s underestimation of Isobel affect the outcome of the competition?
16. How does Isobel serve as a foil to Celia? Who, if anyone, fills that role for Marco?
17. Tsukiko is aware of Isobel’s “tempering of the circus” from the outset and when Isobel worries that it is having no effect, Tsukiko suggests: “perhaps it is controlling the chaos within more than the chaos without.” What, and whose, chaos is Tsukiko alluding to here?
18. Mr. Barris, Friedrick Thiessen, Mme. Padva, and even Bailey are aware that the circus has made a profound, inexplicable, change in their lives, but they each choose not to explore the depth of these changes. Friedrick Thiessen confirms that, “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.” Do you agree with this standpoint? What inherent dangers accompany a purposeful ignorance? What dangers present themselves when ignorance is not chosen? Is one choice better/safer than the other or are they equally fraught?
19. Celia tells Bailey that he is “not destined or chosen” to be the next proprietor of the circus. He is simply “in the right place at the right time…and care[s] enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.” In this situation, is that “enough?” Can the responsibility of maintaining the circus be trusted to just anyone, or unlike Celia suggests, is Bailey truly special?
20. At the closing of the novel, we are left to believe that the circus is still traveling—Bailey’s business card provides an email address as his contact information. How do you think the circus would fare over time? Would the circus need to evolve to suit each generation or is it distinctive enough to transcend time?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 2008
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547247755
Summary
Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new—new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?
Sarah Bynum finds characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. From this most innovative of young writers comes another journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Houston, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., University of
Iowa
• Awards—Finalist, National Book Award (2004)
• Currently—Brooklyn, New York, New York
Madeline is Sleeping is Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's first novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Best American Short Stories of 2004. A graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers Workshop, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)
More
From a 2004 interview with Barnes & Noble:
• I adore sushi (which I didn't discover, weirdly enough, until I was living in Iowa), but right now I'm on a strict sushi hiatus as I wait for the arrival of my first baby in the spring.
• I didn't see a single scary movie until I was twenty years old, but now I can't get enough of them! My favorites are The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, The Ring, and anything with zombies.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
Jane Eyre. When I first read it in the eighth grade, I remember being struck by two things: the extreme attractiveness of Mr. Rochester, and my sudden, acute awareness of Charlotte Brontë as the book's author. Up to this point, I don't remember giving much thought to the writers of books I liked—I was far more interested in the plots and the characters—the authors themselves seemed, for the most part, like appendages. Maybe it's because the edition I read of Jane Eyre had that lovely pencil drawing of Charlotte Brontë on its cover, or because her name was displayed in the exact same font and size as the title. In fact, her name appeared above the title, which explains why my younger brother believed for years that "Charlotte Brontë" was the famous novel written by Jane Eyre.
I'd like to believe that my growing awareness of an authorial presence was due to my budding sophistication as a reader—and certainly there was a new sort of intensity and urgency I felt in this book that might have suggested the workings of a very specific sensibility and imagination—but I'm afraid I would be giving my eighth-grade self too much credit. Either way, I remember Jane Eyre as the moment I became curious about the person behind the book, a curiosity which eventually led, I think, to my first serious thoughts about what it meant to be a writer, to become a writer. Charlotte Brontë continues to exercise her hold over me, as does her sister Emily—now, in addition to rereading Jane Eyre, I find myself returning to Anne Carson's The Glass Essay and Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, both of which cast their own spells.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Bynum's prose remains nimble and entertaining, a model of quiet control well suited to its subject.... The deftness with which [Ms. Hempel] observes and describes her world and its inhabitants is so engaging that for all its circumspection and regrettable lacunae, Ms. Hempel Chronicles works as an account of how nostalgia—both for what was and might have been—can generate a thousand mercies.
Josh Emmons - New York Times
Utterly charming.... Ms. Hempel teaches in middle school, and she's crazy about her students. It's easy to see why: They're vulnerable, darling, gentle souls just beginning to learn to occupy their fleshly selves. On the very first page, one of her seventh-graders attempts to describe the ballet solo she'll be performing in this evening's talent show. " 'Just imagine!' she said to Ms. Hempel, and clapped her hands rapturously against her thighs, as though her shorts had caught fire. The bodies of Ms. Hempel's students often did that: fly off in strange directions, seemingly of their own accord." It's true, that's what junior high kids do. For the reader it's like going off to the South of France and seeing that van Gogh didn't make that stuff up; it really does look like that. It just took an artist to be able to see it.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
A National Book Award finalist in 2004, Bynum returns with an intricate and absorbing collection of eight interconnected stories about Beatrice Hempel, a middle school English teacher. Ms. Hempel is the sort of teacher students adore, and despite feeling disenchanted with her job, she regards her students as intelligent, insightful and sometimes fascinating. Bynum seamlessly weaves stories of the teacher's childhood with the present—reminiscences about Beatrice's now deceased father and her relationship with her younger brother, Calvin—while simultaneously fleshing out the lives of Beatrice's impressionable students (they are in awe of the crassness of This Boy's Life). Though there isn't much in the way of plot, Bynum's sympathy for her protagonist runs deep, and even the slightest of events comes across as achingly real and, sometimes, even profound. Bynum writes with great acuity, and the emotional undercurrents in this sharp take on coming-of-age and growing up will move readers in unexpected ways.
