Twenty-First Century Novels
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Twenty-First Century Novels THE FIRST DECADE
VOLUME 1 A-E
Jeffrey W. Hunter EDITOR
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Twenty-First Century Novels: The First Decade
© 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning
Project Editor: Jeffrey W. Hunter Editorial: Sara Constantakis, Kathy D. Darrow, Matthew Derda, Kristen Dorsch, Reed Kalso, Jelena O. Krstovic, Camille Reynolds, Carol A. Schwartz, Lawrence J. Trudeau Rights Acquisition and Management: Margaret Chamberlain-Gaston, Sari Gordon, Sue Rudolph, and Robyn Young Composition: Evi Abou-El-Seoud Manufacturing: Cynde Lentz Imaging: John Watkins
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Twenty-first century novels. The first decade / [project editor, Jeffrey W. Hunter]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4144-8761-8 (set) – ISBN 978-1-4144-8764-9 (v. 1) – ISBN 978-1-4144-8765-6 (v. 2) – ISBN 978-1-4144-8766-3 (v. 3) – ISBN 978-1-4144-8762-5 (ebk.) 1. Fiction–21st century–History and criticism. 2. Fiction–21st century– Bio-bibliography–Dictionaries. 3. Fiction–21st century–Dictionaries. 4. Fiction–21st century–Stories, plots, etc. I. Hunter, Jeffrey W., 1966PN3504.T84 2011 809.3'051–dc22
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Contents VOLUME 1 Volume 1 Contents by Title ....................................................................................................
vii
Advisors .....................................................................................................................................................
xi
List of Contributors .......................................................................................................................
xiii
Preface .......................................................................................................................................................
xv
Entries A-E ............................................................................................................................................
1
Title Index
.........................................................................................................................................
xvii
Author Index ....................................................................................................................................
xxiii
Major Prizewinners ......................................................................................................................
xxix
Nationality Index ..........................................................................................................................
xxxi
v (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 1 Contents by Title The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie .................................................................... 1 The Accidental Ali Smith ................................................................................... Across a Hundred Mountains Reyna Grande ................................................................... The Adventures of Vela Albert Wendt ..................................................................... The Age of Orphans Laleh Khadivi .................................................................... Air, or, Have Not Have Geoff Ryman...................................................................... An Altered Light Jens Christian Grøndahl............................................
6 11 15 20 24 29
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Michael Chabon .............................................................. 33
Arthur & George Julian Barnes ....................................................................
56
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing M. T. Anderson ............................................................... 60 The Athenian Murders José Carlos Somoza ......................................................
64
Atonement Ian McEwan .......................................................................
67
Austerlitz W. G. Sebald......................................................................
72
Await Your Reply Dan Chaon..........................................................................
77
The Ballad of Desmond Kale Roger McDonald ...........................................................
81
Baudolino Umberto Eco
..................................................................
85
Beasts of No Nation Uzodinma Iweala ...........................................................
90
American Gods Neil Gaiman .......................................................................
38
Beijing Coma Ma Jian...................................................................................
95
Anil’s Ghost Michael Ondaatje
.........................................................
42
Bel Canto Ann Patchett ...................................................................
100
Animal’s People Indra Sinha ..........................................................................
47
Bitter Fruit Achmat Dangor ............................................................
105
51
Blacklist Sara Paretsky ...................................................................
109
The Armies Evelio Rosero ....................................................................
vii (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 1 Contents by Title
A Blessed Child Linn Ullmann ................................................................ The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood ........................................................
113
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Díaz ........................................................................
197
118
The Broken Shore Peter Temple ..................................................................
202
Blindsight Maurice Gee ....................................................................
122
Brooklyn Colm Tóibín ...................................................................
206
Blood from Stone Frances Fyfield ...............................................................
126
Bruised Hibiscus Elizabeth Nunez ..........................................................
211
Blooms of Darkness Aharon Appelfeld ........................................................
131
The Bullet Collection Patricia Sarrafian Ward ............................................
215
Blue Heaven C. J. Box ............................................................................
136
Camouflage Joe Haldeman ................................................................
219
The Boat to Redemption Su Tong ..............................................................................
140
Captain of the Sleepers Mayra Montero.............................................................
223
Bold as Love Gwyneth Jones ..............................................................
145
Carpentaria Alexis Wright ..................................................................
228
The Bonesetter’s Daughter Amy Tan ............................................................................
149
Carry Me Down M. J. Hyland ..................................................................
233
The Book of Chameleons José Eduardo Agualusa ...........................................
153
Celestial Harmonies Péter Esterházy .............................................................
238
The Book of Dead Birds Gayle Brandeis ...............................................................
158
The Changeling Kenzaburo ................................................................ Oe
242
The Book of Negroes Lawrence Hill.................................................................
162
Child 44 Tom Rob Smith ...........................................................
246
The Book of Night Women Marlon James .................................................................
166
The Children’s Book A. S. Byatt ........................................................................
250
The Book of Not Tsitsi Dangarembga...................................................
171
Citizen Vince Jess Walter ........................................................................
254
The Book Thief Markus Zusak ................................................................
175
The City & the City China Miéville ...............................................................
258
The Bottoms Joe R. Lansdale.............................................................
180
City of Thieves David Benioff .................................................................
262
The Boy Next Door Irene Sabatini .................................................................
184
Clara Callan Richard B. Wright ......................................................
266
Brandenburg Gate Henry Porter ..................................................................
188
The Clothes on Their Backs Linda Grant .....................................................................
271
193
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell ...............................................................
275
Breath Tim Winton .....................................................................
viii
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 1 Contents by Title
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen ........................................................
279
Dirt Music Tim Winton .....................................................................
350
Crabwalk Günter Grass ...................................................................
283
A Distant Shore Caryl Phillips ...................................................................
354
Crescent Diana Abu-Jaber ..........................................................
287
The Dive From Clausen’s Pier Ann Packer .......................................................................
359
Douglass’ Women Jewell Parker Rhodes
..............................................
364
Down River John Hart ..........................................................................
368
Duma Key Stephen King ..................................................................
372
El Dorado Dorothy Porter .............................................................
377
The Electric Michelangelo Sarah Hall .........................................................................
382
The Elegance of the Hedgehog Muriel Barbery ..............................................................
387
318
The Emperor of Ocean Park Stephen L. Carter ......................................................
392
323
The Emperor’s Children Claire Messud ................................................................
398
328
Empire Falls Richard Russo ................................................................
403
Declare Tim Powers......................................................................
332
English Passengers Matthew Kneale ...........................................................
407
The Deposition of Father McGreevy Brian O’Doherty ..........................................................
336
Everyman Philip Roth
.....................................................................
412
......................................................
340
Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer ................................................
416
Diary of a Bad Year J. M. Coetzee ................................................................
344
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon ................................................................
291
The Curse of Chalion Lois McMaster Bujold.............................................
295
Dancing to “Almendra” Mayra Montero............................................................. Dark Palace Frank Moorhouse ....................................................... The Day We Had Hitler Home Rodney Hall .................................................................... The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante ............................................................... De Niro’s Game Rawi Hage ........................................................................ Dead Europe Christos Tsiolkas .......................................................... Death with Interruptions José Saramago................................................................
The Dew Breaker Edwidge Danticat
299 303 308 313
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
ix
Advisors Betty Carter Carter is a former school librarian and Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at Texas Woman’s University. She currently reviews books for Horn Book and has served on selection committees for several children’s literature awards, including the Newbery, Sibert, and Boston Globe-Horn Book awards.
Don D’Ammassa D’Ammassa has published several science fiction novels and short stories. A former editor of the Hugo-nominated fan magazine Mythologies, he is a noted critic in the genres of fantasy, horror, adventure, and science fiction. He is also the author of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror, and The Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction.
Natalie Danford Danford is a novelist and book critic whose articles and reviews have been published in The Los Angeles Times, Salon, and many other publications. She is also co-editor of the annual Best New American Voices anthology series, which introduces emerging writers.
Harvey Freedenberg Freedenberg is a regular reviewer for BookPage, Bookreporter.com and Shelf-Awareness.com and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He also writes a monthly column on books for Harrisburg Magazine. The author of several prize-winning short stories, he is a longtime board member of the Dauphin County Library System and served on the One Book, One Community Selection Committee.
Dwayne D. Hayes Hayes is a Managing Editor at Cengage Gale and has edited several literature titles, including Contemporary Authors and the Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. In 2002 he founded the literary journal Absinthe: New European Writing, a biannual magazine of contemporary European literature and art. Absinthe has published the work of over 150 European poets and fiction writers in English translation and has also sponsored readings and film screenings by international writers and filmmakers.
xi (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Advisors
Pam Spencer Holley Holley is a retired coordinator of library services for Fairfax County, Virginia, Public schools. She has served on selection committees of many prestigious young adult literature awards, including the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Alex Award, and the Michael L. Printz Award. She is an active member and former President of the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, and her reviews of young adult literature appear in numerous publications.
Dr. Elizabeth McMahon McMahon is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, where she is coconvener of the Women’s and Gender Studies program and the Australian Studies program. A former President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL), she is co-editor of the journal Southerly and a consulting editor for the Australian Humanities Review. She has published extensively on Australian literature and culture.
Dr. Víctor Federico Torres Torres is the author of Diccionario de autores puertorriqueños contemporáneos (2009) as well as a bio-bibliography of Puerto Rican writers and numerous articles in scholarly journals. He has taught in the Departments of Hispanic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies and at the Graduate School of Science and Information Technology at the University of Puerto Rico’s Rio Piedras Campus.
Professor Lydia Wevers Wevers teaches at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where she is Director of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies. A recent Fulbright Visiting Scholar in New Zealand Studies at the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies (CANZ) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., she is an editor and book reviewer as well as a literature critic and scholar.
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TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
List of Contributors Alana Abbott
Cynthia Giles
Jenny Ludwig
Abbott is an editor, a published novelist, and a comic book writer.
Giles holds an M.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary humanities. She has been a university instructor and freelance writer.
Ludwig holds an M.A. in English literature and has been a university instructor and freelance writer.
Susan Anderson Andersen holds a Ph.D. in English and is a freelance writer.
Robert Berg Berg is a professional freelance writer and critic, with an advanced degree in History and Criticism. He also has an extensive academic background in literary analysis.
Margaret Haerens Haerens is a freelance writer and editor living in New York City.
Masoud is a playwright and screenwriter living in New York City.
Harrabeth Haidusek
Sean McCready
Haidusek holds an M.A. in English literature and is a university instructor.
McCready is a freelance writer and editor specializing in literary criticism.
Todd Breijak
Michele Hardy
Breijak is a freelance writer with a background in literary and film criticism and theory.
Hardy holds an M.A. in creative writing and is an instructor in English and humanities.
Joseph Campana
Kevin Hile
Campana holds an M.A. in English literature and is a university professor.
Hile is a published author, editor, and radio show host on the MIentertainment Radio Network.
Harriet Devine
Lois Kerschen
Devine has a Ph.D. in English literature and is a freelance writer.
Kerschen has a Ph.D. in English and is a freelance writer and college instructor.
Catherine Dominic Dominic is a novelist and a freelance writer and editor.
Bisanne Masoud
Sheri Karmiol Karmiol holds a Ph.D. in English literature and is a university professor.
Stephen Meyer Meyer has an M.F.A. in creative writing and has been a university instructor and freelance writer.
Melodie Monahan
Judson Knight
Monahan holds a Ph.D. in English and operates an editing service.
Knight is the owner of a literary agency.
Janet Moredock
Nancy Dziedzic
Marta Lauritsen
Dziedzic is a freelance editor and writer living in Michigan.
Lauritsen is a high school AP English teacher.
Greta Gard
Adam Lawrence
Gard has an M.A. in English literature and has been a university instructor and freelance writer.
Lawrence has a Ph.D. in English literature and is a university professor.
Moredock is a freelance writer and former university instructor.
Janet Mullane Mullane is a writer, editor, and English teacher with a background in the social sciences and the humanities,
xiii (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
List of Contributors especially nineteenth-century literature and contemporary literary theory.
Anna Nesbitt Nesbitt is a former senior editor for Charles Scribner’s Sons with extensive background in literature criticism.
Wendy Perkins
Laura Pryor
Carol Ullmann
Pryor is a freelance writer who specializes in literature.
Ullmann is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in literature.
Rachel V. Smydra Smydra has an M.A. in English and is a university instructor.
Powder Thompson
Judith West
West holds an M.A. in English literature and has been an editor, writer, audiobook producer, and university instructor.
Thompson is a freelance writer and ivy-league graduate. He has advanced degrees in Shakespeare and Theatre.
Pamela Willwerth Aue
Perkins hold a Ph.D. in English and is a professor of American literature and film studies.
Doris Plantus-Runey
Pamela Toler
Kathy Wilson Peacock
Plantus-Runey holds a Ph.D. in English and is a university instructor and a translator and bilingual writer.
Toler has a Ph.D. in history and is a writer and university instructor.
xiv
Willwerth Aue is an educator, copyeditor, and writer in fields including business, science, and literature. Wilson Peacock is a published author and editor with an extensive background in literature criticism.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Preface Century Novels: The First Decade examines some of the most T wenty-First important fictional works published from 2000 to 2009. In order to help both students and casual readers develop a deeper understanding of these works, each title is covered in an entry that discusses style, characters, critical reception, and cultural and historical contexts, and provides recommendations of related materials and resources. With the participation of U.S. and international advisors, the list of titles has been developed to ensure broad coverage of world literatures, making Twenty-First Century Novels an excellent resource for multiethnic and multicultural curricula and communities. In selecting titles for inclusion, we’ve worked to provide a snapshot of the novel in the first decade of this century, with an eye to identifying works that are suitable for inclusion in a high school or college reading list in addition to being of interest to the general reader of literary fiction. We have kept in mind the criteria set forth by the College Board for works studied in an Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition class, seeking out works that “invite and reward rereading and do not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through” (English Course Description, Effective Fall 2010, p. 49). We hope and believe that many of the titles included here will still be read twenty or thirty years from now, and that each of them offers insights into the general human condition as well as the condition of the novel at the start of the 21st century. In order to provide a broad view of the entire genre, we applied a number of additional criteria in making the final selections. Awards: Winners of a small number of highly prestigious awards have been included by default. While there are many valid arguments both for and against the value of awards, we would be hard pressed to find individuals better qualified to judge fiction that the juries who make these selections. We also believe that much can be learned about the literary culture of a time by examining the creative works it chooses to honor. In assessing additional titles for inclusion, the short lists for these
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Preface
awards as well as other awards bestowed have also been taken into consideration. Lists of major award winners are provided in all three volumes. Genres: Despite the injunction of the College Board cited above, we acknowledge that many works in the “popular genres” do offer much more than simple entertainment. For that reason, no novel has been excluded simply because it belongs to a popular genre. Similarly, young adult fiction has been considered so long as it has significant adult readership and meets the other selection criteria. Outstanding series that began before 2000 but concluded during the decade have been treated in single entries; for ongoing series, individual books have been considered if they stand as serious contenders on their own. Graphic novels that are works of fiction have also been included. Finally, given that our primary audience will be English-speaking, we made the hard decision to include only works available in English at the time of compilation. Given that many very worthy works in other languages do not receive an English translation until years after they first appear, we reached that decision reluctantly. But we felt we would be doing the majority of our readers a disservice by pointing them at titles they could not in fact read. We hope the sampling of world literature provided here will whet English-speakers’ interest in international fiction and play some small role in stimulating the publication and teaching of novels in translation. Identifying the “best” or “most important” items in any large group of works is always a challenging and somewhat subjective task. It is particularly daunting to select a relatively small number of works from a genre as rich, varied, and global as the novel. We have no illusions that we have arrived at a definitive list; indeed, we are sure we have left out innumerable excellent works. Nonetheless we feel confident that we’ve provided a valid and vibrant picture of the novel in the first decade of the century. The Editors TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
xvi
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie
W Introduction Sherman Alexie’s young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a semi-autobiographical memoir of Alexie’s own efforts to escape the downward spiral of reservation life. The narrator is Arnold, or Junior as he is called. The novel begins with Junior’s description of his physical defects and progresses to an introduction to his family and to the absolute poverty of reservation life. After he finds his mother’s name inside his geometry book, Junior throws the book at Mr. P., his geometry teacher. Mr. P. tells Junior that he must leave the reservation and or he will be destined to the same lost dreams and poverty that he sees around him. Junior enrolls at Reardan High School, a school for rich white students, located twenty-two miles from the reservation. His best friend on the reservation, Rowdy, gives Junior a black eye for leaving the reservation and refuses to speak to Junior. At first Junior suffers in his new school. The only Indian at Reardan High, Junior is an outcast; he does find some friends, though, but is bullied until he begins to fight back. Eventually the other students begin to respect Junior, especially after he is invited to play on the varsity basketball team. There are times when Junior’s dad does not pick him up at school, and he is forced to walk home, but Junior never complains and is happy at his new school. Junior’s freshman year at Reardan High is marked by his exclusion from the reservation. Besides the loss of his friendship with Rowdy, other people on the reservation are angry that Junior has left the reservation school for a white school. People on the reservation see Junior’s actions as a rejection of Indian life. In contrast, Junior finds acceptance at his new high school and begins dating Penelope, one of the most popular girls in his class. A drunk driver kills Junior’s grandmother, but before she dies, she says that she forgives the Indian driver. When Reardan plays a basketball game
against Junior’s former school, Junior emerges as a heroic figure, even though he does not score many points. He realizes that beating the ill-equipped reservation school is an empty victory against kids who probably have not even eaten breakfast. Junior’s sister Mary dies in a fire she is too drunk to escape. At her funeral, Junior and Rowdy finally reconcile. Junior completes his first year of high school and realizes that he is part of many tribes, not just the Indian tribe on his reservation.
W Literary and Historical Context
Often times, diaries are not published; typically, they are written as an expression of personal experiences and private feelings. Because Alexie wrote The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian with the intention of having it published, he created a persona—Junior—as a means of transforming his autobiography into fiction. Some elements of Junior’s life are based on Alexie’s life. For instance, Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, and he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, near Wellpinit, Washington. Alexie also left the reservation to attend high school in Reardan, Washington, after discovering his mother’s name written inside a school textbook. Like Junior, Alexie was also a star basketball player, and his sister died in a trailer fire. As part of his acceptance speech at the Horn Book Awards, Alexie said that The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is about three-fourths autobiography and one-fourth fiction. Indians living on reservations experience the most extreme poverty of any minority in the United States. Reservation life is often compared to life in Third World countries, with limited access to electricity and indoor plumbing (Carlson, Rogers). Indian reservations are typically located in remote rural areas, which limits job and educational opportunities. Only a few businesses
1 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
MAJOR CHARACTERS MR. P., Junior’s geometry teacher, tells Junior that he must leave the reservation if he is to have a future. PENELOPE is Junior’s love interest at Reardan High. She is bulimic, which teaches Junior that even rich white girls have problems. ROWDY, Junior’s friend on the reservation, resents Junior for leaving the reservation school but eventually reconciles with him. ARNOLD SPIRIT, called Junior, is the fourteen-year-old narrator. DAD SPIRIT, Junior’s father, is an alcoholic but also a talented singer and musician. GRANDMA SPIRIT is Junior’s mentor and the source of much good advice. She teaches Junior tolerance. MARY SPIRIT, also known as Mary Runs Away, is Junior’s sister. After she leaves the reservation and moves to Montana, she dies in a house fire, too drunk to wake up and escape.
provide jobs and incomes or even the necessary supplies for living. Poverty leads to higher rates of disease, such as diabetes, which is tied to a poor diet. Alcoholism and tuberculosis are also common on reservations. There is limited health care, and the Indian Health Service is often relegated to antiquated buildings and equipment. Many Indians receive food stamps and government-issued commodities, but these are inadequate to support a healthy life. Contrary to expectations, gaming and casinos have not eliminated poverty, since most casinos are only marginally profitable. Indian reservations are on land set aside by the federal government for Indian use. They are selfgoverning but fall under the regulation of the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In some cases, individual Indians own the land on which they live, but in most cases, the land is held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which prevents Indians from securing loans by using their homes as collateral. To improve their property, most homeowners use home equity loans to borrow money. Indians are unable to do this, and as a result, many homes are little more than shacks in a terrible state of disrepair.
W Themes The poverty that permeates the Indian reservation is an important focus of The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian. In the first few pages of the book, Junior witnesses his father shooting the family dog because they are too poor to pay for veterinary care. The reservation
2
Portrait of Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
schools use the same textbooks generation after generation because they cannot afford to buy new books. Often, children attend school without eating breakfast, sometimes without having eaten dinner the night before. Junior writes that poverty feels deserved, that people are poor because they are stupid or ugly and that poverty saps the strength needed to fight poverty (13). Loss of hope is common on the reservation. In one of his cartoons, Junior draws his parents as they might have been had they not lost hope in the possibility of a successful future. At one of the many funerals that Junior attends, he notes that Indians have “LOST EVERYTHING” (173). They have lost their land, their languages, and their culture. To combat the grief that threatens to overtake his life, Junior makes a list of all the things that give him joy and hope. He lists his family and friends, but the list also includes favorite foods and books. The list contains small things, but Junior knows that hope is based on small things and not on wishes for success. Junior must try to balance his Indian identity on the reservation with his life at a school off the reservation. At the reservation school, the students take time to joke, but TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
at Reardan High, the emphasis is on grades and sports and doing well. Off the reservation, Junior is more focused and serious, and he instinctively understands that he must leave his Indian identity behind if he is to succeed. On the reservation, he is called an apple—red on the outside but white inside. Junior explains to one of his new friends at Reardan that his reservation friends think “you become white if you try to make your life better” (131). For Junior, the struggle is to find a way remain connected to the Indian community and at the same time become a successful individual.
W Style Alexie uses cartoons as a device to express Junior’s sense of humor and the deep ironies of his situation. Junior escapes into his cartoons, which he calls his “lifeboats” (6). While not everyone understands a different language, many people understand graphic art. Junior’s cartoons reflect on the cultural duality he experiences. He draws his parents as they might have been had the weight of reservation life not destroyed their hope for the future. He draws himself, exaggerating his physical flaws as a way to make fun of himself. Junior also draws himself as split down the middle, with one side as he really is—a poor kid from the reservation—and the other side, as he hopes to become—a preppy adolescent in expensive clothing. Alexie uses first-person point of view, as is suitable to a diary format. This perspective puts readers on the inside of Junior, seeing through his eyes. Junior’s self-depreciating humor and his grief are expressed in an intimate, straightforward manner. His diary provides the evidence of the family’s loss and poverty, but it also reveals the laughter and joy that come from small triumphs. In the diary, Junior explores his identity and the grief that envelops him. First-person point of view draws readers as confidants in that exploration. Crude humor and irony are survival strategies. Junior uses humor both as a way to survive loss—his dog, his grandmother killed by a drunk driver, and his sister, killed in a house fire. By the time he is fourteen, Junior has already attended forty-two funerals. Alcohol, poverty, and lack of hope destroy people on the reservation, but Junior has learned that humor is one way to cope.
W Critical Reception Reviews of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian were exceptionally positive. Typical is the review by Paula Rohrlick for Kliatt, who wrote that Alexie’s novel is “breathtakingly honest.” Rohrlick focused on the novel’s emotional content, calling it “raw emotion leavened with humor,” and noting that the novel is “funny, profane and sad” in its honesty. Rohrlick also pointed out that Junior’s voice “will stay with readers” and enlighten them
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sherman Alexie was born October 7, 1966, at the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, near Wellpinit, Washington. He was born with hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and was not expected to live. Alexie chose to be educated off the reservation and attended school in nearby Reardan. He then attended Gonzaga University and later the University of Washington. Alexie’s first two books of poetry were published shortly after he graduated from college. These works encouraged him to continue writing. Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie’s third novel, received several awards, including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the Peter Pan Award, as well as the New York Time’s Notable Children’s Books of 2007 award. Alexie is also the author of multiple collections of short stories and several television and film scripts.
about the reservation experience. In her review for the Toronto Globe & Mail, Susan Perren focused on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as a “voyage of self-discovery.” According to Perren, Alexie’s novel is “brave, brash, bracing, iconoclastic and heart-breakingly tender.” Other reviewers, including Bruce Barcott in his review for the New York Times, expressed similar views. Barcott claimed that The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian might well be Alexie’s “best work yet.” Because this novel is so closely focused on action and emotion, reading this novel, Barcott suggested, “becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day.” The novel’s intimacy was also noted by Kate Agnew, who wrote in her review for the London Guardian that Alexie created a protagonist who is “funny, articulate and quick-thinking.” In other words, Junior is the ideal best friend whose stories engage readers and pull them into a narrative that is “bittersweet . . . funny, heartwrenching and utterly gripping.” Many reviewers of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian focused on the cartoons and their role in captivating readers. Kathleen Odean’s review for Teacher Librarian was typical in that the cartoons “draw a wide range of readers into this outstanding novel.” In a review for USA Today, Whitney Matheson called the cartoons in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian “flawless artwork” that is “invaluable to Alexie’s story.” Of course, it is not just the cartoons that make this novel so remarkable. Matheson claimed that the book will also “resonate” with readers and “lift spirits of all ages for years to come.”
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Alexie’s early life and the beginning of his writing career.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Agnew, Kate. “Education: The Lesson: The Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 3 June 2008. Web. 8 Sept. 2010.
Grassian, Daniel. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: U. South Carolina P, 2005. Print. A literary biography that traces Alexie’s life and works and compares Alexie’s work and that of other Native American writers.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian. Illus. Ellen Forney. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print.
Margolis, Rick. “Song of Myself: Sherman Alexie’s First YA Novel.” School Library Journal 53.8 (2007): 29. Print. Interview focuses on influence of reading and books in shaping his life.
———. “Boston Globe—Horn Book Award Acceptance.” www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/ 2009/jan09_alexie.asp. Horn Book Magazine Jan.-Feb. 2009. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Barcott, Bruce. “Off the Rez.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. nyt.com. New York Times 11 Nov. 2007. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Carlson, Peter. “In the Year of ‘Dances with Wolves,’ Everybody Wanted to Be on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Nearly a Decade Later, It Can Hardly Get a Quorum.” washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 23 Feb. 1997. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Matheson, Whitney. “USA Today’s Whitney Matheson Checks Out Some Other New Young-Adult Novels.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. usatoday.com. USA Today 18 Oct. 2007. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Odean, Kathleen. “Boys Past and Present.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Teacher Librarian 35.5 (2008): 10. Print. Perren, Susan. “No Reservations.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. theglobeandmail.com. Globe & Mail 24 Nov. 2007. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Rogers, Tom. “Native American Poverty.” www .spotlightonpoverty.org. Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Rohrlick, Paula. Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Kliatt 41.5 (2007): 6. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Berglund, Jeff, and Jan Roush, eds. Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays. Salt Lake City: U. Utah P, 2010. Print. A dozen interdisciplinary essays that explore Alexie’s work and will appeal to both scholars and fans alike. Cline, Lynn. “About Sherman Alexie.” Ploughshares 26:4 (2000-2001): 197-202. Print. Provides a profile of
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Nelson, Joshua B. “‘Humor Is My Green Card’: A Conversation with Sherman Alexie.” World Literature Today 84.4 (2010): 39-44. Print. Interview in which Alexie speaks about loss of native cultures and language, the importance of education, and the antiintellectualism prevalent on reservations. Newton, John. “Sherman Alexie’s Autoethnography.” Contemporary Literature 42.2 (2001): 413-28. Print. Explores Alexie’s effort to distance himself from the previous generations of Native American writers and his efforts to focus on personal relationships and interrelationships between Indian and white. “Teens on the ‘Rez’ Underground and in the Office.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. canberratimes.com.au. Canberra Times 25 Oct. 2008. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Notes that the heartbreak and poverty in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian reveal the universality of Junior’s experiences. Gale Resources
Brill, Susan B. “Sherman (Joseph), (Jr.) Alexie.” Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200007252&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w McFarland, Ron. “Sherman (Joseph), (Jr.) Alexie.” Twentieth-Century American Western Writers: First Series. Ed. Richard H. Cracroft. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 206. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200008364&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w Quirk, Sarah A. “Sherman (Joseph), (Jr.) Alexie.” American Novelists since World War II: Seventh Series. Ed. James R. Giles and Wanda H. Giles. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 278. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Sept. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id= GALE%7CH1200011218&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it= r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Sherman Alexie.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000110878&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Alexie’s Web site, at http://www.fallsapart.com contains information and links on the author, his works, awards, and other relevant topics. Alexie appeared on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, October 28, 2008, to discuss politics and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The video of this appearance is available at http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbertreport-videos/189691/october-28-2008/shermanalexie Alexie was interviewed by Ross Frank for UCSD Guestbook (University of CA San Diego television station programming) on January 31, 2008. The video, in which Alexie speaks about his childhood and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWol PAoDk3g National Public Radio interviewed Alexie on September 21, 2007. The audio file can be found at http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=14586575
For Further Reading
Alexie, Sherman. The Toughest Indian in the World. New York: Grove, 2001. Print. Collection of short stories about the difficulties in balancing Indian heritage and life on and off the reservation. Bruchac, Joseph. The Way. Plain City: Darby Creek, 2007. Print. Story of a young Native American boy who is bullied in his new school. Carvell, Marlene. Who Will Tell My Brother? New York: Hyperion, 2002. Print. The effort to remove offensive Indian mascots from a high school helps a teenage boy learn about his own Indian heritage. Castile, George, and Robert L. Bee, eds. State and Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy. Tucson: U. Arizona P, 1992. Print. Ten essays that explore the reservation system, including historical, political, and economic topics. Esckilsen, Erik. Offsides: A Novel. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print. About Native American soccer player who refuses to play for his new high school unless they get rid of their Indian school mascot. Lomawaima, K. Tsianina, and Teresa L. McCarty. To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. Print. Critical evaluation of U.S. educational policies as experienced by Native Americans during the twentieth century. Peterson, Nancy J. Conversations with Sherman Alexie. Jackson: UP Mississippi, 2009. Print. Interviews from 1993-2007, in which Alexie speaks about his childhood, family, and reservation life. Sheri Karmiol
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5
The Accidental By Ali Smith
W Introduction The Accidental has been hailed as a technical tour-de-force for Ali Smith’s verbal facility, merging of multiple perspectives, and creation of an atmosphere of both mischief and menace. Smith’s accomplishment is considered all the more remarkable for its innovative transformation of a familiar plot device, succinctly described in an Atlantic Monthly review of the novel: “family succumbs to magical charms of irresistible stranger and is forever changed” (Judd and O’Neill). The stranger in question is Amber MacDonald, a bewitching thirty-something vagabond who insinuates herself into the dysfunctional workings of a middle-class British family vacationing for the summer in a less-than-ideal Norfolk country cottage. The alluring but devious Amber draws each member of the Smart family into her web of intrigue: the mother Eve, a best-selling author suffering from writer’s block; the father Michael, Eve’s philandering college-professor husband; and Eve’s two children from a previous marriage, the suicidal seventeen-year-old Magnus and the irritatingly precocious twelve-year-old Astrid. The Accidental is layered in structure, consisting of a series of overlapping descriptions of Amber’s mysterious visit from the differing viewpoints of Eve, Michael, Magnus, and Astrid. Amber permanently alters the family dynamic and, “with eerie cunning, locates the secret latch in each member’s psyche and flips it” (Miller). The novel is thus an exploration of the metamorphosis of identity using the deus ex machina device of the unexpected visitor. But it is also and, according to critics, more importantly, an exploration of the art of storytelling and its capacity to represent meaning. Laura Miller’s review continues: “But as any farmer’s daughter or man who walks into a bar can tell you, the premise isn’t what counts most. Success is a matter of delivery; at least, Ali Smith’s novel The Accidental—winner
of the Whitbread Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize—places all its chips on that bet.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Accidental recalls the Italian film Teorema, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Terence Stamp (mentioned on the book’s first page) as a mysterious vagrant who descends upon an Italian family and, in his just as sudden departure, induces them to confront the emptiness of their bourgeois existence. The Accidental is typical of Smith’s stories in its unconventionality. It is considered postmodernist in its use of metafictional devices that self-consciously fragment the classic structure of the novel in the realist vein. The Accidental is divided into three sections that correspond to the formal elements of the traditional novel: Beginning, Middle, End. But within each of these three sections are four third-person narratives devoted to each of the Smarts, distinctive in voice and perception of Amber. Complicating these disparate viewpoints is Amber’s first-person commentary, also contained in four sections, starting and finishing the novel and forming a bridge between the parts. The effect of these contrasting narratives of similar events is to disrupt traditional notions of objective reality, aligning The Accidental with postmodernist inquiries into the nature of truth and its modes of representation. Smith explained her approach to fiction in an online discussion forum, responding to questions about the competing narrative perspectives in her earlier novel Hotel World (2001), a work similar in structure to The Accidental: “For me there’s no story without voice, no voice without story, and no single story that doesn’t imply another one right next to it, or behind it, or in front of it—there’s always another story. . . . It’s a take on novel-writing that some readers, who like their worlds to be more complete and hermetic and their stories to be more comforting, to
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The Accidental
take a less fragmented or multilogued direction, might find exasperating. It asks a reader to do quite a lot of work, and to participate. For me it’s the thing that drives the novel form” (“Ali Smith”). The classic elements of novelistic structure are turned on end in The Accidental. Writing for the London Sunday Times, Lucy Hughes-Hallett remarked, “Smith has written a proper novel with a beginning, a middle and an end, but turned it into an exuberantly inventive series of variations. At her beginning, each character is facing some kind of dead end. By the end, everything, including the story of the stranger on the doorstep, is ready to begin again.” The conclusion of The Accidental is anything but. The Smarts return from their holiday to find that Amber has emptied their house of its entire contents except an answering machine on which she has left a message directing them to reconcile with their pasts. The empty house—now devoid of any remnants of the Smarts’ past lives—suggests a new beginning rather than an ending.
W Themes None of the Smarts openly questions Amber’s sudden appearance, each one thinking she is somehow connected with another member of the family. In the end, Amber produces a profound change in all of them, breaking them of their complacent acceptance of their “unsettled settled lives” (Clark). Eve, thinking that Amber is just another one of the coeds Michael has seduced, eventually throws her out of the house, but not before Amber has convinced her that she is wasting her talents as a hack writer of imaginary afterlives of ordinary people who died young. Amber flirts outrageously with Michael but ultimately deflates his male ego and makes him conscious of his middle age and waning charms. Amber instead turns her libido on Magnus, whose suicide attempt she narrowly interrupts, persuading Magnus not to punish himself for a school prank that led to the death of a classmate. And Amber befriends the impressionable but jaded Astrid, opening her eyes to the possibility of uncensored interaction with her surroundings. Critics agree that it is the experimental narrative strategies, thematic as well as stylistic, which Smith uses to develop these character transformations that make a success of the novel. Thematically, Smith relies on a variety of intertextual strategies that filter reality through various media and reinforce the theme of the subjectivity of experience. Amber relates her own history through a series of cinematic vignettes that blur the distinction between fantasy and reality and call into question the actuality of her existence. Eve’s biographies, though imagined hypotheticals, are part of a series of books titled “Genuine Article.” Astrid spends her time filming her surroundings before Amber throws her camera over a
MAJOR CHARACTERS MICHAEL FLINT is a pompous professor of English with an addiction to younger women. In the end he loses his teaching job because of his numerous romantic flings with his students. He is married to Eve Smart, a popular writer with two children from her first marriage, Astrid and Magnus. AMBER MACDONALD is the mysterious uninvited guest at the Smarts’ vacation house. She claims car trouble to inveigle her way inside, then dramatically alters the life of each of the family members by drawing them into her curious spell. Eve Smart finally throws her out of the house. ASTRID SMART is Eve Smart’s precocious young daughter, mature beyond her twelve years even before the arrival of Amber. EVE SMART is the wife of Michael Flint, the mother of Astrid and Magnus, and a writer of popular biographies that speculate on the afterlives of people who died young in the World War II era. Eve believes that Amber is one of Michael’s sexual conquests. MAGNUS SMART is Eve’s son, a seventeen-year-old burdened by the guilt of having been involved in a school prank that claimed the life of a fellow student. He tries to commit suicide but is apprehended by Amber, who then becomes his lover.
bridge. And the dead girl that Michael obsesses over killed herself as a result of a widely circulated e-mail that displayed her head attached to the naked body of another woman.
W Style Stylistically, Smith also uses varying intertextual strategies appropriate to recording each character’s method of apprehending reality. Astrid’s story is told through stream-of-consciousness technique, Magnus’s through a series of repetitions that seem to mimic the formulae coursing through his math-whiz brain. Michael at first holds forth as if lecturing to a classroom full of undergraduates but midway through the novel his narrative changes to the hackneyed and confused Byronic sonnets he writes documenting his infatuation with Amber. Eve turns the Genuine Article interview formula inward on herself, but refuses to answer her own most relevant questions. These narrative constructions are meant to call attention to themselves as deliberate strategies, and the writerly playfulness extends to the language as well, imbuing the novel with what Steven Poole describes as “an infectious sense of fun and invention.” The Atlantic review concluded that Smith’s style itself was the
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The Accidental
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ali Smith is a highly acclaimed author of unconventional novels, short stories, and plays. She is known for her exuberant wordplay and inventive narrative techniques calling into question the reliability of truth and representation. Twice shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, for the novels Hotel World (2001) and The Accidental (2005), the latter was awarded the prestigious Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. Smith taught for a time at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, and now writes full time from her home in Cambridge, England, also contributing articles to such newspapers as the Guardian, the Scotsman, and the Times Literary Supplement.
intended focus of the novel: “The real story, though, is the language. . . . Smith maintains a playful, poetic idiom of startling and clarifying emotional power, so that the prose, in its logical beauty and its surprisingness, serves as an analogue of the enchantment dispensed by Amber. It’s
an enormous technical accomplishment that reminds us of the difference between linguistic hocus-pocus and real writing; more important, it casts a spell.”
W Critical Reception As if in response to Smith’s commentary in the online discussion forum quoted above, Neel Mukherjee affirmed the success of her project to engage the reader in the performance of her writing: “There are no clear-cut answers, only teasing hints. It is a kind of writing that is nothing short of an enormous vote of confidence in her readers’ imagination, an invitation to a true, joyous interaction.” Most critics of the novel have applauded Smith’s inventive narrative strategies and unpredictable language play. The commentary of London Telegraph reviewer Alex Clark is representative. Describing the place of the novel within the whole of Smith’s output, Clark declared, “True to form . . . it is a novel grounded on the idea of fracture—a fissiparous, splintered artefact that has little to do with willful gimmickry and everything to do with its author’s delight in story-telling, linguistic exuberance and ambitious, frequently painful truthseeking.” But a few reviewers were not enthusiastic
Ali Smith, author of The Accidental, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
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The Accidental
In The Accidental, a British family spending the summer in a countryside cottage is visited by a beautiful young stranger who forever alters their lives. witchcraft/Shutterstock.com
about Smith’s privileging of experimentation over the demands of a traditionally developed plot. For example, Eoin Cunningham complained that “the main feeling one takes from this novel is that a very clever writer has decided to ‘do a Shakespeare’ and borrow a stock situation, characters and plot to use as a framework from which their experimental literary riffs may take flight. That would be fine if it worked, but The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story.” In discussing Smith’s characterizations of the Smart family, most reviewers have singled out Astrid for special praise. For example, Yvonne Zipp called Astrid “the book’s crowning glory” and Poole averred, “The only problem with the brilliance of Astrid as a fictional creation is that it rather makes you wish that the whole novel was hers.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Ali Smith.” encompassculture. British Council Arts. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Clark, Alex. “Fresh Light on Amber and Eve.” Telegraph [London], 29 May 2005. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Cunningham, Eoin. Rev. of The Accidental, by Ali Smith. Bookslut. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. “Fiction: The Accidental by Ali Smith.” Sunday Times [London], 22 May 2005. Reviews of Books.com. Amazon. Judd, Elizabeth, and Joseph O’Neill. “Finds and Flops.” Atlantic, 297.1 (Jan.-Feb. 2006): 173. Miller, Laura. “Who’s That Girl?” New York Times Book Review (5 Feb. 2006): 14 (L). Mukherjee, Neel. Review of The Accidental, by Ali Smith. Sunday Times [London], 1 Sept. 2005. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Poole, Steven. “The Genuine Article.” Guardian, 11 June 2005. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Zipp, Yvonne. “The Guest Who Throws a Family into Crisis.” Christian Science Monitor, 10 Jan. 2006. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Accidental, by Ali Smith. Kirkus Reviews, 73.22 (15 Nov. 2005): 1209. Brief plot review concluding, “It’s not so much about the story as it is about the virtuosity of the telling.”
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The Accidental
Rev. of The Accidental, by Ali Smith. metacritic.com. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Provides access to numerous reviews of The Accidental from leading sources, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the London Review of Books, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. Bailey, Paul. “House Breaker.” Independent [London], 10 June 2005. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. High praise for The Accidental, calling the book a “page-turner,” Amber a “brilliant creation,” and Michael’s sonnet narrative an “isolated tour de force.” Dervin, Dan. “Unexpected Visitor Alters Family Life Already Dysfunctional.” Free Lance-Star [Fredericksburg, VA], 15 July 2007. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Commends the novel’s spirit of innovation. Schaub, Michael. “Surprise Visit Upends a Family’s Vacation.” San Francisco Chronicle 8 Jan. 2006. SFGate.com. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Remarks upon Smith’s successful manipulation of multiple viewpoints, also praising Smith’s humor and creation of a sense of mystery. Whitney, Scott. Rev. of The Accidental, Audiobook. Booklist, 102.18 (15 May 2006): 64. Finds that the ensemble cast successfully re-creates the “hypnotic appeal” of the print version. Winter, Jessica. “Amber Alert.” Village Voice, 27 Dec. 2005. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Review of The Accidental that looks at the book within the context of Smith’s other stories and her penchant for metafiction. Gale Resources
“Ali Smith.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, vols. 88, 159, and 199.
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Open Web Sources
The hyperlink “CultureBooksAli Smith” at the website for the London Guardian contains a useful summary of Smith’s life and works, with a suggested reading plan and another link to reviews of her latest stories. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/11/ alismith For Further Reading
The Man Who Came to Dinner. Dir. William Keighley. Perf. Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Richard Travis, Jimmy Durante, and Billie Burke. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD. Comedy about a famous radio wit and cultural critic who takes over a small-town Ohio household after injuring himself in a fall on the ice outside the home. The fractures heal but the uninvited guest fakes the extent of his injuries to prolong his stay. Smith, Ali. The Seer. London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Print. A comedy of manners founded on a premise similar to The Accidental, concerning an Edinburgh couple whose life is completely disrupted by the arrival of the woman’s sister. In the play, the Amber figure, the sister, is even more a force of anarchy but the effect is one of farce. Teorema. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Perf. Terence Stamp, Silvana Magana, Massimo Grotto, Anne Wiazemsky, and Laura Betti. Mondo Home Entertainment, 2003. DVD. Film with a plot very similar to The Accidental and actually referenced in the novel. Terence Stamp plays the charming stranger in the movie, seducing all the members of a wealthy Italian family before mysteriously disappearing. This DVD is in Italian with English subtitles. Janet Mullane
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Across a Hundred Mountains By Reyna Grande
W Introduction Across a Hundred Mountains (2006) is Reyna Grande’s first novel. Largely autobiographical, the book opens with a poverty-stricken family living in a cardboard shack on the outskirts of a small Mexican village. Juana is a young girl whose father, Miguel, has left his family to find work en el otro lado—“on the other side.” He finds a “coyote” to take him to America, promising to send money to his family. After two years, the family has heard nothing from Miguel. Juana loses her baby sister in a flood, and the family is deeply in debt to the village’s loan shark. Juana, convinced that her father is across the mountains, leaves her mother to find him. Juana’s story is intercut with a narrative from the point of view of Adelina Vasquez, a Mexican girl who is a social worker in Los Angeles. Adelina is traveling to Mexico in order to discover the truth about her own father’s disappearance nineteen years earlier, and to get away from her pimp/ boyfriend. Traveling in opposite directions on similar quests, the two women meet in a Tijuana jail, where Adelina agrees to help Juana find the “coyote” who brought her father across the border and into the United States. While on the surface, Across a Hundred Mountains chronicles the personal journeys of two women, it also considers the larger issue of immigration and examines the poverty and destitution experienced by scores of Mexican families who risk their lives trying to escape their situations by crossing the U.S. border.
W Literary and Historical Context
Across a Hundred Mountains takes as its subject matter the contemporary phenomenon of Mexican immigration
into the United States. Although the book is a fictional account of immigration, Grande drew heavily upon her own experiences. Born in Mexico in 1975 and left behind to be raised by her grandmother while her parents immigrated to the United States to work, she came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant at the age of nine. Unable to find books that she could relate to, Grande has said, “I wrote this story because all of the books that I read, especially those by Latino authors, never quite captured my own experience,” adding, “A lot of books deal with the children of immigrants—what they go through and their identity as U.S.-born Latinos. I always felt a little left out because I wasn’t born here, and these stories weren’t reflecting my personal experience” (Rappaport). Rather than discuss the political implications of the immigration issue, Grande personalizes and humanizes the poverty and desperation faced by the thousands of Mexican immigrants coming over the border each year. Speaking about her own experience, Grande has commented, “The poverty—that’s very real to my experience. . . . My sister in Mexico had a habit of picking up things off the ground . . . and eating them, just because we didn’t have any food” (Rappaport). The border’s tendency to break families is illustrated in the novel as well as in Grande’s experience. Her father left for the United States, followed by her mother. When Grande crossed the border after them, several years later, her parents were divorced. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, “She has no memory of her parents ever living together. And when she arrived in the United States, she lived with her father, and although her mother was just 20 minutes away, she only saw her once or twice a month,” adding, “Grande said those childhood experiences reverberate in her writing” (Coca). In the book, Juana’s family is broken when her father leaves—an event that is a catalyst for further fractures and disconnects within the family, ultimately leading to Juana’s own journey and self-discovery.
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Across a Hundred Mountains
MAJOR CHARACTERS DON ELÍAS is a money lender from whom Miguel has to borrow in order to pay the “coyote” to ferry him across the border. When Lupe cannot pay him, he demands that she sleep with him, starting her descent into depression, alcoholism, and insanity. JUANA GARCIA is a poor Mexican girl whose father leaves for the United States and disappears. Two years later, Juana goes after him and, in Tijuana, meets Adelina, who agrees to help her across the border. LUPE GARCIA is Juana’s mother. After her husband leaves for the United States, she loses three of her children and finds herself deeply in debt to Don Elías. She spirals into alcoholism and madness, inspiring Juana to leave the village to find her father. MIGUEL GARCIA is Juana’s father. He borrows money from Don Elías to pay a “coyote” to take him across the Mexico/ U.S. border. His intention is to support his family, but he is not heard from again. ADELINA VASQUEZ is a social worker from Los Angeles who is traveling to Mexico to discover the truth about her father’s disappearance nineteen years earlier. She meets Juana in a Tijuana jail and agrees to help her on her quest.
W Themes Cultural identity assumes a fluid nature in Across a Hundred Mountains. Upon crossing the border, people’s identities shift and change. When characters enter a country that does not want them, they become anonymous and alone. Families on the Mexican side of the border, stuck in a cycle of poverty and violence, are torn apart as a result of members leaving. Despite his intention to effect a change by earning more money for the family, when Juana’s father leaves, the family’s misfortunes intensify. Grande assigns an almost mythical quality to the journey from Mexico to the United States by referring to the destination as “the other side.” She equates the journey from Mexico to the United States with a kind of rebirth, where new identities are acquired, but the novel shows that ultimately cultural identity is inescapable. The theme of cultural identity is extended by Grande’s treatment of duality in the novel. Juana and Adelina represent two sides of the same coin, each on a journey to discover themselves. Early in the novel, Juana meets a man who, speaking of the moon, tells her, “‘It has two faces. She only shows one face to the world. Even though it changes shape constantly, it’s always the same face we see. But her second face, her second face remains hidden in darkness. That’s the face no one can see. People
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Mexican immigrants enter the United States illegally. Across a Hundred Mountains features the story of a young Mexican girl trying to locate her father, who disappears after sneaking into the United States to find work. Spencer Grant/Photo Researchers, Inc.
call it the dark side of the moon. Two identities. Two sides of a coin.’” (Grande 25). Rather than maintaining one identity, the novel illustrates the modernist notion of a fractured, multiplicity of identities.
W Style Grande’s narrative in Across a Hundred Mountains shifts between her two main characters. The book opens with a section told from Juana’s point of view. Héctor Torres, associate professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, has commented, “‘Adelina’ opens the narrations, situating the reader amid the search for the lost/absent father. The reader finds Adelina looking for the lost bones of her father. Nineteen years have passed, the narrator tells us, since the search began: ‘Too many years thinking he had abandoned them.’ Grande leaves her reader suspended over this abyss of narrative time and the corpse Adelina’s search has uncovered” (Torres). Across a Hundred Mountains has a narrative structure that TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Across a Hundred Mountains
manipulates time by situating Juana in a linear, chronological trajectory, while Adelina, generally moving forward through her time, is simultaneously allowed to move backward, through Juana’s time. As Torres observes, “Grande plays with narrative time, making it move backwards and forwards with each name until they collide, unsettling the formula of self-identity, A=A” (Torres). Grande uses deceptively simple language to tell her characters’ stories, with short, sometimes clipped sentences. This makes for a fast-paced story, and also gives the reader a sense of the complicated emotional states occupied by people living very simple lives and dealing with very basic human needs. One critic has suggested that, “Across a Hundred Mountains . . . maintains its power throughout because Reyna Grande keeps control over her language and does not feel a need to trumpet emotionally volatile scenes of alcohol and drug abuse, rape, poverty and infant mortality” (Olivas).
W Critical Reception Garnering critical acclaim, Grande’s novel won an American Book Award (2007) and an El Premio Aztlán Literary Award (2006). Called “a breathtaking debut from a young writer who has a remarkable literary future before her” (Olivas), Across a Hundred Mountains has been praised for its sparse language and honest portrayal of the realities of Mexico’s poor and of the immigration experience. One critic observed that the novel is written “In evocative language that never falls into the trap of bathos,” which contributes to “a striking and moving story” (Olivas). Another, calling the book “a powerful story that balances cultural trauma with reterritorialization and cultural renewal,” calls attention to the book’s “disarmingly simple prose” (Torres). Many critics note that Grande drew on her own life experiences while writing the novel, one commenting that the fact that “the novel is filled with details drawn from Grande’s own life adds immeasurably to the poignancy of the story” (Rappaport), but Grande maintains that the work is not entirely autobiographical—merely informed by her experience with Mexican poverty and as an undocumented immigrant. Commenting on Grande’s use of autobiography, one critic noted, “While acknowledging that the process draws from her personal experience, [Grande] was also quite candid about her disposition to depart from it and make up a tale free to bend the codes of authority housed under the name of realism” (Torres). While the vast majority of critics gave Across a Hundred Mountains rave reviews, some registered complaints about the writing, accusing the novel of having such shortcomings as “stereotyped characters and wildly melodramatic plotting” (Reese). Grande has been accused of writing with a melodramatic bent in the past. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that “Grande . . . said her melodramatic bent was understandable considering she’s
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Reyna Grande was born into poverty in rural Mexico and crossed the border to live with her father in Los Angeles when she was eight years old. At the urging of an English teacher at Pasadena City College, Grande attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing in 1999. Her senior project in UCSC’s Literature Department was the first eighty pages of Across a Hundred Mountains. After graduating, Grande was named a 2003 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow, which enabled her to enroll in free writing classes at UCLA. Now an American citizen, she lives in Los Angeles, teaches English as a second language, frequently visits schools to talk about writing and her books, and continues to write fiction.
from Mexico. . . . ‘Mexicans watch soap operas,’ [she] said with a laugh” (Coca). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Coca, Rick. “Beyond Melodrama First-Time Novelist’s Fiction Underscored with Personal Truths.” Los Angeles Daily News, 2006. HighBeam Research. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Grande, Reyna. Across a Hundred Mountains. New York: Washington Square Press: Atria, 2007. Print. Olivas, Daniel A. Rev. of Across a Hundred Mountains, by Reyna Grande. Latino Stories.com. El Paso Times, 16 Apr. 2006. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Rappaport, Scott. “Alumni Profile: Across a Hundred Mountains.” UC Santa Cruz Review. UC Santa Cruz. 2007. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Reese, Jennifer. Rev. of Across a Hundred Mountains, by Reyna Grande. Entertainment Weekly, 23 June 2006. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Torres, Héctor. “Across a Hundred Mountains.” Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, 2008. HighBeam Research. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Across a Hundred Mountains, by Reyna Grande. Color Lines Magazine, 2006. HighBeam Research. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Brief review of Across a Hundred Mountains praising Grande’s voice and use of detail. Shank, Jenny. “Reyna Grande’s Across a Hundred Mountains.” New West Books and Writers, 16 Aug.
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2007. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Long review of the book that includes notes on the author, plot summary, and criticism of Grande’s characterization. Gale Resources
“Reyna Grande.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Grande’s website featuring a biography, speaking engagements, sections dedicated to her books, and contact information is at http://www.reynagrande. com/index.htm Grande’s publisher’s website includes a biography, interviews, reviews, and excerpts from her novels. http:// authors.simonandschuster.com/Reyna-Grande/ 27097999 An interview with the author in which she discusses her books and her career is at http://thedarkphantom. wordpress.com/2009/03/31/on-the-spotlight-
reyna-grande-author-of-across-a-hundred-moun tains/. For Further Reading
Grande, Reyna. Dancing with Butterflies: A Novel. New York: Washington Square Press, 2009. Print. Grande’s second novel, told from the perspectives of four different women in a Los Angeles dance company. Pérez, Ramón “Tianguis.” Trans. Dick J. Reavis. Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1991. Print. Autobiographical account that deals with the economy and culture of the United States from the perspective of an undocumented immigrant. Zucker, Norman L., and Naomi Flink. Desperate Crossings: Seeking Refuge in America. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Print. Political and social analysis of refugee policies since the end of the Cold War. Discusses the 1980s exodus from Central America and the Haitian and Cuban exoduses of 1994. Todd Breijak
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TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Adventures of Vela By Albert Wendt
W Introduction Albert Wendt’s The Adventures of Vela begins as Alapati, the narrator, meets the immortal Samoan storyteller Vela when they are assigned adjacent hospital beds. Vela, who is emaciated, dying, and desirous of death, anoints the narrator as his chronicler in English. Vela is three hundred years old, so the story of his life spans that of the colonial period of Samoan history. The novel is both a revisionary account of Samoa from the point of view of the colonized and a set of meditations on what it means to write history. The Adventures of Vela, which was written over a period of nearly two decades, first appeared in 1995 as a long poem in Wendt’s collection Photographs. It is the longest novel in verse to come out of New Zealand and the Pacific, and Wendt refers to it as his life’s work. The novel won the Commonwealth Prize for literature in 2010.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Adventures of Vela is set in Samoa, a chain of volcanic islands in the South Pacific Ocean about 2,200 miles south of Hawaii. Under colonial rule from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Samoan islands were split into two sections at the turn of the twentieth century. The eastern islands, today referred to as American Samoa, became territories of the United States in 1904. The western islands became known as Western Samoa (now just Samoa) and were controlled first by Germany and then by New Zealand beginning in 1914. New Zealand administered Western Samoa under the auspices of the League of Nations and then as a United Nations trusteeship. A resistance movement to both German and New Zealand rule, known as the Mau (“strongly held view”) movement, helped to edge the islands toward
independence on January 1, 1962, making it the first Pacific Island country to gain government autonomy. The Adventures of Vela, like Wendt’s previous work, falls in the category of postcolonial literature, a genre that reacts to, and usually against, the discourse of colonization. These works typically offer a critique of the ideological and historical effects of colonial rule in countries that are now independent. Postcolonial literature is also concerned with both the cultural and political policies implemented during colonial rule and the way that those policies changed the native cultures that existed before colonization. Works in the genre often critique classical English language texts that carry racist or colonial undertones through the process of “writing back.” Writing for the Journal of Pacific History, critic Paul Sharrad describes Wendt’s Samoan fiction as “a corrective reclamation of literary history” that counters the “false and demeaning images of Islanders and island life perpetuated in outsider writing and taught in colonial schools.” As Wendt says in a Dominion Post interview with Diana Dekker, the English programs of his own school days were structured “exactly like they were in England. . . . No New Zealand literature at all. I think they started teaching New Zealand literature in the 1970s.”
W Themes The Adventures of Vela fits strongly within the postcolonial tradition and, like Wendt’s earlier novels, struggles to provide a space in which the oral traditions of Samoa’s past can be accommodated, remembered, and reformed while resisting the reproduction of a homogenous “tradition”—a term, Wendt declared, that “means nothing to me” (Mallon). As Wendt notes in his essay “Towards a New Oceania”—often referred to as the founding document of Pacific studies—he is wary of the nostalgic desire to resurrect an imagined precolonial
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The Adventures of Vela
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALAPATI, the unnamed narrator of The Adventures of Vela, meets Vela in a hospital and consents to chronicle his life. Vela comes in and out of his life over the course of several decades, and the narrative of Vela’s past is interspersed with sections describing the relationship between Alapati and Vela and Alapati’s family life. VELA, the immortal storyteller whose life is nominally the subject of the novel, conscripts Alapati to tell his life story. The parts of the novel that take place in the past are mainly a chronology of his life.
culture, instead encouraging New Zealand to embrace cultural and racial complexity as a strength rather than a weakness. As such, the novel does not attempt to revive a pure Samoan past but rather is influenced by the idea of “hybridity,” the central concept in postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s argument in The Location of Culture. Bhabha contends that mixed cultural traditions present a challenge to colonial regimes specifically and to essentialist cultural beliefs and forms generally. Writers such as Wendt, Salman Rushdie, and Derek Walcott depict modern-day ethnic cultures that are strengthened by containing a mix of past and present and of Eastern and Western cultural traditions. In an interview with Vili Hereniko and David Hanlon in Contemporary Pacific, Wendt said, “It’s important that we decolonialize our histories. . . . In school, our histories were taught as prehistory or folk history.” The Adventures of Vela exhibits this desire to decolonize history by bringing the mythic figure from the prehistoric past into the present day and merging aspects of Samoan oral traditions with the literate culture of the present. Vela’s life span is long enough that his biography is itself the story of this endeavor, and his difficult friendship with the narrator is a metaphor for the attempt to provide a cultural form in which otherwise irreconcilable entities (mythic and historical, profane and ordinary, body and soul, past and present) can coexist. As Helen Watson White in the Sunday Star Times puts it, The Adventures of Vela is “storytelling about storytelling,” a novel that champions the possibility that many different voices can produce a more robust and complete version of truth and history than any one speaker can. The indefinite structure of the novel, which vacillates between a number of voices—not all of which are even identifiable but all of which speak with equal authority—suggests that even gods are simply additional voices witnessing events as they pass. The volatility of the text encourages multiple voices and rejects the cultural homogeneity that Wendt criticizes in “Towards a New Oceania.”
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A man in traditional Samoan dress. In The Adventures of Vela, Alapati meets Vela, a 300-year-old Samoan storyteller who appoints him to be his chronicler in English. ª Bill Bachmann / Alamy
W Style The Adventures of Vela, which White refers to as a “postmodern potpourri,” is composed of a mix of styles (poetry, short story, and images); vocabularies (lyric, profane, modern, and archaic); and ideas (religious, cultural, and political). The discontinuous narrative, fragmented verse forms, lack of novelistic conventions such as clear characterization and identifiable speaking styles, absence of markers of temporal and geographical placement, and use of Samoan words can make the novel slow and frustrating to read. Although the book is best described as a hybrid or mixed form comprising elements of poetry, song, drama, and folktales, in an interview with Pacific Starmap, Wendt refers to it as a “novel in verse” rather than a poem. Novels, he says in his interview with Hereniko and Hanlon, “present the most complex histories that have been written . . . [because] you try to bring out the complexity in the characters,” and the “character” of a country is depicted through the behavior and character of the people who inhabit it. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Adventures of Vela
Structurally, The Adventures of Vela resembles an epic or long poem. Like an epic poem, it is divided into “books”—“Beginnings,” “The Chronicles of Nafanua,” “Travel,” and “The Last Adventure”—each of which has several chapters. Paula Green, writing for New Zealand Listener, calls the novel “a sumptuous feast that brings to mind the resonating layers of Dante’s Divine Comedy or Boccaccio’s Decameron.” The piece, however, more closely resembles a modern epic poem or long poem than the Renaissance epic poem represented by Boccaccio’s and Dante’s works. The Adventures of Vela is formally similar to modernist works such as Ezra Pound’s The Cantos and Mina Loy’s Songs to Johannes. Its structure is discontinuous, composed of fragments of verse and phrases, and the difficulty caused by the collagelike arrangement of the poem is accentuated by the fact that most readers are not familiar with the mythic background of the novel, nor will they recognize the words and phrases in Samoan that are used throughout. Despite Wendt’s description of The Adventures of Vela as a novel, the book does not have a continuous narrative. It covers the fictional Vela’s lifetime, from precolonial days to the present, but it bounces around in time. The book begins with Alapati’s first encounter with Vela, but the point of view of the novel alternates between sections that are clearly in the voice of the narrator, sections in which the narrator is unmistakably telling Vela’s story, others in which Vela seems to be telling his own story, and still others in which it is simply unclear who is speaking. The work melds the styles of oral storytelling, novelistic interest in characters, and the fragmentary form of the avant-garde poem into a structure that integrates the past and the present.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Albert Wendt was born in 1939 in Apia, Western Samoa, where he spent his childhood and high school years. He attended Victoria University and, after receiving an MA in history, returned to Samoa to teach history and literature. In the mid-1970s he began teaching at the University of the South Pacific and became a leading figure in the study of indigenous literature of the South Pacific Islands, or Oceania. Wendt, who was the first professor in New Zealand from one of the Pacific Islands, remains influential in the field of postcolonial literature and a strong advocate for native Oceanic writers. He has been particularly involved in supporting efforts to publish and distribute literary works by indigenous and native authors in New Zealand, Australia, and abroad. Wendt, a celebrated novelist, poet, and literary scholar, writes mainly about his native Samoa. His best-known novel, Leaves of the Banyon Tree (1979), won a New Zealand Book Award in 1980. He is the author of the novels Songs for the Return Home (1973), Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree (1974), Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979), Ola (1991), and The Adventures of Vela, as well as of collections of short stories and volumes of poetry. He has edited two major anthologies of contemporary Pacific literature—Lali (1979) and Nuanua (1995)—and volumes on contemporary poetry from Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. Two of his novels, Songs for the Return Home and Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree, have been made into feature films.
whenever it occurred” to be “a merciful spell from considering bodily concerns.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
W Critical Reception The Adventures of Vela has garnered little attention in the press, though it won the prestigious Commonwealth Prize in 2010, edging out such internationally renowned writers as Peter Carey and J. M. Coetzee. One of the few substantial reviews of the novel, written by Green, lauds the book’s origins in “both indigenous oral traditions and Western literature.” Green, a poet from New Zealand, appreciates Wendt’s ability to bring the mythic and the real together, putting “flesh on character beyond what one might expect from the legacy of mythological narrative.” She remarks that Vela and Nafanua, the Samoan goddess of war, “are neither sanitized nor stereotyped but step out of lines that circulate grit and vulgarity as much as they do the rhythms of the sea.” The language of The Adventures of Vela—which, as Green points out, is not “sanitized”—was a concern for White, who found the “surfacing of Wendt the lyricist
Works Cited
“Albert Wendt.” Pacific Starmap. Pacific Starmap, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print. Dekker, Diana. “The Adventurous Albert Wendt.” Dominion Post 1 Aug. 2009: 20. Print. Green, Paula. “Layer by Layer.” Rev. of The Adventures of Vela, by Albert Wendt. New Zealand Listener 8-14 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. Hereniko, Vili, and David Hanlon. “An Interview with Albert Wendt.” Contemporary Pacific 5.1 (1993): 112-31. Print. Mallon, Sean. “Against Tradition.” Contemporary Pacific 22.2 (2010): 362-81. Print. Sharrad, Paul. “Albert Wendt and the Problem of History.” Journal of Pacific History 37.1 (2002): 109-16. Print.
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The Adventures of Vela
Wendt, Albert. “Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body.” Span 42-3 (1996): 15-29. Print. ———. “Towards a New Oceania.” MANA Review 1 (1976): 1. Print. White, Helen Watson. “Free-Running Verse and Stories about Storytelling.” Sunday Star Times [Auckland] 26 July 2009: 8. Print.
The Emory University English Department’s Postcolonial Studies site provides a critical biography and bibliography on the author, as well as an analysis of the themes in Wendt’s early work. http://www. english.emory.edu/Bahri/Wendt.html
Criticism and Reviews
The New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre features links to poems and poetic segments available online, in addition to a number of audio files of Wendt reading his own work. http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/ authors/wendt/
Ellis, Juniper. “‘The Techniques of Storytelling’: An Interview with Albert Wendt.” Ariel 28.3 (1997), 7184. Print. In this long interview, Wendt describes how his ideas about storytelling, form, and narration have changed over his twenty-year writing career.
The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre offers a history of Samoa until 1918 and has, among its listings, a page on “Myths and Legends of Ancient Samoa.” http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-TuvAcco. html
Newton, John. “Challenging Pacific Poems.” Rev. of Photographs, by Albert Wendt. Evening Post [Wellington] 25 Aug. 1995: 5. Print. Newton’s review of Wendt’s 1995 volume Photographs describes the collection as “various, more formally ambitious [than his previous two books of poetry], and more abrasive.”
The Web site of the University of Auckland Library includes a comprehensive bibliography of Wendt’s literary and critical works. http://www.nzetc.org/ tm/scholarly/tei-TuvAcco.html
Additional Resources
Sharrad, Paul. Albert Wendt and Pacific Literature: Circling the Void. Manchester: MUP/Auckland University Press, 2003. Print. Sharrad’s study, the first monograph on Wendt, examines his position as one of the foremost international writers of Pacific literature and reads his work in the context of his own critical writing. ———. “Still Life Moving: Albert Wendt’s Photographs.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 38:1 (1998): 56-68. Print. In this long review, the leading scholar on Wendt calls the “reconstruction in ‘The Adventures of Vela’ of traditional oral epic as verse narrative . . . a new element in Wendt’s poetry, and a very significant one.” Gale Resources
“Albert Wendt.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Nov. 2010. “Albert Wendt.” Contemporary Poets. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Nov. 2010. Open Web Sources
Wendt’s personal and professional Web site contains biographical and bibliographic information on the author. http://www.albertwendt.com/Home_ Page_Albert_Wendt.html On its Web site the New Zealand Book Council reprints the entry on Wendt from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature and offers additional biographical data. http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/wri ters/wendta.html
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For Further Reading
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Print. The encyclopedic format of the revised edition of this volume makes it a helpful introduction. It can be paired with Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin’s exhaustive sourcebook The Post-colonial Studies Reader (2006). Craig, Robert. The Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology. New York: Greenwood, 1989. Print. This alphabetized resource on Polynesian mythology includes the names and concepts from Samoan mythology that Wendt draws on in The Adventures of Vela. Craig’s introduction offers a useful historical overview of Samoa and its myths. Goetzfridt, Nicholas J. Indigenous Literature of Oceania: A Survey of Criticism and Interpretation. Westport: Greenwood, 1995. Print. Goetzfridt’s collection of critical and interpretive sources on literature of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia covers poets, dramatists, and novelists beginning in the 1960s and focuses on academic criticism. Each entry is well annotated, and there is an extensive section on Wendt. Sharrad, Paul, and Karen M. Peacock. “Albert Wendt: Bibliography.” Contemporary Pacific 15.2 (2003): 378-420. Project MUSE. Web. 4 Nov. 2010. The compilation of sources on Wendt, compiled by prominent Wendt scholar Sharrad and updated in 1993 by Peacock, touts itself as the most complete collection of references on Wendt to date. Teaiwa, Teresia, and Selina Tusitala Marsh. “Albert Wendt’s Critical and Creative Legacy in Oceania: An Introduction.” Contemporary Pacific 22:2 (2010): TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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233-48. Print. This issue of Contemporary Pacific is devoted to Wendt’s work as a novelist, a poet, an intellectual, and a mentor. Teaiwa and Marsh’s introduction gives a brief but helpful overview of Wendt’s life and importance in the field of Pacific literatures and provides short annotations on the articles included in the rest of the issue.
Wendt, Albert. Photographs. Auckland: AUP, 1995. Print. A forty-page portion of The Adventures of Vela appears as the centerpiece of this book of mostly autobiographical poems.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Jenny Ludwig
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The Age of Orphans By Laleh Khadivi
W Introduction The first novel in Laleh Khadivi’s planned trilogy about three generations of Kurdish men from Iran, The Age of Orphans begins in 1921 with the brutal massacre of Kurdish guerrillas by the Persian military in the Zagros Mountains. Only one Kurd survives, an eight-year-old boy—witness to the slaughter of his father, uncles, and cousins—who is then adopted by the soldiers and conscripted into the shah’s army. Eight years later he is renamed Reza Khourdi in honor of the king, Reza Shah Pahlavi, notorious for a modernization campaign that involved the silencing of all ethnic minorities disloyal to the cause of nationalism. Reza Khourdi distinguishes himself in the army of the new Iran by virtue of his contempt for the Kurds, rises to the rank of captain, and, with his Westernized Tehrani wife, is sent back to his hometown, Kermanshah, to enforce the shah’s rule over his own people. The return to Kermanshah forces Reza Khourdi to confront his past and the suppression of his birth heritage, and his carefully crafted persona begins to crack. Khadivi’s portrait of his fracturing self has been frequently praised for its psychological depth as well as for its broader implications regarding the meaning of nationhood in cultural clashes and ethnic confrontations around the world. The novel has also been admired as a brutally graphic yet poetic conjuring of a world that no longer exists.
W Literary and Historical Context
Born in Esfahan, Iran, of Persian and Kurdish heritage, Khadivi was only a small child when her family decided to leave the country at the start of the revolution and the ascendancy of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 2002 Khadivi began to research the history of the Kurds, the
largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. The Age of Orphans focuses on the time of the creation of the modern Iranian state. The Kurds were traditionally a nomadic people of goat and sheep herders living in the mountainous regions of southwest Asia. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I created new nation-states—Iraq, Kuwait, Syria—but left the Kurds segmented between Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. In 1925 Reza Shah Pahlavi, a former military officer and prime minister, became king of Persia. His monarchy was a centralized, authoritarian regime demanding that tribal populations pledge loyalty to the shah. This meant that the Kurds were to be stripped of their autonomy, including their languages and customs, in the name of progress. But the Kurds were more defiant than other tribes. Their resistance to assimilation resulted in the brutal battles depicted in The Age of Orphans, which takes place during the reigns of both Reza Shah Pahlavi (19251941) and his son and successor, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979). It has been argued that the country’s name change in the 1930s was influenced by Nazis friendly with the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who suggested that the Persian word for the nation, Iran, a cognate of “Aryan,” was preferable to the Westernized version, Persia, and would signal a new beginning free of Russian and British influence.
W Themes Natsumi Ajiki observed in a review of The Age of Orphans in the Kurdish Herald, “Ms. Khadivi’s utmost interest in her novel is to tell a story about a man who, in his lifetime, is born into a tribe and dies in a nation, as a citizen of that nation.” The statement underscores the importance of the theme of identity in the book, which explores the toll of self-denial and the dangers of conflicted allegiances. Reza Khourdi’s fierce denunciation of his Kurdish self destroys his soul, a reality he confronts
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The Age of Orphans
in Kermanshah as memories of his mother and father mingle with images of his savagery in battle and his continuing suppression of the Kurds. Khadivi writes of Reza in the novel, “As a soldier he will be deftly divided through the head, as a murderer cut open through the heart and as an old man split so thoroughly that one side of him dies first, unbeknownst and long before the other, damned to serve in hell as a half a man” (qtd. in Al-Shawaf). Throughout the story, Khadivi uses a pattern of oppositions in developing the two sides of Reza Khourdi’s identity. The name given him in the Iranian army is doubly significant, “Reza” having been chosen in honor of the shah, “Khourdi” to denote his ethnic heritage. As Reza seeks to distinguish himself in the army, impulses of self-preservation collide with feelings of immense self-loathing, yet he continues on his brutal crusade, hoping to erase every element of the Kurd within him. His Tehrani wife, Meena, is everything he is not— educated, urban, Westernized; their station in Kermanshah is everything she abhors—rural, backward, tribal. The spiritual torture Reza begins to experience in Kermanshah derives from the conflicts between traditional and modern ways, the Kurd within him and the Iranian
MAJOR CHARACTERS BABA is Reza Khourdi’s beloved father, pummeled to death by the Shah’s army before Reza’s eyes. As an older man, Reza is haunted by his banishment of Baba to a “damp purgatory of forget and never-remember.” THE BOY is the name by which Khadivi uses to refer to Reza before he is orphaned and conscripted into the Shah’s army. MEENA is Reza’s Westernized wife from Tehran. She is vocal about her miserable confinement in Kermanshah and vies with Reza for dominance over the local Kurdish people and their many children. Meena is murdered by Reza. REZA KHOURDI is the main character in the novel, almost maniacal in his quest to distinguish himself in the Shah’s army by demonstrating his hatred for his own people, the Kurds. His programmatic denial of his heritage becomes a source of anguish, and his Kurdish-hating façade begins to crack after he is sent to subdue the Kurds in his home region.
The sun rises over the Zagros Mountains, the site of a violent slaughter that opens the novel The Age of Orphans. ª Lee Carruthers / Alamy
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The Age of Orphans
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Laleh Khadivi is a documentary filmmaker and writer of fiction. Prior to the critical success of her debut novel, The Age of Orphans, she received much recognition for the film 900, an exposé of a women’s prison in Louisiana narrated by Susan Sarandon. Khadivi was a creative writing fellow at Emory University, 2007-2009, and has published short fiction in various magazines. The Age of Orphans earned Khadivi a Whiting Writers’ Award and is the first installment of a projected trilogy about the oppression of the Kurds in Iran.
without. As he grows older, Reza’s anguish is manifested in his treatment of his bitterly dissatisfied and complaining wife and their six children. His actions perpetuate a cycle of violence and betrayal. He poisons Meena, eight months pregnant with their seventh child, by putting arsenic, cyanide, and bleach in her tea. And he orphans his children, who have been taught to hate the Kurds. Khadivi explained her intent in the novel to Ajiki: “Readers could read the story, learn about the difficulties faced by Kurds during this period but ultimately understand that we are all torn between one loyalty and the next and how artificial nationality actually is.”
Orphans well worth the effort, not only as a historical account of a little-documented aspect of prerevolutionary Iran, but also as commentary on current ethnic struggles. Donovan noted its relevance to the present situation in Iran: “[The] ayatollahs are simply the latest in a line of aspirants, wiping out the old failed regime and trying to claim ‘this invisible thing called Iran.’” Faye A. Chadwell credited the novel with an even broader significance: “With her eloquent portrayal of Reza, Khadivi has created an epitomic character representing so many 20th-century and current cultural, ethnic, and national identity clashes.” Khadivi received a $50,000 Whiting Writers’ Award for The Age of Orphans, a grant bestowed annually on ten promising new authors. Khadivi is now working on the second book in the trilogy, The Walking, which focuses on Reza Khourdi’s youngest son. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Ajiki, Natsumi. “Celebrate a Kurdish Writer, Laleh Khadivi: The Age of Orphans.” Kurdish Herald 1.2 (June 2009). Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Al-Shawaf, Rayyan. “Breaking Taboos in Middle Eastern Fiction.” Globe & Mail (Toronto) 2 Jan. 2010. Book Review Index Online Plus, Gale InfoTrac. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Chadwell, Faye A. “Khadivi, Laleh. The Age of Orphans.” Library Journal 15 Feb. 2009: 96. Donovan, Deborah. “The Age of Orphans.” Booklist 1 Feb. 2009: 23.
W Style Khadivi’s introduction of first-person accounts narrated by people known to Reza—his wife, his children, the girl he rapes, his commanding officer—enhances the portrait of his duality and the clash between modern and tribal society, adding, according to Bookslut reviewer Jacob Silverman, “a prismatic and humanizing perspective” on Reza. The style of the novel has received much attention, with critics disagreeing on the success of its richly evocative language. Brandon Robshaw remarked, “The style is poetic, intense and lyrical, even when describing events of great brutality.” Deborah Donovan described the language as “luminous . . . by turns graphic and poetic.” But a writer for Kirkus Reviews found the book “somewhat marred by a false and overlush lyricism.” And Silverman complained that the meaning of several passages was compromised by the accumulation of detail in densely phrased sentences with little punctuation. Rayyan AlShawaf appeared to agree, calling Khadivi’s prose “by turns beautifully lyrical and frustratingly grandiloquent.”
