World Made by Hand
James Howard Kunstler, 2008
Grove/Atlantic Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802144010
Summary
In The Long Emergency celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge.
For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure.
Their challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish. With the cost of oil skyrocketing—and with it the price of food—Kunstler’s extraordinary book, full of love and loss, violence and power, sex and drugs, depression and desperation, but also plenty of hope, is more relevant than ever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York, Brockport
• Currently—lives in Saratoga Springs, New York
Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents, who divorced when he was eight. His father was a middleman in the diamond trade. Kunstler spent most of his childhood with his mother and stepfather, a publicist for Broadway shows. While spending summers at a boys' camp in New Hampshire, he became acquainted with the small town ethos that would later permeate many of his works. In 1966 he graduated from New York City's High School of Music & Art, and then attended the State University of New York at Brockport where he majored in Theater.
After college Kunstler worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1975, he began writing books and lecturing full-time. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and was formerly married to the children's author Jennifer Armstrong.
Described as a Jeremiah by the Washington Post, Kunstler is critic of suburbia and urban development trends throughout the United States, and is a proponent of the New Urbanism movement. According to Scott Carlson, reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kunstler's books on the subject have become "standard reading in architecture and urban planning courses".
Non-fiction books
Since the mid-90s, he has written four non-fiction books about suburban development and diminishing global oil supplies. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, his first work on the subject, The Geography of Nowhere, discussed the effects of "cartoon architecture, junked cities, and a ravaged countryside", as he put it. He describes America as a poorly planned and "tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work."
In a 2001 op-ed for Planetizen.com, he wrote that in the wake of 9/11 the "age of skyscrapers is at an end", that no new megatowers would be built, and that existing tall buildings are destined to be dismantled. In his books that followed, such as Home From Nowhere, The City in Mind, and The Long Emergency (2005), he pushed hard on taboo topics like a post-oil America. He was featured in the "peak oil" documentary, The End of Suburbia, widely circulated on the internet, as well as the Canadian documentary Radiant City (2006). In his recent science fiction novel World Made by Hand (2008), he describes a future more dependent on localized production and agriculture, and less reliant on imports.
In his writings and lectures, he makes a strong case that there is no other alternative energy source on the horizon that can replace relatively cheap oil. He therefore envisions a "low energy" world that will be radically different from today's. This has contributed to his becoming an outspoken advocate for one of his solutions, a more energy-efficient rail system, and writes "we have to get cracking on the revival of the railroad system if we expect to remain a united country."
What people say...
Charles Bensinger, co-founder of Renewable Energy Partners of New Mexico, describes Kunstler's views as "fashionably fear-mongering" and uninformed regarding the potential of renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency and smart-growth policies to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. Contrarily, Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune finds that, "Kunstler has plotted energy starvation to its logical extremes" and points to the US Department of Energy Hirsch report as drawing similar conclusions while David Ehrenfeld writing for American Scientist sees Kunstler delivering a "powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change" with a "lengthy discussion of the alternatives to cheap oil."
In May 2008 oil reached $132 a barrel, lending credence to Kunstler's warnings about high energy prices. Kunstler commented on the price surge, stating...
I'm not cheerleading for doom, you understand... merely asserting that we have a problem in the USA. Our behavior and our lifestyle are not consistent with reality. The markets are registering this for the moment.
Kunstler, who has no formal training in the fields in which he prognosticates, made similar dire predictions for Y2K as he makes for peak oil. Kunstler responds to this criticism by saying that a Y2K catastrophe was averted by the hundreds of billions of dollars that were spent fixing the problem, a lot of it in secret, he claims.
Kunstler has made several failed predictions regarding U.S. stock markets. In June 2005 and again in early 2006, Kunstler predicted that the Dow would crash to 4,000 by the end of the year. The Dow in fact reached a new peak of approximately 12,500 by the end of 2006. In his predictions for 2007, Kunstler admitted his mistake, ascribing the Dow's climb to "inertia combined with sheer luck".
The Albany Times Union reviewed World Made by Hand, opening with, "James Howard Kunstler is fiddling his way to the apocalypse, one jig at a time." The reviewer calls it "a grim scenario" with "an upside" or two.
In a critique of James Howard Kunstler's weekly audio podcast, the Columbia Journalism Review called the KunstlerCast "a weekly podcast that offers some of the smartest, most honest urban commentary around—online or off."
Kunstler has faced virulent criticism for his pro-Israeli stance in the debate over the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Kunstler's name is mostly associated with nonfiction works like The Long Emergency, a bleak prediction of what will happen when oil production no longer meets demand, and the anti-suburbia polemic The Geography of Nowhere. In this novel, his 10th, he visits a future posited on his signature idea: when the oil wells start to run dry, the world economy will collapse and society as we know it will cease. Robert Earle has lost his job (he was a software executive) and family in the chaos following the breakdown. Elected mayor of Union Grove, N.Y., in the wake of a town crisis, Earle must rebuild civil society out of squabbling factions, including a cultish community of newcomers, an established group of Congregationalists and a plantation kept by the wealthy Stephen Bullock. Re-establishing basic infrastructure is a big enough challenge, but major tension comes from a crew of neighboring rednecks led by warlord Wayne Karp. Kunstler is most engaged when discussing the fate of the status quo and in divulging the particulars of daily life. Kunstler's world is convincing if didactic: Union Grove exists solely to illustrate Kunstler's doomsday vision. Readers willing to go for the ride will see a frightening and bleak future
Publishers Weekly
This vision of life in upstate New York after the fall of civilization is poignant and personal compared with the main themes in other recent postapocalyptic novels-e.g., bare-knuckles survival in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, charismatic leadership in David Lozell Martin's Our American King, desperate migration in Jim Crace's The Pesthouse. Kunstler instead presents a detailed, granular perspective on the consequences that the breakdown of the government and the economy would have on everyday domestic living. He offers a real look at how people and communities would actually survive without the modern economic infrastructure upon which we rely. This novel does illustrate the violence of a lawless future, but it does so in a way that seems plausible, while maintaining some sense of hope. There is also a little mystery thrown in to sweeten the pot. This future is not completely dire, but it's grim enough to make us seriously consider how we would get by in a world made by hand. Highly recommended for all public libraries.
