The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544214
Summary
From the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy comes a monumental new masterpiece, set in the midst of literature's most famous war. Pat Barker turns her attention to the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.
The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen.
In the Greek camp, another woman watches and waits for the war's outcome: Briseis. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers.
Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents.
Keenly observant and cooly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position to observe the two men driving the Greek forces in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate, not only of Briseis's people, but also of the ancient world at large.
Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war--the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead--all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life.
She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives--and it is nothing short of magnificent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 8, 1943
• Where—Thornaby-on-Tees, Yorkshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London School of Economics
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Durham, England
Patricia Mary W. Barker, CBE is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, The Observer named her Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels."
Personal life
Barker was born to a working-class family in Thornaby-on-Tees in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Her mother Moyra died in 2000, and her father's identity is unknown. According to The (London) Times, Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while in the Wrens." In a social climate where illegitimacy was regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter.
Mother and daughter lived with Barker's grandmother Alice until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven. Barker chose to stay with her grandmother because of their bond and because, as she told The Guardian in 2003, "my stepfather didn't warm to me, nor me to him."
Her grandparents ran a fish and chip shop which failed, and the family was, she told The Times in 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living on National Assistance." At the age of eleven, Barker won a place at grammar school, attending King James Grammar School in Knaresborough and Grangefield Grammar School in Stockton-on-Tees.
Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at the London School of Economics from 1962-65 After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971.
In a pub, in 1969, Barker was introduced to David Barker, a zoology professor and neurologist 20 years her senior. He left his marriage to live with her, they had two children together, and were married in 1978 following his divorce. Barker was widowed when David died in January 2009. Their daughter Anna Barker Ralph is now a novelist.
Early work
Barker began to write fiction in her mid-20s. Although her first three novels were never published, in 1982, after 10 years of rejections, she finally found a publisher for Union Street. The book is an interlinked set of stories detailing the life of working-class women—stories that publishers told her they found "bleak and depressing."
On author Angela Carter's recommendation, Barker sent the manuscript to feminist publisher Virago, who accepted it. Upon its release, the New Statesman hailed Union Street as a "long overdue working class masterpiece," and the New York Times Book Review called it "first-rate, punchy and raunchy. The book remained one of Virago's top sellers for years and was later adapted as the Hollywood film Stanley and Iris, starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda.
Regeneration Trilogy
After publishing five novels, Barker turned her attention to the First World War, which she had always wanted to write about. In 1991 she published the first in her war trilogy: Regeneration, followed by The Eye in the Door (1993), and The Ghost Road (1995).
The books are an unusual blend of history and fiction, and Barker draws extensively on the writings of First World War poets and W.H.R. Rivers, an army doctor who worked with traumatized soldiers. The main characters are based on historical figures, with the exception of Billy Prior, whom Barker invented as both a parallel and a contrast to British soldier-poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
The books, which came to be called the "Regeneration Trilogy," were extremely well received by critics, and in 1995 the final book, The Ghost Road, won the Booker Prize.
Awards and recognition
In 1983, Barker won the Fawcett Society prize for fiction for Union Street. In 1993 she won the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Eye in the Door, and in 1995 she won the Booker Prize for The Ghost Road. In May 1997, Barker was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the University, and in 2000, she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/7/2018.)
Book Reviews
I began to lose faith on the first page of the novel when Briseis describes the retreat of the Lyrnessus women and children, hastening from their homes to seek refuge in the citadel: "…to be walking down the street in broad daylight felt like a holiday." The jarring inauthenticity of this sentence is sadly characteristic of the novel as a whole.… Unfortunately, Barker’s voices are dissonant and unpersuasive. The girls, alas, remain silenced.
Geraldine Brooks - New York Times Book Review
An impressive feat of literary revisionism that should be on the Man Booker longlist.… Why isn’t [it]?… [T]his latest work is an impressive feat of literary revisionism that reminds us that there are as many ways to tell a story as there are people involved.… [T]his is a story about the very real cost of wars waged by men: "the brutal reality of conquest and slavery." In seeing a legend differently, Barker also makes us re-think history.
Independent (UK)
In The Silence of the Girls, [Barker] now gives a voice to the voiceless.… It is not generally known that the omission of Pat Barker’s Regeneration from the 1991 Booker shortlist by the all-male panel of judges was the trigger for the foundation of the Orange (now Women’s) Prize. Barker’s omission from this year’s Booker longlist is a decision equally lamentable, for The Silence of the Girls is a book that will be read in generations to come.
