Mr. Golightly's Holiday
Salley Vickers, 2003
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312423803
Summary
Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date.
But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him. As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to examine his attitude toward love and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his only son's death—so, too, we begin to learn the true and extraordinary identity of Mr. Golightly. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Liverpool, UK
• Reared—Stoke-on-Trent and London
• Education— Cambridge University
• Awards—judge, Booker Prize (2002)
• Currently—lives in London, UK
Salley Vickers is an English novelist whose works include the word-of-mouth bestseller Miss Garnet's Angel, Mr. Golightly's Holiday, The Other Side of You and Where Three Roads Meet, a retelling of the Oedipus myth to Sigmund Freud in the last months of his life. Her books touch on big philosophical themes of religion, art, creativity and death. She also writes poetry.
She was born in Liverpool in 1948. Her mother was a social worker and her father a trades union leader, both members of the British communist party until 1956 and then very committed socialists. She was brought up in Stoke-on-Trent and London, and read English Literature at Cambridge University. Following this, she taught children with special needs and then English literature at Stanford, Oxford and the Open University and was a WEA and further education tutor for adult education classes.
She then trained as an Jungian analytical psychotherapist, working in the NHS and also specialised in helping people who were creatively blocked. She gave up her psychoanalytic work in 2002, although she still lectures on the connections between literature and psychology. She now writes full time and lives in London.
Her father was a committed supporter of Irish republicanism and her first name, 'Salley', is spelled with an 'e' because it is the Irish for 'willow' (from the Latin: salix, salicis) as in the W B Yeats poem, "Down by the Salley Gardens" a favourite of her parents.
She has two sons from her first marriage. In 2002, her second marriage, to the Irish writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney, was dissolved.
In 2002, she was a judge for the Booker Prize for Fiction. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Salley Vickers, though treading perilously close to the edge of whimsy, is not a "cute" writer, and this book is more readable and modern— also darker and more serious—than a description may make it sound (though I have to warn that it does have a cutish ending and a few other lapses into near-coyness).
Alice K. Turner - Washington Post
Mr. Golightly's Holiday invites you to sit back and consider the large issues of remorse, redemption, and creation."
— The Boston Globe
Written in elegant understated prose, her work probes the human condition, while encompassing myth, metaphysics and spirituality, and embracing the big themes of life and death, good and evil along the way.
Christie Hickman - Daily Telegraph
Vickers writes quietly and confidently about the relationship between nature, humanity and the numinous. Mr Golightly’s Holiday is simultaneously funny, sad and surprising, as fresh and hopeful as one of Shakespeare’s comedies and for similar reasons. Vickers is never less than original and, when conveying her understanding of human frailty and potential, she can be sublime.
Pamela Norris - Literary Review (UK)
A compulsively readable novel from the word-of-mouth bestseller.... Salley Vickers’ latest is much more than a slightly eccentric and humorous tale about the small things in life. In fact, it gradually becomes apparent that its significance couldn’t be greater .
Observer (UK)
Vickers’ third novel contains all the elements of humour and expert story-telling but the author is far too subtle and intelligent to announce outright what she is really about to do; that is to deal with the intricacies of human emotion and answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions. It is a testimony to Vickers’ skill as a narrator that she manages to produce a hugely readable and uplifting piece of prose out of such difficult and delicate themes. It would seem she takes a certain delight in selecting deliberately weighty subject matter and simplifying it into light-hearted witty prose."
Clare Sawers - Scotland on Sunday
English author Vickers (Miss Garnet's Angel) has a light hand with themes that touch on issues of faith and sin, and her tale of Mr. Golightly, taking a break from his labors in a Devonshire village to see if he can create a worthy successor to his hugely popular and influential first book, begins with wonderful promise. Mr. Golightly's real identity, as well as that of his magnum opus and his chief business rival, is hinted at with delightful delicacy; and the fact that he chooses not to create any supernormal happenings, but to deal bemusedly with the people of his creation just as they are, makes him particularly endearing. Vickers is on sure ground with her creation of the more raffish of Golightly's new neighbors, but the introduction of a ravaged widow, Ellen Thomas, moves the book into murkier psychological waters. After a while the book's good humor begins to evaporate, and there is a highly melodramatic climax, followed by a weird chapter of discussion between Golightly and his rival that is reminiscent of the conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov and seems quite jarringly out of place. Vickers has a delightful if occasionally overwhimsical wit and writes charmingly of nature, human and otherwise, but the book fails to live up to its highly original central conceit.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the name “Golightly?” Is Golightly a character light of touch? Explain the serious side to his personality. What is the meaning of the epigraph?