Henry Bankhead - Library Journal
Kunstler's latest novel fictionalizes some of the material covered in his nonfiction work The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (2005), which examined how a decline in oil production could have cataclysmic repercussions on modern industrial culture. After a bomb exploded in Los Angeles (attributed to an "act of Jihad"), narrator Robert Earle and his family moved to Union Grove, N.Y., but the economy has since collapsed and the citizens have found themselves atavistically involved in long-lost pursuits such as subsistence farming. The devastation has brought with it other effects, most notably the Mexican flu. Premature death, in fact, has claimed a substantial part of the populace, including Robert's daughter and his wife, who fell victim to an outbreak of encephalitis. So few single men now exist that women (even Jane Ann, wife of the Congregational minister) are shared between friends. In addition, civil authority has largely broken down (no one even knows whether Washington, D.C., still exists). Consequently, the locals are called upon to govern themselves. Into this anarchic breach step Brother Jobe and the members of the New Faith Church, a quasi-Amish band determined to reassert the rule of law. Pockets of lawlessness are rife, both in the personal corruption of local officials and in the sadistic, unholy gang of Wayne Karp, a character who leaves one begging for civilization. After a dull adventure to free a boat crew being held hostage by a local warlord on the Hudson, Robert and company return to Union City to clean up the mess. It's hard to imagine that a post-apocalyptic world could be this tedious.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What was your initial impression of the narrator Robert Earle? What kind of a man does he seem to be?
2. Kunstler has painted a grim picture of a crippled America after the end of available oil, the global economy, consumerism, jihadist bomb attacks on major cities, and the reintroduction of wide-scale plagues. Can you imagine yourself living without electricity, motorized transportation, a regular job, lack of medicines, and contact with the outside world? Do you think that you would be able to survive in this new society? What skills would you rely on? What skills would you no longer need?
3. Does the new organic farm based local economy described in World Made by Hand seem more gratifying than our contemporary life and culture? In what ways? In what ways does it seem inferior?
4. "Plenty of mayflies would still get their one ecstatic night of reproduction in the treetops. They would return to the river to die the next morning. It was called the spinner fall. They’d been doing it for millions of years before we showed up" (p. 4). Cite some of the numerous other insightful observations of the natural world throughout the book. Do you find it paradoxical?
5. At the end of the second chapter Robert says, "I tried to avoid nostalgia because it could destroy you. I was alone now..." (p. 14). Is he really alone? What is his relationship to the greater community? Do you think that his attitude is helping him or hindering him from becoming resigned to all that he has to cope with in his new reality?
6. In chapter 3, Robert says to Jane Ann, "Maybe I’m crazy. I live with hope...that we’ll recover some. Maybe not back to before, but some. I live in hope that my Daniel will walk into this house again some fine morning, and your boy with him" (p. 18). How would you describe Robert’s relationship with Jane Ann? In addition to his optimism, what helps him to be a survivor in the face of his wife and daughter’s deaths and everything else that he has suffered?
7. "The general was run at first as a public cooperative, under the illusion that the ongoing catastrophes would ebb and normality would return. But the flu and the bombing of Washington put an end to that illusion, and the general eventually came under the management of Wayne Karp and his gang of former motorheads" (p. 28). Wayne Karp is the cult leader of the remnants of the basest layer of society, who now live separately in Karptown. Their attitudes and amorality lead to young Shawn Watling’s death. What is the outcome and reaction to this senseless murder emblematic of in the new society? Did the reaction of the townspeople surprise you? What could they have done?
8. When Robert and Loren first encounter Brother Jobe and learn of his acquisition of the high school for himself and his New Faith Brotherhood, they feel a bit troubled. When the brotherhood attends Shawn’s funeral, they start to interact with the rest of the town. How are Brother Jobe and his followers different from the people of Union Grove? Why are Robert and Loren apprehensive?
9. "As the modern world came apart, and the local economy with it, Bullock took the opportunity to acquire at least eight other properties adjacent to the original family farm.... Stephen Bullock had a comprehensive vision of what was going on in our society and what would be necessary to survive in comfort, and I don’t think he ever deviated from that vision for a moment" (p. 85). After Robert introduces Brother Jobe to Stephen Bullock; he says, "That fellow is a dangerous man" (p. 92). Even though Bullock is nominally the town magistrate, his community is somewhat removed from Union Grove. What makes Brother Jobe react to him in that way? Is he another cult figure like Wayne Karp? How is his community organized? What does he offer his followers?
10. How did Brother Jobe’s influence on Robert figure in his heroic rescue of Britney Watling and her daughter from the fire, his dominance at the board of trustees meeting, and his installation as mayor?"It’s like we’ve been living in...Jell-O. Trapped. Immobilized. Watching everything around us slowly fall apart through this thick, gummy transparent prison of Jell-O, and unable to do anything about it" (p. 205). Is Robert aware of Brother Jobe’s effect on him?
11. Why does Britney Watling decide to throw her lot in with Robert? Consider Jane’s comments to Robert: "You’re quite the hero. First the fire, then you shove Dale off the plank, then the Big Breakout, and now the water system finally gets fixed" (p. 204). Did you think about how Robert could have used his new status? Many other men in this story have done less and reaped more. Who are they and how did they do it?
12. When Robert undertakes the expedition to Albany to find out what happened to Bullock’s missing boat, the Elizabeth and its crew of four men, he starts to see what has happened to the surrounding area. What experiences open his eyes to the condition of the rest of the country? Draw some contrasts between our information age and the complete absence of media in the new society. How does this affect people’s perception of each other?