Amanda Craig - Daily Telegraph (UK)
Its magnificent final section can’t help but make you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma.… You feel you are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers, her only priority to enlarge the story.
Evening Standard (UK)
Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker’s stands out for its force of purpose and earthy compassion.… Barker puts a searing twist on The Iliad to show us what the worst fate can be.
Times (UK)
Despite its strong narrative line and transportive scenes of ancient life, however, this novel lacks the lyrical cadences and magical intensity of Madeline Miller’s Circe…. Yet this remains a suspenseful and moving illumination of women’s fates in wartime.
Publishers Weekly
[B]rilliant, beautifully written…. Both lyrical and brutal, Barker's novel is not to savor delicately but rather to be devoured in great bloody gulps. A must read! —Jane Henriksen Baird, formerly at Anchorage P.L., AK
Library Journal
[C]ompelling…. Briseis is flawlessly drawn as Barker wisely avoids the pitfall so many authors stumble into headlong, namely, giving her an anachronistic modern feminist viewpoint…. Barker makes it all convincing and very powerful. Recommended on the highest order.”
Booklist
Barker writes 47 brisk chapters of smooth sentences; her dialogue, as usual, hums with intelligence. [But] the… prose is awkwardly thick with Briticisms…. A depiction of Achilles' endless grief for Patroclus becomes itself nearly endless.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Briseis’ attitude toward Achilles changes throughout the course of the novel. Did you always find yourself agreeing with her opinion of him? Why or why not?
2. What is most striking about the difference between how Achilles presents himself privately and publicly? In what ways do the two personas merge toward the end of the novel?
3. How did reading The Silence of the Girls impact your understanding of The Illiad? What did this book add to the story of the Trojan War as a whole?
4. There are many visceral and devastating depictions of war and its aftermath in The Silence of the Girls. Which moment struck you as the most heartbreaking or poignant?
5. Honor, both familial and for your city, is a strong theme of The Illiad. How does this theme apply to The Silence of the Girls?
6. Throughout the course of the novel, we see Briseis through many traumatic experiences, including her fall from Queen to concubine. Were you ever surprised by her reactions to these experiences? How would you have reacted to these experiences?
7. The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of The Illiad from one of the minor character’s point of view. If Pat Barker were to write another retelling, whose point of view would you be most interested in reading? How, for instance, might Paris, Helen’s lover, tell his tale?
8. If The Silence of the Girls were written from the point of view of a male minor character, how would that change the story?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Love and Other Consolation Prizes
Jamie Ford, 2017
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804176750
Summary
From the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a powerful novel, inspired by a true story, about a boy whose life is transformed at Seattle’s epic 1909 World’s Fair.
For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World’s Fair feels like a gift.
But only once he’s there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks, and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off — a healthy boy "to a good home."
The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam’s precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. Their friendship and affection form the first real family Ernest has ever known — and against all odds, this new sporting life gives him the sense of home he’s always desired.
But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition, and first love.
Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle’s second World’s Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.
Against a rich backdrop of post-Victorian vice, suffrage, and celebration, Love and Other Consolation Prizes is an enchanting tale about innocence and devotion—in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 9, 1968
• Born—Eureka, California, USA
• Raised—Ashland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—Art Institute of Seattle
• Awards—Asian/Pacific American Award-Best Adult Fiction
• Currently—lives in Montana
Jamie Ford is an American author. He is best known for his debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The book received positive reviews after its release, and was also awarded best "Adult Fiction" book at the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. The book was also named the #1 Book Club Pick for Fall 2009/Winter 2010 by the American Booksellers Association.
Background
Ford was born in Eureka, California, but grew up in Ashland, Oregon, and Port Orchard and Seattle, Washington. His father, a Seattle native, is of Chinese ancestry, while Ford’s mother is of European descent.
His Western last name "Ford" comes from his great grandfather, Min Chung (1850-1922), who immigrated to Tonopah, Nevada in 1865 and later changed his name to William Ford. Ford's great grandmother, Loy Lee Ford, was the first Chinese woman to own property in Nevada.
Ford earned a degree in Design from the Art Institute of Seattle and also attended Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts.
