Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck, 1937
Penguin Group USA
112 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140177398
Summary
An intimate portrait of two men who cherish the slim bond between them and the dream they share in a world marred by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness.
Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap.
But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men,” begin to go awry.
Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck described his work, “a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands.” A rarity in American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.
Steinbeck’s tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America’s most widely read and beloved novels. (From Penguin Classics.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1902
• Where—Salinas, California USA
• Death—December 20, 1968
• Where—New York, NY
• Education—Studied marine biology at Stanford University,
1919-25
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, 1940;
Nobel Prize, 1962.
John Ernst Steinbeck, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in Salinas, California February 27, 1902. His father, John Steinbeck, served as Monterey County Treasurer for many years. His mother, Olive Hamilton, was a former schoolteacher who developed in him a love of literature. Young Steinbeck came to know the Salinas Valley well, working as a hired hand on nearby ranches in Monterey County.
In 1919, he graduated from Salinas High School as president of his class and entered Stanford University majoring in English. Stanford did not claim his undivided attention. During this time he attended only sporadically while working at a variety jobs including on with the Big Sur highway project, and one at Spreckels Sugar Company near Salinas.
Steinbeck left Stanford permanently in 1925 to pursue a career in writing in New York City. He was unsuccessful and returned, disappointed, to California the following year. Though his first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, it attracted little literary attention. Two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To A God Unknown, met the same fate.
After moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1930, Steinbeck and his new wife, Carol Henning, made their home in Pacific Grove. Here, not far from famed Cannery Row, heart of the California sardine industry, Steinbeck found material he would later use for two more works, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row.
With Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck's career took a decidedly positive turn, receiving the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. He felt encouraged to continue writing, relying on extensive research and personal observation of the human drama for his stories. In 1937, Of Mice and Men was published. Two years later, the novel was produced on Broadway and made into a movie. In 1940, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Grapes of Wrath, bringing to public attention the plight of dispossessed farmers.
After Steinbeck and Henning divorced in 1942, he married Gwyndolyn Conger. The couple moved to New York City and had two sons, Thomas and two years later, John. During the war years, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of his dispatches reappeared in Once There Was A War. In 1945, Steinbeck published Cannery Row and continued to write prolifically, producing plays, short stories and film scripts. In 1950, he married Elaine Anderson Scott and they remained together until his death.
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and keen social perception." In his acceptance speech, Steinbeck summarized what he sought to achieve through his works:
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.... Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity of greatness of heart and spirit—gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature...
Steinbeck remained a private person, shunning publicity and moving frequently in his search for privacy. He died on December 20, 1968 in New York City, where he and his family made a home. But his final resting place was the valley he had written about with such passion. At his request, his ashes were interred in the Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas. He is survived by his son, Thomas. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble, courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Of Mice and Men is a thriller, a gripping tale running to novelette length that you will not set down until it is finished. It is more than that; but it is that.... In sure, raucous, vulgar Americanism, Steinbeck has touched the quick in his little story.
New York Times
Brutality and tenderness mingle in these strangely moving pages.... The reader is fascinated by a certainty of approaching doom.
Chicago Tribune
A short tale of much power and beauty. Mr. Steinbeck has contributed a small masterpiece to the modern tough-tender school of American fiction.
Times Literary Supplement (London)
Discussion Questions
1. Why does George "take so much trouble for another guy" (p. 21)?
2. Why does George shoot Lennie?
3. Why is the dream recited repeatedly?
4. What does Slim mean when he says, "A guy got to sometimes" (p. 102)?
5. Why does the book begin and end at the pond?
6. Why does Candy feel he should have shot his dog himself?
7. Is Curley's wife to blame for Lennie's death?
8. Why doesn't Slim share in the other men's dreams?
9. Why does Carlson get the last word?
10. What is the meaning of the book's title?
11. Did migrant workers have any options for a better life?
12. Did George do the right thing by shooting Lennie?
(Questions from the publisher.)
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The Surrendered
Chang-rae Lee, 2010
Penguin Group USA
435 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594489761
Summary
With his three critically acclaimed novels, Chang-rae Lee has established himself as one of the most talented writers of contemporary literary fiction. Now, with The Surrendered, Lee has created a book that amplifies everything we've seen in his previous works, and reads like nothing else. It is a brilliant, haunting, heartbreaking story about how love and war inalterably change the lives of those they touch.
June Han was only a girl when the Korean War left her orphaned; Hector Brennan was a young GI who fled the petty tragedies of his small town to serve his country. When the war ended, their lives collided at a Korean orphanage where they vied for the attentions of Sylvie Tanner, the beautiful yet deeply damaged missionary wife whose elusive love seemed to transform everything. Thirty years later and on the other side of the world, June and Hector are reunited in a plot that will force them to come to terms with the mysterious secrets of their past, and the shocking acts of love and violence that bind them together.
As Lee unfurls the stunning story of June, Hector, and Sylvie, he weaves a profound meditation on the nature of heroism and sacrifice, the power of love, and the possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering oneself to another.