13. "Brother Minor was skinny and smaller than me. He had a sharp, weasely face and a joking demeanor, and when he laughed at his own jokes, which was often; his eyes creased and seemed to close up tight, while his laughter was nearly silent, more like air huffing through a pipe. He joked incessantly" (p. 124). Brother Minor has many aspects to him in addition to being a comedian. What are the qualities that set him apart? What is your overall impression of him?
14. "I showed Minor my hand and asked him how it was possible that such an injury could actually heal overnight" (p. 151). There are a number of things in this book that seem impossible to explain. There are some parts that may seem apocryphal. Remember a few and explore their meanings?
15. "A fellow makes a few things happen and the world falls at his feet" (p. 162). What kind of a government is Dan Curry running in Albany? How is he portrayed? The search party also encounters Lieutenant Governor Eugene Furman. How does he do his job? How is he portrayed?
16. " 'Abominable wickedness the Lord hates,' Joseph screamed at her, with the tendons standing out on his neck and blue veins bulging in his forehead, while he waved his pistol at the terrified woman. 'Then the just shall rejoice to see his vengeance and bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked' " (p. 176). Joseph and the other brothers are as adept at killing as they are at other gentler skills. Why are they so sure of themselves and where do they find their justifications? Are they free to do what they please because there is no legal system, no courts, and no real rules? Do you think that they were hypocritical?
17. "The levee at Stephen Bullock’s farm was the greatest social event around Washington County in decades, even going back into the old days, when television and all the other bygone diversions held people hostage in their homes after the sun went down” (p. 208). What made the party so enjoyable? In what ways was it different from parties of today? What place does music play in Robert’s life and in the lives of the people?
18. " 'The world has become such a wicked place,' she said quietly, just a statement of fact. 'There’s goodness here, too.' 'Where is it?' 'In all the abiding virtues. Love, bravery, patience, honesty, justice, generosity, kindness. Beauty, too. Mostly love.' " (p. 226). What does Britney offer to Robert that Jane Ann couldn’t? What can Robert offer Britney? What has prepared him to accept her and Sarah into his life?
19. "Look, old son. There’s real strangeness in this world of ours. Back in the machine times, there was too much noise front and back, so to speak, to keep us from knowing what lies behind the surface of things. Now it stands out more. Am I ever going to understand what I just saw?" (p. 262) What did you make of Robert’s meeting with Mary Beth Ivanhoe? Why is he chosen? Do you think he will understand?
20. What has changed in Union Grove that makes Robert and Loren willing to go after Wayne Karp and his boys for burgling houses during the levee? Why do they also decide to prosecute Brother Jobe for the forced shavings? Did Robert and Loren take on more than they could handle when they went to Karptown to arrest Wayne? Were they testing themselves?
21. "We returned to the jail room, Brother Jobe was now kneeling at his bed with his hands clasped on the mattess, his eyes closed and his lips moving soundlessly, the way little children pray" (p. 297). Do you think Brother Jobe knew that his son, Minor, had been killed before he was told?
22. "In the days that followed, stories circulated around town about Brother Minor and Wayne Karp coming to an eerily similar end" (p. 313). Did you find the identical killings, spooky, magical, apocryphal, biblical? Kunstler speaks of news reaching Union Grove of religious hysteria in other towns. Do you think that is what is happening in Union Grove? Do you think that might explain the curious happenings? Does it matter?
23."We believe in the future, sir. Only it’s not like the world we’ve left behind," Joseph said.... "We’re building our own New Jerusalem up the river. It’s a world made by hand, now, one stone at a time, one board at a time, one hope at a time, one soul at a time. " (p. 142). In the end do you think that Brother Jobe, Robert, and the people of Union Grove were ready to begin building their New Jerusalem?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Madonnas of Echo Park
Brando Skyhorse, 201o
Simon & Schuster
199 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439170847
Summary
Winner of the 2011 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours. With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream.
When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife.
The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again."
Like the Academy Award–winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing— and unforgettable—lyrical power. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Brando Skyhorse is the author of The Madonnas of Echo Park. Born and raised in Echo Park, CA, Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers' Workshop program at UC Irvine. For the past ten years he has worked in New York publishing as a book editor, at Grove Press, Lyons Press, and Skyhorse Books. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A literary glimpse into the often unseen world of Mexican Americans trying to make it as Americans.
USA Today
Skyhorse maps in his vivid debut the spirit of L.A.'s Echo Park, where Mexican-Americans define themselves either in alignment with or in opposition to their barrio. Each story-like chapter tells the tale of a character who has grown up in, moved to, or fled Echo Park, such as an itinerant construction worker hired to dispose of a murder weapon, a woman who converses with the Virgin Mary, and a hustler who swears he's going to stay out of prison this time. These lives coalesce around a random shooting that claims the life of a young girl. Family epics also emerge, notably the story of Aurora Esperanza, whose absent father narrates the opening story and whose mother was at the center of a tragedy. Aurora herself closes out the book, drawing together threads of homecoming that weave throughout the novel. Though a few of the narrators' voices aren't distinct enough, Skyhorse excels at building a vibrant community and presenting several perspectives on what it means to be Mexican in America, from those who wonder “how can you lose something that never belonged to you?” to those who miraculously find it.