2. Golightly’s identity is not revealed until page 250. Discuss the many disguised biblical references that reveal who he is. How were you able to figure out his identity?
3. Golightly has taken a holiday to “rewrite his great work into a soap opera, which he had decided to call That’s How Life Is.” What does this working title say about what he is trying to recreate? Why would his masterpiece need to be rewritten as a soap opera?
4. During his holiday, Golightly meets many interesting characters, all of whom face some type of adversity. How are individual issues confronted by the characters of Great Calne a microcosm of today’s society? What are the positive and negative attributes of Great Calne?
5. As Golightly watches an adult raven try to feed its young he questions the “notion that a creator had influence over the objects of its creation.” What does this say about Golightly’s presence and influence in Great Calne? How does this explain how he sees mankind?
6. Golightly becomes a father figure to the troubled Johnny Spence, a young man who does not have a stable family life and hides around town. How does Golightly’s relationship with Johnny help him deal with the“catastrophe” of losing his son? Discuss how Golightly feels about and deals with the “catastrophe.” How is he a different person because of it?
7. Ellen Thomas, who was told by a gorse to “tell people...about love,” has an extension built on her house to hide a convicted sex offender who is being hunted by Brian Wolford, a prison officer. Consider how Ellen and Brian are different. What are the defining differences in their characteristics and what they represent? How and why do their paths cross at the conclusion of the novel?
8. Golightly’s rival antagonizes him with a series of email messages that Golightly himself “asked of the righteous Job.” How is the story of Job an influence in the novel? Why would Golightly feel that because“he had not been tested by life” he is “poorer thereby?” Consider the suffering that Ellen has experienced. How is she similar to Job? How is this theme reflected in the lines by Keats on the last page?
9. On the night before Ellen Thomas’s funeral, Golightly sends an email to his rival asking to meet. Why did Golightly have a need to talk to his rival? Why are they seemingly friendly with one another? How does the meeting show the necessary balance between good and evil? What are their thoughts on comedy and tragedy? What do they learn from one another?
10. Golightly learns many things about humanity during his holiday, but before leaving he realizes that“the beam of the universe, though slow, found its own level...but he, nor his rival was the agent.” Do you agree with this explanation of who is in control of the balance of the universe? How does this reflect what Golightly has learned during his holiday?
11. How does Luke’s new work reflect what Golightly tried to achieve with his recreation of his masterpiece? Do you agree with Paula’s need for a happy ending? Would you consider Mr Golightly’s Holiday to have a happy ending?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Scent of Rosa's Oil
Lina Simoni, 2008
Kensington Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780758219244
Summary
Set in the beautiful port city of Genoa, Italy, at the turn-of-the-century, The Scent of Rosa's Oil is a magical story that attests to the strength of longing, the consequences of betrayal, and the nostalgic memories only a one-of-a-kind fragrance can evoke .
The only home Rosa has ever known is the Luna brothel, where she's lovingly cared for by Madam C and all the women who work there. Madam C shelters Rosa from what really goes on at the Luna by telling her they play a game with the men who visit. Naturally, Rosa is curious and can't wait until she grows up so she can also play the game.
But when a twist-of-fate forces Rosa to leave the Luna after her sixteenth birthday, she goes to stay with her new friend Isabel, an old woman who distills oils. The strange smells and smoke that emanate from Isabel's shack have deemed her a witch to the locals, but only Rosa sees a lonely, tender woman with a passion for making beautifully-scented oils. Enchanted by the intoxicating fragrances around her, Rosa becomes Isabel's apprentice, learning the art of extracting a flower's essence and selling the oils in the town square.
Soon everyone in Genoa is talking about the pretty, young girl with the lush locks of red hair who sells aromatic oils in the piazza. Some say she has the oil to cure whatever ailment one has, while others say her oils will capture the heart of a special person. Indeed, Rosa has learned Isabel's secret for creating her own "perfect oil"—a unique fragrance that holds a mysterious power.