Publishers Weekly
Among the most popular fiction of the mid-1960s was Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase, the story of an idealistic public school teacher. Four decades later, National Book Award finalist Bynum has produced a worthy version for our times. Departing from the much-discussed experimental prose of her first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, the author here uses deceptively simple language to explore the sometimes amazing world of middle school in eight engaging linked narratives. Recently minted (and not especially idealistic) educator Beatrice Hempel struggles with insecurities at home and work while discovering in her classroom moments of wonder, grace, and sheer goofiness. Like Tobias Wolff—whose memoir This Boy's Life plays a major role in Ms. Hempel's teaching—Bynum writes with concise, careful phrasing and a clarity that illuminates the depths to be found even in the most quotidian existence. Recommended for all fiction collections.
Starr E. Smith - Library Journal
A subtle, dazzling novel about a fledgling middle-school teacher who reveals herself slowly, in layers, as if she isn't quite sure how much to show-to her students, to their parents, to the reader. Like a seventh-grade teacher on the first day of school, Ms. Hempel initially seems generic in this second novel from Bynum (whose debut, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a National Book Award finalist in 2004). It's as if she's more of a type—the young schoolteacher who is just out of school herself—than an individual. But the individual emerges as the novel unfolds. Initially defined by her job, she gradually defines herself by so much more: her ethnicity (Chinese), her affinity for punk rock (the angrier and more abrasive the better), her family life (in her roles as a daughter and sister), her personal life (engaged, then not, then much later married and pregnant). There is so much elliptical richness in the multifaceted character of Ms. Hempel that every chapter in this short, taut novel brings revelation. As Ms. Hempel reveals herself to be "Beatrice" (and, much later, "Bea"), she struggles with how much of her life is appropriate to share with her students, for whom she is, inevitably, "the object of ferocious scrutiny." Some of the choices that she makes suggest either her uniqueness or her inexperience—her assignment of This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, with language perhaps not appropriate for seventh-grade readers; her sharing of her personal life in sex ed; her student evaluations written by the students themselves. So much is new for Ms. Hempel—she is new at being a teacher, new at being engaged (to a man whose sexual proclivities she neither shares nor understands), new at being an adult. These chronicles represent Ms. Hempel's education, as the teacher discovers what it means to be herself. No sign of sophomore slump in this masterful illumination of character.
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 Ms. Hempel Chronicles:
1. Does Ms. Hempel like her job? How does she view her students? How do you view her students?
2. What was the point of having her students write their own progress reports in place of standard teacher evaluations?
3. How has Beatrice's past shaped her present personality and performance as a teacher? What ever happened to the teenaged girl who wore steel-toed boots and listened to punk rock?
4. Talk about this passage from the book: "When you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless... But at a certain point, you begin to feel your talents dropping away...until one day you realize that you cannot think of a single thing you are wonderful at." How true do you find this observation? If it is true, how does it happen?
5. The passage in Question 4 reflects what can happen to children—they start out as colorful butterflies and move toward drab moths as they head into adulthood. Can you trace a sort of reverse movement—from moth to butterfly—for Ms. Hempel?
6. There is little plot and little conflict in Chronicles. Does that bore you...or hold your interest? What about the way the book is structured, its series of vignettes?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Saving Fish from Drowning
Amy Tan, 2005
Penguin Group USA
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345464019
Summary
A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes." — Anonymous
Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China—dubbed the true Shangri-La—and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less-than-honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses.
And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a misty lake for a sunrise cruise — and disappear.
Drawing from the current political reality in Burma and woven with pure confabulation, Amy Tan's picaresque novel poses the question: How can we discern what is real and what is fiction, in everything we see? How do we know what to believe? Saving Fish from Drowning finds sly truth in the absurd: a reality TV show called "Darwin's Fittest," a repressive regime known as SLORC, two cheroot-smoking twin children hailed as divinities, and a ragtag tribe hiding in the jungle—where the sprites of disaster known as Nats lurk, as do the specters of the fabled Younger White Brother and a British illusionist who was not who he was worshipped to be.
With her signature "idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery" (Los Angeles Times), Amy Tan spins a provocative and mesmerizing tale about the mind and the heart of the individual, the actions we choose, the moral questions we might ask ourselves, and above all, the deeply personal answers we seek when happy endings are seemingly impossible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Also named—En-Mai Tan
• Birth—February 15, 1952
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Jose State University
• Currently—San Francisco, California
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer, many of whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989) brought her fame and has remained one of her most popular works. It was adapted to film in 1993.
Early yeaars
Tan is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the US to escape the Chinese Revolution. Although she was born in Oakland, California, her family moved a number of times throughout her childhood.
When she was fifteen, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other. Tan subsequently moved with her mother and younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where she finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa in Montreux.
It was during this period that Tan learned about her mother's previous marriage in China, where she had four children (a son who died in toddlerhood and three daughters). Her mother had left her husband and children behind in Shanghai — an incident that became the basis for Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club. In 1987, she and her mother traveled to China to meet her three half-sisters for the first time.