Combining the complex themes of identity and belonging of Native Speaker and A Gesture Life with the broad range, energy, and pure storytelling gifts of Aloft, Chang-rae Lee has delivered his most ambitious, exciting, and unforgettable work yet. It is a mesmerizing novel, elegantly suspenseful and deeply affecting. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 29, 1965
• Where—Seoul, Korea
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., University of
Oregon (USA)
• Awards—PEN/Hemingway Award; Anisfield-Wolf Prize;
NAIBA Book Award
• Currently—lives in Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Chang-rae Lee landed on the literary scene in 1995 with Native Speaker, a detective story about much more than just another crime. Critics responded, and Lee's debut received a string of recognition, including a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Biography/Critical Appreciation. Everyone agreed that Chang-rae Lee was a writer to watch. Over the nearly two decades since then, he has published four more novels, all to wide acclaim.
Lee and his family emigrated from Seoul, South Korea to the United States in 1968. His family settled in Westchester, New York, and Lee eventually attended Yale and the University of Oregon, where he earned his M.F.A.
Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award. The novel centers around a Korean American industrial spy, explores themes of alienation and betrayal as felt or perpetrated by immigrants and first-generation citizens, and played out in local politics.
In 1999, he published his second novel, A Gesture Life. This elaborated on his themes of identity and assimilation through the narrative of an elderly Japanese-American doctor who remembers treating Korean comfort women during World War II. For this book, Lee received the Asian American Literary Award.
His 2004 novel Aloft received mixed notices from the critics and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian American, but a disengaged and isolated Italian-American suburbanite forced to deal with his world. It received the 2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category.
His 2010 novel The Surrendered won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a nominated finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In 2014 Lee published On Such A Full Sea, a dystopian novel set in a future version of the American city of Baltimore, Maryland called B-Mor where the main character, Fan, is a Chinese-American laborer working as a diver in a fish farm.
Lee a writer and a teacher, as well as the director of the M.F.A. Program at Hunter College of City University in New York City. Those fortunate enough to be his students get to learn from the man who knows the stuff of human nature—that the aftereffect of any act is the core of every great story, and that even the most conventional characters can bear the weight of unconventional story lines. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble and Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/12/2014.)
Extras
(From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview):
• If I weren't a writer," Lee reveals in our interview, "I'd probably be working in the food and/or wine business, perhaps running a wine or coffee bar—or even an Asian noodle soup shop."
• When asked what book most influenced his life or career as a writer, here is his response:
"The Book" doesn't quite exist for me—there are too many that influenced me in incalculable ways.... These, in no particular order, are several of my many, many favorites:
Dubliners by James Joyce—Stories so luminous that one would be instantly blinded by their beauty were it not for the revelatory poignancy of their narratives.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac—This is a wild and inspiring book, and was especially so for someone like me, a middle-class suburban kid who was always taught to color within the lines.
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike—One of the few novels I might consider calling "perfect" —it's all here, in a virtuosic and utterly unified presentation: voice, characterization, narrative sequencing, keen social commentary, metaphorical/pictorial wizardry. Updike at the height of his powers.
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron—A torrential display of Styron's prodigious imagination and lyricism.
The Names by Don DeLillo—A brilliant, complex, brooding inquiry into the uses—and essential position—of language. A "novel of ideas" that goes beyond rgumentation and ultimately soars with the force of poetry.
(Autho nterview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Searing.... With The Surrendered, Mr. Lee has written the most ambitious and compelling novel of his already impressive career—a symphonic work that reprises the themes of identity, familial legacies and the imperatives of fate he has addressed in earlier works, but which he grapples with here on a broader, more intricate historical canvas. Though the novel has its flaws, it is a gripping and fiercely imagined work that burrows deep into the dark heart of war, leaving us with a choral portrait of the human capacity for both barbarism and transcendence.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Chang-rae Lee is fond of words like "accrete" and "accrue," words that try to name the slow, almost imperceptible processes by which experience acquires weight, mass and, if you're lucky, meaning. "Life, gathering," reads one full sentence in his ferocious and lyrical new novel, The Surrendered, and you couldn't ask for a better two-word description of what good fiction aspires to. This novel...gathers life greedily, hungrily, but with a certain stealth: Lee doesn't bolt it all down at once, as the refugee children in his story do. The Surrendered, his largest, most ambitious book, is about the horrors of war and the sorrows of survival, yet its manner is quiet, watchful, expectant, as if everyone, including Lee himself, were waiting to see what might accrue.
Terrence Rafferty - New York Times Book Review
Epic in scope, masterful in execution, heart stopping at times, and heartbreaking at others. The meticulous narrative unfolds over 52 years and across three continents. Nothing is rushed; nothing is overlooked. We can even feel the buzz of a window pane on our fingertips as rumbling Japanese military vehicles approach along a gravel road.... Lee understands that in art and in stories what is perhaps most valuable is not what can be explained but what can be felt.