Now Rosa needs a miracle to make Renato, the man she has fallen in love with, see past the ugly rumors he's heard about her and the Luna brothel. Disguising herselfwith a black wig and dabbing her special fragrance on her wrists, Rosa sets out to win Renato. But how long can Rosa keep her true identity hidden? And when destiny intervenes, challenging their love in unforeseeable ways, they'll need a magic even greater than the scent of Rosa's oil. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Genoa, Italy
• Education—B.S., engineering; Ph.D., computer science;
training in neuroscience—all US schools
• Currently—lives in Palm Spring, California USA
Lina Simoni was born in Genoa, Italy and moved to the US in 1988 to pursue an academic career. With a B.S. in Engineering, a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and training in Neuroscience, she did research and taught for 12 years at major American institutions (MIT, Northwestern University, McGill University) in the field of Computational Neuroscience, studying and modeling the functions of the human brain. She abandoned her scientific endeavors in 2000, when she decided to turn her lifelong hobbies (literature and art) into full-time professional activities. Trained at the Art Insitute of Chicago and the Evanston Art Center, she showed her paintings and photographs in galleries in the Midwest, Northeast, Florida, and the South of France.
On the literary front, she is a graduate of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Santa Fe Writers' Conference, and other literary/screenwriting events. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women. Simoni authored two novels, award-winning The Scent of Rosa's Oil and Villa Serenata, published in the US and Europe; one children's book, Sofia's Rainbow; and numerous short stories and screenplays. Her son, Tommaso, is a talented actor/musician as well as a scholar of the cultures (languages, history, philosophy) of the Mediterranean basin. Simoni lives in Palm Springs, CA. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Scent of Rosa's Oil has an atmosphere as unusual as its title. It reads almost like an allegory where one accepts less than reality for a higher cause, though I'm not positive I've plumbed its lesson. The obvious one, of course, is that one shouldn't judge the worth of a person without walking in his or her shoes. But is there also the lesson that perfectly good people may live happy and comfortable lives outside the normal ethos of one's society? The Luna is a world of its own where its inhabitants are loving towards a child and kindly to each other. It's only with the unknowing hurt Rosa causes at her party that ill will explodes at Luna. All that aside, The Scent of Rosa's Oil is a captivating reading experience with an original plot and an unusual setting. —Jane Bowers
Romance Review Today.com
Simoni's juicy debut is the story of Rosa, a young Genoan woman born to a prostitute and orphaned at birth in the late 19th century. Her guardian is Madam C, the proprietor of a much-loved brothel called the Luna, who shields Rosa from "the game" played on the second floor of her house. But for Rosa's 16th birthday party, she wears a special perfume distilled by her peculiar friend Isabel, and before the evening's over, the mayor, enchanted by the scent, ends up playing "the game" with Rosa. (Rosa, unbelievably, doesn't realize what's going on nor has she ever seen a naked man before.) When their tryst is discovered, Madame C, who has pined for the mayor for years, hurls Rosa onto the street. The orphan seeks refuge with Isabel and hides her born-in-a-brothel past from her new beau, longshoreman Renato (who is also susceptible to Isabel's perfume), but when Renato's life and their love are threatened, Rosa must decide what truths are worth the risk of losing him. Though parts of the story feel pat and the dialogue is often stiff, most of this light, whimsical romance's flaws are forgivable.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Scent of Rosa's Oil:
1. In what way does Simoni turn the conventional assumption about prostitues and "witches" on its head?
2. Should Madam C have kep Rosa from understanding the real "game" / business of Luna? Is there a difference between naivete and innocence? Can you have one without the other? Today, we try to protect our children from adult "knowledge" of the world. Is it possible to over protect them?
3. Was it smart or right of Rosa to deceive Renato by with-holding her upbringing from him and disguising herself? Or did she do it out of necessity? Are we less judgmental today, or do we continue to judge others according to their back-grounds. In other words, do we still believe that that the sins of the parent are visited upon the child? (Be honest, now.)
4. How is this book similar to those that center on food and its magical properties? Have you read, or know of, other works comparable to The Scent of Rosa's Oil? What might all these works be saying about the power of the senses as opposed to the intellect? Think of it this way: historically, Western culture has considered reason superior to passion—the intellect must control pleasure, i.e., the desire to indulge the senses. How does Simoni's work (and others) challenge that way of thinking?
5. This novel is partly a coming-of-age story, in which the heroine attains maturity and finds her way into the adult world. What does Rosa come to learn by the end of the story? What about Renato?
