Girl in Translation
Jean Kwok, 2010
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487569
Summary
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about.
Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant—a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Hong Kong, China
• Raised—Brooklyn, New York City, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.F.A., Columbia
University
• Currently—lives in the Netherlands
Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl. Jean received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed an MFA in fiction at Columbia. She worked as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and now writes full-time. She has been published in Story magazine and Prairie Schooner. (From the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
Although Girl in Translation is a work of fiction and not a memoir, the world in which it takes place is real.
The youngest of seven children and a girl at that, I was a dreamy, impractical child who ran wild through the sunlit streets of Hong Kong. No one was more astonished than my family when I turned out to be quite good at school. We moved to New York City when I was five and my only gift was taken from me. I did not understand a word of English
We lost all our money in the move to the United States. My family started working in a sweatshop in Chinatown. My father took me there every day after school and we all emerged many hours later, soaked in sweat and covered in fabric dust. Our apartment swarmed with insects and rats. In the winter, we kept the oven door open day and night because there was no other heat in the apartment.
As I slowly learned English my talent for school re-emerged. When I was about to graduate from elementary school, I was tested by a number of exclusive private schools and won scholarships to all of them. However, I'd also been accepted by Hunter College High School, a public high school for the intellectually gifted, and that was where I wanted to go.
By then, my family had stopped working at the sweatshop and we'd moved to a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that had been divided into formerly rent-controlled apartments. It was a vast improvement, but there was still no money to spare. If I didn't get into a top school with a full financial aid package, I wouldn't be able to go to college. Although I loved English, I didn't think it was a practical choice and devoted myself to science instead. In my last year in high school, I worked in three laboratories: the Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology labs at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center and the Biophysics/Interface Lab at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Brooklyn.
I was accepted early to Harvard and I'd done enough college work to take Advanced Standing when I entered, thus skipping a year and starting as a sophomore in Physics. It was in college that I realized that I could follow my true calling, writing, and switched into English and American Literature.
I put myself through Harvard, working up to four jobs at a time to do so: washing dishes in the dining hall, cleaning rooms, reading to the blind, teaching English, and acting as the director of a summer program for Chinese immigrant children. I graduated with honors, then took a job as a professional ballroom dancer in New York City: waltzing in high heels by day and writing by night. After a few years, I left ballroom dance and went to Columbia to do my MFA in fiction. Before I graduated from Columbia, two stories of mine had been published in Story. In my last year at Columbia, I worked fulltime for a major investment bank as a member of a five-person computer team that addressed the multimedia needs of the Board of Directors.
I then moved to Holland for love and went through the process of adjusting to another culture and learning another language again. Since then, my work has also been published in Prairie Schooner and the Nuyorasian Anthology, and I am a Featured Writer in the Holt high school textbook Elements Of Literature (eds. 2007, 2009, 2011), in which my story appears alongside those of authors such as Alice Walker, Pearl S. Buck, and Sandra Cisneros. I taught English at Leiden University in the Netherlands and worked as a Dutch-English translator until I finished Girl in Translation. After it was accepted for publication, I quit to write fulltime. I live in the Netherlands with my husband and two sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Jean Kwok takes two well-trod literary conceits - coming of age and coming to America - and renders them surprisingly fresh in her fast-moving, clean-prosed immigrants' tale, Girl in Translation. Along with her widowed mother, 11-year-old Kimberly (Ah-Kim) Chang is transported from the balmy familiarity of her native Hong Kong to the icy, inhospitable projects of 1980s Brooklyn—a girl with little grasp of the language and cultural mores of her newly adopted homeland, and even less financial means. How Kimberly fights through almost obscene marginalization to forge her own version of the American dream is consistently compelling, even if Girl's needlessly soapy conclusion seems unworthy of what came before.
Entertainment Weekly
A resolute yet naïve Chinese girl confronts poverty and culture shock with equal zeal when she and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn in Kwok's affecting coming-of-age debut. Ah-Kim Chang, or Kimberly as she is known in the U.S., had been a promising student in Hong Kong when her father died. Now she and her mother are indebted to Kimberly's Aunt Paula, who funded their trip from Hong Kong, so they dutifully work for her in a Chinatown clothing factory where they earn barely enough to keep them alive. Despite this, and living in a condemned apartment that is without heat and full of roaches, Kimberly excels at school, perfects her English, and is eventually admitted to an elite, private high school. An obvious outsider, without money for new clothes or undergarments, she deals with added social pressures, only to be comforted by an understanding best friend, Annette, who lends her makeup and hands out American advice. A love interest at the factory leads to a surprising plot line, but it is the portrayal of Kimberly's relationship with her mother that makes this more than just another immigrant story.