“Khadivi, Laleh: The Age of Orphans.” Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2008. Robshaw, Brandon. “The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi.” Independent on Sunday [London] 29 Aug. 2010. HighBeam Research. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Silverman, Jacob. Rev. of The Age of Orphans, by Laleh Khadivi. Bookslut Mar. 2009. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Adil, Alev. Rev. of The Age of Orphans, by Laleh Khadivi. Independent [London] 4 Dec. 2009. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Describes the orphan’s rebirth as the fierce soldier and the book’s representation of a cycle of violence. Rev. of The Age of Orphans, by Laleh Khadivi. Daily News [South Africa] 26 May 2010. HighBeam Research. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Judges the book difficult to read because of its heartbreaking subject matter but in the end well worth the effort.
W Critical Reception
Rev. of The Age of Orphans, by Laleh Khadivi. Publishers Weekly, 8 Dec. 2008: 41. A concise plot summary.
Some reviewers remarked on the difficulty of reading a novel so graphically violent, but most found The Age of
“Emory Fellow Wins Whiting Writers’ Award.” US Fed News Service, including US State News. Ht Media Ltd.,
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The Age of Orphans
2008. HighBeam Research. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Press release announcing Khadivi’s selection as a winner of the 2008 Whiting Writers’ Award. The piece provides some biographical details pertinent to the composition of The Age of Orphans and the planned trilogy. Fox, Catherine. “Severed Roots Are Haunting.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 8 Mar. 2009. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. Mainly biographical piece based on Fox’s interview with Khadivi at her Atlanta loft. Gurría-Quintana, Ángel. “Kurd of Honour: A Loss of Innocence and the Birth of Kurdistan.” Financial Times [London] 7 Nov. 2009. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. Finds much to praise in The Age of Orphans but notes that Khadivi sometimes sacrifices clarity to poetic flourish. Gale Resources
“Laleh Khadivi.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s website provides access to a brief biography of Khadivi and reviews of The Age of Orphans. http:// lalehkhadivi.com/about.html In a YouTube video filmed at Kepler’s Books, Khadivi speaks about The Age of Orphans and her interest in the Kurds. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=NMrLDa2lrqM Alan Cheuse reviews Khadivi’s The Age of Orphans and Ismail Kadare’s The Siege on NPR’s All Things Considered, April 7, 2009. http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA197405669&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/bloomsbury/ downloads/guides/ageoforphans.pdf For Further Reading
Abdolah, Kader. My Father’s Notebook. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007. Print. Novel in which an Iranian political exile attempts to decipher the cuneiform writings of his deaf-mute and nearly illiterate father, born to the temporary wife of a Persian nobleman early in the twentieth century. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print. Achebe’s masterpiece, a novel in many respects similar to The Age of Orphans in its depiction of the destruction of an individual and the culture that gave birth to him. Things Fall Apart takes place in Nigeria and describes tribal life before and after colonialism. Kamrava, Mehran. The Political History of Modern Iran: From Tribalism to Theocracy. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishers, 1992. Print. Examines Iran’s political history from the establishment of the Qajar dynasty in 1785 to the present, with special attention to issues of tribalism, religion, and demagoguery. Pezeshkzad, Iraj. My Uncle Napoleon. Trans. Dick Davis. New York: Random House, 2006. Print. A cultural reference point in Iran, first published in Tehran in 1973 and made into a popular television series in 1976, but banned since the Islamic Revolution. The story, set during the Allied occupation in World War II, is a humorous take on events that occur in an Iranian mansion occupied by three wealthy families under the sway of a paranoid uncle. Janet Mullane
Khadivi’s publishers have drawn up a series of discussion questions on the novel for reading groups.
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Air, or, Have Not Have By Geoff Ryman
W Introduction Geoff Ryman’s acclaimed novel, Air, or, Have Not Have, combines elements of alternative universe science fiction, fairy tale, realism, and mysticism to relate the tale of a poor woman, Chung Mae, living in a small village, Kizuldah, in the fictional country of Karzistan. Kizuldah is described in the novel as “the last village in the world to go online,” and the story examines how Mae endeavors to prepare her people for the future (1). “Air” is a wireless network that connects all people to one another, brain to brain, giving them the ability to access all information currently found on the Internet, and more, but without needing a computer. During a disastrous test of the system in which many people lose their lives or their sanity, Mae’s mind accidentally fuses with that of a dying, elderly woman, causing Mae to gain all of the old woman’s memories. Mae’s experiences with this new, shared personality inspire her to learn all she can about Air and the outside world. Air explores the advantages and disadvantages of globalization and third world peoples being unwillingly and abruptly thrust into an advanced technological world, through a narrative that blends stark realism with a hint of pseudoscience that verges into the magical realm as well. Air won the British Science Fiction Association Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
As Air takes place in an alternative universe, some could argue that the book has little or no historical context. However, science fiction often comments on and reflects the society or world in which it was written, and many readers and critics have inferred that Ryman intended Air
to present an examination of the ever-changing and developing technology of the early twenty-first century. Karzistan, though fictional, is reminiscent of the real world’s nation of Kazakhstan in Eurasia. Furthermore, the harsh plight of the peasants’ lives—most of them poor rice farmers—living in Kizuldah seems inspired by the denizens of the rural areas of China, particularly in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Although Air occurs in the early twenty-first century, most of its characters seem to come from a time centuries earlier, who only relatively recently and very slowly begin to integrate such modern-day conveniences as electricity into their everyday lives. The network, Air, is a fictionalized upgrade of the World Wide Web. Air, much like the Internet, is suddenly able to make the world much smaller. Using Air, even people in tiny, remote communities can now connect with other people thousands of miles away. Ryman looks at recent discussions of how the old world is dying and takes his examination one step further. Given the dramatic impacts of personal computer use and the Internet in the real world, he prompts readers to imagine a reality in which minds themselves are all connected, and both the wonder and fears that such a device, or ability, might engender in humanity. Ryman argues that the future is not here for better or for worse, but for better and worse.
W Themes Air revolves around such themes as memory, change, and rebirth. Human beings are shaped and defined by their memories, and when timid Mae’s mind merges with that of Mrs. Tung, Mae begins to adopt many of the attributes of this elder woman who was extremely courageous in her younger life. Mae conducts an affair, threatens a brutish neighbor with a knife, and decides to gain as much knowledge as she can about the world outside the small, poor village in which she has lived her entire life. There is a degree of irony in the fact that another woman’s
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Air, or, Have Not Have
memories of the past inspire Mae to look toward the future. Meanwhile, the change that Mae begins to embrace is reflective of the transition occurring in the outside world due to the new technology. Some people mourn the death of the old ways, and Ryman’s skillful portrayal of the dying traditions is poignant and sad. On the other hand, the new future promises unanticipated new growth, beauty, and potential. As Robert K. J. Killheffer explains, Ryman “recognizes the tremendous losses that change brings . . . but . . . balances his elegies with equally beautiful observations on the wisdom and necessity of acceptance.” This is perhaps best reflected in the flash flood that destroys the village near the end of the book. In her eulogy, Mae mourns the people and homes lost but concludes on a hopeful note: “But look at the beautiful new sea. Look at it sparkle. Look at how full of hope it seems; look, it has seagulls, who could hate such a beautiful sea?” (358).
W Styles Although Air is primarily a science fiction novel, Ryman uses a number of styles that are most often associated with more experimental literature. The majority of the book is written in stark, unembellished prose with only the most subtle of literary flourishes. Ryman introduces us to the characters of Kizuldah via restrained descriptions of their actions and daily lives, painting a picture that firmly establishes the initial verisimilitude of the world of the novel. As the novel progresses, he deals with the narrative’s mystical elements through a more postmodern style, blending in elements of stream-of-consciousness and magical realism. Though Air is technically a sci-fi conceit, Ryman never provides a full, explicit explanation for how it works. Instead, it seems to manifest itself in an almost spiritual manner, which is heightened by the presence of Mrs. Tung’s “ghost” in Mae’s mind. When Mrs. Tung speaks to Mae, Ryman presents the connection in a dreamlike style, forgoing quotation marks. Instead, the novel’s third-person narrator alternates with dialogue between Mrs. Tung and Mae, with verbal cues rather than punctuation indicating who is speaking. The way the text shifts from traditional narrative to strange images, memories, thoughts, and flashes of the future and past creates a surreal atmosphere that clearly marks these portions as separate from the depictions of the relatively mundane reality of the characters’ outer lives. Ryman is also aware of the irony that he is using the medium of the printed word in order to depict a future that has progressed beyond the need for paper and ink. He, therefore, consciously uses a very literary style in order to impart this tale about the future, and perhaps
MAJOR CHARACTERS FAYSAL HASEEM is a brutish, cruel misogynist who makes a living out of ruining others’ lives. A turning point in Chung Mae’s life occurs when she threatens him with a knife. SUNNI HASEEM is the pampered, shallow woman whose husband, Faysal Haseem, makes a habit of bankrupting poor farmers by granting loans they cannot afford. She seems sweet on the surface but is vicious underneath. JOE is Chung Mae’s kind but weak husband, who fails to satisfy her emotionally. With the intention of taking over Joe's farm, early in the novel, Faysal Haseem tricks Joe into taking a loan that he cannot afford to pay back. KEN KUEI is Chung Mae’s next-door neighbor and grandson to Mrs. Tung, the old woman whose memories transfer to Chung Mae upon Tung’s death. Shortly afterward, Chung Mae conducts an affair with Ken. CHUNG MAE is a poor, illiterate woman whose life is fundamentally altered by Air during the initial testing when the memories of a dying, elderly woman, Mrs. Tung, fuse with hers, inspiring Mae to embark on an internal quest of self-discovery. MRS. TUNG is an elderly grandmother at the start of the novel. When she dies during the initial testing of Air, her memories merge with those of Chung Mae. The merging enables Chung Mae to discover how brave and rebellious Mrs. Tung had been in her younger days. KWAN WING is Chung Mae’s good friend and confidante.
even more interestingly, focuses his tale on a group of poor peasants in a place that is the opposite of most traditional sci-fi settings.
W Critical Reception Air was released in 2004 to mainly positive reviews. London’s Guardian critic named it a “deft synthesis of science fiction and the literary mainstream novel,” praising it for its sensitive examination of the effect of globalization and modern “technology on the third world.” Additionally, this reviewer was impressed with Ryman’s concept of Air as a “metaphor for the inevitability of change,” and how Ryman juxtaposes his science fiction concept with moving and incisive characterizations of simple peasant life. Similarly, Publishers Weekly declared that the novel was, for Ryman, a “triumphant return to science fiction . . . superbly crafted,” and also commended him for his vivid and detailed portrayal of the lives of the people of
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Air, or, Have Not Have
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Canada in 1951, science fiction and fantasy writer Geoff Ryman moved to the United States at age eleven, and has spent the majority of his adult life in England. Known for writing extremely literate sci-fi, one of Ryman’s primary interests is in examining fantasy itself, probing how the stories of childhood affect and are affected by the process of growing up, a theme he explored to great effect in Was, a rumination on The Wizard of Oz. Ryman also spearheaded the “Mundane SF” movement, whose goal is to produce realist sci-fi that explores the connection between everyday people and technology. Interestingly, despite this credo, the novels Ryman is most noted for, such as Was, Lust, and Air, all incorporate elements of magical realism into their narratives.
Kizuldah. The reviewer called Air a “treat for fans of highly literate SF,” arguing that “this intensely political book has important things to say about how developed nations take the Third World for granted.” Although Air was generally well received, some critics did express qualms regarding Ryman’s style in the novel. Robert E. Brown of Library Journal wondered to
whom exactly the novel might appeal, claiming that “the tech stuff isn’t high-octane enough for techies, and the rural realism breaks no new ground.” A Kirkus Reviews critic held a more positive view regarding the characterization and prose, stating that Mae “is an impressive heroine, and the text is full of sharp commentary and vivid characters” but felt that the story “fails to engage fully and bogs down for long stretches.” Air won a number of prestigious literary awards, including the British Science Fiction Association Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. It was also short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Air.” Rev. of Air by Geoff Ryman. Kirkus Reviews 15 Oct. 2003: 1248. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. “Air.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. Publishers Weekly 10 Nov. 2003: 47. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. Brown, Robert E. “Ryman, Geoff. Air.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. Library Journal 129.1 (Jan. 2004): 160. Print. General OneFile. Web. 18 July 2010.
Image of medical technology as art, simulating the network called “Air” that links the minds of characters in the novel. kentoh/Shutterstock.com
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Air, or, Have Not Have
Killheffer, Robert K. J. “Edenborn.” Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 108.4 (Apr. 2005): 33+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. “Review: Paperbacks: Fiction: Air, by Geoff Ryman.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. Guardian [London] 4 Nov. 2006: 18. Print. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 18 July 2010. Ryman, Geoff. Air (Or, Have Not Have). New York: St. Martin’s, 2004. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allberry, Russ. “Air by Geoff Ryman.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. Eyrie.org., 13 Feb. 2006. Web. 18 July 2010. A review of Air that discusses Ryman’s key themes and metaphors and how he weds his science fiction concept with a rich portrayal of the characters that encourages reader empathy and understanding. Chiang, Ted. “Is Air Mundane?” Extrapolation 49.2 (2008): 211+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. Geoff Ryman spearheaded the “Mundane SF” movement—hard science fiction set in a “real world” more invested in exploring people’s interactions with technology than investigating potential future breakthroughs such as time travel, parallel dimensions, and other prospective inventions. Ryman has also claimed, however, that Air is not Mundane SF. This essay examines the novel from that perspective, attempting to determine whether or not Ryman is correct. Easterbrook, Neil. “‘Giving an Account of Oneself’: Ethics, Alterity, Air.” Extrapolation 49.2 (2008): 240+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. This essay explores the central metaphors of Air, particularly those of change and rebirth.
Open Web Sources
An interview with Ryman focusing on Air in which he discusses things such as his motivation for writing the novel, his style and technique, done via cyberspace, can be found at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/ nonfiction/intgr.htm Ryman wrote an “interactive novel” called 253 or Tube Theatre, subtitled A Novel for the Internet about London Underground in Seven Cars and a Crash. Each section delves into the mind of a different character in one of the train cars, and by clicking on hyperlinks, one can “travel” to the minds of nearby characters or those in different cars who are connected, in some way, to that character. One can read the book “linearly” or by bouncing around via the hyperlinks. The entire novel is online at http:// www.ryman-novel.com
For Further Reading
Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth. New York: John Day, 1931. Print. This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel set in late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century China depicts the lives of destitute people not far removed, culturally or technologically, from the characters of Air. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984. Print. An acclaimed novel credited with starting the “cyberpunk” movement of literature and film. Very different in tone to Air, it is thematically reminiscent, detailing a future in which everyone’s consciousnesses are connected to a global computer network.
Melzack, Geneva, and Iain Emsley. “Two Views: Air by Geoff Ryman.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. Strange Horizons. 7 Nov. 2005. Web. 18 July 2010. This article compares two viewpoints on Air—both are very positive—each zeroing in on different aspects of the novel.
Mitchell, David. Ghostwritten. New York: Vintage, 1999. Print. This novel of interlinked short stories includes a section on a poor woman who operates a tea shack on the side of a mountain in China, reminiscent in theme and tone to Air. Like Air, Ghostwritten explores themes of globalization and how seemingly disparate cultures are connected on a basic, human level.
Soyka, David. “Air.” Rev. of Air, by Geoff Ryman. SF Site, 2007. Web. 18 July 2010. http://sfsite.com/ 02a/ai241.htmThis compelling review categorizes Air as a sort of inverted cyberpunk novel. Instead of the narrative existing inside of a computer’s virtual reality, the majority of the book takes place in the real world, examining people’s reactions to extreme technological advances.
Ryman, Geoff. Was. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print. Arguably Ryman’s best-known book, this novel depicts the lives of various people affected by The Wizard of Oz, from an alternate version of Dorothy Gale to Judy Garland to a young man dying of AIDS. Includes elements of magical realism and incisive character development similar to those Ryman would later use in Air.
Gale Resources
“Geoffrey Charles Ryman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton, 2002. Print. Written by a Nobel Prize winner, this book examines the policies that have furthered globalization and their negative effects on “Third World” countries.
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Air, or, Have Not Have
Zittrain, Jonathan. The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It. Harrisonburg: R. R. Donnelley, 2008. Print. Presents interesting explorations of the impact the Internet has had on our world and how it might
develop in the future. While Zittrain’s beliefs might appear alarming to some readers, they do speak to several of the same issues that Ryman deals with in Air. Robert Berg
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An Altered Light By Jens Christian Grøndahl
W Introduction Jens Christian Grøndahl’s An Altered Light begins as the story of a middle-aged divorce lawyer, Irene Beckman, whose husband Martin of over thirty years suddenly leaves her for a younger woman. In the first several chapters, the novel focuses on Irene’s reactions, on those of the couple’s grown children, and those of her mother Vivian in hospital facing hip replacement surgery. The fact that Vivian fears she may not survive the surgery leads her to entrust Irene with a journal written many years earlier, containing the secret of Irene’s paternity. Coupled with this revelation comes the subplot concerning publishing editor Thomas Hoppe, a man fifteen years Irene’s junior, with whom Irene had a brief affair a decade earlier. Thomas and his wife Susan are now seeking a divorce, and he too has become involved with a younger woman. The two plot lines concerning the aftermath of these current divorces leads into a third plot concerning Vivian and her first lover and Irene’s biological father, Samuel Balkin. Irene’s story is connected to European military history via her biological father and the story line connected to Thomas Hoppe and his second love interest, Tatiana. The surfacing story regarding Samuel Balkin begins in the late 1930s, when the Balkin family fled anti-Semitism in Leningrad and made their home in Copenhagen, where Samuel was a cellist, on the eve of World War II. With the Nazi occupation of Denmark and increasing threat to Jews in the country, the Balkins fled to Sweden, without knowing that Samuel had impregnated Vivian. The second connection to European history is through Thomas via the author Herbert Verhoeven, whose apartment Thomas uses for his trysts with Irene. In editing posthumously Verhoeven’s unfinished memoirs, Thomas meets and falls in love with the author’s protégée Tatiana. These papers taken together
with Tatiana’s own story report on how Herbert and Tatiana returned to Belgrade, the city of her birth, during the Balkan unrest and witnessed student protests against Slobodan Milosevic. Exploiting these political and national threads, Grøndahl shows how people living in Denmark were shaped by events that happened elsewhere in Europe. Grøndahl’s novel explores the idea of life paths and the way choice, timing, and military and political events conspire to determine people’s lives, creating the intersections in which relationships are forged or broken. In that everongoing process of meeting and separating, individuals face repeatedly the chance to say yes or no to the direction their lives are propelled to take. Jens Christian Grøndahl’s novel, written in Danish and published as Et andet lys in 2003, was translated by Anne Born into English and published as An Altered Light in 2004.
W Literary and Historical Context
The contemporary literary context for An Altered Light is much fiction written in the early 2000s that explores multiple points of view and the relativity of human experience. In the early 2000s, novelists as different as Annie Dillard, Rafael Yglesias, and Elena Ferrante set about to explore marital relationships from various perspectives, noting the subjectivity and relativity that determine how individuals define themselves and come to understand their relationships to others and the trajectories of their lives. The sense among many novelists in the twenty-first century is that reality is not single or constant. It is subjectively experienced and understood, and it is colored by more than external experiences, for dreams and daydreams also affect people’s experience and how they understand themselves. There is an assumption in the early 2000s that part of understanding the self
29 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
An Altered Light
MAJOR CHARACTERS IRENE BECKMAN, the protagonist and main point-of-view character, is a fifty-six-year-old divorce lawyer, married to a banker and mother of two grown children, Peter and Josephine. MARTIN BECKMAN, Irene’s husband of over thirty years, decides to leave his marriage and marry his mistress, Susanne, age thirty. PETER BECKMAN, brother of Josephine, is married to Sandra and has adopted fraternal twins, Emil and Amalie. SAMUEL BALKIN, a Russian Jew and former cellist, is the biological father of Irene Beckman, whom he meets in Ljubljana, Slovenia. SALLY HOPPE, married to Thomas Hoppe, faces his decision to get a divorce and seeks Irene’s legal advice. THOMAS HOPPE, married to Sally and with her the parent of son Magnus, seeks a divorce in order to marry Tatiana Pogorelic. TATIANA POGORELIC, born in Belgrade and protégée of author Herbert Verhoeven, falls in love with Thomas Hoppe when she seeks his editorial assessment of a manuscript Herbert left unfinished upon his death. VIVIAN, Irene’s mother, reveals that her first lover, Samuel Balkin, is actually Irene’s biological father.
requires facing the past that has directed a person to a certain place in the present and has shaped the evolving personality and values of that person. An Altered Light speaks to this awareness. The historical context for An Altered Light is virtually the history of Europe and the Middle East in the twentieth century. The earliest aspect of this context is the anti-Semitism enforced under Stalin in the USSR in the 1930s, with the closing of Yiddish schools and the removal of Jewish leaders, and the growth of Zionism among Russian Jews who set their sights increasingly on a nation state in Palestine. In the late 1930s, some Russian Jews immigrated to neutral Denmark, which had in 1939 signed a treaty of nonaggression with Germany. Nonetheless, Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, and the unprepared Danish government surrendered quickly. In its uneasy relationship with the German occupation, the Danish Parliament complied with some German orders but resisted others. It complied with German efforts to purge communists, but it resisted German efforts to identify the Jewish minority. By 1944, when news reached the Danes of the Nazi decision to purge Denmark of all its Jews, private citizens using motorboats
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over a period of two months successfully transported most Danish Jews to safety in neutral Sweden. The Balkins in An Altered Light were likely among these Jews. The state of Israel was established in 1948 (Declaration of the Establishment), but conflict over boundaries and various wars scarred the area through the twentieth century and remained unresolved in the early 2000s. Another important historical context is the Yugoslav wars that stretched through the late 1990s and led to the breakup of Yugoslavia into separate nations. Also, included in the novel are references to the role of Slobodan Milosevic (1941-2006) as president of Yugoslavia and the demonstrations that forced his resignation in late 2000. Milosevic went on trial in The Hague on various charges and died there of a heart attack.
W Themes Repeatedly, Grøndahl refers to determining factors that impinge on individuals regarding their relationships or circumstances. His novel explores whether people are actually able to remain faithful to their response either way to a choice or decision and what factors make those responses more temporary than individuals making them assume. One instance in which he explores this idea occurs when Irene considers her mother’s journal in the light of a remembered photograph taken of Vivian in the spring 1944 when she is early in her pregnancy. This photograph reminds Irene of those of murdered people printed in newspapers. The victims “smile with the same trusting face, as if nothing bad can happen to them,” but with the knowledge of what has happened to them, the viewer does “violence to the expectant innocence shining in their eyes” (106). The point seems to be that retrospect allows a person to see in “an altered light” what in the ignorance of a past moment individuals cannot imagine as true for themselves. So people respond with a yes, for example, in their wedding ceremony, and yet in time that yes morphs to no, as they “lose their foothold” (117) in marriage and an unforeseen extramarital relationship ignites. The future forces at work in shaping these paths cannot be envisioned before their impact is experienced. This point is illustrated in the accident Irene has in which Thomas Hoppe on his bicycle collides with her car. If that accident had not occurred, she would never have met Thomas. The relationship they had ten years earlier is “only visible in the light of her past” (29). It leaps into view when her legal services are sought by Sally Hoppe who wrestles with the reality that Thomas is leaving her for another woman. People cannot help but reflect on the past in light of subsequent events; yet Irene, who looks back a lot, surprises herself when she remarks that “Looking back only gives you a stiff neck” (177). Doing so actually provides much more for Irene herself, especially regarding her meeting with the elderly Samuel Balkin. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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An Altered Light
W Style Grøndahl wrote An Altered Light in limited omniscient third-person point of view, using several point-of-view characters and three plotlines, which emerge piecemeal and not in chronological order. The thrust of the novel is from the present catalytic event (Martin Beckman’s dinnertime announcement that he is leaving the marriage) into the past as Irene traces the decisions and forces that determined the trajectory of events and brought key characters in her life to certain intersections in their lives. The tracing of these past events requires the information provided in Vivian’s early journal and the gleaning of information regarding the life of Samuel Balkin. Additionally, Irene unearths information about Herbert Verhoeven and Tatiana Pogorelic, since their relationship and Verhoeven’s death brings Tatiana face to face with Thomas and ultimately determines his decision to get a divorce. Other aspects of style in Grøndahl’s novel are dependent on Ann Born’s translation of the Danish into English. Though some awkwardness mars the translation, as in Born’s use of the cliché in “raise his nose from the grindstone” (17), the English seems faithful to Grøndahl’s rendering of perspective through the light
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born November 9, 1959, in Lyngby, Denmark, Jens Christian Grøndahl produced seventeen books between 1985 and the early 2000s, four of which were translated into English. An Altered Light, the English translation of his novel Et andet lys, was short-listed for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
of certain moments. For example, when Irene watches “a ferryboat pass through the dewy, straw-yellow hemisphere of her wine glass” (164) and as she muses about how life “is ceaselessly altering, and there isn’t a place in the world where we belong” (270), only a “flowing beneath an awning between glinting spots of light on the calm surface of the water . . . shining with moist resin” (271). Grøndahl seems particularly interested in examining the factors that alter characters’ understanding of themselves and their circumstances. Their increased understanding alters the light in which they see themselves.
In An Altered Light, Irene’s biological father, Samuel Balkin, lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, during the 1930s to try to escape the antiSemitism in Russia. ª Jon Arnold Images Ltd / Alamy TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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An Altered Light
W Critical Reception Jens Christian Grøndahl’s An Altered Light was received favorably, though it appears not to have made a large splash. Joanne Wilkinson described it as “a penetrating examination of the shifting complexities of marriage.” Wilkinson also noted that the novel is “filled with philosophical ruminations and lyrical prose . . . [and] moves in unexpected directions and at its own measured pace.” Janet Evans agreed, describing the protagonist Irene Beckman as “introspective, philosophical, and psychological as she reflects on the years that passed all too swiftly.” Evans described Grøndahl as “one of Denmark’s most widely read contemporary authors” and explained that his experience as an essayist, playwright, and film director can be felt in this novel. Among more moderate evaluations was a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, who labeled the novel “a thoughtful, probing and fiercely introspective character study” but faulted it for “some pedestrian plotting.” The stronger part of the novel, according this Publishers Weekly review, is “the final narrative spin,” in which Irene searches for and meets Samuel Balkin. In all, this reviewer found that the best part of the novel is its “impressive insights about the unknowable nature of love and the partners we choose.” In the Kirkus Reviews best books of 2005 article, the reviewer praised Grøndahl for how he “coolly observes Irene’s slow transformation, and frames visual observations with painterly skill.” This article also quoted Grøndahl in commenting on what seemed to be a lackluster U.S. reception to the English translation: “I am confident that Americans . . . share my propensity for stopping in the middle of things,” Grøndahl is quoted as saying, “and looking back and thinking for a moment or two about how our lives are actually shaped. . . . In any case, I am glad to think of the unknown reader in, say, Idaho, who will eventually stumble upon a yellowed copy of a book of mine in the musty darkness of someone’s garage, and feel recognized.” It is this meditative, backward-glancing quality in An Altered Light that provides its distinction, and certain readers who encounter the novel may agree that it is just what they were looking for. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“An Altered Light.” Rev. of An Altered Light, by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Publishers Weekly 31 Jan. 2005: 46. Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel, 14 May 1948. www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 14 May 1948. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.
Grøndahl, Jens Christian. An Altered Light. Trans. Anne Born. Orlando: Harcourt, 2004. Print. “Grøndahl, Jens Christian: An Altered Light.” Rev. of An Altered Light, by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2005: 72. Print. “We at Kirkus Reviews Are Delighted to Present the Best Books of 2005.” Rev. of An Altered Light, by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2005: S3+. Print. Wilkinson, Joanne. “Grøndahl, Jens Christian. An Altered Light.” Rev. of An Altered Light, by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Booklist, 1 Mar. 2005: 1137. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Battersby, Eileen. “Strong Chance of First Irish Winner for Literary Award.” Irish Times, 6 Apr. 2006. Print. Sees Grøndahl’s novel not as a winner but as strong nonetheless and likely to find a wide audience. For Further Reading
Andreb, Hans-Jurgen. When Marriage Ends: Economic and Social Consequences of Partnership Dissolution. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2009. Print. Scholarly essays on divorce matters in European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. Tells the story of a marriage, a divorce, and in after years an unusual reconciliation. Ferrante, Elena. Days of Abandonment. Trans. Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2005. Print. Tells the story of a married woman, abandoned by her husband, who goes through a painful adjustment. Grøndahl, Jens Christian. Silence in October. Trans. Anne Born. Orlando: Harcourt, 2000. Print. Plays with the same ideas as those in An Altered Light, but from the perspective of the husband who is left by his wife. Kostyrchenko, Gennadi. Out of the Red Shadows: AntiSemitism in Stalin’s Russia (Russian Studies). New York: Prometheus Books, 1995. Print. Relies on declassified documents in the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the KGB to document the suppression of Jewish culture and removal of Jews from public roles. Yglesias, Rafael. A Happy Marriage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Print. Autobiographical novel depicting how two people are shaped by a long-term marriage and how the husband copes with the untimely death of his wife. Melodie Monahan
Evans, Janet. “Grøndahl, Jens Christian. An Altered Light.” Rev. of An Altered Light, by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Library Journal 15 Mar. 2005: 70+. Print.
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TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay By Michael Chabon
W Introduction The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), by Michael Chabon, follows the wild and difficult success of cousins Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay who find themselves as central figures in the Golden Age of comics with their creation, the Escapist. They are living in New York City in the 1940s, just before the United States enters World War II. At the same time, Joe’s family in Prague is under threat from the Nazis—and nothing Sam or Joe can do and no amount of money or creativity can save them. Joe eventually flees from his friends and family to enlist in the navy for a chance to pound out his frustration and anger on real enemies. Long after the war has ended, he returns to New York City, ashamed and estranged, and finds redemption and no more need of escape. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was followed in 2004 through 2006 with a comic book featuring the Escapist. Titled Michael Chabon Presents . . . the Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, the eight-issue series was published by Dark Horse Comics and won a prestigious 2005 Eisner Award for best anthology.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was published at a time when superheroes were making a comeback in both film and print. Batman, directed by Tim Burton, was released in 1989, kick-starting the revival interest in superheroes. Television shows such as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (19931997) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) secured teenage audiences and carried them through to the blockbuster film hits of the early twenty-first century,
including Mystery Men (1999), X-Men (2000), Unbreakable (2000), Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004; for which Chabon was a screenwriter), The Incredibles (2004), Batman Begins (2005), Hancock (2008), Iron Man (2008), and Watchmen (2009). Anime, or animated Japanese shows and films, became popular in the United States during the 1990s, making way later in the decade for the print medium of manga, a form of Japanese comic. Anime and manga are not exclusively composed of stories about superheroes, but there is a strong association between these forms and heroes. Early manga titles that crossed over into the U.S. market and became popular included Sailor Moon and Ghost in the Shell. The 1986-1987 comic Watchmen, by Alan Moore (illustrated by Dave Gibbons), is a thoughtprovoking work that explores new visual layouts and ways of interpreting superheroes. Watchmen won a Hugo Award in 1988. Art Spiegelman’s Maus (published in two parts, 1986 and 1991) also took the comic book genre in new directions. This graphic novel, with the Jews drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats, is based on the actual survival of the Holocaust by the author’s father. Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Following a decade of relative peace in the United States, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent military action in Afghanistan and Iraq made heroism fashionable, even necessary to fill the ranks. As the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq neared a decade in length, the superhero genre of film, television, and print continued to be strong. Like the golem of Jewish folklore, superheroes gave people hope—however fantastic—that terrible enemies and impossible odds could be overcome.
W Themes Courage, in a book about comics and superheroes, is an easy theme to point toward, but Chabon’s novel dwells very little on the courage of the Escapist except to draw his magnificent feats in broad strokes. Instead, the
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
MAJOR CHARACTERS SHELDON ANAPOL, a shrewd businessman, is the owner of Empire Comics. TRACY BACON is an exuberant and fun-loving man and Sam’s lover. SAM CLAY is a shy, quiet Jewish boy from Brooklyn and Joe’s American cousin. TOMMY CLAY is the son of Rosa and Joe, named for Joe’s brother Thomas who died during World War II. CARL HENRY EBLING is a mentally unstable Nazi sympathizer. LONGMAN HARKOO, Rosa’s father, is an eccentric, wellconnected, wealthy surrealist-art dealer. JOE KAVALIER is the protagonist, a clever artist and illusionist who flees Nazi-occupied Prague to live with his cousin Sam in New York City. ETHEL KLAYMAN, Sam’s mother and Joe’s aunt, is a practical woman who reluctantly supports the artistic pursuits of her son and nephew. BERNARD KORNBLUM, a retired illusionist, teaches his escape tricks to a teenaged Joe in Prague. ROSA LUXEMBURG SAKS, a bold, resourceful, and sensitive young woman, is Joe’s true love and muse.
author, through the actions of Joe, Sam, Rosa, Tracy, and others, examines the nature of courage in everyday lives. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is not simply a book about superheroes and their creators. It describes the courage of those unafraid to be themselves, such as Longman Harkoo and Tracy Bacon; to the courage of those who would put themselves in danger to help others, such as Bernard Kornblum; and the courage of those who continue to live when so much has been lost, like Joe. Survival also figures strongly in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, stemming from—but not limited to—its immigrant, post-Holocaust perspective. Some feats of survival are strictly physical, and these are the specialty of Joe and Bernard Kornblum, trained illusionists. Other feats of survival are emotional, such as Sam’s coming to terms with his homosexuality and Rosa’s having Joe’s baby after he has abandoned her. Moreover, the two cousins negotiate and survive the cut-throat world of comic book publishing. Survival in and of itself is not always a boon; it can also be a burden. For example, Holocaust survivors mourn the people and places they had to leave behind. Their survival can seem to have happened by chance and, therefore, feel meaningless. Chabon’s novel brings all these threads together, concluding that the purpose of survival is concerned with
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the future (i.e., Joe and Rosa’s son Tommy) and not about the past (Joe’s brother Thomas).
W Style The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay traces the growth of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay from childhood to adulthood. One of the literary techniques that Chabon uses to mark the growth of his characters over the course of the novel is tone. Tone is the mood of a work. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay starts with a tone of mischievousness, when Joe is still in Prague, then turns more serious when he arrives in New York City and begins to collaborate with Sam. The middle section of the novel, during Joe and Sam’s young adulthood, is both joyous and dangerous as they each fall in love, create marvelous works, and run up against hard realities. The tone of the novel changes dramatically to grim and unhappy when Thomas dies and Joe leaves Rosa and Sam to enlist in the military. Fear and confusion turn to joy at the end when Rosa and Joe are reunited and Sam finally decides to live the life he’s always wanted. Foreshadowing is a technique that Chabon uses to hint at future events, heighten drama, and make events seem more plausible when they do occur. Joe and Thomas nearly die by drowning in the River Moldau, foreshadowing Thomas’s death by drowning six years later. Joe has unaccountably good luck and is continually escaping implausible situations, foreshadowing his survival of Ebling’s terrorist attack, carbon monoxide poisoning at the Kelvinator Station, and jumping from the Empire State Building. Foreshadowing causes the reader to anticipate what is to come without the reader knowing for sure how events will transpire.
W Critical Reception Many critics considered The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to be the novel that marked Chabon’s maturity as a writer. David Horspool, one such critic, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that this novel was “proof of the abiding power of complex, serious, engaged, but above all entertaining story-telling.” The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, inevitably bringing it under close critical scrutiny. While reviews were generally positive and critics, such as Jonathan Levi of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, were enamored with Chabon’s lyrical prose, not all were unequivocally won over. John Podhoretz, in a detailed review for Commentary, concluded that “this extraordinarily ambitious novel does not have all that much of interest to say.” Amy Benfer, in her Salon review, concurred with Podhoretz on some points but ultimately found that Chabon has succeeded in his approach: “It would seem like a guilty gorgefest, a sugary pop concoction, if, like pop art itself, it TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
weren’t so heavily fortified with all the vitamins and minerals of true art.” Writing for the New York Times, Ken Kalfus disagrees with Podhoretz’s disappointment: “the depth of Chabon’s thought, his sharp language, his inventiveness and his ambition make this a novel of towering achievement.” Popular with readers as well, Kavalier & Clay was a strong seller at bookstores and continued Chabon’s ascent as a major twenty-first century writer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. New York: Picador, 2000. Print.
Born in Washington, D.C., on May 24, 1963, Michael Chabon knew he wanted to be a writer from a young age. His first novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1998 and brought Chabon both popular and critical success; it was made into a movie in 2008. His second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), was also captured on film, in 2000. Chabon’s literary success continued with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Summerland (2002), The Final Solution (2004), The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), and Gentlemen of the Road (2007) followed, with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union winning the Hugo Award in 2008. As of 2010, Chabon lived in Berkeley, California, with his wife Ayelet Waldman and their four children.
Harspool, David. “Sam and Joe Take on the Nazis.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. Times Literary Supplement 6 Oct. 2000: 24. Print.
NYTimes.com. New York Times, 24 Sept. 2000. Web. 18 July 2010.
Kalfus, Ken. “The Golem Knows.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon.
Levi, Jonathan. “Hope against Hope.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Benfer, Amy. Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. Salon.com. Salon, 28 Sept. 2000. Web. 18 July 2010.
A man takes in the view from the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, the hometown of comic book creators Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. ª DaZo Vintage Stock Photos/Images.com/Corbis
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, at the 2010 New Yorker Festival. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New Yorker
Chabon. Los Angeles Times Book Review 8 Oct. 2000: 2. Print. Podhoretz, John. Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. Commentary 111.6 (2001): 68. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Behlman, Lee. “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.” Shofar 22.3 (2004): 56-71. Print. Compares Chabon’s novel with works by Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander, regarding their treatments of fantasy and reality in writing about the Holocaust. Dirda, Michael. “Review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. Washington Post Book World (17 Sept. 2000): 15. Print. Praises Chabon’s sprawling narrative, including its cameos of historical figures, varied settings, and relentless theme of escapism. Maslin, Janet. “A Life and Death Story Set in Comic Book Land.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of
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Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. NYTimes.com. New York Times, 21 Sept. 2000. Web. 20 July 2010. Describes the carefully crafted tension between the wild successes of the two comic-book-writing cousins and the grim struggles of their family in Europe. Punday, Daniel. “Kavalier & Clay, the Comic-Book Novel, and Authorship in a Corporate World.” CRITIQUE 49.3 (2008): 291-302. Print. Discusses Chabon’s novel in the context of economics to come to a better understanding of how the relationship between comic book authors and illustrators and their publishers affect the originality of the work. Sullivan, James. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: A Novel.” Rev. of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. Book Nov. 2000: 66. Print. Commends Chabon’s treatment of creativity and redemption. Gale Resources
Meanor, Patrick. “Michael Chabon.” American Novelists since World War II: Seventh Series. Ed. James R. Giles and Wanda H. Giles. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 278. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.
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com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1200011233& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Michael Chabon.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000016823&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Overview: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 25. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1430006436& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Michael Chabon’s official Web site provides information on current projects as well as photographs of the author and free samples of his essays and fiction. http://www.michaelchabon.com The Amazing Web site of Kavalier & Clay is a fan site that collects information about the novel, reviews and criticism, Chabon and his other works, the history behind the novel, and other media related to the book. The owner of the site, Nate Raymond, also maintains a blog providing up-to-date news about Chabon. http://www.sugarbombs.com/ kavalier
For Further Reading
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. Presents an alternative history about a present-day fictional settlement of Jewish people in Alaska following the demise of the nascent state of Israel during World War II. Chabon, Michael, et al. Michael Chabon Presents . . . The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. Vols. 1-3. Milwaukie: Dark Horse Comics, 2004-2006. Print. Presents the three graphic novels depicting the adventures of the Escapist, Luna Moth, the Machine Gun, and more. Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. New York: Random House, 2007. Print. First published in 1975, this novel is a groundbreaking work of historical fiction that blends fictional characters with historical figures, telling a story that is uniquely American. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper, 1994. Print. Presents work of respected theorist on comics in art and communication, told in black-and-white comic book style. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Print. Recounts Holocaust survival of Spiegelman’s father in graphic novel format.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Carol Ullmann
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American Gods By Neil Gaiman
W Introduction Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods is a melting pot of mythology, deftly weaving together modern incarnations of deities as far reaching as India’s Kali, Africa’s Anansi, the Germanic Easter, Egypt’s Thoth and Anubis, and the Algonquin Wisakedjak. Shadow, the protagonist, is pulled into the action of a mounting war between the old gods, who have immigrated to the United States and are slowly being forgotten, and the new gods of technology, who grow in strength and worshippers daily. In this novel, Gaiman explores issues of faith, truth, and identity while referring to Norse and Christian myths in the resolution of Shadow’s journey. American Gods won the 2002 Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Bram Stoker Award and was a finalist for the 2002 World Fantasy Award. Although it was not a mainstream critical hit for a writer best known for his short stories and graphic novels, the novel was popular among fans of Gaiman and of the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Gaiman followed up American Gods with Anansi Boys (2005), a novel about Mr. Nancy’s two very different sons. Anansi Boys found more immediate commercial and critical success, perhaps due to the quiet popularity of American Gods.
W Literary and Historical Context
Religion became a political issue in the United States beginning in the late twentieth century, when the Christian Right, a movement that sought social conservatism through political change, began to take hold in Washington, D.C. Evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority group in 1979, which had significant influence on the formation of the New
Christian Right and national politics in the 1980s. Through the campaign work of the New Christian Right, the Republican Party was able to claim control of the U.S. legislative, judicial, and executive branches during the 1980s and 1990s. The change in political activity toward social and religious conservatism was not reflected in the makeup of U.S. citizens and is largely a factor of media spin and political control. The Pew Research Center, as reported in a 2008 press release by Juliana Horowitz, found that between 1992 and 2008, the percentages of people who self-identified as liberal (18-21%), moderate (36-38%), and conservative (36-38%) did not change significantly. According to statistics released by the American Religious Identification Survey, the numbers of people selfidentifying as Evangelical Christian tripled from 1990 to 2008, but the raw numbers represent a very small fraction of the overall U.S. population (0.3 to 0.9% of the population). In the same period, Christian membership dropped by 10 percent and those identifying as having no religion rose by almost 7 percent. Both diversity and constant movement characterized the religious makeup of the United States, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in June 2008. In a February 2008 report, Pew found that 92 percent of Americans believe in “God or a universal spirit” (5) and 56 percent say that religion is important in their lives.
W Themes “This is not a land for gods” (245) is the underlying premise of American Gods. As people immigrated to North America, incarnations of the deities they worshipped followed them and settled down in this new land, only to find themselves over time weak and nearly forgotten. Thus faith is a central theme in American Gods. Belief is what empowers the gods, but in the United States, a young nation driven by industry and settled by people looking to make a new life, faith in the old gods
38 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
American Gods
MAJOR CHARACTERS SAMANTHA BLACK CROW is a young woman Shadow befriends during his travels. CZERNOBOG, whose name translates as “black god,” is a Slavic deity who is a close ally to Mr. Wednesday. FAT KID is a modern god of computers, the Internet, and technology. MR. IBIS is the Egyptian god Thoth, arbitrator and inventor of writing. He works in a funeral parlor with Mr. Jacquel in Cairo, Illinois. MR. JACQUEL is the Egyptian god Anubis, who prepares and guides the dead to the Underworld. He works in a funeral parlor with Mr. Ibis in Cairo, Illinois. LOW KEY LYESMITH is Loki, trickster god of the Norse pantheon. He is Shadow’s prison cell mate. An Egyptian ankh. American Gods, a spiritual thriller, is riddled with religious myths and symbols. hao liang/Shutterstock.com
LAURA MOON, Shadow’s wife, is reanimated from the dead after Shadow drops a special coin in her grave. She helps Shadow throughout the book. MR. NANCY, also known as Anansi, is a trickster god who sides with Mr. Wednesday. SHADOW, the protagonist of the novel, is a large, quiet man, thirty-two years old, who is drawn into a war between gods. At the end of the novel, he is thought to be Balder, a god of the Norse pantheon, or perhaps Jesus. MR. WEDNESDAY is a modern incarnation of Odin and father of Shadow. MISTER WORLD is the main antagonist of the novel. He has Mr. Wednesday killed during a truce meeting. THE ZORYA is a triplicate deity who represents the Morning Star, the Evening Star, and the Midnight Star. In the novel, the triplicates live with Czernobog and help Shadow.
A spiritual Egyptian statue. In American Gods, a coming battle between the ancient gods and the modern gods looms in the distance. Ralf Juergen Kraft/Shutterstock.com
has fallen to the wayside. By contrast, Shadow observes that humans do not need the faith of other people to continue to exist, loosely declaring humans to be agents with free will, whereas the gods are prisoners of their own constituents. Trickery and the nature of truth constitute another important theme in American Gods. Many gods from pantheons around the world are associated with trickery, truth-telling, fortunes, misdirection, and wisdom. Low Key Lyesmith and Mr. Nancy are incarnations of trickster gods; Mr. Wednesday is representative of Odin, known as a god of wisdom in the Norse pantheon. In this novel, Mr. Wednesday is a grafter (one who plays confidence tricks). The central plot of the story concerns a confidence scheme on the part of Mr. Wednesday and Low Key Lyesmith. Shadow, who is an honest man, is not
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American Gods
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Neil Gaiman was born in Portchester, England, in 1960. A voracious reader as a child, Gaiman left school in 1977 and, after collecting rejections for his short stories, began working as a freelance journalist. He returned to fiction in the mid1980s by writing for comic books, a medium he had loved for a long time. Gaiman took up retired DC Comics character the Sandman and, beginning in 1988, produced DC’s best-selling and award-winning series, The Sandman. American Gods was published in 2001. In 2002 American Gods won three major awards for works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Gaiman also won the prestigious 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2010 Carnegie Medal for the young adult novel The Graveyard Book (2008). In 1985 Gaiman married Mary McGrath and they have three children together; they divorced in 2008. Gaiman lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota.
as easy to trick as they assume. Through Shadow’s character and his success against Mr. Wednesday, Gaiman underlines the importance and power of truth. Wisdom is hard to come by: Shadow must hang upon a tree for nine days, die, and be revived in order to understand the advantage of being human.
W Style The setting of a work is the time and place in which the action takes place. Gaiman purposefully chose the United States in the late twentieth century for the setting of his novel American Gods. The United States is a relatively young country, just over two hundred years old at the time of this publication, populated largely by immigrants from around the world. The author sets this nation apart from all others because the incarnations of the deities that the immigrants brought with them have not fared well as the attention of their believers has drifted. The popularity of technology in the United States is another element that plays into Gaiman’s choice of this country for the setting; as mortals put their faith in cell phones, computers, the Internet, and the media, new gods arise to represent these elements of technology.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Publishers Weekly 28 May 2001: 46. Print. Bolonik, Kera. “Review of American Gods.” Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. New York Times Book Review, 29 July 2001: 16. Print. De Lint, Charles. “American Gods.” Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 101.3 (2001): 97-98. Print. Gaiman, Neil. American Gods. New York: HarperTorch, 2001. Print. Horowitz, Juliana. “Winds of Political Change Haven’t Shifted Public’s Ideology Balance.” pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center Publications, 25 Nov. 2008. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. Kim, Ann. Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Library Journal 15 June 2001: 102. Print. Kosmin, Barry, and Ariela Keysar. American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008. trincoll.edu. Trinity College, Mar. 2009. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. Olson, Ray. Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Booklist 15 May 2001: 1707. Print.
W Critical Reception Gaiman was best known for his work in the graphic novel industry, especially the multiple-award-winning series The Sandman, when American Gods was published in 2001. The novel received limited critical attention. Mainstream reviewers generally gave the novel a lukewarm reception, with Ray Olson of Booklist summarizing American Gods as “a tale that is just too busy and . . . unengaging.” Publishers Weekly called the plot “aimless” but predicted
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that it would do well among Gaiman’s fans. Ann Kim of Library Journal, by contrast, found the novel “compellingly imaginative,” declaring “the fascinating subject matter and impressive mythic scope are handled creatively and expertly.” Kera Bolonik agreed. Gaiman “has a deft hand with the mythologies he tinkers with here; even better, he’s a fine, droll storyteller,” wrote Bolonik, reviewing for the New York Times Book Review. Charles de Lint, a respected fantasy author in his own right, reviewed the novel for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and, true to Publishers Weekly’s forecast, gave the novel a good review, concluding that it would be a big hit for the year. He declared American Gods to be “a big, sprawling book that seems to take forever to get to its point, but what a wonderful journey it is to get there.” American Gods swept the genre fiction awards in 2002, taking home the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker awards. It was also nominated for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Mythopoeic awards in 2002.
U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation— Diverse and Dynamic. pewforum.org. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Feb. 2008. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant. pewforum. org. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 2008. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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American Gods Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Dalgleish, David. “Mythologizing America.” Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. januarymagazine. com. January Magazine, July 2001. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. Gives a positive review of Gaiman’s novel, hailing it as his most ambitious since The Sandman. DuMond, Lisa. Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. sfsite.com. SF Site, 2001. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. Celebrates Gaiman as a strong horror writer and predicts many award wins for this novel. Jensen, Jeff. “American Gods.” Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Entertainment Weekly 604 (13 July 2001): 75-76. Print. Offers a good review but criticizes Gaiman for an anticlimactic ending. Miller, Laura. Rev. of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. salon.com. Salon, 22 Jun. 2001. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. Detailed positive review, faults Gaiman only for not including Jesus and the Greek deities. Slabbert, Mathilda, and Leonie Viljoen. “Sustaining the Imaginative Life: Mythology and Fantasy in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.” Literator 27.3 (2006): 135-55. Examines the use of myth to connect readers to spirituality. Gale Resources
“Neil Gaiman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000034859&v=2.1&u =aadl&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Sanders, Joe. “Neil (Richard) Gaiman.” British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers since 1960. Ed. Darren Harris-Fain. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 261. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1200010793 &v=2.1&u=aadl&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
in 2001. He enjoyed the experience of blogging so much that he developed the journal into a full-blown Web site featuring a biography, information about his novels, a message board, links to Web sites associated with Gaiman’s work, full-text short stories, and other extras—in addition to the journal that started it all. The full-text of the first chapter of American Gods, along with excerpts from his other books, can be found at http://www.neilgaiman.com HarperCollins, publisher of American Gods, has made the first one hundred pages available to read online free of charge at http://www.harpercollins.com/browsein side/index.aspx?isbn13=9780380789030 For Further Reading
Gaiman, Neil. Anansi Boys. New York: William Morrow, 2005. Print. Takes the character of Mr. Nancy (Anansi) from American Gods and tells the story of his two very different sons. Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubery de Selincourt. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print. Travelogue and examination of the places Herodotus visited in his fifth century BCE travels; inspiring to Shadow in American Gods. James, John. Votan. London: Bantam, 1987. Print. Tells a story of a young Greek man who travels to Germany during the late Roman period, adventures that form the basis for Odin’s mythology. Jones, Diana Wynne. Eight Days of Luke. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. Story about a boy who inadvertently releases Loki from prison, instigating a battle between the gods. Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief. New York: Hyperion, 2005. Print. Story about a boy who learns he is the son of Poseidon and embarks on a quest to find Zeus’s lightning bolt. Willis, Roy, ed. World Mythology. New York: Holt, 1993. Print. A lavishly illustrated general introduction to the myths of nineteen cultures from around the world.
Open Web Sources
Carol Ullmann
Gaiman began an online journal, or blog, as part of the promotion of American Gods when it was published
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Anil’s Ghost By Michael Ondaatje
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Anil’s Ghost (2000) is a work of historical crime fiction set against the backdrop of civil war and insurrection in 1980s Sri Lanka. The book received the Giller Prize, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, and the Governor General’s Award for English Language Fiction. The novel is divided into eight subsections, each one focusing tightly on the character or subject referred to in the title of that particular section. The narrative of the novel unfolds through this series of close examinations, and uses the main characters’ experiences to recount the events of the plot and to paint a vivid picture of a country torn apart by civil war, government-sanctioned murder, and secrecy. Anil, the protagonist, drives the story both narratively and thematically. Native to Sri Lanka, but educated in the West, Anil is uniquely suited to reflect the contrasts between East and West and the tensions between the two with regard to cultural outlook and the place and “definition” of truth in society. Michael Ondaatje uses this character as a lens to examine both the history of the Sri Lankan civil war and the international reaction of human rights organizations to this conflict. In the novel, Anil, a forensic pathologist, has returned to Sri Lanka as part of a human rights fact-finding mission. Anil and Sarath Diyasena, an archaeologist, discover evidence that suggests an unknown victim, nicknamed Sailor by the two investigators, has been murdered by government forces. As Anil digs further and further into this investigation she places herself in grave danger, and the novel builds to a suspenseful climax as layer upon layer of Sri Lanka’s interconnected turmoil is revealed.
Context
The Sri Lankan civil war began with “the advent of serious revolutionary disorder in 1983” (Matthews). The government faced intermittent insurgency by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers. The root of the insurgency was caused by ethnic tension between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. The aim of the LTTE was the formation of a separate Tamil state in the northern part of Sri Lanka. Proscribed as a terrorist group by 32 countries, the LTTE allegedly employed tactics which included threatening or attacking civilians, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombings, and/or the recruitment and use of child soldiers (Bhattacharji). However, in opposing the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government has also been accused of extrajudicial killings, abductions, extortion, conscription, and the use of child soldiers (Bhattacharji). The war officially ended in May 2009 with the Sri Lankan government victorious. Anil’s Ghost was published in 2000, nine years before the official end of the war. The perspective of the novel is particularly useful for a number of reasons. The book provides an array of characters through which to view both the events of the Sri Lankan civil war and the differing value placed on the “truth” regarding certain incidents, and the differing versions of truth ascribed to certain events by Eastern and Western cultures. This offering of multiple perspectives enables the novel to be more accessible to readers from either hemisphere. Michael Ondaatje, while born in Sri Lanka, was educated in the West, much like his lead character, Anil. The official end of the war provides a new context for Anil’s Ghost, but it remains to be seen if the root causes of the war have been successfully dealt with or not.
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Anil’s Ghost
W Themes The war, and its effects on the people of Sri Lanka, is a major theme within the book. The civil war, and a string of human rights violations arising out of the war, prompts Anil’s return to Sri Lanka as she devotes herself to discovering the truth about what is happening in her former home. Some, like Gamini, barricade themselves off from the world. As Margaret Scanlan notes: “Gamini is visibly traumatized by war . . . [and] survives by immersing himself in his work.” Palipana, Sarath’s mentor, goes even further and withdraws from society altogether, choosing to live as a hermit. Others, like Sarath’s wife and Ananda, attempt to escape through suicide. The effects of the war are felt everywhere in Sri Lanka. Other major themes of Anil’s Ghost revolve around the concepts of truth and secrets. Anil comes to Sri Lanka in search of the truth. With Sarath’s help, she uncovers a number of hidden, buried, or obscured things, some hidden more thoroughly than others. However, Sarath himself remains largely an enigma, and Anil is never quite sure of his true nature. She remains unsure until the conclusion of the novel, when Sarath finally reveals himself through the actions he takes to save Anil and her research. Palipana, Sarath’s mentor, serves as another key element in examining the theme of truth. Lisa Pace Vetter explains that “for Palipana, the truth is not simply irrelevant or merely fabricated. Rather, truth must be understood as extended through time and composed of many different elements, objective and subjective.” This conclusion stems from a discussion Palipana holds with the novel’s protagonist, Anil.
W Style Ondaatje’s writing in the novel has been described by Publishers Weekly as “cryptic, elliptical.” This description stems, in part, from the postmodern style in which the book is written. As Chelva Kanaganayakam notes, this elliptical or fragmentary style is a literary device “that postmodern novelists use in order to move away from traditional linear narratives.” Anil’s Ghost exemplifies this “deliberately fragmentary style.” Scanlan further argues that Ondaatje’s “distinctive achievement in Anil’s Ghost is to create a narrative structure that replicates the experience of terror.” The disjointed scenes mirror the fragmentary nature of life as experienced by those caught in the war. Snapshot memories of horror are the primary recollections that stand out in the linear timeline surrounding the civil war. The structure of the novel, as well as the prose used within, help to shape the effect of the narrative on the reader. Anil’s Ghost is divided into eight subsections. This is one key structural component that contributes to the
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANANDA, a wreck of a man, driven to drink by the loss of his wife. At one time, he was a renowned painter and sculptor, partaking in the traditional eye-painting ceremony which gives life to statues, most notably figures of the Buddha. Ananda is enlisted by Anil and Sarath to re-create Sailor’s face. After he completes his work, Ananda attempts to kill himself by slashing his own throat. He is rescued by Anil and Sarath. SARATH DIYASENA, an archaeologist, is a Sri Lankan official who works closely with Anil to investigate the murders. Often aloof and of unknown political affiliation, Sarath provides Anil with an invaluable link to Sri Lanka. His connections provide access to the people, places, and things needed to complete their investigation. Sarath frequently challenges Anil’s assumptions, most notably in terms of what role truth plays in government and in life. GAMINI is Sarath’s younger brother and a doctor who works tirelessly on the never-ending stream of war victims. Gamini grew up in Sarath’s shadow, is addicted to speed, and was once in love with Sarath’s wife. Gamini helps Anil and Sarath save the life of Gunasena, a man they found nailed to the road as they traveled. Also known as “the Mouse,” Gamini’s perspective frequently provides a medical professional’s point of view. SAILOR is the name given to the skeleton of the unknown victim found by Anil and Sarath. Sailor proves to be a key to Anil’s human rights investigation in Sri Lanka. Discovering who he was and what happened to him becomes the main focus of the novel. ANIL TISSERA is a young woman who works as a forensic pathologist. She was born in Sri Lanka but left the country to pursue her higher education in the West. She returns to conduct a human rights investigation into various murders connected with the Sri Lankan civil war. The novel makes significant references to Anil’s past life in America, as well as her current activities in Sri Lanka.
elliptical or postmodern style of the novel. Each subsection is given its own thematically significant title: in some instances the name of one of the characters; in other cases a more interpretive or thematic nomenclature are used. For example, the subsection titled “The Mouse” refers to, and is written from, the perspective of Gamini. This allows the novel to retain islands of discrete, narrative structure, while simultaneously abandoning the linear format. Italicized anecdotes and narrative snapshots appear throughout Anil’s Ghost. Many are written from a firstperson perspective, increasing their immediacy. Some address past events, or allow the reader to glimpse
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Anil’s Ghost
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian author and poet. Born in Sri Lanka in 1942, Ondaatje is perhaps best known for his novel The English Patient. Ondaatje’s personal narrative style involves weaving together a narrative from various disparate scenes or “threads.” These threads, while not always aligned in strict causal or temporal order, link together (often thematically) to create the narrative of the novel. Ondaatje premiered this style in his 1976 work, Coming through Slaughter, and it has been argued that The English Patient is a masterfully realized example of this form. Ondaatje has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Man Booker Prize, awarded to The English Patient; and the Canadian Governor General’s Award, for both his fiction and his poetry. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
otherwise hidden scenes, things not always witnessed firsthand by the primary characters of the book during the course of the narrative. These vignettes serve to illustrate certain aspects of the war and the realities faced by the citizens of Sri Lanka.
W Critical Reception Anil’s Ghost was greeted with a wide range of critical response. Given the political nature of the novel’s subject matter, as well as its contemporary relevance to the then ongoing Sri Lankan civil war, criticism focused not only on the merits of the work as an artistic endeavor, but also on the place of the work within a social and/or political context. Kanaganayakam believes that “multiple analyses advanced by critics have specific implications for the evaluation of Sri Lankan fiction in particular and for postcolonial literatures in general.” New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin responds to some of the inherent difficulties with the postmodern form, remarking that the connection between the powerful images of the war scattered throughout the book and the plot of the novel are “indistinct. Frustratingly so, since the scattered aspects of this voyage of discovery are separately so powerful.” In her opinion, “the book’s real strengths lie in its profound sense of outrage, the shimmering intensity of its descriptive language and the mysterious beauty of its geography.” Theo Tait of the London Review of Books likewise expresses the view that while containing powerful imagery, the novel suffers from a disconnecting of events and a breakdown of plot progression that result from
Homes that were damaged in the Sri Lankan civil war, the same war that is featured in Anil’s Ghost. ª Howard Davies/Corbis
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Anil’s Ghost
Ondaatje’s signature style. He compares Ondaatje to one of the author’s literary characters, calling him one of his own “outlandish figures of comparison, the excellent novelist and the hammy, rather suspect wordsmith seem intertwined.” Other reviewers have lauded Anil’s Ghost, citing the opinion that this work, rather than an imperfect novel, is an inspired exploration of the form. Such reviewers have appreciated Ondaatje for pushing the envelope and bringing a poet’s aesthetic to the prose novel form. Still others prefer to focus on the social or political impact the book might have. Regardless of motive, the novel continues to provoke a wide spectrum of responses. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Anil’s Ghost.” Publishers Weekly 247.12 (2000): 70. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 July 2010. Bhattacharji, Preeti. “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers).” Council on Foreign Relations. 20 May 2009. Web. 9 July 2010. Kanaganayakam, Chelva. “In Defense of Anil’s Ghost.” ARIEL 37.1 (2006): 5+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 July 2010. Maslin, Janet. “Books of the Times; Unearthing the Tragedies of Civil War in Sri Lanka.” Rev. of Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje. New York Times 11 May 2000: n.p. Print. NYTimes.com. Web. 9 July 2010. Matthews, Bruce. “The Limits of International Engagement in Human Rights Situations: The Case of Sri Lanka.” Pacific Affairs 82.4 (2009): 577+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 July 2010. Scanlan, Margaret. “Anil’s Ghost and Terrorism’s Time.” Studies in the Novel 36.3 (2004): 302+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 July 2010. Tait, Theo. “Hit the Circuit.” Rev. of Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje. London Review of Books 22.14 (20 July 2000): n.p. Print. Lrb.co.uk. Web. 9 July 2010. Vetter, Lisa Pace. “Liberal Political Inquiries in the Novels of Michael Ondaatje.” Perspectives on Political Science 34.1 (2005): 27+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. Additional Resources
Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Review focusing on the theme of war and the importance of death in Anil’s Ghost, with brief mentions of connections between the work and certain archetypal protagonist characteristics. Kertzer, Jon. “Justice and the Pathos of Understanding in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.” English Studies in Canada 29.3-4 (2003): 116+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 July 2010. A critical essay that addresses the political aspect (or lack thereof) of Anil’s Ghost, and examines questions of pathos, ethics, and responsibility. New, William H. “Anil’s Ghost.” Journal of Modern Literature (2000): 565. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 July 2010. Places Ondaatje’s work, focusing on Anil’s Ghost in particular, into the context of works written by other contemporary Canadian authors. Ratti, Manav. “Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and the Aestheticization of Human Rights.” ARIEL 35.1-2 (2004): 121+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Critical essay that addresses questions of the political and social impact of Anil’s Ghost, and expands the book’s potential impact on human rights into the question of minority rights and state sovereignty as well. Smothers, Bonnie. “Anil’s Ghost.” Booklist 15 Mar. 2000: 1294. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Brief plot summary and review in support of Ondaatje’s style and the effects of the book as a work of art. Gale Resources
Guneratne, Anthony R. “Michael Ondaatje (12 September 1943-)”. South Asian Writers in English. Ed. Fakrul Alam. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 323. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 273-280. Print. From Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web 12 July 2010. “Michael Ondaatje (1943-)”. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 180. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 173-285. Print. From Literature Criticism Online. Web 12 July 2010.
Criticism and Reviews
Open Web Sources
Allen, Brooke. “Meditations, Good & Bad.” New Criterion 18.9 (2000): 63. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 July 2010. Highly critical review that deconstructs Anil’s Ghost from the perspectives of language, plot, and poetic effect.
Michael Ondaatje’s personal website includes biographical information, quotes, and video clips. It is located at http://michaelondaatje.com/
Cusk, Rachel. “Sri Lankan Skeletons.” New Statesman 129.4485 (8 May 2000): 55. Print. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 180. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Print. Literature Resource
The Poetry Foundation’s website has an extensive entry on Michael Ondaatje. It includes a biography, a current bibliography of his work, a career synopsis and an extensive list of works for further reading. http:// www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html? id=5142
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The Contemporary Writers website offers a biography of Michael Ondaatje, as well as an extended critical perspective on his various works. It also features a current list of prizes and honors awarded him. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/? p=auth205 For Further Reading
De Silva, K. M. A History of Sri Lanka. Rev. ed. 2005. London: C. Hurst & Company, 2005. Print. A history of Sri Lanka; of particular note is chapter 38, which covers the change in regime and the beginnings of the Sri Lankan civil war. Gunawardena, C. A. Encyclopedia of Sri Lanka. Rev. ed. 2006. Elgin: New Dawn Press Group, 2005. Print. Covers major aspects of Sri Lankan history, geography, people, places, art, and culture. Jewinski, Ed. Michael Ondaatje: Express Yourself Beautifully. n.p.: ECW Press, 1994. Print. A biography of Michael Ondaatje, published before he wrote Anil’s Ghost.
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Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992. Print. Arguably Ondaatje’s best-known novel, winner of the Man Booker Prize, adapted into an Academy Awardwinning film. ———. Running in the Family. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. Print. Fictionalized memoir by Ondaatje about his imagined return to Sri Lanka in the 1970s; involves aspects of magic realism and explores themes of memory, family, and societal expectations. ———, with Ellen Kanner. “New Discoveries from the Author of The English Patient.” Bookpage.com. Web. 13 July 2010. An interview with Michael Ondaatje, conducted shortly after Anil’s Ghost was published; includes some of his feelings about Sri Lanka and the impulse behind the writing of the novel. Powder Thompson
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Animal’s People By Indra Sinha
W Introduction Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is a darkly satirical tale set in present-day India, in the city of Khaufpur. The city is a fictionalized version of Bhopal, the site of the 1984 Union Carbide pesticide leak, the worst recorded industrial disaster in history. The protagonist of Sinha’s novel is a nineteenyear-old man whose parents were among the thousands killed in a comparable chemical leak. Instead of killing him, however, the chemicals have caused his spine to become so twisted that he is forced to walk on all fours—thus his nickname, Animal. What might otherwise be a very bleak book is lightened by the novel’s dark sense of humor. Animal is not only incredibly profane but he is also perpetually horny, lusting after numerous women (including the daughter of a local musician) and bragging about the size of his penis. Further humor arises from his relationship with Ma Franci, the deranged French nun with whom he lives, as well as with his dog, Jara. The novel also incorporates numerous elements of magical realism. Animal’s People was short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, as well as the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
W Literary and Historical Context
Although the Bhopal disaster occurred over twenty-five years ago, its effects are still being felt today. On December 2, 1984, a gas leak occurred at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant, which caused thousands of people in the surrounding area to be exposed to harmful chemicals such as methyl isocyanate (MIC). The leak caused somewhere between 3,000 and
15,000 deaths, many of which were immediate, and many more of which were the result of diseases related to gas exposure. To this day, survivors continue to suffer from related illnesses and injuries, in no small part due to the fact that even after the main leak, abandoned chemicals continued to pollute the groundwater. The gas leak in Bhopal, India, is considered the worst chemical disaster in history. More than twenty-five years after the tragedy, several criminal and civil cases are still pending, both in the United States and India. Seven former employees, including the ex-CEO of UCIL, Warren Anderson, were convicted in June 2010 for criminal negligence, each one sentenced to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. An eighth was convicted but died before his sentence could be carried out. The leak was blamed on numerous factors, including inadequate maintenance, the fact that at the plant, MIC was being stored in tanks filled far past recommended levels, and the failure of numerous safety systems, many of which, including the tanks’ refrigeration system, were deliberately turned off in order to save money. Contributing to the severity of the disaster were the large number of slums (and therefore countless people) in the immediate area, the lack of any safety plan in case of a catastrophe, and poor availability of health care. Top symptoms and injuries that resulted include respiratory and eye problems, neurological disorders, and birth defects.
W Themes Animal’s People centers on an exploration of how corporate greed can lead to the devastation and destruction of human lives, casually and senselessly sacrificed in the name of cutting corners and saving money. It uses a fictionalized account of the Bhopal disaster’s aftermath to demonstrate how the world’s poorest people have no voice in how the world is run, or even in something as basic as their own survival.
47 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Animal’s People
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANIMAL, the narrator and protagonist, is a crude and perpetually horny nineteen-year-old whose spine is so twisted he has to walk on all fours ELLI, is a doctor from the United States whose goal is to open a free clinic in Khaufpur, to help the victims of the gas leak. MA FRANCI is a French nun who was poisoned in the gas leak, causing her to lose her mind, along with her Hindi and English. She can communicate only in French with Animal, with whom she lives. NISHA is the young woman with whom Animal has fallen in love, despite the fact that she is Zafar’s girlfriend. ZAFAR is an activist who preaches for nonviolent methods of retaliation against the company that ruined the lives of his people. He is also the boyfriend of Animal’s crush, Nisha.
Years later, the people of Khaufpur continue to suffer, their torment given representation in the form of Animal, whose body is as twisted and damaged as the plight of the people among whom he lives. Throughout the novel, his deformity is a constant reminder of the wrongs that have been done to him and his people, even as his crude personality and obsession with sex reassert Animal’s humanity. He may be horrifying to look at, the novel stresses, but he has the same needs, desires, and drives as any other person. Animal also serves as an extreme symbol for all impoverished people in Third World countries who may seem unapproachably alien to First World people, but who are no less deserving of human rights. He is fiercely individual and refuses to allow his identity to become regarded merely as a statistic.
W Style Sinha writes Animal’s People as a first-person narrative, in the voice of Animal, a device that places the reader directly in the center of the tragedy and fear that continues to affect the lives of the people who populate the novel. The word khauf, part of the city’s name, means fear or horror. “I used to be human once,” Animal says at the start, a declaration that speaks both to his physical deformities and to how the public outside of Khaufpur has come to ignore his people’s plight, treating them as less than human (1). The novel is structured in the form of transcripts of tape recordings that Animal is supposedly making for a reporter, who plans on using his testimony, as well as that of other Khaufpur residents, to write a book about the
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A mosque in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. A fictional version of Bhopal serves as the setting of the novel Animal’s People. ª Photosindia/Corbis
tragedy. Animal remains acerbic and cynical throughout, telling the journalist, “You were like all the others, come to suck our stories from us, so strangers in far off countries can marvel there’s so much pain in the world. Like vultures are you jarnaliss” (5). Regarding the last word, Animal, frequently speaks with mispronounced or even made-up words that reflect the mix of Hindi, French, and English languages that surrounds him. He mistranslates the word, company as “kampani” and refers to spying as “jamisponding,” a verb phonetically derived from “James Bond” (27, 105). Animal’s dark sense of humor and unique perspective on the world adds a satirical layer to the proceedings that keeps the novel from being fully bleak, even as it underlines his humanity. He is, after all, partaking in the particularly human practice of dealing with tragedy through humor and selfdeprecation. Animal can also read minds and even communicates with a two-headed fetus (another result of the gas leak) that has been preserved for study at a local laboratory—a nuance that references the magical realism that runs throughout much of Indian literature. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Animal’s People
W Critical Reception Upon its release, Animal’s People was lauded for the creative and uncompromising manner with which it confronted readers with the victims of the Bhopal disaster. Leslie Patterson of Library Journal praised Animal as a narrator for his “lively mind and . . . way with words, some of them angry and profane, some of them bitterly funny,” calling the novel a “gripping” reminder of a “continuing real-life tragedy.” Entertainment Weekly’s Karen Valby additionally called Animal “as delightfully human a narrator as one could hope to find.” Kirkus Reviews went so far as to say that Animal was “destined to be one of fiction’s immortals.” In the same vein, Donna Seaman of Booklist was very impressed with how Sinha yields humor from the tragedy. She described the novel as being a “story . . . imaginatively told. Writing with both serious intent and exuberant satirical humor, Sinha tells an antic, ribald, and searing tale of greed and heroism.” She went on to applaud “Sinha’s daring farce . . . [for asking] what it means to be human, . . . [rekindling] compassion for the still uncompensated victims of the real-life catastrophe, and . . . [celebrating] the resiliency of love and goodness in the poorest and most poisoned of places.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in India in 1950, Indra Sinha spent the majority of his adult life in England, where he was voted as one of the top ten best British copywriters of all time. His specialty was in producing uncompromising, forceful ad campaigns for such charities as the Bhopal Medical Appeal and Amnesty International. Although he resigned in 1995 to focus on literature and nonfiction writing, his interest in human rights and humanity in general recurs throughout his work. His writing abounds with empathy for the less fortunate, particularly in Animal’s People, in which he places the reader inside the perspective of a most afflicted narrator.
Some critics took issue with the novel’s use of magical realism. London’s Sunday Times found these elements of the novel to be underdeveloped and “halfhearted,” while Ligaya Mishan in the New York Times felt that they were “more disorienting than enlightening . . . Sinha veers between comedy and tragedy,
An abandoned factory sits in ruins. In Animal’s People, a chemical leak from a similar factory leaves the main character, Animal, so deformed that he must walk on all fours. ª Nathan King / Alamy TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Animal’s People
awkwardly stuffing his story with improbable high jinks.” She was also not the only critic to find a great number of the characters other than Animal to be rather twodimensional, built on personality quirks rather than on “fully realized interior lives.” Despite that, however, even she found moments of great power in the novel: “every now and then his prose achieves a plainspoken lyricism that brings his subject into sharp focus.”
Irani, Anosh. Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada], 13 Oct. 2007: D4. Explores how Sinha fictionalized the true story of the Bhopal disaster in this novel. Gale Resources
“Sinha, Indra (1950-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009. “Sinha, Indra. Animal’s People.” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Kirkus Reviews 1 Jan. 2008. “Human, All Too Human; Fiction.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Sunday Times [London], 30 Sept. 2007: 54. Mishan, Ligaya. “POISONED.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. New York Times Book Review, 9 Mar. 2008: 13(L). Patterson, Leslie. “Sinha, Indra. Animal’s People.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Library Journal 133.5 (2008): 61+. Seaman, Donna. “Animal’s People.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Booklist 15 Feb. 2008: 35. Sinha, Indra. Animal’s People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Print. Valby, Karen. “Animal’s People.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Entertainment Weekly 7 Mar. 2008: 96. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“The Animal Kingdom.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. India Today (2007). This mostly complimentary review from India nevertheless argues that the novel’s main flaw is that the grotesqueries of Sinha’s fictionalized Bhopal are not nearly as upsetting as what actually happened. Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. Guardian [London, England], 15 Sept. 2007: 17. Analyzes how Sinha infuses the entire novel with a sense of unspeakable horror that is all the more disturbing because it has its basis in truth. Beresford, Lucy. “Village of the Damned.” Rev. of Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha. New Statesman (1996) 26 Feb. 2007: 67+. This review explains how Sinha used the internet as a medium to help tell his story, through the use of a website for the fictional Khaufpur that he created in conjunction with the novel. “‘The Govt Must Stop Obstructing Justice.’” Times of India, 22 June 2008. Details Indra Sinha’s real-world efforts to help the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster.
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Indra Sinha’s blog includes informative postings on his travels and his culture at http://www.indrasinha.com There is a detailed biography and critical essay about Sinha’s work, along with a full bibliography and list of awards at http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/? p=auth519F079C191fb20F5CkXPTF00D99 For Further Reading
D’Silva, Themistocles. The Black Box of Bhopal: A Closer Look at the World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster. Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2006. Print. This study of the disaster includes documents related to the plant’s operation and construction, as well as to the inner workings of the company that ran it. It also includes in-depth analysis of the Indian government’s response to the disaster, as well as to its investigation. Fortun, Kim. Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 2001. Print. Analyzes the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster and how it has inspired human rights advocacy in ensuing years. Hanna, Bridget; Ward Morehouse; and Satinath Sarangi, eds. The Bhopal Reader. New York: Apex, 2005. Print. This anthology of information includes testimonies, analysis, debates, scientific and legal commentary and evidence, as well as archival documentation about the disaster. Lapierre, Dominique, and Javier Moro. Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster. New York: Warner Books, 2002. Print. Written by a journalist from France and a writer from Spain, this book is both a recounting of the disaster and a history of how the factory came to be built in the first place. Morehouse, Ward, and M. Arun Subramaniam. The Bhopal Tragedy: What Really Happened and What It Means for American Workers and Communities at Risk. New York: Apex, 1986. Print. This early analysis of the Bhopal disaster also contains warnings for how similar disasters can occur in the future, should corporate greed continue to influence precautionary policies. Robert Berg TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Armies By Evelio Rosero
W Introduction Set in war-torn rural Colombia, Evelio Rosero’s novel The Armies is the story of a fictional valley town under attack by several rival military groups and drug traffickers that inhabit the surrounding mountain forests. For years these factions have been swooping into San José without warning to kidnap its wealthiest citizens and to inflict violence on the rest of the inhabitants, who have long since resigned themselves to this menace. At the heart of the story is Ismael Pasos, a seventy-year-old retired professor whose search for his missing wife exposes him to the suffering of nearly everyone in town. Over the course of the novel, Ismael gradually loses his sanity as his neighbors either flee or are brutally murdered. The Armies has been praised for its relentlessly unsentimental examination of Colombia’s drug wars and focus on the personal aspects of the crisis rather than attending to larger questions of politics and social reform. It won the Tusquets International Prize in 2006 and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
Rural Colombia has experienced nearly continuous violence since the late 1940s, when a period known as “La Violencia” erupted after the conservative government’s return to power in 1946 and the 1948 assassination of charismatic liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala. These two events led many conservative peasants to steal land from those who supported the liberal government; a chain reaction of violence ensued that lasted through the mid-1950s. After a brief respite, tension returned with the rise of several Marxist parties in the 1960s and continued with the development of
drug cartels in the 1970s and ’80s. As markets for cocaine grew, rural Colombia’s vast swathes of coca plants became coveted and disputed territory. All of this made the average citizen in these towns easy prey for the numerous cartels and guerrilla organizations that were competing for resources. Many of these groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), were more powerful than the national government, making law enforcement in the region nearly impossible. The Armies, which is set in present-day Colombia, does not identify any particular Colombian fighting force but rather portrays the violence as a permanent and ubiquitous threat coming from anonymous military forces that strike the citizens of San José at unpredictable times. From 1960 to 1967, as war spread throughout much of Latin America, there was a literature boom that featured two distinct types of writing. The more famous of these was made up of writers such as Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Jorge Luis Borges. Together this group developed a new literary style called magic realism, in which fantastic, decidedly unrealistic elements are woven into otherwise realistic stories. The other collection of more traditional writers featured the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Although Rosero is a great admirer of Márquez, he clearly is a descendant of the latter group. The Armies focuses exclusively on the stark realities of civilians coping with war, such as loved ones waiting for spouses and mothers tending to traumatized children.