Publishers Weekly
Eye-opening and haunting, Skyhorse’s novel will jolt readers out of their complacence. —Deborah Donovan
Booklist
First-time novelist Skyhorse offers a poignant yet unsentimental homage to Echo Park, a working-class neighborhood in east Los Angeles where everyone struggles to blend in with American society but remains tied to the traditions of Mexico. Twenty-five years ago, a teenage Skyhorse tells Aurora Esperanza at a high school dance, "I can't dance with you…you're Mexican." Before he can apologize, she disappears. These eight linked stories—real voices, with details changed—are his apology. Hector, Aurora's father, is 40 years old with no job because the Hollywood restaurant where he worked closed. He picks up a construction job, but it isn't what he bargained for. Felicia, Hector's ex-wife and Aurora's mother, works for wealthy Mrs. Calhoun, to whom she is invisible. Efren Mendoza, a by-the-rules bus driver, is proud that he has escaped his family's gang associations, but after a terrible accident he breaks all the rules. Finally, Aurora's story is a lament to Echo Park. She is the last to move out, carried by force by the L.A. Sheriff's Department so Dodger Stadium can be built. Verdict: Universal appeal for readers who favor in-depth character-centered stories, this is enthusiastically recommended. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa County P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. The first chapter of The Madonnas of Echo Park is actually a fictional Author's Note, telling the story of the real Aurora Esperanza and the inspiration for the novel. Did you read the Author's Note before starting the novel? Did you realize it was fictional? Do you prefer to know an author's thoughts about their book before you start, or formulate your own thoughts about it first?
2. The reporters that cover the drive-by shooting raise questions about the positioning that saved Aurora and placed Alma Guerrero in the path of the bullet. Felicia seems doubtful herself about what actually happened during the shooting. Was it just a mother-daughter spat, or did survival instincts kick in and shape the incident?
3. "Tall poppy syndrome" or "crab mentality" is often pointed out by observers of minority cultures, when a member of the community achieves, or has goals, outside of the average and is dragged down or derided by others. Do you see this at work in any of the characters' lives?
4. The incident on Efren Mendoza's bus highlights the racial tensions simmering below the surface of everyday L.A. Was the bus driver trying to manage an unmanageable situation, or acting out of his own prejudices?
5. Aurora, speaking of her obsession with Morrissey, says, "You can't help who, or what, you love." Is she speaking solely about music, or is there a broader context for her statement? Do you agree with her?
6. Felicia works for wealthy white people cleaning their homes; Hector and Diego do construction work off the books. Are these genuine opportunities, or examples of immigrants being taken advantage of?
7. Beatriz (Felicia's mother, Aurora's grandmother) believes she has been visited by Our Lady of Guadalupe at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard. Do you believe in religious visions, or is this simply a hallucination brought on by age and guilt?
8. Juan's father, Manny, is an ex-gangster. What purpose do gangs serve for their neighborhoods? Are they the only option available for many teens, or an actual choice on the part of their members? Can people truly change, after being involved in that kind of violence?
9. Felicia knows her employers as Rick and Mrs. Calhoun, despite the fact that she becomes much closer to Mrs. Calhoun than Rick. Is the way she refers to them indicative of their relationships? Why doesn't it change with the changing circumstances?
10. Are the Calhouns camouflaging their dysfunction with charitable acts, or are they genuinely sympathetic to Felicia? Is this an accurate portrait of their society/demographic? Are the Calhouns' dark secrets the exception or the rule?
11. Which character was your favorite, and which was your least favorite? Which did you identify with the most?
12. The Madonnas of Echo Park has many points of view and many connections that are often revealed slowly. Did the structure of the novel enhance or detract from the reading experience? Would you change it? If so, how?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg, 1987
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804115612
Summary
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age.
The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
And as the past unfolds, the present—for Evelyn and for us—will never be quite the same agains. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Real Name—Patricia Neal
• Birth—September 21, 1944
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—University of Alabama
• Currently—lives in Montecito, California
Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Standing in the Rainbow, and A Redbird Christmas. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
Before her career as a novelist, Flagg was known principally for her on-screen television and film work. She was second banana to Allen Funt on the long-running Candid Camera, perhaps the trailblazer for the current crop of so-called reality television. (Her favorite segment, she told Entertainment Weekly in 1992, was driving a car through the wall of a drive-thru bank.) She appeared as the school nurse in the 1978 film version of Grease, and on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And she was a staple of the Match Game television game shows in the '70s.
Quite early on in her writing career, Fannie Flagg stumbled onto the holy grail of secrets in the publishing world: what editors are actually good for.
Attending the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference in 1978 to see her idol, Eudora Welty, Flagg won first prize in the writing contest for a short story told from the perspective of a 11-year-old girl, spelling mistakes and all—a literary device that she figured was ingenious because it disguised her own pitiful spelling, later determined to be an outgrowth of dyslexia. But when a Harper & Row editor approached her about expanding the story into a full-length novel, she realized the jig was up. In 1994 she told the New York Times:
I just burst into tears and said, "I can't write a novel. I can't spell. I can't diagram a sentence." He took my hand and said the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. He said, "Oh, honey, what do you think editors are for?"
Writing
And so Fannie Flagg—television personality, Broadway star, film actress and six-time Miss Alabama contestant—became a novelist, delving into the Southern-fried, small-town fiction of the sort populated by colorful characters with homespun, no-nonsense observations. Characters that are known to say things like, "That catfish was so big the photograph alone weighed 40 pounds."
Her first novel, an expanded take on that prize-winning short story, was Coming Attractions: A Wonderful Novel, the story of a spunky yet hapless girl growing up in the South, helping her alcoholic father run the local bijou. But it was with her second novel where it all came together. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe—a novel, for all its light humor, that infuses its story with serious threads on racism, feminism, spousal abuse and hints at Sapphic love -- follows two pairs of women: a couple running a hometown café in the Depression-era South and an elderly nursing home resident in the late 1980s who strikes up an impromptu friendship with a middle-aged housewife unhappy with her life.
The result was not only a smash novel, but a hit movie as well, one that garnered Flagg an Academy Award nomination for adapting the screenplay. She won praise from the likes of Erma Bombeck, Harper Lee and idol Eudora Welty, and the Los Angeles Times critic compared it to The Last Picture Show. The New York Times called it, simply, "a real novel and a good one."
