The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Gary Shteyngart, 2002
Penguin Group USA
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781573229883
Summary
Vladimir Girshkin—twenty-five-year-old Russian immigrant, "Little Failure" according to his high-achieving mother, unhappy lover to fat dungeon mistress Challah (his "little Challah bread"), and lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society—is about to have his first break.
When the unlikely figure of a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears and introduces Vladimir to his best friend, who just happens to be a small electric fan, Vladimir has little inkling that he is about to embark on an adventure of unrelenting lunacy—one that overturns his assumptions about what it means to be an immigrant in America."
The Russian Debutante's Handbook takes us from New York City's Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava—the Eastern European Paris of the '90s—whose grand and glorious beauty is marred only by the shadow of the looming statue of Stalin's foot. There, with the encouragement of the Groundhog, a murderous (but fun-loving) Russian mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the American ex-pat community with the hope of defrauding his young middle-class compatriots by launching a pyramid scheme that's as stupid as it is brilliant.
Things go swimmingly at first, but nothing is quite as it seems in Prava, and Vladimir learns that in order to reinvent himself, he must first discover who he really is. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1972
• Where—Leningrad, USSR
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College (Ohio); M.F.A.,
Hunter College (NYC)
• Awards—Stephen Crane Award; National Jewish
Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Gary Shteyngart (born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart) is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.
Background
Shteyngart spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia; (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). He comes from a Jewish family and describes his family as typically Soviet. His father worked as an engineer in a LOMO camera factory; his mother was a pianist.
In 1979 when Gary was 7, the Shteyngart family immigrated to the United States, where he was brought up with no television in his family's New York City apartment and where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14.
Later Shteyngart traveled to Prague, an experience that inspired his first novel, set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City; Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics; and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing.
Writing career
Shteyngart took a trip to Prague which inspired his first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), which is set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He has published two more novels: Absurdistan (2006) and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His fourth book, Little Failure (2014), is a memoir recounting his family's emigration to the U.S. in 1979.
His other writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Granta, Travel and Leisure, and The New York Times.
Shteyngart's work has received numerous awards. The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian. In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by Shout NY Magazine. Absurdistan was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Revieww and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. Super Sad True Love Story won the 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature.
Personal
Shteyngart now lives in New York City. He has taught writing at Hunter College, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University. During the Fall of 2007, he also had a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany.
Shteyngart is married to Esther Won who is of Korean descent. In October 2013, they became parents to Johnny Won Shteyngart. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/14/2014.)
Book Reviews
The "Russian debutante" in Gary Shteyngart's very funny, very deft first novel is one Vladimir Girshkin, a feckless 25-year-old Russian-American who...[is] trying to cope with the confusions of life in America of the 1990's and the incessant demands of an ambitious and endlessly aggrieved mother.... Mr. Shteyngart tells the uproarious and highly entertaining story of how Vladimir journeys from St. Petersburg to Scarsdale and back to Eastern Europe.... And the people Vladimir meets along the way are sketched with an equally wicked and comic hand.... [helping] the very talented Mr. Shteyngart expose the absurdities that exist on either side of the former iron curtain.
Michikio Kakutani - New York Times
Gary Shteyngart ... has produced a sardonic,moving and ingeniously crafted update of earlier sagas of upward-struggling American newcomers.
Washington Post
[A] terrifically charming tale of a young Russian immigrant's capitalist and carnal aspirations.
Vanity Fair
This picaresque debut...transcends its personal genesis to become an all-around great American story.
New York Time Out
The rampaging narrative is festooned on every page with glitering one-liners,improbably apt similes and other miniature pleasures.
Elle
Orwell once remarked that the narrator of Tropic of Cancer was so far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. Shteyngart, whose sensibility is allied with Miller's, takes a passive character, Vladimir Girshkin, and makes him briefly proactivewith disastrous resultsin his smart debut novel. Vladimir is the son of immigrants who came to the U.S. via a Carter administration swap (American wheat for Russian Jews); his father, a doctor prone to dreams of suicide and complicated medical schemes, and his mother, an entrepreneur who makes fun of her son's gait, give him the inestimable gift of alienation. In true slacker fashion, Vladimir, at 25, is wasting his expensive education clerking at the Emma Lazarus Immigration Absorption Society. A client, Rybakov, bribes Vladimir to get him American citizenship, confiding that his son, the Groundhog, is a leading businessman (in prostitutes and drugs) in Pravathe Paris of the nineties in the fictional Republika Stolovaya. Vladimir fakes a citizenship ceremony for Rybakov in order to curry favor with the Groundhog. Then, because he has unwisely repelled the sexual advances of crime boss Jordi while trying to make some illicit bucks to keep his girlfriend, Francesca, in squid and sake dinners in Manhattan, Vladimir leaves abruptly for Prava. Once there, and backed by the Groundhog, Vladimir embarks on a scheme to fleece the American students who have flocked to Prava's legendary scene. Although the satire on the expatriate American community is a little too easy, Shteyngart's Vladimir remains an impressive piece of work, an amoral buffoon who energizes this remarkably mature work.
