Skipping Christmas
John Grisham, 2001
Random House
277 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780440422969
Summary
Luther and Nora Krank are fed up with the chaos of Christmas. The endless shopping lists, the frenzied dashes through the mall, the hassle of decorating the tree... where has all the joy gone? This year, celebrating seems like too much effort. With their only child off in Peru, they decide that just this once, they'll skip the holidays. They spend their Christmas budget on a Caribbean cruise set to sail on December 25, and happily settle in for a restful holiday season free of rooftop snowmen and festive parties.
But the Kranks soon learn that their vacation from Christmas isn't much of a vacation at all, and that skipping the holidays has consequences they didn't bargain for...
A modern Christmas classic, Skipping Christmas is a charming and hilarious look at the mayhem and madness that have become ingrained in our holiday tradition. (From the publisher.)
A 2004 film version of the book, renamed Christmas with the Kranks, stars Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
For all its clever curmudgeonly edge and minor charms, no way does this Christmas yarn from Grisham rank with A Christmas Carol, as the publisher claims. Nor does it rank with Grisham's own best work. The premise is terrific, as you'd expect from Grisham. Fed up with the commercial aspects of Christmas, particularly all the money spent, and alone for the holiday for the first time in decades (their daughter has just joined the Peace Corps), grumpy Luther Krank and his sweeter wife, Nora, decide to skip Christmas this year to forgo the gifts, the tree, the decorations, the cards, the parties and to spend the dollars saved on a 10-day Caribbean cruise. But as clever as this setup is, its elaboration is ho-hum. There's a good reason why nearly all classic Christmas tales rely on an element of fantasy, for, literarily at least, Christmas is a time of miracles. Grisham sticks to the mundane, however, and his story lacks magic for that. He does a smartly entertaining job of satirizing the usual Christmas frenzy, as Luther and Nora resist entreaties from various charities as well as increasing pressure from their neighbors (all sharply drawn, recognizable members of the generic all-American burb, the book's setting) to do up their house in the traditional way, including installing the giant Frosty that this year adorns the roof of every home on the block except theirs. And when something happens that prompts the Kranks to jump back into Christmas at the last minute, Grisham does slip in a celebration of the real spirit of Christmas, to the point of perhaps squeezing a tear or two from his most sentimental readers (even if he comes uncomfortably close to It's a Wonderful Life to do so). But it's too little, too late. The misanthropy in this short novel makes a good antidote to the more cloying Christmas tales, and the book is fun to read. To compare it to Dickens, however, is...humbug.
Publishers Weekly
Accountant Luther Krank is a Scrooge for the new millennium. He calculates that he and his wife, Nora, can take a Caribbean cruise during Christmas for much less money than they spent during the previous year's Christmas season. But Luther doesn't just want to take a vacation during Christmas; he wants to take a vacation from Christmas and skip it altogether. This means that the Kranks will not buy a Christmas tree or calendar, put up any decorations, send any Christmas cards, give any gifts, or attend or host any parties much to the chagrin of their hyperfestive neighbors. However, an unexpected phone call at the last minute leads to a change in plans. Hilarity ensues, but the poignant conclusion is unforgettable. Grisham astutely captures the way many people spend the holiday season, from fighting the crowds to commenting on their neighbors' Christmas trees. A Painted House was Grisham's first departure from the legal thriller genre, and this further demonstrates his ability to tell a story with nary a courtroom in sight. Highly recommended for all public libraries. —Samantha J. Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Skipping Christmas:
1. This book has been called a "modern day Christmas classic." What does the term mean—what makes the book a "Christmas classic"? Do you agree that it is?
2. As you were reading the book, did you find yourself siding with the Kranks' decision to skip Christmas...or disgreeing with them?
3. What are your feelings toward the Christmas holidays? Has this book affected how you will view the season?
4. When friends and neighbors learn that the Kranks plan to skip Christmas, they try to convince them to change their minds. Why do the neighbors find the Kranks' plans so disturbing? Do you find the neighbors' interference appropriate ... or inappropriate?
5. When the Kranks learn Blair is returning from Peru for the holidays, they decide to cancel their cruise and celebrate the holidays as they had in the past. Yet they decided not to tell Blair what they had been planning. Why? Does it seem strange that parents would behave this way toward an adult child?
6. Have you seen Christmas with the Kranks, the 2004 film based on the book and starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis? If so, how does it compare to the book? If not, do you want to see it after having read the book?