As a writer, though, this Birmingham, Alabama native found her voice as a chronicler of Southern Americana and life in its self-contained hamlets. "Fannie Flagg is the most shamelessly sentimental writer in America," The Christian Science Monitor wrote in a 1998 review of her third novel. "She's also the most entertaining. You'd have to be a stone to read Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! without laughing and crying. The cliches in this novel are deep-fat fried: not particularly nutritious, but entirely delicious."
The New York Times, also reviewing Baby Girl, took note of the spinning-yarns-on-the-front-porch quality to her work: "Even when she prattles—and she prattles a great deal during this book—you are always aware that a star is at work. She has that gift that certain people from the theater have, of never boring the audience. She keeps it simple, she keeps it bright, she keeps it moving right along—and, most of all, she keeps it beloved."
But, lest she be pegged as simply a champion of the good ol’ days, it's worth noting that her writing can be something of a clarion call for social change. In Fried Green Tomatoes, Flagg comments not only on the racial divisions of the South but also on the minimization of women in both the 1930s and contemporary life. Just as Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison commit to a life together—without menfolk—in the Depression-era days of Whistle Stop, Alabama, middle-aged Evelyn Couch in modern-day Birmingham discovers the joys of working outside the home and defining her life outside meeting the every whim of her husband.
On top of her writing, Flagg has also stumped for the Equal Rights Amendment.
I think it's time that women have to stand up and say we do not want to be seen in a demeaning manner," Flagg told a Premiere magazine reporter in an interview about the film adaptation of Fried Green Tomatoes.
Extras
• Flagg approximated the length of her first novel by weight. Her editor told her a novel should be around 400 pages. "So I weighed 400 pages and it came to two pounds and something," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1987." I wrote until I had two pounds and something, and, as it happened, the novel was just about done."
• She landed the Candid Camera gig while a writer at a New York comedy club. When one of the performers couldn't go on, Flagg acted as understudy, and the show's host, Allen Funt, was in the audience.
• Flagg went undiagnosed for years as a dyslexic until a viewer casually mentioned it to her in a fan letter. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The people in Miss Flagg's book are as real as the people in books can be. If you put an ear to the pages, you can almost hear the characters speak. The writer's imaginative skill transforms simple, everyday events into complex happenings that take on universal meanings.
Chattanooga Times
When Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home, they find themselves exchanging the sort of confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. At 48, Evelyn is falling apart: none of the middle-class values she grew up with seem to signify in today's world. On the other hand, 86-year-old Cleo is still being nurtured by memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, a pocket-sized town outside of Birmingham, which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its one cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits (both true and hominy) to anyone who passed by. How their love for each other and just about everyone else survived visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, a murder and the rigors of the Depression makes lively reading -- the kind that eventually nourishes Evelyn and the reader as well. Though Flagg's characters tend to be sweet as candied yams or mean clear through, she manages to infuse their story with enough tartness to avoid sentimentality. Admirers of the wise child in Flagg's first novel, Coming Attractions, will find her grown-up successor, Idgie, equally appealing. The book's best character, perhaps, is the town of Whistle Stop itself. Too bad the trains don't stop there anymore.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. This novel has a very complex structure alternating between the past and the present and the point of view of a whole host of different characters. Did this narrative format work for you? Were there particular narrators you found more compelling than others and why?
2. Idgie and Ruth's friendship is truly a case of opposites attract. Why is the scene where Idgie reveals her bee charming skills to Ruth so pivotal to the story of their relationship and in understanding what drew them together despite their differences?
3. Jasper Peavey's grandson is embarrassed by his grandfather's behavior toward white people. Discuss generational conflict and how life changed or did not change across the generations in both the Peavey and Threadgoode families.
4. This novel has a great deal to say about race relations in the South. How did the black and white communities interact in this story both within and beyond the borders of Whistle Stop? Were Idgie and Ruth's egalitarian views on race typical?
5. What is Artis Peavey's secret? Do you think the events he witnessed as a child had an impact upon his later life? How does race have an impact upon the lives of all the Peavey children--Jasper, Artis, Willie Boy, Naughty Bird? What options were available to them and what choices did they make and why? What do you think of the revenge that Artis takes on the man who murdered his brother?
6. Do you think the color of Jasper and Artis' skin--Jasper being very light-skinned and Artis being very dark-skinned--made a difference in their approach to life? What does the light-skinned Clarissa's encounter with her dark-skinned Uncle Artis say about life as a blackSoutherner?
7. How do you feel about a character like Grady Kilgore, Whistle Stop sheriff, member of the Ku Klux Klan, and friend to Idgie and Ruth at the same time?
8. Eva Bates is a woman you might call sexually liberated before her time. What role does she play in Idgie's life? In Stump's? What are Ruth's feelings toward Eva?
9. We never learn where Ninny came from or how she came to be adopted by the Threadgoodes, only that they took her in and treated her like a member of the family. This is only one example in a novel full of non-traditional families. What are some other examples of familial bonds that do not look like a traditional nuclear family? How does this author challenge and expand our understanding of the meaning and structure of family?
10. What drives Idgie to masquerade as Railroad Bill? What role did the economic devastation of the Great Depression play in the lives of Idgie, Ruth, Smokey, and everyone in Whistle Stop?
11. Why did Ruth leave Idgie and marry Frank? What made her finally leave him?
12. Did the identity of Frank Bennett's killer surprise you? What drove her to do what she did? Why was Idgie prepared to take the blame?
13. What do Dot Weems' weekly dispatches tell us about the nature of life in a small town? Were you sorry to see Whistle Stop fade away? Why has this been the fate of so many small towns in America?
14. How does Idgie help Stump overcome having lost his arm?
15. How did Evelyn's relationship with Ninny Threadgoode change her life? What did she learn from Mrs. Threadgoode? And how did Evelyn help her friend?
16. What did Ninny Threadgoode's stories offer Evelyn? Why do you think Evelyn is so drawn to this woman and her stories?
17. Ninny tells Evelyn that her memories are all she has left. Discuss the importance of memory and storytelling in this novel.