W Themes Rosero introduces the themes of voyeurism and indifference in the novel’s opening scene, in which Ismael picks oranges and looks over a wall at his neighbor Geraldina, who is sunbathing in the nude. As Ismael dawdles and
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The Armies
MAJOR CHARACTERS GERALDINA ALMIDA is Ismael’s neighbor. Her husband and son are kidnapped when the armies invade San José. Her son is eventually returned, but the trauma has left him mute. CHEPE is a café owner whose wife is pregnant. She is kidnapped, and one day the optimistic, good-natured Chepe receives a parcel containing several of her and their daughter’s fingers. HORTENSIA GALINDO is the wife of Marcos Saldarriaga, who was kidnapped years before the action of the novel unfolds. Every year she hosts a party on the anniversary of her husband’s disappearance. Because she insists that there be dancing at the party, it is not clear whether she is mourning or celebrating his disappearance. “HEY” is the empanada seller who earns his moniker for the one-word shout he uses to advertise his wares as he pushes his cart through town. Ismael continues to hear the famous “heeey” after the peddler has been assassinated. OTILIA DEL SAGRARIO ALDANA OCAMPO, age sixty, is Ismael’s wife. Early in the novel, in their only protracted scene together, she scolds her husband for his voyeurism and sends him to a priest. Ismael goes to a bar and to a doctor instead and misses a party he was supposed to attend with Otilia. The two share only one brief conversation after this before she disappears. ISMAEL PASOS is the seventy-year-old hero and narrator of the novel. An incorrigible Peeping Tom, Ismael enjoys picking oranges from the trees that line his property so he can peer over the wall at Geraldina, who sunbathes naked. One morning Ismael wakes up early and takes a walk in the countryside. The first of the armies attacks while he is gone, and his wife disappears. Ismael spends the better part of the novel looking for her as his mental health deteriorates.
gawks, Geraldina and her husband, Eusebio, who is clothed, relax as if they do not know Ismael is there. Eventually, Eusebio approaches the wall and says to Ismael, “Your oranges are round, but my wife must be more rounded, no?” The two men continue to have a circumspect, jocular conversation, and Geraldina eventually joins them. The scene exemplifies the manner in which the novel’s characters ignore what is happening around them and then dismiss the violation when it is brought to light. Rosero develops these themes in a broader social context at a party given by Hortensia, whose husband, Marcos, disappeared four years ago. Each year Hortensia throws an unusual gathering to acknowledge the anniversary of Marcos’s disappearance.
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Even as partygoers recall the horror of the kidnapping, they look forward to the gathering as an opportunity to dance and gossip. Ismael skips the event and goes instead to a café, where he ogles the waitresses. All of this foreshadows how the townspeople deal with the armies that invade the day after the party. No one protests; instead, they continue with their lives, resigning themselves to despair. As the guerrillas and paramilitaries continue to draw blood and make demands, Rosero introduces another theme, something akin to loyalty but that could also be regarded as a stubbornness bordering on madness. Ismael refuses to leave town, even after months have passed and all signs indicate that his wife has died. Near the end of the story, he receives several letters from his daughter, urging him to leave San José and live with her and her husband. Ismael refuses and eventually will not even read the missives. At the novel’s conclusion, Ismael visits a dying man named Celmiro, who has locked himself in his home. As Ismael pounds at the door, it is revealed that for days Celmiro’s sons have tried to get him to leave with them, but he prefers to die alone in San José.
W Style The Armies is an example of literary realism, which is an attempt to depict contemporary life as it is. As noted in Maya Jaggi’s article in the Guardian, more than 100,000 Colombian citizens were either killed or disappeared in the last twenty years, according to an Amnesty International report from 2008. To re-create the horror and resignation of rural Colombia during the drug wars of the second half of the twentieth century, the novel contains a litany of atrocities, including an officer firing into an unarmed crowd of civilians, a doctor stuffing money and narcotics into cadavers to help guerrillas transport their contraband, and a group of soldiers killing and then raping a woman. Rosero chose San José (an extremely common city name in Colombia) for the name of the novel’s setting in order to represent any rural Colombian town. “I took everyday life, idyllic as it seemed, and sabotaged it as violence came in,” Rosero comments in the Guardian article. The novel’s realism extends to the interior life of its main character, and the language Rosero uses to narrate the story reflects Ismael’s failing mental health. Ismael suffers from emotional exhaustion and becomes forgetful, nearly demented, the longer he goes without seeing his wife. As his mental health deteriorates, the storyline likewise breaks down. For example, during one point late in the novel, when it seems as if a week has gone by, Ismael says that the armies have been in town for several months. He then starts introducing new characters and talks about them as if they have been present in the novel from the beginning. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Armies
W Critical Reception Although the English translation of Rosero’s novel has not yet been widely reviewed, critics who have studied the work have responded positively. Perhaps the most favorable among these is Boyd Tonkin’s notice in the Belfast Telegraph, which states, “If our age of cyclical terror and counter-terror needs its own answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, here it is.” Most of the reviews commend Rosero for managing the escalation of violence in the text without sentiment or remorse. For example, writing in the Independent, Daniel Hahn claims, “The violence is momentary but often shocking, shown in brief, grim pictures; the building despair is finely controlled and oppressive; but The Armies is a swift and engaging piece of prose.” Miranda France in the Telegraph concurs, commenting that “the horror of the villagers’ plight is always powerfully conveyed.” However, Tommy Wallach, writing for the World, recognizes that the relentless violence may put off many readers: “The only thing that can really be said against Rosero’s novel is either irrelevant or a deal breaker: it isn’t particularly fun to read. When the darkness falls over Ismael, it is never to rise again. Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse. The manager of a local café receives the index fingers of his kidnapped wife and daughter in order
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Evelio Rosero was born on March 20, 1958, in Bogotá, Colombia. He began writing in earnest in his late teens, and since that time has published novels, poetry, short stories, novellas, journalism, young adult fiction, and flash fiction to great acclaim. Famous for riding his bike through Bogotá for exercise and for running errands, Rosero is otherwise known for leading the reclusive life of a tireless writer. He makes a point of not attending literary functions. Over the course of his career, Rosero has won several major awards, including Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento (national short story award) at age twenty-one in 1979 for “Ausentes” (The departed) and Spain’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve (international award for short fiction) for Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) in 1982. In 2006 he was awarded Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (national literature prize) for his body of work.
to extract a higher ransom. The city’s empanada vendor’s severed head is found in his grease boiler. One woman watches her son die, then is killed and raped (in that order) by a group of soldiers.”
The Armies takes place in the midst of a brutal Colombian drug war. ª Bill Gentile/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Reviewers have also praised Rosero for focusing on the private lives of the villagers rather than delving into Colombian politics. In Quarterly Conversation, Travis Godsoe argues that despite its varied influences, among them the many Latin American novels that came before it and the dystopian works of Samuel Beckett, “The Armies stands well on its own as an engrossing tale and needs no reference or interpretation beyond one’s own emotions and sense of justice. . . . Perhaps this is because the book is an antiwar novel without politics, one that only concerns itself with consequences and is all the more moving for it.” Hahn echoes Godsoe’s remarks: “The war is not about politics for these characters, not about rival factions fighting for control. It is about personal tragedies, the loss of a wife, struggles with physical ailments, sensations of pain, heat, thirst, hope and hopelessness. And Evelio Rosero’s book is all the more powerful for it.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
France, Miranda. Rev. of The Armies, by Evelio Rosero. Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 26 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Godsoe, Travis. Rev. of The Armies, by Evelio Rosero. Quarterly Conversation. N.p., 4 Jan. 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Grant, Linda, Boyd Tonkin, and Maya Jaggi. “Witness to War: Evelio Rosero on Fiction That Fights for Truth.” Independent [London]. Independent Print Limited, 15 May 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Hahn, Daniel. Rev. of The Armies, by Evelio Rosero. Independent [London]. Independent Print Limited, 16 Jan. 2009. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Rosero, Evelio. The Armies. Trans. Anne McLean. New York: New Directions, 2009. Print. Tonkin, Boyd. Rev. of The Armies, by Evelio Rosero. Belfast Telegraph. Independent News and Media Limited, 19 Feb. 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Wallach, Tommy. “Of Violence and Beauty.” PRI’s The World. PRI’s The World, 9 Sept. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Ehrenreich, Ben. “After Macando: On Evelio Rosero.” Nation. The Nation Company, 7 Jan. 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Praises the author for his unsparing representation of the violence and desolation the warring armies have brought to Colombia in the past half century. Ehrenreich also argues that Rosero’s narrative implicates readers, creating in them a perverse desire to bear witness to the destruction that is wrought on the page.
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Bomb Magazine features an interview with Rosero in which he speaks about his experiences being educated by priests and the place they occupy in his work, as well as the books that have most influenced him. http://bombsite.com/issues/110/articles/3364 The Web site Booktrust includes an interview with the author in which he discusses the difference between the way rural and urban Colombians understand the violence that has been ravaging the countryside since the late 1940s. http://www.translatedfiction.org. uk/show/feature/Translation-Evelio-Rosero For Further Reading
Camus, Albert. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage, 1991. Print. Set in the 1940s in Algeria, the novel documents a group of people who, much like the citizens of San José, resign themselves to their despair when a deadly communicable disease spreads through town. The Plague has been read as an allegory of the French resistance to the Nazi invasion during the 1940s. Durnan, Michael, and Mark Peceny. “The FARC’s Best Friend: U.S. Antidrug Policies and the Deepening of Colombia’s Civil War in the 1990s.” Latin American Politics and Society 40.2 (2006): 95-116. Print. This article claims that the success of U.S. antidrug policies in Colombia, such as the dismantling of drug cartels and the aerial fumigation of coca crops, pushed coca cultivation exclusively into areas dominated by the FARC insurgents and thus weakened the central government and exacerbated the civil wars in areas like Rosero’s San José. Erlick, June Carolyn. A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia’s Invisible War. Austin: U of Texas P, 2010. Print. In this memoir Erlick gives an account of how urban Colombians lived during the same time period covered in The Armies. She examines both the signs of “convivencia”—the Colombians’ desire to live in peace despite the civil war—and the subtle ways in which the sense of war is present, even in the face of all of the acts of kindness the author witnesses there. García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print. Many reviewers of The Armies have identified Rosero’s fictional San José as a literary counterpoint to Macondo, the fictional Colombian village in García Márquez’s masterpiece. Both places endure relentless civil war, but García Márquez’s fabulations and stylistic flourishes relieve the horror, while Rosero’s realism and stark prose amplify it. Green, W. John. “Guerrillas, Soldiers, Paramilitaries, Assassins, Narcos, and Gringos: The Unhappy Prospects for Peace and Democracy in Colombia.” Latin American Research Review 40.2 (2005): 137-49. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Armies
Print. Gives a comprehensive overview of the political, economic, and military climate that has existed in Colombia since the 1950s. Leech, Garry M. Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia. Boston: Beacon, 2010. Print. A combination of journal entries and news reports, Leech recounts the eleven hours he spent incarcerated by FARC and documents his meetings with the leaders vying for power in Panama’s and Colombia’s drug wars. The book also reviews the effectiveness of U.S. antidrug measures in Latin America.
Web. 24 Sept. 2010. This article reports on measures undertaken by current Colombian government to resolve the land problems and reduce the sort of guerrilla and paramilitary activity depicted in Rosero’s novel. Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Feast of the Goat. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Picador, 2002. Print. Rosero cites Vargas Llosa’s realist work as one of his primary influences. The novel recounts the assassination of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, ruler of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961.
“This Land Is Our Land: At Last the Government Tries to Reverse a Violent Agrarian ‘Counter-Reform.’” Economist. The Economist Group, 16 Sept. 2010.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Joseph Campana
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Arthur & George By Julian Barnes
W Introduction Julian Barnes’s biographical novel Arthur & George (2005) tells the story of two men, one famous, the other not, whose lives intersect because of a miscarriage of justice. Based on a historical case, the novel develops the separate lives of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and George Edalji, an English-born Anglo-Indian solicitor. First, Barnes develops the separate story lines in chapters identified by one or the other character’s name, and then he tells the story of how Conan Doyle helped George in chapters some of which bear the two names together. As Barnes tells the story and as he describes Conan Doyle investigating and interpreting the events, it seems that the brown-skinned myopic George Edalji is likely the victim of racial prejudice, though Edalji never believes he is. The novel is a re-creation of events, fictional except in its verbatim use of newspaper reports, certain letters, and other legal documents. An “Author’s Note” appears at the end of the novel that explains what happened to the historical persons on whom this fictional account is based.
W Literary and Historical Context
The decades of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century provide the time frame for this novel. The famous case of George Edalji was tried in 1903, Edalji was incarcerated for three years and then released, and in 1907, Edalji contacted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking for his assistance in an effort to restore Edalji’s good name and his license to practice law. Heralded in the West and in the United States for its history of common law, England at this time did not have an appeals procedure. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Home Office decided what cases to lay before the Court of Crown
Cases Reserved, an entity that reviewed only points of law. Largely as a result of Conan Doyle’s efforts to bring public attention to this case and an earlier one involving Adolf Beck, the Court of Criminal Appeals was established by the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907. This court was designed to review matters of law and fact and gave defense lawyers an appeal process whereby negative judgments could be reevaluated. It had the additional effect of curbing certain tactics of prosecutors. The growing agnosticism of George Edalji and Conan Doyle’s disinterest in established religion and increased interest in spiritualism reflect the fin-de-siécle erosion of traditional Christian faith. During the nineteenth century, various branches of scientific investigation developed and garnered public attention through lecture and public debate and challenged establish church teaching. Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology (1830-1833), suggested that the earth was shaped by forces acting over millions of years. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) suggested how distinct species descend from common ancestors. Scientific investigation linked with intellectual fervor both undermined bedrock religious tenets and encouraged a hope that in the twentieth century people would be able to know for certain how life began and what lies beyond the grave. Arthur & George alludes to other contextual matters as well. One of these is the prevalence of what was called “galloping consumption” (67) and later termed tuberculosis, the pulmonary infection that afflicts Conan Doyle’s first wife and even in the early 2000s can be fatal in some cases. In the scenes describing George’s imprisonment, readers learn about the prison at Portland Bill, part of an island off the south shore of England near Weymouth. Barnes describes the iron cells, like dog kennels, the lack of fresh air, the prison regimen, and the unlikely possibility of escape. A persistently relevant contextual element is the impact of newspaper coverage on any celebrated legal case and how word choice reveals interpretation and can be inflammatory.
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Arthur & George
MAJOR CHARACTERS GEORGE AUGUSTUS ANSON, chief constable, was prejudiced against Parsees and likely encouraged his police officers to suspect George Edalji of mutilating the horses. SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, tries to assist George Edalji in solving the crime of which he was charged. LOUISA HAWKINS DOYLE, called Touie, is the first wife of Conan Doyle. CHARLOTTE STONEHAM EDALJI is George’s Scottish mother. GEORGE EDALJI is an English-born Anglo-Indian who becomes a Birmingham solicitor and is falsely accused and found guilty of a crime. HORACE EDALJI, George’s brother, moves to Manchester and thus escapes the difficulties the Edalji family experience at the vicarage in Great Wyrley. MAUD EDALJI, George’s sister, provides him with strength during the trial and after his release shares a home with him until she dies.
Portrait of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes and is one of the main characters in Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George. ª Classic Image / Alamy
W Themes An important theme in Arthur & George is presented first in connection with Conan Doyle’s method for writing his Sherlock Holmes mysteries: His method is to begin with the ending and, once it is understood, to trace the inevitable path back to the beginning, thus unfolding the plot in its entirety. The idea that knowledge of the ending determines the path or journey one must take from the beginning is related to the interest of George Edalji in trains and in the law. George admires the English rail service and writes a book about the laws that govern it. He admires how trains arrive at scheduled times at each town between the beginning and ending of a business commute or pleasure excursion. Railroad linearity and the logic that determines rail service can also be seen in the law, which George distinguishes from and privately holds above the Articles of Faith of the Church of England. The novel examines the notion of linear, logical progression from an ending back to the point of origin and challenges its obvious assumptions. The law is not exact; in exercise, it is subject to prejudice, to misinterpretation, and to malicious or ignorant miscarriages of justice. A detective can investigate a crime, working back
SHAPURJI EDALJI, George’s father, was born in Bombay where he converted to Christianity. He later becomes a priest in the Church of England and serves for over twenty years as the vicar of Great Wyrley. CONNIE CONAN DOYLE HORNUNG is the sister of Arthur Conan Doyle who objects to the author’s friendship with Jean Leckie. ERNEST WILLIAM HORNUNG, called Willie, is the husband of Connie. Willie tries to explain to Arthur why his relationship to Jean Leckie is reckless and in bad taste. JEAN LECKIE is the second wife of Conan Doyle. ALFRED WOOD is Conan Doyle’s personal assistant and secretary and plays a Watson-type role in the crime investigation on behalf of George Edalji.
from the crime scene to events and individuals related to that outcome and yet not arrive at the truth. George’s ideals about the English legal system are challenged by his own experience. Arthur Conan Doyle can use his celebrity status and writing expertise to fuel public opinion on George’s behalf and yet still not correctly identify the perpetrators of the crime or their motives. In these ways, Barnes makes of this early twentieth-century case a modern parable about how criminals may go unpunished and how investigations can be swayed by prejudice and public sentiment. As well meaning as many individuals in the legal system may be, various factors can subvert the justice system, causing the innocent to pay and the guilty to escape with impunity.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Arthur & George
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born January 19, 1946, in Leicester, England, Julian Barnes received his BA from Magdalen College, Oxford University, in 1968. He worked as a freelance writer and lexicographer, beginning in the early 1970s and then went on to be a television critic and a literary editor for the Sunday Times (London) and later a correspondent for the New Yorker magazine. In the 1980s he wrote several books, the fourth one of which, Flaubert’s Parrot (1986) being a particular success. He has written several detective novels, two of which under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, and three collections of essays, two short story collections and a translation of the memoirs of Alphonse Daudet, the nineteenth-century French writer. Arthur & George was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. As of 2010, he lived in London with his wife, Pat Kavanagh.
W Style Barnes’s style is ironic and humorous. The plot undermines the assumption early asserted by George Edalji that virtue is its own reward. As the novel demonstrates, one may feel self-satisfaction in being law abiding, but that does not protect a person from malicious others who are intent on mischief and who do not care whom they hurt in the process. Also disproved is the notion that the law allows for no ambiguity such as one finds in Christian beliefs. Indeed, ambiguity and obfuscation cloak police investigation, as prejudice can occlude legal proceedings. The law is putty, subject to innuendo, inference, and slander. The ironies in this novel would be dark indeed were it not for the humor, which is often conveyed by Barnes’s appropriation of Edwardian prose style and as often delivered through the funny lines given to Conan Doyle. Barnes’s handling of tense, which Terrence Rafferty noted was “terribly cunning,” is skillfully related to plot development. George’s story is in present tense until his life stops with his imprisonment at which time it is told in past tense. Conan Doyle’s story is in past tense until he meets Jean Leckie, at which point it unfolds in present tense. Thus, the handling of tense marks the progression or obstruction of progression in the lives of these two protagonists.
W Critical Reception Arthur & George was generally well received but did not escape negative criticism. Andre Bernard praised the novel, noting that Barnes had written “with mesmerizing skill, a remarkably tense and exciting drama.” Terrence Rafferty agreed, labeling it
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an “extraordinary novel” and finding the portrait of Conan Doyle “generous and plausible.” Also enthusiastic was the evaluation of Andre Bernard, who wrote: “If you like Sherlock Holmes— and who doesn’t?—you’ll be plunged immediately into a marvelously readable account, written as fiction but entirely based on fact, of how Conan Doyle becomes involved in a great judicial injustice, and how he tries to solve a great mystery, Holmes-style.” Robert Winder agreed, writing that this “classic post-Victorian miscarriage of justice with a racist/imperialist undertow” allowed Barnes to write “a double biography,” one in which Conan Doyle allowed himself to play Holmes. Winder also noted that Barnes’s novel appeared “on the centenary of Edalji’s incarceration.” About Barnes’s total accomplishment, Bernard wrote: “reminiscent of the better English novels of the nineteenth century, it covers a great deal of territory while galloping at enormous speed, and yet is also loving in its minute details of village and city life, in its revelations of the oppressive truths of a rural environment and a suffocating Victorian moral sensibility, and in its examination of the sins of Empire. Not quite a mystery, nor yet a novel of ideas, it is simply terrific reading.” Rafferty stated this as the novelist’s achievement: “The beauty of the book lies in the restrained, level-eyed respect Barnes maintains for even his characters’ most desperate mental stratagems to keep confusion at bay.” On the negative side, certain critics faulted Barnes for trying to write like the great Victorian novelists. Winder asserted that Barnes uses “gentle archaisms and circumlocutions designed to suggest the fin-de-siécle atmosphere” and used “period detail . . . to create a sense of antiquity,” even when it was inaccurate to do so. In this point, Sebastian Smee agreed. Smee also faulted the ending, noting that the “urgent momentum of Barnes’s crime story leaves us feeling almost cheated by the absence of a culprit.” But Smee ended his review on a positive note, praising the novel for providing a “sprightly and acute . . . biography of Doyle, and as touching a sketch of the persecuted Edalji.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barnes, Julian. Arthur & George. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print. Bernard, Andre. “Arthur and George.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Kenyon Review 29.2 (2007): 2. Print. Rafferty, Terrence. “The Game’s Afoot.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. New York Times Book Review 15 Jan. 2006: 1(L). Print. Smee, Sebastian. “The Curious Case of the Slashed Horse.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Spectator 9 July 2005: 34. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Arthur & George
Winder, Robert. “Bumps in the Night.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. New Statesman 11 July 2005: 49+. Print.
Gale Resources
Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
Julian Barnes maintains a Web site at http://www. julianbarnes.com, which gives information on his other publications, interviews, biography, and current activities.
Ayers, Jeff. “Do the Time, Read the Crime.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2007: 184. Print. Points out how novelists are inspired by real-life cases. Hammer, Joshua. “Sherlock Holmes’ London.” Smithsonian 40.10 (2010): 56-65. Print. Identifies favorite spots in London of the detective and his creator. Mullen, Alexandra. “Sleuthing Conan Doyle.” New Criterion 26.10 (2008): 25-29. Print. Reviews recent biography on Doyle and the publication of his letters. Rasmussen, R. Kent. “Barnes, Julian. Arthur and George.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Library Journal 1 Feb. 2007: 104. Print. Praises the lively character study but faults the novel’s beginning as too slow. Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. “An Unlikely Convergence.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. New Leader 88.6 (Nov.-Dec. 2005): 42-44. Print. A review that describes Barnes’s work as a restitching of the tattered Victorian story. Seaman, Donna. “Barnes, Julian. Arthur & George.” Rev. of Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes. Booklist 1 Jan. 2006: 22. Print. Asserts novel is brilliant inquiry “into the nature of delusion and hope” and explains how case was a catalyst for establishing the Court of Criminal Appeal. Watman, Max. “Ever-Present Human Hint of Yellow.” New Criterion 24.9 (2006): 58-65. Print. Reviews several British novels, including Arthur & George.
“Julian Barnes.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
For Further Reading
Barnes, Julian. Flaubert’s Parrot. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print. Tells the story of an English doctor who investigates some details concerning the life of Gustave Flaubert, the French nineteenth-century novelist. Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures. Intro. by David Stuart Davies. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2007. Print. One of several editions of this autobiography by the novelist. Lycett, Andrew. The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Free Press-Simon & Schuster, 2008. Print. Comprehensive retelling of Doyle’s life by the biographer of Kipling and Dylan Thomas. Weaver, Gordon. Conan Doyle and the Parson’s Son: The George Edalji Case. Lahore, Pakistan: Vanguard Books, 2006. Print. Provides the history that is the major source for Barnes’s novel. Whittington-Egan, Richard, and Molly WhittingtonEgan, eds. The Story of Mr. George Edalji, by Arthur Conan Doyle. London: Camille Wolff Grey House Books, 1985. Print. Presents Doyle’s version of the story, first published in 1907. Melodie Monahan
Whittington-Egan, Richard. “Conan Doyle.” Contemporary Review 289 (Winter 2007): 518-19. Print. Reviews recent biography and other works on the famous author.
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing By M. T. Anderson
W Introduction In the first volume of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, The Pox Party, a black youth named Octavian is raised and educated by a group of Boston philosophers as part of an experiment to determine whether Africans are as intelligent as Europeans. After his mother dies as the result of another experiment (the “pox party” of the subtitle), Octavian runs away and joins the Patriot army fighting the British. He is soon recaptured and returned to Boston, where he is bound and forced to wear an iron mask. At the end of the volume, Octavian escapes with the aid of one of his instructors, Dr. Trefusis. In the second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, Octavian and Dr. Trefusis head to Virginia, where the colony’s governor, Lord Dunmore, has issued a proclamation offering freedom to any slave owned by an American rebel who enlists to fight with the British. As part of the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, Octavian learns more about his African ancestry and the larger slave experience. M. T. Anderson is known for writing young adult novels that challenge readers to look at the world in new ways. In The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, he creates an alternative history of the American Revolution by presenting British Loyalists as sympathetic characters and emphasizing the paradox of freedom-loving slave owners. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing won several major awards, including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2006 and the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature from the American Library Association in 2007 and 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a historical novel set during the period of the American Revolution.
Much of the book is based on the role of slaves during the Revolution. The first African slaves in North America arrived in Jamestown in 1623. By 1750 there were roughly 300,000 slaves in the thirteen American colonies, making up about one-fifth of the population. Most had been born in the colonies and knew of Africa only through the stories of others. When the rift between Great Britain and the colonies began to develop in the years after the French and Indian Wars, slaves adopted the rhetoric of dissent in their own appeals for freedom. In 1775, when the long-simmering resentments between Britain and the colonies erupted into war, many slaves chose which side to fight for based on which army would offer them freedom. At first, George Washington refused to accept black soldiers in the Continental Army, though black freemen fought with their white counterparts at Lexington and Bunker Hill. By contrast, the governor of Virginia offered to emancipate any slave owned by Patriot masters who joined the Loyalist forces. Some 800 escaped slaves joined Dunmore’s Royal Ethiopian Regiment. Thousands more joined the British army in exchange for the promise of freedom. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly, published in 1819, is generally considered the first true historical novel. Although some historical novels, such as Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934), deal with actual historical figures, most follow Scott’s basic formula, in which the story of a fictional character is told against the backdrop of an accurately rendered historical period. Anderson uses the conventions of the historical novel to turn the standard story of the American Revolution on its head. His characters are never directly involved in the best-known incidents of the war. In the first volume, the reader sees the beginnings of the war only at arm’s length through the concerns of the Novanglian College of Lucidity. In the second volume, Anderson focuses on the war experience of the escaped slaves who made up Lord Dunmore’s Royal Ethiopian Regiment. The result is what Kathleen Horning, writing in School Library Journal, says is “historical fiction as it’s never been written for teens.”
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
MAJOR CHARACTERS CASSIOPEIA, Octavian’s mother, is an African princess from the Oyo kingdom in West Africa who was captured and sold into slavery while pregnant with Octavian. Her death in the first volume as the result of smallpox inoculation triggers Octavian’s first attempt to escape from the Novanglian College of Lucidity. MR. GITNEY is the leader of the Novanglian College of Lucidity and Octavian’s chief guardian. OCTAVIAN is a young African prince who is raised and educated by a group of philosophers in an experiment to determine whether Africans have the same intellectual capacity as Europeans. Much of the story is told through “documents” purporting to be his written testimony. PRO BONO is Mr. Gitney’s valet, who introduces Octavian to the realities of slavery and provides him with the information he needs to escape from the College of Lucidity. He reappears in the second volume as Private William Williams in the Royal Ethiopian Regiment. MR. SHARPE is sent by the trustees to repair the finances at the College of Lucidity after the death of the institution’s primary patron. He represents a group of slave owners who want the experiment to fail as a means of justifying the practice of slavery.
Portrait of M. T. Anderson, author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. ª Rick Friedman/Corbis
W Themes In The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Anderson uses the history of slave participation in the American Revolution to consider the fundamental irony of slave owners fighting for freedom. In an interview with Farai Chideya on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Anderson contrasts the Patriots’ battle for liberty with that of the American slaves who “are creating a revolution at their own level. They are almost two interlocking revolutions going on at the same time.” Anderson provides the reader with a clue to the central theme of the book in its subtitle, Traitor to the Nation. The reader inevitably wonders how a slave can be a traitor to a nation that does not recognize him as a citizen. At the end of the first volume, Anderson provides the answer. Both Octavian and Dr. Trefusis must flee to avoid being hanged. Dr. Trefusis is legally guilty of theft because he has helped Octavian escape. Octavian is technically a traitor to the nation for having attempted to kill his master, because such a murder is considered an attack on the concept of sovereignty.
DR. TREFUSIS is the oldest and most accomplished of Octavian’s tutors. At the end of the first volume, he helps Octavian escape at the risk of being arrested for theft. In the second volume, he accompanies Octavian to Virginia.
Anderson raises the prickly questions of liberty and slavery in the early chapters of the first volume. When Octavian first hears about the Patriots’ struggle “for liberty from oppression and from bondage,” he assumes that “soon, the bondage I but little understood that encompassed Bono and my mother and so many others of my acquaintance should melt away,” until he learns that his freedom is not included in the cause. Thereafter, Octavian’s choices are driven by a search for liberty as carefully reasoned as that of a Jefferson or a Franklin. At different points in the novel, he fights for both the Americans and the British, and he ultimately rejects both sides in favor of “a new route which should secure us from the ire and indifference of both England and Colony.”
W Style Stylistically, Anderson goes to great lengths to evoke the feel of the eighteenth century, both in his language and in the novel’s structure. Critics often praise the author for
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Matthew Tobin (M. T.) Anderson grew up in Stow, Massachusetts, a small town near Boston. Because of a distant family connection, he was encouraged to read Mark Twain when he was nine or ten. Hooked on Twain’s satire, he moved on to read other American satirists, including James Thurber, Woody Allen, and S. J. Perelman. After high school, Anderson spent a year in a British boarding school, where he discovered the British satirists, including Jonathan Swift and Evelyn Waugh. He attended Harvard for a semester and then transferred to Cambridge University, where he completed his BA in 1991. After college, he worked for three years as an editorial assistant at Candlewick Press. He left Candlewick to begin graduate work at Syracuse University, receiving an MFA in 1998. Anderson sold his first novel, Thirsty, to Candlewick in 1996, but his career as a writer for children and young adults did not take off until the publication of his picture-book biography of the composer George Frideric Handel in 2001. He began writing full time in 2005.
creating not just one, but a whole series of authentic colonial-era voices that vary according to the social standing and ethnicity of the characters. In an interview with Julie Prince in Teacher Librarian, Anderson described the process. He read eighteenth-century literature extensively, looking for the “ways in which eighteenth-century grammar and vocabulary varied from our own—words they tended to use, unusual syntactical tics, and so on.” According to Anderson, first-generation African American speech presented a special challenge. There are few records of actual speech, and the transcriptions that exist were often made by people focused on denigrating the African speaker. Anderson’s solution was to work with a friend who speaks Yoruba to understand “the ways in which African syntactical patterns may have translated into English. . . . What became obvious is that many of the features that were recorded by white observers actually had their roots in West African American.” Anderson reinforces the period feel of the book by employing a device often used in novels in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most notably Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868). In these works, the author poses as the reporter of an actual incident, presenting his story in the form of a series of documents, most often letters, diaries, and sworn statements, that he has collected as evidence. The title page of Anderson’s work declares that the story of Octavian Nothing is “taken from accounts by his own hand and other sundry sources collected by Mr. M. T. Anderson of Boston.” The bulk of the story is told in Octavian’s own words, first as “drawn from the
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Manuscript Testimony of Octavian Gitney” and later “from the nautical diary of Private Octavian Nothing.” Octavian’s accounts of his story are interspersed with newspaper clippings, scientific articles, letters written by various characters, and historical documents—all of which allow Anderson to show different perspectives on events in the narrative. At the end of the novel, Octavian wrests control of his life story from both the narrator and his former owners by returning to Boston and replacing Mr. Gitney’s elaborate records of Octavian’s childhood with his own narrative account.
W Critical Reception The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is regularly praised for Anderson’s skillful evocation of the novel’s historical setting, believable reconstruction of eighteenthcentury language, and startling reversal of our assumptions about the American Revolution. Reviewers acknowledge that the novel may be challenging for the young adult audience at which it is aimed but are almost unanimous in declaring it worth the effort. Vicky Smith, writing in the Horn Book Magazine, praises Anderson’s work as “a brilliantly complex interrogation of our basic American assumptions. Anderson has created an alternative narrative of our national mythology, one that fascinates, appalls, condemns—and enthralls.” Julie Roach, also writing in the Horn Book Magazine, agrees: “M. T. Anderson’s beautifully written and elegantly structured novel immerses readers in the period using traditional eighteenth century language that resonates with the timeless struggle of being young in a cruel and unjust world. This brilliant and horrifying tale underlines the fact that within every well-known story there are others to be told.” Sharon Rawlins reports in the School Library Journal that “Anderson’s use of factual information to convey the time and place is powerfully done.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Anderson, M. T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. Volume I: The Pox Party. Cambridge: Candlewick, 2006. ———. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves. Cambridge: Candlewick, 2008. ———. “Author M. T. Anderson on Octavian Nothing.” Interview by Farai Chideya. Morning Edition 25 Jan. 2007. General OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Horning, Kathleen. “Patriot Games: Yes, Indeed, the British Are Coming! But M. T. Anderson’s Revolutionary War Novel Is Unlike Anything You’ve Ever TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
Read.” School Library Journal 52.11 (2006): 40+. General OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Prince, Julie. “Giving Readers What They Want: An Interview with M. T. Anderson.” Teacher Librarian 37.1 (2009): 62+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Rawlins, Sharon. Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. School Library Journal 52.10 (2006): 147. General OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Roach, Julie. Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 84.1 (2008): 27+. General OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Smith, Vicky. Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 82.5 (2006): 573+. General OneFile. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“African-American History Comes to Life for Young Readers.” Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, by M. T. Anderson. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 18 Jan. 2009: F9. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. This review compares Octavian Nothing to two other novels based on African American history. Anderson, M. T. “Printz Award Honor Speech.” Young Adult Library Services 6.1 (2007): 20+. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. In his thank-you speech for the 2007 Printz Award, Anderson discusses what historical novels can teach us. Bazelon, Emily. “A Pox on Pox Party.” Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. Slate.com 20 Nov. 2006. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. A rare negative review that gives thoughtful consideration to the prevalence of message books in young adult fiction. Griswold, Jerry. “The War for Independence.” Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, by M. T. Anderson. New York Times Book Review 9 Nov. 2008: 20(L). General OneFile. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. Griswold compares The Amazing Life of Octavian Nothing to both Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. “Octavian Nothing Duo Has Everything for Questing Minds.” Rev. of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. II: The Kingdom on the Waves, by M. T. Anderson. Toronto Star 23 Nov. 2008: ID04. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. This review of the second volume of the Octavian Nothing books looks at Anderson’s use of Enlightenment philosophy.
Gale Resources
“Anderson, M. T.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 60. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. “Anderson, M. T. 1968– (Matthew Tobin Anderson).” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. “Anderson, M. T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.” Literary Newsmakers for Students. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
M. T. Anderson’s personal Web site has a biography and several essays discussing his novels. http:// mt-anderson.com/ The Web site of the Historical Novel Society includes links to several important essays on the genre. http:// www.historicalnovelsociety.org/definition.htm Part of Canada’s Digital Collection, the Web site Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People tells the story of the Black Loyalists who fought with the British and their experiences in Canada after the end of the Revolutionary War. http://www.blackloyalist.com/ canadiandigitalcollection/index.htm For Further Reading
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Chains. New York: Simon, 2008. Print. A mid-grade novel about two young slaves in the Revolutionary War that shares many themes with The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. Bober, Natalie S. Countdown to Independence. New York: Simon Pulse, 2007. Print. A balanced account of the events that led to the American Revolution. Collier, James Lincoln, and Christopher Collier. My Brother Sam Is Dead. New York: Four Winds, 1974. Print. A Newbery Honor novel that tells the story of a family torn apart when brothers choose to fight on opposite sides in the American Revolution. Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom. New York: Norton, 1996. Print. An excellent account of the Enlightenment scholars and ideas parodied by Anderson as the College of Lucidity. Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British and the American Revolution. London: BBC, 2005. Print. A historical account of the British proclamation of emancipation for slaves who fought for Britain during the American Revolution.
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Pamela Toler
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The Athenian Murders By José Carlos Somoza
W Introduction The Athenian Murders (2002) is the sixth novel by popular Spanish writer José Carlos Somoza and the first to be published in an English translation. The multilayered narrative interweaves two stories. One is told in the text of an ancient manuscript (itself called The Athenian Murders): A “decipherer of enigmas” investigates the murders of several young philosophy students from Plato’s Academy. The other story unfolds in the footnotes created by the Translator, an unnamed protagonist who is preparing the first modern translation of the manuscript. The footnotes reveal the Translator’s gradual realization that he is working with an eidetic text (one employing repeated words and phrases to create an image in the reader’s mind) that may contain a secret message. Parts of the message seem to be directed at the Translator. He finds himself drawn into a third plot layer involving another modern character, Montalo, who is obsessed with discovering the ultimate meaning of the manuscript. All the layers revolve around philosophical speculation, and in the end they come together in a surprising twist. The Athenian Murders was well received by most critics and won the 2002 Macallan Gold Dagger awarded by the Crime Writers’ Association.
W Literary and Historical Context
The events of the ancient narrative take place in Athens during the time when the famed philosopher Plato (c 428-347 BCE) taught at the Academy, a school he founded around 387 BCE. The Academy operated until 86 BCE, when the grounds were destroyed (along with much of Athens) in the First Mithridatic War. While the school was under Plato’s direction, there was
no set curriculum. Most instruction was conducted through discussions of philosophical questions. Participants included both older scholars and young men, such as the ephebes (adolescents) who are killed in the plotline of the ancient Athenian Murders. In the course of that narrative, the characters explore other aspects of Athenian culture, including mystery cults (which taught certain doctrines to initiates by means of ritual experiences and ecstatic visions) and numerous philosophical factions. The story also alludes to the sexual mores of ancient Greek culture, such as the acceptance of sexual relationships between older men and young boys. The modern plotline occurs in an unspecified time and place.
W Themes The original Spanish title of Somoza’s novel, La caverna de las ideas (The cave of ideas), a reference to Plato, emphasizes the central thematic role of philosophical inquiry. Although the early Academy probably did not teach a specific doctrine, discussions undoubtedly reflected Plato’s own views. Plato recorded his beliefs in the form of dramatized dialogues between Socrates (his teacher) and various other philosophers. The most important of the dialogues, The Republic, contains a story now known as the Allegory of the Cave. In it, Plato suggests that the material world perceived by the senses is only a shadow of the real forms of things, which exist as ideas; therefore, reality can only be apprehended by the intellect. In The Athenian Murders the nature of reality (that is, the question of whether ideas have an independent existence, separate from the phenomenal world) is a continuing subject of inquiry, both in the ancient manuscript and in the story told by the Translator. As the Translator and Montalo pursue philosophical answers, they focus on the role that language plays in either depicting an existing reality or creating an independent reality.
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The Athenian Murders
MAJOR CHARACTERS DIAGORAS is a tutor at Plato’s Academy who suspects that a young student was murdered and appeals to Pontor for help. He assists in the investigation and discusses philosophy with Pontor. MONTALO, a character in the modern story, was the first to copy the ancient text from papyrus. He kidnaps the Translator in his quest to prove his theory about the manuscript. PLATO is a historical character, a philosopher and teacher who appears only briefly in the ancient story. His Academy, students, and ideas are at the center of both the plot of the ancient text and the themes of the modern story. HERACLES PONTOR is the main character of the story in the ancient manuscript. He is the “decipherer of enigmas” summoned to investigate the murders of the young students of Plato’s Academy. THE TRANSLATOR is the unnamed protagonist of the modern story that unfolds in the footnotes to his translation. As he works on the ancient manuscript, he notices that a secret is concealed in the text, and eventually he becomes involved in a real-life mystery concerning the ancient manuscript and its meaning.
Greek philosopher Plato. In The Athenian Murders, a translator works on an ancient manuscript about the murder of several students from Plato’s Academy. Nick Pavlakis/Shutterstock.com
W Style Plato presented the precepts of his philosophy in the form of dialogues between characters with different ideas. In a similar way, Somoza creates a virtual discussion between Heracles Pontor, the protagonist of the ancient narrative, and the Translator, the main character of the modern narrative. The Translator comments on the original story in his footnotes, and as The Athenian Murders progresses, it begins to seem as if the original text is talking back to him. Another dialogue takes shape between the Translator and Montalo. Both men believe that eidetic imagery is incorporated into the style of the ancient manuscript. The eidetic message, which relates to the question of whether language creates reality, turns out to be a crucial element in the modern plotline. In this manner Somoza weaves the philosophical concepts explored in The Athenian Murders into the style and structure of the novel.
W Critical Reception The majority of critics have praised the conceptual inventiveness of The Athenian Murders and consider the novel strong overall. Publishers Weekly calls it “a highly original and literary approach to crime fiction.” Pedro Ponce, writing for the Review of Contemporary Fiction, observes that “the thrill of this novel comes from both its ingeniously structured mystery plot and the larger questions it raises about what constitutes knowledge and experience.” A review in the London Times declares that Somoza “weaves suspense, gore, a particular corner of Plato’s philosophy and layer upon layer of tantalizing reflexivity with ease and obvious relish.” Not all reviewers were convinced of the book’s merit, however. Kirkus Reviews concludes that “the plot’s deliberate obscurities both intrigue and annoy,” though “the rich, elegant writing will please all comers.” The reviewer cautions, “Mystery fans should be warned that Somoza is more interested in metaphysical questions and literary subtleties than traditional storytelling.” At the negative end of the spectrum, Michael D. Langan writes in the Buffalo News, “It’s hard to know whether the book is a gussied-up sexual escapade or a serious work of philosophical discourse.”
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The Athenian Murders
ABOUT THE AUTHOR José Carlos Somoza was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1959, just a few months after Fidel Castro came to power. The following year Somoza’s family left everything behind and moved to Spain. He is now a Spanish citizen. Somoza has lived in Madrid and Cordoba, where he studied medicine and earned a degree in psychiatry in 1994. The same year, his first novel was accepted for publication, and he decided to become a writer. The Athenian Murders is his sixth novel and the first to appear in an English translation. Since then, two more of his novels have been translated into English: The Art of Murder (2004; Clara y la penumbra, 2001) and Zig Zag (2007; Zig Zag, 2006). Somoza’s novels have won several international awards, including (for his 2007 novel La Llave del Abismo) the Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja.
Thomas, Christine. “A Translator Solves Two Puzzles Shrouded in Mystery.” San Francisco Chronicle 16 June 2002: RV6. Print. This enthusiastic review points out some of the conceptual aspects of the novel. Gale Resources
“José Carlos Somoza.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site is mainly in Spanish, but some material is translated into English. The site also provides photos of the author and a look at the colorful covers of his many Spanish publications. http://www.josecarlossomoza.com/ For Further Reading
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Kirkus Reviews 1 Apr. 2002: 459. Print. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Publishers Weekly 6 May 2002: 33. Print. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Times [London] 6 Feb. 2002: 12. Print. Langan, Michael D. “Grecian Formula.” Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Buffalo News 25 Aug. 2002: F5. Print. Ponce, Pedro. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Review of Contemporary Fiction 23.1 (2003): 150+. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Gerling, David Ross. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. World Literature Today 77.3/4 (2003): 148+. Print. Gerling notes the relationship of Somoza’s novel to several other Spanish works and points out influences from the author’s background as a psychiatrist. Miller, Laura. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Salon 20 June 2002. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Miller’s appreciative review effectively represents the tone and style of the novel. Pye, Michael. “Gripping Like a Crossword Puzzle, but Not Quite a Thriller.” Scotsman [Edinburgh] 14 Jan. 2002: 15. Print. This review compares The Athenian Murders unfavorably to Umberto Eco’s historical murder-mystery The Name of the Rose.
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Schifino, Martin. Rev. of The Athenian Murders, by José Carlos Somoza. Times Literary Supplement [London] 5 Apr. 2002: 28. Print. Schifino cites interesting aspects of the work but ultimately finds it unsuccessful.
Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Everyman’s, 2006. Print. Set in a medieval monastery, Eco’s intricate mystery novel became a best seller and inspired a number of other postmodern mysteries. The Athenian Murders is frequently compared to it. Murdoch, Iris. The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. New York: Viking, 1990. Print. In this nonfiction study of Plato’s cave allegory, novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch explores some of the same questions and ideas that arise in The Athenian Murders. Santas, Gerasimos X., ed. The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. Print. This collection of essays examines the cultural, literary, and philosophical backgrounds of The Republic. Written for the general reader, it provides a helpful understanding of concepts discussed in The Athenian Murders. Somoza, José Carlos. Zig Zag. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. The third of Somoza’s novels to be published in English, Zig Zag is a mixture of science fiction, horror, and suspense. Centering on a project that allows physicists to view the past, it offers a different approach to the author’s vision of temporal interactions. Wechsler, Robert. Performing without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation. North Haven: Catbird, 1998. Print. Wechsler’s book, which introduces the processes and problems associated with translating works of poetry and fiction, presents an interesting context in which to understand the unnamed Translator’s role in The Athenian Murders. Cynthia Giles
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Atonement By Ian McEwan
W Introduction Atonement presents a novel within a novel, supposedly written by its protagonist, Briony Tallis, a woman who spends her life searching for forgiveness for her past lies. The story is based on one fateful night when, as a thirteen-yearold girl, Briony’s accusation dooms the life of an innocent man. The book is divided into four sections: the first details the events that lead to Briony’s crime, while the final three demonstrate its long-term effects from various perspectives. The novel deals with betrayal, the toll that betrayal exacts on the psyches of both perpetrator and victim, and the horrors of war. The novel is perhaps most notable for its metafictional framework, which allows Ian McEwan to explore the nature of writing and, in particular, stories, and the god-like relationship between author and creation. Atonement questions whether a reader should ever trust an author, and examines how easily perceptions can be misconstrued and manipulated. Atonement was a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, among others. It was named Book of the Year by many major newspapers, and Time magazine included it on their list of 100 greatest novels ever written.
W Literary and Historical Context
The first section of Atonement occurs in a stately manor home in the English countryside, in 1935. McEwan uses this idyllic, old-fashioned setting as a counterpoint to the horrors of the war that eventually overtake the country, while hinting that the roots of these later occurrences rest underneath the gentle façade of the opening portion. Additionally, the first section references the works of Jane
Austen, whose writing style and settings are reflected in the quaint country estate setting and the intricacies of social interactions and class distinctions explored by McEwan in this section. In the second section, the famous Battle of Dunkirk is used to illustrate the brutality of war. Despite the fact that the Battle of Dunkirk was considered a success, McEwan highlights the fate of the thousands of men who died there. After suffering one of the worst defeats in the history of the British army, British and French forces retreated to Dunkirk, where they were able to build a line of defense and evacuate over 330,000 Allied forces. This was deemed a “miracle” by the dean of St. Paul’s Church in England (Anderson). The combination of hope and despair surrounding this event beautifully parallels Briony’s fantasy that Robbie survived the battle, as well as the crushing revelation that he did not. The third section details the life of a nurse in London during the evacuations. Fearing that London would be destroyed by German bombings—known as the Blitz— millions of civilians were relocated to rural areas in England. Atonement includes fascinating information about the exodus, including such facts as the removal of street signs in hopes that it would confuse potential invading forces. Ironically, this added to the chaotic, confusing atmosphere of this frightening time. Over 40,000 people ultimately died in the bombings, including Briony’s sister, Cecilia, who is struck down while trying to save wounded men.
W Themes Atonement centers on the themes of morality, interpretation, loss, and a quest for redemption through literature. In McEwan’s words, “empathy . . . to feel what it is to be someone else . . . [is] the cornerstone of a moral system” (Childs). When Briony is a young girl at the start of the novel, she experiences an epiphany: “Was everyone else really as alive as she was? . . . Was being [her sister] Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony” (34)? While
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MAJOR CHARACTERS LOLA MARSHALL, at the start of the novel, is a haughty fifteenyear-old girl who is raped by the much older Paul Marshall while staying at the home of her aunt and uncle. When her cousin, Briony, assumes that the culprit is Robbie Turner, Lola remains silent, thus conspiring in a lie that sends Robbie to jail. Years later, she marries Paul. PAUL MARSHALL is the inventor of “Army Amo” chocolate bars, perfect for soldiers’ rations because they do not melt. While visiting the family home of his friend, Leon Tallis, he rapes fifteen-year-old Lola. The crime is blamed on Robbie Turner, and years later Paul marries Lola, thus forever burying their secret. BRIONY TALLIS, protagonist of the novel, is thirteen when the book opens and she accuses Robbie of assaulting Lola. As the book progresses, the narrative follows Briony’s experiences as a nurse during World War II, and then as a novelist in the book’s epilogue. CECILIA TALLIS is Briony’s older sister. She is in love with Robbie Turner, her family housekeeper’s brilliant son. Their burgeoning romance is thwarted, first by Briony’s lies, and then by World War II, when she becomes a nurse. EMILY TALLIS is mother to Briony, Cecilia, and Leon. For years, she uses her migraines as an excuse to distance herself from her children. LEON TALLIS is Briony and Cecelia’s loving older brother, who both girls idealize. He invites his friend, Paul Marshall, home with him, thus leading to the event that will ruin Robbie, Cecilia, Lola, and Briony. ROBBIE TURNER is an extremely intelligent young man, whose mother works as a housekeeper in the Tallis home. Robbie falls in love with Cecilia, but Briony blames him for Lola’s rape. He is sent to jail for three years, following which he dies of an infection received on the battlefields of France in World War II.
this is an incredibly profound realization for a child, Briony has a limited point of view. As Pilar Hidalgo explains it, her “perception is distorted by literature and an imperfect knowledge of the world.” She is unable to deciper events clearly, leading her to misinterpret Robbie’s letter to Cecilia. As a result, Briony labels Robbie a rapist, an erroneous conclusion that ruins the lives of Robbie, Cecilia, and Briony herself. As an adult, Briony attempts to atone for her crime by writing a novel in which she places herself in Robbie’s and Cecilia’s shoes and attempts to see events from their perspective. The irony, of course, is that no one can truly know what it is to be someone else. Ultimately the only “real” character of the book is Briony herself, who, on a meta level, is also fictional.
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W Style Atonement weaves a seemingly straightforward, old-fashioned narrative with a metatextual framework that does not fully reveal itself until the end. According to Peter Mathews, the way McEwan structures the novel, each successive part “forces the reader to revise his or her understanding of what was revealed earlier, sowing seeds of doubt that make the text blossom into a set of irreconcilable uncertainties.” The first section, the only one divided into traditional chapters, combines a plot and setting reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel, along with psychological examination and technique redolent of Virginia Woolf’s writings. Woolf’s style involved the exploration of the sensations and perceptions of the human mind, often employing a technique referred to as stream-of-consciousness. At the end of Atonement, we learn that the first three parts of the novel comprise a book that Briony has written. In hindsight, it is apparent that McEwan hides clues about the structure of the book within the text. For example, in Part Three, Briony receives a rejection letter from an editor regarding a novella she has written. The editor explains that she has misused Woolf’s technique by following the style but neglecting to add plot or meaning to the work. Only later do we realize that the first section of Atonement is in fact the revised draft of Briony’s novella, including the changes suggested by her editor. The coda also reveals that the two lovers, Robbie and Cecilia, rather than being reunited, as depicted in Part Three, actually died in the war. Briony’s action is foreshadowed at the beginning of the book, in which, as a child, she writes a melodramatic play about lovers torn apart by tragedy and circumstance. Her play, The Trials of Arabella, can be seen as the entirety of Atonement in microcosm—Briony, the author, putting her characters through hell and finally bestowing a happy ending upon them.
W Critical Reception Upon its release, Atonement received near universal acclaim. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Whitbread Book Award. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the W. H. Smith Literary Award, the Boeke Prize, and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel. Additionally, it was selected as Best Book of the Year by Time, the Washington Post Book World, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, and Seattle Times, and as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Entertainment Weekly ranked the book on a list of 100 best books of the past 25 years, and both Time and the Observer included it on their lists of 100 best novels ever written. Tom Shone of the New York Times declared Atonement “McEwan’s most complete and compassionate work to date,” while the Observer praised it for the fascinating TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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questions it raises regarding the relationship between author and text: “If fiction is . . . a way of ordering the universe in which the writer is away in her—or his—thoughts, then is it a form of escapism, lacking all moral force?” Some critics took issue with McEwan’s metatextual framework. As Brian Finney explains, these people “criticize what they understand to be an essentially realist novel that at the end inappropriately resorts to a modish self-referentiality.” According to the critic, this interpretation ignores the nuance that McEwan has woven throughout the work from the start,that Briony isanauthor. Atonement, he argues,is“a work of fiction . . . concerned with the making of fiction. . . . Brought up on a diet of imaginative literature, [Briony] is too young to understand the dangers that can ensue from modeling one’s conduct on such an artificial world. . . . [Later, she] attempts to use fiction to correct the errors that fiction caused her to commit.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Anderson, Duncan. “Spinning Dunkirk.” World Wars In-Depth. BBC, 5 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 July 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Aldershot, England, Ian McEwan is one of Britain’s most famous and celebrated living authors. He is known for the experimental nature of his writing, as well as his career-long focus on subject matter that is sometimes regarded as amoral or unsavory. His early books, such as First Love, Last Rites, were often dubbed “literature of shock.” Over the years, McEwan’s work has been re-evaluated, and critics now agree that his writing is not devoid of morality but instead explores gray areas in order to define “ethical limits” (Childs 4-5). Most of his novels, from The Child in Time to his most acclaimed, Atonement, focus on “couples and families in . . . claustrophobic situations” (3). He uses literary, historical, and meta textual references to examine “individual reactions to moments of crisis” and to present “the tenderness and brutality of relationships without sentimentality” (6). Among his many awards, McEwan was short-listed six times for the Man Booker Prize, which he won for Amsterdam in 1998.
Refugees flee from the ruins of Dunkirk, France, following a Nazi bombardment. Some parts of Atonement take place in France during World War II. ª Bettmann/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Childs, Peter. “Introduction.” The Fiction of Ian McEwan: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Ed. Peter Childs. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 1-7. Print. Finney, Brian. “Briony’s Stand against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Journal of Modern Literature 27.3 (2004): 68+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. Hidalgo, Pilar. “Memory and Storytelling in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 46.2 (2005): 82+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. Lee, Hermione. “If Your Memories Serve You Well: Little Wonder Ian McEwan’s Engrossing, Deep Novel Has Been Shortlisted for the Booker. This Highly Literary Family Saga Is His Best Yet.” Rev of Atonement, by Ian McEwan. Observer [London] 23 Sept. 2001: 16. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 17 July 2010. Mathews, Peter. “The Impression of a Deeper Darkness: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” English Studies in Canada 32.1 (2006): 147+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Anchor, 2001. Print. Shone, Tom. “White Lies.” Rev. of Atonement, by Ian McEwan. New York Times 10 Mar. 2002: n.p. NYTimes.com. Web. 17 July 2010.
Child in Time,’ ‘Black Dogs,’ ‘Enduring Love,’ and ‘Atonement.’ New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Print. This book analyzes characters throughout McEwan’s work, focusing on the ways in which they define their own worlds and narratives, and by so doing, try to become at peace with themselves. Stovel, Nora Foster. “Ian McEwan: Atonement.” International Fiction Review 31.1-2 (2004): 114+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. An extremely positive review of Atonement that discusses the relation between its form and function as a narrative. Wells, Juliette. “Shades of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 30 (2008): 101+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. This essay examines the links between Jane Austen’s writing and Atonement, revealing some less obvious connections, as well as the parallels between Briony and Austen. Gale Resources
Fletcher, John. “Ian Russell McEwan.” British Novelists since 1960. Ed. Jay L. Halio. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. Print. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 14. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. “Overview: Atonement.” Novels for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 32. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Crosthwaite, Paul. “Speed, War, and Traumatic Affect: Reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Cultural Politics 3.1 (2007): 51+. Print. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 July 2010. This essay examines posttraumatic stress and how it relates to the characters and events of Atonement. D’Angelo, Kathleen. “‘To Make a Novel’: The Construction of a Critical Readership in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Studies in the Novel 41.1 (2009): 88+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 14 July 2010. This fascinating essay explores how the literary references that McEwan weaves throughout Atonement help the perceptive reader unlock the text’s mysteries, and demonstrates how the structure of the work strengthens and echoes its themes.
Ian McEwan’s official website contains a wealth of information about McEwan, including biography, published works, and perhaps most useful, books about McEwan and his work, from various countries and in various languages. http://www.ianmcewan. com ContemporaryWriters.com features a page on Ian McEwan, including a comprehensive biography, list of awards, quotes from McEwan, and critical perspective on his writings. http://www.contempor arywriters.com/authors/?p=auth70 The BBC’s official site has an animated map illustrating the events that led up to the Battle of Dunkirk at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/ wwtwo/launch_ani_fall_france_campaign.shtml For Further Reading
Impastato, David. “Secular Sabbath: Unbelief in Ian McEwan’s Fiction.” Commonweal 136.18 (2009): 14+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 14 July 2010. This essay examines McEwan’s writings through the lens of New Atheism, a movement of which he is a part.
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. London, 1817. Print. The first portion of Atonement is, in large part, an homage to this posthumously published novel by Jane Austen. Atonement opens with a quote from this book.
Schemberg, Claudia. Achieving ‘At-One-Ment’: Storytelling and the Concept of the Self in Ian McEwan’s ‘The
McEwan, Ian. First Love, Last Rites. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print. McEwan’s first published book, this set
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of short stories helped earn him the nickname “Ian Macabre,” due to the stories’ preoccupation with shocking moments. Many of McEwan’s later works derive from themes explored in this collection. ———. Saturday. New York: Anchor, 2005. Print. Though a thriller, McEwan’s famous novel, Saturday, deals with similar issues of morality that drive Atonement and was acclaimed as being a powerful, post-September 11th story. Sebag-Montefore, Hugh. Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008. Print. This book is an incisive examination of the fateful Battle of Dunkirk, with which Part Two of Atonement is concerned. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925. Print. Briony’s writing style is largely
informed by Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway, one of Woolf’s seminal works, demonstrates the author’s deft use of stream-of-consciousness, peering into her characters’ psyches to tell the story. Adaptations
Atonement. Dir. Joe Wright. Perf. Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, and Brenda Blethyn. Focus Features, 2007. Film. Released in 2007, the film version of Atonement won the Best Film of the Year award at the 61st British Academy Film Awards and was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning one for Best Original Score. General critical response was positive, though many argued that the film was too literal a translation of the book. Robert Berg
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Austerlitz By W. G. Sebald
W Introduction Published in the year of the author’s death, Austerlitz (2001) is the last of W. G. Sebald’s four experimental novels. At the heart of the tale is a lonely scholar’s return to his origins in Czechoslovakia, where he learns the fate of his birth parents after the German occupation of Prague in 1938. Austerlitz won the 2001 National Book Critics Award, among many other honors. Like its three predecessors, Austerlitz has been praised for its formal innovation and the dreamlike quality of its meditations on the horrors of Nazi aggression. The story unfolds through a series of chance encounters between the scholar—Jacques Austerlitz, an architectural historian—and an unnamed narrator. The pair first meet in the 1960s, in a train station in Antwerp, Belgium. They continue to run into each other through the mid-1970s before losing touch for twenty years. When they cross paths in 1996, Austerlitz is recovering from a nervous breakdown. He complains of a deepening sense of isolation, so the narrator records his friend’s life story, which occupies the majority of the novel. By tracing the free associations of Austerlitz’s imagination and following his exhaustive digressions, Sebald examines the workings of memory and the joys and sorrows—mostly the sorrows—of recovering one’s lost history.
W Literary and Historical Context
The broad sweep of Austerlitz takes into account the full range of the devastation World War II visited on Europe. Of all the subjects considered in the protagonist’s myriad ruminations, the one given the most attention is the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. On September 29, 1938, Adolf Hitler called the leaders of France, Italy, and the United Kingdom to a meeting in Munich.
Without inviting or consulting Czechoslovakia, the participants ordered that the Sudetenland—the northeastern part of the country and home to many ethnic Germans—be ceded to Germany. The Czech government capitulated the following day. These events occurred six months after the Anschluss, when Hitler’s army violated the Treaty of Versailles and crossed the Austrian border. The occupiers were greeted by riotous ovations as they marched through the streets of Vienna. Sebald never mentions the Anschluss or the Munich Conference directly, but in the early part of the story, Austerlitz’s father, Maximilian Aychenwald, anticipates the escalation of the Nazi threat. On a business trip to Munich, he watches a film of a party rally “which confirmed his suspicions that, out of the humiliation from which the Germans had never recovered, they were now developing an image of themselves as a people chosen to evangelize the world.” In response to what he has seen, Aychenwald arranges to have his four-year-old son taken into foster care in the United Kingdom. Austerlitz’s parents enlist the Kindertransport program to send him by train out of Czechoslovakia. Also known as the Refugee Children Movement, this rescue mission transported nearly 10,000 Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. Most of the children survived, but few ever saw their parents again. Shortly after seeing her child off, Austerlitz’s mother is sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic that the Nazis reserved for prominent Jews. The site served as a showcase for visiting foreign diplomats and was intended to counteract rumors that Jewish people were suffering and dying in forced labor camps.
W Themes Austerlitz is an intricate meditation on how individual identity is constructed and how the external world works to overwhelm it. Austerlitz grows up thinking his name is
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Dafydd Elias, the name given him by his adoptive Welsh parents, who never mention his past. Although he is old enough to recall the solitary train ride to the United Kingdom and his time with his birth parents, Austerlitz has suppressed these memories; they return to him only during bouts of depression in adult life. Shortly after his secondary school headmaster tells him his real name, Austerlitz encounters the name in the historical record, which both excites and confuses him. He first learns of Napoleon’s victory over a much larger Russo-Austrian army at the Battle of Austerlitz and later discovers the name in more obscure contexts. For example, he finds out that Fred Astaire’s real name was Austerlitz, that the rabbi who circumcised Franz Kafka’s nephew was also named Austerlitz, and that a woman named Laura Austerlitz witnessed a crime in Trieste in 1944 and made a public statement about it over twenty years later. The connection to Napoleon bestows on the adolescent Austerlitz a grand sense of himself, but the other discoveries puzzle and disorient him, giving him a sense of being adrift in time. On many occasions Austerlitz ponders the idea of being lost, and often he cannot decide which is worse: feeling alone and cut off from the world or being unable to separate himself from it, doomed always to return to the familiar. One night he considers the habits of the moths that cling to his walls. He is amazed that if he does not put them back outside they will die. He speculates that they know they have lost their way and that they are paralyzed by fear. Austerlitz also marvels at carrier pigeons, who, he learns, will find their way back to their original homes even if they are set to flying in the dead of night during a snowstorm at sea. Such musings fill Austerlitz with a sense of wonder, but they also cause despair; he concludes that though humans always return to their past, they are not capable of understanding what they discover there. Regarding the human fascination with history, Austerlitz tells the narrator that “our concern is with preformed images already imprinted on our brains, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS JACQUES AUSTERLITZ is an architecture historian living in England who, after suffering a nervous breakdown in 1992, becomes obsessed with long-suppressed childhood memories. AGATA AUSTERLITZOVA, Austerlitz’s mother, is a talented Jewish opera singer. Soon after putting her young son on a train bound for the United Kingdom, she is sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp billed by the Gestapo as an artists’ colony. MAXIMILIAN AYCHENWALD, Austerlitz’s father, is a businessman and a prominent official in the Czech Social Democratic Party. Recognizing the danger that the rising tide of Nazism poses for Jews, he flees to Paris after sending his son to Britain. GWENDOLYN ELIAS and her husband adopt Austerlitz when he is four years old and raise the boy as Dafydd Elias in their home in Bala. Gwendolyn keeps house meticulously until she becomes ill; the house gradually falls into disarray, and Austerlitz is sent to boarding school. REVEREND ELIAS, Austerlitz’s adoptive father, is a grim Welsh minister famous among his congregation for his fire-andbrimstone sermons. After Gwendolyn dies, Reverend Elias loses his sanity and is sent to an asylum. GERALD FITZPATRICK is a younger student at Stower Grange; Austerlitz is supposed to haze the boy and instead befriends him. The two remain close well into adulthood, but Fitzpatrick, an astrophysicist and amateur pilot, dies in a plane crash. ANDRE HILARY is Austerlitz’s history teacher and the first person to discover his intellectual promise. Shortly after the headmaster at Stower Grange tells Dafydd Elias that his real name is Jacques Austerlitz, Hilary, by coincidence, delivers an animated and thorough lecture on Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. The revelation of his true name and the lecture transform Austerlitz’s sense of identity. THE NARRATOR, unnamed in the novel, shares many traits with Austerlitz, most notably a fascination with architecture and a penchant for meandering, highly intellectual reflection.
W Style Amalgams of novel, essay, and memoir, Sebald’s fictional works defy classification. The author himself called his writing “prose of uncertain form”—a phrase that is quoted often in treatments of his work. Among the most obvious aspects of Sebald’s style are long paragraphs and the photographs he inserts in his texts. The first paragraph of Austerlitz is twenty-five pages long; others run over forty pages. A sentence in the middle of the book extends for seven pages. In these protracted constructions Austerlitz’s digressive meditations move seamlessly over such topics as his favorite history teacher, the architecture of labor camps, the movement of billiard balls, and the sudden death of a dear friend. In the
VERA RYSANOVA is Austerlitz’s nanny in Prague. She recognizes the middle-aged Austerlitz immediately when he visits her home. Now an elderly spinster, Vera tells Austerlitz who his parents were and what she knows of their fate. MARIE DE VERNEUIL is an architectural historian who travels with Austerlitz on some of his visits to Prague. She eventually leaves Austerlitz because she cannot cope with his remoteness.
Spectator magazine Anita Brookner writes, “Sebald’s method, somewhat frightening in itself, is to trace a development through a series of surreal but lucid
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A group of war refugees arrive in London. In Austerlitz, an unnamed narrator recalls the life of Jacques Austerlitz, a scholar and a friend who endured personal tragedy doing World War II. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
digressions, each one spiraling out of the last, until a conclusion of some sort is reached.” Instead of using paragraph and chapter breaks and dialogue, Sebald punctuates his narrative with a haunting collection of black-and-white photographs of doorways, vast ceilings, furniture, people with unfathomable expressions, ledgers, stamps, schedules, and a multitude of other articles from daily life. Rather than enhancing the meaning of the elegant, philosophically rich prose, however, the mundane articles in the photos add to the dreamlike quality of the book. For example, following Austerlitz’s remarks on billiard balls, Sebald inserts a twopage photo with a dark ball on the left and the cue ball on the right. Even though it is an accurate visual representation of what has just been described, the photo is tangential to the corresponding thought. The combined effect of the prose and photographs is to locate Austerlitz and Sebald’s other works somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. While his previous books
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have a more conspicuous autobiographical quality (they include pictures of the author and use his name in the text), Austerlitz is nevertheless grounded in the historical record. Mirela Roncevic notes in the Library Journal that “the black-and-white photographs scattered throughout do not add to the depth of the story, but they do add to its genuineness, serving to validate the events and reconstruct the novel as a tangible historical document. Ultimately, the narrative transcends fiction and becomes history.”
W Critical Reception Austerlitz has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Many critics assigned the book a place at the head of the canon of Holocaust literature almost immediately after its publication. Richard Eder remarks in the New York Times Book Review that the author “stands with Primo Levi as the prime speaker of the Holocaust.” Writing in the New TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Republic, John Banville describes the book as “nothing less than a chronicle of the end of a civilization. Europe, Sebald is telling us, committed suicide in the first half of the twentieth century, and what remains is, for all the carefully applied cosmetics, a lifeless object of desperate veneration and uneasy nostalgia.” Many critics also consider Austerlitz to be the finest work in Sebald’s oeuvre. Brookner, for instance, calls it “the most accomplished of Sebald’s works,” praising in particular the novel’s “sense of displacement” and “blend of conscious and unconscious memory and observation.” Gabriele Annan concurs, observing in the New York Review of Books that “It’s not the story so much that takes hold of the reader: it’s the descriptions and the meditations, which can be hallucinatory in their effect. This is true of all his books, but in Austerlitz the proportion of rumination and evocation to narrative is larger than ever.” Praise for the quality of the translation has also been uniformly high. Banville asserts that Sebald’s new translator, Anthea Bell, outdoes her predecessor Michael Hulse (whose translations of Sebald were also well received): “Austerlitz, in Bell’s pristine translation, strikes a more profound and more moving note than that sounded in the earlier books.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Annan, Gabriele. “Ghost Story.” New York Review of Books 1 Nov. 2001: 26-27. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Banville, John. “The Rubble Artist.” New Republic 26 Nov. 2001: 35-38. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Brookner, Anita. Rev. of Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald. Spectator 6 Oct. 2001: 64. Eder, Richard. “Excavating a Life.” New York Times Book Review 28 Oct. 2001: 10. Roncevic, Mirela. Rev. of Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2001: 110. Sebald, W. G. Austerlitz. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Brockmeier, Jens. “Austerlitz’s Memory.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 6.2 (2008): 347-67. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. In an examination of Sebald’s treatment of time and memory, Brockmeier argues that in the novel, all moments exist simultaneously. The result is that human memory cannot reconstruct a knowable past and is therefore in perpetual disarray.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR W(infried) G(eorg) Sebald was born on May 18, 1944, in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany. He died in a car accident near his home in Norwich, England, on December 14, 2001; he was fifty-seven and at the height of his literary powers. Sebald was a professor of European literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich from 1970 to his death. An accomplished scholar, he did not begin publishing fiction until he was in his midforties. He produced four autobiographical novels to widespread critical acclaim. Raised in post-World War II Germany, Sebald grew up confounded by the lingering horrors of the Holocaust and the Allied firebombing of urban Germany. Claiming he found the writing and research therapeutic, he revisits this period of his life in his major works, combining memory, historical accounts, old pictures, and photocopies of documents into a haunting meditation on the aftermath of war. Aside from Austerlitz, the works on which Sebald’s reputation rests are Schwindel (1990; Vertigo, 1999), Die Ausgewanderten (1992; The Emigrants, 1996), and Die Ringe des Saturn (1995; The Rings of Saturn, 1998).
Byatt, A. S. “Only Connect.” New Statesman 15 Oct. 2001: 52. Byatt’s analysis focuses on the moment Austerlitz discovers his true surname and the connections he then makes between his name and events and people from history. Lewis, Tess. “W. G. Sebald: The Past Is Another Country.” New Criterion 20.4 (2001): 85+. Lewis contends that of the signature aspects of Sebald’s fiction—including his formal innovations, his blending of literary genres, and the free associations of his digressive narratives—the most important is the manner in which his narrator remembers the dead as guides through history. Madden, Patrick. “W. G. Sebald: Where Essay Meets Fiction.” Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction 10.2 (2008): 169-75. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Madden offers cogent summaries of Sebald’s four major novels, comparing the ways in which each straddles the divide between fiction and nonfiction. Pane, Samuel. “Trauma Obscura: Photographic Media in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.” Mosaic 38.1 (2005): 37+. This analysis maintains that the apparently benign photographs of everyday objects placed throughout the novel emphasize the horror of the narrative, making the Nazi aggression, by comparison, even more incomprehensible. Zilcosky, John. “Lost and Found: Disorientation, Nostalgia, and Holocaust Melodrama in Sebald’s Austerlitz.” MLN 121.3 (2006): 679-98. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Zilcosky draws a distinction between
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Austerlitz and Sebald’s three previous works of fiction, arguing that Austerlitz is the closest in structure and content to a traditional novel. Gale Resources
Landon, Philip. Rev. of Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald. Review of Contemporary Fiction 21.3 (2001): 196. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. “W(infried) G(eorg) Sebald.” Contemporary Authors Online.CengageGale,2005. Biography Resource Center. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. “W. G. Sebald (1944-2001).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 253-348. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The blog Vertigo: Collecting & Reading W. G. Sebald reprints an interview with Sebald conducted by Jens Mühling. It was originally published in the journal Pretext in 2003. In the interview Sebald speaks about teaching creative writing, why he avoids contemporary literature, and how he copes with writer’s block. http://sebald.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/ the-permanent-exile-of-wg-sebald-part-1 Maya Jaggi’s September 2001 interview with Sebald at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall was the author’s last public appearance in Britain. He discusses several of his sources for Austerlitz, including the three people on whom the character Jacques Austerlitz is based. The Guardian’s Web site offers an edited transcript of the conversation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/ 2001/dec/21/artsandhumanities.highereducation The blog Writer Unboxed presents an interview with Anthea Bell, the translator of Austerlitz. Although much of the conversation is about Bell’s work translating young adult writers, she gives a detailed account of her effort to preserve the sound and style of Sebald’s German. http://writerunboxed.com/ 2006/08/18/interview-anthea-bell-part-1 University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Douglas O. Linder’s Web site Famous Trials includes detailed information on the Nuremberg Trials. Linder provides links to transcripts from the proceedings against Nazi war criminals, images of the courtroom, and profiles of the defendants. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/ projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm For Further Reading
Allen, William Sheridan. The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945. Danbury: Children’s, 1984. Print. Allen’s detailed account of the workings of the Nazi propaganda machine chronicles how the people of Northeim, Germany, became convinced that the Nazi Party
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could lead Germany out of its economic recession and back to greatness. Appelfeld, Aharon. Badenheim 1939. Trans. Dalya Bilu. New York: Quartet, 1997. Print. Aharon Appelfeld is a concentration camp survivor and one of Israel’s foremost living writers in Hebrew. His novel, set in an idyllic resort town in Austria in the months before the outbreak of World War II, portrays Jewish visitors who ignore rumors of the deportation of fellow Jews to labor camps. Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum. New York: Vintage, 2005. Print. German Nobel Prize-winner Günter Grass’s masterpiece recounts the life of Oscar Matzerath, a three-foot-tall drummer boy who willfully stalls his growth at the age of three and travels through warravaged Germany and Poland recording the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. Jacobson, Dan. Heshel’s Kingdom. Chicago: Northwestern UP, 1999. Print. Jacobson’s autobiographical work describes a quest similar to that of Sebald’s character Austerlitz. Researching the life of his grandfather Rabbi Yisrael Yehoshua Melamed, Jacobson travels from his home in South Africa to Lithuania, where his grandfather died soon after World War I. At the conclusion of Austerlitz, the narrator begins reading this book, which Austerlitz had given him at one of their early meetings. Levi, Primo. If This Is a Man. Trans. Stuart Woolf. New York: Everyman, 2000. Print. Italian chemist and novelist Primo Levi’s account of the ten months he spent in Auschwitz is regarded by critics and many fellow writers as among the most profound memoirs of the Holocaust. Sebald, W. G. The Rings of Saturn. Trans. Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1998. Print. After having been hospitalized following a mental collapse, Sebald’s unnamed narrator in The Rings of Saturn begins a walking tour of Suffolk County, England. He finds patterns of destruction and loss in nearly everything he sees. His thoughts move back and forth between the landscape and human history as he contemplates such topics as China’s opium wars, the novelist Joseph Conrad’s suffering, the herring industry, and floundering economies in seaside towns. Troller, Norbert. Theresienstadt: Hitler’s Gift to the Jews. Ed. Joel Shatzky. Raleigh: U of North Carolina P, 2004. Print. Troller’s memoir covers his two years in Theresienstadt. Many Jewish artists and performers went voluntarily to the supposed model ghetto rich in cultural life. Troller was deported to Auschwitz when he was discovered smuggling art out of the camp that depicted the true conditions under which the inhabitants lived. Joe Campana
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Await Your Reply By Dan Chaon
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply (2009) contains a complex plot that revolves around characters assuming different identities. Diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, Hayden Cheshire leaves his twin brother in Ohio and travels the world assuming different identities. As George Orson, Hayden leaves Ohio with his student Lucy Lattimore and heads to a deserted motel in Nebraska. Promising Lucy a life of travel and wealth, George obtains a large sum of money, two new identities, Brooke and David Fremden, and two plane tickets to Africa. After a few days, Lucy encounters men in the hotel lobby who are looking for George, whom, they claim, ripped them off with a money scam. Another identity Hayden assumes is that of Jay Kozelek, father to Ryan Schulyer who lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Jay contacts Ryan and persuades him to leave his adopted parents and come to rural Michigan. Jay concocts a scheme that involves Ryan’s assuming various identities that allow him to travel and transport money. This, too, ends badly as two men find Jay. One of the men cuts off Ryan’s hand after Jay refuses to tell him where the real Jay is located. Chaon alternates these chapters with the story of Miles Cheshire, Hayden’s brother in Ohio. Miles has spent years searching for Hayden, and it is through Miles’s recollections that readers uncover details about Hayden’s multiple identities. Miles resumes his search after receiving a letter from Hayden indicating that he is in Inuvik, Canada. Miles travels to Canada and meets up with Lydia Barrie. Lydia’s sister, Rachel Barrie, has taken off with her fiancé, Miles Spady, who Lydia determines is Hayden.