Publishers Weekly
Failurchka Mother's Little Failure is what Vladimir Girshkin's overweening Russian immigrant mother calls her 25-year-old son at the beginning of this picaresque, episodic, and somewhat sprawling first novel. Vladimir is stuck in a dead-end job and saddled with girlfriend Challah, "queen of everything musky and mammal-like." Then through a series of chance encounters, he is catapulted to the eastern European city of "Prava" to find himself welcomed into the fold of powerful Mafiosi. Shteyngart introduces a large cast of exotic characters, mainly twentysomethings meandering from adventure to adventure. Yet this distinctive new voice, which is both richly ironic and often side-splittingly funny, still seems to be seeking the right register. The relentless humor and satire obscure the development of character that is necessary to make readers believe the cast is real and not just being staged. Moreover, one wonders why the author felt the need to (thinly) disguise Prague (Prava) with its river Tavlata (Vltava) and the 1969 (1968) Soviet invasion. Thus, his highly imaginative but at times maddening panorama comes to resemble a dazzling Potemkin village. Though this is not an experimental novel, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the author is still experimenting with a very large talent he's not entirely sure what to do with. But having gotten a taste, we will eagerly await his next offering, in which less just might be more. Recommended for all literary collections and larger public libraries. —Edward Cone
Library Journal
This moving and funny debut novel offers a fresh take on the oft-told story of the immigrant longing for an authentic sense of place.... This is a complex and impressive work, full of humanistic touches and worldly humor.
Book Magazine
First-novelist Shteyngart casts a cold eye alike on Clinton-era aimlessness and free-enterprise excess in Eastern Europe. It's Vladimir Girshkin's 25th birthday in 1993, and his mother wastes no time reminding him that he's a disappointment. Since the family arrived in New York from the USSR 13 years before, she's become a successful businesswoman, while Dr. Girshkin adds to their coffers by defrauding Medicare. But Vladimir has dropped out of a progressive midwestern college to take a job at the Emma Lazarus Society helping new immigrants. One of them, the decidedly crazy Mr. Rybakov, wants to get Vladimir in touch with his son Groundhog, a mafioso operating in Prava, "the Paris of the '90s," an imaginary Eastern European city transformed by the collapse of communism into a mecca for criminals and novelty-seeking Americans. At first, Vladimir prefers to hang around the trendier sections of Manhattan, exchanging grad-student babble with the crowd gathered around girlfriend Francesca. But a misadventure in Miami with an amorous drug-dealer makes it advisable for him to get out of town, so Vladimir heads for Prava, where he persuades Groundhog to fund a Ponzi scheme based on getting American expatriates to invest in a literary magazine. Heavy drinking, observations about the void after communism, and a new girlfriend await Vladimir before his bamboozling comes to light and he must once again flee vengeful mafiosi. A sardonic but surprisingly moving epilogue finds him five years later in Cleveland, working at his father-in-law's insurance company, thinking wistfully of the days when he lived "foolishly, imperially, ecstatically" in the Wild West of Eastern Europe. Himself a Leningrad-bornAmerican citizen, Shteyngart mercilessly exposes the moral ambiguities of late-20th-century life under whatever form of government. Though slightly chilly toward its large cast of characters, the novel is redeemed by its thematic sweep and Vladimir's engaging brio. Ambitious, funny, intelligent, in love with irony and literary allusions, as if by a lighter Nabokov.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Assimilation is a major theme in The Russian Debutante's Handbook. Discuss Vladimir's various attempts to assimilate. Which one is most successful and why?
2. Vladimir retains a distinct self-identification as a poor Russian Jew, despite his mother's success in America and the many opportunities available to him as an American citizen. Discuss his ennui as a manifestation of successful Americanization.
3. Rybakov is also attempting to assimilate in his way. Discuss the humor inherant in the Fan Man's chief impetus toward citizenship being the legitimization of his opinions.
4. How does Vladimir's mother's intense desire for her son's success backfire? Why does her pressure on him to assimilate also backfire?
5. Vladimir doesn't seem to care much about money in his days at the Emma Lazarus Society. How does his affair with Frannie change that? What is the newfound appeal of material success?
