Sister Mine
Tawni O'Dell, 2007
Crown Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307351678
Summary
Shae-Lynn Penrose drives a cab in a town where no one needs a cab—but plenty of people need rides. A former police officer with a closet full of miniskirts, a recklessly sharp tongue, and a tendency to deal with men by either beating them up or taking them to bed, she has spent years carving out a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the tiny coal-mining town where she grew up.
Two years ago, five of Shae-Lynn’s miner friends were catapulted to media stardom when they were rescued after surviving four days trapped in a mine. As the men struggle to come to terms with the nightmarish memories of their ordeal, along with the fallout of their short-lived celebrity, Shae-Lynn finds herself facing harsh realities and reliving bad dreams of her own, including her relationship with her brutal father, her conflicted passion for one of the miners, and the hidden identity of the man who fathered her son.
When the younger sister she thought was dead arrives on her doorstep, followed closely by a gun-wielding Russian gangster, a shady New York lawyer, and a desperate Connecticut housewife, Shae-Lynn is forced to grapple with the horrible truth she discovers about the life her sister’s been living, and with one ominous question: Will her return result in a monstrous act of greed or one of sacrifice?
Tawni O’Dell’s trademark blend of black humor, tenderness, and a keen sense of place is evident once again as Shae-Lynn takes on past demons and all-too-present. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A. Northwest University
• Currently—lives in Pennsylvania
Tawni O'Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Fragile Beasts, Sister Mine, Coal Run, and Back Roads, which was an Oprah's Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. She is also a contributor to several anthologies including Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female. Her work has been translated into 8 languages and been published in 20 countries. (From Wikipedia.)
Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, O'Dell graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. She lived for many years in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania, where she now lives with her two children and her husband, literary translator Bernard Cohen (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Tawni O’Dell’s energy bursts off the page. Sister Mine is one of those novels that insist on being read, front to back, as fast as possible.
Boston Globe
Bitterly poignant in places, it’s also a rollicking good read — and Shae-Lynn’s richly drawn character resonates long after her final wisecrack.
People
Sister Mine delivers a luxurious read, a novel worthy of the literary equivalent of a Grammy or an Oscar. This is a novel for people who devour good writing and craft-intensive storytelling, who savor the haven, both safe and fraught with danger, of a world in which fiction becomes the kind of truth that sets you free. Or, at the very least, makes you laugh and think and wish you’d discovered Tawni O’Dell before now
Portland Oregonian
The strength of O’Dell’s narrative is that she lets her characters tell the story. There is much to recommend. Shae-Lynn’s voice is entrancing in its honesty, and O’Dell’s ability to continue to freshly capture her mining communities is impressive… a worthy read.
Denver Post
Sister Mine is packed with flawed characters formed by violence and neglect who quickly become embedded in the reader’s heart. O’Dell sketches her characters with telling details and cop-shop crackling dialogue..Amid chick lit and knit lit and Brit lit, Sister Mine rates as true-grit lit.
USA Today
O'Dell, whose debut, Back Roads(2000), was an Oprah pick, returns with a terrific third novel set in a Pennsylvania coal country of broken families, altercations and smalltown coping. Policewoman-turned-cabbie Shae-Lynn Penrose, a little over 40 and back in Jolly Mount after a rent-a-cop stint in Washington, D.C., raised son Clay (24 and the town deputy) on her own. For the past 18 years, she has believed that her sister, Shannon, was killed by their abusive father while Shae-Lynn was at college. (Their mother died of complications after giving birth to Shannon; their father was killed much later in a mine explosion.) When a New York lawyer turns up asking for Shannon Penrose, whom he seems to have seen recently, Shae-Lynn is shocked; when Shannon herself suddenly turns up, very pregnant, Shae-Lynn's reaction is primal and tactile. As O'Dell slowly unspools Shannon's very-much-of-her-own-doing predicament, O'Dell demonstrates her mastery of set-piece dialogue, reeling off stingingly acute encounters that are as funny as they can be crushingly sad. Ne'er-do-well Choker Simms (and his two kids, Fanci and Kenny), lawyer Gerald Kozlowski, mine owner Cam Jack, Shae-Lynn's nonboyfriend E.J., Shannon's sort-of-boyfriend Dmitri and others are all wonderfully drawn through Shae-Lynn's keen observations. Family saga O'Dell-style crackles with conflict and a deep understanding of the complications and burdens that follow attachment, sex, love and kinship.
Publishers Weekly
Be prepared for an emotional roller-coaster ride with this latest from O'Dell (Coal Run). The author's focus is Jolly Mount, a small Pennsylvania coal-mining town, but abuse and baby-selling figure into the mix. Years ago, adult siblings Shae-Lynn and Shannon escaped their abusive widowed father: single mother Shae-Lynn took a detour, with young son in tow, and did a six-year stint as a Washington, DC, police officer; younger sister Shannon, however, vanished one day and never resurfaced. Feisty Shae-Lynn, now a cab driver back in Jolly Mount, has long theorized about Shannon's whereabouts. So when a variety of shady sorts begins popping up in Jolly Mount searching for Shannon, Shae-Lynn's suspicions are naturally aroused. O'Dell successfully combines the story of negligent coal-mine owners and unfortunate, disabled, or dead miners with Shae-Lynn's own troubled past in this intense, racy, raucous, and often hilarious novel. Although she occasionally includes some jarring topics that veer toward the sentimental, she also packs this gripping tale with loads of action, intrigue, and suspense. Strongly recommended for all public library collections.
Andrea Tarr - Library Journal
From Oprah Book Club alum O'Dell (Back Roads, 2000, etc.), the far-fetched tale of a cab driver whose long-lost sister turns out to be a surrogate-mother-for-hire. Narrator Shae-Lynn Penrose, the author's first female protagonist, is a ballsy, sassy delight, but the story she tells verges on ridiculous. Shae-Lynn's sister Shannon turns up after 18 years, pregnant with her tenth baby and planning, as usual, to sell it to a wealthy couple. Shannon has run out on the sleazy New York lawyer who sets up the adoptions because she's made her own deal with a Connecticut woman and doesn't want to share the money. Both of these caricatures come looking for her in Centresburg, the Penroses' hard-pressed hometown in Pennsylvania coal country; so does an equally cartoonish Russian gangster, the buddy of another guy Shannon double-crossed. How did Shae-Lynn's sister get to be so callous? The answer lies in the girls' miserable childhood with a widowed father so brutal that when Shannon disappeared, her sister assumed he'd killed her. Shae-Lynn has blunt, bracing things to say about the complicity of their blue-collar community, which disapproved of Dad beating his daughters but did nothing to stop him; she saw lots of domestic abuse swept under the rug during her years as a police officer in Centresburg. Dad wasn't the only brutal coalminer, and even good men like Shae-Lynn's beloved friend E.J., who survived a cave-in two years ago, bear the physical and psychic wounds inflicted by their back-breaking profession. O'Dell's unsentimental, loving depiction of working-class life is as moving as ever. Also familiar, unfortunately, is her weakness for lurid plotting, which here includes the heavily foreshadowed exposure of the man who fathered Shae-Lynn's illegitimate baby and the mustache-twirling cynicism with which he reveals his base nature to their horrified adult son. Many wonderful scenes bear witness for people too often left voiceless in American literature, but coming on the heels of the majestic, passionate Coal Run (2004), this undisciplined novel is a disappointment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Tawni O’Dell has populated Jolly Mount with some wonderful, fully-fleshed characters: swearing, miniskirt-wearing Shae-Lynn; rugged and quiet E.J.; whisky-drinking, one-legged Jimmy; delightfully precocious Fanci and her little brother Kenny, just to name a few. Who was your favorite character, and why?