Chaon’s haunting story is reminiscent of authors such as Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and J. R. Tolkien. Starting the story with unclear plot connections, Chaon, much like King and Jackson, leads readers through plot twists to reveal the connections between the characters. Writer Ray Bradbury, Chaon’s mentor, also influenced Chaon’s writing style. Well-known for his fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels, such as Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury incorporated imaginative science fiction scenes and suspense in his novels. Paralleling the efforts of his mentor, Chaon weaves together three suspenseful plots that keep his readers guessing about how plot components connect. Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, and Thomas Tyron, author of The Other, a classic story of scary twins, also influenced Chaon in his use of twins and elusive identities. Most of Chaon’s novel is set in Ohio and Michigan. Another location is the LightHouse Motel in Nebraska, where the story of George and Lucy takes place. Chaon’s interest in this location stems childhood memories at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska. As a result of reservoirs and dams, several towns were flooded and once the lakes dried up, the communities became ghost towns. Chaon also relies on the Internet as a historical context for his story. Chaon takes his title from a 1980s Nigerian Internet money scam, known as a 419, which refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code. The scam involved unemployed university students assuming different identities to targeting companies in the West for money. Copycat scams followed with e-mails posted from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe requesting that receivers send money.
Context
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Await Your Reply
MAJOR CHARACTERS HAYDEN CHESHIRE grows up with his twin brother Miles in Cleveland, Ohio. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Hayden leaves Ohio and assumes different identities, including George Orson and Jay Kozelek. MILES CHESHIRE, Hayden’s twin brother, follows in his father’s footsteps and works in a magic store in Cleveland. LUCY LATTIMORE, an eighteen-year-old orphan who lives in Pompey, Ohio, with her sister, takes off with George, her high school history teacher, for the Lighthouse Motel in Nebraska, where he finds them new identities and a large amount of cash. RYAN SCHULYER, who was adopted in Council Bluffs, Iowa, discovers that his biological father Ryan is his adopted mother’s brother.
W Themes In Await Your Reply, Dan Chaon constructs an unsettling story to suggest that the ability to create virtual identities online dehumanizes people. Chaon uses a twin, an orphan, and an adopted person to explore the nature of identity and how it has changed with advancements in technology. Growing up, Hayden and Miles are close as twins, but after Hayden is diagnosed with schizophrenia, Hayden begins to shift in and out of realty and leaves home. In this storyline, Chaon explores how a mentally ill twin dominates the other twin’s existence, and as a result, the healthy twin is also at risk for not being able to establish his separate identity. Lucy also has a hard time figuring out who she is. Her parents die in a car accident, so Lucy lives with her older sister. Realizing that Pompey is not in her future, Lucy leaves town with George, who was her history teacher in high school. George promises Lucy a new life full of money and travel, but it involves their leaving the country on the run with new identities. Lucy struggles with her decision to give up her identity and abandon her old life. Ryan’s story also involves issues of identity. Feeling his life has been a fraud after he finds out that his adoptive mother’s brother, Jay, is his biological father, Ryan leaves to go and work for Jay without telling anyone. His family and friends conclude he drowned; Ryan follows funeral news and tributes to him on the Internet and decides to stay and work for Jay by assuming a different identity. Chaon intertwines the stories of Miles, Lucy, and Ryan with that of the presence of Hayden, who to some degree never exists as Hayden after the first few chapters.
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For years, Hayden slips into people’s lives by pretending to be different people in order to try on different identities. Once things change or go badly, Hayden simply buys a new identity and moves onto a different life. Through the character of Hayden, Chaon suggests that one negative effect of technology is the isolation it can create. With the isolation comes the ability to create new identities through online avatars and personas.
W Style Much like his mentor and his favorite authors, Chaon creates a plot full of inconclusive connections between several storylines. These gaps in the plot allow Chaon to build suspense by withholding the true identities of some characters. To emphasize the isolation of his characters, Chaon minimizes the emotional connections between characters. However, Chaon chooses certain moments for expression of emotion by using eloquent phrasing. For example, Lucy feels “a wavering shadow passing over her once again, all the different people she herself had wanted to become, all the sadness and anxiety that she had been trying not to think about now shifting above her like an iceberg.”
W Critical Reception With great success surrounding his early novels Among the Missing and You Remind Me of Me, critics were prepared to appreciate Dan Chaon’s use of plot twists and characters in Await Your Reply. Steven Almond in the Los Angeles Times noted that Chaon’s novel contains eloquently worded phrasing, such as “the faint scent of some mildly floral businesslike perfume” that sets the novel apart from works by other horror and science fiction writers. However, Almond decided that the early chapters are “too calculated” and that withholding the basic facts actually takes away from the story rather than enhances it. Alexander Cuadros of the Boston Globe concurred with Almond and suggested the Await Your Reply is “a fast, careless novel” because of Chaon’s use of thriller conventions to attract readers. Lucinda Rosenfeld of the New York Times disagreed with Cuadros’s charge that Chaon’s plot is weak. She argued that Chaon’s use of “intricate and suspenseful plotting” is a credit to Chaon’s ability to craft a suspenseful novel. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Almond, Steve. “Await Your Reply: A Novel by Dan Chaon.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. latimes.com. Los Angeles Times 23 Aug. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Chaon, Dan. Await Your Reply. New York: BallantineRandom House, 2009. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Await Your Reply
Cuadros, Alexander. “Reply Goes for Cheap Thrill.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. boston.com. Boston Globe 10 Oct. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Rosenfeld, Lucinda. “Multiple Lives.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. nytimes.com. New York Times 20 Aug. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Maslin, Janet. “Who Are These People? Well, That Depends.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. nytimes.com. New York Times 19 Aug. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Explores Chaon’s use of characters and plot to create suspense. Nawotak, Edward. “Novel Boots Up Intrigue with 3 Storylines.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. Statesmen.com. Statesmen 23 Aug. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Critiques Chaon’s use of plot to propel his three storylines. Tsong, Nicole. “Await Your Reply: Dan Chaon’s Novel of Shifting Identity.” Rev. of Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. seattletimes.nwsource.com. Seattle Times 11 Oct. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Addresses Chaon’s recasting of his characters’ identities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 11, 1964, Dan Chaon received his BA in 1986 from Northwestern University and his MA from Syracuse University in 1990. Prior to the publication of Await Your Reply, Chaon published three other books: the collections Fitting Ends and Other Stories and Among the Missing and the novel You Remind Me of Me. Chaon was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction in 2002 and 2007. As of 2010, Chaon taught at Oberlin College.
Gale Resources
“Dan Chaon.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000149004& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Dan Chaon’s personal homepage, available at http:// www.danchaon.com, includes information about Chaon’s books and events.
Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply. Ulf Andersen/Getty Images TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Await Your Reply
National Public Radio, available at http://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112292650, includes Maureen Corrigan’s interview with Chaon about plot twists in Await Your Reply.
Morris, Chris. The Hanging Figure: On Suspense and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2002. Print. Includes insight into Hitchcock’s filming techniques.
PBS News Hour, available at http://www.pbs.org/ newshour/art/blog/2009/08/secrets-and-lies-inawait-your-reply.html, includes an interview of Chaon in which he discusses family, plot, and cinematic influences on his writing.
Snyder, Kurt. Me, Myself, and Them. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. Provides insight into schizophrenia.
For Further Reading
Browder, Laura. Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. Print. Examines books presented as autobiographies written by people who are not who they claim to be.
Stickley, Jim. The Truth about Identity Theft. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2009. Print. Covers such topics as phishing and vishing, no-tech identity theft, trash as a means for identity theft, and identity theft in plain view. Wood, Andrew F., and Matthew J. Smith. Online Communication: Linking Technology, Identity, and Culture. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2005. Print. Addresses the social implications of technology.
Klein, Barbara. Not All Twins Are Alike: Psychological Profiles of Twinship. Westport: Praeger, 2003. Print. Written by an identical twin with personal experience and research combined.
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Rachel V. Smydra
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Ballad of Desmond Kale By Roger McDonald
W Introduction Roger McDonald’s ninth novel, The Ballad of Desmond Kale (2005), is a long historical novel about the first settlement efforts of the Australian Outback in the 1830s. The sheep farmers who ventured into this unknown territory turned their wool into gold and attracted expansion from the coastal cities into the wilderness. McDonald tells the story with characters of all classes and stations, both in Australia and England, depicting the early social and economic history of Sydney while spinning a captivating tale of adventure and romance. Central to this story is the pursuit of an escaped convict and expert sheep breeder, Desmond Kale, by an abusive missionary parson and magistrate, Matthew Stanton, who is obsessed with the idea of owning massive amounts of land and huge numbers of prize sheep. Everyone else in the book is either related to or working with these two figures. Rumors of Kale thriving in the Outback with a valuable flock of sheep turn into a mythical ballad sung by Irish colonists who admire his rebellion and are inspired by his success. The Stanton character is based on Samuel Marsden, prominent in Australian history as a profligate missionary, magistrate, and sheep breeder. Greed, hypocritical behavior, cunning, daring, and the pursuit of love and dreams are thematically sewn into a story that includes shipwrecks, prisons, colonial politics, and British society, and extensive information about sheep. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the Miles Franklin Award in 2006 and the Adelaide Festival Prize for Fiction in 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
In 1788 the Australian governor brought sheep to the new colony to supply meat, and some others followed,
but they were not suited to the Australian environment and soon died out. In 1797, at the Cape of Good Hope, captains Henry Waterhouse and William Kent each bought thirteen merino sheep, a breed known for its heavy fleece and fine wool that had thrived in Spain for two thousand years. These animals were likely descended from the king of Spain’s flock. Kent’s sheep were lost, but in Sydney, Waterhouse distributed his sheep to Kent, John Macarthur, Captain Rowley, and the infamous Samuel Marsden. Macarthur crossed his six merinos with the Bengal flock he had started in 1794 and learned that proper breeding could produce fine wool, so he procured more merinos. Macarthur, Waterhouse, Marsden, and William Cox thereafter pioneered fine-wool production in New South Wales with Macarthur promoting their product in London. Macarthur’s work was later honored with his picture on the two-dollar bill. By 1810 there were nearly 33,000 sheep of varying mixes in Australia. Explorers crossing the Blue Mountain in 1813 found good pastures and rivers to the west. Therefore, in 1815, Cox built a railroad across the mountains allowing settlers to expand sheep raising northward into Queensland, arriving in Adelaide in 1838. Other territorial expansions resulted in the sheep industry being established in every colony by the 1830s. Despite a drought that killed more than 200,000 sheep in 1843 and 1844, by 1879 there were a million sheep in Western Australia alone. Seventyfive percent of modern Australian sheep are classed as a separate breed of Australian merinos. Although wool production in the early 2000s is no longer the leading industry, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of wool, including most of the fine apparel wools.
W Themes McDonald titled his novel after the ballad that forms the structure of his book and establishes the theme of opposition to authority and rebellion against oppression
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The Ballad of Desmond Kale
MAJOR CHARACTERS BLAISE CRIBBE, Tom’s stepbrother, is the sickly top wool expert in England who was once romantically involved with Dolly Stanton. DESMOND KALE, convict and master sheep breeder, escapes with Stanton’s prize sire and takes Rankine’s sheep into the Outback, becoming a legend in the process. MEG INCHCAPE, Desmond’s beautiful, kindly daughter, is a laundress for the military and Tom’s love interest. WARREN INCHCAPE, Meg’s son by the man who explored the Outback with Kale, has inherited his grandfather’s talent with sheep and is apprenticed to Stanton. PAOLO MORENO, called Paul Lorenze, is a Spanish shepherd who helped Rankine bring sheep from Spain, aided Kale’s escape, and becomes overseer during Stanton’s absence. TOM RANKINE, called Ugly Tom, is a tough, wily, and romantic New South Wales Ranger, juggling his favored position with the governor and conniving with Kale. DOLLY PRINGLE STANTON is the parson’s independent, cunning wife who loves Titus, hates Warren, dotes on Ivy, and remains loyal to Matthew. IVY STANTON is Dolly and Matthew’s headstrong daughter and Titus’s friend who encounters trouble with a naval officer on the voyage to England. MATTHEW STANTON is the arrogant, pious, ambitious “flogging parson” and magistrate who is obsessed with having the best sheep and finding Kale. TITUS STANTON is the aboriginal boy adopted by the Stantons, who is Warren’s close friend and is loved by Dolly and Ivy, but abused by the parson.
as expressed in a traditional Irish ballad. Kale’s ballad is an underground boast celebrating the triumph of a renegade and giving hope to the downtrodden while irritating those in power. Dreams and ambition are also important themes in the book. These ideas are connected to Kale’s dream of a new life of freedom and prosperity. In contrast, Stanton and his ilk have ambitions of great wealth and power. Australia was a whole new continent offering opportunities to those who were willing to endure the hardships. Even though the first colonists were convicts, they had a chance to set off eventually on their own. Succcess was unlikely because of the nearly insurmountable competition from the wealthy and powerful, at least until Kale came along. Until then, few dared to wander more than a few miles from Parramatta because the land seemed so forbidding, but Kale showed that there were vast
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expanses where people and sheep could thrive. Once the trail was blazed, multitudes followed, and an enormous Australian sheep industry was born. The endeavor took good men and women capable of cunning and determination such as those exemplified by the characters in McDonald’s story. The hypocrisy of Christian endeavors is another theme of the novel. Instead of bringing love and redemption to the convicts and aborigines, Stanton used his mission ministry as a cover for his true ambitions as a sheep farmer. He preached to the convict laborers on Sunday but brutalized and exploited them during the week. Dolly adopted Titus, an aboriginal boy, to save him from savagery and perdition but did not extend the same Christian attitude to Warren.
W Style The framework of The Ballad of Desmond Kale is the novel’s most noticeable stylistic choice. Kale is not part of the main narrative except in a very few appearances at the beginning and the end of the book, yet the rest of the story involves all those who are connected to Kale and his sheep and his legend. This legend is told throughout the colony by means of an Irish ballad, and McDonald uses the titles of the eight verses or choruses to introduce each section of this epic tale. McDonald also makes the break in setting between Australia and England exactly halfway through the choruses. Concurrent to Kale, the narrative stems from Parson Stanton and his multilevel relationships with various entities in Australia and England. McDonald’s language is an impediment as well as a triumph. While the nineteenth-century style, vocabulary, and local idioms make for difficult reading, McDonald’s ability to replicate this form of language as if he had lived during those times and foreshadow the Gaelic, Spanish, Yiddish, and aboriginal influences on Australian English is impressive. This authentic language from the 1830s makes the already well-developed characters more authentic even though dialogue is sparse. McDonald incorporates a number of subplots into the narrative. These include Tom and Meg’s love story, a feud between stepbrothers Tom and Blaise, an unwed pregnancy, a shipwreck, the role of the Josephs family, the adventures of Titus and Warren, and government intrigues. In addition, McDonald provides extensive details about wool and sheep breeding.
W Critical Reception Comments from the critics about The Ballad of Desmond Kale tended to repeat certain observations; for example, reviewers have lauded the clever way that the novel is all about Kale yet not about Kale. A common complaint TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Ballad of Desmond Kale
concerned McDonald’s portrayal of the aborigines—that they are stereotypical and only background figures, except for Titus who lives in both worlds. A further complaint by reviewers was that the nineteenth-century language and Australian idioms make the novel difficult to read. Beyond these two negatives, the critics otherwise raved about the novel’s vividly drawn characters who become involved in greed, duplicity, redemption, and a compelling love story. In fact, Luise Toma, in an article published by M/C Reviews, declared that McDonald had become “the king of historical fiction and a supreme genius of creating landscapes so powerful you can smell the dust and wave away flies whilst you’re reading.” Katherine England, in her review in the Adelaide Advertiser, agreed, asserting that the book is “vibrant in its portrayal of the fascinating but unforgiving Australian bush that imprisons all but the most intrepid.” Luke Beesley, in a review that appeared in the Brisbane Courier Mail, stated that “[t]hirst for the reunion of separated characters, and the fate of Kale’s movements, spices the narrative tension.” Beesley concluded: “It’s a great yarn, craftily written, superbly edited for pace and humour and full of insight.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on June 23, 1941, in Young, New South Wales, Roger McDonald was the middle son of a Presbyterian minister, Hugh Fraser McDonald, and the historian Lorna McDonald. After a childhood in small towns, McDonald earned a BA in education in 1962 from the University of Sydney. He taught briefly, then worked as an educational radio/television producer and as an editor with the University of Queensland Press. His first two books were collections of poetry, but between 1975 and 2010, he published no poetry. Instead, with the help of a Literature Board fellowship, he worked part time as a poetry editor (1976-1980) and in 1979 completed his first novel, 1915, which won several awards and was made into a seven-part ABC television series in 1982. He also wrote various nonfiction works and screenplays. Between 1980 and 2010, McDonald lived mostly near Braidwood with stints in Sydney and New Zealand.
A herd of sheep moves to a new pasture. The Ballad of Desmond Kale is a fictionalized story about the early settlement of the Australian Outback by sheep farmers in the 1930s. Lee Torrens/Shutterstock.com
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The Ballad of Desmond Kale BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Beesley, Luke. “Perfect Pitch in this Wild Colonial Yarn.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. Brisbane Courier 26 Nov. 2005: M05. Print. England, Katherine. “History Comes Alive.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. Adelaide Advertiser 3 Dec. 2005: W12. Print. McDonald, Roger. The Ballad of Desmond Kale. New York: Random House, 2007. Print. Toma, Luise. “Literature: The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. media-culture.org. M/C Media & Culture 15 Sept. 2006. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bode, Katherine. “‘Opportunistic Transpositions and Elisions’: Roger McDonald’s The Ballad of Desmond Kale; or, the Fiction Question: Who Owns Stories?” Antipodes 22.2 (2008): 89. Print. Argues that McDonald idealizes equality and freedom but conceals aggression and rejection of women and minorities in Australian history. Boomert. “The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. Boomerangbooks.com.au. Boomerang Books 7 Jan. 2010, Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Praises McDonald’s many excellent character portrayals but finds the language pretentious. Jacobson, Michael. “A Wooly Tale of Early Australia.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. Gold Coast Bulletin 24 Dec. 2005: 016. Print. Lists the topics and types of characters in the novel then focuses on Tom Rankine’s role and McDonald’s research on colonial Australia. Myers, Seth. “Sheep and Contradiction Define Colonial Australia.” Antipodes 20.2 (2006): 204. Print. Focuses on the themes within the novel and comments about the roles of the characters.
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Pierce, Peter. “The Ballad of Desmond Kale.” Rev. of The Ballad of Desmond Kale, by Roger McDonald. theage. com.au. Age 12 Nov. 2005. Print. Summarizes the book and discusses its language, metaphors, subplots, and emigrant stories. Open Web Sources
The First Tuesday Book Club, sponsored by ABC television, has a review on its Web site at www.abc. net.au/tx/firsttuesday/s/68431.htm concerning The Ballad of Desmond Kale and Roger McDonald. For Further Reading
Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. New York: Grove Press, 2002. Print. A magical realism novel about a convict on Van Dieman’s Island, Australia, in the 1830s, who records events and paints fish. Keneally, Thomas. Bring Larks and Heroes. New York: Penguin, 1989. Print. Set in a British penal colony in 1790s Australia, bleakly depicts one Irish corporal’s struggle of conscience amid corruption and deprivation. Kingsley, Henry. The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlin. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2010. Print. Written in 1859 by an upcoming novelist, a firsthand account of life in the Australian Outback with bushrangers, forest fires, and drought. Marsden, J. B. Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, of Paramatta, Senior Chaplain of New South Wales: And of His Early Connexion with the Missions to New Zealand and Tahiti. Charleston: Nabu Press, 2010. Print. Memoirs of the real 1800s “flogging parson,” magistrate, and sheep farmer upon whom McDonald based the Stanton character in The Ballad of Desmond Kale. McDonald, Roger. Mr. Darwin’s Shooter: A Novel. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Print. Award-winning fiction about a young sailor who helped Charles Darwin collect specimens for seven years, later confronting issues of friendship and faith. Lois Kerschen
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Baudolino By Umberto Eco
W Introduction Originally published in Italian in 2000, Baudolino (translated to English in 2002) is a novel by the scholar and writer Umberto Eco. The story begins in 1204, when sixty-year-old Baudolino recounts his life to the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates. In this narrative within a narrative, the boy Baudolino is taken from his parents’ farm in northern Italy in 1155 by the German king and Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa; he is raised as Frederick’s adopted son. As a young man he hatches a plan to overawe Frederick’s European opponents by forming an alliance with a fabled Christian ruler in the East known as Prester John. Baudolino and his friends forge a friendly letter from Prester John to Frederick, which contains a description of John’s amazing empire, conceived in its entirety by the young forgers. Once “leaked” to Frederick’s enemies, the letter is expected to make them more cooperative. Baudolino and his friends come to believe that the kingdom they have imagined is real. Finally, in 1190 they set off to find Prester John. They return to Constantinople in 1204, largely convinced that John and his kingdom do not exist. Baudolino, though, still believes, and at the end of the novel he sets off to look one last time.
W Literary and Historical Context
Eco’s narratives are typically densely interwoven with ideas from the world in which they are set, and Baudolino is no exception. Central to the novel are the myths of Prester John and the Grasal (also Grail, or Graal), which were widely current in medieval Western Europe. Prester John was said to rule over a vast empire in Asia, an ideal Christian community possessed of unheard-of wealth. The myth likely originated in accounts of early Christian
communities in India, including Saint Thomas the Apostle’s ministry there. In 1165 a forged letter from Prester John was sent to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus and other rulers, including Frederick. The letter helped spur Europeans’ interest in exploring East Asia. In the early thirteenth century, the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach linked Prester John with the myth of the Holy Grail. In his epic poem Parzival, von Eschenbach made John a Grail-bearer and the son of a knight. The Grail was most often depicted as a serving vessel used at the Last Supper. Von Eschenbach based his description of the Grail on the authority of the (possibly fictional) French poet Kyot the Provençal, who appears as a character in Baudolino. Another French poet, Robert de Boron, wrote in his Joseph d’Aramithie of the Grail being used to collect the spilled blood of Christ (Boron also figures in Eco’s novel). The Grail thus became the most sought-after of holy relics. In Eco’s tale, the mythical vessel is given physical reality by the resourceful Baudolino, who identifies his dead father’s wooden wine bowl as the Grasal. He plans to give it to Prester John but is forced to return with it to Europe.
W Themes The grand theme of Baudolino concerns the power of faith in determining reality. As a boy Baudolino tells an impressive story of an imaginary encounter with a saint. In it the holy figure declares Frederick the one and only lord of Lombardy. The child’s tale promptly causes Frederick’s Italian foes to surrender. Much later Baudolino says to Choniates, “The kingdom of [Prester John] is real because I and my companions have devoted twothirds of our life to seeking it,” implying that good stories compel belief. In giving Baudolino a hand in everything from the canonization of Charlemagne to the counterfeited discovery of what becomes the Holy Grail in the novel,
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Baudolino
MAJOR CHARACTERS ABDUL, who befriends Baudolino at the University of Paris, writes songs for a princess he believes he once saw. He joins the quest to find Prester John’s kingdom in the hope that he will encounter her on his journey. BAUDOLINO, the adopted son of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, conceives of an alliance with the legendary Christian ruler Prester John as a way to help Frederick consolidate his empire. Baudolino spends the rest of his life seeking the kingdom he imagined into being. KYOT is a young traveler who tells Baudolino and his friends that the Grasal is in Prester John’s castle. His character is based on the thirteenth-century poet Kyot the Provençal, who may have been merely a character invented by Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival. THE POET, Baudolino’s roommate at the University of Paris, becomes a court poet on the strength of poems written by Baudolino. He joins the quest for the power that finding Prester John’s kingdom will bring him. ZOSIMOS is a treacherous priest who claims to possess a map of the route to Prester John’s kingdom. He tries to steal the Grasal from Baudolino. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA, Holy Roman emperor, finds his energies consumed by destructive rivalries between Italian cities over which he has nominal rule. He wants to believe in Baudolino’s grand plan involving Prester John but dies before the quest gets under way. ROBERT DE BORON is a poet who joins in Baudolino’s search for Prester John. At the end of the quest he says he plans to write about his experiences. Joseph d’Aramithie, written by the real-life poet Robert de Boron in the late twelfth century, helped popularize the Grasal myth. NIKETAS CHONIATES is a Byzantine Greek historian to whom Baudolino tells his life story. Niketas’s character is also based on a historical figure. At the end of the novel, he remains undecided about whether to record what Baudolino has told him. SOLOMON OF GERONA is a Jewish rabbi. He joins the quest for the kingdom of Prester John hoping to find the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Eco calls into question not only the sources but also the truth of history. Brooke Allen notes in her Atlantic review of the book, “History, as we have to acknowledge, is no more than a generally accepted combination of facts, invention, propaganda, and wishful thinking, and Baudolino’s career illustrates the ways in which history is created and authorized.” In Baudolino’s hair-splitting religious disputes with fantastical monsters he encounters in his search for Prester John, Eco highlights the
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Much of Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino takes place during the Fourth Crusade, depicted here in a painting. ª Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy
arguments’ airy lack of substance. Their impact on the Western and Eastern Christian churches, however, has been definitive. Like Prester John, historical truth is hopelessly elusive; the most compelling tale attracts believers. As Baudolino’s friend Boron says of the Grasal, it only acquires “the power of moving men” when it is believed to be lost.
W Style Eco’s novel opens with Baudolino’s first-person record of his initial meeting with Frederick Barbarossa, which the boy writes on parchment stolen from his mentor at court. In the second chapter, the narration changes to the third person and uses an omniscient viewpoint. This shift allows the inclusion of more narrative threads, giving the author greater opportunity to engage in his trademark elaboration of the story’s historical and cultural contexts. Baudolino’s tale of his personal history is a story within a story. The encompassing narrative revolves around his 1204 rescue of Niketas Choniates when Constantinople is sacked during the Fourth Crusade. Baudolino tells his story as he helps Niketas escape to Selymbria on the Sea of Marmara. Finally Baudolino leaves Selymbria to return to what is most real to him: the quest for the kingdom of Prester John. In Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, a medieval murder investigation structures and directs the plot. Baudolino, however, is first and foremost a novel of ideas. Ideas overshadow characters and plot. The first part of the novel describes Frederick’s imperial frustrations in Italy and relates the myths of the Grasal and Prester John; it provides the motivation for Baudolino’s quest to find John’s kingdom. The quest itself forms the central part of the novel. It is an extended fantasy involving extreme TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Baudolino
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, Italy. He studied medieval philosophy and literature at the University of Turin, where he received a PhD in 1954. In the late 1950s he served as cultural programming editor for Radiotelevisione Italiana and began lecturing at the University of Turin. From 1959 to 1975 he worked as an editor for Casa Editore Bompiani. He has been a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna since 1975. Eco has written about language, literature, art, politics, and culture for numerous publications. His first novel, Il Nome della rosa (1980; The Name of the Rose, 1983), was an international best seller and won the 1981 Strega Prize, Italy’s highest literary honor. His works typically involve an investigation of a mystery, through which he explores the nature of interpretive processes, bringing to bear his vast erudition on questions relevant to religion, philosophy, science, and art.
Portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the adoptive father of the main character in Baudolino. ª Classic Image/Alamy
landscapes, exotic monsters, and bizarre rituals. Quests typically inspire transformations in character, but Baudolino’s voyage instead produces alterations in ideas and objects. After all the suffering he and his friends endure for the sake of Baudolino’s father’s wine bowl, it really does become a precious Grasal; when it is threatened or lost, it has “the power to move men.” The historical poets de Boron and Kyot the Provençal helped transform the Grasal into the most sacred of objects. Eco’s fiction supplies a decidedly irreverent backstory to their poetic visions.
W Critical Reception The critical response to Baudolino has been mixed. Most reviewers acknowledge that the novel abounds with historical detail and period authenticity. “Eco is good at evoking life in medieval Italy and at recreating the intellectual horizon of the period,” Thomas Wright asserts in the Spectator. Peter Green of the New York Times Book Review admires the novel’s “richly variegated haul of medieval treasures,” which makes it “compulsively readable.” In a Guardian review, A. S. Byatt argues that, as in his previous novels, Eco uses Baudolino to explore the ways in which humans find and create meaning: “It is an examination of the deep need for explanatory
stories . . . and works in codes and layers that resemble the medieval methods of biblical interpretation as much as modern semiotics.” Some critics have found the novel’s intellectual fireworks sufficient for its success. In his Booklist review Brad Hooper writes that Baudolino “beautifully mixes the elements of an adventure story with intellectual discussions of theology, government, language, geography, and politics.” Others, however, have felt that the novel’s intellectual preoccupations do not cohere well with the plot or the characters. Despite finding in the work a “brilliant conceit,” Byatt’s review concludes, “It is a peculiar kind of novel where the difficult ideas are more interesting than the swashbuckling, or the sex, or the death, or the gruesome objects. . . . It is a paradox that Eco’s most readable tale is also his least satisfactory.” Wright concurs: “While the debates and intellectual digressions in The Name of the Rose were an essential part of the narrative, here they aren’t successfully dramatised within the plot. The characters, too, are merely mouthpieces for ideas.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allen, Brooke. “Barbarossa’s Boy.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Atlantic Oct. 2002: 160. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Byatt, A. S. “Here Be Monsters.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media 19 Oct. 2002. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Eco, Umberto. Baudolino: A Novel. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. Print. Green, Peter. “For Sale: Head of John the Baptist. Box of 7.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. New York
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Times Book Review 3 Nov. 2002: 14+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Hooper, Brad. Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Booklist July 2002: 1794. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Wright, Thomas. “Too Mediaeval by Half.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Spectator 2 Nov. 2002: 70. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Kirkus Reviews 1 Aug. 2002: 1059. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Argues that the author burdens his story with lengthy philosophical discussions which further weaken an uninspired plot. Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Publishers Weekly 1 July 2002: 44. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Posits that readers overwhelmed by Eco’s earlier novels may find Baudolino more engaging and accessible because it features a better balance between fiction and intellectual discussion. Bernstein, Richard. “Of Unicorns and Satyrs and Things with No Knees.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. nytimes.com. New York Times 16 Oct. 2002. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Acknowledges the scholarship of the novel but faults the narrative for being aimless. Cobb, Gerald T. “A Quest of His Own.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. America 11 Nov. 2002: 37. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Provides a detailed overview of the novel and praises the author’s deft marshaling of historical data in telling Baudolino’s tale. Francese, Joseph. “Romancing the Family: Umberto Eco’s Baudolino.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 65.3 (2005): 261+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Explores family relationships in Eco’s novel from a psychoanalytic perspective. Hoffert, Barbara. Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Library Journal July 2002: 116. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Finds the novel worthwhile but not as scintillating as Eco’s previous novels. Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. “Medieval Monsters Inc.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Sunday Times [London] 13 Oct. 2002: 47. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Praises the novel’s ambition, its capacity to entertain, and the energy of Eco’s writing. Lacayo, Richard. “The Good Liar.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Time 4 Nov. 2002: 86. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Appreciates the ideas behind Baudolino but argues that the novel is too long and is inundated by tall tales.
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Langer, Adam. “Italian Hero.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Book Sept.-Oct. 2002: 62+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Highlights the novel’s playfulness. “Making Up Is Never Easy to Do.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Economist 12 Oct. 2002. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Maintains that the weight of too much learning in the novel proves lethal to the story Eco is trying to tell. Mars-Jones, Adam. “You Couldn’t Make It Up.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media 27 Oct. 2002. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Criticizes the novel’s narrative structure and its valuation of inventiveness over artistry. Stock, Jennifer. “Eco Chamber.” Rev. of Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. yalereviewofbooks.com. Yale Review of Books Spring 2003. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Lauds the wealth of historical detail and learned asides in the text but contends that these cannot substitute for character development. Gale Resources
Friend, Bill. “Umberto Eco.” Twentieth-Century European Cultural Theorists, 1st series. Ed. Paul Hansom. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 242. Literature Resource Center. 17 Oct. 2010. Rubino, Carl. “Umberto Eco.” Italian Novelists since World War II, 1965-1995. Ed. Augustus Pallotta. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 196. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. “Umberto Eco.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. “Umberto Eco.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
Eco’s home page features information about the author’s life and career, interviews, lectures, summaries of his many books, and links to other sources. http:// www.umbertoeco.com/en Fordham University’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook includes an excerpt from the fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville in which the author, whose identity remains in doubt, describes the kingdom of Prester John. http://www.fordham .edu/halsall/source/mandeville.html For Further Reading
Boron, Robert de. Joseph of Arimathea: A Romance of the Grail. Trans. Jean Rogers. 1971. London: Steiner, 1990. Print. The medieval French poet describes the Grail as a vessel used at the Last Supper; Boron TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Baudolino
pictures Joseph of Arimathea later collecting the blood flowing from the side of the crucified Christ. Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando: Harcourt, 1974. Print. In Calvino’s novel Kublai Khan listens to Marco Polo’s brief, fantastical descriptions of the cities he has visited. In Eco’s novel the audience Niketas Choniates grants Baudolino is similar. Like Eco, Calvino explores the ways in which individual interpretation affects meaning. Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando: Harcourt, 1989. Print. In Eco’s second novel a scholar and his colleagues make up a history of the Knights Templar. Their game brings them into contact with a thrilling and dangerous reality. ———. Interview. “Eco Returns.” Europe Oct. 2002: 46+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. This brief interview touches on highlights of Eco’s career. He describes the idea that led him to write about the forged letter of Prester John.
———. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando: Harcourt, 1998. Print. In this volume of essays, Eco explores the outcomes of linguistic mistakes, misinterpretations, and hoaxes; he addresses the letter supposedly written by Prester John that inspired European explorations of Asia. “In Search of an Upside-Down World.” Bookseller 5 July 2002: 33. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. This article features Eco’s descriptions of the character of Baudolino and of the real historical artifacts and actions that are attributed to him in the novel. It includes a brief account of San Baudolino, the patron saint of Eco’s native city, Alessandria. von Eschenbach, Wolfram. Parzival. Trans. A. T. Hatto. London: Penguin, 1980. Print. Von Eschenbach’s Arthurian romance describes the trials encountered by the knight Parzival in his long search for the Grail.
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Janet Moredock
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Beasts of No Nation By Uzodinma Iweala
W Introduction Uzodinma Iweala’s debut novel, Beasts of No Nation (2005), is a graphic depiction of the military experience of a child soldier in an unnamed West Africa country. Told exclusively from the child’s point of view in what may be called Nigerian English, this story gives an in-depth look at the mayhem, violence, and sexual abuse experienced by the protagonist, a pubescent boy named Agu. The novel begins with Agu hiding. He has seen his mother and sister flee with other females from his village; he has seen his father murdered. He is discovered by rebel fighters, beaten up by a child among them, and pulled into their ragtag group. All he knows at the start is that war has come to his village, and he has no choice but to be a soldier. His story then follows this marauding band of rebels as they plunder, rape, and burn their way through several villages. Over the course of these events, the guerrilla fighters suffer starvation, injury, and death. Agu and Strika, another young boy among the soldiers, are repeatedly sodomized by the commander. Though this novel has been labeled a young-adult book, it is not for the faint of heart and may be unsuitable for some young readers. In 2005 Iweala, a recent graduate of Harvard University, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best work of literature by a young writer for his novel.
W Literary and Historical Context
The literary context in the West for a novel such as Beasts of No Nation is the bildungsroman, the story of maturation. In this genre, the story is about how a child, the protagonist, grows to adulthood, a coming-of-age story. The trajectory of the bildungsroman typically moves from the childhood home of the protagonist into distant places and through various adventures that lead
the central character toward adulthood and perhaps to reconnection with family and childhood friends. In the nineteenth century, the bildungsroman tended to resolve happily, as in the case of David Copperfield (1850), but often during the twentieth century, the ending was more inconclusive, as is the case, for example, in Catcher in the Rye (1951). The historical context for Beasts of No Nation is the increasing prevalence during the late twentieth century of children being enlisted as soldiers in civil wars in African countries. In Africa, beginning in Mozambique in the 1980s, conscription of children (by various criminal means) as guerrilla soldiers was widespread. Jeffrey Gettleman, in a 2007 New York Times article, stated: “The Mozambicans learned that children were the perfect weapon: easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless and, most important, in endless supply.” Rebel forces and warlords caught on to this resource, and the use of children in tribal conflicts and civil wars spread elsewhere, as in Somalia, Congo, and Uganda. Warlords and renegade gangs, whose aim is often mainly to plunder local villages, have difficulty enlisting adults but can manipulate children with magic (Beah). These children may be told, for example, that their captors come from the stars or that oil rubbed into their bodies will protect them from harm. Persuaded or coerced, the children participate in brutal attacks on local people, burning villages and murdering babies with sticks. They are controlled by fear, for they witness how children who resist are maimed or killed (Beah). In the 1990s, when human rights organizations such as Amnesty International learned that child soldiers were being forced to eat their victims in Congo, under the pretext that it would make them stronger, the issue came before the United Nations, and concerned groups advocated a mandate that soldiers worldwide be at least eighteen years of age. Only the United Kingdom and the United States refused to sign (Gettleman). Such human rights organizations as the Coalition to Stop the Use of
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Beasts of No Nation
Child Soldiers seek to prevent the enlistment of children in military groups and to work for the demobilization and rehabilitation of children who have been conscripted. In 2007 human rights organizations noted that using children in military action had spread worldwide, and an estimated 300,000 children were at that time actively involved in civil wars (Gettleman).
MAJOR CHARACTERS AGU, the narrator and protagonist, is a pubescent boy abducted into the ragtag troop of guerrilla soldiers led by a local thug. COMMANDANT is the unnamed leader of the guerrilla troop, a sadistic child molester and thug.
W Themes The all-encompassing theme of Beasts of No Nation concerns how warfare dehumanizes people and how children in particular are traumatized by participating in guerrilla warfare. The novel dramatizes how these children are forced into following the warlord, how they cannot think of escaping, how they are physically and sexually abused, and how drugs are poured into them to mobilize them to commit brutal obscene acts. Inhabiting a nightmare from which they cannot awake, these children develop symptoms of ego disintegration, dissociation, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Starvation causes hallucination. A second theme pertains to the role played by Western missionary and aid workers. One indication is the presence of the Bible in Agu’s family home and among the guerrilla soldiers. Agu remembers fondly his mother reading from the Old Testament violent stories of Cain and Abel and of Abraham and Isaac; he remembers the magical story of Jonah and the fish. In his eyes, this primary text foretells violence as a way of life. In the final pages of the novel, where Agu describes being cared for in a coastal facility of some sort, Father Festus speaks to him about “Confession and Forgiveness and Resurrection” (139), but Agu admits he does not understand these words. What he understands is that he misses Strika, the mute boy who kicked him into submission when Agu was abducted and then slept next to him on the ground. What Agu understands is missing his friend, Strika. But when Agu begins to tell his story to the aid worker Amy, he sees her eyes fill with tears. He may not understand the priest’s theological terms, but he understands what he sees in her eyes.
W Style The most outstanding aspect of style in this novel is the narrative voice. The little boy Agu speaks in Nigerian English, mostly using the present progressive tense; typically using the singular noun and verb, even when speaking about a plural subject; and tending to omit the terminal -s. For example, Agu reports in the opening scene, “My head is just starting to tingle right between my eye”; “I want to be moving, but my whole bone is paining me and my muscle is paining me like fire ant is just biting me” (1). It is clear his assailant is already
DIKE is Agu’s best friend in his school days who flees with his family before the local warfare begins. MISTRESS GLORIA is the head teacher in the school Agu attends briefly. GRIOT is a child soldier who tells stories late at night, replaying the hanging of his mother, which he witnessed in a marketplace. LUFTENANT is second in command of the guerrilla troop; he is killed by a young prostitute. RAMBO is an older child soldier who figures out he and Agu can leave the Commandant and wakes Agu to tell him so. STRIKA is the mute child soldier who discovers Agu hiding and beats him up; later, Agu thinks of Strika as his only friend.
starving: Strika is described as “short dark body with one big belly and leg thin like spider’s own,” and “His neck is just struggling too much to hold up his big head” (2). The world of Beasts of No Nation is compressed by this voice, which causes the reader to see through the narrowing aperture of Agu’s eyes the “lacerating” pain of his experience (Burns and Hoffert). Agu’s figures of speech reveal the brutality of his existence. One of these links violence and sex. The connection comes from the commander’s repeatedly equating murder with falling in love, the ecstasy of killing. The pubescent Agu uses the word soldier as the name for penis; an erect penis is a soldier standing at attention. His sexual arousal during attacks on villagers is sometime drug-induced. Then, too, the boy conceptualizes intercourse as anal rape, which is perpetrated on him repeatedly by his commander. At the same moment when the lieutenant is knifed by a prostitute, Agu is waiting outside the brothel, masturbating. In another scene, Agu describes how the soldiers hiding at night are more like a family than an army; he stumbles over their bodies, searching for Strika and not finding him. Agu’s terror contrasts with his memory of the darkness of being hugged by his mother, “This kind of dark is making me to feel like I am turning inside out, so all of my thought is floating outside of me and all of my clothe is inside of me. I am walking with my hand stretching out in front of me because I am trying to catch all of those thought that is
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Beasts of No Nation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Uzodinma Iweala was born in 1982 in Washington, D.C., the son of two Nigerian immigrants, his father a physician, his mother a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and the former finance minister and foreign minister of Nigeria. Iweala graduated from Harvard University where he was a Mellon Mays Scholar. His first novel, Beasts of No Nation (2005), was based on his undergraduate thesis. After graduation, he decided to couple his writing career with the pursuit of a degree in medicine from Columbia University. In 2005 Beasts of No Nation won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best work of literature by a young writer.
floating around me so I can make sure no part of me is missing” (106).
W Critical Reception Describing the reception of Beasts of No Nation, Ann Burns and Barbara Hoffert wrote in Library Journal that the novel got “uniformly glowing reviews.” Apparently
the critics were most impressed with the voice that narrates this story. A review in Publishers Weekly (PW) also remarked on “the extraordinary voice.” Identifying the “odd singsong cadence and twisted use of tense” in the “harrowing read,” the PW reviewer stated: “The impressionistic narration by a boy constantly struggling to understand the incomprehensible is always breathless, often breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking.” Benedicte Page agreed: “The first thing you notice about the novel is the voice and its immediacy.” Simon Baker further explained Iweala’s handling of voice: Iweala “gives his hero a voice that is unliterary yet poetic, sometimes sliding into the present tense when describing the past: ‘They are giving me one room for myself’; ‘It is starting like this.’ At moments of high excitement, though, Agu finds himself in a kind of lexical blizzard, snatching desperately at words in his quest for expression: ‘Then they are angrying too much and just kicking so the whole of this place is shaking and the roof is falling apart small small.’” At first surprising and perhaps off-putting, this African English soon convinces readers that it is the only voice for this particular story, a voice that does not explain but only describes, juxtaposing contradictions and inexplicable, even surreal scenes without framing or distancing the reader from the impact of the action.
Nigerian refugees in Owerri, Nigeria. In Beasts of No Nation, a young boy from an unidentified West African country tells his story of losing his family and being forced into a group of rebel fighters. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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Beasts of No Nation
One effect of the voice is in how it conveys the speaker’s character. Baker applauded Iweala’s portrait of this child: “The acute characterization, the adroit mixture of color and restraint, and the horrific emotional force of the narrative are impressive. Still more impressive is Iweala’s ability to maintain not only our sympathy but our affection for his central character.” A review in the New Yorker observed that Beasts of No Nation depicts “war as a mesh of bestial pleasures and pain.” The reviewer admired Agu’s “primitive drive that enables him to survive his descent into hell . . . and keep hold of something resembling optimism.” This faith Agu has in education and his own ability to become something more than a soldier makes him, for the New Yorker, reviewer “a haunting narrator.” The Web site African Success explained how Iweala’s novel transforms its subject matter: “The novel is testament to the profound ability of literature to show horror, dismantle it and identify its parts, and arrive in the silent ether of the aftermath with something utterly unforgettable and, most importantly, worth cherishing.” In cautioning that readers “will come away feeling shattered by this haunting, original story,” Gillian Engberg summed up Iweala’s accomplishment: “Iweala distills his story to the most urgent and visceral atrocities, and the scenes of bloodshed and rape are made more excruciating by the lyrical, rhythmic language. In the narrator’s memories of village life, biblical stories, and creation myths, Iweala explores the mutable separation between human and beast and a child’s struggle to rediscover his own humanity after war.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
African Success: People Changing the Face of Africa, http://www.africansuccess.org/visuFiche.php? id=626&lang=en. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Baker, Simon. “A Boy Soldier’s Heart of Darkness.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. New York Times Book Review 4 Dec. 2005: 70(L). Print. Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print. “Beasts of No Nation.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Publishers Weekly 29 Aug. 2005: 29. Print. “Briefly Noted.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. New Yorker 14 Nov. 2005: 95. Print. Burns, Ann, and Barbara Hoffert. “All New, All Distinct.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Library Journal 15 Mar. 2006: 48+. Print. Engberg, Gillian. “Iweala, Uzodinma. Beasts of No Nation.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Booklist 1 Sept. 2005: 64. Print.
Gettleman, Jeffrey. “The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest War.” nytimes.com. New York Times 29 April 2007. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Iweala, Uzodinma. Beasts of No Nation. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Print. Page, Benedicte. “Agu’s Hard Lessons in Killing.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Bookseller 22 Apr. 2005: 27. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barnes, Tania. “When War Is Child’s Play.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2005: 42. Print. Examines briefly the dilemma of an author writing about a world and experience he knows nothing about directly. “Iweala, Uzodinma: Beasts of No Nation.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Kirkus Reviews 15 July 2005: 756. Print. Explains that while the civil war is horrific, the battle for Agu’s soul is what matters most. Mnubi, Godfrey M., and John H. Hoover. “Review of Beasts of No Nation and A Long Way Gone.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Reclaiming Children and Youth 22 Sept. 2008. Print. Explains how Iweala’s depiction of the acculturation of Agu to becoming dangerous boy soldier contradicts the age-old tribal rituals that bring a boy to respected and productive manhood. Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedi. “Beasts of No Nation (Book review).” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Black Issues Book Review 1 May 2006. Print. Compares the broken English used in the novel to other works by African authors. Stone, Misha. “Iweala, Uzodinma. Beasts of No Nation.” Rev. of Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2005: 131. Print. Explains that the simple declarative voice of Agu makes the story all the more horrific. Gale Resources
“Uzodinma Iweala.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000164888&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
African Success: People Changing the Face of Africa, at http//www.africansuccess.org/visuFiche.php? id=626&lang=en, has biographical information about Uzodinma Iweala. Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, at http//www. child-soldiers.org, provides information about efforts
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to stop the recruitment of children as soldiers and to provide for the rehabilitation of children who have been recruited. For Further Reading
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print. Firsthand report of child soldier in Sierra Leone who states that ideology gets lost quickly in a bloodbath. Honwana, Alcinda. Child Soldiers in Africa (The Ethnography of Political Violence). Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. Print. Describes the recruitment, war experiences, and coping measures as reported by children in Mozambique and Angola.
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Saro-Wiwa, Ken. Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English. Pueblo: Passeggiata P, 1986. Print. Describes the enlistment of a naive young man into the army to fight in the Nigerian civil war and how his idealistic hopes turn to disillusionment with his experience. Singer, P. W. Children at War. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006. Print. Thorough study of child soldiery written by a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Tutuola, Amos. The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. New York: Grove P, 1993. Print. Two novels from the 1950s, in one binding, by the famous African author and drawing from Yoruba folktale traditions. Melodie Monahan
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Beijing Coma By Ma Jian
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
In this historical novel by dissident Chinese author Ma Jian, Dai Wei, the narrator, lies in a coma after being hit by a stray bullet at the 1989 student protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese government fired at demonstrators. Dai, comatose for ten years, only intermittently aware of his surroundings, is consumed by memories from his childhood and from his years as a student organizer. He becomes increasingly aware of the circumstances surrounding his body, including visits from his girlfriend and medical personnel, as well as his mother’s struggles to care for herself and to meet his medical needs. His memories and his growing awareness construct a bleak and compelling portrait of Chinese society from the days of the Cultural Revolution through the democracy movement of the 1980s and the economic revival of the 1990s, during which China became an increasingly important part of the global economy. Beijing Coma, the first major novel about Tiananmen Square, is a powerful critique of twentieth-century Chinese government from one of its foremost dissident writers. This harsh, often humorous account of Dai’s struggle with his burgeoning sexuality under the strictures of the Cultural Revolution—as well as the history of his father’s political persecution under the Maoist regime and his mother’s desperate attempts to survive in the capitalist 1990s—is intended to prevent the forgetfulness Ma sees as endemic in Chinese culture. The novel was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. It won the T. R. Fyvel Index on Censorship Award, was short-listed for the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and was on the long list for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Beijing Coma is set in the Chinese city of Beijing during the last two decades of the twentieth century, covering the years up to and following the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square. The protests were sparked by the death on April 15, 1989, of Hu Yaobang, a former government official who openly criticized the violence that characterized the regime of Mao Zedong and urged Deng Xiaoping’s government to further loosen the economic, cultural, and social controls of the Maoist regime. The protests began as a wave of public mourning for a beloved leader but escalated when a number of political groups arguing for political reforms seized the occasion as an opportunity for a large-scale demonstration. Thousands of students gathered on April 17, presenting the government with a list of demands to further Hu Yaobang’s reform agenda. When police responded to the demonstrators with force, the situation drew national and international media coverage and an outpouring of support for the protests. Over the next several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, students, and dissidents gathered in Tiananmen Square. In other Chinese cities solidarity protests were held. Following a boycott of Beijing’s universities and a hunger strike by more than a thousand students, the Chinese government declared a state of martial law, but with thousands of people in the streets of Beijing, troops were unable to enter the city. Finally, on June 1, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (the governmental forces) pushed their way into the city and fired on the protesters. There is some question about the number of victims at Tiananmen Square (estimates vary between several hundred and several thousand), but the Chinese government’s actions have become emblematic of the oppressive behavior of authoritative governments and a reminder of the way that the repressions of the Communist era remain strongly in place.
Context
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Beijing Coma
MAJOR CHARACTERS A-MEI is Dai Wei’s second girlfriend and his first love, who ends their relationship when she moves to Hong Kong. LULU is Dai Wei’s childhood girlfriend. During the years of Dai Wei and Lulu’s childhood, sexual and romantic liaisons are forbidden, and his first traumatic encounter with members of the cultural police occurs when they are caught together, arrested, and harshly interrogated. CHEN HUIZHEN is Dai Wei’s mother and Dai Changjie’s wife. She is Dai Wei’s primary caretaker when he is comatose. She allows pharmacists access to Dai Wei’s body and sells his urine and his left kidney to fund special treatment from Master Yao, a member of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. During a government crackdown Master Yao is arrested, and Dai Wei’s mother, who has fallen in love with him, loses her mind. DAI CHANGJIE is Dai Wei’s father. An accomplished violinist, he lived and worked in America before returning to China to raise his family. He was a “member of the Five Black Categories” forbidden under Mao Zedong and spent twenty-two years in a labor camp. Branded a “rightist” for his resistance to Mao’s brutal Communist regime, he maintained dissident views for which his family was shunned. DAI WEI is the protagonist of Beijing Coma. Injured by a stray bullet during the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, he lies in a coma for ten years, alternately remembering his childhood and the years leading up to the protests. Viscerally aware of his body as it functions and slowly wakes up, as well as intermittently conscious of visitors and activities outside his room, Dai Wei is both the narrator of the novel and a metaphor for China’s own sluggish awareness of its history. TIAN YI is Dai Wei’s girlfriend during the years leading up to Tiananmen Square. A psychology undergraduate at Beijing University, where Dai Wei is enrolled as a graduate student in biology, she is one of his few frequent visitors while he is in a coma.
Ma, who lives in exile, extends his critique to the current Chinese government, and his books are banned in China. The final image of the novel, in which Dai and his mother’s building is demolished around them by order of one of Dai’s old girlfriends, now a real estate mogul, registers the cruel spirit of the Deng Xiaoping era and its obsession with wealth. As Jess Row of the New York Times and others point out, Ma’s detailed portraits of individual moments of resistance compound the political criticism of the book and are particularly pointed since the book came out just before the 2008 Olympic games.
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W Themes Beijing Coma, as Row observes, “takes as a given Stephen Dedalus’s dictum [from James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man], ‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake up.’” The major theme of the novel, which connects Ma to such dissident writers as Milan Kundera of the former Czechoslovakia, is the way that individuals fit into historical events. Beijing Coma describes the organization and planning that led to the protests at Tiananmen Square in excruciating detail (the factional conflicts and power struggles that initiated the student movement make up the bulk of the novel’s pages), and Ma does so as part of an attempt to counter the encroachment of cultural amnesia. “No one,” Dai comments, “talks about the Tiananmen protests anymore.” While Tiananmen Square is the central event in Dai’s (and Ma Jian’s) life, the novel makes it clear that the loss of memory or the refusal to remember a traumatic past is also characteristic of twentieth-century Chinese history. The book focuses not only on political structures but also on the way that national government policies affect individuals, their lives, and their beliefs. These implications are most clearly articulated through the lengthy debates between Dai and his fellow student leaders as they argue about politics, about the relative benefits of different forms of protest, and when the protests would be most effectively implemented. The most compelling example of the long-term results of living under an authoritarian government is reflected in the changing views of Dai’s mother. During his childhood Dai’s mother, a former opera singer, shows only contempt for his father’s “rightist” views, which led to his imprisonment and to the ostracism of his family. After Dai is injured at Tiananmen Square, she finds herself similarly ostracized and left caring for him on her own. Their financial situation worsens, even in the thriving Chinese economy of the 1990s, and the government fails to accept any responsibility for Dai’s condition. Slowly she takes increasingly desperate measures to survive and to save her son and grows increasingly critical of the government she once believed in. The insanity that strikes her at the end of the novel is indicative of the longterm stress of living in fear of persecution and of being Dai’s sole caregiver. Beijing Coma is also a meditation on the role that literature, the arts, and the aesthetic experience in general can play in the midst of historical events. The image of a sparrow alighting on Dai’s chest, the experience that finally brings him back to consciousness, stands for a fragile beauty that is not strictly useful but that is nonetheless necessary. The sparrow, ordinary yet delicate, was marked for extermination in Maoist China, and the novel makes it clear that, while China has moved away from a strictly authoritarian government, the recovery will not be complete until there is room for this kind of simple pleasure. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Beijing Coma
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ma Jian, a London-based author of novels and short stories, was born in 1953 in the city of Qingdao, China. He worked as a watch repairman and a painter of propaganda boards until he was assigned a job as a photojournalist for a state-run magazine. In 1982 he quit his job as a photojournalist under political pressure and traveled around China (he later wrote about his travels in the 2002 memoir Red Dust). He moved to Hong Kong in 1987 when his collection of short stories about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, was banned by the government, but he continued to travel in China. He missed the protests in Tiananmen Square only because his brother was injured in an accident that put him in a coma, an experience that inspired the narrator’s injuries in Beijing Coma. Ma lived in Germany between 1997 and 1999 and then moved to London with his wife, Flora Drew, who is a noted translator from the Chinese and translates Ma’s works in English. Ma has been allowed to travel in China, but his writings are banned, and he is forbidden from making any public or political statements. Ma was described by Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian as “one of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature.” In addition to Beijing Coma, Red Dust (which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 2002), and Stick Out Your Tongue, Ma is the author of The Noodle Maker (2004) a finalist for a PEN literary award for a novel in translation.
Ma Jian, author of Beijing Coma. Getty Images
W Style Melissa Holbrook Pierson, in the Nation, refers to Ma as a “satiric playwright” who “pens scenes of madcap irony.” This ironic edge in Beijing Coma is widely noted by critics. Ma’s language can be lyrical, as in the passages remembering Dai’s old girlfriends, but history permeates every detail of Dai’s life, and the novel recounts the past and chronicles the present in excruciating, often unsparing detail. This attention to detail, which pushes the novel to over five hundred pages, is a powerful documentary tool that acts as a reminder that the brutal humor Ma displays originates in the events themselves rather than stemming from his stylistic choices. Beijing Coma has the length, sweep, and detailed renderings of an epic novel, but the structure is piecemeal, comprising three narrative strands: Dai’s memories, his current surroundings, and his descriptions of his slow physical recovery. The latter, italicized passages, scattered throughout the text, are full of the terminology—neurons awaken, ducts open up, fluids begin to move—one would expect from a medical student, but they are also exceedingly slow and lyrical, providing a contrast to his frenetic mental energy.
W Critical Reception Beijing Coma has received overwhelmingly positive reviews in the Western press. It was reviewed in nearly all the major book reviews and newspapers and unanimously declared an important book, one that not only details the years leading up to a major historical event of the late twentieth century but also provides an important meditation on the way that history is written or, in this case, forgotten. Ma’s sense of ironic humor is mentioned by almost all readers of the novel, who variously refer to it as a “tragicomedy” (Tash Aw), “blackly funny” (James Lasdun), “horror mixed with laughter” (Chandrahas Choudhury), and a mix of “gritty realism” and “absurdist satire” (Pankaj Mishra). Despite the bleak subject matter, however, critics see a powerful message of hope. The title of the novel in Chinese translates as “Land of Flesh,” and Ma explicitly connects Dai’s coma with the state of the Chinese people. Row quotes the preface to the Chinese edition of the novel: “Inside Dai Wei, there is a strong, resilient person who remembers, and only memory can help people regain the brightness of freedom.” Boyd Tonkin compares the novel to the sparrow it describes, saying it “is destined to be an eagle whose wings will cross the world. In Beijing [where the novel will not be published], powerful heads will hear them beat, and worry.”
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Beijing Coma BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Aw, Tash. “A Story of Tiananmen Square.” Telegraph [London] 26 Apr. 2008: n. pag. Print. Choudhury, Chandrahas. “Testament to an Unquiet Brain.” Observer [London] 20 Apr. 2008: n. pag. Print. Lasdun, James. “Children of the Revolution.” Guardian [London] 3 May 2008: n. pag. Print. Mishra, Pankaj. “Tiananmen’s Wake: A Novel of Hope and Cynicism.” New Yorker 30 July 2008: n. pag. Print. Pearson, Melissa Holbrook. “A Powerful Novel about Tiananmen Square.” Nation 4 Aug. 2008: n. pag. Print. Row, Jess. “Circling the Square.” New York Times 13 July 2008: n. pag. Print. Tonkin, Boyd. “Ma Jian: Slaughter and Forgetting.” Rev. of Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian. Independent [London] 2 May 2008: n. pag. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Fenby, Jonathan. “Beijing Coma.” Times [London] 9 May 2008: n. pag. Print. Fenby lauds Ma Jian for a “huge achievement,” calling Beijing Coma “both intimate and sweeping.” Prose, Francine. “Casting a Lifeline.” Rev. of Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian. New York Review of Books 26 June 2008: n. pag. Print. Well-known novelist Francine Prose gives a helpful, detailed narrative summary of Beijing Coma’s complicated plot. Smallwood, Christine. “Cage of Bones.” Los Angeles Times 24 May 2008: n. pag. Print. Smallwood’s article provides a short positive review and multiple excerpts from an interview with Ma Jian and his partner and translator, Flora Drew. Yang, Belle. “Nightmare on Tiananmen Square.” Rev. of Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian. Washington Post 25 May 2008: n. pag. Print. Yang’s short, positive review calls Beijing Coma “an avenue through which [the Chinese people can] retrieve their souls and emerge from their collective coma.”
complex politics, including the political and cultural policies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. http// academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/ chinhist.html Scholar Richard R. Wertz maintains this comprehensive portal to Web sites documenting Chinese history and culture. Frequently updated, it includes current newsfeeds as well as stable links to a range of helpful sites. http//www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/ This collection of Web resources on Asia, maintained by Robert Y. Eng, includes chapters from seminal history texts and sections devoted to each of China’s major political figures. http//newton.uor.edu/Depart ments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/china-history. html For Further Reading
Dillon, Michael, ed. China: A Cultural and Historical Dictionary. Durham East Asia Collection. Surrey: Curzon, 1998. This guidebook, arranged alphabetically, provides definitions for and explanations of a large array of keywords from China’s history and culture, a helpful resource for understanding the complicated historical background of Beijing Coma. Kim, Mikyoung, and Barry Schwartz, eds. Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past. New York: Palgrave, 2010. Print. This collection of essays on remembrance and history in China, Japan, and Korea is part of the Palgrave Macmillan Memory Series, a series of volumes about the politics and aesthetics of memory in the modern era. Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Knopf, 1980. Print. Kundera’s novel, banned under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, chronicles life under that regime and is often compared to Beijing Coma. Ma Jian. The Noodle Maker. London: Chatto, 2004. Print. Ma’s first novel, The Noodle Maker, which was excerpted in the New Yorker, relays the conversation between a writer of political propaganda and a professional blood donor who meet for dinner every week. The novel uses one of these dinners as the framework for a group of stories about the absurdities and cruelties of life in post-Tiananmen Square China.
Open Web Sources
———. Stick Out Your Tongue. London: Chatto, 2006. Print. This book of loosely autobiographical short fiction about a Chinese journalist traveling in Tibet was published in Chinese in 1997 and subsequently banned by the Chinese government for “harming the fraternal solidarity of the national minorities.”
A condensed history of China from its ancient roots through the modern era, this site provides a concise account of twentieth-century Chinese history and its
Pong, David. An Encyclopedia of Modern China. Scribner’s World History. Detroit: Scribner/Gale, 2009. Print. An engaging and up-to-date resource on
Gale Resources
“Ma Jian.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.
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Beijing Coma
Chinese history and culture from the eighteenth century through the present day, this two-thousandpage work, available in both print and electronic editions, contains articles from well-known scholars and academics, comprehensive bibliographies for further study, and an appendix of primary source material. Adaptations
Farewell: A Fantastical Contemplation on America’s Relationship with China. Dir. and chor. Donald Byrd. Score by Byron Au Yong. Spectrum Dance Theater (Seattle Theater Group), Seattle. 2010. Performance.
Farewell was produced in 2010 for the second year of Spectrum Dance Theater’s “Beyond Dance: Promoting Awareness and Mutual Understanding (PAMU).” According to Spectrum, the goal of PAMU is to bring collaborators together from all over the world to create works that “examine issues relating to personal liberty, freedom, security and social justice.” Part I, “Considering Beijing Coma,” was inspired by the work of Ma Jian, who served as an adviser.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Jenny Ludwig
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Bel Canto By Ann Patchett
W Introduction A detailed portrait of the human need for connection, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto won both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Set in the vice presidential palace of an unspecified South American country, the opening of the novel depicts a world of wealth and power, where an internationally renowned American opera singer has been invited to perform at a party given for a Japanese businessman whom the South American nation is hoping to woo. As the lights go down at the end of the performance, the home is taken over by terrorists, its occupants becoming hostages. The rest of the novel, based loosely on a real-life incident in Peru in the 1990s, traces the development of the bonds that form between the hostages and their captors in a period lasting over four months. Unfortunately for those individuals inside the home who have formed friendships and romances, the situation began as an act of terrorism and cannot end peacefully. Suspense and romance are features of the novel that contributed to its best-selling status.
W Literary and Historical Context
Patchett published her novel Bel Canto in a world in which the lines between literary fiction and genre fiction have become increasingly blurred. Bel Canto won literary awards in both the United Kingdom (the Orange Prize) and the United States (the PEN/Faulkner award), attesting to the idea that it is regarded as a work of literary fiction. Increasingly, literary novels such as Bel Canto are often becoming best sellers as well. In the months immediately following Bel Canto’s publication, a debate was waged in such papers and journals as the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Observer regarding literary and popular fiction and the boundaries of these
categories. The genesis of this debate was a controversial article penned by B. R. Myers in a July 2001 article for the Atlantic, in which Myers rails against the merging of literary and popular fiction in vehement tones. Judith Shulevitz responds directly to Myers’s attack on the current state of literary fiction. While Shulevitz admits that Myers makes some valid points, particularly in identifying literary prizewinners whose prose is overwrought, Shulevitz concludes “Myers doesn’t have a sure grasp of the world he’s attacking.” The same summer, Robert McCrum, in the Observer, comments that some critics have begun to regard literary fiction as a genre unto itself. Others have gone further, McCrum notes, and argue that the literary label “could simply be a way of describing a novel that places style before content, puts prose before plot and subordinates character and narrative to nebulous aesthetic concerns.” McCrum discusses Myers’s article as well, suggesting that while the tone of the piece is perhaps a bit vitriolic, there may be some truth to Myers’s view that literary fiction has become something much different, something much less, than it used to be. The historical event that inspired Patchett’s literary novel took place at the residence of the Japanese ambassador, near Lima, Peru. In December 1996 prominent political figures and business executives mingled to celebrate the Japanese emperor’s birthday. The party was attacked by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Over five hundred hostages, along with the guerrilla forces who had captured them, were crowded into the residence. Negotiations eventually collapsed in March. Over the course of the standoff, all but seventy-two hostages were released. In April 1997 Peruvian military forces stormed the compound, killing fourteen rebels. One of the remaining hostages and two Peruvian soldiers were also killed.
W Themes In Bel Canto, Patchett offers an examination of human relationships and the intrinsic human need for
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Bel Canto
connection. The vice presidential residence, once it is taken over by the terrorists, becomes an incubator for an array of new relationships, bonds which are formed and maintained in a vacuum. This unique environment is a void in which the personal and political pasts of captives and captors fall away. Social barriers such as wealth and power disintegrate. Patchett creates a scenario in which the individuals involved begin to regard each other truly as individuals. They are still products of their environment, but the demands of the external world cease to exist. In this new world, sophisticated, elite Roxane can nurture a talent that the uneducated soldier Cesar was unaware he possessed. Another young soldier, Ishamel, can observe a few games of chess and absorb the intricacies of the game. He can further inspire the paternal love of the vice president. The Japanese translator Gen finds in the South American guerrilla soldier Carmen a willing and able student of language, and a woman he can love. Bridges are formed between soldiers and hostages, paths to relationships that could not exist outside of the captured vice presidential compound. In allowing such relationships to blossom in this environment, Patchett attacks the socioeconomic and political barriers that divide people, that cut off the possibility of connection, that prevent the unity that manages to exist inside the compound. Yet the insulated world is breached when the government forces attack the compound, kill the terrorists, and rescue the hostages. Forcibly the government army injects back into the insular world the violence, struggle, and despair of the outside world. Notably, many of the company inside the residence seem to welcome the opportunity to forget the constraints associated with the world outside during their captivity. They pursue relationships that are obviously doomed, not tracing the logical course of possible outcomes. Forgetting families and obligations, the hostages make plans to enmesh their lives with those of their assailants, to marry, to adopt, to mentor careers. The willingness of Roxane, Gen, and Ruben, for example, to become involved in long term ways with individuals—Cesar, Carmen, Ishamel—whom the rest of the world can only see as criminals, rebels, and killers, demonstrates the intensity of their desire for meaningful emotional connections. All of their desires are thwarted with the deaths of the soldiers, and of Hosokowa. In the end, the marriage of Gen and Roxane appears as another example of the desperation to hold on to an elusive sense of connection. Gen and Roxane wed themselves to the past, and to the sense of community they enjoyed while held as hostages, as they join their individual lives in marriage at the end of the novel.
W Style Bel Canto is written in the third person from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. This allows Patchett the
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE UNNAMED ACCOMPANIST, a pianist, travels with Roxane Coss in order to perform at Mr. Hosokawa’s birthday celebration in South America. In the opening scene, the pianist kisses Roxane at the end of the performance. A diabetic, and deprived of insulin, he is the first hostage to die. BEATRIZ, a female soldier who remains undisguised and displays masculine traits. She is less involved with the captives than some of her companions, and is killed in the siege that ends the standoff. CARMEN is a female terrorist who is disguised as a man for part of the novel. She falls in love with Gen Watanabe as he tutors her. CESAR is a young terrorist soldier who displays a musical talent that impresses Roxane. She intends to train him after the hostage crisis has ended. ROXANE COSS is a famous American opera singer who is tempted, against her better judgment, to sing at a party held in a South American locale. The government there wishes to persuade Hosokawa to build a factory in their country, and they use Roxane, whom Hosokawa is known to greatly admire, to encourage him. Although she allows herself to be used as a pawn, Roxane stands up to the terrorists initially, attempting to escape and refusing some of their demands. She and Hosokawa fall in love over the course of their confinement. KATSUMI HOSOKAWA is the Japanese businessman whom the South American government officials are courting, in the hopes that Hosokawa will decide to build a factory in their country. His love for opera is well known, and the government persuade Roxane Coss to perform at a party held in Hosokawa’s honor. He falls in love with Roxane and in many ways forgets about his former life. RUBEN IGLESIAS is the vice president of the South American country in which the novel is set. Throughout the standoff, Ruben continues to play the role of the host, just as he did at the party. He grows fond of Ishamel and plans to adopt him when the crisis is over, but Ishamel is killed in the siege. ISHAMEL is another young terrorist who becomes well liked by many of the hostages. He learns to play chess by watching Hosokawa. He is killed in the government siege of the compound. JOACHIM MESSNER is a Red Cross worker who is called in to serve as a hostage negotiator. The terrorists fail to recognize Messner’s indications that a military rescue siege is imminent. SIMON THIBAULT, a French ambassador, clings to the memory of his wife and the scarf she has left him after she is released but he is kept as a hostage. GEN WATANABE serves as Hosokawa’s translator, but, during the ensuing months, his ability to translate in a number of languages makes him an instrumental figure in the communications between the terrorists, the other hostages, and the Red Cross worker Messner.
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Bel Canto
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, California. After her parents divorced, Patchett and her mother and sister moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where Patchett grew up. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, graduating with a bachelor’s of arts degree in 1984, and earning an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop in 1987. In 1992 Patchett published her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. A grant then led Patchett to the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College in 1993. Following a divorce, Patchett returned to Nashville and pursued her writing career, supporting herself as a waitress. She published two more novels before Bel Canto appeared in 2001. She married Karl VanDevender in 2005. Patchett has continued to publish critically acclaimed novels, including Run, in 2007.
distance from which she can offer a detached view of her large cast of characters, but it still provides some sense of intimacy between the characters and the reader as it allows Patchett glimpses into the thoughts of various individuals. In an interview with David Podgurski in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (as referenced in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series), Patchett states that she sought to write from the omniscient, third-person viewpoint in order to portray the drama of the story in the same manner that the original, historical event was broadcast on television. The story unfolds slowly, gradually, over the course of several months. The suspense built is of the emotional kind, as feelings among the characters grow and evolve, rather than a suspense rooted in violent action. Bel Canto contains this variety of suspense as well, but it is not the basis upon which Patchett builds her complex plot. Additionally, the language of the novel is controlled and precise, mirroring the distance of the narrator. From the novel’s opening scene, though, the prose can also reflect the emotion and passion of the novel’s characters. As they witness the accompanist reaching toward Roxane’s face to kiss her they collectively imagine a kiss that they do not see, as the lights are suddenly extinguished. Projecting their own desire for connection, the onlookers “assumed she continued her kiss” (Patchett 2). Using an omniscient third-person voice, Patchett lets her story unfold at arm’s length, yet also uses this voice to reflect her theme of the human longing for connection.
W Critical Reception
Author Ann Patchett wins the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2002 for Bel Canto. ª Rune Hellestad/Corbis
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As a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Bel Canto can only be regarded as a critical success. Wanda H. Giles, in a 2009 essay on Patchett for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, describes the novel as a “tour de force, a mix of realism, magic, and profound love and sorrow.” Giles goes on to characterize the critical reception of the novel in positive terms. Yet some reviewers found areas to criticize. Ruth Scurr, in a 2001 review for New Statesman, maintains, “the best parts of this uneven novel are the most hammed-up and comically implausible.” Nancy Poesy’s 2003 assessment for English Journal is more favorable. The critic explores Patchett’s thematic approach, stating, “the real beauty of Patchett’s story lies in the role that music and language play in the lives of her characters.” Poesy goes on to describe the way Patchett “artfully draws readers into the temporary, artificial world she creates.” Patchett’s use of the omniscient third-person voice comes under scrutiny by John Mullan in a 2002 essay for the Guardian. Mullan describes Patchett’s use of this voice, identifying the unusual way she employs it, noting that its efficacy is buoyed by a plot in which nothing really happens. Patchett risks the reader’s disbelief, Mullan contends, when her characters’ thoughts differ from their “official selves” TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Bel Canto
only in ways that are perpetually sympathetic. Patchett’s characterization is also the subject of some scrutiny, as James Polk in a 2001 review for the New York Times Book Review finds that “Patchett strains a bit too hard” to flesh out the revolutionaries as fully as she has the captives. Yet Polk also praises Patchett’s ability to provide “fine insights into the various ways in which human connections can be forged, whatever pressures the world may place upon them. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“1 Hostage Killed in Daring Peru Rescue.” CNN World News 22 Apr. 1997. Web. 30 July 2010. Giles, Wanda H., and J. W. Bonner. “Ann Patchett.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 350. TwentyFirst Century American Novelists: Second Series. Ed. Wanda H. Giles and James R. Giles. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Print. McCrum, Robert. “The End of Literary Fiction.” Observer [London] 5 Aug. 2001. guardian.co.uk. Web. 30 July 2010. Mullan, John. “A Sense of Perspectives.” Guardian (13 July 2002): 33. Rpt. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale. Print. Myers, B. R. “A Reader’s Manifesto.” Atlantic July/Aug. 2001. the atlantic.com. Web. 30 July 2010. Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print. “Patchett, Ann.” Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Ed. Amanda D. Sams. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 339-42. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 July 2010. Poesy, Nancy. “Review of Bel Canto.” English Journal 92.6 (July 2003): 92-93. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print. Polk, James. “Captive Audience.” New York Times Book Review 106.23 (10 June 2001): 37. Print. Scurr, Ruth. “Novel of the Week: Bel Canto.” New Statesman 130.4548 (30 July 2001). Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print. Shulevitz, Judith. “The Close Reader: Fiction and ‘Literary’ Fiction.” New York Times 9 Sept. 2001. Web. 30 July 2010. Sims, Calvin. “A Nightmare in Lima: Hostages in Squalor.” New York Times 21 Dec. 1996. nytimes. com. Web. 30 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Clark, Alex. “Dangerous Arias.” Guardian 14 July 2001. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print. Admires Patchett’s
ability to draw clearly defined portraits of such a wide range of characters and demonstrates parallels between the world of opera—a world in which one of Patchett’s characters is immersed—and Patchett’s novel. Foster, Aisling. “Martyrs to a Cause.” Times Literary Supplement 5230 (27 June 2003). Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print. Praises the psychological complexities of Patchett’s characterization in Bel Canto. Miller, Laura. “Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.” Salon 22 June 2001. salon.com. Web. 30 July 2010. Maintains that despite lapses in realism in the plotting, Patchett’s novel is filled with carefully drawn, realistic characters. Zaleski, Jeff. “Review of Bel Canto.” Publishers Weekly. 248.16 (16 Apr. 2001): 42. Rpt. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Print. Assesses Patchett’s narration in Bel Canto, maintaining that the detached perspective is reflective of the characters’ varied cathartic experiences. Gale Resources
“Ann Patchett.” Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 1282-85. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 July 2010. “Bel Canto.” Novels for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 30. Detroit: Gale, 2010. 45-65. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Ann Patchett’s author website provides an overview of her literary career and includes information about her upcoming work and appearances. http//www .annpatchett.com/ PBS NewsHour features an interview between Gwen Ifill and Ann Patchett in which the two discuss Bel Canto. The exchange includes an examination of the Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological syndrome in which captives develop emotional attachments to their captors. http//www.pbs.org/ newshour/conversation/july-dec02/patchett_ 7-02.html The Orange Prize for Fiction’s website includes a synopsis of Bel Canto, a brief author biography, an interview with Ann Patchett, and a review of the novel. http// www.orangeprize.co.uk/show/feature/orange-belcanto The BBC News on This Day feature provides an overview and the historical context of the hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, in 1996. http//news.bbc.co.uk/onthis day/hi/dates/stories/january/13/ newsid_3330000/3330127.stm
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Bel Canto For Further Reading
Fitzpatrick, Laura. “Stockholm Syndrome.” Time (31 Aug. 2009). Time.com. Web. 30 July 2010. Offers a brief summary of the psychological condition known as the Stockholm Syndrome, in which captives develop strong emotional connections to their captors, citing several famous instances, such as the Patty Hearst case. Patchett refers to the Patty Hearst case within the context of a discussion about Stockholm Syndrome, in an interview with Gwen Ifill about Bel Canto. Giampietri, Luis. 41 Seconds to Freedom: An Insider’s Account of the Lima Hostage Crisis, 1996-1997. New York: Presidio Press, 2007. Print. An account of the Lima hostage crisis written by one of the hostages, who happened to have once served as a field
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commander of special operation forces. Giampietri describes how he aided the government in the siege that eventually ended the crisis. Patchett, Ann. Run. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. A best-selling and well-reviewed novel concerned with the relationships and the inner workings of a political family in Boston. ———. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Print. A memoir in which Patchett details the contours of her friendship with Lucy Grealy, a fellow author, who died of cancer in 2002 at the age of thirty-nine. Catherine Dominic
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Bitter Fruit By Achmat Dangor
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
A finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Bitter Fruit is an important contribution to the literature of apartheid. Set in South Africa during the closing months of Nelson Mandela’s presidency in 1999, Bitter Fruit explores the enduring ramifications of the apartheid system at both the private and public level through the story of one family’s difficult struggle coming to terms with a painful past of violent racism. The events of the novel begin to unfold when Silas Ali, a veteran of the antiapartheid struggle and now a lawyer for the famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), recognizes a man in a grocery store as the white security officer, François Du Boise, who arrested him twenty years earlier for his involvement in the African National Congress. Handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police van, Ali was forced to listen as Du Boise brutally raped his wife, Lydia, who like Silas, was classified as “colored” under the apartheid system. The couple has consciously avoided the subject of the rape for all these years. When Silas tells Lydia of the chance encounter, the long-kept secret incites tension between the two, in the end finally fracturing their strained and loveless marriage and causing a violent transformation in their son, a nineteen-year-old college student named Mikey who now discovers that he is the product of the assault. As each of the three Alis reacts completely differently to the disclosure and to the news that Du Boise is seeking amnesty through the TRC, Achmat Dangor questions the fidelity of the new government to the heroic ideals of the resistance movement and broaches important questions of historical memory that bear on themes of identity, truth, and authenticity.