Boston Globe
This is not a happy book, but it is a rewarding one. The Surrendered grabs your attention—sometimes terrifying you in the process—and doesn't let go until its final moment.... Its pages are breathtakingly alive.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Lee's masterful fourth novel (after Aloft) bursts with drama and human anguish as it documents the ravages and indelible effects of war. June Han is a starving 11-year-old refugee fleeing military combat during the Korean War when she is separated from her seven-year-old twin siblings. Eventually brought to an orphanage near Seoul by American soldier Hector Brennan, who is still reeling from his father's death, June slowly recovers from her nightmarish experiences thanks to the loving attention of Sylvie Tanner, the wife of the orphanage's minister. But Sylvie is irretrievably scarred as well, having witnessed her parents' murder by Japanese soldiers in 1934 Manchuria. These traumas reverberate throughout the characters' lives, determining the destructive relationship that arises between June, Hector and Sylvie as the plot rushes forward and back in time, encompassing graphic scenes of suffering, carnage and emotional wreckage. Powerful, deeply felt, compulsively readable and imbued with moral gravity, the novel does not peter out into easy redemption. It's a harrowing tale: bleak, haunting, often heartbreaking—and not to be missed.
Publishers Weekly
Beautiful, riveting, piercingly haunting.... The settings and times are masterfully interwoven to form an elegant, disturbing inquiry into courage, love, loyalty, and mercy.... This is a book to read in two or three long sittings, gulping pages, turning them as fast as possible to reach the perfect, inevitable ending.
Kate Christensen - Elle
June Singer is a middle-aged Korean woman living in the United States and dying of cancer, but before she dies, she wants to accomplish two things: find her son, who is drifting around Italy, and make a redemptive pilgrimage to the Chapel of Bones. She enlists the unwilling help of Hector, her son's father, whom she hasn't seen since the 1950s, when she was a child in a Korean orphanage and Hector was an ex-soldier working as the handyman. Throughout June and Hector's painful journey, we learn about the Tanners, the couple who ran the orphanage; Sylvie Tanner's childhood as a daughter of missionaries who were slain in front of her; the possessive love that June and Hector had for Sylvie; and the resulting calamity that has haunted them their whole lives. Verdict: This is a completely engrossing story of great complexity and tragedy. Lee's (Aloft) ability to describe his characters' sufferings, both physical and mental, is extraordinarily vivid; one is left in awe of the human soul's ability to survive the most horrific experiences. —Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA
Library Journal
With his signature empathy and artistry, Lee links emotionally complex events.... Profoundly committed to authenticity, and in command of a remarkable gift for multidimensional metaphors, Lee dramatizes the guilt and "mystery of survival" in scenes of scalding horror and breathtaking beauty.... Lee has created a masterpiece of moral and psychological imagination unsparing in its illumination of the consequences of bloodshed and war.
Booklist
The odyssey of a Korean War refugee becomes first the subject of, then a haunting overture to, the award-winning Korean-American author's fourth novel (Aloft, 2004, etc.). Lee's introspective and interrogatory novels seek the sources of their characters' strengths and weaknesses in their own, and their families' stories-nowhere more powerfully than in this exhaustive chronicle of three hopeful lives tempered in the crucibles of wars and their enduring aftermaths. In a patiently developed and intermittently slowly paced narrative that covers a 30-year span and whose events occur in four countries and on three continents, the entangled histories of three protagonists are revealed. We first encounter 11-year-old June Han, traveling with her twin siblings following the deaths of their parents toward safety with their uncle's family. June's willed stoicism and suppression of fear serve her well in extremity, but they will have a far different effect on her later life-shaped when she is rescued by American G.I. Hector Brennan (himself in flight from the memory of a painful loss). Hector brings June to Sylvie Tanner, a minister's wife who runs an orphanage (and whose own demons owe much to the savagery of history in another place and another time). Each character's past, motivations and future prospects are rigorously and compassionately examined, as the author follows them after the war. In its ineffably quiet way, there really is something Tolstoyan in this searching fiction's determination to understand the characters specifically as members of families and products of other people's influences. The characterizations of Hector and Sylvie are astonishingly rich and complex, and the risk taken in depicting the adult June as the woman readers will hope she would not become is triumphantly vindicated. A major achievement, likely to be remembered as one of this year's best books.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the orphanage, June is a bully to the other children and shows affection only to Sylvie. Yet when we first meet her, she is incredibly caring to her sister and brother. What do you think caused this change in her personality? How did her experiences as a young girl shape the adult she became?
2. Hector seems to develop true feelings for Dora. If things had ended differently in the final scene with Dora, do you think he would still have gone off with June? Why or why not? Do you think his experience with Sylvie colored his relationship with Dora? How?
3. Do you think Sylvie and Tanner would have adopted June had things not happened the way they did turned out differently? Why or why not?
4. June seems fixated on finding Nicholas even after it becomes clear that he is not who he says he is. Why do you think she is so focused? Why do you think she needs to find him?