2. What was your first impression of E.J.? Did your opinion of him change over the course of the book? If so, how and why?
3. Shae-Lynn treasures a series of National Geographic books that were given to her by Jimmy and Isabel. There seem to be particular photographs that she revisits time and again. What is the books’ significance to her?
4. The Penrose house was not a happy place in which to grow up. And while their neighbors were good to the girls, no one ever stepped in and confronted their father on their behalf. “Ostracism is the only way people around here deal with unsavory family situations, and if it doesn’t cause the families to change, everyone washes their hands of them.” (p. 174) Does this seem to be an accurate portrayal of how things are handled in Jolly Mount? Is Shae-Lynn’s involvement with Fanci and Kenny a conscious protest of the status quo, or simply the only thing Shae-Lynn knows to do?
5. Shae-Lynn says “a mother’s love is not warm and cuddly like a soft blanket as it’s popularly portrayed. It’s a fierce, rabid love, like having a mad dog living inside you all the time.” (p.332) Do you agree with her assessment of motherly love?
6. Shae-Lynn believes that “a man spends his whole life trying to prove his worth to others. A woman spends her life trying to prove her worth to herself.” (p. 220) Discuss the implications of this statement, especially as they apply to both Shae-Lynn and Shannon. Do you agree with Shae-Lynn?
7. E.J. says that the only thing Shae-Lynn is good at is fighting. (p.92) Much of what we see her do seems to prove him right. So how did Shae-Lynn manage to raise such a level-headed, responsible son?
8. Was Shae-Lynn right to keep Clay’s father’s identity a secret all those years?
9. Did Shannon come back to Jolly Mount with the intention of leaving her baby with Shae-Lynn?
10. Do you think Shannon would have been a different person had her mother been alive to raise her? Do you think all her problems stem from growing up without a mother? Why or why not?
11. Through the course of the novel, Shae-Lynn begins to have trouble getting access to the safe room she imagines for herself. At one point, she becomes startled by the appearance of a face at the window of her safe room. After she surrenders to her physical desire for E.J., she says “for the first time I see what the purpose of my furnished soul has become, no longer to shelter me from monsters but to help me cope with the emptiness of a ransacked heart.... I know now it was [E.J.’s] face at my window, not trying to get in but telling me it’s time to come out.” (pp. 320-321) Discuss this revelation and its impact on Shae-Lynn and her relationship with E.J.
12. After sleeping with E.J. for the first time, Shae-Lynn has a disturbing dream, described on page 327. What do you think it means?
13. What do you think of the mining company’s tradition of giving the mines women’s names? How does it change your view of the mines themselves, and the men who work them?
14. The Jolly Mount Five decide to drop their lawsuit against Cam Jack so that the mines will remain open and continue to provide employment for the men of their town. Do you agree with their decision? Do you think there might have been another option that could have saved the mines and also taken a stand against Cam Jack? Which do you believe was more important: keeping the mines open, or holding Cam Jack accountable for their poor maintenance?
15. It’s six months after the novel ends...where do you see the characters? Are E.J. and Shae-Lynn together? Has Shannon been heard from again? Is Cam Jack alive? Is life the same in Jolly Mount?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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Deafening
Francis Itani, 2003
Grove/Atlantic
378 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802141651
Summary
Winner, 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize
Frances Itani's lauded and award-winning American debut novel has been sold in sixteen countries, was a Canadian best seller for sixteen weeks, reaching #1, and has been awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award for the Caribbean and Canadian Region.
Set on the eve of the Great War, Deafening is a tale of remarkable virtuosity and power.
At the age of five, Grania emerges from a bout of scarlet fever profoundly deaf, and is suddenly sealed off from the world that was just beginning to open for her. Sent to the Ontario School for the Deaf, Grania must learn to live away from her family.
When Grania falls in love with Jim Lloyd, a young hearing man, her life seems complete, but WWI soon tears them apart when Jim is sent to the battlefields of Flanders. During this long and brutal war of attrition, Jim and Grania's letters back and forth—both real and imagined—attempt to sustain the intimacy they discovered in Canada.
A magnificent tale of love and war, Deafening is also an ode to language-how it can console, imprison, and liberate, and how it alone can bridge vast chasms of geography and experience. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 25, 1942
• Where—Belleville, Ontario, Canada
• Raised—Quebec
• Education—Commonwealth Writers Prize
• Currently—N/A
Frances Susan Itani is a Canadian fiction writer, poet and essayist.
Itani was born in Belleville, Ontario and grew up in Quebec. She studied nursing in Montreal and North Carolina, a profession which she taught and practised for eight years. However, after enrolling in a writing class taught by W. O. Mitchell, she decided to change careers.
Itani has published ten books, ranging from fiction and poetry to a children's book. Her 2003 novel Deafening won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Caribbean and Canada region, and has been published in 16 countries. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[D]espite all the pleasures Itani is able to deliver, her decision to split the book into Grania's and Jim's chapters ends up causing a fatal falling-off in momentum. It is as if three books—one concerning Grania's childhood, another concerning her life on the home front and the third detailing Jim's army experience—were uneasily trying to coexist within one cover. The conversation Itani is able to create among these three narratives is insufficient to the task of calling them into unity. Though Deafening flows admirably in the early going, it ends up being more memorable for its failures than for this early success. —Mark Baechtel
Washington Post Book World
War and deafness are the twin themes of this psychologically rich, impeccably crafted debut novel set during WWI. Born in the late 19th century, Grania O'Neill comes from solid middle-class stock, her father a hotel owner in Deseronto, Ontario, her mother a God-fearing daughter of an Irish immigrant. When Grania is five, she loses her hearing to scarlet fever. When she is nine, she is sent to the Ontario Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Belleville and given an education not only in lipreading, signing and speaking but also in emotional self-sufficiency. After graduating, she works as a nurse in the Belleville hospital, where she meets and falls in love with Jim Lloyd. They marry, but Jim is bound for the war as a stretcher bearer. His war is hell on earth: lurid wounds; stinks; sudden, endless slaughter redeemed only by comradeship. Itani's remarkably vivid, unflinching descriptions of his ordeal tend to overshadow Grania's musings on the home front, but Grania's story comes to the fore again when her brother-in-law and childhood friend, Kenan, comes back to Deseronto from the trenches in Europe with a dead arm and a half-smashed face, refusing to speak. Grania, who was educated to configure sounds she couldn't hear into words that "the hearing" could understand, brings Kenan back to life by teaching him sounds again, and then by making portraits of the people in the town whom she, Kenan and her sister Tress know in common. As she talks to Kenan, she reinvigorates him with a sense that his life, having had such a rich past, must have a future, too. This subplot eloquently expresses Itani's evident, pervasive faith in the unexpected power of story to not only represent life but to enact itself within lives. Her wonderfully felt novel is a timely reminder of war's cost, told from an unexpected perspective. Itani's first novel is reminiscent of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy and has a good chance of striking a similar popular chord.