Tan enrolled at Linfield College in Oregon, a Baptist college of her mother's choosing. After she dropped out to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California, she and her mother stopped speaking for six months. Tan ended up marrying the young man in 1974 and subsequently earned both her B.A. and M.A. in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She began her doctoral studies in linguistics at University of California-Santa Cruz and Berkeley, but abandoned them in 1976.
Career
While in school, Tan worked odd jobs — serving as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker. Eventually, she started writing freelance for businesses, working on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell, writing under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms.
In 1985, she turned to fiction, publishing her first story in 1986 in a small literary journal. It was later reprinted in Seventeen magazine and Grazia. On her return from the China trip with her mmother, where she had met her half-sisters, Tan learned her agent had signed a contract for a book of short stories, only three of which were written. That book eventually became The Joy Luck Club and launchd Tan's literary career.
Extras
In addition to her novels (see below), Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot encouraging children to write.
Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band consisting of published writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, among others. In 1994 she co-wrote, with the other band members, Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude.
In 1998, Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went undiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers from epileptic seizures due to brain lesions. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment, and wrote about her life with Lyme disease in a 2013 op-ed piece in the New York Times.
Tan is still married to the guy she ran off with from Linfield College and married in 1974. He is Louis DeMattei, a lawyer, and the two live in San Francisco.
Books
1989 - The Joy Luck Club
1991 - The Kitchen God's Wife
1995 - The Hundred Secret Senses
2001 - The Bonesetter's Daughter
2003 - The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (Essays)
2005 - Saving Fish from Drowning
2013 - The Valley of Amazement
2017 - Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Amy Tan is among our great storytellers. In each of her previous novels, she has seduced readers with the intimate magic of her tale.... Her newest novel, Saving Fish from Drowning...is well paced, as one would expect from Tan. Her lovely and evocative images add charm to the ordinary observation of landscape, in passages that might be dull in lesser hands. The emphasis of Saving Fish from Drowning seems to be humor [and while] the book has clever moments and some good one-liners,...humor is not [Tan's] forte. She has a clunky way with irony, and the sprawling slapstick set pieces at the core of this effort are draggy and inept....The deliberately absurd plot, not moving enough for the kind of elegiac fiction that has made Tan famous and not meaningful enough to pass for allegory, appears to be satire.
Andrew Solomon - New York Times
A superbly executed, good-hearted farce that is part romance and part mystery....With Tan's many talents on display, it's her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations...that make this book pure pleasure.
San Francisco Chronicle
With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and (of course) their consequences.
Elle
(Starred review.) Tan delivers another highly entertaining novel, this one narrated from beyond the grave. San Francisco socialite and art-world doyenne Bibi Chen has planned the vacation of a lifetime along the notorious Burma Road for 12 of her dearest friends. Violently murdered days before takeoff, she's reduced to watching her friends bumble through their travels from the remove of the spirit world. Making the best of it, the 11 friends who aren't hung over depart their Myanmar resort on Christmas morning to boat across a misty lake—and vanish. The tourists find themselves trapped in jungle-covered mountains, held by a refugee tribe that believes Rupert, the group's surly teenager, is the reincarnation of their god Younger White Brother, come to save them from the unstable, militaristic Myanmar government. Tan's travelers, who range from a neurotic hypochondriac to the debonair, self-involved host of a show called The Fido Files, fight and flirt among themselves. While ensemble casting precludes the intimacy that characterizes Tan's mother-daughter stories, the book branches out with a broad plot and dynamic digressions. It's based on a true story, and Tan seems to be having fun with it, indulging in the wry, witty voice of Bibi while still exploring her signature questions of fate, connection, identity and family.
Publishers Weekly
With each successive novel, Tan gets further away from the autobiographical element of her early work. Unfortunately, the characters with whom she replaces friends and ancestors end up shallow and unbelievable. That's especially true in this exasperating saga, where 12 fictional American tourists missing in Burma spar, bond, and have exhibitionist love affairs with all the delicacy of characters in a soap opera. The first-person narration, by the ghost of a Chinese American socialite who planned to lead this art and culture expedition, adds to the listener's frustration, as does the ghost's constant reference to "my friends." While Tan's seriocomic look at American tourists interacting with primitive culture rings true and has one laughing out loud at times, the same effect could have been achieved in a much tighter novel. Even elements that might have heightened awareness and suspense end up suffocated by the idiosyncrasies of characters we'd just as soon forget. Everything has to be neatly ordered, including nearly an hour of tying things up, telling what every character goes on to do with his or her life.