Writings
Ford is best known for his debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The book received positive reviews after its release, and was also awarded best “Adult Fiction” book at the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
In 2013, he released his second book, Songs of Willow Frost, and his third, Love and Other Consolation Prizes in 2017.
His stories have also been included in Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology and the The Apocalypse Triptych, a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. (Excerpted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/28/2017 .)
Book Reviews
Combining rich narrative and literary qualities, the book achieves a multi-faceted emotional resonance. It is by turns heart-rending, tragic, disturbing, sanguine, warm, and life-affirming. Perceptive themes that run throughout culminate at the end. A true story from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition inspired this very absorbing and moving novel. Highly recommended (Editor's Choice).
Historical Novel Society
The latter half of the book feels rushed, with what is perhaps a too-tidy ending. Still, it's a laudable effort that shines light on little-known histories.… [J]ust enough emotional resonance to move most readers. —Suzanne Im, Los Angeles P.L.
Library Journal
Poignant.… Vibrantly rendered
Booklist
Alternating between Ernest's past and present, Ford captures the thrill of first kisses and the shock of revealing long-hidden affairs. A lively history of romance in the dens of iniquity, love despite vice.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The story of Ernest starts off on a very sad note. Do you condemn Ernest’s mother for her actions, and if so, what were her alternatives?
2. The early suffrage movements in the U.S. all took place in what were regarded as frontier territories in the west. Why do you think the trends of suffrage and vice emerged at the same time, in the same places? (Like Wyoming, where women first got the vote in 1869).
3. Those suffrage campaigns were often intertwined with religious movements. When did women’s rights diverge somewhat from a religious underpinning and why?
4. This book ultimately deals with prostitution. Is there an intersection between prostitution, personal agency, and feminism? Or are these mutually exclusive concepts?
5. Caucasian prostitution in the early 20th century has often been glamorized, while Asian prostitution has been demonized. Is there truth behind those cultural tropes? Are our historical perceptions off? What’s the reality of those perceptions then—and now?
6. Madam Flora and Miss Amber have a unique relationship. Do you see this as one born of love, of shared business interests, or a bit of both?
7. Speaking of business interests, do you see Madam Flora and Miss Amber as two people exploiting young women, or benefiting them?
8. Early world’s fairs often had ethnographic exhibits — human zoos, if you will. When did this stop being socially acceptable and why the change?
9. World’s fairs also try to be predictive of the future. The 1962 World’s Fair boasted the latest technology and hinted at a grand technological leap. Were those predictions right?
10. At the Tenderloin (and in the character of Turnbull) we see wealthy, successful men breaking rules and social conventions. Is there a modern analog? Are wealthy men today able to live above and beyond the margins of law and civil discourse and if so, who, and how are they able to get away with such behavior?
11. For much of the book, the reader is wondering whom Ernest will ultimately end up marrying. Did he make the right choice? Why or why not?
12. Lastly, Ernest and Fahn read a certain book by Henry de Vere Stacpoole. How does that novel reflect the innocence and tragedy of their relationship? And do you know what that book is? (Hint, it was made into a somewhat cheesy movie in the 80s).
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Golden State
Lydia Kiesling, 2018
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374164836
Summary
A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America
In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey.
Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.
But clarity proves elusive.
Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby.
Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.
Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds.
But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions. Her debut novel, The Golden State, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Slate, and The New Yorker online, and have been recognized in The Best American Essays 2016. Kiesling lives in San Francisco with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Golden State anchors Daphne’s journey in the visceral and material realities of motherhood…. As Daphne, Alice, and Honey venture across eastern California, a revelation steals upon the reader: cutting ties, packing light, and setting out on one’s own is perhaps a masculine fantasy that we’ve been asked to idealize for too long…. The novel beautifully depicts the golden light of California, the smell of the fescue grasses, the thinness of the air, and the way that Daphne and Honey often feel overwhelmed by the scale of the spaces they find themselves in. The result is less an untroubled analogy between the landscapes of motherhood and the American West than an invitation to think more deeply about how limited our canonical literary imaginings of each have been.
Sarah Blackwood - The New Yorker
Kiesling vividly renders the high desert town, its beauty and its starkness, its juniper-scented air and its neglect, the way it both centers and saps Daphne. Kiesling is also an astute cultural commentator, shedding light on our current political divide and university politics and Orientalism and the barbarism of America past and present while shedding light on parts of California often ignored by news and literature. She reminds us that the Golden State is more complexly storied than we often give it credit for; she also reminds us that for all its stretches of tedium and potential for heartbreak, the state of raising a young child can be pretty golden, too.