Publishers Weekly
Scarlet fever robs Grania O'Neill of her hearing when she is five years old. After learning to sign and read lips, she is sent, at nine, to the Ontario School for the Deaf. Determined to make a life for herself without becoming a burden to her family, Grania works at the school hospital after graduation until she meets and marries Jim Lloyd. Shortly after their wedding, he heads off to the Great War as a stretcher bearer. Award-winning Canadian writer Itani does a good job of presenting her considerable research into education for the hearing-impaired in the early 20th century, small-town Canadian life, and World War I trench warfare, without allowing the details to overshadow what is essentially a character study and romance. Lorraine Hamelin reads with both sensitivity and humor and handles Grania's dialog well, making it sound realistic and intelligible. Sections of Deafening could easily have come across as too sentimental or too grim, but Hamelin keeps the emotional elements under control. Recommended for all collections. —Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr.
Library Journal
Jim and Grania pine as wartime separated lovers do, but their story's real strength is their separate, if parallel, struggles to deal with their unforgiving surroundings. Her original treatment of classic wartime romance will make Itani's readers want more. —Brendan Driscoll
Booklist
An impressively daring first novel from Canada—storywriter Itani's US debut—immerses us in both the world of the deaf and the world of WWI trench warfare. Grania O'Neill is a lucky little girl. Even though her scarlet fever brings on incurable deafness, she is encircled by her family's love. Yes, she is smart and strong-willed, but it is the love of grandmother Mamo and big sister Tress that pulls her through (Mother's love is obstructed by guilt). It's a new century; this family of Irish immigrants owns a hotel in a small Canadian company town on Lake Ontario. The practical Mamo becomes Grania's mentor, but realizes that Grania must leave the charmed circle to attend a boarding school for the deaf. Institutional life has Grania crying for two weeks until she takes control. We learn along with her: how words can be felt; how to concentrate on whatever moves; how to "look for the information" by developing "an extra eye." Grania stays on after graduation, working in the school hospital, where she meets Jim Lloyd. The attraction between deaf and hearing person is immediate. Even though Jim will soon be headed over there (it's 1915), the two decide on marriage, a wedding blessed by Mamo. At the front in Belgium, Jim is a stretcher-bearer. We tumble into a pit of horrors. The noise is relentless. Some of the boys, though uninjured, will become deaf. They work together with the enemy in No Man's Land, soundlessly, miming their search for the wounded. Artful links, these, to Grania's odyssey, which could have been overwhelmed by the frontline gore. There is grim news on the home front, too, as Grania nearly succumbs to the great influenza epidemic of 1918; Mamo sacrifices her own life to save her. Jim returns home unharmed, but with "old eyes." Husband and wife embody Itani's theme: the power and reach of love—love that falters only in the face of the unknowable. Itani never loses control of her tricky material: the result is an artistic triumph.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How well does Itani's novel convey the world of the deaf, specifically that of Grania? Are we persuaded that we are inside Grania's silent world?
2. In drawing a character who is profoundly deaf, an author might be tempted to overstate her virtues and triumphs. Is this so in Deafening? How is Grania depicted realistically? Do you find her subject to anger, resentment, and brooding? In other words, isn't she human? We learn about Grania's deafness primarily from the narrator, with Grania herself as a prism. But we also learn about it from other multiple sources. What are they? Does Grania's deafness serve as a litmus test for other characters' humanity?
3. What makes Deafening a work of consequence? Certainly it teaches us about both the limitations of deafness and the possibilities open to a person of inner strength and determination. What are other concerns of the novel? It is clear that enormous research has informed the book. Do you find that references to public events like the sinking of the Lusitania or Alexander Graham Bell's research into deafness connect the story to a larger context?
4. Are there advantages to deafness? Consider the pleasure of a fireworks display without the racket: "a display of Roman candles, fire balloons and sky-rockets, pin wheels and fountain wheels. The night exploded silently before their eyes while, tired and excited, they leaned into each other's warmth, their skirts tucked beneath them as they sat on the grass of the school lawns that were lighted all around with electric lights hidden inside Japanese lanterns. All of this, she tried to convey to Tress" (p. 90).
Are there times when you have experienced a remarkable quiet? Think of a deep snowstorm in the city when the noise is absent. Do you sympathize with people who buy earphones, not for music but to block sound. Is there a special pleasure about silent movies? Even though we have elaborate technology for sound, isn't it often abused? Would a film like Winged Migration be more effective without its music soundtrack?
"She stood at her bedroom window and peered out. In all of the winter whiteness, perhaps silence was everywhere. She would ask Mamo. Beneath the window she saw undisturbed snow in the street, and a glistening over the new layer of ice. When snow covered the earth, did it also absorb sound? She felt safe during snowstorms, although this was something she could not have explained. Perhaps hearing and deaf people were joined in the same way for a brief time in a silent world" (p. 261). Is Grania's speculative turn of mind a major component of her learning language?
5. From the time Grania insists on earless paper dolls, she asserts her will as well as the reality of her deafness. (In contrast one thinks of the black child in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye who despaired because she didn't look like her blond doll.) Grania dreams with decision: her earless girl will go to the C-shore and play safely in the waves (p.45). . Can you think of other times when Grania uses her deafness for her own purposes? With the odious Cora, for example?
An ironic footnote is that later in her life when Grania and others are living "inside a feeling of terrible necessity (endless war, loss, crumbling business because of Temperance) Grania "pressed her hands to her ears as if, by doing so, she would silence the flow of her own thoughts" (p. 246).
6. How can we trace Grania's learning process? We know she retains a few random shreds from actual pre-deaf experience, and she has a phenomenal memory. How does she accumulate the information and skills she needs to become a fully functioning person? What is the role of Tress? Of Mamo? (" the gift of pictures and words, learned and remembered and stored" p. 42). Other characters who contribute to her growth? How do Itani's images help us enter Grania's thinking? C-shore. "She says 'C' and 'shore' over and over again. She twists the word into yellow rope and stores it in her memory" (p. 44).