6. Can you discern the ways in which Simoni portrays the winds of change in this work—a more modern way of viewing the world?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Wife's Tale
Lori Lansens, 2009
Knopf Doubleday (Canada); Little, Brown & Co. (USA)
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316069311
Summary
On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy—still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school—to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search.
For the first time in her life, she boards a plane and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary finds that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she finds fills her with inner strength she's never felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July, 1962
• Where—Chatham, Ontario, Canada
• Education—St. Clair College (Windsor, Ont.)
• Currently—lives near Los Angeles, California, USA
Lori Lansens was a successful screenwriter before she burst onto the literary scene in 2002 with her first novel Rush Home Road. Translated into eight languages and published in eleven countries, Rush Home Road received rave reviews around the world.
Her follow-up novel, The Girls, was an international success as well. The Wife's Tale, her third novel, was published in 2009. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, Lori Lansens now makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and two children (From the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
I was born in July 1962 in small-town Chatham, Ontario, a rural community near the border to Detroit, Michigan, where I spent the first eighteen years of my life, a landscape that would become the backdrop for my first three novels.
My father worked at a factory that made trucks. My mother stayed at home and cared for me and my brothers, one a year younger than me, one a year older, all of us born in July.... We were free to explore, to wander, and to wonder.
I attended St. Ursula Catholic School from kindergarten to eighth grade. My friends were mostly Italian and Portuguese and I loved their homes with the sides of beef and pork curing in meat lockers, and cloves of garlic dripping from ceilings, and the curious second ovens that they all seemed to keep in their basements. I was strongly influenced by my religious upbringing, and at one point considered becoming a nun, but when our parish refused to baptize my bi-racial cousins I stopped going to church altogether.
After high school I attended St. Clair College in Windsor to study advertising and business. My plan was to become a copy writer, to marry my passion for writing with a practical approach to making a living.
I met my husband of twenty-five years, Milan Cheylov, when he was a young actor. He’d recently returned to Toronto from acting school in New York and I was new in town, working in the classified advertising department of [Toronto's] The Globe and Mail. We met by coincidence at Bennie’s, an old deli near Yonge and Bloor Street. We talked about books and he asked what I was reading. I pulled a tattered, decade-old copy of Mordechai Richler’s Cocksure from my purse. Milan grinned, reached into his duffel bag and pulled out the same novel.
After writing a dozen more short stories, none of which were published, but for which I received just enough encouragement from editors, I decided to try my hand at dramatic writing. Milan suggested I take a few acting classes to better understand the actor’s process and I found myself bitten by the bug. My most memorable moment was playing a scene opposite Al Pacino and John Goodman in Sea of Love. My part was cut out of the movie, but the week I spent on set helped pay our rent that summer. My lowest point was appearing in a children’s play, dressed in a squirrel suit, being upstaged by a fly in a window. I quit acting and turned back to writing— this time a screenplay—South of Wawa. The movie, starring Rebecca Jenkins and Catherine Fitch, was produced in 1992. One reviewer compared the screenplay to Chekov while another wondered if the screenwriter had been dropped on her head at birth.
[After several years] Milan suggested I take a break from the film world to write the novel I’d been dreaming of aloud for so many years..., and with Milan working long hours on film sets, I sat down to write the first chapters to Rush Home Road, the story of an old black woman who lives in a trailer park near Chatham, and the little mixed-race girl she takes in to change the course of both of their lives.... I finished the first draft of Rush Home Road in the weeks before my son was born. Our daughter was born just weeks after Rush Home Road was launched.
Shortly after The Girls [my second novel] was launched, my husband and I made the difficult decision to leave Canada, the city we’d lived in for twenty-five years, our family in south western Ontario, all of our friends, for Milan’s career opportunities in the television industry in L.A. Even before we’d made the decision to move I’d heard Mary Gooch calling from the sidelines—a woman in her forties who undergoes a dramatic transformation.
Milan and I live with our children in a rural canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains with coyotes and bobcats and rattlesnakes. From my office above the garage I can see a horse ranch across the road and beyond that, the tawny hills and clear blue sky. I’m currently at work on my next book.
(Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reivews
Lansens’s gift, and it’s to be cherished, is one of deep engagement with her subject, and empathetic involvement that broadens to draw in the reader.
Globe and Mail (Canada)
A persuasive, dynamic storyteller, Lansens leads us through flashbacks into the world of a lonely, always-hungry child, who grows into a dutiful, anxious, hungry adult.