Gayle Brandeis - San Francisco Chronicle
Remarkable…. What Kiesling syntactically accomplishes is an exquisite look at the gulf between the narrow repetitive toil of motherhood and the sprawling intelligence of the mother that makes baby care so maddening.… We don’t get to enter a golden state without conflict or boredom. But love can persist despite crappy Skype connections, and wonder can flourish in the interstices between tasks. Mothers of babies, who have forever navigated the interplay between burden and desire, could have shown us this a long time ago if they were invited into literature. At least Daphne’s here now, buckling Honey into her stroller and leading the way.
Heather Abel - Slate
(Starred review) [I]ntimate, culturally perceptive.… Kiesling depicts parenting …with humor and brutal honesty.… But perhaps best of all is her thought-provoking portrait of a pioneer community in decline as anger and obsession fray bonds between neighbors, family, and fellow citizens.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) There's so much to love about this novel, it's possible to forgive the frequent use of long, run-on lists, a stylistic choice that becomes a bad habit. Ignore this quirk and focus instead on Daphne's honesty, insight, and efforts to sort out the best path forward. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
[E]ncapsulates the intense and often conflicting feelings of early parenthood: frustration, tenderness, isolation. By playing with punctuation and sentence structure, Kiesling immerses the reader in the fragile headspace of the anxious new mother.… The Golden State sparks the lovely, lonely feelings inside us all.
Booklist
A debut novel about new motherhood and political unrest…. Kiesling is a talented author …with a unique voice. She's very smart, very funny, and wonderfully empathetic. A technically uneven novel from a skilled and promising writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What makes Engin and Daphne a good match? What attracted them to each other, and to each other’s worlds? How does their love evolve over the course of The Golden State?
2. Daphne describes pumping milk at work, in a basement closet that houses computer servers. What does this image say about modern American motherhood?
3. As Daphne counts the dollars in her bank account and the minutes of her commute, what is she really measuring? When she returns to her grandparents’ house, how is she affected by the new daily rhythm of sleeping and feeding and playing?
4. How would you have reacted in Daphne’s situation after Engin was illegally pressured to relinquish his green card? If you could rewrite America’s immigration laws, what would you decree?
5. What viewpoints do Daphne and Cindy share? What lies at the heart of Cindy’s paranoia? Why is it difficult for her and the State of Jefferson followers to stay rooted in reality?
6. As Alice’s friendship with Daphne unfolds, what forms of caretaking do they provide to each other? If you had the chance to reconnect with a chapter from your past, what special place would you want to return to?
7. The author delivers a highly realistic depiction of workplace bureaucracy. How do Daphne’s co-workers compare to yours? How long could you be gone from the office before anyone would know you were missing?
8. Daphne recalls the tidy world that her grandparents inhabited, down to her grandmother’s immaculate golfing outfit, and the thriving small-town community where they were well-known. What caused the decline of Paiute County?
9. None of the staff at the Institute for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations is a Muslim. What commentary does the novel offer on the limitations of institutions—and the power of individuals—to heal society’s fractures?
10. As Daphne comes to terms with the accident that took the life of a student (Ellery Simpson) and injured another (Maryam Khoury), what does she discover about the risks and rewards of her own cross-cultural journeys?
11. What does the novel tell us about the ability of language to connect us, even when language appears to be a barrier?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
An Excess Male
Maggie Shen King, 2017
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062662552
Summary
A chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale.
Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.
Now 40 million of them can't find wives.
China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own.
An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.
Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law.
Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State.
Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.
In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Taiwan; Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University;
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male, published by Harper Voyager. Her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fourteen Hills. Her manuscript "Fortune's Fools," won Second Prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award. She is Goodread's September 2017 Debut Author of the Month.
Maggie grew up in Taiwan and attended both Chinese and American schools before moving to Seattle at age sixteen. She attended Harvard University where she took a single creative writing class but did not begin writing in earnest until 2004 when her youngest child started middle school.
Since then, she has studied with Nancy Packer, Eric Puchner, Thomas McNeely, and Otis Haschemeyer at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program. She shows her work regularly to two writing groups, one of which was formed at the conclusion of her first course at Stanford.