Context
Bitter Fruit is to some degree autobiographical. Dangor was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1948, at the start of apartheid, the legally sanctioned system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa until 1994 with the transition to democracy and the presidency of Nelson Mandela. Apartheid made racial segregation an official government policy, classifying residents into groups— white, black, colored (mixed race), and Asian—as a means of maintaining the minority rule of whites of European descent. Like his protagonist, Silas Ali, Dangor was classified as colored and suffered under the “resettlement” programs that forced people out of their homes into designated group areas. Also like his protagonist, Dangor was active in the antiapartheid resistance of the African National Congress (ANC) and participated in an official capacity in the new government. In the novel, Silas serves as a lawyer and liaison for the TRC, the agency headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu designed as a courtlike forum for victims of racial abuse to air their grievances. The commission’s purpose was one of reconciliation and restoration, not retribution, as part of the negotiated settlement for democratic rule. Therefore, while perpetrators of the crimes were required to admit their acts in public, they were often granted amnesty for full confessions. Critic Ana Miller explains: “The new democratic South African Constitution and the TRC were products of a negotiated settlement with the apartheid regime. . . . The ensuing compromise limited the ANC’s constitutional ability to dismantle the economic and social legacy of apartheid and set substantial limits to the legal opportunities to prosecute against apartheid crimes.” Silas Ali’s involvement with the TRC, combined with Du Boise’s confession to Lydia’s rape and related crimes, leads to the
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Bitter Fruit
MAJOR CHARACTERS LYDIA ALI is of mixed race, the wife of Silas Ali and the mother of their nineteen-year-old son, Mikey. Lydia was raped by an Afrikaner police officer in 1978 as part of her husband’s punishment for subversive involvement in the African National Congress. More than twenty years later, the rape is still a taboo subject in the Alis’ crumbling marriage. MIKEY ALI is the biological son of Lydia Ali and François Du Boise, the white man who raped Lydia in 1978. When Mikey learns of his true parentage as a college student, he determines to seek vengeance against Du Boise. SILAS ALI is of mixed race, a former activist against apartheid, now a liaison for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the new democratic government of Nelson Mandela. Silas and his wife, Lydia, disagree on how best to grieve the past and punish François Du Boise for raping her twenty years earlier. FRANÇOIS DU BOISE is the white police officer who arrested Silas Ali in 1978 for his activities in the African National Congress. Du Boise is guilty of raping Lydia Ali, an assault that resulted in the birth of Mikey Ali. Du Boise seeks amnesty for his crimes through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The plot of Bitter Fruit revolves around the South African policy of apartheid. Anke van Wyk/Shutterstock.com
encounter. This private record, and her self-imposed silence, contrast with the court of public record, the TRC, which, while generally considered successful at effecting a peaceful transition to democracy, has been faulted for rewriting history in a manner unsatisfactory to the victims’ concerns for justice. The strategies Lydia and Silas use to reckon with the past foreground the collision of
complete breakdown of the Alis’ marriage. Ali wants Lydia to tell her story to the TRC, recommending some type of healing at the public level, but Lydia refuses, convinced that her very personal trauma will be swallowed up and forgotten in the homogenized collective trauma of the nation. Lydia and Silas remain unable to connect emotionally because they cannot share the pain of the racially motivated assault.
W Themes Lydia’s devotion to silence and Silas’s preference for rationalizing the rape appear alongside Mikey’s obsessive drive to punish Du Boise, whom he kills at the end of the novel before escaping to India to claim his rightful Muslim heritage. All three methods of confronting and comprehending the past reveal the poisonous effects of the apartheid system on the present. In addition, all three methods pose questions about the nature of historical memory and its methods of articulation, with important ramifications for individual and national identity, the healing of personal and collective trauma, and the truth of innocence and guilt. As Ronit Frenkel noted, “Bitter Fruit is a text that opens history’s processes in order to narrate its ambiguities.” Since the day of her assault, Lydia had kept a diary documenting her feelings and her mind’s inability to separate both Mikey and Silas from the violent
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Photograph of Achmat Dangor, author of Bitter Fruit. Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Mission US
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Bitter Fruit
new freedoms with the practical realities of government, suggesting that individual catharsis is subjugated in the interest of compromise and historical containment. Even Silas is cynical about the new government’s compromises. He observes that personal principles have also taken a backseat to the demands of bureaucracy: “Being in government is different from fighting for freedom. Things have to be managed now” (qtd. in Miller). For Mikey, on the other hand, personal and historic memories collide in what critic Shomit Dutta describes as a “radical destabilization of his sense of self.” His sense of alienation is first played out in a series of unemotional sexual encounters with older women. He then turns to vengeance and radical Islam as a means of ordering the chaos that has reconfigured his life, including the revelation that his maternal grandfather, a Muslim in India, had executed the British officer who raped his sister. Mikey’s murder of Du Boise, therefore, “links the colonial histories of India and South Africa through the racial and sexual violence of rape in both settings. . . . Mikey’s uninvited birthright haunts the family and is experienced as traumatic by Mikey, Lydia, and Silas” (Miller).
W Style Added to this shame of miscegenation is the shame attached by apartheid to the stigma of being “colored.” Lydia, Mikey, and Silas experience the evils of racial discrimination in different ways. Dangor portrays the psychological effects of racist ideologies through a thirdperson omniscient narration that explores the individual racial subjectivities of his characters. The novel is structured in three parts—Memory, Confession, and Retribution—that show the progressive development of the characters’ thoughts. These three parts—the personal response to trauma—are contrasted with the three elements of the public response to trauma as outlined by the TRC: Speak, Grieve, Heal. “But the story,” Barbara Trapido writes, “for all its political context, is stronger for keeping its focus on the evolving family drama, which it does through a series of interior sequences devoted in turn to Silas, to his wife Lydia, and to their meltingly beautiful but troubled and somewhat oedipal son, Mikey.”
W Critical Reception Reviewers of Bitter Fruit have frequently addressed the novel’s juxtaposition of the political realities of liberation with the ideals of the antiapartheid movement and with the need for victims of the system to finally heal old wounds. Critics have suggested that Mikey’s behavior bears some resemblance to the spirit of rebellion of his parents’ generation, which has now been replaced by an
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Johannesburg in 1948 at the beginning of white apartheid rule, Achmat Dangor became a tireless antiapartheid campaigner and was under government surveillance during the old regime. Since the transition to democracy, Dangor has written stories and poems describing firsthand the brutal racism of the apartheid years, the often violent struggle for freedom, and the negotiated peace that led to democratic rule. He is best known for the novella Kafka’s Curse (1997), set against the backdrop of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 election, and the novel Bitter Fruit (2001), a Man Booker and International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award finalist describing postapartheid disillusionment. Dangor has worked for the new government in a variety of capacities. He is currently the CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
institutional framework that rationalizes away the horrors of the apartheid system. A notice for Bitter Fruit in Kirkus Reviews averred that the novel “embodies . . . a sober, measured account of former revolutionaries adjusting to their new roles as pragmatic administrators.” Writing for the Guardian, Gabriel Gbadamosi observed, “A seed of contempt germinates in Mikey as he reflects on the failings of his parents’ generation: ‘The struggle sowed the seeds of bright hopes and burning ideals, but look at what they are harvesting: an ordinariness.’ Mikey’s response to these levels of deception and self-deception is an insistence on ‘nowness’, a determination to keep his own identity open to change as he goes in murderous search of his biological father.” At the other extreme is Lydia’s internalization of her trauma, which she considers superior to the whitewashed truth of victim and perpetrator testimony issued by the TRC. Through Lydia’s silence, Miller argues, Dangor “problematizes oversimplified, generalized, and politicized notions of healing and foregrounds the need to pay attention to the individual contexts of traumatization.” Critic Judith Chettle also remarked on Dangor’s disillusionment with the negotiated settlement to democracy and the constraints placed on the TRC: “And though public confessions of past evils are cathartic and admirable, Mr. Dangor suggests they are not enough. Apartheid was so profoundly destructive of society that forgiveness and forgetting are inadequate response to such a massive psychic injury.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Bitter Fruit, by Achmat Dangor. Kirkus Reviews 73.2 (15 Jan. 2005): 68. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Chettle, Judith. “Apartheid’s Evils Described in Metaphor, but Ineptly.” Washington Times [DC] 17 Apr.
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Bitter Fruit
2005. Print. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Dutta, Shomit. “An Insurrection of the Loin.” Telegraph [London] 22 Dec. 2003. Print. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. Frenkel, Ronit. “Performing Race, Reconsidering History: Achmat Dangor’s Recent Fiction.” Research in African Literatures 39.1 (2008): 149-65. Print. WilsonSelectPlus. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Gbadamosi, Gabriel. “Clouds over the Rainbow Nation.” Guardian 12 Dec. 2003. Print. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Miller, Ana. “The Past in the Present: Personal and Collective Trauma in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit.” Studies in the Novel 40.1-2 (2008): 146. Print. Trapido, Barbara. “Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor: Tainted by the Poison of South Africa’s Past.” Independent [London] 12 Dec. 2003. Print. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Bitter Fruit.” Publishers Weekly 252.9 (28 Feb. 2005): 41. Print. Suggests that Dangor cautions against placing too much faith in the power of forgiveness to heal the wounds of apartheid. Heltzel, Ellen Emry. “Memory, Retribution in PostApartheid South Africa.” Seattle Times 22 May 2005. Print. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 28 Aug. 2010. Contrasts the private pain of the Alis with the public trauma of the South African nation postapartheid. Price, Melissa. “A State’s Brutality Leaves Hearts Calloused.” San Francisco Chronicle 1 May 2005. Print. SFGate.com. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Contrasts the suffering of Silas Ali and his wife, Lydia, and discusses their inability to connect on an emotional level. Rochman, Hazel. Rev. of Bitter Fruit, by Achmat Dangor. Booklist 101.11 (1 Feb. 2005): 941. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Concludes from a reading of Bitter Fruit that neither silence nor truth about the evils of apartheid can heal old wounds in South Africa. Stuhr, Rebecca. Rev. of Bitter Fruit, by Achmat Dangor. Library Journal 130.2 (1 Feb. 2005): 67. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Notes that the reality of democracy in South Africa has not lived up to the dream of antiapartheid activists. Wigston, Nancy. “The Elite’s Favourite Dish—A Family Declines in the New South Africa with Nary a Character Worth Cheering For.” Toronto Star 12 Dec. 2004. Print. NewsBankinc. Access World News. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Negative review finding little in the book to merit its short-listing for the Man Booker Prize.
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Gale Resources
“Achmat Dangor.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, vol. 163. Open Web Sources
Michigan State University offers an online eight-unit study guide chronicling the rise of apartheid in South Africa and the struggle for freedom, including interviews with activists, archival footage of mass resistance and police repression, and other firsthand accounts and artifacts. The media collections are complemented by essays and a variety of curricular materials arranged in chronological fashion. The study guide is titled South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy. The PBS video Post-Apartheid South Africa describes South Africa sixteen years after democracy. The piece contrasts employment prospects for blacks and whites in the new economy and interviews Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the country’s future. Tutu was the leader of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, widely credited with effecting the peaceful transition to the new government. For Further Reading
Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000. Print. Explores continuing racial tension in postapartheid South Africa through the story of a college professor’s midlife crisis. Disgrace earned Coetzee an unprecedented second Man Booker Prize; he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. Gordimer, Nadine. Burger’s Daughter. New York: Penguin, 1980. Print. Widely praised story of a young white woman’s struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her activist parents who were martyred in the fight against apartheid. Gordimer, for most of her life a resident of Johannesburg, was herself prominent in the cause for freedom. She earned the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. ———. The House Gun. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print. Novel about relationships between blacks and whites in postapartheid South Africa and the politicization of personal lives. Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country. New York: Scribner’s, 2003. Print. Story of a Zulu pastor and his disintegrating family, set amid the racial strife of 1940s Johannesburg. The novel, which first appeared in 1948, was considered a landmark publication for destroying any myths about the happy condition of blacks in South Africa. Still popular, Cry, the Beloved Country was one of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club selections. Janet Mullane
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Blacklist By Sara Paretsky
W Introduction With Blacklist, Sara Paretsky added another installment to her successful series of detective fiction featuring private eye V. I. Warshawski. In this volume, the twelfth in the series, Warshawski is hired to investigate unusual sightings at the uninhabited mansion of an elderly woman in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. While casing the grounds, she discovers, in the swimming pool, the dead body of an African American journalist who appears to have been murdered. When she begins to look into his death, she finds connections that go back to the House Un-American Activities Committee and the “red scare” of McCarthy-era 1950s America, finding eerie parallels between it and the post-9/11 world of legalized torture and the Patriot Act. Critics have applauded Blacklist as a worthy successor to Paretsky’s earlier V. I. Warshawski novels, noting in particular the way she ties the contemporary political climate to McCarthyism.
W Literary and Historical Context
Blacklist begins in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, when members of the Afghanistan-based militant Islamist group al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, executed a series of suicide missions on U.S. ground for the first time in history, killing nearly 3,000 people. With the entire country in a state of shock and intense fear, then-president George W. Bush and the sitting Congress declared war on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, with the aid of an international coalition of troops. U.S.-led forces initially were able to drive the oppressive Taliban regime from power; most al-Qaeda operatives were dispersed to other countries, mostly Pakistan. Within the United States, the government enacted a series of antiterrorism measures, including the October
26, 2001, Patriot Act, which vastly expanded the power of government and law enforcement authorities to access individuals’ telephone calls, e-mail messages, and financial and medical records for information on possible terrorist activity. Because of the apparently arbitrary nature of the expansion of power allowed by the Patriot Act, it was greatly controversial and is the subject of much criticism in Blacklist. The war in Afghanistan is also a source of anxiety for V. I. Warshawski, as her boyfriend in the book is on assignment there as a war correspondent. When Warshawski begins investigating the death of the journalist in the swimming pool, she is taken back four decades to the events the journalist was researching at the time of his murder: an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of members of the Federal Negro Theater Project. HUAC was formed in 1938 as an investigative arm of the U.S. House of Representatives. Its primary purpose was always to curtail possible Communist activity in the United States, but this function reached fever pitch in the late 1940s, when the group opened hearings on the political activities of people involved in the film industry in Hollywood. As a result of the hearings, hundreds of actors, screenwriters, directors, and others were placed on a blacklist for allegedly being Communist sympathizers. In most cases this was never proven, and of those accused, most had their careers ruined. Meanwhile, in 1950, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy began making broad accusations about Communists and Soviet spies infiltrating the government. The era of McCarthy’s “witch hunts” became emblematic of a culture of paranoia and fear.
W Themes Critics have long noted that Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski series takes detective fiction in a new and unusual direction—most notably with a strongly feminist lead character in a genre that has been dominated by machismo. Reviewing the book for the Washington Post,
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MAJOR CHARACTERS KYLIE BALLANTINE is the African American performer with the Federal Negro Theater Project whose career was ruined when she was accused of Communist activities by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Her story is being researched by contemporary journalist Marc Whitby. CALVIN BAYARD is a publishing magnate and free-speech advocate in the 1950s. CATHERINE BAYARD, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, hampers Warshawski’s investigation and may have been involved in Whitby’s murder. DARRAUGH GRAHAM is the son of Geraldine Graham and a client of Warshawski. GERALDINE GRAHAM is the elderly matriarch of the wealthy Chicago family that owns Larchmont Hall. She aids Warshawski in her investigation. V. I. WARSHAWSKI is a private detective in Chicago, Illinois. MARCUS WHITBY is the African American journalist whose dead body Warshawski stumbles upon in the pool of Larchmont Hall.
Maureen Corrigan notes that the social and political commentary that runs through the Warshawski books has earned Paretsky the scorn of critics who prefer more traditional male private detectives. Corrigan asserts, however, that “Blacklist delves into the Red Scare of the 1950s and makes pointed connections between McCarthyism and present-day threats to civil liberties in post-Sept. 11 America. Blacklist is a thoughtful, hightension mystery that’s unafraid of making (still more) enemies for the Warshawski series.” Ann Hellmuth, writing for the Orlando Sentinel, said, “Paretsky doesn’t spare the punches in tracking how the increase in federal powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has encroached on personal freedoms.” The story, Hellmuth writes, “contains subtle warnings about the loss of freedoms and is a reminder of how absolute power can corrupt and destroy the freedoms it is meant to protect.” Additionally, Warshawski becomes involved in the case of a young Egyptian man in the United States on a work visa who has been accused—probably wrongly—of terrorism.
W Style Blacklist is a multilayered novel, with a narrative that moves back and forth from contemporary Chicago to mid-century Washington, D.C., in addition to periodic ruminations on Afghanistan and the Middle East. It is densely packed with characters and historical references,
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as well as with the trademark social commentary of the V. I. Warshawski books. As with other volumes in the series, Blacklist foregrounds the character of Warshawski herself as a hard-bitten, cynical, and tough-talking private eye—all qualities that would be not only expected but applauded in a male private detective, but are often considered abrasive and disconcerting in a female investigator.
W Critical Reception While earlier volumes in the Warshawski series examined social issues, Blacklist was widely viewed as Paretsky’s first overtly political novel. Most critics found her historical references and criticism of the state of contemporary civil liberties in the United States, as well as her story, compelling. Marilyn Stasio notes in a brief review in the New York Times the irony of the very vocal and frequently offensive Warshawski coming up against efforts to curtail her freedom of speech. Maureen Corrigan finds the novel one of the finest in the series, which she says overall have “grown richer and more ambitious with age.” But Corrigan also points to the political divide in the United States between those who support tougher national security measures regardless of their effects on civil liberties and those who oppose them—a difference that also divided critics and readers of Blacklist. Dorothy Blackman laments in her review for Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, “[W]ith so much sermonizing, Blacklist comes across mostly as a medium for expressing Paretsky’s own socio-political views. This turns an otherwise intriguing whodunit into a diatribe on civil liberties, and that is unfortunate.” Paretsky herself expressed surprise in an interview with Bob Cornwell on the Web site Tangled Web UK that Blacklist had been singled out as her only “political” work, maintaining that much of her work, and especially the V. I. Warshawski series, is inherently political. Not all the negative reviews of Blacklist had to do with its politics, though. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Connie Fletcher describes the book as “weak, flailing, and often nonsensical. . . . With its murky plot, surprisingly ditzy heroine and multitudinous goofy moments, Blacklist may be the black sheep of the Warshawski series.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Blackman, Dorothy. “Author’s Politics No Mystery in Blacklist.” Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service 19 Nov. 2003. Print. Corrigan, Maureen. “Scoundrel Time; A Private Eye Uncovers Powerful Betrayals and Political Secrets.” Washington Post 30 Nov. 2003. Print. Fletcher, Connie. “V. I. Comes a Cropper; Sara Paretsky’s Newest Mystery a Rare Stumble in Renowned Series.” Chicago Sun-Times 5 Oct. 2003. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Hellmuth, Ann. “Mystery Tied to McCarthy Era Draws Parallels with Patriot Act.” Orlando Sentinel 12 Jan. 2004. Print. Stasio, Marilyn. “Muzzling V. I.” New York Times 19 Oct. 2003. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Six, Beverly G. “Breaking the Silence: Sara Paretsky’s Seizure of Ideology and Discourse in Blacklist.” South Central Review 27:1-2 (2010): 144-58. Print. Argues that Paretsky turns the detective fiction paradigm on its head by focusing on corruption and conspiracy within state apparatuses, using the ideology of culture and politics. Gale Resources
Dempsey, Peter. “Sara Paretsky.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 306: American Mystery and Detective Writers. Ed. George Parker Anderson. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Print. Klein, Kathleen Gregory. “Sara Paretsky: Overview.” St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers. Ed. Jay P. Pederson. 4th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sara Paretsky was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1947 and was raised in Kansas. She holds a BA in political science from the University of Kansas, an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, and a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. She worked with the poor on Chicago’s South Side in 1966 and moved there permanently in 1968. Paretsky’s works are strongly informed by her young adult experiences in the women’s and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Wyrick, Laura. “Sara Paretsky: Overview.” Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Print. Open Web Sources
Cornwell, Bob. “‘Anger Is a Very Bad Place to Start,’ Says Sara Paretsky.” Tangled Web UK. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. Gigstad, Judy. Rev. of Blacklist, by Sara Paretsky. Bookreporter.com. Web. 9 Aug. 2010.
In Blacklist, private eye V. I. Warshawski conducts an investigation at a Chicago mansion. Joseph Squillante TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Blacklist For Further Reading
Bentley, Eric, and Frank Rich, eds. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts on Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. New York: Nation Books, 2001. Print. Presents and discusses testimony given before HUAC by people working in the film and theater industries from 1938 to 1968. Ceplair, Larry. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960. Champaign, IL: U of Illinois P 2003. Print. Focuses on the effects of the HUAC investigations on those working in Hollywood.
Paretsky, Sara. Writing in an Age of Silence. New York: Verso, 2009. Print. Memoir in which Paretsky discusses the effects of her formative experiences in the social justice movement of the 1960s and 1970s on her worldview and her fiction. Adaptations
V. I. Warshawski. Dir. Jeff Kanew. Perf. Kathleen Turner, Jay O. Sanders, and Charles Durning. Hollywood Pictures, 1991. Film adaption of Deadlock, one of the books in Paretsky’s Warshawski series. Received mixed reviews.
Hoffman, Jan. “Nancy Drew’s Granddaughters.” New York Times 7 July 2009. Print. Discusses the legacy of the famous girl detective and quotes Paretsky on Nancy Drew.
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Nancy Dziedzic
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A Blessed Child By Linn Ullmann
W Introduction Linn Ullmann’s A Blessed Child, published in Norwegian in 2005 and then in English in 2009, consists mainly of the flashback memories of Isak Lövenstad’s three daughters, as they undertake a rare visit in 2005 to their father’s retirement home on the island where they vacationed as children between 1972 and 1979. Now Isak is eighty-four, in what he calls the “epilogue” (31) of his life, and he invites the eldest, Erica, to come for a winter visit. Ill at ease about driving, especially in bad weather, Erica urges her sister Laura to come along and do the driving, and when that fails, she urges her to pick up their third sister Molly and follow along separately for a reunion. For various reasons, each daughter has ambivalence about such a visit. It is during the journey toward the island home that the flashbacks occur, each daughter’s separate memories of the summer vacations elicited by the current trip. The major flashbacks revolve around the last summer they went to the island. That year, 1979, was the hottest summer on record since 1874; Erica and her intimate but clandestine friend Ragnar turned fourteen on the same day; Laura was eleven; and Molly was seven. During this summer of pubescent sexual initiation, the teens on the island entertain themselves with pornographic magazines and hurtful game-playing that escalates from bullying and psychological abuse to physical abuse under the influence of the cruel ringleader, Marion Bodström. Ostracized Ragnar is betrayed by only friend Erica, and on the night of her birthday party, her party guests, her sisters, and she take off after him, ultimately causing what is later called a “deliberate accident” (251), a stoning that leads to his drowning. This tragedy brings to an end the summer island visits, but its legacy variously affects Erica and Laura in later years, less so their younger sister. As they travel back to the
island in 2005, they revisit in memory the summers they shared as children, though they are less able to discern how those memories cast their shadows across their adult lives. A Blessed Child was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and short-listed for Norway’s Brage Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
In some ways, A Blessed Child is an example of postmodern fiction, in which multiple points of view are presented, each limited and somewhat unreliable. This handling of the perspective through which the action is viewed undermines the single all-encompassing authority that shapes third-person omniscient point of view. Somewhat in the tradition of her father, filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Linn Ullmann defines the present time in this novel, the three daughters’ winter journey to Hammarsö in 2005, by the surfacing memories of island summers from 1972 to 1979. These remembered experiences are as present in the present time as the present journey is. Postmodernism privileges this subjective sense of time, the way the past insinuates itself in the present, and for a novel whose immediate timeframe is a two-day car trip, it is a fitting way to arrange the plot. As the daughters return after a hiatus of more than twentyfive years, their separate memories of those summers surface and are in a sense relived. Several points of historical context are provided in the novel, first of which, perhaps, is the fact that Isak Lövenstad is said to have made his professional reputation as one of the pioneers of ultrasound. Sonar and other underwater detection systems were beginning to be studied in the nineteenth century, and sonar was used to navigate submarines, particularly after the Titanic sank in 1912 and during World War I. Beginning in the 1940s in Europe, the medical diagnostic possibilities of ultrasound
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MAJOR CHARACTERS MARION BODSTRÖM, Erica’s peer, who develops into the abusive ringleader of a group of teens who vacation on the island. ERIKA LÖVENSTAD, eldest daughter of Isak and his first wife, Elisabet, becomes emotionally involved with Ragnar and is sexually molested by Marion. ISAK LÖVENSTAD, a Swedish gynecologist and womanizer, has three daughters by three different women, two his wives, and untold other affairs. Isak retires to Hammarsö permanently after his second wife dies. LAURA LÖVENSTAD, daughter of Isak and his second wife, Rosa, tends to feel responsible for helpless or vulnerable others. ROSA LÖVENSTAD is Isak’s second wife, who threatens to leave Isak when his mistress Ruth gives birth to his third daughter, Molly. MOLLY is the daughter of Isak and his mistress Ruth. Ten and seven years younger than her two half-sisters, Molly practically never sees Isak after she is five years old. After her mother dies, Molly is raised by her maternal grandmother. ALFRED PAAHP is the old man living in the Colony, a subdivision in Oslo where Laura lives with her husband and two children. Grieving over the death of his brother and lonely, Paahp whiles away his days making beaded bracelets that he gives to the local little girls, much to the consternation of some neighbors. PALLE QUIST is the frustrated author who lives on Hammarsö and writes and directs the Hammarsö Pageant, which is performed each summer between July and August. RAGNAR, born on the same day and year as Erica, is the island outcast, who develops an intimate secret relationship with Erica and hides out in his hut in the woods, where he feels safe from the other teenagers. SIMONA is Isak’s island housekeeper from the 1970s into the early 2000s. During the twelve years when he does not use his house, she maintains the place and enjoys brief stays there away from her busy home and family life.
techniques were explored and developed in research centers around the world (Woo). By the late 1950s, fetal images were being captured that provided new information for obstetricians to use in treating their patients. Late 1950s research conducted in Lund, Sweden, promoted the obstetrical applications of the diagnostic tool. Akf Sjovall and Bertil Sunden were among a group of medical researchers who contributed to the advancement of ultrasound in perinatal medical treatment.
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As for a cultural context, the novel indicates that in the 1970s, Sweden and Swedish language were dominant in Scandinavia. It is noted that in Sweden no one spoke Norwegian or watched Norwegian television, but in Norway, people typically spoke both Norwegian and Swedish, and in their homes, both Norwegian and Swedish television programs were available. The multinational character of the Lövenstad blended family and certain tensions between its members reflect this cultural imbalance.
W Themes The central theme in A Blessed Child encompasses various subjects having to do with group membership and community and the kinds of pressure that are exerted on members and against excluded others. One related subject explores how the family unit is defined, especially regarding offspring from multiple marriages and extramarital relationships. Laura thinks of herself as the full sister and Erika, from Isak’s first marriage, and Molly, from his extramarital affair, as half-sisters. Laura takes them in, especially bonding with the much younger Molly, for whom Laura feels responsible from their first meeting. Related to the idea of family structure and membership is the idea of community, one instance of which is given in the Colony, a subdivision of homes in Oslo where Laura lives with her husband and two children. The Colony community response to Alfred Paahp, the elderly Dane who makes beaded bracelets for the neighborhood girls and allows his property to deteriorate, illustrates how a social group works to protect itself and exclude individuals who are different and seem to pose a threat or erode economic investment by their habits. While Paahp spends his time stringing his beads and making bracelets for the children, the community association is holding its meetings to figure out how to get him to move away. Consulted lawyers say there are no grounds for his removal, but narrow-minded and suspicious parents want the man out of the area. The idea of group membership and the exclusion of isolated others is played out with fatal results by the island teens who are controlled by Marion, the alpha-female. In addition to subjects pertaining to solidarity and ostracism are those associated with compassion and kindred feeling. Examples occur in the novel regarding the family’s responses to birds: the injured bird on the lawn that makes Laura sit down and cry; the bird that flies into the study that frightens Molly who calls it toward the open window; and the elaborate funeral the family enacts for the sparrow. Linked to these instances is the scene in which Laura goes to Paahp’s house and holds his hand while prompting him to not answer the door when the committee comes to call. Laura, called “a love child” (141) by her father, is the one who stretches to include TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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others. She takes up crying Molly when the adults are out of hearing range, she holds hands with Paahp, and “her arms were long enough” (147) to embrace her husband and children.
W Style Told in limited omniscient third-person point of view, the novel is divided into five sections, each of which contains smaller sections, juxtaposed like fragments from a larger design, with remnants from the past surfacing but suitably not in chronological order. The current story is the 2005 winter trek to the island, extended by detours both literal and psychological. Within that overarching narrative are the flashbacks that surface in each sister’s thoughts as she travels toward her now elderly father. Another feature of Ullmann’s style is the way it changes to match the age of the sisters in the flashback being remembered. One instance occurs in 1975 when Laura is seven and discovers three-year-old Molly left in a carriage at Isak’s front door. Laura thinks, “It wasn’t a newborn because it was quite big and could sit up by itself” (113). Laura reasons that Erika and Rosa are away, and Isak cannot be disturbed for any reason. An
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and film director Ingmar Bergman, Linn Ullmann was born on August 9, 1966, in Oslo, Norway. She obtained a BA in English literature from New York University in 1988, began a graduate program there, and then left without completing it to return to Oslo and pursue a career in journalism. She writes on political and cultural subjects, her work often appearing in Aftenposten, a widely circulated Norwegian newspaper. Her novel, A Blessed Child (published in English in 2009) was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and short-listed for Norway’s Brage Prize. Before that work, Ullmann published three novels: Before You Sleep (1998), Stella Descending (2001), and Grace (2002). As of 2010, Ullmann lived in Oslo with her husband, Niels Fredrik Dahl, a Norwegian novelist and dramatist.
abandoned baby does not make for an exception. Laura is alone to resolve the problem and she does; she takes the baby for a ride in the carriage.
A Scandinavian island. A Blessed Child follows the three daughters of Isak Lövenstad as they visit him at his retirement home, which is located on the same Norwegian island where the girls spent many childhood vacations. Andrey Starostin/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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A Blessed Child
W Critical Reception
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Certain reviews of A Blessed Child began with identifying Ullmann’s parents and perhaps linking this novel to the author’s biography. Another response was to appreciate the writing, the lack of chronological order to the events, and the skillful translation by Sarah Death, but to criticize the ending for its lack of resolution, its failure to assign blame and responsibility. Representative of both these approaches is the review by Stacey D’Erasmo, who began by pointing out autobiographical details in the novel. About its backward glancing narrative, D’Erasmo wrote: “Tenderness . . . can convey an illusion of connection. . . . Desire and memory tangle and dissolve in melancholy.” During that “pivotal summer of 1979,” D’Erasmo asserted, “the savage adolescent culture” forces Erika “to choose between power and the heart.” The failure of the novel, according to D’Erasmo, is that Ullmann “shies away from hammering home . . . Isak’s deep moral failure” and that she leaves the past “more vivid than the present,” which is not true to life. Many reviewers praised Ullmann’s writing style; for example, Elizabeth Dickie lauded Ullmann for her “impressive voice” and her “facility with language.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly described the book as an “arresting and well-observed saga,” but it cautioned that the novel’s “tonal coolness won’t be for everyone.” That coolness might have been on the mind of a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews who praised the novel’s “stark beauty” but went on to observe how the story “leaves moral issues tantalizingly open.” In a review that placed Ullmann’s novel in a larger literary context, Jennifer Vanderbes explained how A Blessed Child offers a “fresh change” from the dominant “pattern of bad boys and female victims,” calling Ullmann’s book “a rare literary foray into [the] dark realm” of “psychological warfare and silent cruelty that often pass for female friendship.” But according to Vanderbes, Ullmann commits a serious mistake. In this novel, which according to Vanderbes makes Lord of the Flies “look almost prudish,” Ullmann “seems unsure in the end who, exactly is guilty.” The charge from Vanderbes is: “Having bravely portrayed a world where girls behave wickedly, Ullmann curiously reverts to painting them as victims, not culprits.” Also commenting on the autobiographical elements and praising the translation, Boyd Tonkin identified the central subject: “Conformism shows its savage streak among the island’s pubescent girls,” who are “led by hyper-sexual teen queen Marion.” Ullmann has psychological insight, according to Tonkin, showing how “loneliness clings like a burr to all of Isak’s girls.” In all, these reviewers found much to admire in A Blessed Child, but most seemed to expect that the ones who commit crimes will be identified and punished in the end, and such critics bulked at punishment being the means of group solidarity, a new social adhesive, rather than a means of justice.
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Works Cited
D’Erasmo, Stacey. “Girls of Summer.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. New York Times Book Review 17 Aug. 2008: 6(L). Print. Dickie, Elizabeth. “A Blessed Child.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. Booklist 1 Aug. 2008: 33. Print. “Growing Up Is Hard to Do.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. Publishers Weekly 12 May 2008: 34. Print. Tonkin, Boyd. “Cries and Whispers on the Chilling Baltic Breeze.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. Independent [London] 5 Sept. 2008. Print. “Ullmann, Linn: A BLESSED CHILD.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. Kirkus Reviews 15 June 2008. Print. Vanderbes, Jennifer. “Girls Behaving Badly.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. Washington Post 10 Dec. 2008. Print. Woo, Joseph. “A Short History of the Development of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.” http://www .ob-ultrasound.net/history1.html, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Jeffrey, Ben. “A Blessed Child by Linn Ullmann.” Rev. of A Blessed Child, by Linn Ullmann. www.guardian.co. uk. Guardian 5 Sept. 2009. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Admires the translation, sees parallels to Lord of the Flies in the fateful summer of 1979, and finds the lack of resolution at the end insufficient for the rise in action. Gale Resources
“Linn Ullmann.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000135537&v=2.1&u =itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Leserglede provides information on Ullmann, including an interview and reviews, at http//www.leserglede. com/norwegian-author/linn-ullman.html For Further Reading
Geyh, Paula, Fred G. Leebron, and Andrew Levy, eds. Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. New York: Norton, 1997. Print. Post–World War II innovations in American fiction writing, compiled and analyzed. Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Norton, 2008. Print. The 1954 novel portraying boys on an TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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island who become feral, to which A Blessed Child is compared by some reviewers.
lary novel in which a father tells his life story to the daughter he abandoned.
King, Lily. Father of the Rain. New York: Atlantic Monthly P-Grove/Atlantic, 2010. Print. Set against the Nixon resignation, a story of polarized children in the wake of their parents’ divorce.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print. The 1939 novel about a mentally challenged strong man and the man who tries without success to protect him.
Norman, Howard. What Is Left the Daughter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Print. An episto-
Melodie Monahan
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The Blind Assassin By Margaret Atwood
W Introduction Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) is an intricately structured story of two sisters who grow up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, between the two world wars. The narrative contains the main story, told in the first person by Iris Chase Griffen, the surviving sister. Interspersed with her story of their lives are newspaper clippings and parts of a novel, apparently written by Laura Chase, that contains a science fiction story. The novel opens with Iris’s announcement that soon after the end of World War II, Laura drove Iris’s car off of a bridge and drowned. Iris struggles to remember and record the details in her narrative that lead up to the tragedy. She includes stories of the decline of her once prosperous family led by her industrialist father Benjamin Chase, her subsequent marriage to the wealthy businessman Richard Griffen, Laura’s confinement in a mental institution, and the sisters’ relationship with Alex Thomas, a leftist revolutionary who is on the run from governmental officials. Iris hopes that her estranged granddaughter, Sabrina, will eventually read her account of their family history. The important parallels between the various narrative threads eventually emerge in the novel’s working out of its complex themes, including the difficulties inherent in telling the truth about the past.
W Literary and Historical Context
The important historical contexts in The Blind Assassin are the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s and the treatment of women during that decade. Canada was particularly hard hit during the Depression. One of the major causes of the economic hardships Canada faced was the collapse of world trade, which generated
approximately one-third of the country’s gross national income. The resulting loss of jobs was compounded by cutbacks on goods and services at home. When Benjamin Chase is forced to close his button factory, he determines that the only way he can protect his daughters is to arrange a marriage between Iris and Richard. The economic hardships Canadian workers endure prompt Alex to become a union organizer, which eventually leads to his participation in illegal activities. Women had limited choices in Canada and in other Western countries during the first half of the twentieth century. At an early age, girls were trained to take on the traditional roles of wife and mother. Women who tried to venture outside the home and establish careers were denounced as a threat to family stability, especially during the Depression when it was difficult for men to find work. Instead, women were encouraged to focus on supporting their husbands’ careers and to sublimate their own ambitions. It took three more decades for women to begin to gain any measure of social and economic advancement. Iris suffers from this oppressive environment, which causes her to sacrifice herself for the economic security of herself and her sister. Her father forces her into marriage with a man she does not love and eventually grows to revile. Laura also becomes caught in this web of oppression. When she tries to rebel, Richard has her confined in a mental institution.
W Themes The Blind Assassin examines how difficult it can be to tell the truth about one’s past, especially when it involves the collapse of a family. Iris claims that she is trying to write an accurate account of her and Laura’s experience, but she often is an unreliable narrator, neglecting to provide all the details. One such detail that she does not include is the reason that she told Laura about her own relationship with Alex—information that contributes to Laura’s
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death. She avoids anything in her narrative that may point to her negligence and culpability in her sister’s tragedy. She also suggests the motive behind such omissions when she admits that she wants to memorialize herself, to assert her existence, especially to her estranged granddaughter. Another related theme involves the sacrifices Iris was forced to make to protect her sister as well as herself. When she chronicles the soul-deadening life she endures with Richard, admitting that her father coerced her into the marriage to save what was left of the family, she hints at her bitterness over the responsibilities she had to take on, which compounds her anguish. This bitterness appears to have led her to acts of vengeance and subsequent feelings of guilt, which she refuses to acknowledge in an act of self-preservation.
MAJOR CHARACTERS BENJAMIN CHASE is the sisters’ distant father. When he loses his fortune, he arranges Iris’s marriage to Richard. He eventually drinks himself to death. LAURA CHASE is Iris’s naive, fragile sister. She commits suicide after she learns of Iris’s relationship with Alex. IRIS CHASE GRIFFEN is the octogenarian narrator of the central story. She tries to piece together the truth about her and her sister’s past, but her sense of pragmatism conflicts with her feelings of guilt, and as a result, her narrative remains inconclusive. RICHARD GRIFFEN, Iris’s cold, ambitious husband, tries to maintain control of Laura as well as Iris.
W Style Atwood constructs a complex interplay among the four fragmented narratives in the novel. The newspaper clippings provide some of the facts, including the deaths of the family members as well as historical accounts of the Depression and World War II. Iris’s narrative provides only glimpses of the details that lead up to the collapse of her family. The novel published under Laura’s name that Iris includes in her narrative provides clues to the missing pieces in her own story. The tale of the lovers who construct a science fiction narrative that centers on the sacrifice of virgins echoes her feelings of oppression and sacrifice. The title of this narrative, “The Blind Assassin,” hints at Iris’s role in her sister’s tragedy. Her word choice here implies, or at least tries to convince readers, that while she in a sense was her sister’s assassin, she was blind to what she was doing. Ironically, Iris has a keen eye for historical detail, as her name suggests, especially those that help document her life in high society during the Depression and World War II. She arranges her narrative into chapters with titles that call attention to her world—names of places like “The Imperial Room” and The Arcadian Court” or clothing items such as “Red brocade,” The eggshell hat,” or “The houndstooth suit.” Other chapter titles such as “The Weary Soldier” and “Loaf Givers” reflect the realities of war and poverty.
W Critical Reception The critical reception for The Blind Assassin was overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers citing its welltold story, vivid detail, and compelling characters. Many critics noted that the intricate narrative construction was at times difficult to follow yet ultimately rewarding. B. A. Andrews’s review of the novel for World Literature Today commented on Atwood’s postmodern narrative technique: “the writing defines ‘play’ as only great novelists
WINIFRED GRIFFEN PRIOR, Richard’s sister, runs Richard’s household in an effort to ensure that Iris and Laura meet the social standards she has set for all of them. REENIE, Benjamin Chase’s good-hearted housekeeper, looks after the two sisters as they are growing up. ALEX THOMAS is a leftist revolutionary who becomes involved with Iris and Laura.
understand the word: it is precise, mischievous, deft, educated, mysterious, stratified, ambitious, allusive, confounding, spirited, maddening, and clarifying.” Andrews concluded that the novel, while “demanding,” is “dependably entertaining.” Lorrie Moore, in her review for the New Yorker, claimed that The Blind Assassin “is the best example of the kind of narrative pastiche at which [Atwood] excels.” In her review of the novel for Americas, Barbara Mujica insisted it is “like a funhouse hall of mirrors—full of strange twists, false leads, misleading reflections, and labyrinthine trails that weave in and out of one another in the most intriguing way.” Laurie Selwyn, in her review for the Library Journal, found the narrative “compelling,” offering “many different layers of interpretation.” Critics also praise Atwood’s use of language. For example, Mujica commented, “in spite of her intricate plot, her prose flows effortlessly” in this “brilliant and beautiful novel, a veritable tour de force.” She added: “Atwood uses language so deftly. Her metaphors are often astonishing in the way they join together unrelated notions. Yet they never seem intrusive or contrived.” Elizabeth Templeman, in an article for Southern Humanities Review, pointed out Atwood’s “piercing wit, in truncated phrases strung together sometimes relentlessly.” She also praised Atwood’s “meticulous and lustrous” historical detail, which in her view adds to the story’s power.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, Margaret Atwood began writing when she was six years old and decided less than a decade later to be a writer. She has written several volumes of poetry, nonfiction and fiction, short stories, and children’s books and has been published in more than twentyfive countries. Atwood has received popular and critical acclaim for her writing along with several awards, including Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature. In 2000 she was awarded the Man Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin. Among her most critically acclaimed works besides The Blind Assassin are The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Alias Grace (1996). As of 2010, Atwood lived in Toronto.
Atwood’s characterizations, however, generated some disagreement among critics. Templeman praised Atwood’s characters, who, she argued, are “forcefully
drawn, demanding both interest in their plights, and sympathy.” Andrews, however, asserted that Atwood’s characters “are rarely likable . . . [o]r even ethical,” including those in The Blind Assassin. Yet, she conceded, readers bring their own compassion to the novel and are ultimately entranced by Atwood’s “mesmerizing way with a story, even a story as maddening and complex as this one.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Atwood. Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Random House, 2000. Print. Moore, Lorrie. “BIOPERVERSITY.” New Yorker 19 May 2003: 88. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. Mujica, Barbara. “The Blind Assassin.” Rev. of The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. Americas (English Edition) 53.1 (2001): 61. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. St. Andrews, B. A. “Review of The Blind Assassin.” World Literature Today 76.1 (2002). Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 246. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Selwyn, Laurie. “The Blind Assassin.” Rev. of The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. Library Journal 125.20 (2000): 212. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. Templeman, Elizabeth. “Review of The Blind Assassin.” Southern Humanities Review 36.1 (2002): 91-93. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 246. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bouson, J. Brooks. “‘A Commemoration of Wounds Endured and Resented’: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin as Feminist Memoir.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 44.3 (2003): 251+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Analyzes the politics of gender relations in the novel and claims that the victimization of women links the narratives. Dancygier, Barbara. “Narrative Anchors and the Processes of Story Construction: The Case of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Style 41.2 (2007): 133+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Introduces the concept of narrative anchors, which link the novel’s various substories. One such anchor is the specific language used in the novel’s first sentence relating Laura’s death. Photograph of Margaret Atwood, author of The Blind Assassin. ª BERND THISSEN/epa/Corbis
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Dumars, Denise. “Out of This World: SF for Novices.” Rev. of The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Library Journal 126.13 (2001): 196. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. Explains how Atwood’s works, including The Blind Assassin, fit the genre of science fiction. Hite, Molly. “Tongueless in Toronto.” Women’s Review of Books 18.6 (2001): 1. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 246. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Focuses on how Atwood shapes the novel’s narrative, which reinforces its focus on the problems inherent in trying to tell the truth about the past. Ingersoll, Earl. “Waiting for the End: Closure in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Studies in the Novel 35.4 (2003): 543+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Examines the novel as a mystery, but one without a traditional closure. Gale Resources
Thompson, Lee Briscoe. “Margaret (Eleanor) Atwood.” Canadian Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers. Ed. Douglas Ivison. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 251. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. http//go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE&%7 CH1200010390&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
upcoming publications, her blog, a biography, and resources for writers, among others. For Further Reading
Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996. Print. Based on the sensational murder trial in 1843 of Grace Marks, a Canadian teenager who worked as a maid for the husband and wife she was accused of murdering. ———. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985. Print. Dystopia of the near future, made more frightening by its parallels to the political machinations of the early twenty-first century. Cooke, N. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. Print. Contains several excerpts from Atwood’s letters. Kröller, Eva-Marie. The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print. Examines works by various Canadian writers. Reid, Robin Ann. Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Westport: Greenwood, 2008. Print. Essays that focus on British and American science fiction and fantasy in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, film, and art, and explores how women are presented in these works. Adaptations
In 2002, Icon Entertainment International made the film The Blind Assassin in Canada.
Margaret Atwood’s own Web site, at http//margaretat wood.ca, has links to her speaking engagements,
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Blindsight By Maurice Gee
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Maurice Gee’s Blindsight (2005) is the story of a sister and brother, Alice and Gordon Ferry, of their unusual closeness and how their lives move in divergent directions. The first-person narrator, Alice looks back at the age of seventythree to describe the Ferry family and the schooling and teen years she shared with her brother. Then she traces the divergent life paths Gordon and she took. While Alice flourished as a scientist, Gordon was drawn to helping others, first as a teacher and later in low-level hospital work. The possessive and devoted Alice sought to control Gordon’s choices, and this effort included an action Gee does not reveal until the final pages. While Alice manages to find a harmonious mate and make a name for herself in research, Gordon veers off into anonymity and homelessness. The present action of the novel covers the appearance of Adrian Moore and his developing relationship to Alice, his biological great-aunt. It seems Gordon impregnated a young woman who subsequently gave the baby up for adoption. That child was Adrian’s father who on his deathbed asked Adrian to locate his biological grandfather and reach out to him. Adrian finds the published Alice Ferry easily, but discovering the truth about Gordon is a greater challenge, made more difficult by Alice’s efforts to mislead Adrian. Blindsight is an exploration of sibling relationships and bonding and the kinds of factors that can propel siblings along their separate life paths. Told from the point of view of the seemingly totally reliable narrator, Alice, the story slowly unearths the degree of her obsession with her brother and the lengths she was willing to go to keep him to herself.
Context
One literary context for Blindsight consists of those works that use an unreliable narrator, a device that provides ways to explore the psychology of the narrator and to withhold information from or mislead the reader for any of various reasons. Robert Browning, the nineteenthcentury English poet, used unreliable narrators in his Madhouse Cells, one of which is the so-called lover in “Porphyria’s Lover” (1836). J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is narrated by teenager Holden Caulfield, and only at the end of the novel do readers learn that Holden is now in a mental institution, and his narration of the events of one weekend when he dropped out of school may be part of a therapy session. Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is narrated by the schizophrenic Chief Bromden who reports through the delusional maze of his symptoms on life in a mental institution. In these examples, the authors draw the reader into the narrator’s reality, and however skewed that perspective is, the reader gets the opportunity to see things in an unusual way. If the author handles the point of view skillfully, then the reader feels increased suspense and intrigue as fissures or inconsistencies in the narrator’s story are noted. By the conclusion, the reader is likely asked to reinterpret events in light of what is ultimately revealed about the narrator. Gee uses this device for his own purposes, giving hints along the way that pique the reader’s curiosity about how the plot is ultimately resolved. Various references provide an historical context for Blindsight. The story begins in the 1940s during World War II, and references are made to Mary Ferry’s fear that her son Gordon may be drawn into military service. Luckily, the war will end before he is old enough to serve. Alice describes the late 1950s and early 1960s when she
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and Gordon are dating. She recalls Eddie Fisher’s “Dungaree Doll” (1956) and Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” (1958) and the rage of the horror movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), all of which have thematic significance for the novel in its focus on sexual pairing and how individuals measure one another in their efforts to find and choose a mate. Other references are made to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the self-help recovery program that in the early 2000s is worldwide, but which had its origins in the United States in the early 1930s with the work of Bill Wilson. By the 1960s and 1970s, AA was well established in New Zealand and helping down-and-out alcoholics take charge of their lives again. Finally, a specific historical seed for the novel was explained by Iain Sharp in his review. Sharp described the “mild-mannered tramp Rob Jones,” who was well known in Wellington, New Zealand. Called “the Bucket Man because he carried his few possessions in a plastic bucket,” Jones also slept in a hiding place on the Tinakori Hills. Sharp listed several characteristics Jones and Gordon shared, “including the bucket, rough Tinakori abode, perpetually downcast gaze, quietness and shuffling route around inner Wellington.” Jones gained even more notoriety when an estimated six hundred people attended his funeral. The physical condition called blindsight refers to a level of perception that may occur in people who are totally blind as a result of injury to the part of the brain that is responsible for vision. In this condition, individuals who are blind in certain parts of their visual field can, nonetheless, respond to certain visual stimuli. Such individuals may not be able to recognize objects, for example, but be able to anticipate movement of objects.
W Themes The novel begins and ends with the same sentence: “Father taught us how not to love” (5, 192). This statement explicitly tags the model set by Earl Ferry as an explanation for how Alice and Gordon develop. Their radically different lives are explained by Alice this way: “I mean Father’s greediness in love, his benevolence and appetite, which started Gordon and me on our divergent ways” (5). If by “taught,” Alice means “by his example,” then Earl showed his children both exceptional benevolence and a heightened sexuality or sensual response to others. These responses in Earl are mixed rather than mutually exclusive. While Alice suggests that Gordon took the path of benevolence and she the path of appetite, the matter is more complicated than that. The thematic point seems to be that as children grow into adulthood they apply something of the lessons they learned in watching their parents and these serve as momentum in shaping the children’s lives.
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALICE FERRY, the narrator, is a seventy-three-year-old widow and retired mycologist. EARL FERRY, Alice’s father, is a chemist like his father, a sentimental man and a sensualist. GORDON FERRY, Alice’s younger brother, is a kind-hearted compassionate man who cannot tolerate cruelty and seeks to help others. CYRIL HANDY is a poor alcoholic friend of Gordon who comes by Gordon’s place for handouts. JOSEPHINE IMRIE is a highly sexed beautician who gets involved in abusive relationships and has a brief affair with Alice’s father. NEVILLE KITE is Alice’s kindly husband, a man older than her father and without academic degrees but brilliant in his field. ADRIAN MOORE, Alice’s great nephew and Gordon’s biological grandson, lives with Alice and tries to discover what became of Gordon. ADRIAN MOORE, biological grandson of Gordon, comes to live with Alice and discover the truth about his biological roots.
The title refers to a medical condition: the ability of an otherwise totally blind person to perceive the location of objects and their movement. In a literal sense, this condition might be used to describe how Gordon walks around town, head down, avoiding eye contact, he shuffles along not seeing those around him and yet aware of them enough to avoid hitting pedestrians who share the sidewalk with him. Considered figuratively, the condition becomes a metaphor for how individuals see the world around them, taking the part they see for the whole when in fact they are blind to most of what exists. In this sense, the term becomes a description of the limits of any particular point of view. This theme is played out in several of the characters. Alice tells part of the story but lies about or omits other parts. She reveals part and she withholds part. She knows and loves her brother intimately and long term, but he disappears from her view, and when he reappears she only sees him in part. This process of trying to see what one is blind to or trying to uncover what is hidden from view or lost can be said to describe much of the novel’s action and indeed the narrative style. Adrian Moore wants to discover his biological grandfather; he relies on what Alice tells him, at first innocently accepting her fiction as truth. But the research efforts of his girlfriend reveal Alice’s lies and omissions, and in a sense, that revelation helps Adrian see more and also causes him
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Blindsight
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born August 22, 1931, in Whakatane, New Zealand, Maurice Gee grew up in Henderson, a suburb of Auckland, and received his BA and MA from the University of Auckland. Highly prolific and touted as New Zealand’s finest writer, Gee produced numerous collections of short stories through the 1950s and 1960s and nearly thirty novels by the time Blindsight appeared in 2005. After that he published Salt (2007), Gool (2008), and Access Road (2009). In 2004 the University of Auckland awarded him an honorary doctorate in literature. In 2006 Blindsight won the Montana New Zealand Readers’ Choice award and Book award for fiction and the Deutz Medal for Fiction. As of 2010, Gee lived in Wellington, New Zealand.
to question what he has been told. Ultimately, the novel is about the mystery of a homeless person that haunts his relatives who love him. The question of what makes a person go off so entirely from human connection, even when others want to connect with him, remains only partially answered. Incestuous love may be a driving
force, murder may be another, and other determining factors (at least in this novel) remain undiscovered.
W Style Blindsight begins with the elderly Alice observing Gordon, the vagrant, shuffling along the inner-city streets of Wellington. This is their present time. Alice then goes back to their childhood, early family life, and to two important events in Gordon’s life that show his empathy for others and natural inclination to help others feel better. Her reflection on the more distant past is disrupted by the arrival of Adrian Moore who is intent on finding his biological grandfather and has only had luck in identifying his published great-aunt, Alice. The rest of the novel traces Adrian’s efforts, both to assist Alice and to work through her lies to the truth. Another feature of the style is the self-consciousness Alice expresses as the author of her own story. Her intention is to resurrect Gordon, who “stepped into the world with such innocence and goodwill” (7) and at the start showed so much more promise than she did and who has been lost to her for years. She is eager to see “beyond our fire” (7) and yet ambivalent regarding what
Photo of New Zealand author Maurice Gee with his daughter, Emily. Maurice Gee is the author of the novel Blindsight. ª Tim Cuff / Alamy
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a widening vision may require of her. This ambivalence shows itself in deliberately checking her speed. For example, at one point she says before she goes on she needs to describe a certain day more fully (45); at another point she remarks, “I’d like to describe my life as Dr Ferry and Mrs Kite but have a bridge to cross before I reach it” (118). A third place she remarks, “I’m shuffling twenty years like playing cards” (138). Added to these stylistic features are the remarkable metaphorical patterns used by Gee throughout the novel, one of which has to do with stitching as a figure for connection, the other with gravitational pull. Faced with her father’s infidelity and unable to soothe his feelings, Alice notes that “the stitching between us was undone” (41). Adrian describes the role of his double bass in the band as “more like stitching. . . . It fastens things together” (62), not unlike Adrian’s role himself regarding Alice and Gordon. Later Alice realizes she and Gordon “circle each other like binary stars . . . together and apart” and others “made no gravitational pull” (82). Their relationship is who they are, made from the same cloth, connected and yet not connected as binary stars.
W Critical Reception Blindsight was well received but not widely reviewed. David Larsen described Gee’s novel as “a remarkable and memorable read.” He also affirmed that the characters “are worth the effort it takes to get to know them.” The novel’s human interest also appealed to Patricia Soper, who pointed out that the story is about “every attribute that makes us human.” Soper concluded: “Gee never disappoints.” Iain Sharp wrote a longer review of Blindsight. Sharp analyzed “high achiever” Alice as the narrator: “Because she initially seems so sane and perceptive, and because she addresses us with Gee’s crystalline lucidity, it takes a while to realise she is not a narrator to be trusted. Her jealousy, possessiveness, snobbery and capacity for frightening rage stand in contrast to Gordon’s easy-going compassion.” Sharp also expounded on the significance of the title for both Gordon and Alice: “Gordon in his later years, trudging the same path through Wellington day after day without lifting his head or meeting anyone’s gaze, is an example of one kind of blindsight. But the subtler forms of impairment that afflict Alice are more disquieting.” Sharp concluded that the book is both a quick read and delivers lasting effect: “Blindsight is a book you can whiz through in a couple of sittings. But its skilfully managed implications will haunt you for weeks to come. It is, without a doubt, one of the year’s best local novels.”
Larsen, David. “Maurice Gee: Blindsight.” Rev. of Blindsight, by Maurice Gee. www.nzherald.co.nz. New Zealand Herald, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. Sharp, Iain. “Great Fiction from Bleak Street-Truths.” Rev. of Blindsight, by Maurice Gee. Sunday StarTimes 9 Oct. 2005. Print. Soper, Patricia. “Gee Whiz: What a Book.” Rev. of Blindsight, by Maurice Gee. Southland Times 17 Dec. 2005. Print. “Two Minutes with Maurice Gee.” Press [New Zealand] 29 July 2006. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Moore, Christopher. “Playing God Joins the Platinum List.” Press [New Zealand], 14 Oct. 2006. Print. Along with other titles that have sold well, mentions that Gee’s novel Blindsight sold ten thousand copies in its first year. ———. “Worthy of the Award.” Press [New Zealand] 26 July 2006. Print. A description of New Zealand’s Montana New Zealand Book Awards with praise for Maurice Gee for winning it. Gale Resources
“Maurice Gee.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000035790&v=2.1&u=itsbtria l&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w For Further Reading
Flagg, Fannie. I Still Dream about You. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. Reflections on the secets people hide combined with a murder mystery. Gee, Maurice. Salt. Orca Books, 2009. Print. One of a trilogy for young adult readers concerning colonialism and radioactive weaponry. Hopper, Kim. Reckoning with Homelessness. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003. Print. By an anthropologist and about types of homeless shelters, including almshouses, flophouses, shelters, and airports. Laurence, Margaret. The Stone Angel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964. Print. Narrated by elderly woman who resists adult son’s efforts to place her in a retirement home. Sarton, May. As We Are Now. New York: Norton, 1992. Print. The 1973 novel narrated by an elderly woman in rural old-folks’ home who insists she is not insane.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Melodie Monahan
Works Cited
Gee, Maurice. Blindsight. Auckland: Penguin Group (NZ), 2005. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Blood from Stone By Frances Fyfield
W Introduction Frances Fyfield’s novel Blood from Stone begins when Marianne Shearer—a wealthy and successful, but not very well-liked—criminal defense attorney, leaps to her death from the balcony of a London hotel. Her death leaves many questions unanswered: Why did she kill herself? Why are all her belongings missing? And why did she die wearing such a fantastic skirt? The secrets are wrapped up in Shearer’s final trial, where the successful exoneration of the violent criminal Rick Boyd comes at the cost of his victim, a key witness who commits suicide halfway through the trial. Blood from Stone won the prestigious Dagger Award in 2008, and was hailed by the judges as “a subtly and elegantly written exploration of contemporary themes” (“Frances Fyfield Wins”). Fyfield’s experience as a criminal prosecutor lends her narratives “a believability that her novelist-by-day-novelist-by-night peers often lack” (“Interview: Frances Fyfield”). David Sexton contends she has “emerged as one of the most intriguing and original crime writers in the generation since P. D. James and Ruth Rendell.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Frances Fyfield says, “I hate novels being used as social criticism—it’s like being whacked over the head. . . . Better for that sort of perspective to emerge as a natural result of the story you’re trying to tell” (qtd. in de Villiers). That is not to say that Fyfield’s novels do not have social relevance. The author “has a knack for picking a troubling episode from the news and transforming it to fit into her imaginative world” (Wheatley). While writing Blood from Stone, Fyfield was inspired by the story of Katherine Ward, a British lawyer who leaped to her death from the window of a
London hotel. Fyfield wanted to explore why a successful, attractive woman might do such a thing. “My interest is in the aftermath of crime, and the things that lead up to it,” says the author (qtd. in Coren). “I am not really interested in writing a ‘whodunit.’ I am much more interested in the ‘why’” (qtd. in Wickens). Fyfield’s vast experience working as a lawyer has given her “incredible insight into the best and worst of humanity” (What’s Your Motive?) In her line of work, she would frequently be sent into the worst parts of London, which she says gave her a “fascinating knowledge” (“Seedy Underbelly”). “It instills . . . an ice-chip in the heart which helps you be objective—a great advantage. It acquaints you with all sorts of nasty human behavior” (qtd. in de Villiers). Fyfield talks of the distress felt when “you are no longer surprised by man’s inhumanity to man” and the “sense of relief when you are surprised, but also the cut-off point when you don’t want to know any more. That’s the point at which I begin to write” (qtd. in Dougary).
W Themes Peter Guttridge writes, “Frances Fyfield is all about psychological exploration.” This exploration often proves very dark, and Fyfield has been accused of writing only about “damaged people.” But this, Fyfield says, “makes her work more powerful. The characters are not normal heroes with happy lives and strong roots but must rise above a handicap to become heroic” (Deziel). Not all of Fyfield’s damaged characters are heroes; the theme of the violent serial predator appears in many of her books. Like Rick Boyd in Blood from Stone, her “monsters are very often men who perpetrate the most appalling violence against women” (“Law Meets High Fashion”). Another recurring theme in Fyfield’s writing is the damaged psychology of the battered woman, as her narratives often “bristle with wounding insights into the pathology of women who conspire in their own manipulation” (“Frances Hegarty”). Laura Wilson has said, “[W]hen it
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comes to the dissection of the human spirit, [Fyfield] is the most efficiently brutal scalpel-wielder we have.” Another theme of Blood from Stone is that of “baggage, both emotional and physical, whether clung to, discarded, or simply stashed away and forgotten” (Wilson). One of the characters, Mr. Joyce, runs a selfstorage unit, and Fyfield skillfully employs this as a metaphor for the unearthing of buried secrets in the narrative. “Storage is magic,” Fyfield writes. “Nothing will perish in here” (248). Mr. Joyce comments that most of what people store is rubbish they can’t bear to get rid of, but it’s “rubbish with attitude and meaning” (251). Finally, Fyfield writes about redemption. Blood from Stone may be dark, “but there are also bright flourishes of hope and a surprising and even uplifting conclusion” (Turnbull). The author says, “What I want to say in all my books is that people can suffer terrible abuse and survive” (qtd. in Sexton).
MAJOR CHARACTERS RICK BOYD is the serial predator represented by Marianne Shearer. He mentally and physically abuses his victims, and cons them for their money. PETER FRIEL is a young lawyer who was on the defense team for Rick Boyd. After the case shatters his belief in the system, he becomes determined to find out why Marianne Shearer killed herself. ANGEL JOYCE is Rick Boyd’s victim. She kills herself halfway through his trial rather than endure the trial and continue to be questioned by Marianne Shearer. HENRIETTA JOYCE is Angel’s older sister, and the one who rescued Angel from Rick Boyd and encouraged her to prosecute. Henrietta, a clothes-restoration and preservation expert, runs the business FrockServe.com.
W Style
MR. JOYCE is Angel and Henrietta’s father, and the proprietor of WJ Storage, a successful self-storage facility.
Fyfield is known for her skillful, elegant prose, and Blood from Stone is no exception. “Her descriptions of the colours and textures of clothing and artifacts are, as always, lyrical and lush” (Wilson). The contrast between Fyfield’s “fluid, almost poetic” prose and the grittiness of her subject matter combine for a “compelling, hypnotic effect” (Low). Fyfield writes, “She was admiring herself, hands splayed on the wood, when I took off the first digit. The blood went in the soup and salt went in the wound. She slept very well, I assure you” (6). Fyfield eschews the traditional “cosiness of so much old-fashioned detective fiction” and instead imbues her work with a melancholic, “haunting, slightly surreal quality” (Sexton). Marcel Berlins, writing for the London Times describes Blood from Stone as unfolding “subtly and absorbingly” in “typically Fyfieldian manner.” Indeed, this slow burn is common in many of the author’s works, as she quietly pulls the reader deeper into the story. “The use of the trial transcripts and the slow pace of the storytelling” give “Fyfield plenty of time to delve into the protagonists’ psyche” (Croll). The author is known for writing stories where plot is a function of character, and the action is driven by the “skillful, creepy psychological” portraits and “penetrating characterization” (Scrivener). Says Fyfield, “I like to explore a situation, not be led by a plot” (qtd. in Coren). In Blood from Stone, that situation is why the lawyer, Marianne Shearer, jumps to her death, and “the explanation . . . is a perfect example of Fyfield’s work: beautifully written, cold, and emotionally brutal” (Wheatley).
MRS. ELLEN JOYCE is Angel and Henrietta’s mother.
W Critical Reception The British press has “gone wild in its praise” of Frances Fyfield, “calling her the ‘new queen of crime’ and the
THE LOVER was Marianne Shearer’s lover for many years. Married with children, he always kept his affair with Marianne secret. THOMAS NOBLE is the lawyer Marianne Shearer left in charge of sorting out her estate after her death. Unfortunately, Noble cannot seem to locate a will or any of Ms. Shearer’s belongings. FRANK SHEARER is Marianne Shearer’s broke and underachieving younger brother, and stands to inherit her money and apartment. MARIANNE SHEARER is the highly successful criminal defense attorney who, for reasons unknown, kills herself after her client Rick Boyd’s exoneration.
‘mistress of menace’” (Scrivener). She is known as “the crime writer’s crime writer,” a statement that appears to ring true: P. D. James, with whom the author is often compared, is reported to have told Fyfield’s Canadian publisher, “you’ll be all right with this one, dear” (Sexton, qtd. in Scrivener). Blood from Stone proved overwhelmingly popular with critics, though a few have taken issue with the plausibility of some of its plot points. A reviewer for the London Independent calls attorney Marianne Shearer’s battering of the witnesses “excessive” and questions whether such behavior would be permitted in an English courtroom (“Law Meets High Fashion”). Some critics find the reasoning behind Shearer’s suicide “highly unlikely” (Croll), but others admit that though “Fyfield’s plot hinges on a whopping coincidence . . . it is acceptable because of her gift for creating characters who seem like real people” (Kerridge).
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Frances Fyfield was born in 1948 in rural Derbyshire, England. Her parents, whom she describes as eccentric, raised animals with no real knowledge of animal husbandry. As a result, pigs escaped, and chickens roamed indoors. “I thought everyone lived like this,” Fyfield says (qtd. in Scrivener). After receiving her BA in English from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Fyfield admits she took some time to find her career, taking various jobs from teaching English to working as a sales assistant, until she decided to study law (qtd. in Dougary). After working for the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, Fyfield published her first novel at age thirty-nine. Since then, the author has published nearly twenty-five crime novels—three under her birth name Frances Hegarty—including two series, and has been nominated for an Edgar Award and won two Dagger Awards. Often compared to the work of Ruth Rendell and P. D. James, her novels are known for their chilling psychological profiles, and A. N. Wilson calls Fyfield “the best crime writer alive” (qtd. in Coren).
However, not all reviewers appreciate highly realistic characters; one such critic found the majority of them “entirely unappealing” and professed “it is extremely difficult for the reader to develop any form of empathy with them” (Croll). Most critics, though, praise Fyfield’s fascinating characters. “They’re all off-kilter, of course— one of Fyfield’s pleasurable trademarks” (Guttridge). Sue Turnbull says, “Fyfield has a talent for capturing the quiet despair of ordinary people trapped by circumstance,” and Shelley Orchard calls one of the protagonists, Henrietta, “clever, cutting, and courageous.” Critics also praise Fyfield’s “ingenious plotting,” and comment that the complex set-up of Blood from Stone “takes Fyfield just ten pages of precise and polished prose to establish” (Turnbull). The narrative is complex; after its initial start the story unfolds slowly and “takes time to work through, but is all the more satisfying and thoughtprovoking for that” (Clements). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Berlins, Marcel. “Lingering Shivers.” Review of Blood from Stone by Frances Fyfield. Times [London] 15 March 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010 Clements, Toby. “GENRE.” Review of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Daily Telegraph [London] 5 April 2008. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Coren, Giles. “What Makes the Perfect Crime Writer?” Times [London] 5 Aug. 1995. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Croll, Luke. Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Reviewing the Evidence Feb. 2008. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. de Villiers, Melissa. “True to Crime.” Sunday Times [South Africa] 3 Aug. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Deziel, Shanda. “Strange and Neurotic.” Maclean’s 29 Apr. 2002: 115-17. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Dougary, Ginny. “Tales from Humanity’s Underbelly: Ginny Dougary Meets a Lawyer Who Copes with the Distress of Gruesome Crime Cases by Writing Novels.” Independent [London] 27 Nov. 1989. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Frances Fyfield Wins the 2008 CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger.” The Crime Writers’ Association. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Frances Hegarty.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Fyfield, Frances. Blood from Stone. Great Britain: Sphere, 2008. Print. Frances Fyfield, author of Blood from Stone. ª Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/ Corbis
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Guttridge, Peter. “Review: Crime Round-Up: On the Way from Hope to Despair: Jack Reacher Drifts into TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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High-Octane Trouble in Colorado, While Elsewhere Blood and Body Parts Abound . . . ” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Observer [London] 6 April 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Interview: Frances Fyfield.” Book Reporter 20 Apr. 2001. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Kerridge, Jake. “CRIME; CHICK LIT; Not Just Mindless Violence; Jake Kerridge Tracks Down Dastardly Plots with Emotional Power.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Daily Telegraph [London] 6 Dec. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Law Meets High Fashion in Investigation into WellDressed Barrister’s Death.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Independent [London] 27 Mar. 2008. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Low, Shari. “Staying In: Book Group.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Daily Record [Glasgow] 29 Mar. 2008. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Orchard, Shelley. “This Week’s Selections.” Review of Blood from Stone by Frances Fyfield. Advertiser [Sydney] 24 May 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Scrivener, Leslie. “A Prosecutor Turns to Crime.” Toronto Star 16 May 1993. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Seedy Underbelly of the Metropolis.” Herald [Glasgow] 20 Mar. 2000. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Sexton, David. “London by Fright.” Evening Standard [London] 2 Jan. 1998. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Turnbull, Sue. “Plot, Pasta, and Plenty of Claret; Review of the Week.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Sydney Morning Herald 28 June 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “What’s Your Motive?” Publishers Weekly 247.43 (23 Oct. 2000): 243. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. Wheatley, Jane. “Beyond the Grave, Voices that Still Linger: Books.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Times [London] 31 May 2008: 9. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Wickens, Barbara. “Wondering Why Crime Happens.” Maclean’s 108.22 (29 May 1995): 26. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Wilson, Laura. “Review: Crime: Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances
Fyfield. Guardian [London] 16 Feb. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Frances Fyfield: The Lawyer and Crime Writer on Her New Novel, Blood from Stone.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Book Show Web. 11 Aug. 2010. A review of Blood from Stone, and short interview with the author. Sutton, Henry. “Books: New Releases.” Review of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Mirror 7 Mar. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. A short, positive review of Blood from Stone. Taylor, Andrew. “Recent Crime Novels.” Rev. of Blood from Stone, by Frances Fyfield. Spectator 3 May 2008: 37. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. A positive review of Blood from Stone, focusing on the strength of the narrative. Gale Resources
“Frances Fyfield.” St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, 4th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Rpt. in Biography Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Frances Fyfield’s official website at http//www.frances fyfield.co.uk includes biographical information about the author and her novels and awards. Visitors to the website can also listen to a series of short stories by Fyfield, called “A Dark and Stormy Night,” read by various voice-over artists and first broadcast on BBC Radio in 2006. Track six is Fyfield’s interview with Jenny Murray on Women’s Hour on July 5, 2006, after the publication of Fyfield’s novel The Art of Drowning. The website for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, at http//www.thecwa.co.uk/index.php gives information about the award, past winners, and author events. There is also information about National Crime Fiction Week, and the Young Crime Writers’ Competition, organized by the Crime Writers’ Association. For Further Reading
Adilman, Sid. “Former U.K. Prosecutor Hunts Fictional Criminals.” Toronto Star 9 Apr. 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Fyfield discusses her original desire to write romance, but suggests her “weird and dark imagination” eventually drove her to write crime fiction. Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York: Coward-McCann, 1955. Print. The story of the young sociopath Tom Ripley and his quest to trade
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his banal existence for a life of wealth and sophistication, at all costs. Highsmith, like Fyfield, is known for her searing psychological portraits, causing the reader to sympathize with Tom even when his actions become completely amoral. James, P. D. Cover Her Face. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962. Print. In P. D. James’s debut novel, she introduces detective Adam Dalgliesh, who must investigate the murder of a beautiful young social climber. This novel marks the beginning of the Adam Dalgliesh series, with over a dozen novels. Murphy, Rachel. “Interview: Frances Fyfield—How Amanda Brought; Amanda Burton’s Thrilling New Crime Series Is Based on the Life of Author and Solicitor Frances Fyfield.” Mirror [London] 11 May 2002. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. An interview with Fyfield about three of her Helen West novels that have been adapted for television. The character of Helen West is loosely based on Fyfield’s experiences as a prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Rendell, Ruth. Tigerlily’s Orchids. London: Hutchinson, 2010. Print. In this novel by esteemed crime writer Ruth Rendell, young, naive Stuart Font throws a housewarming party with terrible consequences when he invites his young, beautiful Asian neighbor, whom he has dubbed “Tigerlily.” Richardson, Anna. “Fyfield Snatches Dagger.” Bookseller 18 July 2008: 48. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. A short article detailing Frances Fyfield’s 2008 Dagger Award for Blood from Stone. Selway, Jennifer. “Books: Kind Hearts and Chloroform— Jennifer Selway Talks to Frances Fyfield about Kittens, Crime, and Evil in Court.” Observer [London] 22 Sept. 1991. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. The author discusses recurring themes in her writing, her schedule, and how her law career and divorce influenced her work. Bisanne Masoud
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Blooms of Darkness By Aharon Appelfeld
W Introduction Set in an unnamed Ukrainian village during World War II, Blooms of Darkness (2006) is the story of a preadolescent Jewish boy who comes of age in a brothel under the care of a Catholic prostitute. Hugo Mansfeld spends most of his time hiding in a closet listening to Mariana conduct business with male clients, who sometimes beat her when she refuses their demands. Over the course of the novel, Mariana increases her drinking and needs Hugo’s tenderness to obtain relief from the depression caused by her work. The two eventually become lovers. When the brothel closes they attempt to make a life together living off the land in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, but they are apprehended by the Russian army and separated. Blooms of Darkness has been praised for its spare, evocative prose and, in a series of carefully sketched love scenes, for striking a note of optimism without lapsing into sentimentality. Kind, but also willful and erratic, Mariana cares for Hugo as a protective mother would, but she grows dependent on him as she confides her troubles and discovers that he listens to her without judging her. With the constant threat of Nazi search parties in the background, Aharon Appelfeld shows how love grows out of vulnerability and mutual trust, regardless of the age of the lovers.