7. Talk about the commercialization of the Christmas season. Do you agree with the Kranks that it's excessive and detracts from the true meaning of Christmas? Or do you feel that the holiday with all its commercial trappings is festive and exciting...that the Kranks are Scrooges...and that you need to take the good with the bad? (There's no "right" answer here....) Is it possible to avoid or escape the commercialism and still celebrate Christmas?
8. Once the Kranks change their plans with Blair's arrival, the neighbors pull together to help them pull off their traditional holiday celebration. Did your opinion of the neighbors change?
9. If you skipped Christmas, what would you miss the most? Alternatively...what would you enjoy the most?
10. Did you find this story enjoyable, even endearing? Or do you think John Grisham should stick to writing legal thrillers?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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These Things Hidden
Heather Gudenkauf, 2011
Mira Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778328797
Summary
When teenager Allison Glenn is sent to prison for a heinous crime, she leaves behind her reputation as Linden Falls' golden girl forever. Her parents deny the existence of their once-perfect child.
Her former friends exult her downfall. Her sister, Brynn, faces whispered rumors every day in the hallways of their small Iowa high school. It's Brynn—shy, quiet Brynn—who carries the burden of what really happened that night. All she wants is to forget Allison and the past that haunts her.
But then Allison is released to a halfway house, and is more determined than ever to speak with her estranged sister.
Now their legacy of secrets is focused on one little boy. And if the truth is revealed, the consequences will be unimaginable for the adoptive mother who loves him, the girl who tried to protect him and the two sisters who hold the key to all that is hidden. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Wagner, South Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—Edgar Award Finalist
• Currently—lives in Dubuque, Iowa
Heather Gudenkauf was born in Wagner, South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month of age, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota where her father was employed as a guidance counselor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up.
Having been born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment (there were many evenings when Heather and her father made a trip to the bus barn to look around the school bus for her hearing aids that she often conveniently would forget on the seat beside her), Heather tended to use books as a retreat, would climb into the toy box that her father's students from Rosebud made for the family with a pillow, blanket, and flashlight, close the lid, and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.
Gudenkauf graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent the last sixteen years working with students of all ages and is currently an Instructional Coach, an educator who provides curricular and professional development support to teachers. Heather lives in Dubuque, Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running.
Novels2009 - The Weight of Silence
2011 - These Things Hidden
2012 - One Breath Away
2014 - Little Mercies
2016 - Missing Pieces
(Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Gudenkauf's scintillating second suspense novel (after The Weight of Silence) opens with the release of 21-year-old Allison Glenn from prison, where she has served five years for an unspecified but particularly horrible crime. Allison is reluctant to enter a halfway house in her hometown of Linden Falls, Iowa, where "even a heroin-addicted prostitute arrested for armed robbery and murder would get more compassion than I ever will." Allison, her family's former golden girl, secures a job at a local bookstore, but her efforts to resume some sort of normal life are undermined by her well-to-do parents' indifference, her sister's hatred, and the stigma of her conviction. Meanwhile, one little boy holds the key to the tragedy that led to Allison's imprisonment. The author slowly and expertly reveals the truth in a tale so chillingly real, it could have come from the latest headlines.
Publishers Weekly
Gudenkauf's second novel (after The Weight of Silence) sees 21-year-old Allison Glenn released on parole after serving five years for an undisclosed but particularly gruesome crime. Disowned by her family and facing a small town's inability to forget her sins, former golden girl Allison reluctantly moves into a halfway house and finds work at a local bookstore, where she unwittingly discovers the key to her tragic past and her potential future: a little boy named Joshua. Verdict: The author unravels the mystery of Allison's crime through the lives of four women. While certain aspects of the story are tinged with melodrama and none of the characters develops a truly unique voice, the suspense is gripping. —Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll., Pepper Pike, OH
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1.Charm, Claire and Allison all serve as Joshua's mother at some point in the novel. In the end, who is the best mother? Why do you think so? How does each of these characters evolve throughout the story?
2.The women in the story all love Joshua in their own way. What else do they have in common? What are their differences?
3.Describe Charm's relationship with her mother. How does Charm demonstrate her determination to be different than her mother? What qualities do they share?
4.Olene, the director of the halfway house where Allison resides, tells her to "meet the world with hope in your heart." What does this quote mean for each of the main characters? What does it mean for your own life?
5.Water is consistently referenced throughout the novel. What is its significance? What message do you think the author is trying to relate to the reader?
6.Many of the characters in this novel have hopes and expectations for their family members that are not met. How do the various characters deal with their disappointment? Are their reactions justified? Do you relate to this in your own life?