Library Journal
(Adult/High School) Saving Fish from Drowning is based on the real-life disappearance of 12 American tourists in Myanmar. The narrator is Bibi Chen, dealer in Chinese antiquities, who had arranged an art-oriented tour for her friends. When she dies under mysterious circumstances, the others decide to proceed, saying that Bibi will join them "in spirit" —an invitation she accepts. Mostly well-meaning, but ignorant and naive, the group lands in one hilarious situation after another due to cultural misunderstandings. On a lake outing, they are kidnapped and taken to a hidden village where a rebel tribe waits for the Younger White Brother, who will make them invisible and bullet-proof and enable them to recover their land. They believe that they've found him in 15-year-old Rupert, an amateur magician. The tour group consists of 10 adults and 2 adolescents, some pillars of the community and some decidedly not, but all rich, intelligent, and spoiled. Bibi, feisty and opinionated, uncovers their fears, desires, and motives, and the shades of truth in their words. As the novel progresses, they become more human and less stereotypical, changing as a result of their experiences. Although Tan also satirizes the tourist industry, American Buddhism, and reality TV, her focus is on the American belief that everyone everywhere plays by the same rules. An extremely funny novel with serious undercurrents. —Sandy Freund, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal
Tan's ambitious fifth novel is a ghost's story (though not a ghost story), about an American tourist party's ordeal in the Southeast Asian jungles of Myanmar (formerly Burma). Its narrator is Bibi Chen (whose relation to the story's complex provenance is discussed in a brief prefatory note): a 60-ish California art collector/dealer and sometime travel guide, whose unexplained violent death limits her to joining the members of an American art tour "in spirit" only. She's a major presence, however, among such varied traveling companions as Chinese-American matron Marlena Chu and her preadolescent daughter Esme; biologist Roxanne Scarangello and her younger husband Dwight Massey (a behavioral psychologist); a florist who produces specially bred tropical plants and his teenaged son, an ardently liberal rich girl and her sexy lover, a gay designer pressed into service as de facto tour master, and several others-the most interesting of whom is TV celebrity dog-trainer Harry Bailley (who has eyes for Marlena, and whose name slyly alludes to that earlier portrayal of motley travelers who discover one another's unbuttoned humanity: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). The strength here is Tan's clever plot, which takes off when 11 of the dozen tourists (sans Harry, who's ill) enter the jungle, cross a rope bridge that subsequently collapses and find themselves stranded among a "renegade ethnic tribe" who mistake 15-year-old Rupert Moffett for a "god" capable of rendering them invisible to Myanmar's brutal military government. Their disappearance becomes an international cause celebre, cultural misunderstandings entangle and multiply, and some fancy narrative footwork brings the tale to a richly ironic conclusion. Alas, Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter, 2001, etc.) offers much more-ongoing discursive commentary from Bibi's post-mortem perspective, and scads of historical and ethnographic detail about Burma's storied past and Myanmar's savage present. The author's research ultimately smothers her story and characters. A pity, because this vividly imagined tale might very well have been her best yet.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Saving Fish from Drowning begins, "It was not my fault."How is the concept of personal responsibility important in the novel?
2. How does Vera's experience in the jungle influence her book on self-reliance?
3. In what sense do the tourists feel culpable for the suffering they see in Burma? Does Amy Tan offer a solution to their feelings of guilt?
4. Bibi is not necessarily always a reliable or likable narrator. Can we always take her observations at face value?
5. Tan prefaces Saving Fish from Drowning with "A Note to the Reader" that is mostly fictitious, and also invents the accompanying newspaper article. Why do you think she made this choice? How did it shape your impression of the story?
6. The novel takes its title from a euphemism for fishing. In what ways are names and "brands" important to the story? How are words used to conceal truth in Burma and among the travelers?
7. What are Bibi's attitudes toward sex and the human body? How do her observations reflect her own psychology and background?
8. The first time in her adult life that Bibi feels "unmindful" passionate love results in her accidental death. Is her demise tragic? Comic? Ironic? Why does Tan leave us to assume for most of the novel that Bibi was murdered?
9. How does the tour group's behavior reinforce or rebut stereotypes of the "ugly American"?
10. If you are familiar with Tan's other novels, what parallels can you draw between the mother-daughter relations in her previous stories and Bibi's impressions of her mother and stepmother?
11. Is this an optimistic story?
12. Have you ever been in a situation in which you came to have mixed feelings about the volunteer or charitable work that you were doing? If so, how did this experience affect your beliefs about charity?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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The Widow of the South
Robert Hicks, 2005
Grand Central Publishing
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446697439
Summary
In 1894 Carrie McGavock is an old woman who has only her former slave to keep her company…and the almost 1,500 soldiers buried in her backyard.
Years before, rather than let someone plow over the field where these young men had been buried, Carrie dug them up and reburied them in her own personal cemetery.
Now, as she walks the rows of the dead, an old soldier appears. It is the man she met on the day of the battle that changed everything. The man who came to her house as a wounded soldier and left with her heart. He asks if the cemetery has room for one more.
In an extraordinary debut novel, based on a remarkable true story, Robert Hicks draws an unforgettable, panoramic portrait of a woman who, through love and loss, found a cause. Known throughout the country as "the Widow of the South," Carrie McGavock gave her heart first to a stranger, then to a tract of hallowed ground—and became a symbol of a nation's soul.
The novel flashes back thirty years to the afternoon of the Battle of Franklin, five of the bloodiest hours of the Civil War. There were 9,200 casualties that fateful day. Carrie's home—the Carnton plantation—was taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a hospital; four generals lay dead on her back porch; the pile of amputated limbs rose as tall as the smoke house.