Publishers Weekly
Living in squalor among rats and roaches in a virtually abandoned unheated apartment building in Brooklyn, NY, 11-year-old Kimberly Chang narrates how, after recently immigrating from Hong Kong, she and her mother strive to eke out a life together working in an illegally run sweat shop. Though she was once the top-ranked pupil in her class in Hong Kong, Kimberly's English skills are so limited that she must struggle to keep up in school while still translating for her mother and attempting to hide the truth of her living situation from her well-to-do classmates and only true friend, Annette. Drawing on her own experiences as an immigrant from Hong Kong (though she herself went to Harvard and Columbia, while Kimberly earns a spot at Yale), Kwok adeptly captures the hardships of the immigrant experience and the strength of the human spirit to survive and even excel despite the odds. Verdict: Reminiscent of An Na's award-winning work for younger readers, A Step from Heaven, this work will appeal to both adults and teens and is appropriate for larger public libraries, especially those serving large Asian American populations. —Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. Lib., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
An iteration of a quintessential American myth—immigrants come to America and experience economic exploitation and the seamy side of urban life, but education and pluck ultimately lead to success. Twelve-year-old Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong and feel lucky to get out before the transfer to the Chinese. Because Mrs. Chang's older sister owns a garment factory in Brooklyn, she offers Kimberly's mother—and even Kimberly—a "good job" bagging skirts as well as a place to live in a nearby apartment. Of course, both of these "gifts" turn out to be exploitative, for to make ends meet Mrs. Chang winds up working 12-hour-plus days in the factory. Kimberly joins her after school hours in this hot and exhausting labor, and the apartment is teeming with roaches. In addition, the start to Kimberly's sixth-grade year is far from prepossessing, for she's shy and speaks almost no English, but she turns out to be a whiz at math and science. The following year she earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school. Her academic gifts are so far beyond those of her fellow students that eventually she's given a special oral exam to make sure she's not cheating. (She's not.) Playing out against the background of Kimberly's fairly predictable school success (she winds up going to Yale on full scholarship and then to Harvard medical school) are the stages of her development, which include interactions with Matt, her hunky Chinese-American boyfriend, who works at the factory, drops out of school and wants to provide for her; Curt, her hunky Anglo boyfriend, who's dumb but sweet; and Annette, her loyal friend from the time they're in sixth grade. Throughout the stress of adolescence, Kimberly must also negotiate the tension between her mother's embarrassing old-world ways and the allurement of American culture. A straightforward and pleasant, if somewhat predictable narrative, marred in part by an ending that too blatantly tugs at the heartstrings.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout Girl in Translation, the author uses creative spelling to show Kimberly’s mis-hearing and misunderstanding of English words. How does the language of the novel evolve as Kimberly grows and matures? Do you see a change in the respective roles that English and Chinese play in the narrative as it progresses?
2. The word "translation" figures prominently in the title of the novel, and learning to translate between her two languages is key to Kimberly’s ability to thrive in her new life. Does she find herself translating back and forth in anything other than language? Clothing? Priorities? Expectations? Personality or behavior? Can you cite instances where this occurs, and why they are significant to the story as a whole?
3. Kimberly has two love interests in the book. How are the relationships that Matt and Curt offer different? Why do you think she ultimately chooses one boy over the other? What does that choice say about her? Can you see a future for her with the other boy? What would change?
4. In many ways Kimberly takes over the position of head of household after her family moves to New York. Was this change in roles inevitable? How do you imagine Ma feels about it? Embarrassed? Grateful? In which ways does Ma still fulfill the role of mother?
5. Kimberly often refers to her father, and imagines how her life might have been different, easier, if he had lived. Do you think she is right?
6. Kimberly’s friend Annette never seems to grasp the depths of Kimberly’s poverty. What does this say about her? What lesson does this experience teach Kimberly? Is Kimberly right to keep the details of her home life a secret?
7. Kimberly believes that devoting herself to school will allow her to free her family from poverty. Does school always live up to her expectations? Where do you think it fails her? How does it help her succeed? Can you imagine the same character without the academic talent? How would her life be different? What would remain the same? Is Kimberly right to believe that all of her potential lies in her talent for school? Must qualities like ambition, drive, hope, and optimism go hand in hand with book smarts?
8. Think about other immigrant stories. How is Kimberly’s story universal? How is it unique? How does Kimberly’s Chinese-American story compare to other immigrant stories? Would it change if she were from a different country or culture?
9. Kimberly lives in extreme poverty. Was anything about her circumstances surprising to you? How has reading Girl in Translation affected your views of immigration? How can you apply these lessons in your community?