W Literary and Historical Context
Blooms of Darkness takes place between 1942 and 1944 in an unnamed village in what is today Ukraine, a country that lies between Poland and Russia. During World War II, the village of the novel was located in territory that was fought over by Germans and Soviet armies. Initially, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union entered into an agreement in which
they each took control of areas that lay between their countries. On June 22, 1941, however, Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, and its army advanced eastward across Ukraine. The allegiance of Ukrainians was split, with the majority of Ukrainians siding with the Soviets. Those Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazis as liberators discovered that the German army had little interest in enlisting their support against the Soviets. Appelfeld makes no mention of how the Nazis administered the parts of Ukraine that they occupied but notes that German soldiers conducted regular searches for Jews. In 1944 the Soviet army started pushing the Germans out of Ukraine. The brothel in Blooms of Darkness provides services to German soldiers who are stationed away from the front. As the Russians advance through Ukraine, the women execute the prostitutes they find because the service they provided to German soldiers was considered to have been aiding the enemy. An estimated five million to eight million Ukrainians died in World War II, including up to 500,000 Jews who were killed by the Germans.
W Themes As the novel’s title suggests, one of the main themes in Blooms of Darkness is the idea that something beautiful or hopeful can emerge from even the most desperate situation. Appelfeld introduces this theme when Hugo flees with his mother through a sewer toward the brothel where Mariana works. When the stench becomes unbearable the young boy faints. He awakes lying on grass, unable to remember most of the journey. Appelfeld writes, “Hugo will think a great deal about that dark night, trying to tie the details together, and he will wonder again and again how his mother had managed to pull him out of the sewer and restore him to life.” At the end of the novel, when Hugo and Mariana wander penniless while evading the Russian army, they find hope and beauty in the Psalms from the Bible, even though Hugo is an atheist and to Mariana the verse is
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MAJOR CHARACTERS MARIANA is the prostitute who cares for Hugo in his mother’s stead but eventually falls in love with him and initiates him into the rites of sex. Mariana is Catholic, and she often tries to convert Hugo, who is Jewish but has been raised as an atheist. VICTORIA is the cook at the brothel who reluctantly watches over Hugo when Mariana abandons him for short spells, either to drink or to look after her own mother. Hugo fears that Victoria will turn him over to the authorities. HUGO MANSFELD is a well-educated eleven-year-old boy whose parents are pharmacists. After Nazi soldiers send Hugo’s father to a concentration camp, Hugo’s mother leaves her son in the care of Mariana, a childhood friend who is now a prostitute. Soft-spoken but observant, Hugo comes of age in the brothel listening from his hiding place in Mariana’s closet to her interactions with her clients, and he eventually becomes her lover. JULIA MANSFELD is Hugo’s mother, who carries her son at night through a sewer to evade the Nazi soldiers who are searching neighborhood homes for Jews. After a number of her contacts vanish, Julia is forced to leave her son at a brothel and find her own place to hide.
incomprehensible. Mariana says to him, “Read, honey, you have a marvelous voice. I don’t understand the poems but they exalt my soul.” The novel also offers a strident argument against fear and pessimism. Early in the novel, before Hugo escapes with his mother, one of the boys from the neighborhood circulates fearsome rumors about what awaits them with the arrival of the Nazis. Hearing the rumors, Hugo thinks to himself, “You mustn’t be so pessimistic. Pessimism weakens you. You have to be strong and encourage your mother.” Mariana says much the same to Hugo when he expresses doubt that they will survive: “Don’t fear. Fear debases us. A debased person isn’t worthy of living. If you’re going to live, then live in freedom. That simple thing was what I didn’t know. All my life I lived a debased life.”
W Style In Blooms of Darkness Appelfeld uses a literary technique called understatement to convey the menacing threat with which people fleeing a murdering army must live. Characters in the novel often speak in terms that are considerably less harsh or severe than the circumstances seem to warrant. For example, when Hugo wakes on the grass and tells his mother that he does not
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remember anything from after having been carried through the sewer, she responds, “There’s nothing to remember.” The mother betrays no further emotion and the narrative picks up without haste: “But meanwhile, it’s dangerous to linger in the open field. They make their way, hunched over, to a nearby grove of trees. Every few minutes they stop, kneel, and listen.” Both the mother’s dismissive response and the steady pace of the following sentences may seem incongruous with their flight from the Nazis and impending separation, but the contrast between the style of the language and the action of the plot emphasizes rather than diminishes the danger. Appelfeld also uses a limited third-person point of view to emphasize the injustices that many of the characters suffer. The reader sees and hears only what the narrator is able to see and hear. The reader may understand the reported events differently from the narrator, however. In this case, for example, the narrator is an eleven-year-old boy completely unfamiliar with sex who is hiding in a closet of a brothel, and when he gives an account of the noises he hears he does not know that he is describing a sexual act, much less an exceptionally crude one. Likewise, when he hears men leaving in a huff because Mariana has refused one of their demands, he is not aware that she is putting her job—and his safety—in jeopardy. The tenseness of this situation is heightened by the fact that Mariana is entertaining and then rebuffing the very persons who are hunting Hugo during the day. Hugo’s blindness to his danger makes that danger more palpable to the reader.
W Critical Reception Blooms of Darkness has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with critics citing the allure of Mariana’s character and the simple, evocative language of the novel as its greatest virtues. The reviewer for Publishers Weekly calls Mariana “an exhilarating tragicomic heroine” and claims that Appelfeld’s “lean, spare prose does not shy away from harsh realities.” Also entranced by Mariana, David Leavitt raves in the New York Times Book Review that she is an “astonishing creation” who “sets the novel on fire the moment she enters it.” Focusing on Appelfeld’s language, a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews observes that Blooms of Darkness is “a beautiful read” that “achieves its powerful emotive effects through simplicity and understatement.” Leah Strauss writes in Booklist that the novel is “a haunting tale of love and loss with a conclusion that is both grim and elegantly hopeful.” Some critics rank the novel with Elie Wiesel’s Night and The Diary of Anne Frank, two of the most critically acclaimed and widely read works on Nazi occupation that are told from the point of view of a young person. Writing in the Library Journal, Henry L. Carrigan Jr. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Blooms of Darkness
German soldiers enter a Ukrainian city like the one that serves as the setting for the novel Blooms of Darkness. Roger Viollet/Getty Images
claims, “This latest from Israeli novelist Appelfeld joins classics such as Elie Wiesel’s Night in depicting the struggles of a young man to come to terms with the loneliness and despair of a world falling apart.” Leavitt strikes a similar chord, noting that “like Anne Frank’s diary—a work to which it will draw justified comparison—Blooms of Darkness records a brutal process of education.”
Leavitt, David. “The Whore’s Secret.” Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. New York Times Book Review 21 Mar. 2010: 16(L). Print
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buruma, Ian. “What Is There to Say?” Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. New York Review of Books 57.7 (2010). Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Asserts that Appelfeld treats being Jewish as an affliction and that the author could be read as being insensitive to assimilated Jews.
Works Cited
Appelfeld, Aharon. Blooms of Darkness. New York: Schocken, 2010. Print. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2010. Print. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. Publishers Weekly 4 Jan. 2010: 28. Print. Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2010: 66. Print.
Strauss, Leah. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. Booklist 15 Mar. 2010: 18+. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cooper, David. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. New York Journal of Books. New York Journal of Books, LLC, 9 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Argues that a central theme in Blooms of Darkness and other novels by Appelfeld is a sense of sadness and loss among the Gentiles who
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The events of Blooms of Darkness take place during the struggle to fight off invading German forces. S. Khoroshko/Slava Katamidze Collection/Getty Images
attempt to shield Appelfeld’s Jewish characters from persecution. Glinter, Ezra. Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. National Post [Toronto]. National Post Inc., 13 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Examines how Appelfeld evokes the tragedy and horror of the Holocaust without referring specifically to concentration camps, in part by focusing on private situations in remote corners of the war zone. Margolin, Elaine. “Men from Boys.” Rev. of Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld. Jerusalem Post 4 Apr. 2010. Print. Provides an autobiographical reading of Blooms of Darkness and speculates that Appelfeld writes to reunite with his mother, who was killed by Nazi soldiers when Appelfeld was nine years old. Gale Resources
“Aharon Appelfeld.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. “Aharon Appelfeld.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
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“Aharon Appelfeld.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
In an online interview with Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Appelfeld discusses his escape from a German concentration camp in 1941 and the various ways he accesses memories when he prepares to write about his past. http//www.haaretz.com/culture/ books/questions-answers-a-conversation-withaharon-appelfeld-1.283933 At writerscast.com, a Web site that features interviews with contemporary writers, Aharon Appelfeld discusses with David Wilks how he works with translators, about the languages he spoke in his home, and why Blooms of Darkness is a work of fiction despite its many autobiographical elements. http//www .writerscast.com/aharon-appelfeld-blooms-of-dark ness/ The Web site Roland Collection of Films on Art provides a video interview with Aharon Appelfeld in which he discusses his arrival in Israel and his decision to become a writer. http//www.rolandcollection.com/ films/?prm=a20-b116-c1662-d2-e0 TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Blooms of Darkness For Further Reading
Appelfeld, Aharon. The Story of a Life: A Memoir. New York: Schocken, 2004. Print. Memoir chronicling a period of more than seventy years covers Appelfeld’s escape from a concentration camp, his resettlement in Palestine at age fourteen, his university studies, and his writing career. Appelfeld also reflects on what it means to be Jewish and why one should write about the subject without sentimentality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Ed. Otto H. Frank. Trans. Susan Massotty. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2010. Print. New edition of the diary contains 30 percent more material than the original version (1947) and recasts Anne Frank to be more sarcastic and rebellious than the sensitive, vulnerable child of the original version.
Aharon Appelfeld was born on February 16, 1932, in Zhadova, a village in what is now Ukraine. When he was eight years old, Nazi soldiers raided his home, murdered his mother, and deported him and his father to a concentration camp in the Romanian-occupied district of Transnistria. The boy escaped from the camp and lived in the woods for three years before he was captured by the Russian army and forced to work as a cook. After the war, Appelfeld lived briefly in a displacedpersons camp in Italy and then immigrated to Palestine in 1946. He now lives in Israel. The author of more than forty books, Appelfeld is considered one of the leading writers who publishes in Hebrew. Appelfeld draws heavily on his past in much of his fiction but rarely makes explicit reference to his experience in a concentration camp, focusing instead on private, isolated situations in remote areas away from the battlefields and the camps. Although he was raised speaking German, Appelfeld writes in Hebrew, which he began studying at age thirteen, because he believes it would be repugnant to tell the story of the Jewish experience during World War II in the language of those who persecuted Jewish people.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, Rpt. ed., 2009. Print. Like Mariana and Hugo, who trudge through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the waning days of World War II, the father and son in McCarthy’s novel wander alone through a world in the aftermath of its devastation, scavenging for food and seeking shelter from murdering bands of thugs.
II recounts the author’s return with her mother to their native soil in 1991. Savage visits personal friends of her mother as well as historical markers such as the excavation of a mass grave that honors victims of Stalin’s purges.
Carell, Paul. Scorched Earth: The Russian-German War, 1943-1944. Atglen: Schiffer, 1994. Print. Regarded by many historians as the definitive account of the German defeat in eastern Europe by the Russian army, this volume contains hundreds of photographs, military campaign maps, and an extensive bibliography.
Roth, Philip. Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work. New York: Vintage, 2002. Print. Roth’s collection of interviews with fellow writers contains a chapter in which Appelfeld discusses his decision to write in Hebrew rather than in German. Savage, Ania. Return to Ukraine. College Station: Texas AM UP (TAMU Press), 2000. Print. Memoir by a Ukrainian-born journalist who fled during World War
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill Wang, 2006. Print. Memoir chronicles author’s experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps with his father and includes an account of Wiesel’s loss of faith in God and his disgust with himself for at times wishing he could be free of his ailing father.
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Joseph Campana
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Blue Heaven By C. J. Box
W Introduction Blue Heaven is a thriller set in the gorgeous ranch country of northern Idaho, where retired Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers come to retire—an area known as “Blue Heaven.” When a twelve-year-old girl, Annie, and her younger brother, William, witness an execution-style murder perpetrated by four retired police officers, they flee for their lives. The killers, however, volunteer to lead the search for the missing children and the unsuspecting local sheriff agrees. With no one to trust, Annie and William meet Jess Rawlins, a old-school rancher with a stubborn streak who is determined to protect the children and serve justice on the killers looking for them. Meanwhile, a retired LAPD detective, Eduardo Villatoro, comes to town to investigate a decade-old robbery-and-murder case that has been unsolved too long and becomes embroiled in the chase. Told over a tense, action-packed forty-eight-hour period, Blue Heaven explores themes of greed, betrayal, trust, justice, and the power of redemption. Upon its publication, the novel quickly became a best seller. In 2009 it received the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 2008. As critic Margaret Cannon states in her review of the book, “Blue Heaven is [C. J.] Box’s seventh novel, and it’s as good as a psychological/action thriller gets.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Blue Heaven is regarded as one of the best examples of the thriller genre published in 2008. To be successful, thrillers use suspense and excitement through a variety of narrative techniques, including cliffhangers, plot twists, and red herrings, and by creating an atmosphere of danger by implied or real violence, crime, chase scenes, and mysterious or menacing characters. In Blue Heaven, the action takes place over a very short time and is
intensified by the reader’s concern for the threatened characters: two scrappy but vulnerable children, Annie and William, who are being chased by four experienced and heartless ex-cops who are determined to kill them. The thriller genre can be traced back to ancient epic poems, like Homer’s Odyssey, and One Thousand and One Nights, which use plot twists and elements of detective fiction. Thrillers have been a popular genre throughout history; whether through stories told around a campfire or in medieval castles or in isolated homes in the wilderness, some of the most popular stories were thrillers because they are entertaining, exciting, and appealed to the human instinct for justice and survival. There are several subgenres of thrillers, such as spy novels, crime fiction, mystery fiction, and legal thrillers. Today thrillers are one of the most successful genres of popular fiction. Blue Heaven also touches on a cultural issue that has garnered debate and controversy in recent years: the conflict between outsiders and longtime residents of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and similar areas because of land development. As outsiders buy up land to build mini-ranches and swoop in for long vacations, longtime residents resent the ostentatious homes and estates of these newcomers. There is a clash of lifestyles and values—and economics. Newcomers are often very wealthy, while many old-time ranchers are not. Although their influx of cash into county coffers and local businesses are welcomed, their lifestyles and culture often are not.
W Themes Betrayal is a recurring theme in Blue Heaven. As the novel opens, Annie and William feel betrayed by their mom because of her boyfriend, and they escape to go fishing— only to witness a murder by four ex-cops. They are then pursued by the killers, who are supposed to follow the law and protect them, not kill them. They are also inadvertently betrayed by the townspeople, who have
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been fooled by the ex-cops. With the killers heading the search for Annie and William, the kids do not have anyone to trust until they meet Jess Rawlins. As in most crime thrillers, justice is also a central theme in Blue Heaven. Jess realizes he has to protect Annie and William, even at the risk of his own life. Eduardo comes to Idaho to solve a decade-old crime because the victim’s family deserves justice. In the process, both men find redemption: Jess, battered by romantic and financial problems and feeling like a failure, is redeemed by doing the right thing for Annie and William; and Eduardo will finally solve a crime that has haunted his conscience for years. Box also touches on a sociocultural theme that has affected the west since the first settlers came out to build ranches and cities in a pristine natural environment: the conflict between new arrivals and those already on the land. Newcomers represent change—sometimes unwelcome change. In Blue Heaven, the new arrivals are the retired LAPD cops who are trying to escape their own haunted pasts. “Box deftly weaves in another important issue that faces the ‘new’ West—depressed rural communities being invaded by ‘transplants’ who move there for the area’s character and then turn around and try to change everything,” Leslie Doran writes in a review of the novel. “Among the many new residents in Idaho are the retired West Coast cops. Some try to fit in and join the community; others stay by themselves and follow unknown pursuits, showing little respect for their neighbors.”
W Style In reviews of Blue Heaven, critics maintain that Box fully uses his rural Idaho setting not only to create suspense in the novel, but also to add richness and texture to the story. Leslie Doran observes that “Box uses the rich Idaho landscape to good effect, setting much of the action outdoors. The rugged wilderness provides a welcome haven for the children, offering many places for hiding while at the same time threatening their chances of survival. Early-spring weather is treacherous, and wildlife abounds, but the most dangerous threat comes from the men chasing them.” Reviewer Hallie Ephron concurs and applauds Box’s ability to engage the reader through setting and by exploiting the characteristics of a suspense novel. “The ranch setting, combined with a rich, complex story, gives the novel the flavor of a Western saga,” she states in her review of Blue Heaven. “Cliffhanger scene shifts, a ticking clock, and escalating danger lend it all the trappings of a suspense novel, but with characters that make the reader care.” Leslie Doran also comments on Box’s use of the ticking clock technique in the novel. “The proverbial ticking clock drives the sometimes-frantic pace of Blue Heaven, with a majority of the novel taking place over a two-day period,” Doran notes.
MAJOR CHARACTERS JESS RAWLINS is a rancher in the North Idaho area known as “Blue Heaven.” When Annie and William Taylor show up in trouble and in need of an ally, Jess helps them at risk to himself. With a failing ranch on the cusp of foreclosure and abandoned by his family, Jess is determined to redeem himself by protecting Annie and William. ANNIE TAYLOR is a twelve-year-old girl who sees a murder while fishing with her little brother, William. The two siblings escape into the woods and find protection from a local rancher, Jess Rawlins. MONICA TAYLOR is Annie and William’s lonely and scared mother. A heartbreaker, she has a knack for getting involved with the wrong men. WILLIAM TAYLOR is Annie Taylor’s younger brother. While fishing one day, they witness an execution-style murder and must go on the run to escape the killers. EDUARDO VILLATORO is a retired LAPD detective who comes to Idaho to investigate an old robbery case and becomes involved in protecting Annie and William.
Analysis of Box’s narrative style also extends to his prose and exposition. Margaret Cannon finds that “his prose is as spare and elegant as James Lee Burke’s, and his loving exposition of the western American landscape is excellent, as good as anything Hollywood ever put on film.” Reviewers also examine the depth and realism of the characters in Blue Heaven, arguing that Box succeeds in crafting complicated, believable characters facing convincing problems and issues. “One of the more attractive features of any Box novel is the memorable characters he creates,” Leslie Doran argues. “They display the welcome familiarity of the old West while facing the challenges of the new West. His characters are sympathetic, with fully realized depth and complexities.”
W Critical Reception Blue Heaven spent four weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list and received the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel in 2008. Critics praised the novel as a suspenseful, action-packed read. In her Globe and Mail review, Margaret Cannon maintains that “this is a terrific suspense novel, with superb characters and a satisfying plot. You’ll be hooked.” Chris Rubich also commends the sense of high drama and tension in Blue Heaven. “It’s four days of high tension and high action. And Box delivers surprises until the final page,” he states in his review of the novel. Another reviewer, Leslie Doran, finds that the novel “crackles with electric tension and action,
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Blue Heaven
ABOUT THE AUTHOR C. J. Box was born in Casper, Wyoming, and attended college at the University of Denver in Colorado. After graduating in 1981, he worked briefly as a ranch hand, exploration surveycrew member, fishing guide, and newspaper reporter and editor. Box is also the former manager of travel development for the Wyoming Travel Commission. In recent years, he founded the Rocky Mountain International Corporation, which promotes tourism to Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho from Europe. He is currently the CEO and president of the company. In 2001 his first novel, Open Season, introduced the character of Joe Pickett, a crimesolving game warden in Wyoming. Box’s Joe Pickett series has proven to be very popular and the novels have been translated into 24 languages. In 2007 he was honored as Writer of the Year by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. He lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
while the characters plumb the depths of human emotions, including greed, corruption, callous disregard of human suffering and, on the other hand, love, honor and compassion.” Some reviewers, however, criticized narrative strategies that counteracted the carefully constructed suspense. A review in Publishers Weekly found fault with one of the storylines in the novel and unfavorably compared Blue Heaven with Box’s wildly popular Joe Pickett series. “A subplot involving a retired California detective pursuing the original robbery case adds too many extra characters and undercuts the suspense,” the review states. “Readers expecting the same brisk story lines as the author’s Joe Pickett crime novels (Free Fire, etc.) will be disappointed.” Chris Rubich assesses Box’s complicated and authentic characters as one of the best aspects of the novel. “Box excels in capturing the personalities and lifestyles of the inland Northwest,” Rubich asserts. “He also masterfully peels away the layers of lives to reveal secrets that influence folks’ decisions across decades.” Focusing on Rawlins, the protagonist of Blue Heaven, Rubich finds that there are similarities between the hard-knocked Rawlins and Box’s most famous character, Joe Pickett. “Fans of Joe Pickett will find the tortured good-guy values in Rawlins, too,” he adds. “And the added focus of the children struggling just to get home and erase the dangers makes the stakes higher.” Most critics found Blue Heaven to be a rich, fastpaced thriller. “Against a backdrop of wilderness, rich with the scent of pine and cattle, there are strong elements of classic tragedy here as well, as yearning propels all of the characters, good and bad, into mortal peril,” Hallie Ephron concluded in her review. “Blue Heaven is my favorite kind of thriller—one with a heart.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Blue Heaven, by C. J. Box. Publishers Weekly 254.41 (15 Oct. 2007). Print. Cannon, Margaret. Rev. of Blue Heaven, by C. J. Box. Globe and Mail 5 Feb. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Doran, Leslie. “Kids Flee Killers in Idaho Panhandle: C. J. Box Enters Thriller Territory with Plight of Siblings Who Witness a Murder.” Denver Post 24 Feb. 2008. Print. Ephron, Hallie. “Sleuths Bearing Wrenches, and Old Wounds.” Boston Globe 27 Jan. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Rubich, Chris. “Betrayals Mount in Box’s New Novel.” Billings Gazette 26 Jan. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Portrait of C. J. Box, author of Blue Heaven. Matthew Peyton/Getty Images
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Blundell, Graeme. “Long-Running Arm of the Law.” Australian 10 May 2008. Finds Blue Heaven to be TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“as classy, elegiac and as affecting as any of those wonderful Joe Pickett stories.” Graff, Keir. Rev. of Blue Heaven, by C. J. Box. Booklist 104.3 (1 Oct. 2007). Commends Box’s ability to build suspense in Blue Heaven, and calls the novel a true page-turner. Hartlaub, Joe. Rev. of Blue Heaven, by C. J. Box. Bookreporter.com 2008. Web 10 Aug. 2010. Favorable review of the novel that praises Box’s distinctive twist on the crime thriller genre. Gale Resources
“C. J. Box.” Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
C. J. Box’s website, www.cjbox.net, features synopses of his books, his blog, a reader forum and polls, and a photo gallery. It posts updated information on his upcoming appearances and other events. Fans can also sign up for Box’s newsletter. Similar information on Box, his books, and critical reviews of his novels can be found on the Macmillan website, found at www.us.macmillan.com. Tourism information about Idaho, the setting of Blue Heaven, can be found at the Idaho Tourism Bureau website, at www.visitidaho.org. Peruse maps and photographs, sign up for an e-newsletter, and learn about all the events and activities happening in the state. The National Park Service website for Yellowstone Park, at www.nps.gov/yell, features video and photos of the gorgeous national park. You can also view the Old Faithful webcam, which streams the geyser eruptions live.
For Further Reading
Anderson, Patrick. The Triumph of the Thriller. New York: Random House, 2007. Print. Explicates the long-standing popularity of the thriller genre and considers some of its most important figures, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Dennis Lehane. Ascari, Maurizio. A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Traces the evolution of crime fiction from the Middle Ages to the late twentieth century, exploring how the genre developed and differentiated itself from detective fiction. Box, C. J. Nowhere to Run. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010. Print. In this novel, Joe Pickett is working in his last week as the temporary game warden in the isolated town of Baggs, Wyoming. When strange things start happening in the surrounding mountains, he is compelled to investigate. James, P. D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Knopf, 2009. Print. James is regarded as one of the world’s top writers of detective fiction. In this literary history, she investigates the origins of the genre and considers the long-lasting appeal of detective novels. Parker, T. Jefferson. Iron River. New York: Dutton, 2010. Print. Parker’s 2010 novel is the third in the series featuring Los Angeles Sheriff Deputy Charlie Hood. In this book, Hood joins Operation Blowdown, a law enforcement attempt to stop the massive flow of guns and money across the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Margaret Haerens
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The Boat to Redemption By Su Tong
W Introduction Set in Milltown, a fictional city along the Golden Sparrow River in China, The Boat to Redemption (2009) chronicles eleven years (1966-1977) in the life of Ku Dongliang, the son of Communist Party enthusiasts. Following his parents’ divorce, Dongliang comes of age among barge workers in a river community. Over the course of the novel, Dongliang, who narrates the story, copes with his father’s disgrace, his mother’s strident loyalty to the Communist Party, and his own frustrated sexual longings by nursing an obsession for Huixian, an orphan who grows into a beauty and becomes a favorite of party leaders. The Boat to Redemption has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the relationships between small-time party members and disenfranchised citizens during China’s Cultural Revolution. The people of Milltown do their best to follow Communist doctrine to the letter, often quoting slogans in their everyday speech, while looking with scorn on the barge workers, who do not concern themselves at all with politics. The story highlights the extremes of behavior to which people resort when forced to live under intense government scrutiny and to vie for political favor. Su Tong’s novel won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Boat to Redemption is set during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which began on August 8, 1966, when the Communist Party of China (CCP) passed the “Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” and ended on September 9, 1976, with the death of the CCP chairman Mao Zedong. Under the supervision of Chairman Mao,
the Cultural Revolution affected the lives of almost every Chinese citizen. The decade was marked by famine, violence, the destruction of antiques and cultural artifacts, and a comprehensive dissemination of propaganda. Mao made his primary appeal to the youth of China, who responded by forming the Red Guards, associations of young paramilitaries who were encouraged by the CCP to terrorize anyone whose devotion to party ideals was deemed questionable. Local authorities were instructed to disregard the actions of these ruffians. Mao spread his ideals by circulating a red book, known in the West as “The Little Red Book,” which was filled with his quotations, and by subsidizing operas and films that celebrated party ideals. He posted his portrait throughout the country and commissioned posters illustrating various aspects of the party’s vision. On June 27, 1981, five years after Mao’s death, the CCP issued an official judgment on the Cultural Revolution, distancing itself from Mao’s actions during that infamous decade but at the same time honoring his contribution to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. China’s government discourages independent research on this period of its history. In writing about this subject while resident in China, Su Tong risks being labeled a dissident by the Chinese government. The Boat to Redemption contains no explicitly derogatory remarks about Mao Zedong or the CCP.
W Themes Martyrdom and celebrity are central themes in The Boat to Redemption. The novel opens with an account of Deng Shaoxiang, a revolutionary martyr who stored guns and ammunition in coffins for retrieval by the Communist army. According to legend, Deng’s activities were discovered when she changed her routine by storing pistols in a baby basket. Before her execution, she set the baby, rumored to be her son, afloat on the Golden
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Sparrow River in his basket. Officially recognized as the child in the basket, Ku Wenxuan lives a life of privilege until middle age. The CCP then revokes his birthright, declaring that the fish-shaped birthmark on his buttocks, which marks him as Deng’s progeny, is fraudulent. Immediately afterward he loses his position as Milltown’s party secretary. The novel’s two central female characters, Qiao Limin and Huixian, pursue honor by auditioning for roles in the party-endorsed operas that tour the country. Neither achieves national fame but both become local celebrities, Qiao as a radio broadcaster, and Huixian for her reenactments of Li Tiemei, the central character in The Legend of the Red Lantern, a famous opera from the period. Aside from its political concerns, The Boat to Redemption focuses on Dongliang’s struggle to escape his father’s tyrannical rule. Shamed by public knowledge of his philandering, Ku Wenxuan will not so much as permit Dongliang to have an erection, even after the latter has grown well into his twenties. Dongliang steadfastly defies his father but cannot summon the courage to move away.
W Style Su Tong’s works have often deviated from conventional modes of storytelling, and the author is also known for crafting lavish, elegant sentences that violate standard rules of grammar. The Boat to Redemption, however, is a traditional, linear novel written in simple, grammatically sound sentences. The action of the novel unfolds in chronological sequence, with the characters often speaking in the stilted language of Communist party doctrine. For example, when a group of barge workers gathers to dissuade Ku Wenxuan from punishing his son for his pursuit of Huixian, Wenxuan tells them, “Go ahead, stir up plenty of trouble and break all the rules. I won’t need to use family law; I’ll let national laws do their job. Sooner or later you’ll be handed over to the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Satirical in his philandering days Ku Wenxuan would seduce a woman by telling her that “your body emanates the spirit of revolutionary romanticism.” During Wenxuan’s stint as party secretary, women felt honored when he told them that they appeared to be living in accord with the revolution’s ideals of hard work and selflessness. Su Tong’s writing in these passages can be read as satirical. In the instances cited above, Su is likely criticizing the leaders of the CCP, who imposed such stilted language on ordinary citizens. He may also be making fun of people who internalize the language to such an extent that they use it when discussing romantic love and such private family matters as disciplining children.
MAJOR CHARACTERS BIANJIN, the town idiot, is declared the rightful son of Deng Shaoxiang, based on the identification of a fish-shaped birthmark on his buttocks. HUIXIAN is the object of Ku Dongliang’s obsession. The two first meet as children, when the abandoned Huixian is adopted by the barge workers in the river community. When she grows into a beautiful young woman, the party casts her as Li Tiemei, the heroine from a famous opera popular during the Cultural Revolution, in its parades. Huixian fails to become an actress and loses her party privileges as a result of her willfulness. KU DONGLIANG, who is fifteen when the story begins, is the narrator of the novel. After his parents’ divorce he moves with his father onto a barge. He falls in love with Huixian, an orphaned girl adopted by the river community. When Huixian moves to Milltown, Dongliang stalks her until the party’s security officers threaten his life. KU WENXUAN grows up believing that he is the son of Deng Shaoxiang, a martyred revolutionary heroine. When investigators declare instead that he is the son of a fisherman and a prostitute, Wenxuan loses his prestigious government post, and his wife divorces him. Wenxuan spends the rest of his life petitioning the government to recognize his birthright. QIAO LIMIN is Dongliang’s mother, a factory worker, and a radio broadcaster. She divorces Ku Wenxuan after he loses his birthright and confesses his extramarital affairs to party officials. Qiao refuses to share custody of Dongliang and forces him to choose to live either with her or with Wenxuan. ZHAO CHUNTANG assumes Wenxuan’s position as party secretary in Milltown. He recruits Huixian by giving her a prominent role in the party’s parades but later demotes her when she refuses to live at his beck and call.
W Critical Reception The Boat to Redemption has received mostly positive reviews. Critics who praise the novel point to the narrator’s charisma and the accuracy of the author’s depiction of life during China’s Cultural Revolution, which Su leavens with bawdy humor that exposes the absurdity of the government’s preoccupations. In the London Daily Mail, Eithne Farry claims that the author “paints Dongliang’s erratic behaviour with broad brush-strokes and the humour is rough, raw and irreverent, but there is genuine sympathy for the maverick
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Su Tong is the pen name of Zhong Gui Tong, who was born on January 23, 1963, in Su Zhou, a city of six million people located along the Yangtze River. He has published several novels and more than two hundred short stories and is among the most widely admired of contemporary Chinese writers. He achieved international fame when a film version of Raise the Red Lantern, a novella from Wives and Concubines (1990), earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film in 1992. A leading figure among China’s avant-garde writers, Su Tong has a reputation for elegant prose and formal experimentation. A traditional realist novel, The Boat to Redemption is recognized as a departure from his previous work.
whose impetuous behaviour can only bring trouble in a prescriptive, claustrophobic world.” SH Lim of Time Out Kuala Lumpur notes that Su successfully portrays the
extremes of behavior characteristic of those who live under intense government scrutiny. “What the novel captures is a kind of life where the frantic impulse to survive—to have enough to fill the stomach and quench the throat—overwhelms and precipitates ridiculous behavior,” Lim writes. Likewise, Shabhano Bilgrami argues in the Asian Review of Books that the balance Su strikes between “painful, gut-wrenching incidents” and “a passion, which is tempered by humor” make the novel “not only bearable but mesmerizing to read.” Critics who fault the novel claim that Su undermines its plot by devoting too much of the second part of the book to Huixian. Lim calls Huixian’s misadventures “a detour that leads nowhere.” Hugo Barnacle of the London Sunday Times argues that the second part of The Boat to Redemption “breaks one of the basic rules of narrative”: Dongliang, a first-person narrator, cannot possibly know about Huixan’s experiences on land because he is not present. One notable exception to this view is Christine Williams’s review in the Sunday Express, which asserts that, when Huixian becomes the focus of the narrative, “more twists, turns and tragedies hold the reader’s attention right to the end.”
In The Boat to Redemption, the main character lives with his father on a barge in China. ª Horizon International Images Limited/Alamy
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The Boat to Redemption BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barnacle, Hugo. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Sunday Times. Times Newspapers Ltd, 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Bilgrami, Shabhano. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Asian Review of Books. Image Alpha (Holdings) Ltd, 4 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Farry, Eithne. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Mail Online. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 1 Feb. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010.
community and concludes that the novel’s central concern is with how corrupt politics exile a person from his or her potential. “The Boat to Redemption a Winning Perspective on the Past.” People’s Daily Online. People’s Daily Online, 7 Dec. 2009. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Distinguishes The Boat to Redemption from other novels and short stories by Chinese writers on the Cultural Revolution, which, the reviewer notes, typically have adult rather than adolescent protagonists. Gale Resources
Lim, SH. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Time Out Kuala Lumpur. Time Out Group Ltd, May 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010.
“Zhong Gui Tong.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
Su Tong. The Boat to Redemption. Trans. Howard Goldblatt. London: Random House, 2010. Print.
Open Web Sources
Williams, Christine. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Express.co.uk. Northern and Shell Media Publications, 4 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hill, Justin. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Speculates that English-speaking readers are likely to find the humor and the violence in the novel juvenile and overwrought but that Chinese readers will regard the novel’s melodrama as an accurate representation of life during the Cultural Revolution. Li, Yiyun. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 9 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Notes that, on the strength of his previous, more experimental works, Su Tong had established himself as a leader in China’s avant-garde, but that The Boat to Redemption marks a shift in Su’s style from exotic, labyrinthine sentences to the more prosaic, familiar language of a realistic novel. Mirsky, Jonathan. “Fear Hovers in China.” Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Spectator 16 Jan. 2010: 36+. Print. Contains anecdotes from some of Su Tong’s colleagues, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and gives specific examples of the privileges high-ranking party members enjoyed, including greater access to their personal files and permission to add details to the most flattering aspects of the files. Mukherjee, Neel. Rev. of The Boat to Redemption, by Su Tong. Neelmukherjee.com. Neel Mukherjee, 5 Feb. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Contrasts the proper lives of the party members living on land with the bawdy, slapstick existence of the people in the barge
Su Tong discusses reading habits in modern China and corruption in the Chinese publishing industry in an interview with China Daily, an English-language national newspaper published by the Chinese government. http//www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/ 2003-08/24/content_257750.htm China the Beautiful—a cultural heritage Web site with links to pictures and information on Chinese classics, art, history, literature, poetry, calligraphy, and paintings—has recordings of several of the arias from The Legend of the Red Lantern, the opera frequently referenced in The Boat to Redemption. http//www .chinapage.com/xwang/aria.html#list Morning Sun, a Web site that documents the origins and history of the Cultural Revolution in China, has video footage of The East Is Red, a government-sponsored, epic song-and-dance film celebrating the virtues of Communism. http//www.morningsun.org/east/eir. html Morning Sun also features slides of government forms documenting the resettlement of people and the confiscation of goods. http//www.morningsun.org/ living/personnelFiles/index.html Chineseposters.net, a Web site maintained by Dr. Stefan R. Landsberger, a sinologist trained at Leiden University in the Netherlands, showcases one of the largest private collections of Chinese propaganda posters in the world. Spanning the period from 1925 to 2006, the collection is arranged by date and theme. http// chineseposters.net/gallery/ The Mao Tse Tung Internet Archive houses a collection of quotations from Chairman Mao arranged in thirty-three categories, including “Youth,” “Women,” “Culture and Art,” “Correcting Mistaken Ideas,” and “Self-Reliance and Arduous Struggle.” http// www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/ red-book/
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The Boat to Redemption For Further Reading
Gao Yuan. Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987. Print. Gao’s memoir covers the period from 1966 to 1969, when he was in middle school and joined the Red Guards. As a student Gao zealously backed the Cultural Revolution in China, despite the fact that his father was a target of the Communist Party. Jin, Ha. A Free Life. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print. This story of a Chinese couple who immigrate to the United States after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 contrasts the immigrant experience with the upheavals of revolution. Like The Boat to Redemption, Ha Jin’s novel traces the dissolution of a single-child family.
the 1930s in rural China, this novel focuses on how large-scale historical events, like the Second SinoJapanese War (1937-1945), disrupt family life and create intolerable conditions in communities. Like Su Tong and Raise the Red Lantern, Mo Yan became famous in the United States when a film adaptation of Red Sorghum was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988. Su Tong. Raise the Red Lantern: Three Novellas. Trans. Michael S. Duke. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. Print. Initially published as Wives and Concubines, this collection of novellas secured Su’s reputation when a film adaptation of Raise the Red Lantern was nominated for the 1992 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. Like Ku Wenxuan, the heroine of the title story suffers chronic humiliation and takes refuge in increasingly bizarre behavior.
Li, Yiyun. The Vagrants. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. Set in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, this novel centers on the execution of a former Red Guard member accused by the Communist Party of being a counterrevolutionary. Like Su Tong, Li focuses on how the politics of the era affects romantic and familial relationships.
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life. New York: Grove Press, 2000. Print. This memoir chronicles the writer’s coming-of-age in the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. Wolff lives with his mother, but like Dongliang, spends much time reflecting on the unfair choices the divorce forces him to make.
Mo Yan. Red Sorghum: A Novel of China. Trans. Howard Goldblatt. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print. Set in
Joseph Campana
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Bold as Love By Gwyneth Jones
W Introduction Winner of the 2002 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the United Kingdom’s premiere prize for novels in the science fiction category, Bold as Love is the first book in Gwyneth Jones’s pentology about a group of rock musicians at the helm of a near-future England on the brink of imminent collapse. As this first installment opens, the British royal family has quit and what is left of Parliament has declared Dissolution Year, breaking its ties with the other countries in the United Kingdom just as the European Commonwealth is itself fragmenting wholesale. England’s Home Secretary decides to bolster public morale by establishing a Counter Cultural Think Tank, a sort of shadow government composed primarily of rock stars. But an Ozzie Osbourne-type figure, Pigsty Liver, envisions a different scenario, staging a violent coup d’état at a Cabinet meeting that claims the lives of the Home Secretary and many of the rockers assigned to the Think Tank. The story pits Pigsty in a battle for control of England with surviving rockers Ax Preston, Sage Pender, and Fiorinda Slater, friends modeled on the legendary figures of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere. The updated Arthurian triumvirate prevails, now confronted with the seemingly insurmountable task of transitioning England out of its turmoil. Bold as Love has been praised for its vivid characterizations of its three main protagonists as well as for its thoughtful meditations on current social, political, and environmental issues extrapolated to some of their more unfortunate consequences. In an interview with LOCUSonline (“Gwyneth Jones: Magical Science”), Jones offered a synopsis of the series: “People argue over whether the ‘Bold as Love’ books are fantasy or science fiction. I call them fantasy, because the story is a romance. It’s set in the future, but it’s about a good prince, a fairy princess, and a perfect Champion (rock stars being the knights and princesses of
our culture). On the other hand it’s set in the future, in a time of profound change. It’s about a global social and scientific revolution, and it involves plenty of high-tech extrapolation from the possibilities of the present day. So maybe it’s fantasy and science fiction.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Bold as Love takes its name from the title of a 1967 Jimmie Hendrix album, Axis; Bold as Love. Indeed, the novel as a whole owes much to the countercultural movement of the 1960s and early 1970s and the notion that rock musicians had political sensibilities worth taking seriously. As Francis Spufford explains, “The salient oddity of Bold as Love is that its achievement is rooted not in the festival scene of 2001, but in the world of 1971. It substantiates the dreams not of present-day apocalypse-minded teenagers, but of their counterparts 30 years ago, who read Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius novels and relished the fantasy of the Rolling Stones playing gigs in the rubble of liberated cities.” But, as Jones’s comments in an interview with Andrew M. Butler indicate, the novel is even more broadly indebted to history, both personal and political: “You can think of the ‘Bold as Love’ sequence as being based on my life and times: including the formative influence of my parents’ struggle against Fascism in the thirties, the Gravity’s Rainbow story of the Second World War and the rocket science that came out of that, the austerity of the fifties, the psychedelic sixties, Vietnam, Civil Rights, molecular biology, neuroscience, environmental disaster, the lot. It’s all in there, all the fashions and customs and history that I’ve been exposed to, all mixed up together.” Bold as Love is also much indebted to the mythology surrounding King Arthur. The relationships among Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda is drawn on the famous love triangle
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MAJOR CHARACTERS PIGSTY LIVER is a drug-addled and destructive rocker who is thwarted is his attempt to overthrow the government of the Counter Culturals. SAGE PENDER, as the Lancelot figure, is Ax Preston’s right-hand man. He is the visionary behind the band AOXOMOXOA and THE HEADS and a techno-wizard capable of transforming his face with holographic images of skulls. AX PRESTON is the King Arthur figure in the novel, the rocker who directs England’s restoration. He is the lead guitarist of the band THE CHOSEN FEW, armed with heroic ideals and a database implant. FIORINDA SLATER is the Guinevere figure in the triumvirate of friends who attempt to rebuild England. She is a daughter of rock-and-roll royalty, singer for the band DARK, and possibly possessed of magical powers.
of Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere. Accordingly, there is the familiar three-way political and sexual intrigue. But Jones rewrites the myth with a twist so that, instead of Fiorinda disrupting the bond between the two men—Ax,
the King Arthur figure, and his trusted ally, Sage, as Lancelot—all three remain partners and friends. The camaraderie of King Arthur’s Round Table remains intact, and there is the suggestion that a peaceful England-cum-Camelot will be restored out of the maelstrom.
W Themes Jones is herself a product of the counterculturalism movement of the 1960s. Thus, the major themes in the novel grow out of her well-developed social consciousness. Bold as Love is antiestablishment in the sense that it foresees a world transformed by the rock anthems of the 1960s, using countercultural poetics as a curative to social, political, and environmental crises. The world inherited by Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda is bleak and chaotic: England has no allies and no central government; a virus has nearly obliterated the Internet; electricity reserves are shrinking; uncontained diseases are at epidemic levels; a conflict with Islamic separatists in Yorkshire verges on an ethnic bloodbath; and pollution and global warming are serious threats as well. The three friends discover their hidden talents as they attempt to restore England’s infrastructure and economy and crusade on behalf of Green causes. Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda shift their attention
Photo of Gwyneth Jones, author of the novel Bold a Love. ª Jeff Morgan 03/Alamy
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from one calamity to another and devote their sparse free time to giving free public concerts aimed at national solidarity. The novel deconstructs contemporary power struggles in England using what Jones calls the “Matter of Britain” to explore what truly is the matter with Britain (qtd. in Forshaw). But Jones has also insisted that the novel is not so much nationalistic as it is suspicious of entrenched power structures in general and political apparatuses that have long since outlived their usefulness.
W Style The style of Bold as Love is informed by a musical consciousness. In fact, the website for the series includes a list of the fictional band members who comprise Jones’s cast of characters as well as a musical playlist for each chapter with songs that express its thematic concerns. References to actual song titles, lyrics, and rock performers abound in Bold as Love. Combined with Jones’s staging of concerts as the sites of political maneuvering, these allusions add to the novel’s spirit of youthful energy. Analogous to some of the rock lyrics Jones references, Spufford described Jones’s prose as “elegant in a disheveled way.”
W Critical Reception Results of a 1993 survey conducted by the journal Science-Fiction Studies counted Jones among the most unjustly neglected writers of the genre (Weinbaum). Writing for a Femspec symposium in 2004, Batya Weinbaum recorded no change in Jones’s critical stature despite her winning of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Weinbaum called for a critical reassessment, noting, “Every sf academic I know admires and respects Jones’s work. The complex imbrications of hard scientific and ethical speculations, the fiercely insightful feminist, leftist, and green politics, and the intense critiques of gender, ethnicity, and colonialism we find in her fiction cry out for the kind of attention that Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and Marge Piercy have received.” Bold as Love attracted largely positive, if slight, critical notice. Reviewers were impressed by Jones’s inventive use of rock-and-roll and Arthurian motifs applied to a future political landscape. They were unanimous in their admiration for Jones’s well-drawn characterizations of Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda and the loyal relationship that develops among them. Though the novel is bleakly pessimistic in some of its future prognostications, critics found it to be ultimately infused with a sense of hope due to the idealism of the rock musicians. Suzanne Keen, for one, commented, “Normally, serious literary fiction flirts with sci-fi only in the form of dystopia, but Bold as Love puts the question positively: What would it take to build a
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alongside more than twenty fantasy novels for young adults, Gwyneth Jones has produced a considerable body of science fiction for adult readers, including a trilogy published in the 1990s about an Aleutian invasion of the earth and a pentology published the following decade about a trio of 1960s-inspired rock stars who assume control of a near-future England just as it threatens to deconstruct into Dark Ages chaos. Many times short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain’s most prestigious prize for writers of science fiction, Jones finally won in 2002 for Bold as Love, the first volume in her series of stories dedicated to the countercultural idealism of the 1960s.
Utopia, and who would you put in the seats of that Round Table?” Asked about the novel’s optimism by Sandy Auden for the SF Site, Jones responded, “I didn’t make that decision, the music did. That’s what music does, if it works, whether it’s Chopin or Blink 182. It excites, raises your spirits, arouses, gets people going.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Auden, Sandy, and Gwyneth Jones. “Winning with a Bold Streak: An Interview with Gwyneth Jones.” SF Site. Web. 27 July 2010. Butler, Andrew M., and Gwyneth Jones. “Going Uphill: An Interview with Gwyneth Jones.” Femspec 31 Dec. 2004. HighBeam Research, Gale. Web. 26 July 2010. Forshaw, Barry. “Books: Biography of Gwyneth Jones: The Music of the Future.” Independent [London] 12 Dec. 2003. NewsBank, Access World News. Web. 26 July 2010. “Gwyneth Jones: Magical Science.” LOCUSonline Jan. 2004. Web. 24 July 2010. Keen, Suzanne. “Christmas Critics, Novel, Book Reviews.” Commonweal 5 Dec. 2008. HighBeam Research, Gale. Web. 26 July 2010. Spufford, Francis. “Visons of Albion: Francis Spufford Celebrates a Rock ‘n’ Roll Pastoral.” Guardian [London] 25 Aug. 2001: 8. Print. Weinbaum, Batya. “Jones: An Introduction.” Femspec 31 Dec. 2004. HighBeam Research, Gale. Web. 26 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bartholomew, Kathleen. Rev. of Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones. Green Man Review. Web. 24 July 2010.
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Issues high praise for the “larger than life” trio of Ax, Fiorinda, and Sage and the novel’s well detailed, if less mythic, minor characters. However, Bartholomew notes that the English specificity of the novel may prove an obstacle to American readers. “Bold as Love: Publisher and Industry Reviews.” Waterstones.com. Web. 25 July 2010. Reprints a Kirkus review that calls Bold as Love “a gripping evocation of what happens when the ideals and protests of popular music are played out for real with guns rather than guitars.” Rev. of Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones. Publishers Weekly 252.36 (12 Sept. 2005): 48(1). Student Resource Center - College Edition Expanded. Web. 23 July 2010. Describes the premise of Bold as Love. Butler, Chris. Rev. of Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones. infinityplus: sf, fantasy, horror. Web. 24 July 2010. Finds little in the way of escapism in the novel, wishing for more of the scenes in which Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda find a few moments of relaxation away from all of England’s troubles. Schroeder, Regina. Rev. of Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones. Booklist 102.3 (1 Oct. 2005): 43(1). Student Resource Center-College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 23 July 2010. Calls Bold as Love a “satisfying blend” of rock-and-roll idealism and Arthurian legend. Skoya, David. Rev. of Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones. the SF Site. 2001. Web. 24 July 2010. Considers the novel’s premise hard to believe but nonetheless judges Bold as Love a worthwhile read because of its finely drawn characters. Gale Resources
“Gwyneth A(nn) Jones (1952-).” Something about the Author. Vol. 159. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 113-16. Something about the Author Online. Web. 28 July 2010.
250-52. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Suzanne Keen described the website for the “Bold as Love” series of novels, http//www.boldaslove.co. uk/The%20Bands%20Framed.html, as “a multime dia work of art in its own right.” The site prioritizes a cast list identifying the members of the rock bands fictionalized in the novels and provides a playlist representative of thematic concerns for each of the chapters in each of the novels in the series. Jones’s own homepage, http//homepage.ntlworld. com/gwynethann/, provides biography and personal anecdotes and access to the author’s blog and the “Bold as Love” webpage. For Further Reading
Jones, Gwyneth. Band of Gypsies. London: Victor Gollancz, 2005. Print. The fourth novel in the “Bold as Love” sequence. ———. Castles Made of Sand. London: Victor Gollancz, 2002. Print. The second novel in the “Bold as Love” sequence. ———. Midnight Lamp. London: Victor Gollancz, 2003. Print. The third novel in the “Bold as Love” pentology. ———. Rainbow Bridge. London: Victor Gollancz, 2006. Print. The final novel in the “Bold as Love” series. Malory, Sir Thomas. Le morte d’Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table. New York: Signet, 2001. Print. A concise rendering of Malory’s famous chronicles of the legendary King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table, written in the fifteenth century. Janet Mullane
“Jones, Gwyneth A(nn) 1952-.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 123. Detroit: Gale, 2004.
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The Bonesetter’s Daughter By Amy Tan
W Introduction The Bonesetter’s Daughter addresses Amy Tan’s concerns with memory, writing, and the tension between mothers and daughters. Written in three parts, the novel tells the stories of multiple generations of women in one Chinese American family, beginning with Ruth, a middle-aged American-born editor and ghostwriter living with her boyfriend and his children in San Francisco. Ruth is experiencing an identity crisis in her relationships with her boyfriend and her mother, LuLing, a Chinese immigrant who has always been a figure of unwelcome dominance in her daughter’s life. But when Ruth begins to see signs of dementia in LuLing, she realizes that she risks losing her only link to her family’s history. The second part of the book is a first-person telling of LuLing’s story, which she wrote down in Chinese calligraphy when she began losing her memory. Ruth has her mother’s memoirs translated and, as she reads the astonishing story, she discovers shocking revelations about her family history. In the book’s third part, Ruth decides what to do with the information she has, leading her to make major life changes and finally find her own voice. Reviewers were largely impressed with Tan’s handling of her multiple storylines and numerous characters, although many asserted that Tan concluded the story too abruptly.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the novel, LuLing is born in a village called Immortal Heart near Peking (Beijing) in 1915, and her story in the second part of The Bonesetter’s Daughter ends at the dawn of World War II, when she immigrates to the United States. In the twenty-odd years of LuLing’s life that are recounted, China underwent some of the most profound social and political changes in its history. The Revolution
of 1911 resulted in the 1912 founding of the Republic of China, moving the country away from the imperial rulers who had controlled it for thousands of years. A constitution was passed in 1913, and the provisional senate and president began instituting reforms intended to create a balance of powers. The effort to move the country toward democracy was short-lived, however, as the permanent president, Yuan Shih-kai, attempted to reinstitute imperialism and declared himself emperor. Additionally, the country was still largely controlled by regional warlords and a feudal system. Even after it agreed to play a role in World War I on the Allied side— under the condition that all German-held regions of China be returned to Chinese control—the country continued to be subjected to foreign imperialism, which the Chinese deeply resented. The awarding of the formerly German-held Shandong Province not to China but instead to Japan was a particularly sore point, and a wave of Chinese nationalism was sparked. On May 4, 1919, thousands of students organized a massive protest and strike, issuing a list of demands. Businesspeople and workers around the country also went on strike to show their solidarity with the May 4 Movement. It was out of this movement that Chinese Communism emerged. In 1921 the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded. The Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) had been established as China’s first political party in 1912, and the two originally worked together to remove the warlords from power in the provinces. A violent split occurred between the parties, however, and during the 1927 Shanghai Massacre, Kuomintang leaders purged their party of Communists in a series of arrests and executions. The Kuomintang then formed the central government of China for the next ten years. Nonetheless, the representatives of the CPC set up encampments in rural provinces, establishing these as the Soviet Republic of China. One of the leaders of this movement was Mao Zedong, the future leader of the People’s Republic of China. In the meantime, China was engaged in
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MAJOR CHARACTERS LULING YOUNG is Ruth Young’s elderly mother. Born in a village in China, LuLing has never fully adjusted to life in the United States. As she feels her memory beginning to fail, she writes her memoirs so that her middle-aged daughter might read them and finally understand her and the family’s past. RUTH YOUNG is a Chinese American editor in San Francisco who ghostwrites self-help books and has a contentious relationship with her elderly mother, LuLing. PRECIOUS AUNTIE is LuLing’s mute, disfigured nursemaid in China. Her story is equal in importance to LuLing’s, for at the end of LuLing’s story, Precious Auntie is revealed to be the girl’s real mother.
intermittent battles with Japan over the latter’s attempts to colonize China. In 1937 the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, with Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States all providing support to China. Allegiances shifted when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, drawing the United States into World War II, and broadening the conflict between China and Japan into the second front, known as the Pacific War. It was at this time that many Chinese fled the country, settling in the United States, like LuLing in The Bonesetter’s Daughter.
ª Marc Brasz/Corbis
W Themes As in much of Tan’s work, intergenerational conflict, especially between mothers and daughters, is a hallmark theme of The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Additionally, the novel confronts the lack of understanding between Chinese-born elders and their American-born offspring, as well as the secrets and misunderstandings both between generations of women and within the self. In Ruth’s case, for example, an annual case of mutism every August brings up questions of self-censorship and the problem of finding one’s voice. Similarly, in the second part of the book, LuLing’s nursemaid, known to the child as Precious Auntie, is disfigured and missing her tongue and communicates only with LuLing, through a secret sign language. Written language holds equal symbolic significance in The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Ruth’s career as a ghostwriter—a writer who pens works that are attributed to others—again leads to questions about her own “voice.” That she cannot read LuLing’s calligraphy, but must have her mother’s story translated so that she can understand it, also speaks to the fundamental lack of understanding between mother and daughter. Likewise, LuLing reveals in her own story that Precious Auntie was
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Amy Tan, author of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, at a book signing.
the daughter of the “bonesetter” of the book’s title—and both she and her father had an uncanny ability to “read” meaning into the mysterious dragon bones found in the caves near their home. Later, when Ruth is a child, LuLing believes her own daughter is able to communicate with the dead by writing messages in the sand tray used to practice Chinese calligraphy. In this sense, Ruth is quite literally a ghostwriter. And the ghosts from LuLing’s past—as they exist in her memory and as they existed in reality—are essential to Tan’s narrative, for Tan demonstrates that personal and family history can affect families for generations. Writing for the New York Times, Nancy Willard explained, “For Tan, the true keeper of memory is language, and so the novel is layered with stories that have been written down—by mothers for their daughters, passing along secrets that cannot be said out loud but must not be forgotten.”
W Style The Bonesetter’s Daughter is told in three separate narrative parts. The first is Ruth’s story in contemporary TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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San Francisco, up to her discovery and the translation of her mother’s memoirs. The second part is told in the firstperson by LuLing, and it recalls her childhood and young adulthood in China. The third part returns to Ruth’s life in San Francisco and the decisions she makes based upon what she learns from LuLing’s story. Tan’s work has garnered praise for her unique writing style, which interweaves narratives from different generations and geographical elements into one cohesive story. Her poetic use of language and the complexity of her narrative as the story moves from Ruth’s childhood to LuLing’s life in China has been lauded for its poetic and evocative quality.
W Critical Reception The Bonesetter’s Daughter was well-received by critics and readers, who noted almost unanimously Tan’s ability to weave a complex mystery with great skill. According to Maria Russo, who reviewed the book for Salon.com, “The Bonesetter’s Daughter comes into its own in the flashbacks to Ruth’s childhood, which give an adept and pungent account of the mortifications of a certain type of immigrant childhood: on the one hand overly sheltered and on the other completely without guidance in the navigation of everything from sex to school bureaucracies. And when Tan writes in LuLing’s voice, the effect is nothing short of haunting.” In fact, most critics found Tan’s writing in Ruth’s voice to be strained and only mildly interesting, noting that her storytelling skills do not really come to the fore in The Bonesetter’s Daughter until she leaves Ruth’s voice and begins writing in LuLing’s. Many critics found the book’s third section to be overly simplistic. Helene Lorber, reviewing the novel for the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, wrote: “The book falters at the end, when it switches back to modern-day San Francisco. Having read the family history, Ruth still must deal with LuLing’s illness. She and her partner hatch a scheme to get LuLing into a utopian assisted-living facility that’s more appropriate for a second-rate sitcom than a thoughtful book. There’s even a surprise Schwab account to pay for it all. But the world of memory needs no such gimmicks.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Lorber, Helene. Rev. of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan. Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. Tribune Company. 2001. HighBeam Research. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Russo, Maria. “The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan.” Salon.com 21 Feb. 2001. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Willard, Nancy. “Talking to Ghosts.” New York Times 18 Feb. 2001. NYTimes.com. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952, an American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants. She received bachelor and master’s degrees from San Jose State University. Known for her lyrical prose, many of Tan’s stories focus on the emotional and cultural conflicts between Chinese American mothers and daughters, sisters, or friends who struggle to understand each other across a generational and cultural divide. Tan’s first novel, The Joy Luck Club, was an international best seller and was adapted into a popular film in 1993. Subsequent works by Tan include The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and a children’s book titled The Moon Lady. Tan’s work has been universally critically acclaimed, and she has won numerous awards for her fiction. She resides in Sausalito, California, with her husband.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hull, Akasha. “Uncommon Language.” Women’s Review of Books 18.9 (June 2001): 13. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Brief summary of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, theorizing that this work is “essentially about writing and the act of writing.” Lui, Cynthia W. “Tracing the Life of the Bonesetter’s Daughter.” International Examiner 2 Oct. 2001. Highbeam Research. 30 Sept. 2010. Reviews The Bonesetter’s Daughter from a Chinese American perspective, discussing especially Tan’s focus in all her novels on mothers and daughters. Moxley, Melody A. Rev. of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan. Kliatt 37.3 (May 2003): 22. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Brief, positive review of The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Gale Resources
“Amy (Ruth) Tan.” Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. “Amy Tan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Champion, Laurie. “Amy (Ruth) Tan.” Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Print. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 312. Dunick, Lisa M. S. “The Silencing Effect of Canonicity: Authorship and the Written Word in Amy Tan’s Novels.” MELUS 31, no. 2 (2006): 3-20. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 257. Detroit: Gale, 2008.
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The Bonesetter’s Daughter For Further Reading
Jones, Vanessa E. “Secrets and Lives in Writing Her New Book, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan Reconciles Loss, Memories, and Family Ghosts.” Boston Globe 1 Mar. 2001. Print. Interview in which Tan recounts the revelations she and her siblings had after their mother’s death and the ways in which this affected her writing of The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print. This book comprises a series of autobiographical vignettes, and is often described by critics as a powerful memoir by Kingston of her experiences growing up as a first-generation Chinese American woman who struggles to find her identity.
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Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1989. Print. Tan’s first and best-selling novel, focusing on four Chinese American immigrant families living in California, the book is framed within the narrative of the mahjong game that allows three mothers and four daughters to share stories about their lives. ———. The Kitchen God’s Wife. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print. This is Tan’s second novel, and one where she once again focuses on a mother-daughter relationship. The novel tells the story of Winnie’s past in war-torn China during the 1940s, as she works to establish a relationship with her daughter, Pearl. Nancy Dziedzic
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The Book of Chameleons By José Eduardo Agualusa
W Introduction Set in post–civil war Angola, José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel The Book of Chameleons (2004) is the story of Félix Ventura, a self-conscious albino who invents distinguished family histories for the nouveaux riche of Angola seeking to secure their positions in the turbulent nation. One of his clients, an unnamed former war photojournalist whom Ventura dubs José Buchmann, embarks on a quest to meet the mother Ventura has created for him. Buchmann’s journey leads him to face a crisis from his real past that threatens Ventura’s love affair with a photographer named Angela Lucia. The Book of Chameleons won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. Agualusa has been praised for his ability to use the technique of magic realism, a style of writing used by Latin American writers that blends fantastical elements with realistic portrayals of everyday events. The Book of Chameleons is narrated by a gecko named Eulálio, who in the novel is a reincarnation of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer believed to be among the chief contributors to the development of magic realism.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Book of Chameleons is set sometime between 1992 and 1994, during a lull in what up to that point had been a seventeen-year civil war in Angola. This civil war had, in turn, followed a fourteen-year war for independence from Portugal. The Portuguese landed in Angola in 1575 and ruled the territory as a colony from 1655 to 1951, when the area was declared an overseas province. Begun in 1961 as an uprising against forced cotton harvesting, the Angolan War for Independence was not concluded until 1975, shortly after a leftist coup in Lisbon overthrew the
authoritarian regime in Portugal. Upon gaining independence the three leading factions in Angola—the Communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the anti-Communist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, and an association of separatist movements called FLEC—waged a twentyseven-year war for control of the new republic. The war finally ended in 2002. Much of the fighting was funded by the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which saw Angola as a crucial ally in the Cold War. According to most estimates more than 500,000 people died in the conflict. The early 1990s was a period of political and economic optimism in Angola. The ruling Communist Party made concessions to rival factions, bringing a lull in the fighting, and a series of discoveries of new petroleum reserves turned Angola into one of the richest countries in Africa. Fortunes were made overnight. However, the newly wealthy had to fight for social acceptance from the landed Portuguese-speaking aristocracy. To obtain prestige and often to protect themselves, these people sought the services of men like Ventura, who invented aristocratic bloodlines for their clients. Agualusa re-creates the tensions in Angola of the early 1990s by using a technique called magic realism, which was developed by the Latin American writers he grew up reading, namely Jorge Amado, Gabriel García Márquez, and Borges. In this method of writing, elements of magic are woven into a realistic universe in order to give readers a deeper understanding of that universe. The narrator in The Book of Chameleons, a reincarnation of Borges as a highly articulate gecko, is the most conspicuous of the magical elements in the book.
W Themes Identity construction is the central theme of The Book of Chameleons. Agualusa considers the essential characteristics of a person and explores whether it is possible for
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MAJOR CHARACTERS EULÁLIO is the gecko that narrates the story. The events of its life, which are revealed in a series of dreams interspersed throughout the book, are based on the life of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. EDMUNDO BARATA DOS REIS is a vagabond who strikes Buchmann as an interesting subject for a photo essay. As the former journalist tries to capture him on film, his curiosity grows, until one day he visits Barata’s underground home when he thinks the vagabond will be away. When Barata returns earlier than anticipated, he catches Buchmann rummaging through his belongings, and the two men recognize each other from earlier days of the civil war. JOSÉ BUCHMANN is the appellation Ventura gives to a nameless photojournalist who seeks his services. Enamored of the family history Ventura has created for him, Buchmann embarks on a labyrinthine search for his fictional ancestors. However, as he delves into his fictional past, he comes into contact with Edmundo Barata dos Reis, a man from his past. ANGELA LUCIA is a dreamy, somewhat intellectual photographer. She travels the world trying to take pictures that match her ideals for form and color. Ventura falls in love with her because she does not react self-consciously, as most others do, to his skin color. EVA MILLER is Buchmann’s fictional mother, who in Ventura’s yarn disappears under mysterious circumstances. Buchmann embarks on a search for her that takes him halfway around the globe and ultimately returns him to his real past. FÉLIX VENTURA is an albino who creates respectable histories—complete with documents and family portraits—for the nouveaux riche of Angola who require such legacies to secure their prestige and protect their wealth.
people to reinvent themselves by changing one aspect of their identity. In the novel the first marker of each character’s identity is his or her past. The unnamed war journalist in the story, who never discloses why he requires Ventura’s services, attempts to change his present self by purchasing a new past from Ventura, thus becoming José Buchmann. Once given a new name and a new lineage, Buchmann feels free of old burdens and tries to embody his new identity by traveling to the memorials of the forebears Ventura has created for him. While this idea may seem fantastic, Agualusa notes in an interview appended to the novel that in a war-torn country like Angola, many people need new pasts in order to make
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their futures more secure. In Buchmann’s case, as with many real Angolans protecting their new petroleum fortunes, enemies are looking for him, and he is ashamed of something he has done in his past. A new name with documents and pictures of relatives will help throw adversaries off his trail and perhaps allow him to forget what nags his conscience. In The Book of Chameleons Agualusa examines the extent to which the journalist’s new past makes him a new person. He concludes that ultimately a person cannot transform himself or herself in the way Buchmann has tried. In the novel’s climactic scene, a man from Buchmann’s past, and the source of his shame, appears and threatens to disrupt not only Buchmann’s peace of mind but also Ventura and Lucia’s thriving relationship. On the other hand, Agualusa proposes that people can reinvent themselves by falling in love. By showing a character such as Buchmann flourish, even briefly, under a new, distinguished name, Agualusa suggests that part of a person’s identity is often based in how others regard him or her, or how the person senses he or she is regarded by others. At the beginning of the novel, Ventura is convinced that his albino skin makes him unlovable. He brings home prostitutes who eye him with disgust before going to bed with him. For company he enlists the friendship of a pet gecko, to which he speaks after listening to Brazilian love songs. One night he says to the gecko, “You’ve really got terrible skin, you know that? We must be related.” However, when the photographer Angela Lucia shows interest in Ventura, his selfconsciousness gradually evaporates, and he is reborn in their romantic relationship—less eccentric, more affable, and undeniably happy.
W Style Composed in thirty-two short chapters, The Book of Chameleons reads like a set of independently presented vignettes held together by two thinly sketched plotlines— Buchmann’s search for his invented mother and Ventura’s romance with Angela Lucia—as well as by the gecko’s ruminations on love and dreams. Each of chapters has its own title page, with no print on the reverse side, suggesting that what follows is not so much part of a unified novel but an entity unto itself—perhaps a short story or a poem in a collection. At the same time, however, there is a discernible pattern to the book’s arrangement. Six times in the novel, at semiregular intervals, the gecko recounts a dream. Titled “Dream No. 1,” “Dream No. 2,” and so forth, these highly impressionistic pieces comment on the book’s plotlines and themes. For example, in the first dream the gecko walks through a crowd, trying to shake people’s hands, but is ignored—a reverie that speaks to Ventura’s isolation. In “Dream No. 2,” the chapter that precedes Lucia’s arrival in the story, the gecko hears a man’s voice from TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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underground while at the same time a dog appears with a radio around its neck. The man’s voice and the sounds from the radio intermingle, and the gecko recalls the final image from the dream in this confused way: “‘The worst of sins is not to fall in love,’ said God, with the soft voice of a tango-singer: ‘This broadcast has been sponsored by the Marimba Union Bakeries.’” Books that contain such formal eccentricities have been labeled metafiction, which is a form of storytelling that does two things at once: it exists as any regular narrative does, with characters, a plot, complications, and a resolution; and it questions what a story is and if a story can ever be something else. For example, at the very end of the climactic scene in The Book of Chameleons, Agualusa breaks out of traditional narrative form and finishes the scene in a twelve-line visual poem. In addition to resolving the plot, the style of writing used at this point questions the nature of the book of itself. After 180 pages of prose with paragraphs and chapter breaks Agualusa appears to be writing a novel, but twelve lines of verse near the end may suggest that he classifies the work as a poem as well.
W Critical Reception Reviews of The Book of Chameleons have focused primarily on Agualusa’s surprising narrator and on the competence with which the author, in such a slender volume, manages an intricate plot while experimenting with several postmodern tropes. Most of the notices have been positive. Regarding Agualusa’s narrator, perhaps the most positive of the reviews comes from Amanda Hopkinson. Writing in the Independent, she claims, “Not since Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis have we had such a convincing non-human narrator.” Although considerably less effusive, Nicholas Lezard’s review in the Guardian agrees that the book’s narrator is a first-rate storyteller: “To tell the truth, I am not confidently sure why the narrator is a lizard. If there is a symbolic point, it eludes me. But that is actually a strength of the novel, its not being shackled to an interpretation. From a storytelling perspective, it’s very useful: Ventura treats him as a pet, and confides in him; and, being able to climb over any surface, even inverted ones, the gecko can observe anything he wishes. In short, an ideal narrator.” Publishers Weekly calls Eulálio “a lovable narrator, alternately sardonic and wistful.” A review of the novel in African Business, although positive, refuses to overlook the oddness of the choice: “The Book of Chameleons is populated with stories whose characters never quite settle. It is some pages in before you realize that the narrator—rather charming, witty as he is—is a lizard. A very articulate and very friendly lizard, and—like all Agualusa’s narrators—unusually perceptive. But a lizard nonetheless.” Critiques of the book’s plot and the philosophical ground it attempts to cover have been somewhat more
ABOUT THE AUTHOR José Eduardo Agualusa was born Alves da Cunha on December 13, 1960, in Huambo, Angola. He grew up reading Latin American writers Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jorge Amado, whose fictional universes reminded Agualusa of the Angola where he came of age. After graduating from college, where he studied agronomy and forestry, Agualusa split his time between Angola, Brazil, and Portugal. He began working as a journalist for the Portuguese magazine LER and the Angolan newspaper A Capital, as well as writing novels, poetry, and plays. Several of his books have had their beginnings in his newspaper columns, which the writer regards as notebooks to record stories, characters, and phrases that might one day grow into larger works. A Stranger in Goa (2000), for example, began as a newspaper piece about unusual names that seem to represent their owner’s destiny. His 1997 novel Creole, about a Portuguese adventurer who falls in love with a slave woman, won the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature and was a bestseller in seven countries. In 2007 The Book of Chameleons was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, making Agualusa the first African-born writer to receive the honor. His work has been translated into twenty languages.
varied. Among those who praise Agualusa is James Crossley, who, in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, observes, “In description, the novel may come across as a bizarre and confusing mix of the horrific, comical, political, sexual and intertextual, but in the reading, all these elements blend naturally, with subtle and supple results.” Likewise, the New Internationalist finds that Agualusa handles complex material deftly: “It is entirely fitting, in a book dealing with the mutability of truth and ambiguity of identity that the plot morphs effortlessly across genre boundaries, from the dreamscapes of magical realism to a gripping political thriller and even, in the unexpected but wholly satisfying climax, a murder mystery.” Other reviewers, however, were unsatisfied with the ending and found Agualusa’s formal innovations derivative. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Stephen Henighan claims that “the story’s final twists feel imposed.” Village Voice reviewer Alexis Soloski compares Agualusa to the writer he has chosen to emulate and finds the former wanting: “Like Borges, Agualusa (in Daniel Hahn’s translation) writes relatively straightforward prose embellished by vivid visual details. Unlike Borges, Agualusa has a tendency toward the precious—a woman who Polaroids rainbows, a chortling lizard. Agualusa’s novel is gentler than Borges’s fictions, but less intricate and arresting.”
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Gale Resources
Works Cited
“José Eduardo Agualusa.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 16 Sept. 2010.
Agualusa, José Eduardo. The Book of Chameleons. Trans. Daniel Hahn. New York: Simon, 2008. Print. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. African Business Jan. 2007: 64. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. New Internationalist Magazine. 1 Dec. 2006. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. Publishers Weekly 7 Apr. 2008: 41. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Crossley, James. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. Review of Contemporary Fiction 28.3 (2008): 186. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Henighan, Stephen. Times Literary Supplement. 23 Sept. 2005: n. pag. Complete Review. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Hopkinson, Amanda. “Truth Hangs by a Lizard Tale.” Independent. Independent Print Limited, 24 Nov. 2006. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Lezard, Nicholas. “The View from Upside Down.” Guardian. 30 June 2007. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Soloski, Alexis. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. Village Voice. 13 May 2008. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Guterres, Maria. “History and Fiction in José Eduardo Agualusa’s Novels.” Fiction in the PortugueseSpeaking World. Ed. Charles M. Kelley. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2000. 117-38. Print. Explores how Agualusa deploys the trope of magic realism to blur the line between history and fiction. Mabe, Chauncey. “Literary Effects Grow Tiresome.” Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. Sun Sentinel. 8 June 2008. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. Argues that Agualusa leans too heavily on other writers, such as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, and that the novel lacks surprises. Whatley, Daniel. Rev. of The Book of Chameleons, by José Eduardo Agualusa. Quarterly Conversation, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. Considers the various literary influences on Agualusa’s work and cites the namedropping of writers as one of the book’s chief weaknesses. Ultimately, Whatley calls the novel a success because, though its antecedents are obvious, the book “is not precisely like any novel you’ve ever read.”
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Open Web Sources
José Eduardo Agualusa’s Web site contains an author biography, links to descriptions of his books, and a set of photos of the author taken during his travels through Namibia and Angola. http//www.agualusa. info/ The BBC’s Africa Beyond Web site features an interview with Agualusa from 2007, shortly after The Book of Chameleons was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The author discusses the porous boundary between reality and fiction in Angola and the effect his dreams have had on his creative work. http//www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond/africanarts/ 19126.shtml In an interview on the Web site Words without Borders, Agualusa speaks about the Angolan and Latin writers who have influenced his work, his role as a critic of the contemporary politics of Angola, and how an individual’s construction of his or her past directs the person’s future. http//wordswithoutborders.org/ar ticle/an-interview-with-jos-eduardo-agualusa/ For Further Reading
Agualusa, José Eduardo. Creole. Trans. Daniel Hahn. London: Arcadia, 2002. Print. Written as a series of letters by a wealthy adventurer, Creole examines the triangular slave trade between interior Portugal, Angola, and Brazil. Amado, Jorge. Dona Flora and Her Two Husbands. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print. The story of a widow who remarries and later welcomes the ghost of her dead husband back into her bed, this novel is widely regarded as Amado’s masterwork. According to Agualusa, the Brazilian writer is among the first writers in Portuguese to use Brazilians of African origin as main characters in his work. Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print. This volume contains all of Borges’s published short fiction, offering an exhaustive look at the stories from which Agualusa drew much of his inspiration for The Book of Chameleons. Hodges, Tony. Angola: The Anatomy of an Oil State. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003. Print. This nonfiction work examines the corrupt system of patronage in Angola that has widened the rift between the rich and the poor in a country that, Hodges claims, should be able to use its vast oil and diamond reserves to create a prosperous society. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Maier, Karl. Angola: Promises and Lies. London: Serif, 2007. Print. American journalist Maier reshapes his dispatches to the Independent and the Washington Post into a compelling narrative of the civil war in Angola. Pepetela. Mayombe. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996. Print. Mayombe is a novel by Pepetela, a white Angolan who is recognized as one of the country’s most important writers. It examines the racial, emotional, and ideological tensions among the members of the MPLA, who won independence for Angola from Portugal after a waging a guerrilla war between 1961 and 1975.
Spillman, Rob, ed. Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print. This anthology includes an excerpt from Agualusa’s Book of Chameleons as well as writings by Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and other leading African writers. Williamson, Edwin. Borges: A Life. New York: Viking, 2004. Print. This biography examines Jorge Luis Borges through a Freudian lens and offers insight into the writer’s private life, particularly the frustrations and anxieties of his love life.
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Joseph Campana
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The Book of Dead Birds By Gayle Brandeis
W Introduction Gayle Brandeis’s The Book of Dead Birds (2003) tells the story of Ava Sing Lo, a young woman of mixed African American and Korean ethnicity, and her mother, Helen, a former prostitute from Korea who was impregnated by an African American G.I. in the early 1970s. The novel chronicles Ava’s struggle to connect with her mother and to overcome her own feelings of sexual repression. As a young child Ava accidentally killed many of her mother’s beloved pet birds. Years later, in an act of redemption, Ava travels to the Salton Sea to assist in the effort to save birds that have been exposed to agricultural poisoning. The main text is interspersed with flashbacks to Helen’s life in Korea, excerpts from Helen’s journal, and the notebooks of famed naturalist John James Audubon. Critics have admired Brandeis’s first novel for its wellresearched details and its poetic qualities. In 2002 The Book of Dead Birds won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, an award that supports literature of social change.
W Literary and Historical Context
During the mid-1990s, the period in which the main action of The Book of Dead Birds takes place, agricultural poisoning led to the massacre of birds in the Salton Sea in California’s border region. Thousands of birds, including more than fourteen hundred endangered California brown pelicans, died of avian botulism. In the novel, as Ava joins the effort to save these birds, the horrors of the worst bird die-off in U.S. history are described in vivid detail. Korea serves as a secondary setting of the novel. Flashbacks take the reader to Korea during the 1960s, when Ava’s mother was coming of age. Poverty and the exploitation of women were widespread in Korean
society, and many young women were lured into prostitution. The young Helen hopes for a better life than the one she endures as a sea diver, and she naively leaves home to seek her fortune. Soon she and her friend, Sun, are drawn into prostitution, and Helen eventually becomes pregnant by an anonymous African American soldier. Her plight highlights the difficulties that women of her era faced in a society that did not value women and that turned a blind eye to abuse and exploitation.