18. Why and how was Evelyn able to finally overcome her revenge fantasies, send Towanda packing and make important changes in her life? What steps did she take that ensured these changes would be for good and not a temporary thing?
19. How does this story explore the process of aging? How do we die with dignity when all those we loved and who loved us are gone? How does Ninny manage?
20. Does the Whistle Stop Cafe sound like a restaurant you would like to frequent?
21. Is domestic violence viewed differently today than it was in Ruth's time? Do you see any changes in Ruth's character after she leaves her abusive marriage?
22. Which character would you be most interested in meeting and why?
23. For those of you who have seen the movie, how do the movie and the book compare? What is missing from the movie and why do you think this is so? Do you think the choices made in terms of how to streamline this complex novel for film were the best ones?
24. The importance of food in the fabric of everyday life is a central theme in this book. For example, Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode bond over the treats Evelyn brings. What does Evelyn's battle with her weight say about contemporary society and women's relationships with food and their weight? Are these struggles evident in the lives if Ninny, Idgie, or Ruth?
25. In the final chapter, we learn what has happened to Idgie. Why do you think she and Julian left Whistle Stop to take to the road? Why don't their friends or family appear to know where they are? Does this seem like an appropriate ending for Idgie?
26. Will anyone or has anyone tried any of Sipsey's recipes?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Mistress of the Revolution
Catherine Delors
Penguin Group USA
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451225955
Summary
In 1815 England, an exiled Frenchwoman, Gabrielle de Monserrat, begins a memoir of her days before and during the French Revolution. Gabrielle, the youngest daughter of a family of the impoverished nobility, recalls her journey through hardships and betrayals by three men in her life.
A girl of quiet strength and startling beauty, a widow at seventeen with a young daughter, Gabrielle is released into the world of Paris nobility. Determined and inquisitive, with little money and few prospects, she strives to find her own freedom. Around her, the French people attempt to build a utopia based on the ideals of liberty and equality. Differing currents of thought clash over the fate of a nation as the Revolution takes an ever more violent turn. Yet Gabrielle survives, maintaining her humanity and sense of decency. On occasion, she glimpses her first love as he ascends from obscure patriot to one of the most passionate architects of the new order. At last she reaches for him and an impossible happiness.
As Gabrielle writes on, twenty years later, political events again overtake her and she realizes that her tale is far more than an evocation of the past. It is the truth she owes her children. (From the author's website.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—France
• Education—University of Paris, Sorbonne School of Law
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California (USA) and Paris,
France
Catherine Delors was born and raised in France. She graduated from the University of Paris-Sorbonne School of Law and became a member of the Bar of Paris at the age of twenty-one.
She moved to the United States after her marriage and passed the California Bar. She worked at a few large law firms, then, after the birth of her son, set up a solo practice. She now splits her time between Los Angeles and Paris.
She has completed her second novel, titled For The King, a historical thriller about a terrorist attack in 1800 Paris, at the beginning of Bonaparte's reign. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Definitely a contender for one of the best reads of the year.
Associated Press
A most impressive literary debut, this outstanding novel of the French Revolution is well worth reading.
Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice)
Against the backdrop of the leadup to the French Revolution, Delors's mostly successful debut follows the life of Gabrielle de Montserrat, a feisty young woman forced by her meddling brother to forsake her commoner true love and marry the Baron de Peyre, a wealthy, older man. The baron is abusive and cruel, but the short-lived marriage produces a daughter before the baron dies. A widowed Gabrielle travels to Paris and enters the heady world of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, where, with a sparse inheritance and the responsibility of a young daughter, Gabrielle becomes the mistress of Count de Villers. Delors shines in her portrayal of the late 18th-century French women's world (she has a rougher time with the men), though the amount of political-historical detail covered overshadows the tragic love story that develops once Gabrielle reunites with her first love, Pierre-André Coffinhal, who is now a lawyer. The appearance of historical figures sometimes comes off awkwardly (as when Gabrielle meets Thomas Jefferson or has a private audience with Robespierre), and the ending is marred by a too-convenient and seemingly tossed-off twist. Nevertheless, the author ably captures the vagaries of French politics during turbulent times and creates a world inhabited by nicely developed and sympathetic characters.
Publishers Weekly
Delors does an admirable job of depicting the tension, confusion, and volatility of an era when one false move could mean the guillotine. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist
A noblewoman suffers several close brushes with the guillotine during the French Revolution in this debut novel from Delors. Gabrielle, from a noble family in Auvergne, sees her ancestral chateau for the first time at age 11, after she's removed from convent boarding school by her brother, the Marquis de Montserrat. Her mother, whom she hardly knows, is cold and hypercritical, and as Gabrielle matures, her brother makes incestuous overtures to her. While visiting her former wet nurse, a peasant woman, Gabrielle falls in love with Pierre-Andre, a young doctor. The Marquis forbids her to wed Pierre-Andre because he is a commoner. Instead, when she turns 15, her family forces her to marry middle-aged Baron de Peyre, who proves a volatile, brutal husband. When he dies suddenly, leaving Gabrielle a pittance, she flees with daughter Aimee to Paris, where she finds refuge with a distant cousin, a duchess who introduces her to the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Gabrielle becomes the mistress of the Count de Villers, who keeps her in grand style but often displays a cruel streak. When the Revolution begins, and Villers is killed defending the Tuileries Palace, Gabrielle is imprisoned, but acquitted by a peoples' court. Meanwhile, Pierre-Andre, now a lawyer, has become an influential magistrate under the new regime, and remains so throughout the various power shifts of the Revolution, while his contemporaries are losing their heads. Gabrielle seeks his help in procuring identity documents falsifying her aristocratic past, and the two rekindle their romance. Gabrielle is again arrested when her employer, whose advances she spurns, informs on her. Pierre-Andre secures her release and obtains his mentor Robespierre's blessings for the relationship. But a sudden reversal of Robespierre's political fortunes leaves Pierre-Andre and Gabrielle at the mob's mercy. Delors, who was born in France, writes competently in English, but at times her prose reads like a stilted translation. The Revolution's successive upheavals form an engrossing backdrop to Gabrielle's predicament, but she's too timid a protagonist to command center stage.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In Mistress of the Revolution, Gabrielle often makes difficult choices (when she becomes Villiers's mistress, when she accepts the position of lady-in-waiting, when she goes to work at the Theatre.) In her place, would you have chosen other options?