6. Vladimir shows himself to be remarkably adaptable. What is the crucial difference between adaptation and assimilation?
7. History is an important character in this novel. How does it differently effect the lives of Rybakov? Kostya? Perry Cohen?
8. How is the destruction of the Foot symbolic of both Prava's escape from history and Vladimir's?
9. What does Vladimir learn about appearances from Morgan? Discuss the irony of this All-American girl's desire to immerse herself in Prava and its politics, and flee the bland, affluent normalcy so many immigrants seek.
10. Do you believe that Vladimir has assimilated at the end—that his life in Cleveland as an accountant with a wife and baby on the way has finally Americanized him? Or does Vladimir's nostalgia for his past status as an outcast reveal something more complex about the makeup of our souls.
(Questions issued by publishers.)
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller, Jr. 1959
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553273816
Summary
In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter.
In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope for humanity's rebirth from the ashes. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 23, 1923
• Where—Smyma Beach, Florida, USA
• Death—January, 1996
• Education—University of Tennessee; University of Texas
• Awards—Hugo Award, 1959 (short story) and 1961 (for
Canticle)
Walter M. Miller, Jr. grew up in the American South and enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. He spent most of World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery in the Western world. Fifteen years later he wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz. The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, followed after nearly forty years. (From the publisher.)
More
Walter Michael Miller, Jr. was an American science fiction author. Today he is primarily known for A Canticle for Leibowitz, the only novel he published in his lifetime. Prior to its publication he was a prolific writer of short stories.
Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying 53 bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him.
After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism, but did not practice the religion consistently. Miller married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. He lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril in 1953, and her Jewish cultural heritage informed A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller." Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955, 1956 and 1957. His novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic (post-holocaust) novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark times.
After the success of A Canticle For Leibowitz, Miller never published another new novel or story in his lifetime, although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 70s. As well, a radio adaptation of A Canticle for Leibowitz was produced by WHA Radio and NPR in 1981 and is available on CD.
In Miller's later years, he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members. According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression during his later years, but had managed to write a 600-page manuscript for the sequel to Canticle before taking his own life with a gun in January 1996.[1] The sequel, titled Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson and published in 1997. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
This is an eloquent, an angry and a sad book...But Mr. Miller is so capable a novelist that he has never allowed his message to overwhelm the terrific story he has to tell. For imaginative power, for savage irony, for originality of conception, A Canticle for Leibowitz is altogether exceptional.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (2/22/1960)
In this ingenious fantasy, Walter M. Miller Jr. diagrams mankind's future in terms of its past.... Mr. Miller is a fine story teller at his best—which is in the opening section of the novel, depicting the medieval reprise. But when his machine shifts gears in neo-Renaissance, it stalls.... A graver misemeanor is the author's heavy-handed approach to allegory: this far too explicit moralizing dulls the luster of his imaginative format.
Martin Levin - New York Times (3/27/1960)
An extraordinary novel.... Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all ... simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years.
Chicago Tribune
Extraordinary.... Chillingly effective.
Time
Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done) —Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. —Paul Hughes
Amazon
An exciting and imaginative story.... Unconditionally recommended.
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 conversation started for A Canticle for Leibowitz:
1. Who was Leibowitz and why was he made a saint?
2. Who is the mysterious old man who appears in all three sections of Canticle? In what way does his story mirror the legend of the Wandering Jew? Why is he chosen to reappear; in other words, what is the old man's role in this novel?
3. In what ways does this book parallel the real history of the "dark ages," the Renaissance era, and the development of modern technology? How closely do Miller's fiction and real history track? Do you need knowledge of history to appreciate his book?
4. Spend some time discussing one of the central themes in Canticle—the clash between religious faith and scientific rationalism? How does that conflict play out in this work? What is Miller's stance on the issue? In what way is that theme still alive today?
5. What does the phrase "Lucifer is fallen" signifiy in this novel?
6. Discuss this passage: "The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it and with themselves as well." Is that observation true in real life?
7. Philosopher George Santayana wrote in 1905, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Miller probes that issue in Canticle. What conclusion does he reach? Is it inevitable that we will repeat our mistakes, or can we learn from the past? What are your views?
8. As a pilot during World War II, Miller bombed the Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino. How might that fact color both his writing of this work...and your reading of it?
9. In the final section of the book, Miller examines the role of faith in the face of suffering and destruction. He wrestles specifically with euthanasia and suicide. What are the opposing views that emerge from this discussion?
10. Given the fact that Miller himself committed suicide years later, how does this affect your reading?
11. Did you enjoy the religious and philosophical musings of Canticle...or did you find them distracting?
12. This book is 40+ years old. What relevance does it hold for today? How did you come away from this book—feeling hopeless...or hopeful?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Heretic's Daughter
Kathleen Kent, 2008
Little, Brown & Co.