W Themes The Book of Dead Birds centers on the protagonist’s efforts to connect with her mother. Helen is unable to discuss her painful and brutal past with her daughter. Instead Ava learns her mother’s story through a pansori, a traditional Korean music form in which a long story is told through song. As Helen sings her pansori she incorporates the details of her past with traditional lyrics. Ava accompanies her mother on the chang’go, a Korean drum, and then writes down everything her mother sings about. Ava also makes discoveries about her mother by reading Helen’s journal—what Ava calls her “book of dead birds.” Helen’s entries include obituaries she has written about her dead birds, bits of feathers and eggshell, and newspaper articles related to birds or other topics of interest to Helen. Ava and Helen grow closer when Helen joins her daughter in the bird rescue operation at the Salton Sea. Birds clearly figure heavily in the novel, serving as metaphors for Helen’s inability to escape her past and Ava’s failed efforts to communicate with her mother. Birds both divide and unite mother and daughter. Throughout her life Ava repeatedly kills her mother’s pet birds by accident, and Helen has carefully recorded these events in her book of dead birds. The two women find a semblance of redemption in their efforts to save the birds dying near the Salton Sea, as Ava gains selfconfidence and a greater understanding of her mother.
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W Style The main action of The Book of Dead Birds takes place during the late twentieth century, with the bulk of the story narrated in the first person by Ava. Some parts of the novel are presented in the third person, describing the life of brutality and prostitution Ava’s mother endured in her native Korea in the 1960s. However, rather than providing the gruesome details of Helen’s past all at once, Brandeis reveals the stories bit by bit, interrupting Ava’s narrative with flashbacks that describe Helen’s young adulthood. The author also pauses from time to time to offer entries from the journal Helen has kept as an adult, excerpts from writings by noted ornithologist John James Audubon, and descriptions of the protagonist’s dreams. The text of each of these digressions is set in a font different from that of the novel’s primary text, signaling a shift in time or speaker, away from the main plot. A poet as well as a novelist, Brandeis has been praised for the lyric quality of her prose. Her sensitivity to word choice is evident, for example, in her protagonist’s name. At first glance the choice of “Ava” as the name of the protagonist might seem cliché in its association with birds, but the protagonist explains that her mother drew a different connection to her love of birds when she selected the name: “My mother named me Ava because she liked how the English letters looked—the big A a beak pointed upward, the v a sharp slash of wings, the small a round and flat as a parrot’s eye.” David Abrams, reviewing the novel for January Magazine, comments that “poetry abounds on every page and graces every sentence” and that “Brandeis has a poet’s ear for the music of language.”
W Critical Reception Critical reception of The Book of Dead Birds has been mixed. Commentators count among the novel’s strengths the poetic qualities of Brandeis’s writing. Joanne Wilkinson, in a review for Booklist, argues that Brandeis “is at her best in her lyrical descriptions of nature and in the finely detailed portrait of the emotional tug-of-war between mother and child.” Critics have also appreciated the author’s attention to detail and historical accuracy. In writing about The Book of Dead Birds for Library Journal, Eleanor J. Bader lauds the work as being “poignant and well researched.” Brandeis receives high marks for her well-developed, sympathetic characters. On the other hand, some reviewers have suggested that the author attempts to tackle too many weighty subjects at once. Wilkinson, for example, complains that “Brandeis’ novel suffers, at times, from overly fraught symbolism and an awkwardly tacked-on subplot.” A Kirkus reviewer observes that “too many elements . . . fight for ascendancy and resolution: murdered prostitutes washed up on the shores of the Salton Sea; the sorrowful, desperate
MAJOR CHARACTERS AVA SING LO is the novel’s protagonist. Ava struggles with identity and sexual repression because of her mixed racial background and the fact she has never met her father. She distances herself from men, and is initially cautious with Darryl. HELEN SING LO (originally Hye-yang), Ava’s mother, is a Korean woman and a former prostitute. An American soldier marries her, effectively rescuing her from prostitution; however, he abandons her after she gives birth to another man’s child. She struggles to provide for Ava and continues to be haunted by her past. DARRYL STERNBERG is Ava’s love interest and the director of the bird rescue operation at the Salton Sea. SUN is Helen’s childhood friend, whom she follows into a life of prostitution.
history of Helen’s and Sun’s lives as G.I. prostitutes; and the early massacre at Cheju-do in 1948.” Bader likewise suggests that “Brandeis’s writing is at times heavyhanded.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Abrams, David. “Fledgling Flight.” Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. January Magazine Oct. 2003. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. Bader, Eleanor J. Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. Library Journal 1 May 2003: 153. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. Kirkus Reviews 1 Apr. 2003: 489+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. Brandeis, Gayle. The Book of Dead Birds. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print. Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. Booklist 15 May 2003: 1642. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Dieter, William. “Death Yields Tenderness, Redemption in Birds.” Rocky Mountain News Online 2 May 2003. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. A lengthy assessment that admires the novel’s plot and lauds Brandeis’s effort as a first-time novelist. Mahoney, Blair. Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. Modern Word 30 Jan. 2004. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. A generally positive review that discusses the
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gayle Brandeis was born in 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, and spent her childhood in the Chicago area. She began writing poetry as a young child, and her poetry and other writings have been featured in such publications as the Nation and the Mississippi Review. Brandeis completed an individualized learning program at the University of Redlands in California in which she earned a BA in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing.” She then studied at Antioch University, completing an MFA in creative writing. Her first book-length publication was the nonfiction work Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (2001), a guide for aspiring women writers. In addition to The Book of Dead Birds, Brandeis has written three other novels: Self Storage (2007); Delta Girls (2010); and My Life with the Lincolns (2010), her first novel for young readers. The author and her family live in Riverside, California.
novel’s theme of sexual repression and references to various books, including Audubon’s Birds of America. Pearl, Nancy. “California, Here I Come.” Rev. of The Book of Dead Birds, by Gayle Brandeis. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2004: 144. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. A brief review that provides an overview of the novel. Pelland, Alice. “When a Daughter Takes Flight.” BookPage 10 Nov. 2003. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. An analysis that focuses on the relationship of the protagonist and her mother. Wolff, Carlo. “Healing at Heart of Sensitive MotherDaughter.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 4 May 2003: E6. Print. A review that praises the insightful nature of Brandeis’s writing. Gale Resources
“Gayle Brandeis.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010.
In the story, Ava’s desire to help the endangered birds is prompted by childhood incidents in which she accidentally killed her mother’s pet birds. SpicStock/Shutterstock.com
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In The Book of Dead Birds, Ava Sing Lo goes to the Salton Sea in California to help rescue birds that have come in contact with agricultural poisons. Brent Stirton/Getty Images
Open Web Sources
Gayle Brandeis’s official Web site offers a brief biography, links to the author’s blogs, excerpts from her novels, and information about her inspiration for The Book of Dead Birds. http//www.gaylebrandeis.com/ HarperCollins, publisher of The Book of Dead Birds, furnishes a reading guide for the novel, with a synopsis of the book, discussion questions, and a brief author biography. http//www.harpercollins.com/author/ authorExtra.aspx?isbn13=9780060528041& displayType=readingGuide The Audubon Society presents information about current bird conservation efforts. http//www.Audubon.org/ The Web site for the Bellwether Prize for Fiction features a press release that was issued upon Brandeis’s winning the award in 2002. http//www.bellwether prize.org/
Durrow, Heidi W. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2010. Print. The daughter of a Danish woman and an African American G.I. is the focus of Durrow’s novel. Junghyo, Anh. Silver Stallion: A Novel of Korea. New York: Soho Press, 1990. Print. Set in a small village in Korea during the Korean War, Silver Stallion provides a frank and revealing portrait of how Koreans were affected by the war. Keller, Nora Okja. Fox Girl. New York: Viking, 2002. Print. Fox Girl, which takes place just after the Korean War, concerns the search for Korean American identity as well as the tragic culture surrounding Korean prostitution. Silver, Marisa. The God of War: A Novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. Print. Silver’s work traces the struggles of a family living near the Salton Sea in 1978.
For Further Reading
Choi, Sook Nyul. Echoes of the White Giraffe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print. Choi’s novel for young readers offers insight into the role of women in Korean society. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Harrabeth Haidusek
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The Book of Negroes By Lawrence Hill
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Drawing from the historical document called The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill has created a novel with the same title—a fictionalized account of Aminata Diallo, captured by slave traders from her village in West Africa. The novel was published as The Book of Negroes in Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, and India, and as Someone Knows My Name in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Aminata, an eleven-year-old freeborn Muslim, survives the forced overland march of the coffle (chained line of prisoners) to slave ships headed for South Carolina indigo plantations. During the sea voyage, Aminata insists on calling out the names of the captives to affirm their humanity. Among the named fellow villagers is Chekura, a young man sold by his uncle to slavers, whom she later marries. Aminata uses her skills as translator to work as a baby catcher (midwife). Raped by the ship’s doctor, she gives birth to her first child, who is destined for bondage. On Robinson Appleby’s indigo plantation, Aminata, or Meena as she was known, marries Chekura, though they must live apart, and she learns to read and write from Mamed, the trusted Negro overseer. Later she is sold to Solomon Lindo, a Jewish inspector, but she escapes Charles Town toward the end of the American Revolution and gets to Nova Scotia, where the British have offered freedom to those whose names were recorded in The Book of Negroes. Hill includes historic figures, such as Sam Fraunces, the black owner of a New York tavern, and the Birchtown preacher, Blind Moses Wilkinson, as he describes how Aminata travels to Nova Scotia and then to Freetown in Sierra Leone, and finally to London, England. Despite its realistic depiction of slavery, Hill’s narrative describes kind strangers, the promise of freedom, individual dignity, and the reward of accomplishment.
Context
The historical document called The Book of Negroes records the names of three thousand black people who pledged their service to the British during the Revolutionary War in exchange for freedom and their passage to and settlement in British colonies. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 made illegal the business of transporting and selling slaves; it was followed in 1833 by the Slavery Abolition Act, which outlawed the institution itself. The United States abolished slave trade in 1808, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery in 1865. Black loyalists, like the white loyalists faithful to King George during the Revolution, were offered their freedom in British colonies as a reward for their service behind lines. Bleak conditions, including poor housing and lack of provisions and jobs, revived racial tensions and led to the first race riot. Nearly twelve hundred black loyalists sailed from Halifax back to Africa and settled at Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1792. Moses Lindo, a Sephardic Jew from England, eventually became an inspector after his arrival in South Carolina in 1756; however, Hill’s depiction of this character is otherwise fictional. John Clarkston founded Freetown in 1792, along with freed American slaves who sailed from Nova Scotia. Hill places him in Sierra Leone longer than his actual sojourn. The historical Thomas Peters (1738-1792), known as Black Moses, died shortly after landing in Freetown from malaria, not at the hands of slavers as in the novel.
W Themes The Book of Negroes, published in the United States and Australia as Someone Knows My Name, is about freedom
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and identity, both literal and figurative. Aminata is born free, and thus very aware of the loss of her personal liberty. But she is also intellectually free and able to cultivate her skills despite being in bondage. Assisted by diverse characters, Hill’s protagonist uses her fierce sense of identity to outwit her captors, but it is her proficiency in speaking and writing that insures her survival and ultimate victory. The theme of language is also important. Hill suggests that the fictional slave narrative by Aminata Diallo sheds more light on the institution of slavery. Her skill at articulating events and relationships underscores the value of the storyteller as a witness to history.
W Style Hill’s style is both gritty and eloquent, particularly in the voice of his protagonist, Aminata Diallo. Peppering the narrative and dialogue with colloquialisms of Fulfulde and Bamanankan, as well as English, Hill produces different voices, that are distinguished by such words as woloso, toubabu, and buckra. In addition, Hill mimics the Djeli art of preserving elements of oral tradition, with compound metaphors similar to the kennings of Old English, such as “baby catcher” or “firestick.” He uses fresh images to describe objects, calling the slave ship, for example, “an animal in water,” and he puns effectively, such as with the word Guinea for a geographical place, a unit of currency, and modifier of the epithet for a wench. Hill implicates language at every turn, showing how it has the power to kill or conquer, and he suggests cultural assumptions in the rules governing usage, which, for example, prohibited slaves from using the word “white” or whites from using the name “Mary” for a female slave whose real name was not known. Distinctions between slave and servant collapse first in context, then in actuality. In the tradition of a bildungsroman, Aminata’s tale is one of development, as she is dislocated from her homeland and besieged by obstacles as she travels across three continents. Hill’s spry heroine comes of age by her wit, her ability to read and write, her skill as a negotiator, and her indefatigable virtue.
W Critical Reception Lawrence Hill’s third novel, The Book of Negroes, enjoyed critical acclaim because of its fine storytelling. Already an established Canadian author, Hill turned to an overlooked historical document with the eponymous title of his novel and created a memorable protagonist, whom Stephen Kimber described as both lifelike and larger than life. Sarah Johnson offered similar praise for Hill’s depiction of Aminata as a quintessential unconquerable heroine. Stressing another feature, Tahmima Anam
MAJOR CHARACTERS ROBINSON APPLEBY is a tyrannical indigo plantation owner who abuses Aminata and eventually sells her to Solomon Lindo. CHEKURA, sold by his uncle to slavers, is Aminata’s village companion and later her husband and the father of May. AMINATA (MEENA) DIALLO, the narrator, recounts her life story as an old woman. MAMADU DIALLO, jeweler by trade, is Aminata’s Muslim father who teaches her to write in Arabic. He is murdered by the Toubab slavers. FANTA, the youngest wife of the village chief, is mean to everybody but relies on Aminata to catch her baby on board the slave ship. FOMBA, a gentle hunter, is among those in the coffle who survive the trip to a South Carolina indigo plantation with Aminata. SIRA KULIBARI, the village midwife, is Aminata’s mother. She teaches her daughter to “catch babies,” but she is also slain by slavers. SOLOMON LINDO, an indigo inspector, makes a deal to purchase Aminata from Appleby, on the condition that he can sell her firstborn son. Using his Jewish identity to strike a common chord in Aminata as an outsider, he treats her as a servant, teaches her bookkeeping, and allows her to hire out as a midwife in Charles Town. He manumits her long after she has escaped his servitude. MAMED, the black overseer on the Appleby plantation, teaches Aminata to read and write. MAY, the daughter of Aminata and Chekura, is kidnapped by the Witherspoons but later reunited with her mother in London. TOM, the medicine man on the slave ship, misleads Aminata with his occasional generosity and then rapes her. LIEUTENANT MALCOLM WATERS, a British officer, arranges for Aminata to participate in compiling the ledger known as The Book of Negroes.
credited the protagonist with language skills that play a role in transforming her fate. Many critics agreed that Hill’s own use of language and his development of characters give The Book of Negroes its major strengths. Johnson, writing in Booklist, called the novel “a masterful example of historical storytelling,” The epic style and vivid characters earned the novel the Best Regional Book award for Canada and the Caribbean, the Overall Commonwealth Best Book, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1957, to a black father and white mother, Lawrence Hill explores themes of racial identity and social justice in his work. He received his BA from Université Laval in Quebec City, Quebec, in 1980, and his MA from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1992. Hill has worked as a reporter, freelance writer and researcher, and teacher. His publications include the novel, Any Known Blood (1997); the autobiography, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (2001); and (with Joshua Key), the biography, The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (2007). As of 2010, Hill lived with his wife and children in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Ruth Scurr called Hill’s novel “an imaginative response to the real historical document.” Kimber agreed that Hill’s slave narrative weaves history and fiction so deftly that it is possible to confuse the two and imagine the author’s inventions are historical events. But he was quick to add that he did not impugn Hill for irresponsible handling of the facts. Rather he commended the author for his “seductive power as a storyteller.” Sarah Churchill
pointed out in her review in the Guardian that Hill observes the slave narrative tradition of Olaudah Equiano, and she added that his “textured and nuanced grasp” is reinforced by his historical research. Others, such as Luanne Gaines, applauded Hill for telling Aminata’s story, lest readers forget her. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Anam, Tahmima. “Reading for Pleasure: The Author of a Golden Age Admires a Fictional Narrative Told by a Female Slave.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Bookseller 6 June 2008: 22. Print. Churchill, Sarah. “Bought and Sold.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian 24 Jan. 2009. Web. 30 July 2010. Gaines, Luanne. Rev. of Someone Knows My Name, by Lawrence Hill. curledup.com. Curled up with a Good Book 2007. Web. 23 July 2010. Hill, Lawrence. The Book of Negroes. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. Johnson, Sarah. “Someone Knows My Name.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Booklist 15 Oct. 2007: 33+. Print. Kimber, Stephen. “The Lived Truth of Slavery: Fiction So Powerful It Stumped an Historian.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Literary Review of Canada 15.5 (2007): 19. Print. Scurr, Ruth. “The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. Times [London] 16 Jan. 2009. Web. 30 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hill, Lawrence. “Freedom Bound.” Beaver: Exploring Canada’s History 1 Feb. 2007. Print. Details about the historical document recorded by the British, including entries of freed slaves. Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. “A Slave’s Great Journey.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 26 Feb. 2008. Web. 18 July 2010. Explains use of female North-American slave narratives in portraying Aminata Diallo. Kavanagh, Afra. “Slavery’s Painful Stories.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Canadian Literature 197 (2008): 141-43. Print. Describes Aminata’s indictment of everyone who contributed to the institution of slavery. The Book of Negroes tells the story of Aminata Diallo, a young girl who is captured by slave traders in West Africa. ª North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy
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Kline, Nancy. “From Slavery to Freedom.” Rev. of The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. newyorktimes.com. New York Times 20 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 July 2010. Applauds Aminata Diallo, Hill’s protagonist, who TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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writes a slave narrative that exposes the horrors and ironies of slavery. Gale Resources
“Lawrence Hill.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 July 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id =GALE%7CH1000045561&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial& it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Jane Finch interviewed Lawrence Hill on January 19, 2010, a transcript of which is provided at her Web site at http//www.jane-finch.com/interviews/ lawrencehill.htm as a podcast. The Lawrence Hill Web site, at http//www.lawrencehill. com, includes information on the author and his works. For Further Reading
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: Bedford-St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. Classic autobiography and slave narrative, which affirms the importance of literacy.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Ed. Vincent Carretta. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print. Recounts personal experiences as a slave and later as respected member of the antislavery movement. Greene, Jack P. Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina’s Plantation Society. Columbia: U of South Carolina Press, 2001. Print. Explores the slave economy in South Carolina and discusses gender issues such as reproductive abilities of female slaves and trade skills of male slaves. Mitchell, Faith. Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies. Port Carling: Summerhouse Press, 1999. Print. Describes African American folk culture preserved by slaves and their descendants, particularly in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Schneider, Dorothy, and Carl J. Schneider. Slavery in America. New York: Checkmark Books, 2006. Print. Emphasizes various aspects of slavery using primary materials.
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The Book of Night Women By Marlon James
W Introduction Marlon James’s second novel, The Book of Night Women, traces the life of Lilith, a mixed-race slave on a Jamaican sugarcane plantation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The green-eyed Lilith is the product of a union between a black teenage slave and her white overseer. She feels that her white ancestry elevates her above her fellow slaves, and she is reluctant to join a group of her half-sisters, the “Night Women,” in planning a slave uprising. Lilith eventually becomes involved with Robert Quinn, a white overseer who previously supervised her regular beatings. Lilith and Quinn have a daughter, and at the end of the novel the daughter reveals herself as the narrator of her mother’s story. The Book of Night Women catalogs the horrors of slave life and the complex hierarchies that existed among both enslaved and free peoples during that time. Critical reception of the novel was varied, with many reviews noting the book’s graphic, often shocking depictions of violence. The Book of Night Women was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
Jamaica came under British rule during the midseventeenth century and remained so for more than 150 years. Enslaved Africans were brought to the island via the Atlantic slave trade. Sugarcane and coffee were cultivated in Jamaica, and slave labor was employed to work the plantations, providing a lucrative enterprise for the British Empire. These slaves were often treated brutally by their white overseers, who whipped, raped, and even murdered them. Many female slaves, often barely beyond childhood themselves, bore children as a result of the sexual abuses of white overseers. Lilith, the protagonist of The Book
of Night Women, is the product of such an encounter. Her teenage mother’s death in childbirth is described early in the novel. The Book of Night Women graphically depicts the horrors of life on a typical Jamaican sugarcane plantation in the late eighteenth century and details the difficulties and dangers associated with any act of resistance. With more than twenty slaves for every white master, Jamaica saw numerous uprisings and slave conspiracies during the eighteenth century. In James’s novel, a group of six slave half-sisters, all daughters of the same white overseer, form a secret society called the Night Women. Together they plan an uprising, which ultimately fails with devastating results. Slavery was officially abolished in the British Empire on August 1, 1834. The Book of Night Women follows in the tradition of West Indian literature, which began to develop in the mid-twentieth century. Much of West Indian literature deals in some way with issues and concerns associated with Caribbean history, including language, ethnicity, and national and colonial identity. Like Lilith in The Book of Night Women, many Caribbeans claim a mixed-race heritage and identify with more than one culture, among them African, English, Spanish, and even American.
W Themes Although The Book of Night Women portrays the torture and cruelty that were common in Jamaican society during the late eighteenth century, its central concern is the theme of power versus powerlessness. Throughout the novel the narrator repeatedly declares, “Every Negro walk in a circle.” Gail Lumet Buckley, in her analysis of the novel for the Washington Post, interprets the phrase as a simple, succinct summary of the brutal world of West Indian slavery. “It seems to mean,” says Buckley, “that black life in the Americas was a vicious circle, full of the terrible things that whites did to blacks and that blacks did to whites and to blacks because of whites.” Slaves vastly outnumber whites, and the constant threat of
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rebellion seems to make for an environment even more horrific than that of some other neighboring slave cultures. Sexual and other forms of physical abuse become vehicles for power and control. Susan Straight, writing in the Los Angeles Times, points out that “sex is a weapon, a method, a shackle. An act of violence and power.” Straight notes that some of the slave women’s bodies are “the living chronicle of rape and power.” Indeed, Lilith’s torso is so scarred from whippings that she appears to have a “quilt on her back.” Murder and mysticism also empower slaves as they attempt to resist their vicious oppressors. When a black enforcer, or “Johnny-jumper,” tries to rape the fourteenyear-old Lilith, she resists him and kills him with his own sword. This murder gives Lilith a glimpse of power, and she goes on to murder others, desperately trying to gain some control over her own life. Arifa Akbar, reviewing the novel in the Independent, observes that Lilith is “both exhilarated by this demonic energy within her” and at times “consumed by self-loathing and guilt.” Akbar also notes that “James uses the imagery of witchcraft and African shamanism inventively, as a metaphor for political resistance.” Homer, the leader of the Night Women, has mastered the art of African potion making, using her lotions to heal victims of violence and also to “send the masters and their wives into deranged states of mind as a form of revenge.” Class distinction is closely related to the struggle for power. The lives of blacks are considered expendable, since black slaves are cheap and are easily acquired. The hierarchy is not limited merely to blacks and whites, however. “House slaves” who serve the family of the master are valued above other slaves. Lilith believes that she is better than other slaves because her green eyes are proof of her white heritage. In addition, black Johnnyjumpers abuse other slaves. Class distinction exists among whites as well. Robert Quinn, for example, is disdained by British authorities simply because he is Irish. Nevertheless, he is considered superior to slaves. His affair with Lilith illustrates their society’s insuperable barriers inherent in a relationship that crosses class and racial lines, since the scars on Lilith’s back serve as a reminder that she has been brutalized at Robert’s command. Rayyan AlShawaf, writing in the Miami Herald, suggests that “the intrinsic dichotomy between Lilith and Quinn dooms their relationship. . . . So thorough and consuming is destructiveness that even love doesn’t stand a chance.”
W Style The most distinctive stylistic feature of The Book of Night Women is James’s use of Jamaican patois. This Englishbased dialect developed among the slave populations of the seventeenth century and blends British English, Hiberno-English (Irish English), and Lowlands Scots with west African influences. In her review in the Independent, Akbar observes that the “narration is one
MAJOR CHARACTERS HOMER is the leader of the Night Women, a group of six halfsisters who plan a slave rebellion. Homer is skilled with herbs and lotions, using her powers both to heal and to inflict cruelty on her enemies. LILITH, the novel’s protagonist, is the daughter of the white overseer Jack Wilkins and a teenage slave girl, who dies when Lilith is born. The green-eyed Lilith works on the Montpelier plantation as a house slave. The Night Women attempt to recruit her in an effort to further their plans for a slave uprising. Lilith becomes the mistress of Robert Quinn, an Irish overseer, with whom she eventually has a child. LOVEY QUINN is the daughter of Lilith and Robert Quinn. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Lovey is the narrator of the story. ROBERT QUINN is an Irish overseer who initially supervises regular whippings of Lilith. He falls in love with Lilith, and she becomes his mistress. The two are never fully able to overcome the cultural restrictions that prevent them from having a relationship as equals. JACK WILKINS is a white overseer on the Montpelier plantation. He rapes young slave girls, fathering a number of children, including the members of the group that calls itself the Night Women.
of the novel’s strongest features, written in the vernacular and carrying its own drum-like rhythm which is as lyrical as it is hypnotic, even in the most violent passages.” In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Susan Straight calls the book “a chant, using repetition and verse.” Both the narration and the dialogue within the novel are written in patois. Dialogue is distinguished from narration with dashes rather than quotation marks. To indicate who is speaking, the narrator uses simple dialogue tags, such as “Homer say” or “Homer ask.” The story is told by a third-person narrator whose identity is revealed only at the end of the novel. It is Lilith and Robert Quinn’s daughter, whom Lilith names Lovey Quinn, who narrates her mother’s story. Lilith taught her daughter to read and write, and Lovey tells the reader that writing is a liberating experience for her—what she writes in the darkness “is as free as free can be, even if it never come to light and go free for real.” In the last lines of the book, Lovey explains that she began writing about her mother in 1819, several years after the action in the story takes place. She begins each chapter with either a brief description of an event or a philosophical observation, such as “White man is white man is white man, but not every nigger be the same nigger,” or “Every Negro walk in a circle. Take that and make of it what you will.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1970 in Kingston, Jamaica, Marlon James earned a BA in literature from the University of the West Indies (1991) and an MA in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006). While studying at Wilkes, James received Norman Mailer’s Norris Church Mailer Scholarship for Creative Writing. The author’s work has been published in several anthologies, including Iron Balloons (2006; edited by Colin Channer), Bronx Noir (2007; edited by S. J. Rozan), and Silent Voices (2007; edited by Peter A. Balaskas), and in the Caribbean Review of Books. John Crow’s Devil (2005), James’s debut novel, was a finalist for both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. An essayist as well as a novelist, James is a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has also taught at the Calabash International Literary Festival Workshop in Kingston and the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City.
W Critical Reception Critics have offered mixed reviews of The Book of Night Women. Praise for the novel generally focuses on James’s vivid depictions of the cruel, violent conditions and helpless circumstances that slaves endured in late
eighteenth-century Jamaica. A Bookmarks reviewer calls the novel “a stunning testament to the dynamics of ultimate power and powerlessness.” Kaiama Glover, writing in the New York Times, offers a similar assessment, declaring that “James has conducted an experiment in how to write the unspeakable—even the unthinkable. And the results of that experiment are an undeniable success.” Reviewers have also acknowledged James’s ability to capture the complex class struggles that exist in both black and white societies. On the other hand, Jim Hannan, reviewing the novel for World Literature Today, concludes that the novel is “flawed,” finding fault with James’s “superficial” characterization and suggesting that “his patois is plodding and unimaginative” compared to that of other Caribbean writers. Some critics have complained about the excessive—and perhaps sometimes gratuitous— violence in the novel. For example, Rayyan Al-Shawaf, a reviewer for the Miami Herald, argues that the author’s “preoccupation with detailing the history and methods of slave punishment in his native Jamaica sometimes interferes with the story. Describing the violence meted out to a character, he might segue to listing other sorts of torture historically inflicted on slaves.” In addition to its consideration for a National Book Critics Circle Award, The Book of Night Women was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and the Minnesota Book Award. The novel was also named the third-best book of 2009 by New York magazine.
Jamaican slaves on a sugar plantation. In the story, Lilith, the daughter of a slave and a white overseer, becomes involved in a romantic relationship with her own overseer. English School
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Jamaican slaves are set free. The Book of Night Women chronicles the story of Lilith, a biracial Jamaican slave. Thomas Picken BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Akbar, Arifa. Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 28 Aug. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Al-Shawaf, Rayyan. “The Author Portrays Strong Female Characters in This Tale Set in 19th Century BritishRuled Jamaica.” Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Miami Herald 4 Mar. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Buckley, Gail Lumet. “Vengeance Is Theirs.” Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Washington Post 17 Feb. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Glover, Kaiama L. “Womanchild in the Oppressive Land.” Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. New York Times Book Review 1 Mar. 2009: 7L. Print. Hannon, Jim. Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. World Literature Today 84.1 (2010): 66. Print. James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. New York: Riverhead, 2009. Print.
Straight, Susan. Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Los Angeles Times 8 Mar. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Bookmarks May-June 2009: 32. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Provides an overview of critical reception of the novel as well as a critical summary of the book. Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Jamaican Book Review. Jamaicans.com, 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Favorable review that includes biographical information about the author as well as links to additional book reviews. Reed, Troy. “Editors’ Choice Novels for May 2009.” Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Historical Novel Society. Historical Novel Society, May 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Positive review that praises the novel’s realistic dialect and James’s character portrayal.
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St. John, Edward B. Rev. of The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Library Journal 15 Feb. 2009: 14. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Brief review that discusses point of view in the novel as well as the complexities of nineteenth-century Jamaican society. Smith, Candace. Rev. of The Book of Night Women. Booklist 15 Apr. 2009: 58. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Audiobook review that admires the poetic quality of James’s prose. Open Web Sources
On his Web site, Marlon James provides a brief biography, an overview of his writings, and a blog. http//marlonjames.com Macalester College offers online information about the author’s life, writings, and teaching career. http// www.macalester.edu/english/james.html Listeners can access an audio recording of James’s March 2009 interview with Tom Ashbrook for National Public Radio’s On Point, in which James discusses The Book of Night Women. http//www.onpointradio. org/2009/03/jamaicas-night-women
refers to the brutal task of working in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic. The book centers on the massacre of Haitian workers in the 1930s and the potentially devastating consequences of racism. Diptee, Audra. From Africa to Jamaica: The Making of an Atlantic Slave Society, 1775-1807. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2010. Print. This scholarly work details the history of slavery in Jamaica and slavery’s impact on Jamaican society. James, Marlon. John Crow’s Devil. New York: Akashic Books, 2005. Print. Like The Book of Night Women, James’s first novel is set in Jamaica. During the midtwentieth century, a Jamaican village deals with religious conflict and suggestions of witchcraft. Levy, Andrea. The Long Song. London: Headline Review, 2010. Print. Levy’s novel takes the form of a memoir written by an elderly Jamaican woman named July, who is a former slave. The story is set on a sugarcane plantation in early nineteenth-century Jamaica. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print. Morrison’s celebrated novel chronicles the life an escaped slave and her daughter.
For Further Reading
Harrabeth Haidusek
Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. New York: Soho, 1998. Print. The title of Danticat’s novel
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The Book of Not By Tsitsi Dangarembga
W Introduction The Book of Not is Tsitsi Dangarembga’s sequel to her 1988 semi-autobiographical novel Nervous Conditions, in which she detailed the efforts of a young Zimbabwean girl named Tambudzai, or Tambu, to acquire an education despite the difficulties she faced, including extreme poverty, misogyny, and colonialism. Dangarembga traces Tambu’s journey in Nervous Conditions and then in The Book of Not. In the first novel, Tambu develops a pragmatism that allows her to see her brother’s death as an event in her favor. For example, because he was the only male in the family, his death allowed Tambu to attend school. Similarly, in The Book of Not, Tambu learns to come to terms with her sister’s dismemberment, which occurs during the Zimbabwean war for independence. Tambu’s primary concern in The Book of Not is to leave her village and attend the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart, a missionary school to which she has won a scholarship. What Tambu does not understand is that Sacred Heart is a relic of European colonialism, a place where she will encounter the same kind of patronizing racial assumptions she is trying to escape. Dangarembga makes it clear that Tambu’s overidentification with the whites at the school is just another consequence of colonialism, and that colonized peoples suffer long-term effects from their subjugation.
W Literary and Historical Context
Until 1980 Zimbabwe was variously called either Southern Rhodesia or simply Rhodesia, named after the Englishborn South African explorer Cecil Rhodes. By 1889 Rhodes held a monopoly on the world diamond trade and later cofounded the DeBeers Mining Company, which
continues to trade in diamonds into the twenty-first century. Hoping to make a name for himself, Rhodes began acquiring mining rights in central and southern Africa by forging treaties with chieftains. In 1889 he was granted a charter by Queen Victoria to form the British South Africa Company (BSAC), which was modeled on the highly successful British East India Company. Several thousand white settlers followed Rhodes to the region, hoping to capitalize on the mining opportunities. Instead, with protection from the BSAC’s private army, the settlers took over much of the fertile land. They also ignited tensions between tribal leaders, only some of whom had signed treaties with Rhodes. The First Matabele War broke out in 1893, in which the Ndebele king, Lobengula, and his tribesmen fought the BSAC and British troops, who used the most advanced weaponry available at the time. The war ended the following year, with the death of Lobengula, the loss of all the Ndebele territory, and establishment of the country of Southern Rhodesia. A Second Matabele War began in 1896 and is known in Zimbabwe as the First War of Independence. It, too, ended in defeat for the Ndebele, as well as the Shona, and cemented the BSAC’s control of the region. From the start, Rhodes and his settlers wanted as much independence as possible from British colonial interference. With the BSAC’s charter set to expire in 1914, Rhodes requested a ten-year extension to avoid having the colony overtaken by South Africa. In 1923 the white population of Southern Rhodesia voted to establish itself as a self-governing colony, and it remained so until 1953, when it entered a federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now the countries of Zambia and Malawi, respectively). But while Southern Rhodesia had no African suffrage or legislative representation, Northern Rhodesia, with a much smaller white population, allowed for three, and later five, seats for Africans in its assembly. The movement for African independence that was taking hold across the continent during the first half of the twentieth century resulted in growing concerns in
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MAJOR CHARACTERS NTOMBI is an African classmate of Tambu’s at Sacred Heart. She has a more well-rounded approach to life and is contrasted favorably with Tambu. NYASHA is Tambu’s cousin, who was partly raised and educated in England before returning to Zimbabwe. She plays a smaller role in The Book of Not than in Nervous Conditions, where her own “nervous condition” is a major plot point. TAMBUDZAI, more commonly called Tambu, is a young woman coming of age during Zimbabwe’s war for independence from colonial rule during the 1960s and 1970s. TAMBU’S MOTHER has become embittered by poverty, racism, and marriage to a tyrannical husband. She is skeptical of Tambu’s ambitions.
Southern Rhodesia about the increasing number of Africans serving in Northern Rhodesia’s government. Thus, all three colonies petitioned the British government to dissolve the federation in 1963. Shortly thereafter Africans gained a majority in the governments of both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Southern Rhodesia, now calling itself simply Rhodesia, rejected the trend of majority rule sweeping the African colonies and instead voted to continue its white-minority rule through the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Great Britain in 1965. The British considered the UDI an act of rebellion and requested that the United Nations (UN) enact economic sanctions against Rhodesia. In the meantime, two pro-democracy parties were formed in Rhodesia. In 1961 Joshua Nkomo formed the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU); his colleagues in the group were Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe. Internal tensions reached a peak among the three in 1963, when Sithole and Mugabe left ZAPU and formed a rival pro-independence group, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Although a new constitution was passed in 1962 that allowed for some African representation in the country’s parliament, a new, white supremacist party, the Rhodesian Front, was formed by Ian Smith, and it easily won in the elections of 1962. Winston Field was installed as prime minister and Smith was his deputy. In 1964 Smith succeeded Field as prime minister and had Nkomo and Mugabe, followed by Sithole, arrested and imprisoned until 1974. Smith issued the UDI in 1965, but UN sanctions were not instituted until 1968. Meanwhile, guerrilla fighting took hold of the country, led by the competing ZAPU and ZANU. Lasting from 1964 to 1979, the fighting is known as the Rhodesian Bush War, or Zimbabwe War of Liberation. In 1976 Nkomo and Mugabe reconciled and formed the
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black-nationalist Patriotic Front. With his government on the brink of collapse, Smith agreed to negotiations in 1978, during which he made concessions that allowed the moderate African leader of United African National Council (UANC), Bishop Abel Muzorewa, to be elected prime minister. In 1979 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was created, with a new constitution that ended white minority rule and the institution of a land reform program. In 1980 the old rivalry between Nkomo and Mugabe was revived when the two faced off against each other in the general election, which Mugabe won. Now officially independent of colonial rule, the new nation was renamed Zimbabwe. Although he initially gave Nkomo a role in the new government, Mugabe dismissed him in 1982, igniting tribal violence that lasted until 1987. At that point, Mugabe and Nkomo tried to reconcile their differences by coming together in a single party and amending the constitution so that Mugabe would serve as executive president and Nkomo as vice president. The country’s brief flirtation with democracy ended. Under Mugabe’s leadership, which had begun with great promise, Zimbabwe suffered economically and socially. Life expectancy dropped dramatically, hunger and poverty increased, HIV/AIDS reached epidemic rates, and the country experienced numerous humanitarian crises. As of 2010, Mugabe remained president.
W Themes According to Rosanne Kennedy, in an essay in Studies in the Novel, “Dangarembga innovatively uses irony, humor, and farce to dramatize the absurdities of racism in a colonial society and the impediments to witnessing it, thereby bringing into visibility what is unspeakable in (post)colonial Zimbabwe. The novel dramatizes the narrator’s struggle to break out of a repetition compulsion, manifested in her obsessive desire for recognition, which continually leaves her deflated and depressed.” In Nervous Conditions Tambu watches as her English-educated cousin Nyasha crumbles under the weight of racial and cultural confusion and suffers a breakdown. In The Book of Not it is Tambu who loses her sense of self when she tries to assimilate into white culture through educational achievement at a white-run academy. Kennedy continues: “In narrating Tambu’s struggles to become someone, and the undoing of her subjectivity, the novel dramatizes ordinary, everyday acts of racism in a gendered colonial context. By locating the story in the context of a colonial war in which the colonized are not unified against the white minority, the novel reflects on the psychological and political effects of witnessing traumatic events in a culture in which no one is supposed to remember what they saw.” Helon Habila, reviewing the book for the Guardian, writes, “The novel’s irony—and irony is the armature on which this whole story hangs—is that Tambu doesn’t see how false and unachievable her goal is. In a sense, this is the same old TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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story of being black in a far too white world, even though here—more irony—the white world is actually in Africa.” Having been raised and educated partly in England, Dangarembga herself experienced the fractured existence of living in two cultures—one of which had historically exploited the other. In The Book of Not, Tambu becomes so invested in achieving success in the white world that she begins to betray her own culture, at one point taking part in a volunteer effort to aid white Rhodesian soldiers in the war for independence in order to comfort two white classmates whose parents were killed by guerrilla fighters. Despite her commitment to success, and despite Zimbabwe’s winning independence in 1980, Tambu repeatedly experiences the same forms of racism. At school she watches silently as a white student accepts an award that should have gone to her. And later, while working at a white-owned advertising agency, a white male colleague takes credit for Tambu’s work and wins an award for that as well. Conditioned by racism and misogyny to hold her tongue, Tambu is unable to defend herself in both cases.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Mutoko, Rhodesia, in 1959, but moved with her parents, who were continuing their educations, to England when she was two years old. The family returned to the colony when Dangarembga was six. She attended a missionary school in Mutare, returning to England as a young adult to study medicine at Cambridge University. Homesickness took her back to Africa just prior to Zimbabwean independence in 1980, and she entered the University of Harare to study psychology. She became involved in theater, writing and directing plays, and also began writing fiction. Her first novel, Nervous Conditions, was the first English-language novel published by a Zimbabwean woman and won a prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize. Dangarembga next studied film in Berlin and began writing and directing highly acclaimed motion pictures.
In The Book of Not, Tambudzai is a young Zimbabwean girl determined to obtain an education in spite of the challenges she faces. ª Aladdin Color, Inc./Aladdin Color, Inc./Corbis
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The Book of Not
W Style The Book of Not is written entirely from Tambu’s point of view. As such, it provides no other perspective but hers, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to remember that Tambu’s perspective is more and more warped as the story moves forward. As Tambu repeatedly explains, she is entirely focused on herself and her own achievement, to the exclusion of everything else. Ironically, though, the more she focuses on herself, the less she engages with her culture and her family, risking losing a fundamental part of her identity.
W Critical Reception Nervous Conditions is considered a classic of twentiethcentury African literature and has been hailed as one of the most significant works written by an African woman. Critics noted that the novel provides a rare glimpse into the experiences of a broad spectrum of Zimbabwean women, including Tambu’s mother, embittered by poverty and low expectations and resentful of her daughter’s opportunities, and her cousin Nyasha, who suffers from anorexia and other emotional problems because she cannot reconcile her feelings about Africa and England. These characters reappear in The Book of Not, but reviewers of the sequel found their roles reduced because of Tambu’s intensified focus on her own development. Helon Habila explained in her review that “[t]he whole novel is an examination of Tambu’s increasingly warped perspective, achieved through a focused, almost claustrophobic first-person point of view and a masterly deployment of flashbacks.” Heather Margolis, reviewing The Book of Not for the Journal of Asian and African Studies, also commented on Tambu’s gradual loss of connections: “Throughout [Tambu’s] struggle, the realm of the other expands to envelope much more than those who do not look like her or speak her native language. As the vast other builds a cold cement around her heart, Tambu labors ever more intensely and erratically to establish connections through the narrowing gaps. This personal isolation is the acknowledged but silent tragedy.” Some critics compared The Book of Not unfavorably with Nervous Conditions, maintaining that Tambu’s relentless refusal to protest the wrongs done to her made her seem more a martyr than a heroine. Most, however, agreed that Dangarembga narrates the story with such deft irony and sardonic humor that Tambu remains a likeable figure in spite of her flaws.
Kennedy, Rosanne. “Mortgaged Futures: Trauma, Subjectivity, and the Legacies of Colonialism in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s The Book of Not.” Studies in the Novel 40.1-2 (Spring-Summer 2008): 86-107. Print. Margolis, Heather. Rev. of The Book of Not, by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Journal of Asian and African Studies 42, no. 6 (Dec. 2007): 578-79. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Mustafa, Fawzia. “Reading Development and Writing Africa: UNFPA, Nervous Conditions, and The Book of Not.” Comparative Literature Studies 46.2 (2009): 379-406. Print. Examines Dangarembga’s novels in the context of the literal and figurative concept of “human” in the postcolonial world. Wanner, Zukisma. Rev. of The Book of Not, by Tsitsi Dangarembga. African Writing Online, June-Aug., 2007. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Review that takes into account the role of Zimbabwe’s colonial history in the formation of Tambu’s character. Gale Resources
“Dangarembga, Tsitsi.” Black Literature Criticism: Classic and Emerging Authors since 1950. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. ————. Contemporary Authors Online. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. Mabura, Lily G. N. “Black Women Walking Zimbabwe: Refuge and Prospect in the Landscapes of Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and Its Sequel, The Book of Not.” Research in African Literatures 41.3 (2010): 88+. Print. For Further Reading
Barclay, Philip. Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despair. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2010. Print. Journalistic account of Zimbabwe’s election of 2008, which Robert Mugabe won despite predictions to the contrary. Fuller, Alexandra. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. New York: Random House, 2003. Print. Memoir of the author’s childhood in colonial Rhodesia. Rogers, Douglas. The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. New York: Crown, 2009. Print. Memoir of life in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nancy Dziedzic
Works Cited
Habila, Helon. “In Time of War.” Guardian [London], 4 Nov. 2006. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.
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The Book Thief By Markus Zusak
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief takes place during World War II, in the town of Molching, in Germany. Narrated by Death, the work explores the life of a young girl, Liesel Meminger, and her efforts to adjust to life with her new foster family. As the reader learns over the course of the novel, Liesel’s own family was splintered when her father, accused of being a Communist, disappeared. Her mother struggled to raise Liesel and her brother, but fearing for her family’s safety as Hitler gains power, Liesel’s mother decides her children will be safer in the hands of a German family not scarred by labels and accusations. In the course of the journey, Liesel’s brother, Werner, dies. At his grave site, Liesel picks up a book the young grave digger has dropped. This becomes the first incident in Liesel’s long history of book thievery. Throughout the novel, Liesel grows to love her foster parents, particularly, her foster Papa, Hans Hubermann. She makes friends, notably with Rudy Steiner. Liesel’s Papa, however, has a dangerous association in his past. His life was saved by another German soldier in World War I, a German who happened also to be Jewish. Now, as the Nazis have targeted Jews as the enemies of Germany, Hans’s dead friend’s son has come to Hans for help. Max Vanderburg is subsequently hidden in the Hubermanns’ basement. Eventually, a tender friendship grows between Max and Liesel. The war wages on. Max must leave when Hans’s kindness to a Jewish man being marched to a concentration camp is observed by Nazi authorities. Hans himself is forced into service in the Nazi army. He returns safely however, but Liesel’s joy in her father’s return is shortlived. Soon, her street is bombed by Allied forces. Writing in her basement during the night of the bombing, Liesel alone of all her loved ones survives.
Set during World War II, Zusak’s novel is told from a modern, or rather, timeless perspective. Narrated by Death, the work is contemporary in terms of Zusak’s experimentation with nonlinear narration and in terms of his choice of the mythic character of Death as the commentator on the novel’s characters and action. While Death is clearly looking back on events that have already occurred, the story itself unfolds within the time frame of the war, and the characters—unlike Death—do not speak in the present-day vernacular. The action of the book takes place almost entirely within the German town of Molching, beginning in 1939. Himmel Street becomes a microcosm for the tensions playing out in larger German cities and all over the country. Adolf Hitler had risen to power in the aftermath of World War I, advocating a strongly nationalistic philosophy as the only means of rebuilding a strong Germany. He sought to restore territories lost during World War I. In 1938 he invaded Austria, and in 1939 Czechoslovakia. After signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union regarding Poland, Hitler proceeded to invade Poland, an act that brought Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand into the war. Throughout the war, the Nazi government transported enemies of the state to various concentration camps. Forced labor camps established in the early 1930s detained Communists and other political dissidents, as well as those deemed socially “deviant,” including homosexuals. Later, following the invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, the Nazis imprisoned and murdered Jews from Germany and all its newly occupied regions. As the war wore on, prisoners of war were also incarcerated. If not outright murdered, many of these individuals died of mistreatment, exposure, disease, or starvation. According to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Context
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MAJOR CHARACTERS DEATH is the omniscient, first-person narrator of The Book Thief. He shows himself to be gentle, scooping up souls when their bodies expire and transporting them to their eternity. He sees much of the world in terms of color, and describes his impressions in a highly poetic manner, although his style of narration is rather conversational. Death is attracted to Liesel’s story, and although he does not explicitly state why, his commentary suggests that he is drawn to Liesel not just because of her goodness, but because her goodness stands in such stark contrast, and eventually in such blatant opposition to Hitler’s evilness. Death is as moved to despair by Hitler’s treatment of the Jews as any modern reader. Thinking of the souls he collects, of the countless Jewish people who have died in concentration camps, Death describes how he tries to “de-realize” what has happened. He observes the way he mentions the name of God “in a futile attempt to understand.” In the end, Death’s perspective on the human race is that he remains “haunted by humans.” ILSA HERMANN is the wife of the mayor of Molching. Ilsa witnesses Liesel rescuing a book from the pile of Jewish books being burned in a Nazi book-burning rally. Ilsa later, however mutely, shares with Liesel her secret library. HANS HUBERMANN is Liesel’s foster father. Where his wife Rosa is harsh, Hans is gentle. He tenderly coaxes Liesel out of her shell of grief after she loses both her brother (to death) and her mother (after being abandoned by her). Hans teaches Liesel to read from her stolen books and comforts her when she wakes from her nightmares. He is compelled by a sense of duty and guilt to shelter the son of the man who saved his life in World War I. After an act of compassion for a Jewish man being made to parade through the streets of Molching with his fellows, Hans is subsequently sent off to war. He returns home with only a broken leg, but is killed shortly afterward when Himmel Street is bombed. ROSA HUBERMANN is Liesel’s foster mother. She is also the mother of a son and a daughter who are older and
documentation, between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany created twenty thousand concentration camps and incarcerated millions of individuals. Approximately three million Jews were killed in camps specifically constructed for their extermination. In 1945 the Allied forces liberated the prisoners in concentration camps, yet many were too ill or weakened by disease or starvation to survive.
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make only brief appearances in the story. Despite her rough and sometimes cruel treatment of Liesel, Rosa loves her, and this emotion is brought to the fore after the Hubermanns begin hiding Max Vanderburg in their basement. LIESEL MEMINGER is the story’s protagonist. Given up by her mother, Liesel is forced into a foster home with her brother, yet her brother does not survive the journey there. Liesel is welcomed by Hans Hubermann and, less affectionately, his wife. In contemplating her life and the state of affairs in Germany, Liesel grows increasingly defiant. As she begins to devote herself to Max Vanderburg’s safety, consoling him and helping him in any way she can, Liesel begins to hate Hitler and what he has done to Germany and to the people she loves. Liesel is comforted by words and books, and stealing books for her becomes a way to soothe the emotional trauma she continues to suffer. PAULA MEMINGER is Liesel’s mother. It is suggested in the course of the novel that her poverty, combined with her status as the wife of a suspected Communist, compels her to seek a foster family to care for her two children. WERNER MEMINGER is Liesel’s brother. His death and subsequent burial haunt Liesel for years, and also inspire her first act of book thievery. RUDY STEINER is a young boy who befriends Liesel shortly after she moves in with the Hubermanns. He becomes her accomplice on many occasions as they steal food or books. MAX VANDENBURG is the son of the man who saved Hans Hubermann’s life in World War I. When being Jewish becomes a dangerous thing in Germany, Max is aided by a friend who hides him and helps him reach Hans. Hans, indebted to Max’s father, welcomes Max into the Hubermann home, where life alters drastically as the family attempts to hide their secret and to help Max as best they can at the same time.
W Themes The Book Thief is a thematically rich novel in which Zusak explores a variety of war-related topics. One of the most salient themes of the work is summed up in the novel’s last line, when Death observes, “I am haunted by humans.” Much of the novel is devoted to the depiction of the inhumane treatment of human beings by fellow TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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human beings. Hitler’s large-scale oppression of the Jews is only one example. Zusak takes pains to also depict a German citizenry sometimes reluctant and often vigorously opposed to Hitler’s beliefs and aims. The Nazis’ cruelty to anyone who hesitates to subscribe to Hitler’s message is seen in the way both Liesel’s and Rudy’s fathers are taken from their families, and in the way both Liesel and her father are whipped and beaten for approaching and helping Jewish prisoners as they are marched through town. Death, however, is equally mystified by the way human goodness manages to exist in a world that can also create a Hitler. Acts of goodness and sacrifice abound in the novel, beginning with the way Liesel’s mother is prepared to sacrifice her own ties to her children in order to protect them. Hans sacrifices his family’s safety to protect another man’s son, in acknowledgment of the way that man saved Hans’s own life. Liesel’s selflessness is revealed in her generosity and love toward Max, a man to whom she owes nothing, but with whom she feels a sense of shared pain and victimization. The mayor’s wife, plagued by her own
sorrows, climbs out of her grief to befriend Liesel and share with her a love of books and language. Liesel in turn shares this love of reading with her neighbors, comforting them in the darkness of the basement during air raids. The power of words is another of The Book Thief ’s main themes. Before Liesel can even read the words in a book, she is comforted by the very existence of the book itself. Learning to read is a journey she takes under Hans’s guidance, and consequently the act of reading is forever imprinted with a sense of comfort for Liesel. Through Max, Liesel learns that Hitler has used words to further his malevolent plans; Death also emphasizes the fact that Hitler has crafted Nazi Germany and the myth of German superiority through words. Words, therefore, reflect the dual nature of humanity, their inherent capacity for good and for evil inherent in humans—a nature that haunts Death.
W Style In The Book Thief, a novel acknowledged as a work intended for teens, Zusak employs a unique, omniscient first-person narrator: Death. Death tells Liesel’s story, and snippets of the stories of other characters as well. As a commentator on the action, Death additionally interrupts the narrative to make observations, or sometimes to tell the reader about the future events of a particular character’s life. Occasionally, Death will relate events involving a character’s death, but outside of the otherwise linear narrative of The Book Thief; Death then revisits the events leading up to the point already revealed. As the story continues, Death gradually conveys that much of what he is relating has been taken directly from the story Liesel will eventually write herself, The Book Thief. Furthermore, Death retains the habit of talking to the reader in a casual, conversational style, placing the superstructure of the narrative outside of the story’s historical context. Despite the obvious nature of the work as historical fiction, Zusak’s unconventional narrative style reaches out to its intended audience as it approaches a horrific period of world history in a voice that is both modern and sympathetic.
W Critical Reception
Set during World War II, The Book Thief follows a young German girl who develops a penchant for stealing books. Ksenia Palimski/ Shutterstock.com
The Book Thief, winner of numerous literary awards, was well received by critics upon its publication. Its style and careful yet ambitious treatment of its tragic subject matter are the focus of many assessments of the work. John Green in a 2006 review for the New York Times Book Review observes that in Australia, the book was marketed to adults, while in the United States it has been aimed at a teenage audience. Arguing that the work is appropriate for young adult readers, Green states that while some teenagers may find that the story begins sluggishly, it is a book with the potential to be “life-changing.” He finds that young readers need to be exposed to “alternatives to
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Markus Zusak was born in Sydney, Australia in 1975 to workingclass immigrant parents, his mother being German and his father Austrian. Having worked as a janitor and a high school English teacher, Zusak published his first novel, The Underdog, in Australia in 1999. Subsequent works gradually received increasing critical attention. His 2002 novel, I Am the Messenger, published in the United States in 2005, won Zusak a Michael L. Printz Honor. The work was additionally nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most commercially and critically successful work to date, The Book Thief was published in 2006. Zusak’s next novel is a coming-of-age story titled Bridge of Clay, slated for a 2011 release by Knopf.
ideological rigidity” and to “explorations of how stories matter.” Hazel Rochman, in a 2006 review for Booklist, maintains that despite the excessive shifting from the past to the present in the story’s narration, the work is a “powerful story.” In an unsigned 2006 Kirkus Reviews assessment, the critic describes Zusak’s writing as “elegant, philosophical and moving.” Claire Rosser, in a 2007 review of The Book Thief for the journal Kliatt, comments on the ways in which Zusak’s novel challenges the boundaries within which young adult novels are typically inscribed. In assessing The Book Thief for a 2007 review for the Guardian, Philip Ardagh comments on the way the book has been marketed in some countries as a teen novel, and in others as a work for adults. Ardagh finds it appropriate for both audiences, and he praises Zusak’s adroit characterization and story telling. Ardagh finds the work “a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told.”
“Zusak, Markus: The Book Thief.” Kirkus Reviews 74.2 (15 Jan. 2006): 91. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Coventry Evening Telegraph 30 Dec. 2006: 33. Print. The critic praises Zusak’s novel for its thematic complexity and the “elegant, haunting” quality of Zusak’s writing. Brace, Marianne. “Forget the Scythe: Death Needs a Mop.” Independent on Sunday 31 Dec. 2006. HighBeam Research. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Brace applauds Zusak’s characterization, particularly his depiction of Liesel and Death, and commends the work as a whole. Humphreys, Simon. Rev. of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Mail on Sunday 4 Mar. 2007: 73. Print. Humphreys offers a largely favorable review of Zusak’s novel, praising the author’s prose and ability to move the reader, while faulting the narrator (Death) for a tone that is sometimes grating. Gale Resources
“The Book Thief.” Literary Newsmakers for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2009: 41-63. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. “Markus Zusak.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Also covered in Contemporary Authors. Vol. 223. Detroit: Gale, 2004: 451-52. Print. Open Web Sources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Ardagh, Philip. “It’s a Steal.” Guardian 6 Jan. 2007. guardian.co.uk. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Green, John. “Fighting for Their Lives.” New York Times Book Review 14 May 2006: 26. Print. “Holocaust Encyclopedia.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Print. Maughan, Shannon. “It’s a Wonderful (Sales) Life: The Staying Power of The Book Thief.” Publishers Weekly 257.34 (30 Aug. 2010): 16. Print. Rochman, Hazel. “Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief.” Booklist 102.9-10 (1 Jan. 2006): 88. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Rosser, Claire. “Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief.” Kliatt 40.2 (Mar. 2006): 19. High Beam Research. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.
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“Zusak, Markus.” Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Ed. Amanda D. Sams. Vol. 163. Detroit: Gale, 2008: 420-23. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.
Random House’s author website for Markus Zusak features information about the author, reviews, bibliography, and discussion forums. http//www. randomhouse.com/features/markuszusak/ The BBC covers the history of the world wars on its website and features a section on the Holocaust. Included is an interactive timeline, interactive maps, and links to essays on various related topics. http// www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/ For Further Reading
Nees, Greg. Germany: Unraveling the Enigma. Boston: Intercultural Press, 1999. Print. After reviewing modern German history, Nees analyzes German cultural themes and stereotypes, exploring such topics as the German sense of duty and responsibility, and the German desire for order and security TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Spinelli, Jerry. Milkweed. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2003. Print. Spinelli’s novel is, like The Book Thief, a young adult novel focused on World War II. It takes place in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and is told from the point of view of a poor young boy uncertain of his heritage. Wistrich, Robert Solomon. Hitler and the Holocaust. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Print. Wistrich, a professor of modern Jewish history, explores the forces contributing to the anti-Semitism that
Hitler capitalized on in the years leading up to World War II. The author then goes on to trace the history of the Holocaust during the war years. Zusak, Markus. I Am the Messenger. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print. Originally published in Australia in 2002, Zusak’s young adult novel centers around a nineteenyear-old cab driver whose life alters completely after he stops a bank robbery.
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Catherine Dominic
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The Bottoms By Joe R. Lansdale
W Introduction The Bottoms (2000) is a work of literary detective fiction by the noted mystery and science fiction writer Joe R. Lansdale. The story is narrated in the present day by the elderly Harry Collins, who describes a chain of traumatic happenings from his childhood in East Texas in the 1930s. The series of events unfolds when Harry and his sister Thomasina, (known as Tom), discover the mutilated body of an African American prostitute in the woods near their home. Their father, the community’s constable, investigates the crime, motivated by a desire for justice. His investigation is impeded by citizens who feel that African American deaths are not worth investigating and by Ku Klux Klan members who brand him a “nigger lover” and threaten his family. As the murders continue, Harry is forced to come to terms with the brutality and injustice of the world in which he lives. The work has been praised for its re-creation of the dialect and racial politics of 1930s, Texas, as well as for its coming-of-age narrative. It won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel and helped to bring Lansdale to the attention of a broader readership.
W Literary and Historical Context
The central story of The Bottoms takes place in East Texas during the Great Depression, a period of economic strife that gripped the country beginning in 1929. During this era unemployment reached a record high, while incomes and prices fell dramatically. Many people were forced to turn to soup kitchens and breadlines for food. Others traveled the country with their families, desperately seeking work. While the national economy began to show signs of improvement by 1933, it did not fully recover for more than a decade. The novel opens with Harry’s reflection on the period: “I suppose there was
some back then had money, but we weren’t among them. The Depression was on.” Later in the novel, Harry’s grandmother arrives from North Texas with stories of the Dust Bowl, the brutal dust storms that destroyed farmland in Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond, compounding the problems of the Depression by destroying the crops and livelihood of farmers and farmworkers. Lansdale’s novel also dramatizes the racial bigotry and violence that were prevalent in the South during the 1930s. The Ku Klux Klan, which had died out shortly after the Civil War, remerged in 1915, with membership reaching a peak in the 1920s. It was during this second wave of popularity that the Klan adopted the burning cross as a symbol. Although membership was beginning to die out nationally in the 1930s, when Lansdale’s story takes place, the Klan was still active around the country, particularly in the Midwest and the South. In the novel members of the Klan attempt to dissuade Harry’s father from investigating the murders of black prostitutes. Later they burn a cross in the Collins’s yard and lynch an innocent, elderly African American man for the crimes.
W Themes Racial injustice permeates the fictional world of The Bottoms and is the central theme of the novel. While characters such as Harry’s father and grandmother have developed progressive views that lead them to view African Americans as equals, the majority of people in their community seek to keep the two races segregated, threatening abuse or death to those who cross racial boundaries. The white mill manager, Pappy Treesome, is repeatedly attacked by the Ku Klux Klan because he has married an African American woman, and his mentally handicapped son is castrated and burned to death for exposing himself to a white woman. When Jacob begins to investigate the murders of African American prostitutes, he is warned off by his former friend, Red Woodrow, who tells him, “It’s known far and wide all
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over this country you’re a nigger lover, and you ain’t careful you’re gonna bring up another generation of them nigger lovers, and some folks around here have all the nigger lovin’ they want.” Lost innocence is another prevalent theme in The Bottoms. At the beginning of the novel, Harry’s biggest concerns are that his wounded dog might have to be put down or that the Goat Man, a monstrous creature from an old wives’ tale, haunts the woods near his home. He and his sister feel comfortable roaming the woods and befriending all of their neighbors, black and white, without any fear of repercussions. Over the course of the novel, however, Harry and Tom are changed indelibly by events in their community. Toward the end of the narrative, Harry reflects on his former innocence: “Just a short time before I had been a happy kid with no worries. I didn’t even know it was the Depression, let alone that there were murderers outside of the magazines that I read down at the barbershop.” Within a relatively short time, however, the boy is awakened to the realities of hatred and cruelty as he finds a murder victim and witnesses, in rapid succession, an autopsy, a lynching, and an assault on his young sister.
W Style The Bottoms is narrated in the first person by Harry Collins, who is looking back on the events of his childhood more than seventy years later. His voice re-creates the dialect of his childhood (“I just soon I didn’t see nothing like it again, and I sure hate Harry and Tom seen it.”). The most extreme example of this dialect comes from the toothless Pappy Treesome (“Dey zay ooo god u ded gul in duh eyezouse, cozdabull.”). Lansdale also plays with figurative language, creating colorful metaphors that reflect Southern life. As Steve Jelbert notes in his Times review of the novel, the author is “never afraid to stretch a curious metaphor to within an inch of its cotton-picking life.” Largely because of its similar treatment of racial violence, Lansdale’s novel has frequently been compared to Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Also set during the Great Depression, Lee’s novel is the story of a young brother and sister whose father is appointed to defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman. The novel includes a near lynching and a wrongful conviction. Like Lee’s novel, The Bottoms is a bildingsroman, or a novel that traces a character’s coming-of-age. Traditionally the protagonists of such novels mature through emotionally painful experiences that force them to seek a better understanding of the world. In Lansdale’s novel Harry must grapple with the trauma of discovering a body and the racial violence that ensues. He is forced to give up his childhood belief in a fictitious monster, the Goat Man, and come to terms instead with the capacity of his fellow human beings for
MAJOR CHARACTERS GRANDMA is Harry and Tom’s maternal grandmother. She comes to live with the family after the death of her husband and helps to investigate the murders. MISS MAGGIE is an elderly African American woman who is known as the longtime companion of Red Woodrow’s father. She is later revealed to be Red’s mother. She is murdered by Red after he learns the truth of his parentage. MOSE is an elderly black man who briefly falls under suspicion in the murders. After he is lynched, his innocence is proven. Known to have had some white blood, he is revealed to be the biological father of Red Woodrow. TELLY is Mose’s mentally handicapped son. He has been living in the woods and is mistaken by the children for the Goat Man. He witnesses Cecil abducting Tom and leads Harry to her. He is killed rescuing the children, but he kills Cecil in the process. CECIL CHAMBERS is a World War I veteran and barber who works for Harry’s father. After he kidnaps and abuses Tom, he is revealed to be the serial killer. He is killed by Telly. HARRY COLLINS is the narrator of the story. He helps to investigate the murders after his father sinks into depression and alcoholism. JACOB COLLINS is the father of Harry and Tom. He is a farmer and barber and the local constable. He falls into depression and alcoholism after he cannot prevent the lynching of Mose. After a popular white woman is murdered, proving Mose’s innocence, Jacob vows to give up alcohol. THOMASINA “TOM” COLLINS is Harry’s younger sister. She is kidnapped and molested by Cecil Chambers, but she is rescued after Telly witnesses the abduction and warns Harry. RED WOODROW is an old friend of Jacob. The men’s friendship ended in rivalry for Harry’s mother. A staunch racist, Red is unable to handle the knowledge that both of his biological parents were of African American descent. After carving the word nigger in his chest, he covers himself in tar and hangs himself.
monstrosity. Over the course of the novel, he receives an education in sexual perversion, bigotry, and violence and discovers that even his parents have secrets. “I had learned too,” he explains, “that the people I knew, or thought I knew, had problems and lives. Mama and Daddy had a past.” These discoveries are so earthshattering, he reveals, that “I wouldn’t have been surprised right then to discover the moon could be reached by climbing to the top of the highest tree, and with a good pair of scissors you could snip it in half.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joe R. Lansdale was born on October 28, 1951, in Gladewater, Texas. After studying at the University of Texas at Austin and at Stephen F. Austin State University, he held a number of jobs that included stints as a factory worker and ditch digger before devoting himself full time to writing beginning in 1981. His first mystery novel, Act of Love, was published that same year. Over the next two decades Lansdale published more than thirty books, including a popular mystery series featuring the detectives Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, and several volumes of short fiction. In addition to the Edgar Award for The Bottoms, Lansdale’s work has garnered six Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America, and an American Mystery Award. During the 1990s Lansdale wrote screenplays for Batman: The Animated Series. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he continues to write novels in the mystery, horror, and science fiction genres.
W Critical Reception Upon its publication in 2000, The Bottoms was met with critical accolades. In addition to receiving the Edgar Award, the book was nominated for a Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Novel and for the Mystery Readers International’s 2001 Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel. While these awards recognized Lansdale’s achievements in the mystery genre, many reviewers have noted that the power of the novel’s social commentary and the literary quality of its prose elevate it beyond the confines of the mystery genre, making it appealing to a wider audience of readers. In his Booklist review of The Bottoms, Les Lukowsky praises the novel by noting, “Effectively combining mystery and family history, it offers a vivid, multifaceted glimpse back to a simpler, but not necessarily better, time.” He goes on to suggest that the novel represents Lansdale’s transcendence of the mystery genre, asserting that “if any author ever deserved a breakthrough book, it’s Lansdale. This should be it.”
An aging narrator, Harry Collins, recalls a childhood story of racial violence and the Ku Klux Klan in The Bottoms. Popperfoto/Getty Images
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Not all assessments of the novel have been wholly positive, however. In his review of the novel in the London Times, Edward Clark comments that “while Lansdale’s depiction of life in America’s Deep South during the Thirties is compelling, he often lapses into cliche, sentimentality and a certain unintentional burlesque.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Clark, Edward. “New Paperbacks.” Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Times [London] 25 Nov. 2000: n. pag. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Jelbert, Steve. “Fiction.” Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Times [London] 11 Aug. 2001: n. pag. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Lansdale, Joe R. The Bottoms. New York: Mysterious Press, 2000. Print. Lukowsky, Les. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Booklist 1 June 2000: 1798. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
De Lint, Charles. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Jan. 2001: 24. Offers an overview of The Bottoms and compares it to Lansdale’s earlier novel The Boar (1998). Julian, Janet. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Kliatt July 2002: 49. Recommends Lansdale’s novel for its strong narration and its treatment of sensitive social issues. Knight, Bill. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Magill Book Reviews (2001): n. pag. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Praises Lansdale for his attention to detail and his development of the novel’s characters. Lunn, Bob. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. Library Journal Aug. 2000: 158. Likens The Bottoms to works by William Faulkner and Harper Lee. Stasio, Marilyn. Rev. of The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale. New York Times 24 Sept. 2000: 29. Print. Favorably reviews the novel, emphasizing its outlook on Southern life and race relations. Gale Resources
Group, 2000. 79-82. Gale, Cengage Learning Trial Site. Gale. Something about the Author Online. 13 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site includes a biography, a bibliography of his work, and the full text of select short stories. http//www.joerlansdale.com/ The Web site of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law brings together information about lynching in the United States, providing historical context and statistics. http//www.law.umkc.edu/ faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchstats.html For Further Reading
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997. Print. This collection of essays examines lynching from sociological and historical perspectives. Lansdale, Joe R. A Fine Dark Line. New York: Mysterious Press, 2003. Print. Set in 1958, Lansdale’s follow-up to The Bottoms tells the story of a thirteenyear-old boy who stumbles on a box of love letters tied to an unsolved double murder. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960. Print. The Bottoms has been compared to Lee’s classic coming-of-age novel about racial injustice. MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print. MacLean chronicles the post-World War I resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. This book examines the Great Depression, emphasizing economics and politics as well as individuals’ experiences. Vronsky, Peter. Serial Killers: The Method and the Madness of Monsters. New York: Berkeley Books, 2004. Print. Vronsky investigates the phenomenon of serial killing in its historical, psychological, and cultural contexts.
“Joe R. Lansdale.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
Greta Gard
“Joe R(ichard) Lansdale (1951-).” Something about the Author. Ed. Alan Hedblad. Vol. 116. Detroit: Gale
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The Boy Next Door By Irene Sabatini
W Introduction The Boy Next Door is a story of forbidden love set in Zimbabwe in the chaotic days following the country’s 1980 independence from British rule. As the book follows the relationship between a white man and a “colored” woman over the course of almost twenty years, The Boy Next Door also chronicles the racial, ethnic, and political turmoil that descended upon the country following the heady days of excitement that greeted black majority rule and Robert Mugabe’s appointment as prime minister. The main characters of The Boy Next Door are Ian McKenzie, a seventeen-year-old white “Rhodie” of British descent recently convicted of setting his stepmother on fire, and his naive and studious fourteen-year-old neighbor, Lindiwe Bishop, who becomes obsessed with the facts of the crime—and with Ian, following his mysterious release from prison some eighteen months later. Warned by her upwardly mobile parents, a black mother and white father, to stay away from Ian, Lindiwe nevertheless develops a secret bond with him that matures into love as their lives are taken in many different directions by the turbulent political situation in Zimbabwe. The Boy Next Door received the Orange Prize for New Writers, an important international prize for women’s fiction. In conferring the honor on the novel, Di Spiers, the chair of judges, remarked, “At heart a love story, it is also so much more as, through the experiences of its charismatic protagonists, it charts the first two decades of the emerging Zimbabwe with honesty, humour and humanity” (author’s website).
W Literary and Historical Context
The Boy Next Door recalls the Zimbabwe of author Irene Sabatini’s youth. She was raised in southern Zimbabwe in the country’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, the setting of
much of the novel. In an interview with Belinda Otas, Sabatini explained that the novel originated in the conflux of two circumstances: her publisher’s request for a memoir about Zimbabwe in the time of independence and a phone call from her father, still living in her childhood home in Bulawayo, telling her that the house next door had burned. Then, about a year after this phone call, Sabatini told Otas, the first line of the novel came to her, “Two days after I turned fourteen the son of our neighbor set his stepmother alight.” The Boy Next Door is divided into four parts which chronicle the developing relationship of Lindiwe and Ian as well as the deterioration of Zimbabwe, once heralded as a model of African democracy. Part 1 occurs in the 1980s as the country attempts to adjust to the transformation to black majority rule. Lindiwe and her family are the first blacks to settle in their Bulawayo neighborhood after integration. Her parents’ mixed marriage would have been forbidden in the former Rhodesia. Lindiwe is light-skinned but considered “colored.” She is an excellent student but is taunted by racial slurs at the mostly white school her parents insist she attend. Ian, on the other hand, is a brash and bold high school dropout, still possessed of the elitist attitude of the white ruling class, though the McKenzies are the last remaining whites on the street. The two protagonists develop a friendship against a backdrop of widespread terror as Matabeleland (southern Zimbabwe) is occupied by a brigade of North Korean soldiers sent to crush any rebellion from ethnic Ndebele opposing the nationalist government of Robert Mugabe, who is backed by the Shona majority in the north. The succeeding parts of the novel find Ian and Lindiwe separated for many years as Lindiwe attends school—as did the author—in the northern city of Harare, and Ian takes his photojournalism career to South Africa. In the years before and after they reunite, the government of Mugabe further disintegrates with ethnic and racial riots, corruption among political leaders
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and the military, and economic devastation. Terror reigns as thousands are killed in violence that erupts between warring black factions and between whites and blacks, and as Mugabe’s plan to redistribute the land owned by the whites comes to involve intimidation and murder. Additionally, South African rebels seek to destabilize the new democracy.
W Themes Amy Virshup wrote in the New York Times of Lindiwe and Ian, “Their shared status as outsiders brings them together in this novel about love, family, and what it means to be African.” These themes—love, family, and identity—emanate from the intersection of private lives and public events. In a video interview on the author’s website, Sabatini described the plot as hinging on the threatened love affair of Ian and Lindiwe: “The question throughout the novel, that the novel asks, is, will they manage to keep this connection despite all the trauma and drama that is happening all around them?” The “trauma and drama” is political as well as personal. Aside from their difference in color, complicated by the everwidening racial divide that accompanies Mugabe’s rule, there are their diverse family backgrounds and the continuing threat posed by Lindiwe’s parents to their union. Added to that are the killings and torture of innocent people happening almost daily around them as Mugabe’s regime becomes increasingly dictatorial. Because of the volatility of the situation, a writer for Kirkus Reviews noted, Sabatini “never manages to convince us of the durability of the lovers’ relationship, which is key.” Sabatini said in the interview with Otas that she also hoped to show the affirmative side of independence in the form of the influx of people from all over the world into Zimbabwe just after liberation: “I guess one of the most important stories that I wanted to convey . . . is just how multicultural it was. There was such a heady mix of nationalities: young people, full of energy and good will . . . to help this new nation find its feet. Zimbabwe was going to be a socialist paradise. . . . There was Black, White, Coloured, Asian, Shona, Ndebele . . . and the rest of the world, all squashed up against each other in this (previously) isolated land-locked country.” But Sabatini also admitted that this spirit of optimism existed mostly in the north and drew international attention away from the brutal massacres occurring to the south in Matabeleland.
W Style In her interview with Otas, Sabatini described the style of The Boy Next Door as “stripped down,” designed to highlight the emotional intensity of the story unburdened by excessive description. The dialogue is colorful, consisting of a pastiche of untranslated Shona, Ndebele,
MAJOR CHARACTERS DADDY BISHOP is Lindiwe’s father, a white man who works in the Telecommunications Department of the post office. He is married to a black woman, Lindiwe’s mother, but is unfaithful, conducting an affair with their adopted daughter, Rosanna. LINDIWE BISHOP is one of two main characters. At the start of the novel, she is a shy fourteen-year-old girl fascinated by a crime that occurred at her neighbor’s house. As the novel progresses, she becomes romantically involved with the person accused of the crime, the young white boy who lives next door. Their love is threatened by family circumstance and deteriorating political conditions in Zimbabwe. MUMMY BISHOP is Lindiwe’s mother. At time goes on, she is trapped in a loveless marriage to Lindiwe’s white father. She is desperately opposed to Lindiwe’s involvement with Ian. DAVID MCKENZIE is the son of Lindiwe and Ian. IAN MCKENZIE is the other main character. He is the object of Lindiwe’s love, forced to confess to the crime of setting his stepmother on fire, imprisoned and then released. He has aspirations as a photojournalist and travels to South Africa when Lindiwe is away at school in the north of Zimbabwe. ROSANNA is the adopted daughter of Mummy and Daddy. Daddy fathers a child by her.
British English, Afrikaans (South African), and Zimbabwean street slang. The meaning of the language reveals itself slowly, just as Sabatini unveils the many secrets of the plot in gradual fashion, including Lindiwe’s admission to Ian after several years’ separation that they are the parents of a son, David. Other family secrets mysteriously unravel as well—the involvement of Ian’s father in the military campaign against independence, the mental illness of Ian’s stepmother, the fractured marriage of Lindiwe’s parents, and her father’s child by their adopted daughter, Rosanna. This personal drama seems disturbingly real because it is played out against a sharply realized historical backdrop Sabatini experienced firsthand.
W Critical Reception The Boy Next Door was published in several editions, including separate releases in the United States, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. Amanda Craig described its appeal for the London Independent: “What makes this novel so interesting is that it is a story about the difficulties of first love drawn against a vivid background of political change. We all know something of the sufferings of Zimbabweans, black and white, under
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
United States, where it was greeted with limited, though mostly positive, reviews. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Irene Sabatini won the Orange Award for New Writers with her debut novel, The Boy Next Door (2009), which chronicles the secret love of a white man and a mixed-race woman set against the backdrop of Zimbabwe’s crumbling democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. Sabatini writes from firsthand experience in The Boy Next Door, having grown up in Bulawayo, in the south of Zimbabwe, where much of the novel takes place. She subsequently studied and traveled widely, in Colombia, the Caribbean, and Europe. She currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland.