5. If you’ve read Chang-rae Lee’s work in the past, you know that he writes often of identity. How do these themes play out in The Surrendered? Of Hector, June, and Sylvie, which character do you think has the strongest sense of identity? The weakest?
6. Each character undergoes a traumatic experience that ends up shaping the course of his or her life: Hector’s father’s death, June’s loss of her family, and Sylvie’s experience in Manchuria. How do these events change their characters? Do you think each person’s life would be different had these traumatic events not occurred?
7. The book A Memory of Solferino recurs throughout the novel and is passed from Sylvie to June to Nicholas. What do you think the book means to each character and how does it influence the choices they make?
8. Although The Surrendered is very much about war, the events of the Korean War itself make up a very small part of the book. Why do you think the author chose this approach? What point do you think he was making? How does this relate to his choice of title?
9. Discuss the idea of mercy in the book. Which characters do you think most exemplify this trait? In which scenes does the idea of mercy seem to be the guiding force?
10. Hector is born in the town of Ilion and is named after Hector in the Iliad. Discuss heroism in the book. Are any of the characters heroes? Do they behave heroically?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly
Connie May Fowler, 2010
Grand Central Publishing
278 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446540681
Summary
How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly is the transcendent story of a young woman who, in a twenty-four hour period, journeys through startling moments of self-discovery that lead her to a courageous and life-altering decision. (From the publisher).
Author Bio
• Birth—Janury 3, 1958
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Tampa; M.A., University of
Kansas
• Awards—Southern Book Critics Circle Award; League of
American Pen Women - Frances Buck Award; Chataqua
South Literary Award
• Currently—lives in the state of Florida, USA
Connie May Fowler is an essayist, screenwriter, and novelist. She is the author of several novels, including How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly; The Problem with Murmur Lee; and a memoir, When Katie Wakes. In 1996, she published Before Women Had Wings, which became a paperback bestseller and was made into a successful Oprah Winfrey Presents movie.
She founded the Connie May Fowler Women With Wings Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding women and children in need. (From the publisher.)
More
Connie May Fowler is an American novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter, and poet. She earned a Bachelor of Arts (English Literature) from University of Tampa and a Masters of Arts (English Literature with an Emphasis in Creative Writing) from University of Kansas where she studied with the novelist Carolyn Doty
Her semi-autobiographical novel, Before Women had Wings, received the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award (League of American Pen Women). She adapted the novel for Oprah Winfrey and the subsequent Emmy-winning film starred Winfrey, Ellen Barkin, Julia Stiles, and Tina Majorino.
Remembering Blue received the Chautauqua South Literary Award. Three of her novels were Dublin International Literary Award nominees.
Her other novels include Sugar Cage; River of Hidden Dreams; The Problem with Murmur Lee (Redbook’s premier book club selection); and How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly. Her memoir, When Katie Wakes, explores her family’s generational cycle of domestic violence. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages.
Fowler’s essays, touch on a wide range of topics such as family history, Sumo wrestling, popular culture, music, sex, and food. They have been published in a variety of publications including the New York Times, The Times, Japan Times, International Herald Tribune, Oxford American, Best Life, and Forum.
Her work has been characterized as southern fiction with a post-modern sensibility. It often melds magical realism with the harsh realities of poverty. It generally focuses on working class people of various racial backgrounds.
She has been cited in sources such as Advancing Sisterhood?: Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction; and Race Mixing: Southern Fiction Since the Sixties. She is considered part of a "fourth generation" of American writers—black and white—that explodes old notions of race, segregation, and interpersonal racial relationships.
Extras
• In 2007, Fowler performed at New York City’s The Player's Club with actresses Kathleen Chalfont, Penny Fuller, and others in a performance based on The Other Woman, an anthology that includes Fowler’s essay “The Uterine Blues.” In 2003, Fowler performed in a charity benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues with Jane Fonda and Rosie Perez.
• Fowler has held numerous jobs including bartender, caterer, nurse, television producer, TV show host, antique dealer, and construction worker.
• From 1997-2003 she directed the Connie May Fowler Women Wings Foundation, an organization that served at risk women and children. From 2003–2007, she was the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College and directed their author series “Winter With the Writers.”