Toronto Star
Like short-story queen Alice Munro, to whom she is often compared, Lansens demonstrates a singular gift for discerning both the ordinary and the extraordinary in small-town life and small-town people.
Winnipeg Free Press
Mary Gooch is beyond shock when her husband leaves the night before their silver anniversary party. Jimmy Gooch has always loved her, but with each new trauma—two early miscarriages, her father's death, even the loss of her feral cat—Mary has felt less worthy of his affection and more hungry. Now weighing 302 pounds, Mary can't seem to move past her malaise. Finding $25,000 in their bank account, Mary flies, for the first time, from their small Canadian town to her mother-in-law's home in Southern California, determined to wait for her prodigal spouse. While there, she loses her appetite but discovers a measure of self-worth through the "kindness of strangers." Verdict: Lansens's (The Girls) portrait of a woman who hides behind the Kenmore as protection from life's heartache is earthy and primal in its pain. Yet Lansens doesn't resort to an overnight makeover to save Mary. Instead, our heroine uncovers a hidden strength she had all along. Those who loved The Girls will be pleased that Lansens is back. Highly recommended. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Wife's Tale:
1. In what ways has Mary Gooch's life become smaller and smaller as she enters mid-life? How has she withdrawn from the world...and why?
2. Talk about her obsessive eating. What drives her to food... what is Mary "hungry" for?
3. Comment on this quotation: "The anger of Mary's secret floated down to the silty bottom until another storm stirred it up again. But like the food she hid from herself Mary always knew its precise location." What does this passage reveal about Mary?
4. In what way is Mary a prisoner of her own body? Talk about the daily humiliations she undergoes because of her size?
5. In real life how do people treat the morbidly obese? For instance, what is really being said when someone utters, "such a pretty face"? What condescending or dismissive statements are said or written about any eating disorder, obesity or anorexia?
6. The history of storytelling is replete with heroes who undertake challenging journeys for a specific goal. In what way might The Wife's Tale be considered a "hero's journey," an "adventure" story...or a "coming of age" story? Outwardly, Mary searches for her husband; inwardly, what is her search really about? What is the treasure at the end of the journey?
7. One reader observed that Mary is like an onion. What might she have meant?
8. Talk about her mishaps and the numerous people Mary meets when she arrives in California. How do these acts of kindness begin to heal her?
9. What about Jimmy? What kind of man is he...what kind of husband?
10. Ultimately, how is Mary changed—on the inside? What does she come to learn about herself and the world?
11. To what extent does this passage represent a change in Mary: "Yes, she still believed in miracles. What were they but random occurrences that caused wonder instead of random occurrences that brought grief?"
12. To what extent did you sympathsize with Mary Gooch? Or were you irritated by or impatient with her? If so, did you find yourself rooting for her by the end?
13. Someone referred to Mary as "everywoman"—a character who symbolizes the plight of the modern female. Do you agree? If so, in ways is she representative of many woman today?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Incendiary
Chris Cleave, 2005
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451618495
Summary
"Dear Osama," a woman writes, "you blew up my husband and boy." With stark simplicity, these words begin a story that's as unsettling as it is compelling.
After a suicide bomb at a London soccer match, a young wife and mother is forced to confront the unthinkable. In a voice filled with despair, this unnamed narrator begins a letter to Osama bin Laden. She writes so he will "see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind."
With her familiar life blown to pieces, the letter is a cri de coeur and an attempt to convince Osama to stop his campaign of terror. But this is only the beginning. With London under a virtual lockdown and every scrap of life she knew gone in one terrible moment, she talks her way into a job aiding the police in their investigation.
Befriended by a journalist and his girlfriend, she is drawn into a psychological tangle of subterfuge that threatens her sanity and her life. And when London faces yet another attack, she finds herself under siege, on the run, and witness to a desperation and violence she could never have fathomed.
Undeniably provocative and stunningly bold, with a vision as macabre as it is chillingly realistic, Incendiary is a keenly imaginative first novel, lit by the times we know. (From Barnes & Noble)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—London, England, UK
• Where—raised in both Buckinghamsire (UK) and Cameroon
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Somerset Maughm Award; Prix des Lecteurs
• Currently—lives in London
Chris Cleave is a British author of four novels and has been a journalist for London's Guardian newspaper, where from 2008 until 2010 he wrote the column "Down With the Kids."
Novels
His first novel, Incendiary, was published in 2005 and released in 20 countries. It won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and the Prix Special du Jury at the 2007 French Prix des Lecteurs. In 2008, the novel was adapted to film starring Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams.