And when a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrived and awakened feelings she had thought long dead, Carrie found herself inexplicably drawn to him despite the boundaries of class and decorum. The story that ensues between Carrie and Cashwell is just as unforgettable as the battle from which it is drawn
The Widow of the South is a brilliant novel that captures the end of an era, the vast madness of war, and the courage of a remarkable woman to claim life from the grasp of death itself. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 30, 1951
• Where—West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—unspecified college in Nashville, Tennessee
• Currently—lives in Franklin, Tennessee
Robert Hicks is the author of New York Times bestseller, The Widow of the South (2005) and two other novels in the Southern saga, A Separate Country (2009) and The Orphan Mother (2016). Hicks was born and raised in South Florida, moving to Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1974. He now lives at "Labor in Vain," his late-eighteenth-century log cabin near the Bingham Community.
Because of his writing, as well as his work in music, art, and historical preervation, Hicks made the #2 spot in the "Top 100 Reasons to Love Nashville." The list was featured in a 2015 issue of Nashville Lifestyles, which dubbed Hicks "Nashville's Master of Ceremonies."
Music and art
Hicks's interest in the arts are varied: over the years he has worked in music as a publisher and an artistic manager in both country and alternative-rock music. He has also been a partner in the B. B. King's Blues Clubs—located in Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, and Los Angeles—and continues to serve as the company's "Curator of Vibe."
As a lifelong art collector, Hicks was the first Tennessean ever to be listed among Art & Antiques's Top 100 Collectors in America. He focuses on artists such as Howard Finster and B.F. Perkins, as well as on different genres, such as Tennesseana and Southern Material Culture.
Hicks has also served as curator of the exhibition "Art of Tennessee" at the First Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The exhibition—first conceived at Hicks's kitchen table—was seven years in the making, opening in September 2003. Hicks also co-edited of the exhibition's award winning catalog, Art of Tennessee.
Historic preservation
Hicks has long been fascinated by the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864—a particularly bloody fight that weakened the Confederate's ability to win the Civil War. Hick's interest led him to found Franklin's Charge, an organization that saved what remained of the eastern flank of the battlefield—turning it into a public battlefield park. It was a massive project, considered "the largest battlefield reclamation in North American history" by the American Battlefield Protection Program.
By the end of 2005, Franklin's Charge had already raised over 5 million dollars toward this goal, surpassing anything ever achieved by other communities in America to preserve battlefield open space. As Jim Lighthizer, President of the Civil War Preservation Trust said, "There is no 'close second' in any community in America, to what Robert Hicks and Franklin's Charge has done in Franklin."
In addition to his work for the battlefield park, Hicks has served on the boards of the Historic Carnton Plantation (a focal point of the Franklin Battle), Tennessee State Museum, The Williamson County Historical Society, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He presently serves on the board of directors of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Historical novels
Hicks's interest in the Franklin battlefield—and a chance meeting with Civil War historian and author Shelby Foote—inspired an idea for a book, eventually leading to The Widow of the South, his first novel, which was published in 2005. Hick's intent for the book was to bring national attention to those five bloody hours on the Franklin battlefield and the impact the battle had in remaking us a nation.
A Separate Country, Hicks's second novel published in 2009, takes place in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War. It is based on the life of John Bell Hood, one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army—and one of its most tragic figures.
In 2016, Hicks released his third book in the Civil War saga, The Orphan Mother. The story follows Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock—the "Widow of the South"—who has built a new life for herself as a midwife during the post-war Reconstruction Era.
Other writing
Hicks has written other works in addition to his novels. His first book, published in 2000, is a collaboration with French-American photographer Michel Arnaud: Nashville: the Pilgrims of Guitar Town. In 2008, he co-edited (with Justin Stelter and John Bohlinger) the story collection, A Guitar and A Pen: Short Stories and Story-Songs By Nashville Songwriters.
He has also written the introduction to two books on historic preservation authored by photographer Nell Dickerson, GONE: A Photographic Plea for Preservation and Porch Dogs.
Hicks's essays on regional history, southern material culture, furniture and music have appeared in numerous publications over the years. He also writes op-eds for the New York Times on contemporary politics in the South and is a regular contributor to Garden & Gun.
More
Hicks travels throughout the nation speaking on a variety of topics ranging from "Why The South Matters" to "The Importance of Fiction in Preserving History to Southern Material Culture" and "A Model for the Preservation of Historic Open Space for Every Community."
In January 2016 Hicks was a panelist and featured speaker at the third annual Rancho Mirage Writers Festival in California. Along with American historian H.W. Brands, Hicks took part in the panel discussion "The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Matters."
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, in 2014 Hicks released the first small batch of his bourbon whiskey Battlefield Bourbon. Each of the 1,864 bottles is numbered and signed by Hicks. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/2016.)
Book Reviews
A new Civil War title arrived at No. 10 on the [ New York Times ] fiction list: The Widow of the South, by the first-time novelist Robert Hicks, a music publisher and manager in Nashville. It's the fictional story of the real-life Carrie McGavock, who turned her Tennessee plantation house into a makeshift hospital for Confederate soldiers after the bloody Battle of Franklin in 1864, which left nearly 2,000 dead. McGavock had almost 1,500 of the bodies buried in her own private cemetery on the Carnton plantation. In spite of some negative reviews, the book has been selling briskly, ... and it has also received a lot of attention in the Southern press. The Tennessean speculated it might do for the Carnton plantation what Gone With the Wind did for Atlanta: increase tourism.