• Fowler, a life-long resident of Florida, has set all of her books, thus far, in that state. ("More" and "Extras" from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In this gloomy novel, Fowler (Before Women Had Wings) presents a day in the life of writer Clarissa Burden, stuck in a loveless marriage and preoccupied with a joyless childhood. Memories of a cruel mother aren't the only things haunting Clarissa; a number of ghosts, including the 19th-century biracial family who had lived in Clarissa's Florida home, also weave themselves into Clarissa's story. Plagued by writer's block and suspicious of her photographer husband (and the nude models he employs), Clarissa leaves home for a day filled with spooky cemeteries, near-death experiences, life-altering conversations, exhilaration, and frustration. The plot tends to meander, incorporating not just incorporeal spirits but occasional jaunts into the minds of Florida's animals; still, Fowler produces some singularly memorable characters. By the time Clarissa stands up to her husband, readers will have suffered mightily through a sweltering Florida solstice, listening to the heroine's witty, sometimes whiney, internal monologue, and wishing for some real action. Fortunately, Fowler delivers on that wish, bringing together all her characters—dead, alive, and imagined—for an explosive conclusion
Publishers Weekly
In the little town called Hope, FL, it's the summer solstice, not only the longest but the hottest day of the year. On this day, Clarissa Burden's life changes irrevocably. Supporting a brutal husband who makes no living sketching and wooing frolicking female nudes and who deeply resents her successful career as a novelist, Clarissa needs release. Badly. Unbeknownst to her, there are ghosts living in her rambling home who need a release of their own. For all parties, enough is enough, and during this solstice day's long hours, things change forever. In this novel by best-selling author Fowler (The Problem with Murmur Lee) past and present lives collide in magical and violent ways with surprising, liberating, and redeeming results. The colorful characters include an almost-angel, carnival dwarves, and anthropomorphic animals, and the result is folksy and sophisticated, and humorous yet at times grave and appalling, with the sins of the past clearly depicted. Verdict: A seductive and thoroughly satisfying read. —Jyna Scheeren, NYPL
Library Journal
Florida novelist Clarissa Burden is suffering from writer’s block...her mind is blank.... Fowler blurs the line between the written and the writer as we witness Clarissa’s brave discovery that the real truth is often the most risky tale to tell. —Annie Bostrom
Booklist
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly opens with vivid descriptions of the weather and wildlife of Hope, Florida: “this swampy southern outpost,” “the humidity-laden situation,” “its sundry wildlife…all steeling themselves against the inevitable onslaught of the day’s hellish heat” (1). How do the climate and geography of Hope affect the story? Could the events that take place have happened anywhere else in the country? In the world?
2. Recalling what she once thought of as a heroic move, Clarissa considers the way Iggy left his family and South Africa because of their different feelings about race. She did not ask, 'If a man walks away from his mother because he seriously disagrees with her politics, how deep is his allegiance to a wife?’” (6). Do you agree that one’s relationship with family can be an indicator of one’s relationship with a spouse? Why or why not?
3. A fly that is in love with Clarissa plays an important role in this story. We are also introduced to other insects and animals living in Clarissa’s home, truck, and other spaces around her that she doesn’t even know about. How does knowing about these creatures affect your perception of Clarissa, if at all? Would the story be different without them?
4. “Jane was, unknowingly, ticking off the list of the most asked, most useless questions thrown at writers” (43). Is it fair that Clarissa thinks of her interviewer’s questions this way? What questions would you want to ask a writer you admire? What questions would you want an interviewer to ask you?
5. Clarissa is described as not having much confidence or independence at the beginning of the book: “uncharacteristically courageous” (59), “Despite all that she had accomplished in her life, she was not a woman accustomed to doing things on her own” (62). How does Clarissa change as the day progresses? What was it about this one day that was so special?
6. “What was love if not an idea—abstract as wind, concrete as rain—an invisible homily so powerful that it propelled even the meekest souls to hold dear what they feared most?” (64). Do you agree that love drives you toward what you “fear most?” Why or why not? Have you experienced love that made you feel this way? What would the fly in the story think about this notion?
7. What is the significance of all the trash that piled up in Clarissa’s truck, and why is she so determined to get rid of it by herself on this day?
8. Why does Clarissa go to the cemetery, and in what way did it affect her? Do you think she is aware of the ghosts there, particularly the children who pull her out of the mud?
9. Clarissa realizes "...her marriage hung by a single tendril spun of stubbornness and fear" (115). What is she being stubborn about, and what is she fearful of? How does Iggy fit into this fragile arrangement?
10. Clarissa is harassed by the boys at the Treetop General Store, but Miss Lossie seems to get rid of them without a problem. "Surprised at their compliance, Clarissa wondered why she had commanded such little respect from the two-pint punks” (122). What is it about Miss Lossie that Clarissa doesn’t possess? How do Miss Lossie and Chester aid Clarissa in her spiritual journey?
11. How do the stories about the worm gruntin’ stob fit into the larger picture of Clarissa’s new life? Why do Chester and Miss Lossie regard worm gruntin’ so highly, and what does Clarissa take away from that devotion?
12. How do Clarissa’s perceptions and desires shift as she rides Chester’s motorcycle? “Hurtling down the highway on two wheels, she felt death’s presence...Duende...the Spanish notion of a creative force antithetical to the muse—a death dancer spinning a flamenco composed of carnality, sadness, and passion” (144-5). How does this awakening relate to the rest of her lessons of the day?
13. Despite all the excitement of buying a flashy new car, Clarissa notices the understated details of car salesman Raul:
Raul’s fingers resumed their dance. They were graceful fingers, tanned, and still bore the calluses of a man who used his hands to make a living. Clarissa wondered how long he had worked at the car lot and if he missed whatever it was that earned him those calluses. Maybe he understood the secrets of oak and pine, citrus and tomatoes, drywall and nails (152).