7.We see glimpses of Allison and Brynn's parents through each girl's eyes. How have their parents shaped each girl? How have their roles in their family defined their relationship? How have your parents shaped you?
8.How does public perception of Allison and Brynn differ from how the sisters view themselves—and each other? How does this change throughout the book? How did your perceptions of Brynn and Allison change as you learned more about each character?
9.It is Christopher that connects Allison to Charm, yet his presence in the story is seen only through the eyes of women in his life. What was your impression of Christopher? Why do you think Allison fell in love with him?
10.In These Things Hidden, several characters take on the role of a parent—for example, Devin, Olene, Gus—for a child to whom they are not biologically related. What makes a good parent? Has there been anyone in your life who has represented the role of a parent for you? Have you done this for anyone in your life?
(Questions from the author's website.)
A Fraction of the Whole
Steve Toltz
Random House
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385521734
Summary
Meet the Deans . . . "The fact is, the whole of Australia despises my father more than any other man, just as they adore my uncle more than any other man. I might as well set the story straight about both of them . . ."
Heroes or Criminals? Crackpots or Visionaries? Families or Enemies?
". . . Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one."
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
As he recollects the events that led to his father’s demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries—about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin’s constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains.
It’s a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a rollicking rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A., University of Newcastle
• Currently—lives in Australia
Toltz attended Knox Grammar School, Killara High School and graduated from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1994. Prior to his literary career, he lived in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Barcelona, and Paris, variously working as a cameraman, telemarketer, security guard, private investigator, English teacher, and screenwriter.
A Fraction of the Whole, his first novel, was released in 2008 to widespread critical acclaim. It is a comic novel which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. The narration of the novel alternates between Jasper Dean, a philosophical, idealistic boy, who grows up throughout the novel and his father, Martin Dean, a philosopher and shut-in described at the start of the novel as "the most hated man in all of Australia". This is in contrast with Terry Dean, Jasper's uncle, whom Jasper describes as "the most beloved man in all of Australia". The novel spans the entirety of Martin's life and several years after (a range never specified in the text, but starting after World War II and ending in the early 2000s), and is set in Australia, Paris, and Thailand.
The novel has repeatedly been compared favourably to John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. A Fraction of the Whole was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
First novels these days too seldom dare to raise their voices above an elegant whisper or an ironic murmur. Not so A Fraction of the Whole, a riotously funny first novel that is harder to ignore than a crate of puppies, twice as playful and just about as messy. This is not a book to be read so much as an experience to be wallowed in. Mr. Toltz’s merry chaos—a mix of metaphysical inquiry, ribald jokes, freakish occurrences and verbal dynamite booming across the page—deserves a place next to A Confederacy of Dunces in a category that might be called the undergraduate ecstatic. A Fraction of the Whole is a sort of Voltaire-meets-Vonnegut tale.
Wall Street Journal
A rich father-and-son story packed with incident, humor, and characters reminiscent of the styles of Charles Dickens and John Irving.... Occasionally, a big, sprawling first novel fights its way into print with a flourish, at which point its ambition and the eccentricities of its ‘firstness’ can become its best marketing tools. Such is the case with A Fraction of the Whole, a book that is willfully misanthropic and very funny…like Irving, Toltz makes minor characters leap off the page.... He’s a superb, disturbing phrasemaker...this long novel, which lives or dies in the brilliance of its writing, has a subtle, compelling structure.... A Fraction of the Whole soars like a rocket.
Los Angeles Times
An exuberantly funny debut novel that you should just go away and read.... There is plenty to laugh at in A Fraction of the Whole—and also, goodness knows, there is plenty of plot and the narrative pace of a puppy with attention deficit disorder. But it also has a heart.... A grand achievement and the debut of a great comic talent.
Sunday Times (UK)
Very light on its feet, skipping from anecdote, to rant, to reflection, like a stone skimming across a pond.... There’s a section about a labyrinth that you could imagine Borges writing, another about a lottery gone wrong that made me think of Vonnegut, and a strange, lovely account of childhood illness that had echoes of Garcia Marquez. In some ways it plays like a modern Arabian Nights.... The inevitability of disaster is heartbreaking.... Brilliant.
Guardian (UK)
A Fraction of the Whole is that rarest of long books–utterly worth it.... The story starts in a prison riot and ends on a plane, and there is not one forgettable episode in between…It reads like Mark Twain with access to an intercontinental Airbus....This book moves; it bucks and rocks in a world tha t feels more than a hemisphere away.... So comically dark and inviting that you have no choice but to step into its icy wake.