His second novel, Little Bee, was inspired by his childhood in West Africa. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Costa Award for Best Novel. Gold, his third novel, came out in 2012, and his fourth, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, was published in 2016. That novel is based on his grandparents' experience during the London Blitz of World War II.
Cleave lives in London with his French wife and three mischievous Anglo-French children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/24/2016.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
How are we left at the end of this gruesome and grueling saga? Strangely light-headed, as if we have lived through happenings in another world, a world brought brutally to life by current events. This is Chris Cleave's first novel. My imagination can't stretch to where he could go from here.
Brigitte Weeks - Washington Post
An al-Qaeda bomb attack on a London soccer match provides the tragicomic donnee of former Daily Telegraph journalist Cleave's impressive multilayered debut: a novel-length letter from an enraged mother to Osama bin Laden. Living hand to mouth in London's East End, the unnamed mother's life is shattered when her policeman husband (part of a bomb disposal unit) and four-year-old son are killed in the stadium stands. Complicating matters: our narrator witnesses the event on TV, while in the throes of passion with her lover, journalist Jasper Black. The full story of that day comes out piecemeal, among rants and ruminations, complete with the widow's shell-shocked sifting of the stadium's human carnage. London goes on high terror alert; the narrator downs Valium and gin and clutches her son's stuffed rabbit. After a suicide attempt, she finds solace with married police superintendent Terrence Butcher and in volunteer work. When the bomb scares escalate, actions by Jasper and his girlfriend Petra become the widow's undoing. The whole is nicely done, as the protagonist's headlong sentences mimic intelligent illiteracy with accuracy, and her despairingly acidic responses to events-and media versions of them-ring true. But the working-class London slang permeates the book to a distracting degree.
Publishers Weekly
Cleave's auspicious debut takes the form of a woman's letter to Osama bin Laden. A suicide bombing at a London sporting event leaves the city gripped by fear: 1000 are dead and many more irrevocably damaged by the experience. The author of the letter is a working-class woman whose husband and young son were killed in the blast. Afterward, haunted by visions of her son and other bombing victims, she teeters on the edge of reality, vacillating between hope and desperation. The narrator, whose name we never learn, goes on to develop a perverse relationship with an upper-class couple and take a job in the police department to help fight the war against terrorism. Graphic depictions of violence and gore accompany humorous reflections on life and class differences-an odd combination that makes for strangely compelling reading. —Sarah Conrad Weisman, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY
Library Journal
A grieving widow and mother composes a letter to Osama Bin Laden. At points, Cleave's oddly elegant debut novel about the soul-corroding effects of modern terrorism seems like something George Orwell might have written during the Blitz, had he been a little less concerned with the niceties of punctuation. Cleave opens with a high-wire burst of stream-of-consciousness grief on the part of a youngish but now careworn woman whose husband and son have been killed in a horrific suicide attack on the Arsenal football stadium: "I saw the video you made Osama where you said the West was decadent. Maybe you mean the West End? We aren't all like that. London is a smiling liar his front teeth are very nice but you can smell his back teeth rotten and stinking." Sinking into her mourning, she attempts to comfort herself with the thought that at least her son died in the company of his beloved father. It is not enough; sadness gives way to denial, and denial gives way to fury as the bereaved of London begin to suspect that the government knew something about the impending carnage and did nothing to stop it. Our narrator falls in with a fiercely ambitious columnist and an investigative journalist, with whom she had a brief, formless affair before the attack. Working as a civilian in an antiterrorist police unit at Scotland Yard, and urged on by her confidants, she discovers bits and pieces of information that, just in time for a new attack, collectively do much to slip the tether off whatever small mooring she has left in the world: "It is Christmas Eve Osama and this morning I decided you were right after all.... Some people are cruel and selfish and the world would be better off without them." Who knows what? Whom can we trust? Like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Cleave's provocative debut will make readers a little uneasy—and that's okay.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Incendiary opens with "Dear Osama," and is framed as a novel-length letter from a devastated mother of a terror-attack victim to Osama bin Laden. How does the epistolary structure impact your appreciation of the narrator's plight? Is the narrator's run-on narrative style intended to be indicative of a semi-literate upbringing, or to convey the urgency of her situation, or to suggest that she is psychologically unbalanced?