2. Gabrielle is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned at birth by her mother. How does she cope with it?
3. Do you think Gabrielle is a good mother? How does her relationship with her daughter evolve throughout the book?
4. Do you see Gabrielle's brother, the Marquis de Montserrat, as a villain, or do you feel some sympathy for him?
5. Is Gabrielle passive? Does she accept the limits imposed on women of her class and time, or does she strive to forge her own path?
6. When Gabrielle arrives in Paris as a widow at the age of seventeen, she is not reunited with her former love. Why not?
7. Is the portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette in Mistress of the Revolution different from what you read in other books or saw in films?
8. How are the stark realities of the Terror foreshadowed in the luxurious lifestyle of the aristocracy before the Revolution?
9. How does Gabrielle's attitude towards religion in general, and her own faith, evolve throughout the novel?
10. Mistress of the Revolution begins as a memoir. How, and why does the tone and purpose of Gabrielle's narrative evolve?
11. Did Mistress of the Revolution change your image of the French Revolution? If yes, how so?
12. Did the conclusion of the novel surprise you? Is it a "happy ending"?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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The Septembers of Shiraz
Dalia Sofer, 2007
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061130410
Summary
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known.
As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer. And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.
A page-turning literary debut, The Septembers of Shiraz simmers with questions of identity, alienation, and love, not simply for a spouse or a child, but for all the intangible sights and smells of the place we call home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Tehran, Iran
• Reared—New York, New York
• Education—B.A., New York University; M.F.A, Sarah
Lawrence
College
• Currently—New York, New York
Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled at the age of ten to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo. In March 2007 she was the first recipient of the Sirenland Fellowship, given each year to an unpublished author to attend the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.
She has been a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered, Poets & Writers magazine, the National Poetry Almanac of the Academy of American Poets, and the New York Sun. Her essays, "Of These, Solitude" and "A Prenuptial Visit to Chartres" were included, respectively, in the anthologies Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (2001) and France, a Love Story (2004). She lives in New York City. (From Barnes & Noble, courtesy HarperCollins.)
Extras
From a 2007 interview with Barnes and Noble editors:
• "My first job was in retail in a clothing store on Madison Avenue. (It was the most ruthless job I've ever had, because I experienced, firsthand, the raw rudeness of people. Nowhere else can you find the sordid depths of the human soul than you can as a shop clerk on Madison Avenue!)
• "I like to take very long walks in the city—sometimes as long as seventy or eighty blocks. Walking shakes things up inside me. It is the best mood stabilizer.
• "I am fascinated by religious iconography. This began in Assisi, Italy, where I spent some time many years ago."
• When asked about what book influenced her most as a writer, she responded:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I first read this book, in high school, I found it to be a simple but beautiful account of the lackadaisical spirit and eventual malaise of the 1920s. It was years later, on subsequent readings, that I took note of the many layers that make it such a rich and satisfying novel. Nick Carraway, the narrator, discovers Gatsby's story bit by bit - some parts true, others lies - from overheard gossip or from Gatsby himself. Flashbacks intersect with the present story of the summer of 1922, filling the gaps as the plot continues to move forward. In the end the pieces come together like those of an intricate puzzle. I was struck by Fitzgerald's use of symbols, such as colors. When Nick first sees Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker they are both wearing white dresses, which were "rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."
This points to the women's innocence, but also to their lack of substance. Gatsby wears silver and gold when he goes to visit Daisy for the first time after five years, and the green light at Daisy's dock, which taunts Gatsby, symbolizes the simplified version of the American dream. Another prominent symbol is the vigilant pair of eyes over the "valley of the ashes," signifying the witnessing of the waste and purposelessness of the 1920s—a reference perhaps to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The passage introducing the valley is filled with images of dust and smoke, and it is in this valley that carelessness finally ends with a death. I love, too, how Fitzgerald weaves the inevitable passage of time throughout the novel: Gatsby believes that time does not alter things. When he meets Daisy at Nick's house for the first time after five years, his nervousness makes him knock the clock over. Later, Daisy's child becomes a physical representation of the passage of time, and in the end Nick Carraway notes that it's his thirtieth birthday—a sobering realization that the "roaring twenties" are over. Like a hand-woven fabric that seems simple and straightforward at first glance, this book is constructed of multiple, delicate layers—only noticeable on close inspection. This, I think, is how a great book should be." (Author interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The Septembers of Shiraz is a remarkable debut: the richly evocative, powerfully affecting depiction of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran shortly after the revolution. In this fickle literary world, it's impossible to predict whether Sofer's novel will become a classic, but it certainly stands a chance.... Sofer writes beautifully, whether she's describing an old man's "wrinkled voice" or Shirin's irritation at wearing a head scarf, imagining "there are tiny elves inside...crumpling paper against her ears all day long." And she tells her characters' stories with deceptive simplicity. Every member of the Amin family attains a moving, and memorable, depth and reality. Although their crises—and the philosophical questions they raise—are of the greatest urgency and seriousness, The Septembers of Shiraz is miraculously light in its touch, as beautiful and delicate as a book about suffering can be.