Esquire
Packed with plots, sub-plots, sub-sub-plots, tangents, flashbacks, diversions, philosophical wanderings and spectacular set pieces…Fuelled by brilliant ideas and driven by an original, bracing, and very funny voice.
The Age (Australia)
(Starred review.) At the heart of this sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer are two men: Jasper Dean, a judgmental but forgiving son, and Martin, his brilliant but dysfunctional father. Jasper, in an Australian prison in his early 20s, scribbles out the story of their picaresque adventures, noting cryptically early on that "my father's body will never be found." As he tells it, Jasper has been uneasily bonded to his father through thick and thin, which includes Martin's stint managing a squalid strip club during Jasper's adolescence; an Australian outback home literally hidden within impenetrable mazes; Martin's ill-fated scheme to make every Australian a millionaire; and a feverish odyssey through Thailand's menacing jungles. Toltz's exuberant, looping narrative-thick with his characters' outsized longings and with their crazy arguments-sometimes blows past plot entirely, but comic drive and Toltz's far-out imagination carry the epic story, which puts the two (and Martin's own nemesis, his outlaw brother, Terry) on an irreverent roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy. Comparisons to Special Topics in Calamity Physics are likely, but this nutty tour de force has a more tender, more worldly spin.
Publishers Weekly
For those who, if they think of it at all, think of Australia as a bloated island full of Tasmanian devils, baby-devouring dingoes, and convicts, with an iconic opera house thrown in, this eagerly awaited Australian debut novel comes as further confirmation. Here the focus is the dysfunctional Dean family, which boasts the notorious Terry Dean, bank robber, cop killer, and bona fide Australian legend. Under his large and imposing shadow, his brother and his brother's son, Jasper, have both withered into reclusive, crotchety curmudgeons with more than their fair share of eccentric opinions, and Jasper is in rebellion against not only his uncle but his father as well. This is one Oedipus story told, though, with lots of snap and crackle, as well as pop. While there are no new stories, even Down Under, Jasper's progression reads like the trajectory of a gleefully crazed Roman candle across the southern skies in this sprawling, entertaining, decidedly quirky, and at times laugh-out-loud-funny romp reminiscent of John Irving's family sagas or Brocke Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Recommended for all public libraries.
Bob Lunn - Library Journal
(Starred review.) What satirical fun is found on the madcap pages of this rough-and-tumble tale.... This hilarious, sneaky smart first novel is as big and rangy as Australia.... Toltz salts it all with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life. This is one rampaging and irresistible debut.
Booklist
A bloated first novel from Australia. The opening promises suspense. Narrator Jasper Dean is in prison; his father's body, he confides, will never be found. The suggestion of foul play, though, is a misleading tease. Moving back in time, the father, Martin, takes over as narrator; he and Jasper switch roles throughout.... We end, exhausted.... One thing after another in a novel that wallows in excess.
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 A Fraction of the Whole?
1. How would you characterize this book? As a philosophical novel? A family saga? A comedy...or tragic comedy?
2. Steve Toltz' novel is long and packed with metaphysical ideas, strange characters, and mad-cap action. Some say its "stuffed" and "bloated." British reviewer James Wood has gone so far as to label it "hysterical realism"—which is both criticism and description. Others find the novel's screwball excesses delightfully rich and exciting. How did you experience A Fraction of the Whole?
3. Are the characters in this book sympathetic...likable? Do you care about them?
4. Describe Jasper Dean. What are his feelings toward his father? How has the father shaped the son—what affect did Martin's escapades have on Jasper? In his diaries, Martin worries his baby son "is me prematurely reincarnated." Is Martin right?
5. Martin proclaims, "I don't believe in anything." Is he right about himself...or not? What do you think of Martin?
6. Why might Toltz have chosen father and son to narrate his novel? What affect does the dual narration have on how we read the book—our understanding of it?
7. What about Anouk? What does she believe in? Why doesn't she like Martin, and yet why does she try to save him throughout the novel. What is her relationship with Jasper?
8. The novel's title is derived from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction." What does the passage mean...and how do both title and quotation relate to the novel?
9. Martin and his brother Terry are intent on solving the riddle of human happiness. Talk about the various schemes each devises—the suggestion box, the giant telescope, and the murder of corrupt sports figures. What does each scheme attempt to achieve? And why do they fail?
10. How would you describe Martin and Terry's relationship? Is Martin living in Terry's shadow?
11. What, or who, are the world's "inexorably tepid souls," and why are they the scourge of this novel?
12. How do you feel about the comment regarding God's treatment of Lot's wife:
Most of the time when God's supposed to be the hero, he comes across as the villain. I mean, look at what he did to Lot's wife....What was her crime? Turning her head? You have to admit this is a God hopelessly locked in time, not free of it; otherwise he might have confounded the ancients by turning her into a flat-screen television or at least a pillar of Velcro.