7. Do you see an identifiable moral sense in Deafening? If so, what would it be? What behavior is condemned, what is extolled, and what merely condoned or tolerated? What do Cora (who seems to resent Grania's very existence) and her daughter Jewel represent? You recall it is Jewel who pins the white feather on Bernard. When we enter the world of the war, the moral senses are both sharpened and made ambiguous. One moment that is clear is the sinking of the Lusitania: "The drowning of those women and babies was a cowardly act. A brutal act by cowardly men" (p. 101) . How is history made vivid and relevant? For Grania it is "one hundred and fifty dead babies floating in the sea off the coast of Ireland" (p. 109).
8. What are we to make of Grania's mother? She prays for miracles, makes pilgrimages, including the doctor in America and the shrine in Quebec, hoping to cure her daughter's deafness, to no avail. Guilt assails her. Why? Even when Grania wants to share sign language, her mother resists. "I have too much work to do" (p. 92). Is the work a pretext? What is the result in their relationship? Grania "felt the hard wall that was Mother's will, Mother's intent. Three years after she finished school she could still feel Mother's will" (p. 116) . Is there ever a time that things change for them? Consider Mother's startling act when Kenan is injured (p. 249).
When Jim enters Grania's life, how does Mother respond? Remember "No announcements"? In clinging to her guilt and prayers, is Mother dismissing Grania? Does her intransigence further distance her husband? Would it shake Mother's reality to think Grania might be not only independent but also perhaps happy?
9. The love story: are there times when the necessity for a private language turns into a delight? " they had begun to create a language of their own. It arose as naturally as the love between them, an invented code no one would ever break" (p. 123). Is it partly their challenges that keep them from taking their love for granted? "He brushed a fingertip over his lips and signalled across the room Grania's cheeks reddened furiously when he made the public-private display .He had never known a language that so thoroughly encompassed love. She had never felt so safe" (p. 124) . When are other times that the special language links between Jim and Grania become almost enviable?
10. How do Grania and Jim survive their years-long separation and the fear that attends it? As he leaves for war, "he took her hand and held it firmly inside his own and she felt only the pressure of his skin on hers. Don't let go. The war is close. The war is closing in. Against her will, a part of her was shutting down. It was happening to him, too. He is leaving before it's time to go. And though she hated what was happening to both of them, she knew that in the same way he was pulling away, she was pulling back, searching for the safe place inside herself. If she could find it, she would stay there until he returned (p.140).
Do we regard this pragmatism as somehow counter-romantic? Could it be that part of their strength as a couple is based on their strong sense of survival as individuals? These are not immature young people, either one. Jim has been orphaned, twice really, counting his grandparents.
11. If deafness in the novel becomes a world of possibility, a triumph of human ingenuity, then can war be seen as a thematic opposite? At first the war is seen by leaders and soldiers alike as a theater for grand achievements: patriotism, courage, adventure, manhood, and brotherhood. What happens to these dreams of glory both on the large scale and the personal? What do you think is Itani's purpose in writing the war scenes? It was Irish who said, "These are the sights the mind gorges on in horror forever, Jimmy" (p. 213).
The destruction is made vivid in this scene: "It was one of the horrors of the war — the terrible waste of living creatures. Thousands upon thousands of horses and mules were buried and unburied across the scarred landscape in these corners of Belgium and France" (p. 214). And then the human toll.
One scene in particular is memorable, powerful in its understatement, when Jim meets his German double, also assigned to help the injured. What does Jim take away from the encounter? In this case it is a German who gives first aid to a wounded Canadian and helps load him onto a stretcher. No words are exchanged. Jim tries to hate his enemy "but there was only coldness, no other feeling. Coldness and the hatred of war" (p. 216). Do we deduce that the young German, same age as Jim, same filthy uniform, feels the same?
12. Jim's need to communicate with Grania is so strong that he writes letters in his head he will never be able to send.: " the fear in the eyes of the horses. My own jostling comrades, as tightly packed as the horses the stench of being close together..the feeling of stagnation. We are ready to go but we are squashed onto a cattle boat that keeps us in England and brings us no closer to the shores of France. A monoplane appears out of nowhere. The buzz in the sky hovers overhead like a portent. It is a wonderful machine to see. I try to imagine the thrill of freedom a man unknown to me must feel up there, sailing through the sky, looking down on us, a luckless clump of men trapped within the confines of an old cattle boat" (p. 155).
The perils of war, the fears, courage, brutality, brotherhood and waste of war are perhaps universal from Troy to the Somme to Vietnam. How does Itani create simultaneously a specific time, World War I, and the timelessness of all wars?
13. War takes center stage for much of the novel. But the issues at the front and those at home often echo each other. Think of isolation, fear, friendship, and the need for communication. How does Itani create a counterpoint between home and "over there"?
14. How would you compare or contrast Deafening with other war books you have read. Think of some titles. Did those works glorify or at least justify war? Do any of them seem like out-and-out antiwar books? How would you characterize Itani's novel?
15. How would you describe Itani's narrative method? How does she structure the novel? Would you say the device of interweaving memories and the Sunday book throughout is a fair evocation of Grania's thinking process? Of anyone's?
16. It stands to reason that some things will always be difficult for Grania. What are some of these inevitables? "As always, in a group, words jumped the circle quickly and could not be read. When Mamo and Tress were with her, Grania was included. She had only to cast a sideways glance at either to follow their familiar lips — lips that formed words without creating so much as a whisper, lips that supplied silent commentary as they had been doing since she was five years old. Keeping her inside the circle of information" (p. 226). Do you sense that she will always need dependable allies to help her navigate?
We recall the poignancy of her instinct that "for her, alone is best" and yet her need to reach out to children in the hearing school. She succumbs to the hope of playing their game unaware that she is the game, the butt. She watches and tries to capture their words, but fails. "Whatever it is bounces from one child to another, erupting the way mayflies erupt on the surface of the water, quick, impossible to catch The children keep it in front, overhead, behind, to the side. But behind does not exist. Not for her. Behind is the darkness outside of thought. It's the place where sound gathers, sound that she is not meant to hear" (p. 55). Do you find language like this, imagery close to poetry, effective in capturing Grania's world?
17. Memory translates into smell for Grania often. As she leaves school in June, "Grania's nose sniffs carbolic acid when she thinks of the trunk; her own and everyone else's will be fumigated, clothes and all, when they return in the fall" (p. 88). What other smells are particularly important for her? Think of Mamo and her scent, one that comforts Grania after her grandmother's death. In a parallel way, how is Grania's understanding of the world heightened in a visual way?
18. Are secrets important in the book? Think of Tress, Aunt Maggie, Mrs. Brant, Mamo, Kenan, Grew, and Father. In this book discuss how secrets are used for connection or exclusion or simply to maintain privacy.