2. "And when I get nervous about all the horrible things in the world I just need something very soft and secret and warm to make me forget it for a bit." (p. 9) How is the narrator's sexual promiscuity connected to her anxiety? To what extent does her sexual encounter with Jasper Black on the day of the stadium attack seem reprehensible?
3. How does their shared awareness of class differences establish an immediate boundary between the narrator and Jasper Black? What is it about their social and cultural differences that makes them especially attractive to each other?
4. How does the setting of Incendiary in London resonate for you as a reader? Does London function as a character of sorts in the novel, as it undergoes changes as a result of the attacks?
5. "Well Osama I sometimes think we deserve whatever you do to us. Maybe you are right maybe we are infidels. Even when you blow us into chunks we don't stop fighting each other." (p. 50) How does the narrator's disgust with some of the Arsenal and Chelsea bombing victims reveal her own awareness of her society's failings? Why does the author choose to include details from the attack and its aftermath that are unflattering to the victims?
6. How did you interpret the narrator's interactions with her deceased son? To what extent do you think the author intended these glimpses of the boy as evidence of the narrator's post-traumatic mental condition? How might they also function as a kind of magical realism?
7. "I am someone who is having a surreal day," she said. "This afternoon I had a light lunch with Salman Rushdie. We drank CÔte de LÉchet. We discussed V.S. Naipaul and long hair on men." (p. 107) To what extent is Petra Sutherland a caricature of a self-involved snob? Does she transcend that characterization through her involvement with the narrator? What does her behavior in light of the narrator's discoveries about the May Day attack suggest about her true character?
8. In the text of her letter to Osama, the narrator imagines newspaper headlines that comment directly on her experiences. How is this propensity connected with the narrator's sense that her life offers the kind of spectacle that others only read about? How does it relate to her relationships with the journalists Jasper Black and Petra Sutherland?
9. "Yes," she said. "We have better sex when I look like you." (p. 163) How is Jasper Black's love triangle with the narrator and his girlfriend, Petra Sutherland, complicated by their similar appearances? How does Petra's pregnancy change the narrator's relationship with her? Does Jasper Black's staging of a dirty bomb in Parliament Square reveal his social conscience or his stupidity?
10. How does Terence Butcher's revelation about the truth behind the May Day attack impact his relationship with the narrator? What does his decision to tell the narrator the truth suggest about his feelings for her? To what extent do you feel his behavior before and after the attack is justifiable?
11. "A thousand City suits die and it's good-bye global economy. A thousand blokes in Gunners T-shirts die and you just sell a bit less lager." (p. 188) How do the social concerns introduced in Incendiary hint at the tensions between working class and middle class London in the twenty-first century?
12. Why doesn't author Chris Cleave give his narrator a name? To what extent does her anonymity impact your ability to identify with her as a reader?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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River of Smoke (Ibis Trilogy, 2)
Amitav Ghosh, 2011
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374174231
Summary
The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck-hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her lover, Kalua.
The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. And the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries Frederick “Fitcher” Penrose, a horticulturist determined to track down the priceless treasures of China that are hidden in plain sight: its plants that have the power to heal, or beautify, or intoxicate. All will converge in Canton’s Fanqui-town, or Foreign Enclave: a tumultuous world unto itself where civilizations clash and sometimes fuse. It is a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars.
Spectacular coincidences, startling reversals of fortune, and tender love stories abound. But this is much more than an irresistible page-turner. The blind quest for money, the primacy of the drug trade, the concealment of base impulses behind the rhetoric of freedom: in River of Smoke the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries converge, and the result is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance. Critics praised Sea of Poppies for its vibrant storytelling, antic humor, and rich narrative scope; now Amitav Ghosh continues the epic that has charmed and compelled readers all over the globe. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—St. Stephen's College, Deli; Delhi University;
Ph.D., Oxford University.
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in New York City; Kolkata and Goa, India
Amitv Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)
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Ghosh was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.
Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan.
He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India.
Sea of Poppies (2008), the first installment of a planned trilogy, is an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. The second in the trilogy, River of Smoke was published in 2011.
His previous novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), In an Antique Land (1992), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.
In addition to his novels, Ghosh has written The Imam and the Indian (2002), a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature).