Do you find the comment offensive, humorous, insightful? How would you address the charges of God as a villain?
13. Talk about the Towering Inferno. What does it teach Jasper?
14. Talk about Jasper's high school perched on the Cliffs of Despondency—obviously a comment on the desperation of life for bullied youngsters. Is the parody effective...or does it miss the mark?
15. Talk about some of the other objects of satire and parody in this novel? What is Toltz lampooning in the 20th and 21st centuries?
16. What is this book about?
17. Have you read other works comparable to A Fraction of the Whole? Perhaps John Irving, John Kennedy Toole, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? If so, what do any of these works have in common with Toltz's?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Once on a Moonless Night
Dai Sijie, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307456731
Summary
From the author of the beloved best seller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a haunting tale of love and of the beguiling power of a lost language.
When Puyi, the last emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in the early 1930s, it is said that he carried an eight-hundred-year-old silk scroll inscribed with a lost sutra composed by the Buddha. Eventually the scroll would be sold illicitly to an eccentric French linguist named Paul d'Ampère, in a transaction that would land him in prison, where he would devote his life to studying the ineffably beautiful ancient language of the forgotten text.
Our unnamed narrator, a Western student in China in the 1970s, hears this story from the greengrocer Tumchooq—his name the same as that of the language in which the scroll is written—who has recently returned from three years of reeducation. She will come again and again to Tumchooq's shop near the gates of the Forbidden City, drawn by the young man and his stories of an estranged father.
But when d'Ampère is killed in prison, Tumchooq disappears, abandoning the narrator, now pregnant with his child. And it is she, going in search of her lost love, who will at last find the missing scroll and discover the truth of the Buddha's lesson that begins “Once on a moonless night...” in this story that carries us across the breadth of China's past, the myth and the reality. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 2, 1954
• Where—Chengu, Sichuan, China
• Education—re-education camp
• Awards—Prix Femina, 2003
• Currently—lives in Paris, France
• Occupation—filmmaker and novelist
Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker who was himself “re-educated” between 1971 and 1974.
He left China in 1984 for France, where he has lived and worked ever since. Blazac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, his first novel, is semi-autobiographical; it was an overnight sensation when it appeared in France in 2000, becoming an immediate best-seller and winning five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in nineteen countries.
His second novel, Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch won the French Prix Femina award in 2003. Once on a Moonless Night was published in 2007 (English trans., 2009) (From the publisher.)
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Because Dai Sijie came from an educated middle-class family, the Maoist government sent him to a reeducation camp in rural Sichuan from 1971 to 1974, during the Cultural Revolution. After his return, he was able to complete high school and university, where he studied art history.
In 1984, he left China for France on a scholarship. There, he acquired a passion for movies and became a director. Before turning to writing, he made three critically-acclaimed feature-length films: China, My Sorrow (1989) (original title: Chine, ma douleur), Le mangeur de lune and Tang, le onzième. He also wrote and directed an adaptation of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, released in 2002. He lives in Paris and writes in French.
A new novel, Par une nuit où la lune ne s'est pas levée (Once on a Moonless Night), appeared in 2007 (and in English in 2009).
L'acrobatie aérienne de Confucius was released in 2008.
Novels
His first book, the semi-autobiographical Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) (2000), was made into a 2002 movie, which he himself adapted and directed. It recounts the story of a pair of friends who become good friends with a local seamstress while spending time in a countryside village, where they have been sent for 're-education' during the Cultural Revolution. They steal a suitcase filled with classic Western novels from another man being reeducated, and decide to enrich the seamstress' life by exposing her to great literature. These novels also serve to sustain the two companions during this difficult time. The story principally deals with the cultural universality of great literature and its redeeming power. The novel has been translated into twenty-five languages, and finally into his mother tongue after the movie adaptation.
His second book, Le Complexe de Di won the Prix Femina for 2003. It recounts the travels of a Chinese man whose philosophy has been influenced by French psychoanalyst thought. The title is a play on "le complexe d'Oedipe", or "the Oedipus complex". The English translation (released in 2005) is titled Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch. ("More" from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Dai Sijie is a wonderful storyteller.... Once on a Moonless Night is full of tales within tales and worlds within worlds, ranging from ancient Chinese empires through communist China to modern Beijing….Everything in all these interwoven tales is extreme, from intellectual obsession to the cruelty of empresses, from the mountain landscapes to cabbages….Sijie writes wonderful descriptions….There is always a sense of the pressure of numbers of people and things, which seems to provoke in the characters a ferocious determination to be individuals, to make their own fates, single-mindedly. Places and events are shocking….the reader feels a readerly excitement, even pleasure, as he or she is swept along from disaster to disaster.