19. Someone has sprung the question: "Can the deaf think?" Why not ask a few more: "Can the deaf eat?" "Can the deaf sleep?" "Can the deaf breathe?" It strikes us that the fool-killer misses a good many possible swats with his club. The Canadian (p.336)
The absurdity of the passage is blatant to us after reading Deafening. Are there other "differences" that distance us from people until we get to know them? What are some of these? Ethnic, religious, sexual, social, racial? We think of Shakespeare's Shylock saying, "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed?" (Merchant of Venice) In your experience can you remember getting over a hump of similar ignorance? Do you believe that literature can help us in this regard?
20. Do you identify with Grania in some ways? Isn't the world view of any person necessarily limited? Cobbled together from bits and pieces learned and observed? Relating ideas, thinking, may be as instinctive as the senses, but the raw data to some degree remains random and partial. Do you agree? Discuss examples in your own life or that of others.
21. How does Canada per se assume importance in Deafening? How does Itani establish a sense of place? Is it a frontier, a place of fresh starts, of self-creation? Is it hard for Americans to comprehend "We are coming, Mother Britain, we are coming to your aid. / There's a debt we owe our fathers, and we mean to see it paid" (poem in The Canadian, p. 120).
Are there ambiguous feelings about the war in Grania's community? At one point, Grania, observing the piano player for a recruitment concert wonders "with his son in France, what Grew thought of tonight's show of patriotism" (p. 135). On the other hand, "the thrill of being part of this moment could not be denied. Jim and all of these men were leaving to serve their country" (p. 140). Do you see analogies in recent days in America, conflicting ideas about patriotism?
It is just as pleasant and grand a thing to die for Canada and the British Empire today as it was for Rome in the brave days of old. The Canadian (p.243).
"Was she the only one who was angry?" wonders Grania. It is worth recalling Wifred Owen's poem, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" from 1920. Does Itani create the same tone of bitter irony?
22. In the novel music assumes definite importance. What are some examples? Think of Mamo and Grania, and Grania sitting on the step singing to Carlow. For Jim music is bred in the bone; he plays the piano, the harmonica, and he sings. How does music begin to make sense to Grania? "Grania believed that music and song were everywhere. Not only in clouds but in flights of birds, in oak leaves that brushed the dorm window, in the children's legs as they raced across the lawns. 'It's silly, isn't it,' she signed. 'My memory of sound is gone for all those years — fourteen years — but I feel as if my brain remembers music'" (p. 115). Does music, paradoxically, become a bond for Grania and Jim? How do they make this bond?
23. Sound and silence knit the disparate elements of the book together. Can you think of examples? Some of the severely wounded stop speaking: Kenan, for example. Others become deaf without evident cause. Jim, as a musician, has a keen sensitivity to sound, and the relentless clamor of war makes it a circle of Dante's hell for him. Sound bombards them, terrifies them, blocks out thought. When it's not the bombs and guns, it is the screams of pain and constant complaining. Do you find that Itani is as effective in describing the horrors of war noise as she is the silent world of the deaf? "Sound was always more important to the hearing," said Grania (p. 127). How does Grania later communicate to Jim the joys of Armistice? (p.327). Do you find it ironic that it is the hearing administrators who dictate the Canadian''s description? Is it Grania's love for Jim, her understanding of his sensitivity to sound and music that leads her to share details denied to her?
What does it mean when Grania opens the floodgates of memory to Kenan, her sharp observations of their shared childhood? What is the significance for Grania? For Kenan? He, too, can finally break through with war memories. " it was so dark. So much noise. There was no silence in that place. The boys went mad from the sound. Some tried to dig their own graves" (p. 282).
24. How is teaching a major force in the novel? Consider the teaching that works and that which doesn't, such as Grania's first experience in hearing school where the teacher turn her head away or otherwise ignores her. When does Grania show her remarkable talents for teaching? How does the teaching work both ways with Tress, Mamo, and Jim? Mamo at one point puts down the Sunday book, that breakthrough miracle book for Grania. "Grania begins to teach Mamo the hand alphabet — which the old arthritic hands delight in learning. M-a-m-o, Grania spells, and she creates a name-sign, tapping a three-fingered 'M' against her cheek"(p.91). Think about the extraordinary bonds that are created between students and teachers when it really works. After reading Deafening, what do you think are the relative merits of signing versus "oral method"? Do you think either should be used to the exclusion of the other? We recall Fry's saying " As long as we permit hearing teachers to disapprove of our language, we will always be made to feel ashamed" (p.338). Do you find a persuasive picture of some of these issues in the play or film Children of a Lesser God?
25. How does illness figure as a major motif? Consider Grania's two serious diseases, as well as the results of the epidemic of influenza. As we read of SARS, do we feel we have made progress since 1918? As debates rage about civil liberties versus Draconian measures to protect against a Typhoid Mary threat, what are your thoughts?
26. How is Mamo crucial in giving Grania a strong sense of herself? As Mamo relates Grania's own history, she underscores the momentous day of her birth. What happened on that day in Deseronto? "Mamo falls silent and contemplates the miracle of new life in the midst of destruction" (p.33). Indeed it is Mamo who serves as midwife to help deliver her granddaughter, a lifelong sustaining connection between them. In what other ways does Mamo provide lifelines for Grania?
27. Frances Itani sees this novel as being about love and hope-despite loss and sickness, war and devastation. She has worked thematically with "emptiness as source." Do you think she has achieved this, even partially? Discuss.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand, 2010
Random House
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812974492
Summary
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.
Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Fairfax, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Kenyon College
• Awards—William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award;
National Book Critics Circle Award Nomination, 2002
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Laura Hillenbrand is an American author of books and magazine articles. Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Hillenbrand spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland, farm. A favorite of hers was Come On Seabiscuit, a 1963 kiddie book. "I read it to death, my little paperback copy," she says.
She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but was forced to leave before graduation when she contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has struggled with the condition ever since, remaining largely confined to her home. On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapaciated herself, she says, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie Zamperini [hero of Unbroken] as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives—it's my way of living vicariously.
She now lives in Washington, D.C, with her husband, Borden Flanagan, a professor of Government at American University. They were college sweethearts and married in 2008.
Writing
Hillenbrand's first book was the acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), a non-fiction account of the career of the great racehorse Seabiscuit, for which she won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001. She says she was compelled to tell the story because she "found fascinating people living a story that was improbable, breathtaking and ultimately more satisfying than any story [she'd] ever come across."She first told the story through an essay she sold to American Heritage magazine, and the feedback was positive, so she decided to procede with a full novel. Upon the book's release, she recieved rave reviews for her storytelling and research. It was made into the Academy Award nominated film Seabiscuit (2003).
Hillenbrand's second book is Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini (1917-).
Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Equus magazine, American Heritage, Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest, and many other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on the horse Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing.
Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation Iraqi Children. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Just as she demonstrated in Seabiscuit, Ms. Hillenbrand is a muscular, dynamic storyteller…Her command of the action-adventure idiom is more than enough to hold interest. But she happens also to have located a tale full of unforgettable characters, multi-hanky moments and wild turns. And if some of it sounds too much like pulp fiction to be true, Ms. Hillenbrand has also done a bang-up research job.... [Unbroken] manages to be as exultant as Seabiscuit as it tells a much more harrowing, less heart-warming story.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it’s told. A better book than Seabiscuit, it manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety. [Hillenbrand has] a jeweler’s eye for a detail that makes a story live.
Newsweek
A warning: after cracking open Unbroken you may find yourself dog tired the next day, having spent most of the night fending off sleep with coffee refills, eager to find out whether the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic runner turned WWII POW, ends in redemption or despair..In Hillenbrand’s [hands], it’s nothing less than a marvel—a book worth losing sleep over.
Washingtonian
Will you be able to put [Unbroken] down once you poke your nose into it? You will not.... No one delivers a play-by-play better than Laura Hillenbrand.... No other author of narrative nonfiction chooses her subjects with greater discrimination or renders them with more discipline and commitment. If storytelling were an Olympic event, she’d medal for sure.
Laura Miller - Salon
(Starred review.) From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable.... In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. After a record-breaking 47 days adrift on a shark-encircled life raft with his pal and pilot, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, they were captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist (called the Bird by camp inmates) who never killed his victims outright—his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment.... And Louie, with his defiant and unbreakable spirit, was Watanabe's victim of choice. By war's end, Louie was near death. When Naoetsu was liberated in mid-August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free!"... But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. [he was] haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. Hillenbrand...writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers [who had] no help for their as yet unrecognized illness.... The book's final section is the story of how...Louie found his path. It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed...against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs.... Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption. —Sarah F. Gold
Publishers Weekly
The author of Seabiscuit now brings us a biography of World War II prisoner of war survivor Louis Zamperini (b. 1917). A track athlete at the 1936 Munich Olympics, Zamperini became a B-24 crewman in the U.S. Army Air Force. When his plane went down in the Pacific in 1943, he spent 47 days in a life raft, then was picked up by a Japanese ship and survived starvation and torture in labor camps. Eventually repatriated, he had a spiritual rebirth and returned to Japan to promote forgiveness and healing. Because of the author's popularity, libraries will want this book both for general readers who like a good story and for World War II history buffs; however, it's not essential reading for those who read Zamperini's autobiography, Devil at My Heels, with David Rensin, in its 2003 edition.
Library Journal
[Hillenbrand’s] skills are as polished as ever, and like its predecessor, this book has an impossible-to-put-down quality that one commonly associates with good thrillers.
Booklist
[Hillenbrand] returns with another dynamic, well-researched story of guts overcoming odds...Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting—and always gripping.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Unbroken:
1. Readers and critics alike have described Unbroken as gripping, almost impossible to put down. Was that your experience as well? How do you account for the page-turning quality given the grim subject material? Also, would your reading experience have been different if you didn't know that Zamperini survived? (Or didn't you know the outcome?)
2. Laura Hillenbrand gives us a moving story, one that brings to life the suffering and courage of not just one man but thousands, whose stories are untold. What is it about Hillenbrand's writing that saves her book from becoming mired in bathos and melodrama?
3. What do you admire most about Zamperini? What enables him to survive the plane crash and POW ordeal? Does he possess special strengths—personal or physical? Did his training in track, for instance, make a difference in his resilience?
4. How do the POW captives help one another survive? How are they able to communicate with one another? What devices do Zamperini and others use not only to survive but to maintain sanity?
5. What do you find most horrifying about Zamperini's captivity?
6. Does this book make you wonder at mankind's capacity for cruelty? What accounts for it—especially on the part of the Japanese, a highly cultured and civilized society? (The same question, of course, has been applied to the Nazis.)
7. Hillenbrand devotes time to the difficulty of veterans' re-entering life after the war. She says, "there was no one right way to peace; each man had to find his own path." What is Zamperini's path? How does his conversion under Billy Graham help him? What role does his wife, Cynthia, play?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Why, after World War II, did the medical profession fail to acknowledge Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? After all, this was the mid-20th century, and psychiatry was a fairly established discipline. Plus, the horrors of World War I were only one generation behind. What took so long?
9. Unbroken is a classic inspirational story, but it lies somewhat on the surface, offering little in the way of psychological depth. Do you wish there were more instrospection in Zamperini's account? Or do you feel this story is rich enough as it is?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Sister of My Heart
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 2000
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385489515
Summary
From the award-winning author of Mistress of Spices, the bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart.
Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite those differences, since the day on which the two girls were born, the same day their fathers died—mysteriously and violently—Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates as well as their hearts were merged.
But, when Sudha learns a dark family secret, that connection is shattered. For the first time in their lives, the girls know what it is to feel suspicion and distrust. Urged into arranged marriages, Sudha and Anju's lives take opposite turns. Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household. Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. When tragedy strikes each of them, however, they discover that despite distance and marriage, they have only each other to turn to.
Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and exotic, seducing readers from the first page with the lush prose we have come to expect from Divakaruni. Sister of my Heart is a novel destined to become as widely beloved as it is acclaimed. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 29, 1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—B.A., Kolkata University; Ph.D., University of
California, Berkeley
• Currently—lives in Houston, Texas and San Jose, Calif.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of the bestselling novels Queen of Dreams, Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, and The Vine of Desire, and of the prizewinning story collections Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives. Her writings have appeared in more than 50 magazines, including Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker.
Divakaruni was born in India and came to the United States at 19. She put herself through Berkeley doing odd jobs, from working at an Indian boutique to slicing bread in a bakery. She lives in Houston, Texas, and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Extras
Excerpts from a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• During graduate school, I used to work in the kitchen of the International House at the University of California, Berkeley. My favorite task was slicing Jell-O.
• I love Chinese food, but my family hates it. So when I'm on book tour I always eat Chinese!
• I almost died on a pilgrimage trip to the Himalayas some years back—but I got a good story out of it. The story is in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives—let's see if readers can figure out which one it is!
• Writing is so central to my life that it leaves little time/desire/need for other interests. I do a good amount of work with domestic violence organizations—I'm on the advisory board of Asians Against Domestic Violence in Houston. I feel very strongly about trying to eradicate domestic violence from our society.
• My favorite ways to unwind are to do yoga, read, and spend time with my family.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her answer:
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior. I read this when I was in grad school, and it really made me examine my own role as a woman of color living in the U.S. It made me want to start writing about my own experiences. It made me think that perhaps I, too, had something worthwhile to write about. ("Extras" from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Banerjee's poetically embroidered storytelling powers are in evidence.... [A] bittersweet fairy tale.
Anderson Tepper - New York Times
Ms. Divakaruni emphasizes the cathartic force of storytelling with sumptuous prose...she defies categorization, beautifully blending the chills of reality with rich imaginings.