10. The story is set in the 1980s. Do you think immigrant experiences are much different today? What has changed? What has remained the same?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Sister Scarlet Mary
Julia Peterkin, 1928
University of Georgia Press
376 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780820323770
Summary
Winner, 1929 Pulitizer Prize
Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness.
In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 31, 1880
• Where—Laurens County, South Carolina, USA
• Death—August 1961
• Where—near Fort Motte, South Carolina
• Education—Converse College (South Carolina)
• Awards—Pulitizer, 1929
Julia Peterkin was a white American fiction writer, who wrote about the African-American experience in the American South.
Her father was a physician, of whom she was the youngest of four children. Her mother died soon after her birth. In 1896, at age 16, Julia graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from which she received a master's degree a year later. She taught at the Forte Motte, South Carolina, school for a few years before she married William George Peterkin in 1903. He was a planter who owned Lang Syne, a 2,000-acre (8.1 km2) cotton plantation near Fort Motte.
Julia began writing short stories, inspired by the everyday life and management of the plantation.
She was audacious as well as gracious, an ambiguity attested to by Elizabeth Robeson in her 1995 scholarly essay about Peterkin in the Journal of Southern History. Peterkin sent highly assertive letters to people she did not know and had never met, such as Carl Sandburg and H.L. Mencken, and included samples of her writing about the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina.
Essentially sequestered on the plantation, she invited Sandburg, Mencken and other prominent people to the plantation. Sandburg, who lived nearby in Flat Rock, North Carolina, made a visit. While Mencken did not visit, he nevertheless became Peterkin's literary agent in her early career, a possible testament to her persuasive letters. Eventually, Mencken led her to Alfred Knopf, who published her first book, Green Thursday, in 1924.
In addition to a number of subsequent novels, her short stories were published in magazines and newspaper throughout her career. She was one of very few white authors to specialize in the Negro experience and character. But her work was not always praised, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Scarlet Sister Mary was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, a South Carolina town. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book.
In addition to the controversy over the obscenity claim, there was another problem with Scarlet Sister Mary. Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by Dr. John B. Oliver. His nomination was superseded by the School of Journalism's choice of Peterkin's book. Evidently in protest, Burton resigned from the jury.
As an actress and possible dilettante, she played the main character to some acclaim in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Town Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina, from February 1932.
In 1998, the Department of English and Creative Writing at her alma mater, Converse College, established The Julia Peterkin Award for poetry, open to everyone. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Peterkin is a southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth.
W. E. B. Du Bois
[N]early everything that Mrs. Peterkin's characters did and said was interesting. She has a great talent for creative observation and description, for realistic folklore.
Time Magazine (6/10/1929)
Pulitzer Prize winner Peterkin was a pioneer in writing candidly, yet unsentimentally, about black women, including their sensuality.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Scarlet Sister Mary:
1. How do you see Mary Pinesett? Do you admire her...do you like her? Or does she irritate and anger you? Is she an early feminist, defining her own sexuality and identity while defying the social order? Is she a "primitivist" who uses sexuality and child-bearing to connect with the natural cycle of life? Is she a victim of spousal abuse, struggling to regain self-esteem? Is she an immoral, immature, self-centered woman? All...some... none of the above...or something else?
2. As a white writer, does Julia Peterkin play into racial stereotypes for African-Americans? Or, as W.E.B. Dubois said of her, does she have "the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth" whether black or white?
3. Talk about the rat and the wedding cake as symbolizing the future prospects of Sister Mary and July's marriage.
4. What role does magic and superstition play in the Gullah community and in Sister Mary's life?
5. Do you care about this book's characters? Does Peterkin fully develop them—providing them with emotional and psychological complexity? Or do you find them flat and one-dimensional?
6. In what way might Killdee Pinesett be considered, in the words of one critic/reviewer, "one of the most moving, one of the most admirable characters is modern fiction"?
7. What kind of family does Mary create...what affect does her promiscuity have on her children? Is she a good mother?
8. How does the church view Sister Mary? And how do you view the church with its concepts of sin and grace? What about Brer Dee lining out the hymns?
9. At the end, when the church has accepted her back into its fold, does Sister Mary repent? Why does she keep the charm when Daddy Cudjoe asks her to return it? What does she mean when she tells Daddy Cudjoe, "E's all I got now to keep me young"?
10. Is this book a morality tale?
11. Are you at all familiar with the Gullah culture along the Carolina coasts, its unusual patois, the beautiful sweet grass baskets? You might do a little research into the area and its history. There's a Gullah cultural and educational center not far from Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina—take a look at its website.