332 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316024495
Summary
Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft.
This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation descendent of Martha Carrier. She paints a haunting portrait, not just of Puritan New England, but also of one family's deep and abiding love in the face of fear and persecution. (From the publisher.)
The Wolves of Andover is the prequel to this work.
Author Bio
Kathleen Kent is a tenth-generation descendant of Martha Carrier. She lives in Dallas with her husband and son. The Heretic's Daughter is her first novel;The Wolves of Andover, its prequel, is her second.
Book Reviews
A powerful coming-of-age tale in which tragedy is trumped by an unsinkable faith in human nature…Like The Crucible, The Heretic’s Daughter uses the Salem witch hunt to explore larger themes…but at its core, it’s a story about a family.
New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
A family’s conflict becomes a battle for life or death in this gripping and original first novel.... Sarah’s front row view of the trials and the mayhem that sweeps the close-knit community provides a fresh, bracing and unconvential take on a much covered episode.
San Fransisco Examiner
Kathleen Kent takes a new approach to an old topic, the 17th-century Salem, Mass., witch trials, in her engrossing debut novel, The Heretic's Daughter…. Ms. Kent movingly sketches the lives of this extended family as they get drawn into the maelstrom of unfounded suspicion and religious insanity, which eventually put more than 150 people behind bars as accused witches, including many children, Sarah and her siblings among them….Ms. Kent brings a gentle decency to her portrait of this nasty episode in American life.
Dallas Morning News
The most shocking aspect of the 17th-century Salem witch trials was that anyone with a grudge could accuse a neighbor of being in league with the devil... It is the fundamental outrageousness of these tragic events that Kathleen Kent portrays to great effect in her debut novel, The Heretic's Daughter.... Kent tells a heart-wrenching story of family love and sacrifice. Its warnings about the dire consequences of intolerance and fundamentalism still have meaning in the modern world.
USA Today
The panic and horror of the Salem witch trials in Kent's novel is conveyed with dead-eyed calm and an occasional tremor of emotion by Mare Winningham, whose tempered, dispassionate voice is not given to great displays of drama. Her melodiousness is pleasing to the ear, and Kent's novel becomes a sort of long-form song possessed of many verses and no chorus. At times, the melody overwhelms the meaning, but Winningham is more than capable as a reader, and her reading of Kent's sad tale of women accused and accusing emits a hint of deeply buried, untouchable tragedy.
Publishers Weekly
Kent, a descendant of Martha Carrier (one of the first women convicted of witchcraft in 1690s Salem, MA), has created an engrossing historical debut novel based on her ancestors' experiences. Told from the point of view of Sarah, Martha's daughter, it is filled with vivid characters and detail-rich anecdotes of everyday life in Puritan New England. Emmy® Award-winning actress Mare Winningham's clear, believable reading flows well, even through those few times when the prose gets a bit bogged down (particularly when Martha is imprisoned).
Library Journal
Told from the point of view of young Sarah, the daughter of one of the first women to be accused, tried, and hanged as a witch in Salem, this novel paints a vivid and disturbing picture of Puritan New England life. Based on fact and the author's family history, the story portrays Martha, Sarah's mother, as a strong-willed nonconformist who knows she is a target of the zealots who pit family members against one another with their false accusations. All but one of the siblings end up imprisoned with their mother, and much of the story is told from the inhumane and corruptly run jail. When Martha is finally executed, her husband "would stand for all of us so that when she closed her eyes for the last time, there would be a counterweight of love against the overflowing presence of vengeance and fear." History is brought to life as readers learn of the strength of Martha's convictions and the value she places on her conscience. They will also appreciate the themes of family love, repression, intolerance, and persecution in this beautifully written and compelling first novel. —Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA
School Library Journal
A first-time novelist recreates her family's involvement in the Salem witch trials. On August 19, 1692, Martha Carrier was hanged. She was one of the first women convicted of witchcraft amidst the hysteria that started in Salem and spread throughout Massachusetts. Kent is a tenth-generation descendent of Carrier, and, in this novel, she looks at this troubled time through the eyes of Martha's daughter. As Sarah Carrier tells her story, she creates a vivid portrait of the harsh, hard-headed woman who was her mother. When the story begins, Sarah begrudges her mother's stubbornness and severity. She knows that the neighbors resent Martha's sharp tongue, and Martha's unyielding attitude toward her sister's husband means that Sarah is separated from her beloved cousin. When petty village feuds turn into whispered rumors about Martha's dealings with the devil, Martha remains steadfast in her protestations of innocence, and Sarah learns that her mother's willfulness is the product of integrity, courage and fierce individuality. Sarah learns, in fact, that the very qualities that condemned her mother redeemed her as well. The story Kent tells—of a powerful woman punished by a society that fears and hates women—is not a new one. It's not a bad one, either, but this particular iteration is not one of the most compelling. One problem is that Sarah is one of the less remarkable characters in the novel. Both her parents are substantially more intriguing and would have made for dynamic central characters. In fact, Kent seems to have a general problem with distinguishing between the interesting and the uninteresting. The pace of her narrative slows to a crawl, offering lyrical, metaphor-laden, mostly unilluminating descriptions of the natural world. And her practice of breaking the novel into little sections that inevitably end on a portentous note give the story a leaden, numbing rhythm. Serviceable, if unexciting, historical fiction with a feminist perspective.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How was Sarah Carrier changed by the time she spent living with the family of her cousin Margaret? How was Sarah affected by the return to her own family?