A.S. Byatt - Guardian (UK)
An unlikely love affair twists and turns through Dai’s story...but it is the stops along the way, in which we visit the lost and unforgiven of Chinese history, that give the novel its real meaning….the knotty truths of China’s past are habitually ironed out by ‘official’ historiography, whether it is compiled by the communists or shot in Technicolor by western filmmakers. The result is a collective memory shot through with holes, and Dai’s pantheon of anti-heroes and forgotten souls is an attempt to patch the gaps.... Once on a Moonless Night evokes the past with all the eerie clarity of a dream, its outlines blurred, but every tiny, telling detail extraordinarily alive. Anyone in search of a brief history of China would do well to begin right here.
Margaret Hillenbrand - Financial Times (UK)
Once on a Moonless Night takes the reader deeper, into stories within stories and myths within myths about China’s real and imaginary past.... Startling undercurrents sway this mysterious narrative: Dai Sijie’s inventiveness enfolds it in some extreme stories...show how language, which we (and many modern Chinese) think of as free, may be treacherous and incomplete...this shy, complex novel, which speaks its concerns so quietly, remains a forceful lament, infused with incident and dramatic storytelling.”
Julian Evans - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Acclaimed novelist Sijie has written another novel that has already caused a stir in France. Narrated by an unnamed Western student in China in the 1970s, the story begins centuries before, with the Emperor Huizong, a calligrapher and great art collector, who acquired a silk scroll with a Buddhist sutra written upon it in an ancient lost language. The last emperor of Japan inherits the scroll and then in 1952, Paul d'Ampère, a French linguist, becomes obsessed with translating the scroll and goes to prison for 25 years for illegally acquiring it. When the narrator falls in love with a greengrocer, Tumchooq, who tells her the story, she begins to witness the life-altering consequences of the scroll—consequences that will change her own life and send her on a journey to seek truth and understanding. Sijie's breathtaking story shows the beauty and horrors that make up China's history while the poetry of Sijie's words is revealed in Hunter's magnificent translation. It's fitting that a story of a love affair with language should be written so beautifully.
Publishers Weekly
"Once on a moonless night a lone man is traveling..." and, stumbling, clings to the side of an abyss. No, this doesn't actually happen in Dai's magisterial new work; it's reputedly the beginning of a lost Buddhist sutra, written on a scrap of silk belonging to China's last emperor. As Dai would have it, the exiled emperor tosses it from a plane, and the daughter of the man who claims it is pursued by French linguist Paul d'Ampere—he's fascinated because the sutra is written in the lost language of Tumchooq. Their son, named Tumchooq, keeps the story of the sutra alive and shares it with a Western student who becomes obsessed with it—and pregnant with Tumchooq's child. Dai's latest is structurally more complex than his international hit, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, whose power lies partly in its singular clarity. But it's just as rich and evocative and powerfully delivers the idea that language (even more than literature, as in Balzac) truly defines us. This should be almost as big as Balzac; highly recommended.
Library Journal
A scroll containing a Buddhist sutra written in an unknown language causes no end of trouble in Sijie's meandering novel (Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch, 2005, etc.). The unnamed narrator, a French student of Chinese literature at the University of Peking, first hears of the mysterious sutra in 1978, when she is acting as a translator during a meeting about The Last Emperor. Puyi, the subject of that film, inherited the second- or third-century scroll, which resided in the collection of a 12th-century emperor-and anyone who thinks that description is opaque should try reading the longwinded account given to the narrator by an elderly Chinese historian. When Puyi was taken prisoner by the Japanese, the historian says, he tore the scroll in half and flung both halves from the plane. Now the narrator backtracks to describe her meeting with Tumchooq, a vegetable seller on a street near the university, whose name is also the name of the ancient language in which the Buddhist scroll was written. Paul d'Ampere, the French scholar who figured this out in 1952, just happens to be Tumchooq's father; indeed, he may have married Tumchooq's mother, now a curator at the museum of the Forbidden City, to get his hands on the half of the scroll that her elderly relative picked up after it was flung from the plane. D'Ampere ends up in prison; his death there a quarter-century later sends Tumchooq into self-imposed exile. The narrator aborts his baby and returns to France, but soon she's learning new languages and traveling again, for no discernable reason except to make sure that she picks up Tumchooq's trail again in Burma in 1990. He's still looking for the complete text of the sutra, but the missing portion won't surface until after Tumchooq has been arrested and deported to Laos. By then, only the most patient readers will care. Intended to celebrate the art of storytelling, this tedious work merely illustrates the perils of authorial self-indulgence.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is this book about? What are Dai's major themes?