In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
Amitav Ghosh's literary awards include:
• Prix Medicis Etranger (French; for Circle of Reason)
• Sahitya Akademic and Ananda Pursaskar Awards (Indian;
for The Shadow Lines)
• Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK; for The Calcutta Chromosome)
• Grand Prize-Fiction, Frankfurt International e-Book Awards
(for The Glass Palace)
• Hutch Crossword Book Prize (Indian; for The Hungry Tide)
• Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italian)
• Shortlisted for Man Booker (UK; for Sea of Poppies)
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
River of Smoke does not disappoint...[it] reclaims a story appropriated for too long by its winners...yet Ghosh does so without excessive earnestness, leavening his narrative with nuggets of fact and insight...[his] historical judgments are largely rendered subtly, without any of the sledgehammer effect of retrospective moralism that a lesser writer might have employed…With River of Smoke, Ghosh's Ibis trilogy is emerging as a monumental tribute to the pain and glory of an earlier era of globalization.
Shashi Tharoor - Washington Post
On one level, [River of Smoke] is a remarkable feat of research, bringing alive the hybrid customs of food and dress and the competing philosophies of the period with intimate precision; on another it is a subversive act of empathy, viewing a whole panorama of world history from the 'wrong' end of the telescope. The real trick, though, is that it is also fabulously entertaining.
Observer (UK)
Eloquent.... Fascinating.... [River of Smoke's] strength lies in how thoroughly Ghosh fills out his research with his novelistic fantasy, seduced by each new situation that presents itself and each new character, so that at their best the scenes read with a sensual freshness as if they were happening now.
Guardian (UK)
[This] vast book has a Dickensian sweep of characters, high- and low-life intermingling . . . Ghosh conjures up a thrilling sense of place.
Economist (UK)
Brillian.... By the book’s stormy and precarious ending, most readers will clutch it like the ship’s rail awaiting, just like Ghosh’s characters, the rest of the voyage to a destination unknown.
Don Oldenburg - USA Today
Ghosh’s best and most ambitious work ye.... [He] writes with impeccable control, and with a vivid and sometimes surprising imagination.
New Yorker
Ghosh sets the second volume of his Ibis trilogy in 1838, appropriately enough, because at heart he's a 19th-century novelist with a sweeping vision of character and culture.... Ghosh triumphs both through the clarity of his style and the sweep of his vision, and he leaves the reader eager for volume three.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The opening scenes recount Deeti's survival after she and Kalua escaped the Ibis. She insists that destiny, not chance, led her to the site of her hidden shrine. For her, what does destiny mean? What legacies does she pass on to the next generation?
2. Like many of the novel's characters, Ah Fatt and Robin Chinnery have bicultural ancestries. What limitations and freedoms accompany their lack of a legitimate, aristocratic bloodline? Do ancestry and prestige go hand in hand in River of Smoke?
3. Discuss Bahram's and Fitcher's motivations. Are they simply greedy?
4. Paulette is a master of disguise and can comfortably move between cultures. What does she consider to be her true identity? Why is horticulture a suitable field for her?
5. Discuss the role of religion in shaping the characters' view of the world. How are the novel's Hindu characters affected by the expectations of the gods? When Christian characters justify the opium trade, how do they reconcile it with their faith? (You may enjoy revisiting Charles King's letter to Charles Elliot near the book's final pages.)
6. Bahram and Zadig discuss the experience of having an additional, foreign wife, debating whether love is a factor. How does the relationship between Bahram and Chi-mei change over the years? Would Bahram enjoy Canton as much if he weren't a foreigner?
7. How do the trilogy's ships—the formerly slave-trading Ibis, Fitcher's practical but eccentric-looking Redruth, and the treasure-laden Anahita (named for a Hindu goddess of water)—reflect their passengers?
8. In chapter seven, Robin's letter describes the Pearl River as a suburb of Canton. In chapter thirteen, Zadig recalls the legend that claims the river got its name from a foreign trader who dropped a mysterious pearl. Drawing on these and other impressions, discuss the Pearl River as a character: how would you describe its powers and its personality?
9. Consider Ghosh's penchant for intertwining fates. For example, Ah Fatt had been Neel's companion in the labor prison, while Neel (qualified to work as a munshi because of the education that accompanied his noble status) is close by when Mr. Punhyqua is arrested, marking the unlikely fall of another member of the ruling class. Does Ghosh create tragicomedy or pure irony in story lines such as these?
10. Near the end of chapter six, Bahram has a chance encounter with Napoleon (a scene inspired by reported encounters between the French emperor and seafaring traders). If you had been in Bahram's position, what would you have asked Napoleon?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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