Rachel Donadio - New York Times
Carrie McGavock's convoluted internal monologues about why she feels impelled to rescue the wounded and bury the dead halt the narrative in its tracks. Better to stick with Cashwell; he alone is worth the read. I'd follow him anywhere, wooden leg and all.
Paulette Jiles - Washington Post
Hicks's big historical first novel, based on true events in his hometown, follows the saga of Carrie McGavock, a lonely Confederate wife who finds purpose transforming her Tennessee plantation into a hospital and cemetery during the Civil War. Carrie is mourning the death of several of her children, and, in the absence of her husband, has left the care of her house to her capable Creole slave Mariah. Before the 1864 battle of Franklin, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest commandeers her house as a field hospital. In alternating points of view, the battle is recounted by different witnesses, including Union Lt. Nathan Stiles, who watches waves of rebels shot dead, and Confederate Sgt. Zachariah Cashwell, who loses a leg. By the end of the battle, 9,000 soldiers have perished, and thousands of Confederates are buried in a field near the McGavock plantation. Zachariah ends up in Carrie's care at the makeshift hospital, and their rather chaste love forms the emotional pulse of the novel, while Carrie fights to relocate the buried soldiers when her wealthy neighbor threatens to plow up the field after the war. Valiantly, Hicks returns to small, human stories in the midst of an epic catastrophe. Though occasionally overwrought, this impressively researched novel will fascinate aficionados.
Publishers Weekly
John McGavock, the husband of our eponymous heroine, isn't even dead when she begins wearing black, but the mantle of mourning seems to fit Carrie McGavock. Having lost three young children, it is perhaps appropriate that she becomes the caretaker of over 1500 Confederate dead, all killed at the Battle of Franklin, TN, in 1864. Based on a true story, music publisher Hicks's first novel brings the reader onto the battlefield and into the lives of its survivors, including Zachariah Cashwell, an Arkansas soldier whose presence at the makeshift hospital established in the McGavock home shakes Carrie out of her stupor: "I had discovered why I had been drawn to him," she says. "He is a living thing, not a dying one." And it is life, after all, that drives Hicks's story. We know from the outset about Carrie's cemetery, but her journey to that place is compellingly told. Highly recommended for all libraries.
Library Journal
A thunderous, action-rich first novel of the Civil War, based on historical fact. Music publisher Hicks treats a long-overlooked episode of the war in this account of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn., which took place in November 1864 near Nashville. As a field hospital is pitched in her field, Carrie McGavock, an iron-spined farm woman and upstanding citizen of the town, takes it upon herself to tend after the Confederate wounded; later, she and her husband will rebury 1,500 of the fallen on their property. Hicks centers much of the story on Carrie, who has seen her own children die of illness and who has endurance in her blood. "I was not a morbid woman," Carrie allows, "but if death wanted to confront me, well, I would not turn my head. Say what you have to say to me, or leave me alone." Other figures speak their turn. One is a young Union officer amazed at the brutal and sometimes weird tableaux that unfold before him; as the bullets fly, he pauses before a 12-year-old rebel boy suffocating under the weight of his piled-up dead comrades. "Suffocated. I had never considered the possibility," young Lt. Stiles sighs. Another is an Arkansas soldier taken prisoner by the Yankees: "I became a prisoner and accepted all the duties of a prisoner just as easily as I'd picked up the damned colors and walked forward to the bulwarks." Yet another is Nathan Forrest, who would strike fear in many a heart as a Confederate cavalryman, and later as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Hicks renders each of these figures with much attention to historical detail and a refreshing lack of genre cliche, closing with a subtle lament for the destruction of history before the bulldozer: "One longs to know that somethings don't change, that some of us will not be forgotten, that our perambulations upon the earth are not without point or destination. "An impressive addition to the library of historical fiction on the Civil War, worthy of a place alongside The Killer Angels, Rifles for Watie and Shiloh.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. It seems that Carrie doesn't come alive until literally everyone around her is dying. Why do you think it took her home being taken over by the Confederate Army and turned into a hospital to awaken Carrie out of her stupor?
2. Do you believe that Zachariah really wanted to die when he picked up the colors on the battlefield? Why does Nathan Stiles spare Zachariah on the battlefield specifically, when others carrying the colors were killed? Is Zachariah grateful to be spared, or is he regretful, or a little of both, and why?
3. Does John McGavock undergo a character transformation from the beginning of the novel, when he and Theopolis encounter the gang of ruffians in the woods, to the end, when we see scenes him of him wandering around Franklin somewhat aimlessly? How do you think he views the war? How do you think he views his role, or his non-role, in the war? And how does this compare with Carrie's attitude towards the war?
4. In the author's note Robert Hicks says of Mariah, "I have concluded that Mariah may well have been the most complete human of them all." Mariah never let her enslavement define her. Do you agree?
5. Discuss how the death of their children affected both Carrie and John. What is the difference between the attachment mothers and fathers have with their children? Do you think John would have begun drinking whether his children had died or not? And do you think Carrie had a propensity for eccentricity and seclusion?