2. Who is the narrator? What do we know about her? Do you like her?
3. On pages 31-32, Professor Tang Li describes Puyi's fascination with an ancient language made up purely of nouns: “No verbs, therefore no concerns.” What does this mean? Why did Puyi conflate verbs with concerns?
4. Discuss the role of language itself throughout the novel. Why does it hold such power for Paul d'Ampère? For Tumchooq? For the narrator?
5. The narrator states that filial love “lies at the heart of the Chinese moral code” (p. 59). Why is this significant?
6. How does the murder of White-Tuft change the course of the novel?
7. Why does Tumchooq tell the story of Mr. Liu (pp. 82-85)? What message is he trying to convey to the narrator? Why is Mr. Liu so important to him?
8. Discuss the incident with Ma at the Exhibition of Ancient Chinese Punishments and Tortures. Why did Tumchooq do what he did? And why does he tell the story the way he does? What does this scene say about truth and deception?
9. Is there such a thing as a true friend in this novel? What about Hu Feng?
10. How are women treated in the novel? Why aren't the narrator and Tumchooq's mother identified by name?
11. Is Tumchooq like his father? In what ways?
12. Why does Paul d'Ampère turn his back on France? Does the narrator? How does pride of country affect the events in the novel?
13. Reread Tumchooq's letter on page 175. Why does his father's death affect him so deeply?
14. Discuss the notion of choice. How does Dai distinguish “choice” from “decision”?
15. On pages 197-198, Mr. Tarakesa tells the narrator that d'Ampère couldn't find the scroll because he was a Westerner, that “finding the end of a teaching like that requires an entirely oriental mind.” Why is the narrator so taken aback? Where else does bigotry come into play? In this novel, does it work both ways?
16. Do you agree with the narrator's assertion, on page 202, that “in literature there is just one true masterpiece to which different writers give a particular form”? Do you think Dai agrees?
17. What is signified by d'Ampère's blank headstone? Do you agree with Tumchooq's interpretation on page 230?
18. Discuss the epilogue. What does it mean that Peking has changed so thoroughly?
19. What did you think of the revelation about Tumchooq's mother, on pages 268-69?
20. Reread the end of the sutra, the last lines of the novel. What is the significance?
21. Did the ending satisfy you? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See, 2005
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812980356
Summary
Lily is haunted by memories-of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.
In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu ("women's writing").
Some girls were paired with laotongs, "old sames," in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become "old sames" at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive.
But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 18, 1955
• Where—Paris, France
• Education—B.A., Loyola Marymount University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her Chinese-American family (See has one Chinese great-grandparent) has had a great impact on her life and work. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995) and the novels Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007), Shanghai Girls (2009), which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list, and China Dolls (2014).
Flower Net, The Interior, and Dragon Bones make up the Red Princess mystery series. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love focus on the lives of Chinese women in the 19th and 17th centuries respectively. Shanghai Girls chronicles the lives of two sisters who come to Los Angeles in arranged marriages and face, among other things, the pressures put on Chinese-Americans during the anti-Communist mania of the 1950s. See published a sequel titled Dreams of Joy.
Writing under the pen name Monica Highland, See, her mother Carolyn See, and John Espey, published three novels: Lotus Land (1983), 110 Shanghai Road (1986), and Greetings from Southern California (1988).
Biography
Lisa See was born in Paris but has spent many years in Los Angeles, especially Los Angeles Chinatown. Her mother, Carolyn See, is also a writer and novelist. Her autobiography provides insight into her daughter's life. Lisa See graduated with a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in 1979.
See was West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly (1983–1996); has written articles for Vogue, Self, and More; has written the libretto for the opera based on On Gold Mountain, and has helped develop the Family Discovery Gallery for the Autry Museum, which depicts 1930s Los Angeles from the perspective of her father as a seven-year-old boy. Her exhibition On Gold Mountain: A Chinese American Experience was featured in the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, and the Smithsonian. See is also a public speaker.
She has written for and led in many cultural events emphasizing the importance of Los Angeles and Chinatown. Among her awards and recognitions are the Organization of Chinese Americans Women's 2001 award as National Woman of the Year and the 2003 History Makers Award presented by the Chinese American Museum. See has served as a Los Angeles City Commissioner. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2014.)