12. Overall, what do you think of this book? Is it a good read...a disappointing one? Did it hold your interest?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Nefertiti
Michelle Moran, 2007
Three Rivers (Random House)
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307381743
Summary
Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised in a powerful family that has provided wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries.
Ambitious, charismatic, and beautiful, Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep, an unstable young pharaoh. It is hoped that her strong personality will temper the young ruler’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods.
From the moment of her arrival in Thebes, Nefertiti is beloved by the people but fails to see that powerful priests are plotting against her husband’s rule. The only person brave enough to warn the queen is her younger sister, yet remaining loyal to Nefertiti will force Mutnodjmet into a dangerous political game; one that could cost her everything she holds dear. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1980
• Where—San Fernando Valley of California, USA
• Education—B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Claremont Graduate University
• Currently—lives in southern California
Michelle Moran, an American novelist, was born in California's San Fernando Valley. She took an interest in writing from an early age, purchasing Writer's Market and submitting her stories and novellas to publishers from the time she was twelve. She majored in literature at Pomona College. Following a summer in Israel where she worked as a volunteer archaeologist, she earned an MA from the Claremont Graduate University.
Her experiences at archaeological sites were what inspired her to write historical fiction. A public high school teacher for six years, Moran is currently a full-time writer living in California
Novels
Moran's novels have been published in both the UK and the US, and have been translated and sold in more than 20 countries, including France, Bulgaria, Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Poland, Russia, China, and Taiwan.
2016 - Mata Hari's Last Dance
2015 - Rebel Queen
2012 - The Second Empress
2011 - Madame Tussaud
2009 - Cleopatra's Daughter
2008 - The Heretic Queen
2007 - Nefertiti
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/18/2016.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Michelle's on History Buff.
Book Reviews
Almost every character in the book is based on a historical figure, and Moran fleshes out their personalities beautifully, highlighting the teenage pharaoh's arrogance and paranoia, underscoring his queen's ambition and insecurity...Inspired by the distinctive bust of Nefertiti at the Altes Museum, in Berlin, Moran has created an engrossing tribute to one of the most powerful and alluring women in history.
Boston Globe
Nefertiti is a gem of a novel—the atmosphere positively seethes with intrigue, passion, betrayal and, above all, the searing and oppressive heat of sibling rivalry. Posh and Becks have nothing on the shenanigans of this ancient pair of celebrities!
Daily Telegraph (Britain)
Before there was Cleopatra there was the notorious Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile. Moran recreates her story with a vibrancy, drama and compassion that would make the queen proud. As in The Other Boleyn Girl, the relationship between sisters sets this novel apart and makes Nefertiti's story powerful and memorable. It belongs alongside the finest fictional biographies.
Romantic Times Book Review
This fictionalized life of the notorious queen is told from the point of view of her younger sister.... Though sometimes big events are telegraphed, Moran...gets the details just right, and there are still plenty of surprises in an epic that brings an ancient world to life.
Publishers Weekly
Mutnodjmet as narrator is a stroke of genius.... Beautifully written and completely engrossing, this first novel should enjoy wide readership.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Thousands of years after the Pharaoh's ruled Egypt; this ancient civilization continues to fascinate the world. Were you drawn to Nefertiti by an interest in Egyptology? What aspects of Egyptian life are of interest to you?
2. History remembers Nefertiti as a great beauty. What other aspects of her personality are highlighted in Nefertiti? How does she use her stunning good looks to her advantage? How do they hurt her? Have you ever known a woman like Nefertiti? Overall, is this a positive portrayal of her as a Queen? As a sister?
3. Is Mutnodjmet jealous of her sister? Is Nefertiti jealous of Mutny? How are the sisters different? What makes two people who are raised together turn out so differently? What do they have in common?
4. Nefertiti knows she must convince Amunhotep that she is more than his mother's choice of bride. How does she do it? How does Kiya attempt to keep him? How do their powerful fathers make the rivalry between these two women worse?
5. How are Nefertiti and Kiya alike? What is the nature of the Pharaoh's relationship with each? If you put his ambitions aside, which of them do you think Amunhotep loved more? Why does Nefertiti try so hard to outshine Kiya at every turn? Are her reasons personal or political?
6. What is your impression of Amunhotep? Do you think he was responsible for the death of his older brother? His father? Is he a tragic figure in Nefertiti or a villain?
7. General Nakhtmin is taken by Mutnodjmet from their first meeting while she pretends to be uninterested in him. Why? What is the attraction between them? Why does Mutny deny it? What finally convinces her to admit her love for him?