How could Clarissa spend so much time considering the back story of another when her own life is changing so wildly? Do you think that the mind of a writer naturally imagines the histories of those she encounters?
14. Iggy’s ire over the new car doesn’t surprise Clarissa, but she realizes, "Her life—all of its molehills and detours—she realized, was an enormous annoyance to him” (168). What kept her from having this awareness during their seven years of marriage? What gives Clarissa the strength to do something about her problems now?
15. "What good was hope if it remained nebulous? Hope was one of those abstractions, like love; for it to be meaningful, it had to be hitched to something real" (179). If this is true and it’s also true that love drives a person to what they fear most, what does hope motivate a person to do? According to Clarissa, how are the two similar and how are they different? What’s your opinion?
16. Compare Iggy and Adams. How do they perceive Clarissa, how do they treat her? In what ways does she respond to each of them?
17. Clarissa taught Adams that writing is scary and painful and dangerous, and now he has to re-explain that lesson back to her. What made Clarissa forget this essential part of her craft? How does she turn her writer’s block around?
18. Do you agree that Olga’s story is the one that Clarissa should focus on for her new book, as Adams says? Why or why not?
19. “She'd woken up that morning naive. And now she was not. Now the world was a different place. And Iggy was going to have to catch up” (236). Do you think it’s possible to turn a life around in one day? Have you ever had an epitome similar to Clarissa’s, whether it was about a relationship, a job, or another major life decision?
20. How do Larry Dibble/Lawrence Butler and the Villada-Archer family function in Clarissa’s alteration? Do you believe that spirits of the past can influence the present?
21. What do you think will happen next to Clarissa Burden?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
176 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307957122
Summary
Winner, 2011 Man Booker Prize
The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes's new novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world's most distinguished writers.
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they swore to stay friends forever. Until Adrian's life took a turn into tragedy, and all of them, especially Tony, moved on and did their best to forget.
Now Tony is in middle age. He's had a career and a marriage, a calm divorce. He gets along nicely, he thinks, with his one child, a daughter, and even with his ex-wife. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove. The unexpected bequest conveyed by that letter leads Tony on a dogged search through a past suddenly turned murky. And how do you carry on, contentedly, when events conspire to upset all your vaunted truths? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Dan Kavanaugh
• Birth—January 19, 1946
• Where—Leicester, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford Uiversity
• Awards—Man Booker Prize; Gutenberg prize;
E.M. Forster Award; Geoffrey Faber Memorial
Prize; Prix Medicis; Prix Femina.
• Currently—lives in London, England
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending. Three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005).
Barnes has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. Barnes is one of the best-loved English writers in France, where he has won several literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Flaubert’s Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over. He is an officer of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Although Barnes was born in Leicester, his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks later. Both of his parents were teachers of French. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination." As an adolescent he lived in Northwood, Middlesex, the "Metroland" of which he named his first novel.
Education and early career
Barnes attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. During his time at the New Statesman, Barnes suffered from debilitating shyness, saying: "When there were weekly meetings I would be paralysed into silence, and was thought of as the mute member of staff." From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer.
Books
His first novel, Metroland (1980), is a short, semi-autobiographical story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris as a student, finally returning to London. It deals with themes of idealism, sexual fidelity and has the three-part structure that is a common theme in Barnes' work. After reading the novel, Barnes' mother complained about the book's "bombardment" of filth. In 1983, his second novel Before She Met Me features a darker narrative, a story of revenge by a jealous historian who becomes obsessed by his second wife's past.
Barnes's breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot broke with the traditional linear structure of his previous novels and featured a fragmentary biographical style story of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. The novel was published to great acclaim, especially in France, and it established Barnes as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation. Staring at the Sun followed in 1986, another ambitious novel about a woman growing to maturity in post-war England who deals with issues of love, truth and mortality. In 1989 Barnes published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, which was also a non-linear novel, which uses a variety of writing styles to call into question the perceived notions of human history and knowledge itself.
In 1991, he published Talking it Over, a contemporary love triangle, in which the three characters take turns to talk to the reader, reflecting over common events. This was followed ten years later by a sequel, Love, etc., which revisited the characters ten years on.
Barnes is a keen Francophile, and his 1996 book Cross Channel, is a collection of 10 stories charting Britain's relationship with France. He also returned to the topic of France in Something to Declare, a collection of essays on French subjects.
In 2003, Barnes appeared as the voice of Georges Simenon in a BBC Radio 4 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories. Other works include England, England, a satire on Britishness and the culture of tourism; and Arthur & George, a detailed story based on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his involvement in the Great Wyrley Outrages. His 1992 book, The Porcupine, deals with the trial of a fictional former Communist dictator.
Barnes' eleventh novel, The Sense of an Ending, was published in 2011 and awarded the Man Booker Prize. The judges took 31 minutes to decide the winner, calling it a "beautifully written book," which "spoke to humankind in the 21st Century." Salman Rushdie tweeted Barnes his congratulations.