2. At one point Sarah says, "Mother had an unsettling ability to foretell the weather" (page 91). Do you believe that Martha Carrier possessed special powers of any sort? What was it about Martha’s character that seemed to antagonize so many neighbors?
3. In what ways did Martha and Sarah have a typical mother-daughter relationship? If there are aspects of their relationship that you found exceptional, can you attribute those exceptions to the particular time and circumstances in which the Carriers lived? Consider Sarah’s statement: "Perhaps it was true that I was like my mother, as everyone seemed to think so" (page 142).
4. Identify and discuss some of the factors that contributed to the witch hysteria in seventeenth- century New England.
5. Discuss Mercy Williams’s role in the tragedy that befalls the Carrier family. What motivates Mercy?
6. Discuss the signifi cance of Martha Carrier’s big red leatherbound book. Why does she ask Sarah to "keep this one thing a secret, even among your brothers" (page 150)? And why does Martha make Sarah promise not to try to read the book until she comes of age (page 178)?
7. Why did Martha choose to take a stand of innocence, knowing that a refusal to confess meant death?
8. Why did Thomas, despite his size and capabilities, not seek to persuade or deter Martha from her course of action?
9. Discuss the assault on Sarah in the burying ground near the meetinghouse (pages 121–125). To what extent does the incident seem a typical case of adolescent bullying? Have you, or has anyoneyou know, had a similar experience? Put yourself in Sarah’s shoes; how would you have responded to the girls’ taunting?
10. Why do you think the magistrates, and the wider community of Salem, so easily believed in and relied on "spectral evidence"?
11. Has reading The Heretic’s Daughter in any way changed your opinion of the men and women who were hanged as witches in seventeenth- century New England?
12. Do you believe in witchcraft? Have you ever met anyone who claimed to be, or whom you perceived as, a witch?
13. If you have read or seen Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, discuss the ways that both that play and The Heretic’s Daughter draw from the historical record to tell fresh and relevant stories. In what ways are the two works similar? How are they different?
14. Are you aware of any social intolerance in the community in which you live? If so, discuss the nature of that intolerance (for example, religious, ethnic, xenophobic). Do you think this intolerance could ever rise to the toxic level of the Salem witch hunts? Why or why not?
15. Are there any notable or notorious ancestors in your family tree? If so, do you remember your relatives telling stories about them when you were young? If you’ve researched your ancestry, discuss what you’ve learned about your family and yourself.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie, 1981
Random House
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976533
Summary
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people—a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 19, 1947
• Where—Bombay, Maharashtra, India
• Education—M.A., King's College, Cambridge, UK
• Awards—Booker Prize, 1981 (named the best novel to win
the Booker Prize in its first twenty-five years in 1993);
Whitbread Prize, 1988 and 1995
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on February 14, 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at the Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the Satanic Verses controversy.
Career
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker, for whom he wrote the memorable line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer. John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has criticised Rushdie for not referring to his copywriting past frequently enough, although conceding: "He did write crap ads...admittedly."
His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie. However, the author has refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating...
People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character.
After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called The Jaguar Smile. This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. He also wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990.
Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.
His latest novel is Luka and the Fire of Life, published in November 2010. Earlier in the same year, he announced that he was writing his memoirs, entitled Joseph Anton: A Memoir, which was published in September 2012.
In 2012, Salman Rushdie became one of the first major authors to embrace Booktrack (a company that synchronises ebooks with customised soundtracks) when he published his short story "In the South" on the platform.
Other Activities
Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers.
In 2007 he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives.
In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances).
Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On May 12, 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher.
Rushdie is currently collaborating on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. The film will be released in October, 2012.
Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation which provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Satanic Verses and the fatwa
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
On February 14, 1989, a fatwa requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam." A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On March 7, 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the fatwa sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies, burning copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and even killed.
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."
Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's current spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.
Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
A memoir of his years of hiding, Joseph Anton, was published in 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias.
In 2012, following uprisings over an anonymously posted YouTube video denigrating Muslims, a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million dollars. Their stated reason: "If the [1989] fatwa had been carried out, later insults in the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not happened."
Knighthood
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on June 16, 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie.
Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."
Religious Beliefs
Rushdie came from a Muslim family though he is an atheist now. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. However, Rushdie later said that he was only "pretending".
Personal Life
Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on July 2, 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage.
In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.
Since 2000, Rushdie has "lived mostly near Union Square" in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
This is a book to accept on its own terms.... As a Bombay book, which is to say, a big-city book, 'Midnight's Children is coarse, knowing, comfortable with Indian pop culture and, above all, aggressive.... The flow of the book rushes to its conclusion in counterpointed harmony: myths intact, history accounted for, and a remarkable character fully alive.
Clark Blaise - New York Times
Extraordinary... One of the most important [novels] to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation.
New York Review of Books
The literary map of India is about to be redrawn.... Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice.
New York Times
In Salman Rushdie, India has produced a glittering novelist– one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling.
The New Yorker
A marvelous epic.... Rushdie’s prose snaps into playback and flash-forward...stopping on images, vistas, and characters of unforgettable presence. Their range is as rich as India herself.
Newsweek
Burgeons with life, with exuberance and fantasy.... Rushdie is a writer of courage, impressive strength, and sheer stylistic brilliance.
Washington Post Book World
Pure story—an ebullient, wildly clowning, satirical, descriptively witty charge of energy.
Chicago Sun-Times
Discussion Questions
1. Midnight's Children is clearly a work of fiction; yet, like many modern novels, it is presented as an autobiography. How can we tell it isn't? What literary devices are employed to make its fictional status clear? And, bearing in mind the background of very real historical events, can "truth" and "fiction" always be told apart?
2. To what extent has the legacy of the British Empire, as presented in this novel, contributed to the turbulent character of Indian life?
3. Saleem sees himself and his family as a microcosm of what is happening to India. His own life seems so bound up with the fate of the country that he seems to have no existence as an individual; yet, he is a distinct person. How would you characterise Saleem as a human being, set apart from the novel's grand scheme? Does he have a personality?
4. "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?" (p. 109). Is it possible, within the limits of a novel, to "understand" a life?
5. At the very heart of Midnight's Children is an act of deception: Mary Pereira switches the birth-tags of the infants Saleem and Shiva. The ancestors of whom Saleem tells us at length are not his biological relations; and yet he continues to speak of them as his forebears. What effect does this have on you, the reader? How easy is it to absorb such a paradox?
6. "There is no escape from form" says Saleem (p. 226); and later, he speaks of his own "overpowering desire for form" (p. 317). Set against this is the chaos of Indian life which is described in such detail throughout the book. How is this coherence achieved? What role does mythology play in giving form to events in the novel?
7. "There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents" (p. 402). Saleem is speaking here of an injury; but has he inherited anything more positive? Is there anything inherited which aids rather than hinders him?
8. Saleem's father says of Wee Willie Winkie, "That's a cheeky fellow; he goes too far." The Englishman Methwold disagrees: "The tradition of the fool, you know. Licensed to provoke and tease." (p. 102). The novel itself provokes and teases the reader a good deal. Did you feel yourself "provoked"? Does the above exchange shed any light on Rushdie's own plight since The Satanic Verses?
9. How much affection is there between fathers and sons in Midnight's Children? Why is Saleem so drawn to father-figures? What does he gain from his many adopted fathers?
10. "What is so precious to need all this writing-shiting?" asks Padma (p. 24). What is the value of it for Saleem?
11. "...is not Mother India, Bharat-Mata, commonly thought of as female?" asks Saleem; "And, as you know, there's no escape from her" (p. 404). Elsewhere he speaks of "...the long series of women who have bewitched and finally undone me good and proper" (p. 241). To what extent are women "held for blame" for Saleem's misfortunes?
12. Saleem often appears to be an unreliable narrator, mixing up dates and hazarding details of events he never witnessed. He also draws attention to his own telling of the story: "Like an incompetent puppeteer, I reveal the hands holding the strings..." (p. 65). How much faith do you put in his version of events?
13. Saleem pleads, "...believe that I am falling apart." (p. 37); he never arrives at a certain image of himself without being thrown into chaos again (e.g. p.164-165). But a child on an advertising hoarding is described as "flattened by certitude" (p. 153). Is there, then, value in uncertainty? What is it?