8. Do you think Nefertiti's father, Vizier Ay, was a wise man or was he a slave to his ambitions just as his daughter was? Do you think he asks for an unfair level of loyalty from Mutnodjmet? Does she disappoint him?
9. When the Elder dies Amunhotep becomes Pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt, meaning he is free to do as he wishes. Nefertiti is entitled to the dowager queen's crown but doesn't take it. What does she do instead? Why doesn't Nefertiti demand this symbol of all she has worked to attain?
10. Why do Nefertiti and Amunhotep oppose Mutnodjmet's marriage to the general? When Mutny lost her baby, did you think Nefertiti was to blame? How would a child of Nakhtmim and Mutnodjmet be a threat to Pharaoh?
11. What effect does the intrigue and politics and positioning of court life have on Nefertiti and Mutnodjmet's relationship? What makes the sister's close? Would you say they are bound by love or obligation? Why does Nefertiti want to keep Mutny so close?
12. Unwilling to call on the army, Amunhotep makes a treaty with the Hittites. What is the result of this treaty? Why is Amunhotep so afraid of the army?
13. Desperate for a son, Nefertiti asks Mutnodjmet to take her to visit a shrine to Tawaret, the hippo goddess of birth. What does the fact that Neferetiti calls on the old gods in times of trouble say about her belief in Aten? Why does she ask her sister to pray for her? Considering how powerful the Egyptians considered their gods, do you think Nefertiti had any concerns about denying the gods to advance herself and her family?
14. Why does Nefertiti banish Mutnodjmet?
15. What does Mutnodjmet learn about herself when Ipu marries and takes a long journey away? How does this help her resolve any anger towards Nefertiti?
16. Nefertiti tells Pharaoh that she dreamed the scheming Panahesi would be High Priest of Aten to get him out of her own father's way. On page 386, Panahesi tries to use the same ruse to assure his grandson the throne. Is it a success?
17. How does declaring Nefertiti co-regent change Amunhotep's position? What does this mean for Nefertiti? For her daughters and family? Is this the ultimate victory it appears to be?
18. When the plague comes to Amarna (page 404) Mutnodjmet decides to stay instead of leaving for the safety of Thebes. Why? What would you have done in her position?
19. What happens to Amunhotep? Do you think he deserved this fate? Does Nefertiti deserve what happens to her?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
top of page
The Stone Diaries
Carol Shields, 1994
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143105503
Summary
Canada Governor General's Award (1994)
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1995)
The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman's life; a truly sensuous novel that reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century.
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood and old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her own role, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her own story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1935
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Death—July 16, 2003
• Where—Toronto, Canada
• Education—B.A., Hanover College; M.A., Ottawa University
• Awards—Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction for Larry’s Party,
1998; Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, 1995; National
Book Critics Circle Award for The Stone Diaries, 1994
Carol Shields's characters are often on the road less traveled, and the trip is never boring. She has written about a folklorist, a poet, a maze designer, a translator, even other writers—appropriate professions in novels in which characters struggle to find their own paths in life.
Shields often focused on female characters, most notably in The Stone Diaries, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel documenting the birth, death, and everything in between of Daisy Goodwill. Goodwill's story is told over a century, in various voices, featuring Shields's wry humor and her ability to convey what she has called "the arc of human life."
But don't pigeonhole Shields as a "women's writer." "I have directed a fair amount of energy and rather a lot of rage into that particular corner [of the] problem of men and women, particularly men and women who write and how women's novels are perceived differently from men's," Shields said in a 2001 interview. In 1997's Larry's Party, she swapped genders, writing from the perspective of a male floral designer who discovers a passion for mazes.
Unafraid to experiment with genres, Shields wrote an epistolary novel (A Celibate Season, coauthored with Blanche Howard), a sort of "literary mystery" about the posthumous discovery of a murdered poet's genius (Swann), and short stories (collected in Dressing for the Carnival and other titles). Though she often covered serious topics, she rarely did so without humor. Her novel of mid-life romance, Republic of Love, was called by the New York Times a "touching, elegantly funny, luscious work of fiction," an assessment that could be applied to the bulk of her work.
Shields changed her viewpoint yet again for Unless, but the circumstance was a tragic one. The book, which resurrects the main character from Dressing Up for the Carnival's "A Scarf," was written during the author's battle with breast cancer. "I never want to sound at all mystical about writing,'' she said in a 2002 interview, ''but this book—it just came out." Though not touching on her own illness, Shields did what she had always done—took her own questions and lessons, then used them to produce a story that speaks its own truth.
Shields passed away on July 16, 2003; she was 68.