Wall Street Journal
Her literary voice is a sensual bridge between worlds. India and America. Children and parents. Men and women. Passion and pragmatism.
USA Today
The power of stories and the strength of the women who tell them are lovingly rendered...a novel fragrant in rhythm and language.
San Francisco Chronicle
Like the old tales of India that are filled with emotional filigree and flowery prose, Divakaruni's (The Mistress of Spices) latest work is a masterful allegory of unfulfilled desire and sacrificial love. It is also an intricate modern drama in which generations and castes struggle over old and new mores. Anju and Sudha are cousins, born in the same household in Calcutta on the same day—which is also the day on which their mothers learn that both their husbands have been killed in a reckless quest for a cave full of rubies. Sudha grows up believing her father was a no-good schemer who brought ruin on his cousin, Anju's upper-class father. As they mature, Anju dreams of college, Sudha of children, but arranged marriages divide and thwart them. Anju adjusts to life in California with a man who lusts after Sudha; Sudha grapples with a mother-in-law who turns to the goddess Shasti to fill Sudha's barren womb rather than to a doctor for her sterile son. Ultimately, the tie between Anju and Sudha supersedes all other love, as each sustains painful loss to save the other. When Sudha learns the truth about her father and no longer needs to right his wrongs, she sees that all along her affection for Anju has not been dictated by necessity. An inspired and imaginative raconteur, Divakaruni is sure to engender comparisons with Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), but Divakaruni's novel stands in its own right as a compelling read. If her prose sometimes veers toward the purple, her mesmerizing narrative sustains it well.
Publishers Weekly
Divakaruni's debut novel, The Mistress of Spices, was a word-of-mouth hit; its blend of magical realism and culinary sensuality also appealed to fans of Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. This second novel is a bit more earth-bound. Born on the same day their fathers die in a mysterious accident, Sudha and Anju are more than just cousins; although Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family and Sudha the daughter of a black-sheep renegade, they are sisters of the heart, bound by a deep love. Narrated by Sudha and Anju in alternate chapters, this is the tale of their relationship over the years, a friendship that is almost destroyed by jealousy and family secrets. Although much of the plot is contrived (the final revelation is no big surprise) and the male characters are stock cliches, this is still an engaging read, filled with tender, moving moments.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. What kind of relationship is there between the older generation in India, who live in a world full of mystical tales and magical occurrences, and Anju and Sudha's generation, which is more drawn to Western ideals? Why are both cousins, especially Anju, skeptical of their own culture and interested in the west, particularly America? How do they incorporate each world into their lives?
2. How are Sudha and Anju different, and how are they similar? Despite their differences, what continues to keep their relationship strong?
3. The mothers tell the girls that loving someone too much is dangerous. What are they trying to achieve with this warning?
4. What does the ruby symbolize? What is the significance of Anju and Sudha being so "unlucky" in the circumstances under which they were born? Why was it significant for Sudha to know the truth about her past and not be able to tell Anju?
5. There is often a great disparity between what is the proper thing to do and what is the fun, exciting thing to do. How does this theme play itself out in the novel?
6. Why does Anju's mother welcome Sudha and her mother into the family even though she knows the truth about Sudha's father? In contrast, why is Sudha's mother so harsh and seemingly ungrateful? Do she and her daughter belong in the house?
7. The mothers often tell stories and gossip. What role do these stories play in their livesand in the lives of Sudha and Anju?
8. According to Bidhata Purush's predictions, Anju is supposed to be brave and clever, fight injustice, marry a fine man and travel the world, while Sudha is supposed to have a life ofsorrow. Do the girls live up to these predictions? If not, how else would you characterize each?
9. How did having a man enter each of their lives affect the girls' friendship? Would the friendship have evolved differently had they not married? Are men portrayed positively or negatively in this book?
10. Why is there jealousy between the two cousins? Is it inevitable despite their mutual love? Do they ever successfully rise above it?
11. How does Anju change after she comes to America? Would she have been as independent and assertive if she had stayed in India?
12. Sudha defies traditional Indian culture by leaving her husband and raising her child on her own. How do her actions affect her deep connection to Indian culture? How does the author portray Sudha's decision?
13. The keeping of secrets and the telling of lies play a huge part in the novel. Why are so many secrets kept? Is it better to keep some secrets and to tell some lies or to always share the truth?
14. Discuss your reaction to finding out Singhji's identity. Was Sudha's response reasonable?
15. Should Sudha have gone with Ashok? Throughout the novel, does Sudha give up too much for Anju? Are sacrifices required of a true friend?
Consider these next four questions if you have read Divakaruni's other novels and short stories.
16. What do the characters in lose and gain as they become more "American"?
17. In the story "Affair, " Abha says, "It's not wrong to be happy, is it? To want more out of life than fulfilling duties you took on before you knew what they truly meant?" How is this idea further developed in The Mistress of Spices? In Sister of my Heart?
18. In Divakaruni's stories, women are wives and mothers, but the men are portrayed primarily as husbands, not fathers. How are the men's roles in the novels similar to or different from those in the stories?
19. How does the Indian immigrant experience compare to that of other immigrants—Spanish, Italian, Chinese?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Taker
Alma Katsu, 2011
Simon & Schuster
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439197059
Summary
True love can last an eternity ... but immortality comes at a price . . .
On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her, despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort. And as she begins to tell her story, a story of enduring love and consummate betrayal that transcends time and mortality, Luke finds himself utterly captivated.
Her impassioned account begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same small town of St. Andrew, Maine, back when it was a Puritan settlement. Consumed as a child by her love for the son of the town’s founder, Lanny will do anything to be with him forever. But the price she pays is steep—an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate for all eternity. And now, two centuries later, the key to her healing and her salvation lies with Dr. Luke Findley.
Part historical novel, part supernatural page-turner, The Taker is an unforgettable tale about the power of unrequited love not only to elevate and sustain, but also to blind and ultimately destroy, and how each of us is responsible for finding our own path to redemption. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1959
• Where—Alaska, USA
• Raised—near Concord, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Brandeis University; M.A, Johns
Hopkins University
• Awards—American Library Association's Top Ten
Debut Novel
• Currently—lives in Reston, Virginia
In her words
Many writers have certain genes in their DNA. We're the kids who always have their nose in a book, who live in the library (my first paying job was as a page—yes, a page in the library), are loners, and inordinately fond of fairy tales.
I grew up reading my oldest sister's gigantic Golden Book of Fairy Tales until it fell apart. I loved the book because it had fairy tales that I'd never read before, like "Bright, Deardeer and Kit" and Japanese fairy tales (growing up half-Japanese without seeing any references to Japanese stories, this seemed very enlightened to me). I also loved the slightly horrible things kept in those translations, like how frogs and snakes would fall from a villain's lips whenever she (the main characters were often female, another plus) told a lie. Once we'd all grown up, my oldest sister decided she wanted it back. I pined for it and thought I'd never find it again, but to my delight my husband had a copy from his childhood—in pristine condition! It's one of my prized possessions.