14. With the birth of Saleem's giant-eared son, history seems about to repeat itself; but Saleem senses that this time round, things will be different. How have circumstances changed?
15. Midnight's Children is a novel about India, and attempts to map the modern Indian mind, with all its contradictions. In your discussions, how much difficulty have you had in addressing the novel from a Western perspective? Is there an 'otherness' which makes it hard to assimilate, or are the novel's concerns universal and easily understood?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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A Short History of Women: A Novel
Kate Walbert
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416594994
Summary
National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women is a profoundly moving portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first.
The novel opens in England in 1914 at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself for the cause. Her choice echoes in the stories of her descendants interwoven throughout: a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mother's infamy by immigrating to America just after World War I to begin a career in science; a niece who chooses a conventional path—marriage, children, suburban domesticity—only to find herself disillusioned with her husband of fifty years and engaged in heartbreaking and futile antiwar protests; a great-granddaughter who wryly articulates the free-floating anxiety of the times while getting drunk on a children's playdate in post-9/11 Manhattan. In a kaleidoscope of voices and with a richness of imagery, emotion, and wit, Walbert portrays the ways in which successive generations of women have responded to what the Victorians called "The Woman Question."
As she did in her critically acclaimed The Gardens of Kyoto and Our Kind, Walbert induces "a state in which the past seems to hang effortlessly amid the present" (New York Times).
A Short History of Women is her most ambitious novel, a thought-provoking and vividly original narrative that crisscrosses a century to reflect the tides of time and the ways in which the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1961
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; O. Henry Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York and Stony Creek,
Connecticut
Kate Walbert made her writing debut in 1998 with Where She Went, a collection of interlinked stories about the lives and travels of a mother and daughter. Marion moves frequently, a lifestyle that never permits her to form a stable identity. Her daughter Rebecca, by contrast, travels with the intent of "finding herself," but only becomes more and more rootless in the process. The New York Times named Where She Went a Notable Book of 1998 and said that it "contains many quick flashes of beauty...it goes far and takes us with it."
In 2001 she published The Gardens of Kyoto —a bittersweet story about the friendship between two cousins prior to World War II. The novel is based on her Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Award–winning story of the same name.
Walbert has published fiction and articles in the Paris Review, Double Take, New York Times, and numerous other publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She teaches writing at Yale University and lives in New York City and Stony Creek, Connecticut. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Walbert's books have all dealt...with the lives of women, but this one is her most ambitious and as if to reflect the non-linear progress of feminism. Walbert also utilizes compression and flashback to sweep through time, her style reminiscent of a host of innovative writers from Virginia Woolf to Muriel Spark to Pat Barker…A Short History deals with complicated women living in complicated times, and if it is empathetic, it is also disturbing, as all moral conundrums are. It is a witty and assured testament to the women's movement and women writers, obscure and renowned.
Valerie Sayers - Washington Post
Nearly everything about Kate Walbert's new novel is wickedly smart…Walbert's primary concerns—unlike those of some of her characters—aren't political. Her writing wears both its intelligence and its ideology lightly. No manifesto, this is a gorgeously wrought and ultimately wrenching work of art.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times Book Review
With a sharp eye and deft touch, Walbert explores the ways women’s priorities and freedoms have evolved even as their yearnings have stayed remarkably constant. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Walbert—2004 National Book Award nominee for Our Kind—offers a beautiful and kaleidoscopic view of the 20th century through the eyes of several generations of women in the Townsend family. The story begins with Dorothy Townsend, a turn-of-the-century British suffragist who dies in a hunger strike. From Dorothy's death, Walbert travels back and forth across time and continents to chronicle other acts of self-assertion by Dorothy's female descendants. Dorothy's daughter, Evelyn, travels to America after WWI to make her name in the world of science-and escape from her mother's infamy. Decades later, her niece, also named Dorothy, has a late-life crisis and gets arrested in 2003 for taking photos of an off-limits military base in Delaware. Dorothy's daughters, meanwhile, struggle to find meaning in their modern bourgeois urban existences. The novel takes in historical events from the social upheaval of pre-WWI Britain to VJ day in New York City, a feminist conscious-raising in the '70s and the Internet age. The lives of these women reveal that although oppression of women has grown more subtle, Dorothy's self-sacrifice reverberates through generations. Walbert's look at the 20th century and the Townsend family is perfectly calibrated, intricately structured and gripping from page one.