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is how she responded:
• When I was home sick as a child I used to take several volumes of the Encyclopedia to bed with me. We had a World Book Encyclopedia, which had quite a few pictures in color. I read the volumes randomly, browsing my way through them. I loved the hugeness of the world they confirmed for me, and the notion that that vastness could be organized and identified. You might think I would be humbled by the fact that people—individual intelligences—could become familiar with arcane material, but, in fact, I was deeply encouraged.
Here is Shields on were her favorite books (a fascinating list):
• Emma by Jane Austen. This book was written at the height of Austen's powers, when she felt secure in her footing.
• The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul. The subject is so complex and the approach so original, that I didn't think he'd make it to the end, but he did.
• The Rabbit novels by John Updike. You might think of this as the four books it is, or you might see it as one long novel of the life of an American male in the middle of the 20th century. It is a great accomplishment, this emotional documentation of a human life and the other lives that accompany him.
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness, the Icelandic Nobel Prize winner. This novel has an epic range, looking at the world sometimes through a giant telescope, then concentrating with a magnifying lens on the rambling thoughts of one particular child.
• I love all the books by Alice Munro, who has given the world new ways of looking at the lives of women. She has, in fact, reinvented the shape of the short story.
• Possession by A. S. Byatt captures what many novels leave out: the life of the mind and the excitement of intellectual reflection.
• Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. This book, published in the last year, is about family, about the delicacy and strength that weaves the family into a web.
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond made me believe (for about ten minutes) that I understood how the world was made. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Shields's novelistic signature is her sympathetic insight into ''the rather lumpy psychic matter of perplexity'' felt by her characters. Delving into the lives of obscure people like Daisy Flett, she captures their dazed awareness that they are mysteries to themselves—yet she also grants them "the cool and curious power of occasionally being able to see the world vividly."
Ann Hulbert - New York Times Book Review
The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters.
New York Times
Bittersweet, beautifully written...deliciously unclassifiable, blatantly intelligent and subtly subversive.... The Stone Diaries chips away at our most cherished, comforting beliefs about the immutability of facts and fate.
San Francisco Chronicle
Shields follows her heroine, Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett, from her birth—and her mother's death—on the kitchen floor of a stonemason's cottage in a small quarry town in Manitoba through childhood in Winnipeg, adolescence and young womanhood in Bloomington, Ind. (another quarry town), two marriages, motherhood, widowhood, a brief, exhilarating career in Ottawa—and eventually to old age and death in Florida. Stone is the unifying image here: it affects the geography of Daisy's life, and ultimately her vision of herself. Wittily, ironically, touchingly, Shields gives us Daisy's version of her life and contrasting interpretations of events from her friends, children and extended family. (She even provides ostensible photographs of Daisy's family and friends.) Shields's prose is succint, clear and graceful, and she is wizardly with description, summarizing appearance, disposition and inner lives with elegant imagery. Secondary characters are equally compelling, especially Daisy's obese, phlegmatic mother; her meek, obsessive father, who transforms himself into an overbearing executive; her adoptive mother, her stubborn father-in-law. Readers who discover Shields with this book can also pick up a simultaneously published paperback version of an early first novel, Happenstance.
Publishers Weekly
Shields (The Republic of Love, The Orange Fish, Swan) offers epic material in this century-long story of a woman's life told from many points of view. Short-listed for the Booker Prize, the novel dazzles with its deft touch and ironic wisdom. Daisy Goodwill is born in 1905 in Manitoba and dies early in the 1990's in a Florida nursing home. Chapter headings are archetypal: "Birth, 1905," "Childhood, 1916," "Marriage, 1927," "Love, 1936," "Motherhood, 1947," until, finally, "Illness and Decline, 1985" and "Death." In fact, the novel even includes 16 pages of photos to mimic the usual pattern of a biography. In this case, however, the point of view switches frequently: "Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses," Daisy says in "Birth," and the narrative structure bears out this theme. Daisy's mother dies in childbirth, and her father, a stonecutter, forgets for days at a time "that he is the father of a child...."' Her father moves to Indiana, where she marries a man who quickly commits suicide and then, in 1936, she marries Barker Flett, a professor whose mother had brought her up. Her life plays itself out. Shields's quiet touch, gossipy and affectionate, re-creates Daisy's poignant decline and death with dollops of humorous distance, including obituaries, recipes, and overheard snippets of conversation. Shields, who began as a miniaturist, has come full bloom with this latest exploration of domestic plenitude and paucity; she's entered a mature, luminous period, devising a style that develops an earlier whimsical fabulism into a hard-edged lyricism perfect for the ambitious bicultural exploration she undertakes here.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The first chapter of this novel is the only one that is narrated entirely in the first person. Why might the author have chosen to shift narrative voices? At what points in the book does the narrative "I" return? Who do you think is telling Daisy's story?