Although I was born in Alaska, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts very near the famously historic town of Concord. I didn't think I was particularly susceptible to the colonial influence or was a history buff in general, but apparently it seeped into my subconscious. Everywhere you turn in that part of Massachusetts, there are historical landmarks (the Old Manse, the Old North Bridge, battlefields, cemeteries) and just plain old houses that people live in. It was part of our everyday; you couldn't get away from it. It also probably didn't hurt that I'm a fan of Nathaniel Hawthorne, either....
Katsu is Japanese. It's my husband's family name; he's half-Japanese. So am I, but on my mother's side. Because I don't look particularly Asian, I always felt that side of me was hidden, so it's nice to have my husband's name to point to, like having a card that shows I'm part of the club....
As I mentioned, my mother is Japanese and was raised Buddhist. She didn't raise us to be Buddhist, but we absorbed notions about her beliefs; it would've been impossible not to. The thing is, I went to a Catholic school. As a child, I wasn't one to question inconsistencies; I didn't even see the inconsistencies between Catholicism and Buddhism and, to their credit, the priests and nuns never tried to "correct" my thinking about, say, reincarnation (though they were probably mightily confused.)
So, while it might annoy some people that I've conflated alchemy, religion and magic, to me it seems perfectly natural. To draw hard distinctions between notional things is folly, in my mind; well, you can draw distinctions for yourself but it would be futile to try to get everyone else to adhere to your beliefs. One person's religion is another person's magical delusion. One person's science is another person's magic. And, of course, some people treat religion as a science as opposed to philosophy or, say, fiction. While I'm a fan of fantasy, I've never been a believer in delusion. (Which, by the way, is why you won't find specific details of the spells and elixirs in the novel. I don't want anyone ingesting newt's eye or mandrake root on my say so.) (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Alchemy and love prove a volatile mix in Katsu's vividly imagined first novel, which toggles between the present and the past. While working the graveyard shift at a rural Maine hospital, Dr. Luke Findley discovers that patient Lanny McIlvrae has miraculous self-healing powers. Lanny then relates the incredible tale of her life: sent packing to Boston by her family in 1817 to give birth to her illegitimate child, she fell in with the entourage of Count Adair, a centuries-old alchemist who saved her life with an elixir of immortality. Decadent and domineering, Adair took Lanny as his mistress—a role she accepted until Adair's scheme to use her true love, Jonathan, to perpetuate his unnatural existence forced her to a desperate ruse to thwart his formidable magic powers. Katsu shows considerable skill in rendering a world where Adair's unspeakable evilness and Lanny's wild passion make the supernatural seem possible. The result is a novel full of surprises and a powerful evocation of the dark side of romantic love.
Publishers Weekly
On a cold winter night a young woman is brought into an emergency room in the small Maine town of St Andrew. Lanore McIlvrae is covered in blood and probably injured, but the sheriff also believes she murdered someone. When Lanore is alone with emergency physician Luke Findley, she tries desperately to convince him of her innocence, telling her story in mind-numbing detail. In the late 19th century, she met and fell in love with Jonathan, the man Lanore is now accused of killing. At one point, Lanore's family sent her from the town to avoid a terrible scandal. During this journey, she met the man who made her immortal and brought her back to Jonathan. Finally, the plot begins to move, although at times the pace is still slow. —Patricia Altner, Biblioinfo.com, Columbia, MD
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Readers won’t be able to tear their eyes away from Katsu’s mesmerizing tale.
Booklist
A backwoods Maine doctor falls under the spell of a confessed killer whose loves and sorrows go back two centuries.... Beneath the trappings of undead lore is a love story that's deeply old-fashioned, and not just because the principals were born 200 years ago.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Luke leave his home to follow Lanny? Is his willingness to leave his life behind a sign of strength or of weakness? What would you have done if you were in Luke's position?
2. Do you think it was fair of Jonathan to ask Lanore to end his suffering? Did Lanore owe it to him? Do her actions in Maine absolve her of her long life of transgressions?
3. What separated Lanore from the other immortal members of Adair's court? Consider Alejandro, Tilde, Dona, Uzra, and their various stories of origin.
4. Discuss the evolution of Lanny's character, from a coy, young girl from the backwoods of Maine to a world-traveled, immortal hedonist. Is Luke destined to be just another fling, or is there something deeper to their budding love?
5. Do you believe that Lanny ever loved Adair? Why do you think she was so drawn to a scheming madman?
6. How did you react to the violent tendencies of the members of Adair's household? Consider Lanny's first night in the mansion, the abductions of the local Bostonians, and the bizarre sexual proclivities of the immortal house-goers. Do you believe there might have been a secret society of hedonists living in Boston during this period?
7. The traveling priest, later revealed to be a member of Adair's flock, recognizes a spiritual unease and some inherent wildness deep within Lanore's soul. Do you think he was right? Was Lanny, to some extent, wicked? How do you explain her actions in the chambers in Boston, or her initial involvement in Sophia's death? Are her choices that of someone trying to take control of her life or someone losing control of herself?
8. On her return trip to St. Andrew, Lanore encounters Magda, the town whore. Magda warns Lanore, "…don't fall in love with your gentleman. We women make our worst decisions when we are in love." Do you believe this to be true? Could Lanore have been saved from her complicated fate if she wasn't so in love with Jonathan? Why do you think Lanore was drawn to Magda in the first place?
9. Do you think Luke made the right decision in leaving St. Andrew behind for a life with Lanny in Paris? What of his obligations to his family? Do you agree with his decision regarding the fabled vial?
10. Were you surprised by Adair's true identity? Do you believe Lanny's plan to trap the physic worked?
11. After everything Lanny had told Luke about the fantastical and magical, do you think there was some greater significance to the vision of his mother momentarily rising from the dead?
12. The story's narrative unfolds in three different time periods, following three distinct characters. Which of the three was your favorite to read, and why? Who did you feel the most sympathy for?
13. Why do you think the author chose to title this book, The Taker? Are there multiple "takers" in the story? If so, who are they? What does Lanny take from Adair, Jonathan, and Luke? What does she give them?
14. Did Jonathan ever truly love Lanore? Did he have such a capacity? How would you characterize Lanny's feelings for Jonathan? Is it love or obsession?
15. At the heart of The Taker is a fairytale about a woman coming into her own. As Lanny eventually explains, alchemy is an effort to transform the person into something more pure, self-assured, and strong. Compare Lanny's story to other well-known fables, like Pinocchio, Snow White, Cinderella, or any of Aesop's valued lessons. What similarities do you see? What sort of classic temptations are placed before Lanore, and what is it that she ultimately takes away from her endless trial of self?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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