In 2013 Barnes published a "memoir" Levels of Life, about the death of his wife, which is "part history, part meditative essay and part fictionalized biography. The pieces combine to form a fascinating discourse on love and sorrow" (New York Times).
Personal life
His wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died of a brain tumour on 20 October 2008. He lives in London. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specialised in Ancient Philosophy. He is the patron of human rights organisation Freedom from Torture. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The Sense of an Ending...is dense with philosophical ideas.... Still, it manages to create genuine suspense as a sort of psychological detective story. We not only want to find out how Mr. Barnes's narrator, Tony Webster, has rewritten his own history—and discover what actually happened some 40 years ago—but also understand why he has needed to do so.... Mr. Barnes does an agile job...of unpeeling the onion layers of his hero's life while showing how Tony has sliced and diced his past in order to create a self he can live with. In doing so Mr. Barnes underscores the ways people try to erase or edit their youthful follies and disappointments, converting actual events into anecdotes, and those anecdotes into a narrative.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
In Barnes's (Flaubert's Parrot) latest, winner of the 2011 Man-Booker Prize, protagonist Tony Webster has lived an average life with an unremarkable career, a quiet divorce, and a calm middle age. Now in his mid-60s, his retirement is thrown into confusion when he's bequeathed a journal that belonged to his brilliant school-friend, Adrian, who committed suicide 40 years earlier at age 22. Though he thought he understood the events of his youth, he's forced to radically revise what he thought he knew about Adrian, his bitter parting with his mysterious first lover Veronica, and reflect on how he let life pass him by safely and predictably. Barnes's spare and luminous prose splendidly evokes the sense of a life whose meaning (or meaninglessness) is inevitably defined by "the sense of an ending" which only death provides. Despite its focus on the blindness of youth and the passage of time, Barnes's book is entirely unpretentious. From the haunting images of its first pages to the surprising and wrenching finale, the novel carries readers with sensitivity and wisdom through the agony of lost time.
Publishers Weekly
Life has been good to Tony Webster, who's both contentedly retired and contentedly divorced. Then friends reappear from a childhood long left behind and presumably shelved, and as the past suddenly looms large, Tony must rethink everything that has been his life. In the hands of multi-award winner Barnes, this should be masterly—and, with the book under 200 pages, there's a gorgeous simplicity at work.
Library Journal
A man's closest-held beliefs about a friend, former lover and himself are undone in a subtly devastating novella from Barnes.... [S]peaks to Barnes' skill at balancing emotional tensions and philosophical quandaries. A knockout. What at first seems like a polite meditation on childhood and memory leaves the reader asking difficult questions about how often we strive to paint ourselves in the best possible light.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Would you describe Tony Webster as an "unreliable yet sincere narrator"?
2. To what extent do you think Julian Barnes uses “peripeteia,” the unexpected twist in plot, to encourage the reader to adjust their expectations?
3. Do you agree with Anita Brookner’s review, “his [Julian Barnes] reputation will surely be enhanced by this book.” The Telegraph, July 2011.
4. The Sense of an Ending is a novel about the imperfections of memory. What insight does it give the reader into ageing and memory?
5. Is the ending unforeseen, does it leave you with a sense of unease?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Also see the Discussion Questions at Princeton Book Review. They're much more comprehensive.
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The Messenger
Daniel Silva, 2006
Penguin Group USA
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451221728
Summary
Sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon would prefer to pursue his love of art restoration, but threats of terrorism keep calling him back. In The Messenger, the computer of a dead al-Qaeda operative holds scattered clues to a massive future attack. To thwart that offensive, Allon must move with speed and stealth. Filled with trapdoors and plot surprises, this is a first-class post-9/11 thriller. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1959
• Where—Michigan, USA
• Raised—California
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Daniel Silva was attending graduate school in San Francisco when United Press International offered him a temporary job covering the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Later that year, the wire service offered him full-time employment; he quit grad school and went to work for UPI—first in San Francisco, then in Washington, D.C., and finally as a Middle East Correspondent posted in Cairo. While covering the Iran-Iraq War in 1987, he met NBC correspondent Jamie Gangel. They married, and Silva returned to Washington to take a job with CNN.
Silva was still at CNN when, with the encouragement of his wife, he began work on his first novel, a WWII espionage thriller. Published in 1997, The Unlikely Spy became a surprise bestseller and garnered critical acclaim. ("Evocative.... Memorable..." said the Washington Post; "Briskly suspenseful," raved the New York Times). On the heels of this somewhat unexpected success, Silva quit his job to concentrate on writing.