2. What irony is implicit in the fact that Mercy Goodwill is unaware of her own pregnancy? Compare this near-virgin birth to Daisy's own catastrophically chaste honeymoon. How do this novel's female characters experience sex, pregnancy and childbirth?
3. Although Daisy describes her mother as "extraordinarily obese" and taller than her husband, a photo reveals that Mercy Goodwill is actually shorter than Cuyler and no more than ordinarily husky. Is Daisy lying? Or does she merely have "a little trouble with getting things straight?" Where else are there discrepancies between Daisy's version of her life and the book's "documentation?"
4. From the passionate Cuyler Goodwill to Barker Flett, who is smitten with Daisy while she is still a child, the men in this novel are both erotically enthralled by women and fulfilled by their relationships with them. In contrast, their wives seem bewildered by, indifferent to, or at best serenely tolerant of their husbands' ardor. Does The Stone Diaries subvert traditional sex roles? Where do Daisy and the novel's other female characters derive their greatest pleasure and fulfillment? How badly do Shields's women need men?
5. When Cuyler Goodwill loses his wife he builds her a tower. When his daughter loses her first husband, she never tells the story to another soul. What might account for her reticence? How deeply does Daisy seem to love either of her husbands? On the other hand, how trustworthy are these characters' public displays of emotion?
6. "Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses." This observation in the first chapter seems borne out by the constant stream of secondary characters who intrude into Daisy's life story and at times commandeer it. What role does Daisy—or Carol Shields—assign "witnesses" like the Jewish peddler Abram Gozhdë Skutari, the bicyclist who kills Clarentine Flett, or Cuyler Goodwill's housekeeper? Why might these characters reappear in the narrative years after their initial entrances? How trustworthy are their interpretations of Daisy's life and character?
7. Although Cuyler Goodwill builds a tower in his wife's memory, he is unable to remember her name at the time of his own death. Magnus Flett is able to recite much of Jane Eyre from memory well into his hundreds. And, even as small children, Alice, Warren and Joan Flett "take turns comparing and repeating their separate and shared memories and shivering with pleasure every time a fresh fragment from the past is unearthed." What role does memory play in The Stone Diaries? How much of Daisy's diary is remembered, and how much imagined?
8. In the chapter entitled "Sorrow," a number of characters offer explanations for Daisy's depression. How accurate are any of these? Are we given any reason to trust one interpretation over others? How well do any of Daisy's intimates really know her? How well does the reader know her by the book's close?
9. How does Daisy influence her children or determine the choices they make in their own lives? Does she seem to do so at all? What kinds of lessons does she impart to them? Is Daisy Flett a "good" mother, a "good" wife or daughter? Does The Stone Diaries allow us to make such easy judgments about its protagonist?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page
A Secret Kept
Tatiana de Rosnay, 2010
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312593315
Summary
This stunning new novel from Tatiana de Rosnay, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Sarah’s Key, plumbs the depths of complex family relationships and the power of a past secret to change everything in the present.
It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood. Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Melanie’s birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach. It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they’d returned to the island—over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased. But the island’s haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Melanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer. When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car.
Recovering from the accident in a nearby hospital, Melanie tries to recall what caused her to crash. Antoine encounters an unexpected ally: sexy, streetwise Angele, a mortician who will teach him new meanings for the words life, love and death. Suddenly, however, the past comes swinging back at both siblings, burdened with a dark truth about their mother, Clarisse.
Trapped in the wake of a shocking family secret shrouded by taboo, Antoine must confront his past and also his troubled relationships with his own children. How well does he really know his mother, his children, even himself? Suddenly fragile on all fronts as a son, a husband, a brother and a father, Antoine Rey will learn the truth about his family and himself the hard way. By turns thrilling, seductive and destructive, with a lingering effect that is bittersweet and redeeming, A Secret Kept is the story of a modern family, the invisible ties that hold it together, and the impact it has throughout life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 28, 1961
• Where—Suburbs of Paris, France
• Education—B.A., University of East Anglia (UK)
• Currently—lives in Paris
Tatiana de Rosnay, born in the suburbs of Paris, is of English, French and Russian descent. Her father is French scientist Joël de Rosnay, her grandfather was painter Gaëtan de Rosnay. Tatiana's paternal great-grandmother was Russian actress Natalia Rachewskïa, director of the Leningrad Pushkin Theatre from 1925 to 1949.
Tatiana's mother is English, Stella Jebb, daughter of diplomat Gladwyn Jebb, and great-great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer. Tatiana is also the niece of historian Hugh Thomas.