6. When Carrie first notices Zachariah in her upstairs guest room, she remarks: "Unlike most of the men, he looked ready to die. He looked as if he were welcoming it, urging it along…I wanted his eyes on me." Why does Carrie take to Zachariah, and why does she later give him special treatment? Do you think it was purely physical attraction? Does Zachariah's welcoming of his own death conflict with Carrie's values?
7. Faith plays a large part in each character's motivations. Discuss the role of belief in a higher power and how it guides Carrie, Zachariah, and Mariah in their actions. For most of us, our belief system changes or 'grows' over the span of our lives, one way or the other. How did Carrie's faith change over the span of the novel?
8. Why do you think Carrie beats Zachariah on the porch? Were you surprised by this or did you understand it?
9. Zachariah and Carrie have an intense love affair yet it's never consummated sexually. Do you think the fact they never were physically intimate takes away or adds to their relationship, or does it matter?
10. At one point Carrie tells Mariah, "You always could have left, even when you weren't allowed. I would have never stopped you." Do you think this is true? Carrie seems to think of Mariah as her best friend, but she was really her property, a "gift" her father gave to her as a child. Do you think Carrie tries to make herself appear a better friend/owner than she really was? Discuss Carrie and Mariah's relationship. Could friendship really transcend enslavement?
11. Among the political issues leading up to the Civil War was the South's strong adherence to the doctrine of 'state's rights.' Among the issues to come out of the war was the emancipation of the enslaved in the 'slave states,' whether they had remained loyal to the union or had seceded and joined the Confederacy. Yet, neither of these political issues is ever addressed 'head-on' in the book. Why do you think that is?
12. Carrie comes from a rich, educated family. She is "learned." Zachariah is poor, and almost illiterate. Yet do you think one is wiser than the other?
Robert Hicks has said, "good writing is about transformation." We see transformation in Carrie, Zechariah and in their relationship, in John, in his and Carrie's relationship, in Mariah and her relationship with Carrie. Are we left with any sense that Mr. Baylor ever comes to any real peace about what has happened?
13. What does Carrie mean when she says the following to Zachariah: "You are my key. You will explain things I have not been able to understand…I want you to explain to me why I wanted you to live and why I was able to make you live. Because I don't understand, not really, and the answer is very important to me." What is Carrie not able to understand about herself, and what answer does she think Zachariah will be able to provide?
14. Carrie takes Eli into her home and he quickly assumes the role of a surrogate son and Winder's surrogate brother. How do Carrie's actions speak to her changing perceptions of family? Has her work running the hospital changed her maternal instincts or is she simply responding to the nature of war?
15. At the town party, Carrie remarks about how she doesn't fit in with the other women; Mrs. McEwen pokes fun of her efforts and jokingly calls her "St. Carrie." Why do these women resent Carrie, and does it bother her? Does Carrie see herself as saintly?
16. In 1894, after John has died, and Mariah, Carrie and Zachariah are all elderly, why does Zachariah not profess his love for Carrie more overtly? Over time, did his love become more of respect and admiration for her heroism, or are his feelings for her just as romantically intense?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Double Comfort Safari Club (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series #11)
Alexander McCall Smith, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307277480
Summary
Readers will agree that this touching and dramatic new installment in Alexander McCall Smith’s beloved and best-selling series is the finest yet. In this story, Precious Ramotswe deals with issues of mistaken identity and great fortune against the beautiful backdrop of Botswana’s remote and striking Okavango Delta.
Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi head to a safari camp to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest who has left one of the guides a large sum of money. But once they find their man, Precious begins to sense that something is not right. To make matters worse, shortly before their departure Mma Makutsi’s fiancé, Phuti Radiphuti, suffers a debilitating accident, and when his aunt moves in to take care of him, she also pushes Mma Makutsi out of the picture.
Could she be trying to break up the relationship? Finally, a local priest and his wife independently approach Mma Ramotswe with concerns of infidelity, creating a rather unusual and tricky situation. Nevertheless, Precious is confident that with a little patience, kindness and good sense things will work out for the best, something that will delight her many fans. (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
Mma Ramotswe’s observations not only inevitably expose her suspects, but also reveal much about humanity as a whole.... [McCall Smith] is a master.... There’s beauty and revelation of one kind or another woven expertly into every line.
Christian Science Monitor
These novels...loft the spirits. They make the reader feel good—about life, the world, the basic decency of people.... They are wise.