Other books followed, all earning respectable reviews; but it was Silva's fourth novel that proved to be his big breakthrough. Featuring a world-famous art restorer and sometime Israeli agent named Gabriel Allon, The Kill Artist (2000) fired public imagination and soared to the top of the bestseller charts. Gabriel Allon has gone on to star in several sequels, and his creator has become one of our foremost novelists of espionage intrigue, earning comparisons to such genre superstars as John le Carre, Frederick Forsythe, and Robert Ludlum. Silva's books have been translated into more than 25 languages and have been published around the world. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[The book] is written in broad strokes, with villains more loathsome, terrorist attacks more spectacular and a plot more melodramatic than he's given us in the past. In terms of controversy, it won't hurt that his chief villain is a Saudi billionaire who finances terrorist attacks and is, in truth, a stand-in for the House of Saud itself, which "started the fire of the global jihad movement in the first place," Silva says. The author is quite serious in his contempt for the Saudis—and U.S. officials who are seduced by them—and yet, in an interview that accompanied the book, he jokes that he wants The Messenger to be a good beach read. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a writer wanting to have it both ways.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post
Bestseller Silva continues to warrant comparisons to John le Carre, as shown by his latest thriller starring Israeli art restorer and spymaster Gabriel Allon. Ahmed bin Shafiq, a former chief of a clandestine Saudi intelligence unit, targets the Vatican for attack, in particular Pope Paul VII and his top aide, Monsignor Luigi Donati, who both appeared in Silva's previous novel, Prince of Fire. Shafiq, who now heads his own terrorist network, is allied with a militant Islamic Saudi businessman known as Zizi, a true believer committed to the destruction of all infidels. Gabriel's challenge is to infiltrate Zizi's organization, a task he assigns to a beautiful American art expert, Sarah Bancroft. Gabriel promises he'll protect her, but plans go awry, and by the end Sarah faces torture and death. While Sarah's fate is never in doubt, the way Silva resolves his plot will keep readers right where he wants them: on the edges of their seats.
Publishers Weekly
Echoes of 9/11 haunt Silva's sixth Gabriel Allon thriller. An attack on the Vatican leads the art restorer and Mossad agent on the trail of a wealthy Saudi suspected of financing al-Qaeda. Because Zizi collects Impressionist art, Gabriel creates a fake Van Gogh and enlists Sarah Bancroft, an American art historian, to infiltrate the ruthless billionaire's entourage. The author masterfully weaves together the worlds of art, espionage, and terrorism; few thriller writers balance entertainment and serious issues so well. The novel's structure is unusual for Silva, with Gabriel becoming secondary to Sarah in the second half, but the fears she faces are gripping. Recommended for all collections.
Michael Adams - Library Journal
The five previous spy thrillers featuring Gabriel Allon addressed topics including the Munich Olympics massacre, Yasir Arafat, and the Vatican. The Messenger, about global terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, resounded just as loudly with critics. Fortunately, Daniel Silva has also written an ingenious, thrilling, and entertaining book with complex characters and settings, from London and Jerusalem to Rome, that serve the plot well. While one critic cited Silva's bias toward Israel, the majority felt that the author created characters with different perspectives and left readers to form their own opinions. In the end, they agreed with the assess-ment of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Gabriel Allon remains one of the most intriguing heroes of any thriller series."
Bookmarks Magazine
(Starred review.) An engrossing and beautifully written contemporary spy thriller. —Connie Fletcher
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Messenger:
1. What is the significance of Gabriel's name? How does he fit his name? Consider, too, his last name—Allon—which according to Silva means oak tree in Hebrew.
2. Talk about Gabriel Allon's back story—what in his life has inspired his devotion to Israel and his work in stopping international terrorism?
3. How does Silva portray Saudia Arabia and its involvement in both international terrorism and U.S. political life? What, for instance, makes the involvement of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari difficult for the American president and the C.I.A? Do you find Silva's depiction of the Saudis accurate or stretched?
4. Talk about Silva's characters—Sarah Bancroft, for example. Which are more fully developed and emotionally complex...and which are more one-dimensional?
5. What derails Gabriel's carefully laid plans with Sarah? Who (or what) is at fault?
5. What about Silva's depiction of torture? How did it affect your reading? Did it heighten your feeling of suspense or instill dread, fear, anger...what?
6. Silva raises difficult a number of issues: how to punish criminals/terrorists in the absence of a court of law; what stance should religious people take in the face of terrorism; how far can a country go to protect itself? All of these questions remain topical to modern geo-politics. Where do you stand on any one, or all, of these issues?
6. What do you know about the history of jihad, and how accurate do you feel The Messenger depicts terrorism's history? Some readers/critics have criticized Silva's worldview: feeling that Silva unfairly portrays all Arabs negatively—as evil or potential terrorists—and all Israelis as good. Agree...or not?
7. Did you enjoy the detailed information about the art world? Or did you find it distracting?
8. The Messenger is the second in a trilogy of books dealing with terrorism in today's world—Prince of Fire is the first and The Secret Servant is the third. Have you read either of these books...or any others in the Gabriel Allon series (totalling 8 in all)? If so, how does this book compare with the others?
9. Has this book altered your view of the roots of international terrorism...or how it should be confronted? If so, how. If not, why not?
10. Is the book's ending a satisfying one? Predictable or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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