Tatiana was raised in Paris and then in Boston, when her father taught at MIT in the 70's. She moved to England in the early 1980s and obtained a Bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich. On her return to Paris in 1984, she was a press officer, then became a journalist and literary critic for Psychologies Magazine.
Since 1992, de Rosnay has published twelve novels in French and three in English. She has also worked on the series Family Affairs for which she has written two episodes with the screenwriter Pierre-Yves Lebert. The series was broadcasted on TF1 during the summer of 2000.
In 2006 de Rosnay published her most popular novel, Sarah's Key, selling over three million copies in French and almost two million in English. In 2009 the book was adapted into French cinema, under the same title by Serge Joncour, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia; the movie was converted to English in late 2011. She published A Secret Kept in 2009, Rose in 2011, and The House I Loved in 2012.
In January 2010, several French magazines issued a ranking of the top French novelists, placing de Rosnay at number eight. In January 2011, Le Figaro magazine published a ranking of the top ten most read French authors, positioning de Rosnay at fifth. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The long-delayed resolution of a French family's mystery electrifies de Rosnay's (Sarah's Key) glimpse at the crushing cost of keeping secrets. Parisian architect Antoine Rey and his sister, Melanie, celebrate her 40th birthday on the island where they vacationed as children with their mother, until she died there in 1974. Upon returning, Melanie is gripped by a shocking repressed memory and loses control of the car. After a brief spell of amnesia, she tells her brother what it was she remembered: their mother had been in love with a woman. As a skeptical Antoine investigates this twist in their mother's past, an upsetting chain of events unfurls: his daughter's best friend drops dead of a heart condition at only 14 years of age; his teenage son is arrested; and he learns that his father is dying of cancer. Antoine gets support in his quest from a new lover, a Harley-riding mortician who teaches him how respecting death helps one to embrace life. This perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man's delayed coming-of-age rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper.
Publishers Weekly
Frenchman Antoine Rey wants to do something special for his sister Melanie on her fortieth birthday, so he surprises her with a weekend trip to Noirmoutier Island, where the two spent many idyllic childhood summers until their mother’s untimely death.... French novelist de Rosnay renders swift, lucid prose and steady suspense (even though one of the novel’s big secrets is revealed mid-tale). Expect demand among fans of both literary mystery and high-end romance. —Allison Block
Booklist
The story of an emotionally distant family as it struggles to come to grips with changing dynamics and the mysterious death of a young mother many years ago[...] De Rosnay’s writing is eloquent and beautiful, and her characterizations are both honest and dead-on.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the different narrative structures employed in A Secret Kept. What do you think the author intended to achieve with each? Do you prefer one over the others?
2. How does the author describe the classic, wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris—where Blanche Rey's apartment and the avenue Kleber one are located—as opposed to where Antoine lives, on the Left bank? What does this tell you about the Rey family?
3. Part of the novel takes place on Noirmoutier Island which is connected to the west coast of France by the Gois Passage. Why is Antoine so attached to Gois Passage? Do you see any parallels between the author's descriptions of this place and the story as a whole?
4. What was your impression of Antoine at the beginning of the book? What about at the end? Over the course of the novel, how does he change and what does he learn about himself?
5. Discuss the different themes and imagery of death that come up in the novel and that Antoine has to face. Did you find them morbid? Or realistic?
6. Did you like the character of the sexy, streewise mortician Angele Rouvatier? What makes her different from other heroines and what do you think she represents? In what ways does she have a hand in the changes in Antoine's character?
7. François and Antoine Rey are two opposite personalities, as fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Discuss specific differences you see. Do you believe Antoine will ever get through to his father? What exactly do you think Francois knows about Clarisse, her life, her death?
8. Clarisse Rey is the invisible woman of this book. Yet her letters, photos, and the film that Antoine watches at the end, as well as Gaspard's confession, gradually expose her. What kind of woman was she? What do we learn about her? Compare her to Angele, Melanie, and Astrid.
9. How do Melanie and Antoine react differently when they discover the truth about their mother and her death? Why do you think that Melanie chooses not to remember? Do you think you would react more like Melanie or Antoine?
10. This novel explores taboo subjects and family secrets in a conservative French bourgeois society. Discuss those subjects and whether they would be taboo if the novel were set in the USA. What do you think really happened the day Clarisse went to confront Blanche?
11. Do you personally believe that family secrets should be revealed or hidden forever? In cases like the novel's, do you think the truth is more painful than lying?
12. If you have read Sarah's Key—also by de Rosnay—can you point to any themes that are found in both books?
(Questions issued by publiser.)