Claire Messud - The New York Times
Like Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir about the same period in Iran, this book's strength lies partly in Sofer's ability to characterize Iranians in any epoch: the obsession with saving face, the moments of sweetness between strangers, the interplay between Muslims and Jews that can be ugly or tender.... The Septembers of Shiraz rises above being an ethnic novel about an intriguing place. It does not exoticize the Middle East or focus unduly on tempting targets such as women being forced to cover themselves or the persecution of Jews. These things exist, but they are part of a panoply of strangeness wrought upon everyone regardless of religion, gender or class. Instead, the book is about how people, in any country, live mostly without thinking about the political implications of their choices, and how they are taken by surprise when revolution or war crashes in. And how, even after the soul searching and the questions about whether they have led their lives the right way, they still care mostly about family, work, love and money. They are still, in the end, themselves.
Tara Bahrampour - The Washington Post
Sofer's family escaped from Iran in 1982 when she was 10, an experience that may explain the intense detail of this unnerving debut. On a September day in 1981, gem trader Isaac Amin is accosted by Revolutionary Guards at his Tehran office and imprisoned for no other crime than being Jewish in a country where Muslim fanaticism is growing daily. Being rich and having had slender ties to the Shah's regime magnify his peril. In anguish over what might be happening to his family, Isaac watches the brutal mutilation and executions of prisoners around him. His wife, Farnaz, struggles to keep from slipping into despair, while his young daughter, Shirin, steals files from the home of a playmate whose father is in charge of the prison that holds her father. Far away in Brooklyn, Isaac's nonreligious son, Parviz, struggles without his family's money and falls for the pious daughter of his Hasidic landlord. Nicely layered, the story shimmers with past secrets and hidden motivations. The dialogue, while stiff, allows the various characters to come through. Sofer's dramatization of just-post-revolutionary Iran captures its small tensions and larger brutalities, which play vividly upon a family that cannot, even if it wishes to, conform.
Publishers Weekly
In Sofer's debut novel, Isaac Amin, a Jewish businessman in Tehran, is imprisoned following the Iranian Revolution. As Amin attempts to survive his brutal treatment and convince his captors that he is not a Zionist spy, his wife, young daughter, and son (a college student in New York City) find various ways to cope with the radical change in their way of life and the knowledge that they may never see Amin again. This is a story that needs to be told, as a reminder of how political and religious ideologies can destroy individuals, families, and societies. Yet the Amins are not portrayed as innocent victims but flawed human beings who closed their eyes to the injustices of the monarchy under which they benefited. The family and political issues raised in the book are timely and ripe for discussion; this should be a popular book club choice.
Christine DeZelar - Library Journal
An Iranian Jew waits wrongly accused in prison while his family slowly crumbles in Tehran and New York. In the wake of the Iranian Revolution, as the Ayatollah Khomeini's Republic is first being established, gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested near his opulent Tehran home. Technically accused of being an Israeli spy, Isaac's real crimes are his religion and his personal wealth. As his interrogators try to break him with physical abuse and neglect, Isaac is most tortured by the memories of his family, with whom he is allowed no contact. On the homefront, the situation is similarly bleak. Isaac's beloved wife Farnaz tirelessly seeks information about her husband, and in doing so, begins to question the loyalty of the family's trusted maid, Habibeh, whose son (a former employee of Isaac's) has become an ardent member of the Republic. Isaac and Farnaz's precocious young daughter, Shirin, decides to take matters into her own hands, risking the family's lives when she steals confidential files from a classmate's home in the hopes of saving her uncle from the same fate as her father. And, an ocean away, son Parviz feels the strains in different ways, when both information and money from his family suddenly stops. He takes a room and job with a welcoming Hassidic man in Brooklyn, and, against his better judgment, falls in love with the daughter, Rachel. Eventually, Isaac triumphs over his accusers by bribing his way out of prison with a gift of his life savings. But the family's troubles are hardly over, and as they try to make their way out of the country to reunite their family overseas, young Shirin's well-intentioned plan threatens to curtail all their efforts. Sofer's characters are immensely sympathetic and illustrate plainly and without pretense the global issues of class, religion and politics following the Iranian Revolution. As intelligent as it is gripping.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Indifference: As Isaac Amin is arrested, he notices the indifference of the items on his desk “witnessing this event.” The following morning, his wife Farnaz thinks: “That the city is short by one man this morning makes so little difference.” Does one man's suffering or misfortune really affect those around him, or are we essentially alone in the world—whether we are experiencing pain or joy? While we may feel compassion for someone undergoing a difficulty, can we ever truly understand what that person is experiencing?
2. Isaac and Farnaz (as well as Isaac's sister and her husband) are very attached to their belongings. To what extent do the objects that we collect over the years come to define us?
3. The story is told from the points of view of the four family members. How does this affect your experience as a reader?
4. In prison Isaac is picked on because of his materialistic pursuits. His response—that life is to be enjoyed—and his recitation of a poem by Hafez manage to unite the group's opinion in his favor. What do you think of Isaac's philosophy?
5. Are you familiar with the poetic form—the ghazal? If so, where have you encountered this form? Do you have a favorite ghazal that you could share? What do you think of the idea of the ghazal as a symbol for Isaac's situation?
6. Isaac is persecuted because he is Jewish—even though he has led an essentially secular life. His son Parviz, renting an apartment from a Hassidic family in Brooklyn, is denied the love of his landlord's daughter because he is not Jewish enough. What do you think of the ways in which people classify and categorize one another—and set boundaries and differences? Do you think these boundaries are sometimes justified?
7. Isaac's nine-year-old daughter, Shirin, steals files from the basement of a friend whose father is a Revolutionary Guard. How do you understand her actions?
8. What role does memory serve in this novel? As a young man Isaac was a memorizer of poetry, and in prison he memorizes lines from the Koran—a partially calculated act that helps him when faced with his interrogator. But it is the involuntary memory (a term famously coined by Marcel Proust) of each of the characters that surfaces in much of the book. How do these recollections serve the characters, the story, and the reader?
9. Has this book changed your understanding of Iran—its history, its culture, and its people? If so, does this new understanding affect how you perceive the current stand-off between Iran and the United States?
(Questions provided by the publisher.)
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