Publishers Weekly
When 34-year-old British feminist Dorothy Townsend intentionally starves herself to death to win attention for women's suffrage, she leaves behind two children. It's 1914, and the pair is separated, never to reunite. Walbert's latest work—her previous novel, Our Kind, was a 2004 National Book Award finalist—imagines the impact of Townsend's suicide on four successive generations of Townsend women, all of them named Dorothy. Was the act a sign of desperation, a brilliant way to divert attention from an impending world war, or a selfish renunciation of maternal obligation? Walbert's intricately layered novel examines the past 100 years with subtlety and wit, simultaneously addressing the ways historical memory intrudes and recedes in individual lives. It's gripping, intense, and powerful. Walbert's language is elegant, her images resonant. Characters are recognizable but not clichéd and will stay with readers as wise, if also flawed and struggling, exemplars of political and intellectual engagement. Highly recommended for all contemporary fiction collections.
Eleanor J. Bador - Library Journal
Five generations of willful, restless women struggle to find an identity beyond that of wife and mother. Dorothy Trevor Townsend bequeathes one heck of a legacy when she dies at age 34 in 1914. The British suffragette starves herself to death as an act of civil disobedience, leaving behind two fatherless children and a married lover. Her act is doubly shocking, occurring as it does during the carnage of World War I. Dorothy's son Thomas ends up with family friends in California, becomes a musician and dies young of alcoholism. Daughter Evelyn endures wartime deprivations at boarding school before finding her way to America as well. She becomes a well-known chemistry professor at Barnard, eschewing traditional attachments and family life. Thomas's daughter, Dorothy Townsend Barrett, takes a different route, marrying and producing three children, only to realize in her 70s that she has always been miserable. So she protests the Iraq war, divorces her devoted husband Charles and starts a blog, to the horror of her responsible eldest daughter Caroline. With an empty nest and a divorce of her own, Caroline is stunned to recognize the role that fear has played in her life. Caroline's sister Liz, like the others, has talent and brains, but late motherhood and a busy, privileged life in Manhattan have made her question what it all means. When Liz was a child, she slipped into her mother's purse a verse she'd written that contained the line "I am a hollow bone." It resonates throughout the lives of all these women: "It's as if I echo, or rather, feel in myself an absence," says Dorothy Barrett. "I feel as if I've forgotten something, as if there's a question I forgot to answer." Walbert (Our Kind, 2004, etc.) is careful to give equal weight to their challenges through different eras. The male characters are not as fully fleshed out as they could be, but Charles' longing for the wife he never really had is quite moving. Daring and devastating: 20th-century history made personal.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the novel, Walbert consistently reveals future events before they occur—from Father Fairfield's death to Dorothy Townsend (Barrett's) impending divorce. Why do you think she chooses to do this? How does this change the pacing of the story?
2. How is Evelyn's release of the canary symbolic of her own desires? (p.15) Why do you think she gets so angry when the bird refuses to leave on its own? How does she feel once it is gone? How does this parallel the actions that Evelyn eventually takes?
3. The novel opens with Evelyn Charlotte Townsend's mother starving herself for her cause, a death "brought on by modern ideas, pride, acertain vanity or rather, unreasonable expectations." (p. 76) How does her death spur on the next generation of this family? How do you think things would have been different if she had not died? Would Evelyn and subsequent Townsend generations have been as bold as they were? Why or why not?
4. Discuss how all the women in the novel struggle between their rebellious ideals and trying to lead a "normal" life. Do you believe Dorothy when she says that she "didn't sign on for this?" (p. 74)
5. How did you feel when Evelyn lied to Stephen Pope about her family? Why do you think she says "I'll start from nothing...I am now no one's daughter." (p. 90) Does she really reject her past or is she more like her mother than she wants to admit?
6. Each of the women in the novel at one point or another rejects the life they are leading. The most notable instance is Dorothy Townsend's (Barrett) radical change following her son's death. Discuss how each of the women, like Dorothy Townsend, "shed a skin." (p. 104)
7. Discuss the theme of loss in A Short History of Women. What are the major losses that each character experiences? How does this affect the women they are and the women they become?
8. Evie has a long standing relationship with Stephen Pope and has a love for him that she claims is "not what a woman's love should be or look like, absent, as it is, a family, a husband." (p. 173) Yet, they have a very solid and caring relationship. How does this compare to someone like Dorothy Townsend (Barrett) who has a husband she no longer loves?
9. How does Fran's question of "Did you ever ruin your life for a feeling?" (p. 191) reflect the struggles that each woman has experienced? What is Elizabeth's response to Fran's question? Do you think she believes her response? What do you think her response would be if asked the same question about her mother?
10. Which of Dorothy's descendants do you think best embodies her strength and will for the cause? Which do you think embodies it the least? Why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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