Winston-Salem Journal
McCall Smith is a vivid observer and an elegant writer, honoring Botswanan customs and culture.... Like the best traditions, this series is one we hope will endure.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
As in 2009’s Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, the previous entry in this beguiling, bestselling series, a personal crisis for one of the leads, rather than a mystery, drives the plot of Smith’s superb 11th novel set in Botswana featuring his infinitely understanding sleuth, Precious Ramotswe. When a delivery truck backs into Phuti Radiphuti, the fiancé of Mma Ramotswe’s prickly and insecure assistant, Grace Makutsi, and crushes his leg against a wall, Phuti’s rude aunt won’t allow Grace to visit her beloved in the hospital. Meanwhile, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency tries to help the executor of an American woman, who wished to leave some money to a kind tour guide, but couldn’t recall the guide’s name. The resolution to the problem of another client, who was cheated out of his home by a gold-digger, might strike some as unduly fortuitous, but it makes sense within the framework of these books, which are more about humanity than logic.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) New challenges and an exciting adventure await Botswana lady detective Precious Ramotswe in this eleventh entry in the much-beloved series.... As always, wrongs are righted and all is resolved, thanks to the wit and wisdom of these two shrewd Mmas. Even after nearly a dozen installments, McCall Smith manages to keep his series engaging and fresh. Expect much demand: the release of a new No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novel is always cause for celebration among the author’s many fans —Allison Block
Booklist
Mma Precious Ramotswe's 11th full cupboard of cases takes her from her office in Gaborone into a safari camp to track down the elusive heir to an unexpected legacy. On her deathbed, Estelle Grant, late of St. Paul, Minn., amended her will to leave $3,000 to the guide who'd been kind to her on a safari to the Okavango Delta, but she couldn't remember the name of the guide or the camp. Can the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, 2009, etc.) locate the beneficiary and inform him of his good fortune? Only if Mma Ramotswe can find the time to spare from the rest of her caseload. Her old friend, senior midwife Constance Mateleke, is convinced that her inattentive husband is carrying on an affair and wants the agency to find evidence she can use in her divorce proceedings. Government biologist Robert Monageng Kereleng, whose family business has already been plundered by an employee who fled to South Africa, wants Mma Ramotswe to help him recover the house he'd unwisely deeded to an avaricious girlfriend who has no intention of sharing it with him. And Mma Grace Makutsi, the agency's secretary and assistant detective, has problems of her own: Not only has her fiance, furniture salesman Phuti Radiphuti, been hospitalized with a serious injury, but his territorial aunt won't let Mma Makutsi near him. All these problems are solved with Mma Ramotswe's customary grace and wisdom, though it would take a sharp reader to see which of them will prove the most intransigent.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thinks of himself as less clever than his wife. What happens in the opening scene that proves him to be as observant and intuitive as Mma Ramotswe herself (pp. 7–14)?
2. The differences between men and women have long been a topic of discussion between Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi. Mma Makutsi thinks, “Of course men and women were different, and women were, on the whole, different in a better way. . . . Women were capable of doing rather more than men” (p. 38). Does this prove true in the course of the story?
3. Botswana is more than just a setting in these stories. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thinks about the country as he drives to the aid of Mma Mateleke (p. 4), while Mma Ramotswe thinks about her father’s Botswana “in which young people had shown respect for older people” (p. 34). What does Botswana represent, for Mma Ramotswe particularly?
4. Mma Makutsi challenges the patience and kindness of Mma Ramotswe often in this novel. How does Mma Ramotswe respond to Grace’s suggestion about switching teapots? Why does she buy Grace a new pair of boots?
5. “How to Love Your Country Again” is a chapter that appears not to advance the plot. What is the purpose, then, of this seeming pause in the story? What are some of the observations and reflections here that provide insight into Mma Ramotswe’s character?
6. What is at stake in the struggle between Grace and Phuti’s aunt? Do you find Phuti’s timidity disturbing as the story goes on? Is this an aspect of his character that Grace fully accepts?
7. What is the lesson of the visiting priest who gives the sermon in the cathedral? Why does Mma Ramotswe change her mind about telling people not to weep (pp. 67–68)?
8. Mma Ramotswe defines wisdom as “an understanding of the feelings of others and of what would work and what would not work; which stood by one’s shoulder and said this is right or this is wrong, or this person is lying or this person is telling the truth” (p. 34). What do you think of this definition of the term? Is wisdom the key to her success as a detective?
9. Violet Sephotho has convinced Robert Kereleng to put his new house in her name. Why does her plan backfire (pp. 147–49)? Why is Grace so happy about this (pp. 153–54)?
10. When Precious and Grace travel to the Okavango Delta, several comic scenes develop. What are some of your favorite funny moments during their trip?
11. Mma Ramotswe has been hired to find an unnamed guide at a safari camp, to whom an American woman has left a large amount of money. A coincidence—two women named Mrs. Grant—causes Mma Ramotswe to tell the wrong man he will receive the bequest. But another coincidence resolves the difficulty (pp. 187, 194). Would you consider this outcome a matter of plot manipulation or a plausible situation, given the closeness of kinship ties in a place like Botswana?
12. Why does Mma Potokwane succeed in the confrontation with Phuti’s aunt? What is Mma Potokwane willing to do that Mma Ramotswe did not do (pp. 206–10)? Is this because Mma Ramotswe is too kind to act forcefully?
13. In most detective fiction, readers seek the identity of the criminal or the resolution of a mystery. Who is the guilty party, and what if anything is the mystery, in The Double Comfort Safari Club? How does Mma Ramotswe differ from most fictional detectives? How do plot and pace differ, and what other unique features distinguish the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series from other detective fiction?
14. How does Mma Ramotswe figure out what is going on in Mma Mateleke’s marriage? How well does she manage her tricky conversations with the husband and the wife?
15. The novel’s ending brings a happy reunion of Grace and Phuti, who says that Grace will be “Mma Radiphuti . . . very soon now” (p. 210). Do you expect that the marriage will take place in the next installment?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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