Maggie lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. When she is not writing, she can usually be found hacking her way around a golf course. She adores roses and is always on the lookout for shade-tolerant varieties that can thrive in the odd corners of her garden. (Adapted fom the author's website.)
Read an interview with the author on The Quillery.
Book Reviews
What King does so skillfully, with a light, deft, even comedic, touch, is to limn the human heart — with all its unruly urges and desires. She captures the vagaries of life, how easily one can veer off the "correct" path and risk punishment by a chillingly repressive state. [But] the best part of An Exccess Male happens to be its characters, who grow and change, who are lovable, sometimes irascible — yet who surprise us with their innate kindness.… [The book is] a winner — a romance, captivating family drama, and sobering view of totalitarian power. Highly recommended. READ MORE…
P.J. Adler - LitLovers
Through an almost satirical look into a near-future China, Maggie Shen King’s debut, An Excess Male, makes a compelling argument that marriage stands as a method of societal control.… King writes distinctive and sympathetic characters, and her vision of a not-so-far future is unnerving and thought-provoking.
Everdeen Mason - Washington Post
[T]houghtful, heartbreaking…. A scary twist in the third act keeps the pages turning. King expertly explores the myriad routes to family, hope, and love in a repressive country.
Publishers Weekly
This is a believable near-future vision of what could happen with China's growing gender imbalance. The relationships between the brothers and their shared spouse are interesting, although… [the novel] doesn't quite maintain momentum for the entire novel, seeming more suited for a short story.
Library Journal
King imagines a frightening reality, in which forced cultural norms run counter to basic human rights, leaving readers exceedingly uncomfortable with its feasibility,
Booklist
Boldly envisioned and executed, An Excess Male is thrilling, provocative and genuinely frightening in its implications.
Shelf Awareness
[A] dystopian future of longing, inequality, and constant surveillance.… An intelligent, incisive commentary on how love survives—or doesn't—under the heel of the State.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The One Child Policy was adopted in 1979 to help China reduce its population to an "ideal" 700 million in order to limit the demand for water and other resources and alleviate social, economic and environmental problems. What other forms of social engineering were carried out in this book for the public good? Who is valued under a government that espouses China First?
2. By the year 2030, China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs will have created a society overrun by 30 million unmarriageable men. More than 25% of men in their late thirties will never have married. Is it more immoral to violate the traditional notion of marriage or to deny tens of millions of men the comforts of family and home? What might be another solution to this problem?
3. In a society where marriageable men outnumbered women in the millions, it seems logical that the scarcity of women would elevate their social status and role in society. What went wrong for women in this book? Were Compatibility Tests advantageous for them? Can you think of an example where women heavily outnumbered men? How did that affect the balance of power?
4. During the 18th and 19th century, polyandry (marriage where wife has more than one husband) was practiced in rural China to help impoverished families pool resources and avoid breakup of property. The elites of the Qing Dynasty considered the practice immoral, yet emperors kept concubines and wealthy men had multiple wives and mistresses. Why do you think polyandry garnered such opposition?
5. Hann was forced to live contrary to his most fundamental nature. How do you feel about him lying to May-ling and creating a sexual outlet in his badminton team?
6. By requiring him to marry and become a parent, XX’s family also forced him to live against his nature and his wishes. Was Hann right to interfere with so many details of XX’s day-to-day life? Was it for XX’s own good when Hann tried to encourage him to conform to social norms? To what extent should families of productive and independent adults like XX intrude upon their lives?
7. How do you think polyandry affects BeiBei and other children in such a family unit?
8. Privacy was of the utmost importance to XX. He insisted that his new spouse maintain a discreet digital footprint, yet he felt no compunction in planting a bug on Wei-guo, training cameras on his family in their apartment, or developing mind-reading algorithms that could be used on the public at large. Is he amoral, mercenary, or a modern-day hero?
9. What devices did the author use to build this fictional world? Did you find the world believable?
10. An Excess Male was narrated from four alternating points of view. Whose story was it? How would the story change if it was told only from Wei-guo’s or May-ling’s point of view?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
French Exit
Patrick deWitt, 2018
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062846921
Summary
A brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.
Frances Price—tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature—is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy.
Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development.
And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.
Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin—to riotous effect.
A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.
Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind "tragedy of manners," a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, Rogers Prize, Stephen Leacock Award
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon, USA
Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. He was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and later lived in California and Washington. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
His first book, Ablutions (2009), was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. His second book, The Sisters Brothers (2011), was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the 2011 Governor General's Award for English language fiction. He was one of two Canadian writers, alongside Esi Edugyan, to make all four award lists in 2011.
On November 1, 2011, he was announced as the winner of the Rogers Prize, and on November 15, 2011, he was announced as the winner of Canada's 2011 Governor General's Award for English language fiction. On April 26, 2012, the book The Sisters Brothers won the 2012 Stephen Leacock Award. Alongside Edugyan, The Sisters Brothers was also a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/7/2013.)
Book Reviews
The comic brilliance that sparked deWitt’s earlier adventures ignites this "tragedy of manners" and Frances Price, "a moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five years," is revealed to be another of deWitt’s sublime eccentrics.… Rarely has a transatlantic voyage and its limited diversions been so pithily evoked.
Anna Mundow - Washington Post
A modern story, a satire about an insouciant widow on a quest for refined self-immolation.… DeWitt’s surrealism is cheerful and matter-of-fact, making the novel feel as buoyantly insane as its characters.… DeWitt is a stealth absurdist, with a flair for dressing up rhyme as reason.
Katy Waldman - The New Yorker
A sparkling dark comedy that channels both Noel Coward’s wit and Wes Anderson’s loopy sensibility. DeWitt’s tone is breezy, droll, and blithely transgressive.… These are people you may not want to invite to dinner, but they sure make for fun reading.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
Hilarious.… Delightful.… In his book, as in [Edith] Wharton’s, New Yorkers’ wit and elaborate manners cannot hide the searing depth of their pain.… DeWitt is aiming for farce and to say something about characters who cannot get out of their own way, and he achieves both with elan.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] riotous tragedy of (ill) manners.… The show stealer here is deWitt’s knack for scene setting and dialogue in the form of Frances’ wry one-liners.… That Frances sure is a force to contend with. But what a classy broad.
San Francisco Chronicle
Darkly comic.… French Exit is both a satiric send-up of high society and a wilding mother-son caper.
Poets & Writers
[DeWitt] creates and conveys entire worlds—and not just names and places, but colors, smells, sounds and style.… Incredibly entertaining and oddly sympathetic.… And snappy stage-worthy dialogue—deWitt’s wheelhouse.
Eugene Register-Guard
[E]ntertaining.… DeWitt’s novel is full of vibrant characters taking good-natured jabs at cultural tropes; readers will be delighted.
Publishers Weekly
Whatever you do, don’t mess with Frances Price.… An entertaining portrait of people who are obsessed with the looming specter of death and who don’t quite feel part of the time they were born into.
BookPage
"They're not normal people": an entertaining romp among the disaffected bourgeoisie..… [S]harply observed moments give deWitt's well-written novel more depth than the usual comedy of manners.… [A] bright, original yarn with a surprising twist.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for FRENCH EXIT … then take off on your own:
1. Patrick deWitt's French Exit is subtitled "A Tragedy of Manners." What does the subtitle mean?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Despite the subtitle, there is much that is funny in this novel. What made you laugh (or chuckle)? In what way is this book also "a comedy of manners"—a genre that satirizes the hypocrisy of the privileged: people who value appearance over substance?
3. Katy Waldman in The New Yorker considers the opening sequence of French Exit a sort of tour de force. What do we learn in the first several pages about Frances Price and her son Malcolm? Does your attitude toward them change over the course of the novel? Do they elicit sympathy from you …or disgust …or laughter …or eye-rolling or… anything in particular?
4. "Do you know what a cliche is?" Frances asks her friend Joan. "It's a story so fine and thrilling that it's grown old in its hopeful retelling." What does she mean? How would you define cliche? And why does Frances bring up cliches in the first place?
5. What do we come to learn about the Price's marriage and about Malcolm's childhood? What kind of man was Franklin Price, and what was his relationship to—and the effect he had on—those closest to him?
6. Do the characters ever achieve true intimacy in the novel? Do they ever break out of deWitt's witty dialogue and narration?
7. Talk about the novel's conclusion, especially the twist at the end? What do you think will become of Malcolm?
8. Oh, and Small Frank? Care to comment?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)