Book Reviews
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is written with a stately but unremarkable prettiness; it is not a book that will make its mark for reasons of style. But Ms. See has worked enough joy, pain and dramatic weepiness ("Oh, how I wanted to dip a cloth into that water and wipe away the cares that played across my laotong's features") to give it a quiet staying power. It's liable to be read by women's groups and valued for its quaintness. ("All people cherish the hair on their moles, but Uncle Lu's were splendid.") But what will work best for this book is its own secret message: cultures vary, but old sames and same-olds don't change.
Janet Maslin - The New York Times
The wonder of this book is that it takes readers to a place at once foreign and familiar—foreign because of its time and setting, yet familiar because this landscape of love and sorrow is inhabited by us all. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a triumph on every level, a beautiful, heartbreaking story.
Judy Fong Bates - The Washington Post
See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.
Publishers Weekly
Foot binding; nu shu, a secret language used exclusively by the women of Hunan Province for 1000 years; and laotong, the arranged friendship between little girls meant to last a lifetime, provide the framework for See's (Dragon Bones) riveting look at a little-known chapter in 19th-century Chinese history. In 1903, 80-year-old Lily looks back on her life, which was anchored by her laotong relationship with the beautiful Snow Flower. As little girls, the two communicated in nu shu, writing of their mutual devotion on a fan they passed between each other over the years. Raised according to the traditional restrictions of the times, they lived most of their lives confined to the upstairs women's chamber in their homes, enduring the relentless societal insistence that women are worthless except for their value in producing sons. The laotong bonds of Lily and Snow Flower endure through family tragedies, a typhoid-fever epidemic, and the Taiping Rebellion of 1851-64, but it is a misunderstood message in nu shu, the language that held them together for decades, that ultimately tears them apart. See's meticulous research and exquisite language deliver a story that is haunting, powerful, and, at times, almost too painful to bear. Highly recommended. —Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
A nuanced exploration of women's friendship and women's writing in a remote corner of Imperial China. At the end of her life, Lady Lily Lu, the 80-year-old matriarch of Tongkou village, sits down to write her final memoir-one that will be burned at her death. Using nu shu, a secret script designed and kept by women, Lily spends her final years recounting her training as a woman, her longing for love and the central friendship of her life. Born, in 1823, into an ordinary farming family, Lily might not have ended up as a wealthy matriarch. Her earliest memories are of running through the fields outside with her cousin Beautiful Moon in the last days before her foot-binding. But in childhood, Lily's middle-class fate changed dramatically when the local diviner suggested that her well-formed feet made her eligible for a high-status marriage and for a special ceremonial friendship with a laotong (sworn bosom friend). Accordingly, Lily became laotong with Snow Flower, a charming girl from an upper-class household. Together, the two begin a friendship and intimate nu shu correspondence that develops with them through years of house training, marriages, childbirths and changes in social status. See (Dragon Bones, 2003, etc.) is fascinated by imagining how women with constrained existences might have found solace-and poetry-within the unexpected, little known writing form that is nu shu. Occasionally, in the midst of notes about childbirth and marriages, Lily and Snow Flower wonder how to understand the value of their secret writing in relation to the men's "outside world." The question is left delicately open. As the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) approaches the villages around them, threatening to disrupt the social order, Lily and Snow Flower's private intimacy changes, stretches and is strained. Taut and vibrant, the story offers a delicately painted view of a sequestered world and provides a richly textured account of how women might understand their own lives. A keenly imagined journey into the women's quarters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Lily endures excruciating pain in order to have her feet bound. What reasons are given for this dangerous practice?
2. Did See's descriptions of footbinding remind you of any Western traditions?
3. If some men in 19th-century China knew about nu shu and “old same” friendships, why do you think they allowed these traditions to persist?
4. Reflecting on her first few decades, Lily seems to think her friendship with Snow Flower brought her more good than harm. Do you agree?
5. Lily's adherence to social customs can seem controversial to us today. Pick a scene where you would have acted differently. Why?
6. Lily defies the wishes of her son in order to pair her grandson with Peony. Does she fully justify her behavior?
7. Lily sometimes pulls us out of the present moment to reflect—as an old woman—on her youthful decisions. What does this device add to the story?
8. How would you film these moments of reflection?
9. If Lily is writing her story to Snow Flower in the afterworld, what do you think Snow Flower's response would or should be?
10. Did you recognize any aspects of your own friendships in the bond between Lily and Snow Flower?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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