Mugabe, but Sabatini shows the gradual collapse of her ‘country of eternal optimists’ with a hundred swift, sure touches and a rich cast of characters, heightening tension and mystery.” Elsewhere, Craig included The Boy Next Door among a list of deserving novels that had received almost no publicity in the United Kingdom (New Statesman). The situation was similar in the
Works Cited
Craig, Amanda. “Booked Up.” New Statesman 139.5008 (5 July 2010): 6. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. ———. Rev. of The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini. Independent (London) 29 June 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Otas, Belinda, and Irene Sabatini. “Irene Sabatini: My Interviews. In Conversation (June 2010).” Author website. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. “Sabatini, Irene: The Boy Next Door.” Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2009. Print. Spiers, Di. “Irene Sabatini: The Boy Next Door.” Author website. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Virshup, Amy. Rev. of The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini. New York Times 16 Sept. 2009. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
Pedestrians walk through a busy intersection in Zimbabwe, the setting of the novel The Boy Next Door. ª Robert Fried / Alamy
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For Further Reading
Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini. Publishers Weekly 256.30 (27 July 2009): 39. Print. Provides a concise plot summary. Bush, Vanessa. “The Boy Next Door.” Booklist 106.2 (15 Sept. 2009): 28. Plot synopsis of what Bush calls a “beautifully written first novel.” McKay, Carla. “Out Now in Paperback.” Daily Mail [London] 2 July 2010. HighBeam Research. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. High praise for Sabatini, “a born writer,” and her debut novel, “a completely engrossing story.” Otas, Belinda. Rev. of The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini. New African Woman no. 4 (2010): 98. Ethnic NewsWatch. ProQuest. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Mostly favorable review commending the accuracy of Sabatini’s historical details and the book’s picture of a multicultural Zimbabwe in the early years of independence. Open Web Sources
The author’s website, http//www.irenesabatini.com/, includes biography, a reading guide to The Boy Next Door, print and audio interviews with the author, links to published and reader reviews, and a photo gallery of Bulawayo and other parts of Zimbabwe.
Barclay, Philip. Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despair. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. Print. Diplomat Barclay records his three-year stint in Zimbabwe working for the British Embassy. Barclay witnessed the scandal of the 2008 election, when Robert Mugabe used death squads to cling to power after he was voted out. Meldrum, Andrew. Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. London: Murray, 2004. Print. A journalist’s account of Zimbabwe’s failed promise chronicling the food riots, fuel shortages, inflation, and racial violence that followed independence. Meldrum was expelled from Zimbabwe after twenty years of exposing the corruption and terror of Robert Mugabe’s regime. Rogers, Douglas. The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. New York: Harmony Books, 2009. Print. A narrative of Zimbabwe by a journalist and travel writer who grew up there during the declining democracy of Robert Mugabe and his attempts to take over the land of the white people, including that of Rogers’s family.
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Brandenburg Gate By Henry Porter
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Henry Porter’s novel Brandenburg (published in the United States as Brandenburg Gate) is the third in his series featuring the British secret service agent Robert Harland. Set in the weeks just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this adventure is set in East Germany, where a former Stasi (East German secret police) agent has been called into service once again. Harland is the handler for the former Stasi agent, Rudolf Rosenharte, who is now working as an art historian in Dresden. They are asked to make contact with Rosenharte’s former lover, whom the Stasi believe has important intelligence. In order to ensure Rosenharte’s cooperation, the Stasi have taken Rosenharte’s twin brother Konrad prisoner. Although Rosenharte knows his lover is dead, he plays along with the Stasi’s plan to meet her in Italy, in order to buy his brother time. In Italy, Rosenharte is approached by British and American intelligence agents, who seek to place him back in East Germany as a double agent. The Westerners believe Rosenharte can help identify Islamic terrorists operating in East Germany. Rosenharte is aided by Ulrike Klaar, an anticommunist dissident with her own political agenda. Through the course of the novel, Rosenharte and Ulrike fall in love. Although Rosenharte’s prime objective is to free his brother from prison and protect his brother’s family, he is only marginally successful. His brother dies in prison, although his sister-in-law and nephews are safely relocated. At the novel’s conclusion, Rosenharte and Ulrike escape Stasi pursuers as the Brandenburg Gate opens and the Berlin Wall ceases to be an obstacle closing off East Germany from West Germany.
The Brandenburg Gate, built in the eighteenth century, became, along with the Berlin Wall, a postwar symbol of the division of Germany into two countries, East and West Germany. Germany and the city of Berlin were divided into two sectors at the end of World War II by the Allied powers—one portion was occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France, and the other portion by the Soviet Union. In the postwar years, the relationship between the Soviets and the Western nations began to erode. The year 1949 saw a further reorganization of Germany. The zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France united to form the Federal Republic of West Germany, while the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. Although Berlin was entirely within the Soviet zone, as part of the peace negotiation, the city, like the country, had to be divided among the Allied forces. West Berlin retained the democratic nature of its occupying forces, while East Berlin was under Communist rule. The economies of the two Germanies developed along radically different paths—capitalist versus communist—and by the 1950s, many East Germans were fleeing to the more prosperous West Germany. The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to stem this flow, although communist East Germany claimed the wall was erected as a means of protecting the East Germans from Western influence. The Brandenburg Gate was in the Soviet sector of what was now East Berlin and was incorporated into the Berlin Wall. In 1961, the Brandenburg Gate, once a point of passage, was closed, and heavily guarded, to prevent any East Germans from leaving the country via that route. Escape attempts often ended in death. In the late 1980s, Soviet,
Context
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MAJOR CHARACTERS COLONEL OTTO BIERMEIER works for the Stasi Main Directorate for foreign intelligence, and is Rosenharte’s direct contact to the Stasi for much of the novel. Biermeier and Ulrike work together to draw Rosenharte back into the Stasi’s web. KURT BLAST, who later reveals his former name to have been Hans-Joseph Huch, is an East German who helps Rosenharte rescue Ulrike from prison. ROBERT HARLAND is the British agent who seeks Rosenharte’s cooperation in obtaining information about an Arab terrorist. He is Porter’s recurring character. Depicted as intelligent and sympathetic, Harland aids Rosenharte, Ulrike, and Kurt in their escape from the Stasi at the novel’s end. JESSIE is the name of the British agent who becomes the second Annalise Schering. Although purportedly working to gather information from Ulrike Klaar for the British, she and Ulrike are both members of the peace movement. ULRIKE KLAAR is an East German agent, known to the British agents as Kafka, who is passing information about the East Germans to the West. She also possesses ties to an Arab terrorist, and is a committed member of the peace movement. Her conflicting loyalties become the subject of the increasing fascination of Rosenharte, with whom Ulrike falls in love. Ulrike explains to Rosenharte that she and Biermeier used Konrad as a pawn, getting him imprisoned, in
Eastern bloc nations began to lose their powerful grip on the region. Civil unrest in Poland and Hungary contributed to the decision of the East German government to lift restrictions on travel between East and West Germany in 1989. The Brandenburg Gate was opened, and soon the Berlin Wall was dismantled. East and West Germany were officially reunited in 1990.
W Themes Organized around the theme of the failure of communism, Porter’s novel is focused on the political intrigue generated by the shifting balance of power in Europe. Although the story centers sympathetically on the East German Rosenharte, Porter’s approach is clearly biased toward the West, and Western values. Although Rosenharte was once a Stasi agent himself, he becomes a pawn of his government, and a victim in the sense that his own life is at risk, as are the lives of his family members. His brother’s death comes at the hands of his Stasi captors. Some critics have commented on Porter’s obvious favoring of the British
order to involve Rosenharte, claiming that Rosenharte was needed as a reliable “intermediary” who could get the information to the West about the Arab terrorist movements. KONRAD ROSENHARTE is Rudolf Rosenharte’s brother. He is described as a filmmaker, and a political dissident. Imprisoned ostensibly for his radical behavior, he in fact is being used by Klaar and Biermeier, and the Stasi, in order to manipulate Rosenharte. RUDOLF ROSENHARTE is the story’s protagonist. A former Stasi agent, Rosenharte has extricated himself from the world of espionage and has become an art historian, living in Dresden. The Stasi, however, have another job for Rosenharte, and they have imprisoned his dissident filmmaker brother, Konrad, to encourage Rosenharte to do their bidding. ANNALISE SCHERING is Rosenharte’s former lover, whom he believes to be dead, but is said to be in Trieste, Italy, where Rosenharte is to meet her and gather the intelligence she is believed to possess. The woman he meets is someone who has adopted Annalise’s identity; later her identity as a British agent named Jessie is uncovered. COLONEL ZANK is the Stasi agent who pursues Rosenharte and Ulrike when it becomes clear they are a threat to German Democratic Republic. Zank is portrayed as cruel, and his character is a reflection of the oppression the East German regime.
in the novel. Phil Jacobson in a 2005 review for the Daily Mail states that Porter’s British agents are “onedimensional” but are shown to be “thoroughly decent types serving a noble cause.” Jacobson goes on to lament the lack of “moral ambivalence” regarding espionage that one is more likely to find in the novels of John le Carré. Likewise, Max Hastings, in a 2005 article for the Observer, states that Porter never doubts who “the good guys” are, and that while John le Carré’s novels are permeated with “a sense of moral equivalence between the two sides’ spies, Porter plainly admires Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.” The failure of communism in the Eastern bloc countries, then, is set against the superiority of Western, and specifically, British politics and government. Rosenharte’s interest in Ulrike Klaar, who is aiding the British through her own espionage, underscores Porter’s themes. Ulrike is an outspoken dissident, a critic of the regime that rules East Germany, and an agitator who fuels the public outcry against the government. Rosenharte’s attraction to a resistance figure such as Ulrike clearly posits him on the democratic, Western side of the struggle that Porter depicts.
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The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. The events of Brandenburg Gate take place in Berlin just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jeremy Reddington/Shutterstock.com
W Style Porter’s Brandenburg Gate, set in the recent past, is a tale of espionage and intrigue, a work placed within the genre of the political espionage thriller. A complex plot typical of the genre is layered with historical details surrounding the crumbling of the Soviet power in Eastern Europe. Porter’s novel is part of a trend observed by critic Andrew Taylor, in a 2005 review for Spectator. Taylor observes, “[T]he modern thriller has developed a retrogressive tendency and often looks for its inspiration to the past.” Brandenburg Gate is an example of this tendency to capitalize on the richness of the history of the Cold War era in order to craft a thriller with a suitable quantity of intrigue and villainy. As Porter explores the intricacies of espionage and counterespionage during this particular time and place, his straightforward prose provides the reader with the sense that while dense and intricate, the plot, with twists and turns provided by characters with a variety of motivations, may be unwound, deciphered. Porter’s style reflects his experience as a journalist. The third-person narrating voice conveys a deceptive aura of objectivity, yet Porter doles out the information needed to trace the
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varying loyalties in the plot at his leisure in this work of over four hundred pages.
W Critical Reception Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for 2005, Porter’s Brandenburg Gate has been widely praised a solid work of genre fiction. Matthew Lewin, in a 2005 review of Brandenburg Gate for the Guardian finds that Porter enriches the typical “tale of intrigue and deception, betrayal and retribution,” with a deeper examination of individual responses to such experiences. Lewin praises Porter’s exploration of how people “cope with the demands on their lives” wrought by such circumstances. Additionally, Lewin commends Porter’s “fascinating switchback rollercoaster of a plot.” In a 2006 review of Brandenburg Gate for the Observer, upon the occasion of the paperback version of the work being published, Sarah Hughes appreciates both the plotting and characterization, noting that “Porter spins a merry web involving British, American, Russia and East German spies in an ever more complicated dance, where no one, least of all TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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the reader, is aware of who is really pulling the strings.” Hughes further comments that the East German characters’ complexities of emotion are also well detailed, as they balance their own “anti-west” socialism against the fact that “they rejected their own socialist state.” Other critics have harsher views of the characterization and style Porter uses. Philip Jacobson, in a 2005 review for the Daily Mail finds that the novel’s “main weakness lies in its generally unconvincing supporting cast.” The dialogue is also found to be occasionally inferior, according to Jacobson. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Burgan, Michael. The Berlin Wall: Barrier to Freedom. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2008. Print. Hastings, Max. “A Brandenburg Concerto for Our Times.” Observer [London] 26 June 2005: 17. Print. guardian.co.uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Henry Porter was born in 1953, in Worcestershire, England. A political columnist for the Observer, Porter focuses his journalism on the issues of civil liberties and rights in Britain. In 1990 Porter married Liz Elliot; they have two daughters. Porter published his first novel, Remembrance Day, in 2000. This work was followed with the first in what has become a series of works featuring the British agent Robert Harland, A Spy’s Life, published in 2001. Two additional novels in this series have followed, including Brandenburg Gate, in 2005. In addition to publishing spy novels set in the past, Porter’s recent work, such as the 2009 The Dying Light, published in the United States in 2010 as The Bell Ringers, explores the England of the near future. Porter also works as the London editor of the New Yorkbased magazine Vanity Fair.
“Henry Porter.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008.
Jacobson, Philip. “A Spy Goes Back into the Cold.” Daily Mail 8 July 2005: 58. Print. Questia. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.
Hughes, Sarah. “Paperback of the Week.” Observer [London] 12 Feb. 2006, Review Section: 27. Print. guardian.co.uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.
Lewin, Matthew. “After the Fall.” Guardian [London] 9 July 2005, Review Section: 27. Print. guardian.co.uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.
Germans flood through the recently fallen Berlin Wall. Brandenburg Gate is a spy thriller set in Germany that begins just weeks before the fall of the wall. ª Regis Bossu/Sygma/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Porter, Henry. Brandenburg Gate. London: Orion, 2005. Print. Taylor, Andrew. “In Search of Fresh Villains.” Spectator 298.9233 (23 July 2005): 39. Print.
Open Web Sources
Henry Porter’s author website offers biographical information, news on new releases, and a bibliography of Porter’s works. httpwww.henry-porter.com
Criticism and Reviews
Porter’s British publisher, Orion, offers a synopsis of Porter’s novel Brandenburg Gate. http//www.orion books.co.uk/books/brandenburg-paperback
Robson, David. “Double-Crossing Double Agents.” Sunday Telegraph 3 July 2005. Print. Telegraph.co.uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Robson provides a brief but favorable review, commenting on the novel’s complex plot and large cast of duplicitous characters.
In its coverage of world history, the BBC contains the section “Mapping the Fall of Communism,” on its website. Text and graphics offer an overview of the pivotal events in Eastern Europe leading to the fall of Communism. http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8347035.stm
Additional Resources
Sutton, Henry. “High Spy.” Mirror 17 June 2005. Print. HighBeam Research. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Sutton praises Porter’s Brandenburg Gate for its intricacies, and delights in Porter’s choice in setting the novel in Europe during the Cold War. Terpening, Ronnie H. Rev. of Brandenburg Gate, by Henry Porter. Library Journal 131.4 (1 Mar. 2006): 79. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Terpening commends the well-researched nature of Brandenburg Gate and praises the richness of Porter’s characterizations. Wright, David. Rev. of Brandenburg Gate, by Henry Porter. Booklist 102.13 (1 Mar. 2006): 74. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Wright suggests that while Brandenburg Gate could be characterized as overly complex, the plot is intriguing. Gale Resources
“Porter, Henry.” Contemporary Authors. Ed. Amy Elisabeth Fuller. Vol. 273. Detroit: Gale, 2008: 32224. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 24 Aug. 2010.
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For Further Reading
Funder, Anna. Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall. London: Granta Books, 2003. Print. In this collection of stories, Funder relates from the perspective of East German citizens the challenges and sufferings endured by those who lived inside the oppressive republic. Greenstreet, Rosanna. “Q & A: Henry Porter, Writer and Journalist.” Guardian [London] 29 Aug. 2009, Weekend Section: 11. Print. guardian.co.uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Greenstreet provides a brief interview with Porter about his interests and personal life. Porter, Henry. The Dying Light. London: Orion, 2009. Print. Published in the U.S. as The Bell Ringers by Atlantic Monthly Press in 2010, Porter’s novel is set in the near future in an England envisioned by Porter as a police state. ———. “Why I Write about the Surveillance State.” Independent [London] 7 Aug. 2009. independent.co. uk. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Porter discusses his exploration of the world of espionage in his fiction, and the way his work as a journalist has provided insights into this world. Catherine Dominic
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Breath By Tim Winton
W Introduction Tim Winton’s eighth novel, Breath (2008), is a coming-ofage story. The plot follows the narrator, Bruce Pike, from age twelve to fifteen. His friend, Loonie, is a year older and considerably wilder. Pike’s parents are in the dark about his activities, and Loonie’s bar-owning father does not care. Together, the boys discover surfing and a famous but aging expert, Sando, who tutors them in the sport. They compete for Sando’s attention and take on increasingly dangerous challenges. Eventually, Loonie and Sando go off on a surfing trip, leaving Pike to become sexually entangled with Sando’s wife and needing to make a decision about where his life is headed. Winton is considered by many to be Australia’s most popular novelist. His themes for this short novel are concerned with addictive behaviors, philosophical issues about escaping the ordinary, and the lessons learned in youth that can affect one’s whole life. Set in Western Australia, the novel is written with clear but highly descriptive language that helps the reader understand the thrills and art of surfing.
W Literary and Historical Context
Surfing developed among the Polynesian nations. The ancient Hawaiians named it he’e nalu or “wave sliding.” Both a sport but a training exercise for leaders, the chief was the best rider with the best board. Kahunas (priests) prayed for good waves, and competitions settled conflicts among the upper class. However, the dissipation of the Hawaiian culture with the coming of westerners almost extinguished the practice of surfing until its revival in the early twentieth century. In 1907 George Freeth, an IrishHawaiian, brought the sport to California; in 1912 Jim
Jordan and his oversized board made Virginia Beach the surfing capital of the East Coast; in 1915 Duke Kahanamoku, a surfing legend, introduced surfing to Australia. Advances in the 1920s in technology, materials, and surfboard design made the sport more accessible to the general public, and the first major surfing competition was held in 1928. Adding fins to the boards made surfboarding easier to learn and allowed for more trick maneuvers. Over the years, the boards became lighter and more manageable with the use of Styrofoam and fiberglass rather than woods. The invention of the wet suit in the 1950s also allowed surfers to catch waves in colder water and weather. The sport’s first major promoter was Dale Veazy, a manufacturer of surfboards who used advertising endorsements. Then interest exploded after Hollywood started making surf or beach party movies such as Gidget (1959) and the documentary The Endless Summer (1966). In the 1960s, boards were shortened from ten to six feet, and surfing became commercialized and culturally influential in clothes styles, music, and surfing magazines. In the 1970s, Australia became the center of the surfing world, which includes professional surfers, a number of supporting businesses, and fans around the world.
W Themes Addiction is a major theme of Breath: addiction to surfing, to danger, to pushing the limits and facing fear; Bruce’s addiction to Eva; Eva’s addiction to autoerotic asphyxiation, all of which in rebellion against the natural human compulsion to breathe. Surfing, its art, physicality, and danger serve in the novel as a stark contrast to the dreaded state of being ordinary, of living in a dull mining town like Sawyer. For Pikelet and Loonie, surfing gives meaning and intensity to their lives and makes them special. In addition, surfing is a way for these teens to prove their masculinity as measured by strength and daring.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS IVAN LOON (Loonie) is Bruce Pike’s danger-addicted, mouthy, surfing buddy who lives neglected at his father’s pub until he is caught up in the surfing world. BRUCE PIKE (Pikelet), the narrator, is a loner with older, unaware parents, who uses surfing to combat boredom, but discovers other excitements and their dangers, too. BILL SANDERSON (Sando), is a 36-year-old former surfing champion who surfs all over the world, has cosmopolitan tastes, and becomes a guru to Pikelet and Loonie. EVA SANDERSON, Bill’s difficult wife, was a free-style skier until a mangled knee causes her to find her thrills elsewhere, including an affair with Pikelet.
The title makes it obvious that breath is a theme of the novel. The importance of taking a breath, or not being able to, is laced throughout the narrative: One needs breath to play the didjeridu; Bruce’s father stops breathing because of sleep apnea; as children Bruce and Loonie
compete to see who can hold their breath the longest while playing in the river; surfers need sixty-seconds worth of breath to survive when submerged by a wave; Eva fights for breath during autoerotic asphyxiation. Another theme concerns the effects of the past upon the middle aged, especially men. Surfing may provide an escape mechanism as well as new spiritual and aesthetic experiences, but where does it lead? Bruce’s spirits soar when he surfs, and he feels that he is doing something as graceful as dancing, but the letdown when not surfing causes him to seek other highs, other dangers that leave him with long-term emotional damage and a continuing battle to find balance in his life as a whole rather than just on the surfboard.
W Style Winton structured Breath as a story about Bruce Pike as a youth framed by Pike as a middle-aged paramedic. The frame is quite brief, only seven pages at the beginning of the book and sixteen pages at the end, but it is sufficient to set up the scenario of the older Pike reflecting on the most daring period of his life. As a paramedic, Pike is called to a suicide that he is able to recognize is an accidental death
The plot of Breath revolves around the exploits of a group of Australian surfers. Stephanie Swartz/Shutterstock.com
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due to autoerotic asphyxiation because of his own teenage experiences with this dangerous practice. Inside this frame is a first-person story with just four main characters. The short novel has vivid images of the oceans and surfing. Within his spare prose, Winton uses lively action verbs that help the reader to understand the thrill of surfing. His language is also quite lyrical, and there are passages in which he interrupts the action of the story with effective descriptions that enable readers to get inside the characters’ emotions and feel their intensity. Winton’s practice in planning a novel is to first decide on the setting because the location and its landscape, the feelings he gets about the people in a certain place, are what give him inspiration. Almost always, the setting is in Western Australia, as in Breath, because that is Winton’s home, the area and people he knows well. In conjunction with the setting, his habit is to emphasize Australian English, using colloquialism to convey local characters.
W Critical Reception According to the critics, there are a number of flaws in Breath. Russell Celyn Jones, as published by the Times, provided a summary: Winton sometimes rushes, reverts to empty phrases and posturing, and ends the book badly. However, Jones concluded, when it comes to describing surfing, Breath is “as good as it gets.” Jennifer Schuessler, in the New York Times Book Review, agreed on its strength: “The freeze-frame descriptions of surfing . . . are gripping.” Barbara Hoffert, in a review for the Library Journal, concurred but added that the reasons Bruce gives for a derailed life are “not entirely convincing.” However, the novelist excels at his subject matter. Hoffert wrote: “Winton is pitch perfect in capturing (but not exploiting adolescent angst), and he describes surfing and the sea so thrillingly that even non-swimmers will want to plunge right in.” Philip Hensher agreed with Hoffert: Winton can “make us see, while sitting in our armchairs, exactly what it would be like to stand on a bit of hardboard while a 30-foot wave defeats our attempts to float on it.” Hensher explained Winton’s “virtuosity” in Breath as the ability “to move seamlessly from Pikelet’s honest speech into an elevated but absolutely direct account of what it is like to fling yourself at these great waves.” David Maine, in his Publishers Weekly review, praised Winton’s style: “Winton’s language, often terse, never showy, hovers convincingly between a teenager’s inarticulateness and the staccato delivery of a grown man.” Adding a note about the theme of the novel, a review in the New Yorker concluded that Breath “is both a hymn to the beauty of flying on water and a sober assessment of the costs of losing one’s balance, in every sense of the word.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Karrinyup, Western Australia, in 1960, Tim Winton attended Curtin University and Western Australia Institute of Technology. He has written novels, nonfiction, and short stories, receiving numerous awards and becoming one of Australia’s premier authors. His books include the Lockie Leonard children’s series, which has been adapted as a TV series. One of these books and his novels Cloudstreet and That Eye, the Sky have been adapted for the stage, and his novels That Eye, the Sky and In the Winter Dark have been adapted for film. Winton likes to cook, dive, fish, and surf. He belongs to the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Stop the Toad Foundation as a patron and has established the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers. Married to a nurse and administrator, Denise, Winton has three children—two sons and a daughter. As of 2010, they lived in Western Australia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Breath.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. New Yorker 84.20 (2008): 95. Print. Hensher, Philip. “Ruling the Waves.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Spectator 307.9375 (2008): 36. Print. Hoffert, Barbara. “Winton, Tim. Breath.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Library Journal 133.7 (2008): 78. Print. Jones, Russell Celyn. “Breath by Tim Winton: The Times review.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. timesonline. co.uk. Times [London] 25 April 2008. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. Maine, David. “Breath.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Publishers Weekly 225.14 (2008): 40. Print. Schuessler, Jennifer. “Beach Boys.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. New York Times Book Review 8 June 2008: 17(L). Print. Winton, Tom. Breath. New York: Picador-Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Breath.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. bookmarksmagazine.com. Bookmarks Sept.-Oct. 2008. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. Comments on surfing as the center of the story and includes a critical summary and excerpts from other reviews. Ness, Patrick. “The Seventh Wave.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 10 May 2008.
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Web. 23 Aug. 2010. Summarizes the story then comments on Winton’s prose and the theme of fear. O’Reilly, Nathanael. “Testing the Limits of Endurance.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Antipodes 22.2 (2008): 169. Print. Reviews Winton’s career, provides a story summary, and comments on Winton’s descriptions and tone. Ratcliffe, Sophie. “New Fiction.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Daily Mail 9 May 2008: 68. Print. Briefly discusses the framework of the novel and its philosophical message about the value of surfing. “Winton, Tim: BREATH.” Rev. of Breath, by Tim Winton. Kirkus Reviews 1 Apr. 2008. Print. Examines the language and characters and remarks on Winton’s handling of youth and lessons learned. Gale Resources
“Tim Winton.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2010. http//galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&o=DataTy pe&n=10&l=d&c=1&locID=itsbtrial&secondary= false&u=CA&t=KW&s=2&NA=Tim+Winton
biography and links to several interviews and other information. For Further Reading
Ben-Messahel, Salhia. Mind the Country: Tim Winton’s Fiction. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2006. Print. The first book-length study of Winton’s fiction, divided into four thematic sections. Carey, Peter. Oscar and Lucinda. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print. Australian novel about a minister and an heiress who love gambling and each other. Hawkins, Christopher. The Water’s End. Bloomington: Trafford, 2006. Print. Hawkins’s first novel about a Jersey boy and his complicated romance on the beaches of Mexico. Warshaw, Matt. The Encyclopedia of Surfing. New York: Mariner Books, 2005. Print. Covers the history, mythology, statistics, and other facts about surfing. Winton, Tim. Cloudstreet: A Novel. New York: Scribner’s, 2002. Print. Tells the story of two very different families who share a house for twenty years. Lois Kerschen
Open Web Sources
Winton maintains a Web site for Breath at http//breath. timwinton.com.au, which lists awards and includes a
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao By Junot Díaz
W Introduction In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), Junot Díaz intertwines the stories of Dominican Republic political figures with the stories of the Cabral and de Leon families to amplify Oscar de Leone’s struggle with his identity, culture, and quest for love. Living with his mother Beli and his sister Lola, Oscar, nicknamed Oscar Wao by some bullies who liken him to Oscar Wilde, stays at home to write stories, read science fiction, watch cartoons, enjoy role-playing games, and dream about finding love and becoming a wellknown author. Lola narrates a chapter, but it is Yunior, Lola’s occasional boyfriend, who narrates the story of Oscar, his family, and their bad luck, resulting from a curse (fukú) with a history of its own. Díaz’s lengthy first section tells the history of the fukú and Oscar’s adolescence, then Lola narrates her own story. From this point, Díaz moves the narrative to the Dominican Republic and back in time to tell Beli’s story. The setting reverts to Oscar and his collegial experiences at Rutgers University, where Oscar’s bad luck continues to prevail as he continues to seek relationships with unattainable women. Díaz changes the setting to the Dominican Republic in the second section for Abelard Cabral’s story, in which the history of the curse becomes clearer as Díaz reveals Abelard’s encounter with Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. The narrative shifts to Oscar as an adult and describes Beli, Oscar, and Lola’s return to the Dominican Republic to visit La Inca. While there, Oscar meets his grandmother’s neighbor, Ybon, a semiretired prostitute. Even though she is involved with a Dominican police officer, Oscar falls in love with her. The third portion describes the encounter between Oscar and Ybon. The encounter ends badly for Oscar, who is eventually beaten and then killed by the police officer’s goons. The story ends with Yunior reading a letter from
Oscar, in which Oscar describes his last encounter with Ybon.
W Literary and Historical Context
Frequently alternating time and place in The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz’s narrative jumps from New York, New Jersey, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and in and out of different decades of the twentieth century. The story of Oscar and the family curse is set during the time when Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961) was in power, from 1930 to 1938 and from 1942 to 1952. As commander of the National Army, Trujillo established his power by 1930 by harassing and intimidating voters for the presidential elections. Winning 95 percent of the vote, Trujillo took over a stunned nation and began his feudalistic-like reign, which lasted until 1952. During this period, Trujillo ruled with complete authority, maintaining a secret police force and establishing monopolies over all state enterprises. Ironically, life got better for most Dominicans during Trujillo’s reign, but Trujillo’s fascist ideals put many citizens in great fear and peril (Haggerty). Díaz also weaves in a footnote about Trujillo’s protégé, Joaquín Balaguer (1906-2002). After Trujillo’s assassination in 1961, Balaguer was accused of fixing elections and intimidating voters. He won the election and ruled “with a sometimes ruthless manner for 22 years and six presidential terms” (Kershaw).
W Themes In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz illustrates the struggles and costs that are associated with the pursuit of love. Díaz uses Oscar, a social outsider, to show that
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ABELARD CABRAL, Beli’s father and Oscar and Lola’s grandfather, dies at the hands of Trujillo’s regime. BELI (BELICIA) CABRAL DE LEON is the mother of Lola and Oscar and the niece of La Inca. YUNIOR DE LAS CASAS is Oscar’s roommate, occasional boyfriend of Lola, and the narrator of most of the novel. LA INCA is Oscar and Lola’s grandmother and Beli’s aunt. She raises Beli after the tragic death of Beli’s parents. LOLA DE LEON is Oscar’s older sister and Yunior’s intermittent girlfriend. OSCAR DE LEON, the protagonist of the story, is an overweight, Dominican American nerd. He spends his time writing, reading science fiction, and searching for love and a bit of good luck. YBON PIMENTEL is a semiretired prostitute who becomes Oscar’s love interest.
even though love can endure, it does not have the power to transform a person into the person he wants to be; the power has to come from the person himself. Unfortunately, Oscar never realizes he has the power and authority to make these changes happen. Díaz includes stories of Oscar’s family members to show how love cannot save individuals even though they make great sacrifices in order to love and be loved. Lola and Yunior sacrifice their love for each other in order learn how to construct independent lives since their love is not enough to bind them together. The relationship between Abelard and his daughter serves as another example of the cost of love. Abelard sacrifices his freedom for his daughter, but in the end, the sacrifice goes unrewarded as his daughter drowns. A second theme that appears in the novel is that of cultural identity. Díaz connects the history of the Dominican Republic with the histories of Oscar, Lola, and Yunior to show that their own histories and the histories of their country are inseparable. How to merge these histories, however, is what confronts Lola and Yunior. Lola runs away from her past, and Yunior has a series of infidelities in order to gloss over his past. In the end, both characters resolve how to accept their Dominican heritage rather than reject it. Oscar, who refuses to confront who he is, remains a displaced person who never fits in. As a result, Oscar comes to mirror people, especially immigrants, who struggle to fit in because they either will not or cannot blend their past and present cultural heritages.
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Set in the Dominican Republic, some of the events in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao take place during the reign of President Rafael Trujillo. ª Bettmann/Corbis
A third theme in the novel is that of politics, power, and authority. In combining Oscar’s story with that of Abelard, Díaz documents the history of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Díaz uses Trujillo to explore how one man can rise to power and once he is in control, how horrifying it is when that solitary voice comes to be the voice a nation.
W Style Díaz successfully constructs a plot in which readers have to unravel the characters’ stories and their connections to each other. By juxtaposing not only characters—Lola and Beli, Oscar and Yunior, and Abelard and Trujillo—along with the past and present, and the setting of the United States and Dominican Republic, Díaz manages to throw readers into the same quandary as some of his characters, giving them a sense of displacement. The style of this novel is heavily infused with Spanish and English idioms and dialects from New TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Jersey in the 1980s and Santo Domingo in different decades. Díaz uses intermittent exchanges between Oscar’s story and the chapters laced with family member accounts to bounce readers back and forth in time and place. Consequently, readers encounter chapters spliced into Oscar’s story. Because of the erratic change in time and place, the text itself moves swiftly to focus on different characters as the voice swings from third person (Yunior) to first person, (Lola). Díaz uses Yunior as the primary narrator to offset the tragedy with comedy and to interject a sense of style and voice that manages to connect readers to the prose. With street-smart references, vulgar language, and a sense of lightness and humor, Yunior manages to reveal his own complicated history while telling the story of Oscar and his family.
W Critical Reception Díaz’s Drown, a collection of short stories published in 1996, was well received; however, it took Díaz eleven years to publish his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Praised for his handling of the protagonistnarrator, intermingling of historical footnotes, and engaging prose, Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in addition to several other awards and accolades. Much of the novel’s success is attributed to Díaz’s use of setting. According to Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, Díaz successfully uses setting to fuse the stories of past and present, combining Dominican history with that of a fat Dominican ghetto kid from Paterson, New Jersey, who is looking to lose his virginity. Kakutani indicated that Díaz successfully “fashioned both a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family’s life and loves.” She argued that this book “establishes him as one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.” A few reviewers noted the strength of the historical footnotes and the narrative, which moves readers into the past. For example, Alice O’Keefe in the New Statesmen praised Díaz for the book’s portions that focus on Dominican history and the story of Abelard and Beli as the sections that “drive the narrative.” Despite the rave reviews from some reviewers, a few others, however, noted some weaknesses in Díaz’s use of language. James Wood in the New Republic argued that Díaz does not do anything new with language, and as a result, his text does little to connect readers to characters. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carlin Romano critiqued Díaz for his “sprinkles sci-fi/comic book/fantasy references, and Spanish and Spanglish phrases, with abandon and no explanation, as if smugly unconcerned for any reader of the ‘universal’ sort he’s said he hopes to attract.” However, Romano stated that there is value in the read as the novel “grows on you because Díaz slowly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on December 31, 1968, Junot Díaz immigrated with his family in 1974 to Parlin, New Jersey, to reunite with his father, who immigrated earlier. Raised in New Jersey, Díaz received his BA from Rutgers University and his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. From 1997 to 2002, Díaz taught in the MFA program at Syracuse University, and in 2003 he became associate professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Díaz is the author of Drown (1996), a short story collection that received wide recognition, and editor of The Beacon Best of 2001: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors and Cultures. Díaz won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
convinces us that Oscar, the sad sack Díaz might have become, is real and matters.” A. O. Scott from the New York Times stressed that Díaz’s success lies in his use of his narrator Yunior. Even though Yunior’s street-savvy persona is in direct conflict with his authoritative use of language in the telling of Oscar’s story and in the footnote accounts, Scott saw the conflict Yunior’s narrative voice creates as part of the appeal and the voice that holds the text together. John Lingan in the Quarterly Review indicated that Yunior is “a breathless and colloquial storyteller” and that, over the course of the book, Yunior’s contribution is an essential ingredient in the success of the story. Susan Straight in the Los Angeles Times agreed with Scott. She noted that Díaz took a risk in choosing Yunior, who is “unconcerned about whether his language is accessible.” O’Keefe, however, disagreed with both Scott and Straight; she argued that Yunior is “an inconsistent character” because he is an unreliable narrator and, therefore, distances the reader. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Isak’s Blog 4 June 2010. Web. 10 July 2010. Haggerty, Richard A., ed. “The Era of Trujillo.” Dominican Republic: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1989. Print. Kakutani, Michiko. “Travails of an Outcast.” Rev. of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. nytimes.com. New York Times 4 Sept. 2007. Web. 25 July 2010. Kershaw, Sarah. “Joaquin Balaguer; 95, Dies; Dominated Dominican Life.” NYtimes.com. New York Times 15 July 2002. Web. 13 July 2010.
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Lingan, John. Rev. of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. quarterlyconversation.com. Quarterly Conversation, n.d. Web. 25 July 2010.
Library. Web. 28 July 2010. http//go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CCX2285700052& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w
Romano, Carlin. “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: It’s Hard Going but Stay with It.” Rev. of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. Philadelphia Inquirer.com. Philadelphia Inquirer 7 Sept. 2007. Web. 26 July 2010.
“Junot Díaz.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 July 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id= GALE%7CH1000124825&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Scott, A. O. “Dreaming in Spanglish.” Rev. of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. nytimes. com. New York Times Sunday Book Review 30 Sept. 2007. Web. 1 July 2010.
“Junot Díaz.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 258. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 July 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1121130000&v=2.1&u =itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Straight, Susan. “A Love Supreme.” Rev. of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. Latimes. com. Los Angeles Times 9 Sept. 2007. Web. 20 July 2010. Wood, James. “Call It Sleep.” Rev. of Drown, by Junot Díaz. New Republic 215.25 (1996): 39-42.
“Selected Websites on Junot Díaz’s Life and Works.” Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 July 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1440124825&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w
Additional Resources Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
Díaz, Junot, and Juleyka Lantigua. “Junot Díaz.” Progressive 70.9 (2007): 33-36. Print. Discusses social outcasting, the Internet generation, immigrant status, and the writing process. Hannan, Jim. “Junot Díaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” World Literature Today 82.2 (2008): 65+. Print. Describes effective use of grim humor contrasted with the horror of the Trujillo regime to unravel the story of Oscar and the curse. Stetler, Carrie. “A Decade of Writer’s Block Over, Díaz Publishes His Novel.” Newhouse News Service. 29 Aug. 2007. Web. 1 July 2010. Discusses the role of Yunior as character and narrator. ———. “From ‘Ghetto Nerd’ to MIT: Writer Junot Díaz.” Newhouse News Service 20 Oct. 2005. Web. 1 July 2010. Explores the role of Oscar as protagonist in relation to Díaz’s childhood. Thompson, Bob. “The Outsider Is In: An Immigrant’s Stories.” Washington Post.com. Washington Post 20 Sept. 2007. Web. 25 July 2010. Addresses the theme of self-identity. “The Yale Literary Magazine Interviews Junot Díaz.” Yale Literary Magazine 20.1 (2008): 26+. Print. Explores the connection Díaz has to Yunior, the narrator in two of his works, his literary influences, and his role as a writer representing a different culture. Gale Resources
“Díaz, Junot 1968-.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Ed. Amy Elisabeth Fuller. Vol. 183. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 145-49. Gale Virtual Reference
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“Díaz’s First Novel Details a Wondrous Life,” posted on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, available at http//www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=14004835, includes Alan Cheuse reviewing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. “First Novel Examines ‘Dominican-American Sci-Fi Geek,’” posted on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, available at http// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=15271108, is a podcast of Andrea Seabrook interviewing Junot Díaz on the stereotypes in his work, Dominican themes, mashing of cultures, and making life choices. Facebook page dedicated to Junot Díaz, available at http//facebook.com/pages/Junot-Diaz/ 111850538834522 includes posts about his writing, books, and interviews. “Junot Díaz Discusses His ‘Wondrous’ Debut Novel” posted on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, available at http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=90111248, includes a podcast of Terry Gross interviewing Díaz his childhood, writing experiences, family history, and influences. Junot Díaz’s Web site, available at http://www.junot diaz.com, includes information about lectures and work in progress. For Further Reading
Brown, Isabel Zakrewski. Culture and Customs of the Dominican Republic. Westport: Greenwood, 1999. Print. Highlights the land, people, customs, religion, performing arts, and literature of the Dominican Republic. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Céspedes, Diógenes, and Silvio Torres-Saillant. “Fiction Is the Poor Man’s Cinema: An Interview with Junot Díaz.” Callaloo 23.3 (2000): 892-907. Print. Focuses on Díaz’s childhood experiences, creative process, and the intermingling of cultural references into his texts.
Pons, Frank Maya. The Dominican Republic: A National History. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1998. Print. Offers a comprehensive overview of the history of the Dominican Republic.
Diederich, Bernard. Trujillo: The Death of a Dictator. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2000. Print. Chronicles the dictatorship of Trujillo after thirty-one years of ruling the Dominican Republic.
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The Broken Shore By Peter Temple
W Introduction Published in Australia in 2005 and in the United States in 2007, Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore is a detective novel written in a literary style. A departure from Temple’s popular Jack Irish series, the book follows Joe Cashin, a Melbourne homicide detective who takes a position in Port Monro, a small rural town on the Victorian coast, after he is seriously injured on the job. There he becomes involved in a murder investigation that forces him to confront police corruption and racial bigotry. He also has to face his awkward relationship with his mother and brother. Set in contemporary Australia, The Broken Shore employs distinctly Australian dialogue, to the extent that the North American edition of the book includes a glossary defining more than sixty terms. The novel addresses a number of social concerns, from class and racial tensions to homophobia and pedophilia. It won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (formerly the Gold Dagger Award) for the year’s best work of detective fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
Much of the plot of The Broken Shore relies on tensions between Australia’s white majority and Indigenous Australians, or Aborigines. Historically, these tensions date back to the arrival of Europeans on the Australian continent in the late eighteenth century. Under British colonial rule, Australia’s indigenous population was decimated by disease. It has been estimated that the indigenous population of the continent precontact was more than 300,000; by 1900 it had dwindled to fewer than 100,000. Over the next century, Indigenous Australians struggled to overcome racial bigotry, win
suffrage and representation, and reclaim land. Although they won the right to vote in 1962 and gained limited rights to their land in 1972, indigenous people remain underrepresented in Australian politics and are often isolated in poverty-stricken settlements. In the novel, Aboriginal characters live primarily in “the Daunt,” an economically depressed indigenous settlement. Cashin recalls the taunting that his cousin, whose mother was Aboriginal, endured during their youth. As the novel unfolds, people of indigenous descent remain the subject of derision among the white police force, who refer to them in pejorative terms such as “Daunt dickheads,” “coons,” “niggers,” and “boongs.”
W Themes Power and its abuses are central themes in Temple’s novel. The book illuminates a number of important inequalities between those who have power and those who do not. The murdered Charles Bourgoyne is the novel’s most obvious representative of the abuses of power. His wealth puts him at the top of the class structure, a position he takes advantage of in order to abuse disadvantaged children while paying officials to look the other way. Bourgoyne’s death highlights the disparities in power and credibility between the community’s white majority and its indigenous minority. Before it is eventually revealed that Bourgoyne was killed by his stepson, a victim of his abuse, the combination of racial prejudice and a police cover-up leads to the senseless deaths of three young Aboriginal men who are suspected of the crime. Temple is quick to point out, however, that bigotry extends beyond lines of race and class. Cashin frequents a restaurant owned by Leon Gadney, who relocated to the area after his male lover was murdered, either by antigay zealots or by equally bigoted police officers. Later, Cashin learns that the successful brother he has long resented is struggling with his own homosexuality. The brother,
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CHARLES BOURGOYNE is a prominent citizen whose murder sets off the chain of events that dominate the plot. As the detective Cashin investigates, he discovers that Bourgoyne and his friends had been sexually abusing and likely murdering children for many years through the guise of a charity camp. Bourgoyne is murdered by his stepson, Jamie, in retaliation for the abuse. JOE CASHIN is a homicide detective who has been relocated to a small town on Australia’s southern coast. While investigating a murder case, he uncovers corruption that implicates local police. MICHAEL CASHIN is Joe’s successful brother. Though the two have never been close, they are brought together after Michael attempts suicide and confesses that he has been forced out of his high-powered job after he was photographed kissing a man. HELEN CASTLEMAN is a defense attorney and Cashin’s love interest. She is defending Donny Coulter, the young Aborigine accused in Bourgoyne’s death, and uncovers evidence that helps Cashin unravel the truth about Charles Bourgoyne’s death.
Detectives follow a lead about two teenagers trying to sell a missing watch at a pawn shop in the book The Broken Shore. Linda Armstrong/ Shutterstock.com
Michael Cashin, loses his job after he is photographed kissing his male lover. As a result the lover, who is married and has children, commits suicide. Michael subsequently also attempts suicide. While these revelations bring Cashin and his brother closer together, Temple makes it clear that homophobia does real and lasting harm to families and communities. The relationship between the past and the present is also a central theme in The Broken Shore. Characters such as Bourgoyne’s stepson, Jamie, and the drifter Dave Reb are haunted by the abuse they suffered at the hands of Bourgoyne and his friends. The abuse turns Jamie into a sadistic killer and is ostensibly responsible for Reb’s life of poverty and isolation. Cashin is also haunted by events from his past, including his father’s suicide, his mother’s careless parenting style, and what he perceives to be his own responsibility for the death of a fellow cop. Both he and Reb are seen to gain some strength from their joint effort to rebuild the ruined home of Cashin’s ancestor, an act that symbolizes their determination to come to terms with the past and create a new future.
DETECTIVE HOPGOOD is a senior police detective and an obvious racist who is investigating the attack on Charles Bourgoyne. Cashin becomes suspicious of Hopgood’s insistence on the guilt of three young Aborigines, and Hopgood is later revealed to have turned a blind eye to Bourgoyne’s crimes. DAVE REB is an itinerant worker, or “swaggie,” whom Cashin discovers sleeping in a shed. Touched by the man’s circumstances and apparent honesty, he offers him a job. The two men develop a friendship. Dave eventually reveals that he attended Bourgoyne’s charity camp as a child.
W Style The Broken Shore is stylistically notable for its terse dialogue, which is marked by coarse language, slang, and racial slurs. Typical of such dialogue is Detective Hopgood’s warning against arresting the young Aboriginal suspects at home: “You don’t go into the f—ing Daunt at night and arrest people. It’s Indian territory. Excellent chance we end up being attacked by the whole f—ing street, the whole f—ing Daunt, hundreds of coons off their f—ing faces.” At the same time, the book’s narrative passages are full of visual details described in language that borders on the poetic (“Cashin went for a walk, bought cigarettes, another surrender. A cold night, rain in the west wind, the last of the leaves flirting with bits of paper in the streetlights.”).
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Peter Temple was born in South Africa in 1946. He immigrated to Australia in 1980, seeking to distance himself from the repressive and racist system of apartheid in his native country. Living in Sydney, Temple established himself as a well-respected journalist, writing for both newspapers and magazines. In 1995 he began to focus full time on fiction writing. In 1996 he published his first novel, Bad Debts. The work introduced attorney Jack Irish, a character who would feature prominently in a series of subsequent novels. Bad Debts won the prestigious Ned Kelly Award for crime fiction and helped establish Temple’s reputation as a favorite Australian crime writer. Temple produced eight more novels over the next decade, including The Broken Shore. Like his other works, The Broken Shore depicts the life and landscape of Australia. It garnered Temple his fifth Ned Kelly Award. His 2009 novel Truth revisits some of the characters introduced in The Broken Shore.
Commentators have pointed to such prose when arguing that Temple’s novel, while clearly rooted in the detective fiction tradition, transcends the genre with its
literary style. Writing in the Washington Post, for example, Patrick Anderson described The Broken Shore as “an exceptional blending of first-rate crime fiction and a literary sensibility.”
W Critical Reception When it was first published in Australia in 2005, The Broken Shore was an immediate critical success. In addition to winning the 2006 Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel, it garnered the 2005 Colin Roderick Award, which honors the best Australian literary work representing life in that country. With its publication outside of Australia, the book drew international praise for its treatment of sensitive social issues as well as for its writing style. Commentators were especially drawn to Temple’s gift for description and his ability to depict numerous different characters and situations with an even hand. Susanna Yager noted in the Sunday Telegraph that “This is a very fine book. Characterisation, dialogue and the quality of the prose are all top-class,” while Anderson praised Temple for his character development, writing that the novel “presents sophisticated portraits of at least a dozen of Port Monro’s citizens—the rich and the poor,
The novel The Broken Shore is set in a small, rural Australian town, much like the one shown in this photo. ª sam oakes / Alamy
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the honest and the corrupt—all seen with compassion and without illusion.” The Broken Shore has even been the subject of some scholarly analysis. For example, in an article in the journal Antipodes, William Sayers examines Temple’s use of Australian slang, noting in particular how characters are marked by the language they use. “Temple’s long career as a journalist,” he writes, “has given him a fine ear for popular speech and its reflection of ethnic and class selfidentification. His protagonist, Joe Cashin, uses none of the terms reviewed here, which qualifies him to get the killers and the girl. On the other hand, his detective counterpart from a neighboring jurisdiction, Hopgood, who is eventually shown to be corrupt and implicated in some of the crimes, delivers the most offensive characterization of the Aboriginal community, aware that Cashin has in-laws there.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Anderson, Patrick. “Brutal Eloquence.” Washington Post 18 June 2007: C03. Print. Sayers, William. “Hoon, Coon, and Boong in Peter Temple’s Detective Fiction.” Antipodes 22.2 (2008): 165+. Print. Temple, Peter. The Broken Shore. Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 2005. Print. Yager, Susanna. “Crime Fiction.” Sunday Telegraph [London] 9 July 2006: 49. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple. Kirkus Reviews 15 Apr. 2007: 363. Print. Offers an overview of the novel’s plot and praises its psychological insight. Rev. of The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple. Publishers Weekly 2 Apr. 2007: 38. Print. Emphasizes the novel’s attention to character development and setting. Graff, Keir. Rev. of The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple. Booklist 15 Mar. 2007: 30. Print. A favorable review that likens Temple’s Australia to the American West. Ott, Bill. “The Year’s Best Crime Novels.” Booklist 1 May 2007: 6+. Print. Praises the intelligence of Temple’s novel. Williams, Wilda. Rev. of The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple. Library Journal 15 May 2007: 85. Print.
Lauds the author’s prose style and his insight into racial and class politics. Gale Resources
“Peter Temple.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
The Australian Crime Fiction Database offers an online bibliography of Temple’s work. http//www.crime downunder.com/petertemple.html The Web site Tangled Web UK includes an interview with Temple by Bob Cornwell in which the author discusses his work. http//www.twbooks.co.uk/crimescene/Pe ter-Temple-talks-to-Bob-Cornwell.htm The January Magazine Web site offers an overview of Temple’s career through 2002 and notably includes the writer’s reflections on his craft and publishing. http//www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/ptem ple.html Reading Group Guides offers an introduction to the novel and questions to guide discussion of the book. http// www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_B/broken_ shore1.asp For Further Reading
Flood, Josephine. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2006. Print. Provides a history of Australia’s indigenous people and their culture. Karl, Roland F., et al. Australia: Continent of Contrasts. Munich: C.J. Bucher, 2007. Print. Presents an imagerich introduction to the continent of Australia. Kuhns, Joseph B., and Johannes Knutsson. Police Use of Force: A Global Perspective. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010. Print. Explores the use of force in its myriad forms by police officers around the world. Rowe, Kerrin P. Wordbook of Australian Idiom—Aussie Slang: No Worries! She’s Apples! Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2005. Print. Offers an overview of slang terms and idioms in Australian English. Temple, Peter. Truth. Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 2009. Print. A mystery that features Inspector Stephen Villani, who appears in The Broken Shore.
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Greta Gard
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Brooklyn By Colm Tóibín
W Introduction Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn is a story about twentiethcentury immigration. The heroine, Eilis (pronounced EYElish) Lacey, is the youngest and least important daughter in the Lacey family. Her mother has been widowed and her three brothers have all left Ireland for jobs in England. Eilis’s older sister, Rose, is a bookkeeper who supports their widowed mother with her wages. Employment and husbands are in short supply in the small town of Enniscorthy, where the girls and their mother live. Rose asks a visiting priest, Father Flood, to help Eilis immigrate to the United States. Father Flood finds Eilis a job and a place to stay and watches over her as she settles into her new life in Brooklyn. Eilis is one of several Irish girls living in Mrs. Kehoe’s boardinghouse. She finds a job working for Bartocci’s department store, under the watchful eye of Miss Fortini, her supervisor. To help Eilis cope with her loneliness and homesickness, Father Flood arranges for Eilis to enroll at Brooklyn College, where she can complete the requirements for a bookkeeper’s certificate in two years. At Brooklyn College, Eilis’s professor, a Holocaust survivor, encourages her to continue her studies. Eilis attends Friday night dances at Father Flood’s church and also helps him serve Christmas dinner to the homeless. All of these activities help Eilis to feel more connected to her new home in Brooklyn. At one of the dances, Eilis meets Tony, a young Italian American, who soon becomes her boyfriend. Tony falls in love with Eilis and begins pressing her to marry him. He loves baseball and takes her to Ebbets Field to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers play. When Rose dies suddenly, it is Tony and his family who offer Eilis the most comfort. None of Eilis’s brothers is willing to move back to Ireland and care for their mother. One of the brothers writes and tells Eilis that her mother needs her. When she decides to return for a
one-month visit, Tony insists that they marry secretly. He is afraid that Eilis will not return to Brooklyn unless they are married. The visit to her mother does stretch beyond the month, and Eilis is tempted to stay by Jim, a local Irish man, who courts her. In the novel’s concluding paragraphs, however, Eilis chooses to leave Ireland and return to Tony and the life they have planned together.
W Literary and Historical Context
In Brooklyn, the owner of Bartocci’s department store says that “Brooklyn changes every day” (61). During the 1950s, the predominately Jewish and Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn gave way to new immigrants from the Caribbean and to an influx of African Americans from the southern United States. The Brooklyn Dodgers drew huge crowds to Ebbets Field in the 1950s. Although Brooklyn residents had diverse backgrounds, they were united in their worship of the Dodgers and their belief that the team would eventually win a World Series, which they finally did in 1955. However, just as the Jews and Italians were leaving Brooklyn for the suburbs, so too did the Dodgers, who left Brooklyn in 1958 for Los Angeles. Coney Island is a favorite date destination for Brooklyn’s Eilis and Tony during the summer months. In the 1950s, Coney Island was a favorite location for New Yorkers wanting to escape the city heat. More than one million bathers would cram onto the beach at Coney Island. The three miles of boardwalk included more than nine hundred different shops, restaurants, games, and rides. The amusement park contained the Cyclone, one of the largest roller coasters in the United States, as well as the Wonder Wheel, an exceptionally large Ferris wheel. These rides and many others began to disappear by the mid-1950s, as more people moved to the suburbs and land in Brooklyn became more valuable when used for residences than for amusement.
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In Brooklyn, Tony’s family purchases land on Long Island and begins planning for the family’s move out of Brooklyn. The desire to escape Brooklyn for Long Island was felt by many people in the 1950s. In Brooklyn, people were crowded into apartments or in multiple-family houses. With little open land and no yards, children played in the streets. Many people wanted to build in outlying areas. This market supported the work of Levitt and Sons, the real-estate developer that spearheaded the construction of suburbia and built more than seventeen thousand homes for families trying to escape urban congestion.
W Themes For the first few weeks that Eilis is in Brooklyn, she refuses to think about Ireland and her family. Homesickness does not appear in Brooklyn until Eilis receives letters from home. Before the letters arrive, she thinks about Ireland, especially her mother and sister and she thinks about the town. With the arrival of the letters, Eilis suddenly thinks about her life in Enniscorthy, especially her bedroom, her clothes, and even the food her mother cooked. Her homesickness is not centered on people, although she clearly misses Rose. Instead, Eilis misses the ways in which she defined her own life in Ireland. In Brooklyn, she dresses differently and eats different food. The changed personal and intimate parts of her life cause her to be homesick. Social stratification in Brooklyn is depicted in the relationships between the other boarders at Mrs. Kehoe’s. Working at a desk job is considered superior to working in a store as a clerk. Working as a domestic servant has the lowest form of social status. Eilis is immune to this stratification, but her fellow tenants are especially condemning. When a new boarder arrives, the other tenants ostracize her because she cleans the house instead of paying rent. The women who perform office work also earn the highest salary, and so there is a clear correlation between social stratification and economic reward. Brooklyn is the story of exile. Eilis has no choice about moving to Brooklyn. Her sister Rose makes the arrangements and informs Eilis that she is to leave and dictates when the departure will occur. In Brooklyn, Eilis is under the care and supervision of Father Flood, who recreates Ireland in his small part of Brooklyn. As a result, Eilis remains an exile, even when living in Brooklyn, where she sees herself as a ghost, with no friends or family to sustain her. Her only venture outside her Irish Brooklyn community occurs late in the novel, when she goes to visit her Italian boyfriend’s family. Her isolation even permeates her letters home, in which she writes about people generally but not about how she feels or about Tony, whom she loves.
W Style Brooklyn is told from the point of view of Eilis. This perspective is especially effectively for a character like Eilis
MAJOR CHARACTERS JIM FARRELL is the Irish man whose marriage proposal tempts, and nearly convinces, Eilis to divorce Tony and remain in Ireland. TONY FIORELLO is Eilis’s Brooklyn boyfriend. He becomes her fiancé and, by the end of the novel, her husband. Although Eilis is warned about the lasciviousness of Italian men, Tony is kind, generous, and devoted to Eilis. FATHER FLOOD is the priest for the area in Brooklyn where Eilis lives. He sponsors her immigration and provides support when she needs it most. MADGE KEHOE is the proprietor of the boardinghouse where Eilis lives in Brooklyn. Madge is judgmental and controlling but also protective of the young women living in her house. MRS. LACY, a widow, favors her older daughter Rose over her other daughter, Eilis. EILIS LACEY, a young Irish woman, immigrates to the United States and finds her home and work in Brooklyn. ROSE LACEY, Eilis’s older sister, is beautiful, athletic, gregarious, and much admired by everyone. She arranges for Eilis to leave Ireland and find a fresh start in Brooklyn.
who thinks one thing but does something completely different. In her actions, Eilis is restrained, oftentimes an observer of her own life. She thinks about rebellion, but quickly rejects the possibility. Instead, she obeys as a dutiful daughter, sister, employee, tenant, and girlfriend. It is clear that she often wishes she could do something entirely different than what is expected of her. The heroine of Brooklyn is defined by her passivity. Tóibín characterizes Eilis by her emotional state rather than by her actions. Throughout Brooklyn, she is restrained, cautious, and obedient without objection. And yet while she acquiesces to the demands of those around her, her mind is in turmoil and nearly always ready to do rebel. When Miss Fortini tells Eilis not to bother using a changing room to try on several bathing suits, Eilis is upset, since no one had seen her naked before (161). In spite of her distress, Eilis tries on the bathing suits in front of Miss Fortini and can only escape after all four suits have been fitted. Her thoughts during this scene show her to be a woman who is tortured by her inability to act according to her own desire. Tóibín did not create a back story for his characters. Nothing of the past is explained. The novel moves forward telling Eilis’s story but does not reveal her family’s life before the start of the novel. Tóibín tells readers nothing about Rose or that in 1950s Ireland it was customary for one of the daughters to remain
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, in 1955. He worked as a journalist and as a teacher. Tóibín has published several nonfiction books, including travel books about living in Spain, Homage to Barcelona (1990) and Walking along the Border (1987), which focuses on the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Tóibín’s fifth novel, The Master (2004), was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004 and was selected by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2004. Brooklyn, Tóibín’s sixth novel, was awarded the Costa Novel of the Year Award in 2010. As of 2010, Tóibín had homes in Ireland, Spain, and New York and often stayed in these locations.
unmarried and care for an aging parent. No information is provided about Eilis prior to the start of the novel. Readers know virtually nothing about Tony’s life or that of his family, except that they are Italian. As a result, readers must pay careful attention to Eilis’s narration to know these characters and understand their motivations. There is no information to distract, and more importantly, there is no information that readers might use to predict behaviors. Instead, clues are provided by dialogue or by what Eilis thinks or observes.
W Critical Reception Reviews of Brooklyn were almost uniformly positive. Many reviews were similar to one written by Peter Kemp for the London Sunday Times, who praised Tóibín’s novel as “elating” and “brilliant.” Kemp also admired
The Brooklyn Bridge in New York. In Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey is a young Irish girl who immigrates to Brooklyn, New York. H. Armstrong Roberts
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One of the few complaints about Brooklyn pertained to the depiction of Eilis, who is so readily compliant to demanding others. In her review for the Christian Science Monitor, Yvonne Zipp complained that Tóibín’s heroine is a “doormat,” who “is almost a parody of 1950s femininity.” Zipp described Eilis as a heroine who is “sweet,” “curvy,” “attractive but not alarming so,” “good at school but not ambitious,” and “above all, biddable.” Although Zipp thought that Eilis could use some backbone, she also found that there is much to admire in Brooklyn. Tóibín’s attention to small details is especially effective in relating his heroine’s life. In the end, Zipp celebrated Brooklyn as “a masterpiece of quiet reflection, bringing up deep emotions submerged under the placid exterior and giving the novel an ache that will linger for days.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Goring, Rosemary. “Brooklyn Calling.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. heraldscotland.com. Sunday Herald 17 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Kemp, Peter. Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. thesundaytimes.co.uk. Sunday Times 19 April 2009. Wed. 4 Aug. 2010. St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Brooklyn, New York. In the story, Eilis meets a handsome young Italian man named Tony at a church dance. Vladimir Korostyshevskiy/Shutterstock.com
Tóibín’s ability to create “a fresh dimension of humane warmth” in a novel that also remains so lucid in its depiction of Eilis’s life. Kemp enjoyed Tóibín’s ability to create a novel that is stylistically straightforward and without unneeded digressions. This “pared-down style” is not so bare, though, that it eliminates comedy, and as a result, Kemp asserts, Tóibín created “a novel that stands out as remarkable even among Ireland’s distinguished roll of fiction about home and exile.” In her review of Brooklyn for the Sunday Herald, Rosemary Goring was similarly complimentary of Tóibín’s talents, pointing out that although the novel might initially seem a bit “dreamy,” it soon becomes clear that Brooklyn is an “exquisitely observed story.” Goring’s review celebrated Tóibín’s narrow focus on Eilis’s life, which reveals itself through many small details. Brooklyn, suggested Goring, is “a profoundly moving, deceptively artless creation whose brilliance lies in its restraint.” Bernard O’Donoghue’s review of Brooklyn for the Irish Times also focused on Tóibín’s restraint in creating scenes that are “unsensational” and “delicately described.” According to O’Donoghue, Brooklyn has “not a sentence or a thought out of place.” This is high praise, indeed, for a novel that many reviewers judge to be Tóibín’s finest work.
O’Donoghue, Bernard. “The Clear Voice of a Master.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. irishtimes.com. Irish Times 25 April 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Tóibín, Colm. Brooklyn. New York: Scribner’s, 2009. Print. Zipp, Yvonne. “Brooklyn: The Quiet, Contemplative Story of a Young Woman Leaving Ireland for a New Life in the Brooklyn of the 1950s.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. csmonitor.com. Christian Science Monitor 8 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bracken, Claire. “Brooklyn.” Journal of Irish Studies 5 (2010): 166. Print. Analyzes the objectification of Eilis Lacey as Irish property, the visible material of society and social life. Knox, Malcolm. “An Irish Face in Brooklyn: Interview with Colm Tóibín.” theage.com.au. Age 15 May 2010. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Suggests that Tóibín draws connections between immigration to the United States and the recent increase of immigration to Ireland, of those who come with no history or connection to the land but with the desire to start over. McCrum, Robert. “You Can Take the Man Out of Ireland: Interview with Colm Tóibín.” observer. guardian.co.uk. Observer 26 Apr. 2009. Web.
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4 Aug. 2010. Explains the mechanics of writing and his enjoyment of teaching. O’Kelly, Emer. “Delicate Portrait of a Soul Triumphs in Tóibín’s Tale.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. independent.ie. Sunday Independent 3 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Claims that Brooklyn reveals the dreariness of a life held in check, where longings for escape are only tentative for a heroine who is bound by duty. Ross, Michael. “The Soul Trader.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. thesundaytimes.com.uk. Sunday Times 26 Apr. 2009. Web 4 Aug. 2010. Links Tóibín’s childhood experience in Ireland with the experiences of the heroine in his novel. Schillinger, Liesl. “The Reluctant Emigrant.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. nytimes.com. New York Times 3 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Discusses the heroine of Brooklyn, who never complains, even when complaining would serve her well. Taylor, Christopher, “The Country Girl.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 9 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Explains that Tóibín uses humor and not sentimentality to describe the immigrant experience. Witchel, Alex. “His Irish Diaspora.” Rev. of Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. nytimes.com. New York Times 3 May 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Explores Tóibín’s childhood and influences on his writing, including a story he heard about Brooklyn many years earlier. Gale Resources
“Colm Toibin.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GA LE%7CH1000114647&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w “Colm Toibin.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 285. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1107500000&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w Middleton, Tim. “Colm Toibin.” British and Irish Novelists since 1960. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 271. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. http//go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200011139&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w
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Open Web Sources
Tóibín maintains a Web site at: http//www.colmtoibin. com, which contains information about his novels and book signings. An interview with Tóibín on National Public Radio, in which he discusses characterization and immigration and the dynamics of family life in Brooklyn, can be found at http//www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ry.php?storyId=103761998 For Further Reading
Almeida, Linda Dowling. Irish Immigrants in New York City, 1945-1995. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. Print. A survey focusing on the role of economics and social change as an indicator of Irish identity among recent Irish immigrants to New York City. Frommer, Harvey, and Myrna Katz Frommer. It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing Up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. New York: State U of New York, 2009. Print. A collection of anecdotal memories culled from many interviews with Brooklyn residents. Hamburger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: Holt, 2005. Print. An illustrated history of New York City, including the five boroughs. Martinez, Ruben, and Joseph Rodriguez. The New Americans. New York: New Press, 2004. Print. Companion book to the PBS series tracing the stories of seven immigrant families. Miller, Kerby A. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print. A social history that relies on primary source documents, such as letters and diaries, as well as historical documents to provide a history of the Irish immigration experience. Reiss, Marcia. Brooklyn Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2002. Print. A photographic history of Brooklyn, with oversized photos of historical Brooklyn, including then and now photos of Brooklyn landmarks. Tóibín, Colm. The Master. New York: Scribner’s, 2004. Print. A fictionalized study of Henry James. Sheri Karmiol
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Bruised Hibiscus By Elizabeth Nunez
W Introduction Set in 1950s Trinidad, Bruised Hibiscus (1994) is a novel about a friendship between two women that transcends class and racial barriers. When a fisherman recovers the body of a white woman from the sea, the rage and frustration that results leads to the reunion of two childhood friends, each haunted by a brutal crime they had witnessed years ago. Now reunited, the two women reestablish their bond and find the courage to face their own unhappy marriages. By confronting their complicated pasts and unhappy present, they then try to find fulfillment and happiness in their lives. Bruised Hibiscus also explores themes of colonialism, domestic violence and sexual oppression, and class and racial differences in colonial Trinidad. Upon its publication, Bruised Hibiscus was a commercial and critical success, receiving the American Book Award in 2001. As Sandra Adell maintains in her review, “In this novel [Elizabeth] Nunez weaves such a rich and well-crafted tapestry of legend, myth, and history that one cannot help comparing her to Toni Morrison, whose Song of Solomon stands out as a masterpiece among novels of the African diaspora.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Bruised Hibiscus is set in 1954 on the small Caribbean island of Trinidad, which for years has been grouped with its sister island, Tobago, and known as Trinidad and Tobago. Both islands were originally settled by Amerindians and encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1498. Trinidad was eventually colonized by the Spanish, but settled by the French, who developed the lucrative sugarcane industry. The Spanish surrendered Trinidad to the British in 1797. The British abolished slavery, which left a dearth of workers for the large sugarcane plantations
and the burgeoning cacao industry. In 1830s the British began a campaign to attract workers from China, West Africa, and India. Racial resentments between the different groups festered, and sometimes exploded into violence. The presence of workers from various nations also created class and racial barriers, which are explored in Bruised Hibiscus. Trinidad received its independence from the British Empire in 1962. The island nation became a republic in 1976. Elizabeth Nunez’s novel is set at the point at which British colonialism was beginning to loosen its grip on Trinidad. Although the ownership of most of the lucrative sugarcane business was in the hands of white colonialists, other immigrant groups were starting to gain economic and political power. Class and racial stratification were still entrenched, but the institutional structure that kept them in place was starting to show cracks. The real-life inspiration for the book can be found in the “Author’s Notes” at the close of the book. “On April 7, 1954, Dr. Dalip Singh, a Trinidadian physician, strangled his German wife, Paula Inge, removed her intestines, sutured her abdomen, ferried her body in a pirogue to the middle of the Gulf of Paria and dumped it there. The next morning her body floated up on the beach at Freeman’s Bay in Otahiti.” This horrific murder is fictionalized at the opening of Bruised Hibiscus, and acts as the catalyst for the reunion of two childhood friends, Rosa and Zuela.
W Themes Class, racial, and gender differences play a major role in Bruised Hibiscus. Many of the relationships in the novel are affected by the prejudices and discrimination found in Trinidadian society. For example, Cedric is haunted by feelings of inferiority because of his race and takes out his revenge on his white wife and other women. The Chinaman keeps Zuela under his control, a virtual prisoner in the family’s stores. The friendship between
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Bruised Hibiscus
MAJOR CHARACTERS CEDRIC is Rosa’s husband. The headmaster of a local secondary school, he has always felt inferior to whites despite his intellect. His marriage to Rosa has gone cold, and he often accuses her of infidelity. His increasingly menacing behavior leads Rosa to embark on her pilgrimage and her renewed friendship with Zuela. ROSA is a white Trinidadian, the youngest daughter of a British plantation owner and his mistreated wife. Rosa is suffering in a stifling marriage to Cedric, a black headmaster whom she suspects of unspeakable acts. When on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, she runs into her old friend, Zuela, and renews her friendship with her. With Zuela’s help, she begins to confront her past. ZUELA is a black Trinidadian worn out from her terrible marriage to an opium-addicted Chinaman. After marriage at fourteen, bearing ten children, and being treated like a prisoner in her own house, she is ready to escape her dreadful marriage and begins a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, where she encounters a childhood friend, Rosa. Trying to help her old friend, she sends Rosa to a healer, Mary Christophe. Zuela finally finds the courage and resourcefulness to escape her marriage and find fulfillment and love.
Rosa, a wealthy white woman, and Zuela, a poor black one, is shadowed by class and racial issues. Yet both Rosa and Zuela are able to transcend those class and racial barriers to rekindle their childhood friendship and find the courage to try to address their past and move toward a better future. Another key theme in the novel centers on violence against women. With the story turning on an incident based on the true story of a husband’s brutal murder of his wife, Bruised Hibiscus documents the emotional and physical brutality of men toward women. As children, Rosa and Zuela witness a man’s vicious sexual assault of a young woman behind a bush, which bonds them together and yet tears their friendship apart. Cedric berates and demeans his wife, Rosa. The Chinaman maintains an iron grip on Zuela, keeping her pregnant and isolated from the greater community. It is only through Rosa and Zuela’s renewed friendship and a growing sisterhood that the two women are able to take steps to change their circumstances.
W Style When discussing the style of Bruised Hibiscus, most critics describe it as lyrical in quality. Some single out Nunez’s use of an authentic, rhythmic Trinidadian dialect, which
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adds to the lyrical nature of the story. Other reviewers, like Sandra Adell, underscore the author’s use of symbolism and imagery. “The image of the young girl behind the hibiscus bush is one of several recurring images that contribute to the lyrical, almost incantatory quality of Bruised Hibiscus,” Adell states in her review in the African American Review. “They are disturbing images: images of a notorious gangster, Boysie Singh, who the islanders believe murders and cuts out the hearts of young women to rub on the hooves of his racehorses to make them run faster; of two pigs devouring the butchered body of a woman named Melda; of the opiumaddicted Chinaman’s recurring nightmares of his wife and daughter being slaughtered back in China; of Zelda, not much older than the ‘girl-child’ behind the hibiscus bush, being bargained over by her father and the Chinaman who came to her village in Venezuela ‘to buy alpagats [sandals] for his store and took her, too.’” Jessica Opad finds that Nunez’s lyrical style takes some time to find its legs, noting that the beginning of the novel is stilted and difficult. “Although Nunez’ poetic style helps set the tone of the novel, the first few chapters feel as if she tries too hard to be poetic, as her lengthy sentences can be hard to follow,” she maintains. “Once she introduces both of the main characters, however, she seems to become more comfortable with her narrative voice and abandons unnecessary lengthiness without losing the poetic flow of the novel.”
W Critical Reception Bruised Hibiscus received critical praise, earning an American Book Award in 2001. Critics commend Nunez for crafting a vivid and haunting story of horrible violence and a redemptive friendship between two damaged women. As reviewer Zakia comments, “Nunez is a gifted writer. She employs the brevity and repetition of poetry in her work. She writes unpretentiously, deftly inserting sex, murder and cruelty into a story that also speaks truth to friendship, love and a miracle or two. She is able to create a telling story that is not cheapened by the oftenexploited aforementioned themes. Her writing is like the sway in the walk of a confident woman. Buy it. Read it. It’s good.” In her review in the African American Review, Sandra Adell lauds Nunez’s ability to create a suspenseful novel. “She keeps her distance and lets her imagination and beautiful writing prevail,” Adell states. “The result is a stunning and often chilling work of fiction that one will find hard to put down or to forget.” Adell also reflects on Nunez’s position in black literature. “It is evident from her novels that Elizabeth Nunez’s imagination is likewise a storehouse of stories, legends, and myths,” she argues. “She is an accomplished writer who is creating a memorable space for herself in African diaspora literature. She is one of those rare novelists who must be read.” TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Bruised Hibiscus
Author Elizabeth Nunez’s Bruised Hibiscus is set on the Caribbean island of Trinidad; pictured here is Trinidad's Maracas Bay. PHB.cz (Richard Semik)/Shutterstock.com
New York Times reviewer Jana Giles does find flaws in the novel. “Nunez’s shrewd employment of native dialect enlivens the narrative, but without efficiently enhancing plot or character,” she states. “She fails to handle suspense well, frequently revealing just enough of what will happen next to diminish your desire to actually read about it. And she interrupts what could have been a fluid fictional dream with too much commentary and too many descriptive passages. It’s as if she never quite comes to see her characters as more than vehicles for conveying ideas.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adell, Sandra. Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. African American Review 35 (2001). Print. BNET. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Giles, Jana. “Trouble in Paradise.” New York Times Book Review 105.15 (9 Apr. 2000). Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Opad, Jessica. Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. Voices from the Gap (17 June 2009). Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Zakia. Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. ColoredGirls.com (2002). Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. Publishers Weekly 241. 41 (10 Oct. 1994): 62. Print. Deems Bruised Hibiscus to be a “thoughtful critique of race, gender, and class relations” in Trinidad in the midtwentieth century. Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. Publishers Weekly 247.9 (28 Feb. 2000): 59. Print. Classifies Bruised Hibiscus as a work of Caribbean Gothic and praises Nunez’s deft use of authentic Trinidadian dialect. Nussbaum, Lisa S. Rev. of Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez. Library Journal 125.5 (15 Mar. 2000): 128. Print. Recommends Bruised Hibiscus as a beautifully written novel with well-drawn and sympathetic characters. Gale Resources
“Elizabeth Nunez.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. “Elizabeth Nunez.” Black Literature Criticism: Classic and Emerging Authors Since 1950, Vol. 3, 2nd ed. 147-58. Print. From Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.
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Bruised Hibiscus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Nunez was born on February 18, 1944, in Cocorite, Trinidad. Her father, Waldo, was an oil company executive and labor commissioner for the government, and Elizabeth grew up in comfortable circumstances. At the age of nine, she won a children’s writing competition in the Trinidad Guardian, which spurred her interest in fiction writing. After graduating from high school, she worked briefly for Shell Oil Company. In 1963 she traveled to Wisconsin to enroll in Marian College, a small Catholic women’s college. There she experienced widespread racism and hostility as one of the few black students at the college during the turbulent years of the civil rights struggle. In 1967 she graduated with a BA in English and returned to Trinidad, intent on becoming a teacher. When she was consistently turned down in favor of Canadian candidates, Nunez became an outspoken activist against the prejudicial hiring practices of her homeland. She immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City in 1968. Nunez earned her MA in English from New York University in 1971 and became an instructor at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York. In 1977 she earned her PhD from New York University. Her first novel, When Rocks Dance, was published in 1986. Nunez formed the National Black Writers Conference with her friend, the author John Oliver Killens, and served as director from 1986 through 2000. She has edited anthologies of Caribbean writing and has published essays and book reviews. In 2001 she was awarded an American Book Award for her novel, Bruised Hibiscus.
Open Web Sources
The website for the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College is a resource for students to study the literature of the African Diaspora. It also links to the latest information for The National Black Writers’ Conference, lists recent publications, and has a photo gallery of the group’s events. http//www.centerfor blackliterature.org/
about the show is available at the Black Writers in America website. http//www.cuny.tv/series/bwa/ index.lasso The official website of Trinidad and Tobago, http://www. ttconnect.gov.tt/gortt/portal/ttconnect, provides links to government ministries, such as the Ministry of Tourism. Research, statistics on tourism, pictures, video, and maps of Trinidad are available. For Further Reading
Allen-Agostini, Lisa, and Jeanne, Mason, eds. Trinidad Noir. New York: Akashic Books, 2008. Print. A noir anthology comprising eighteen stories set in the sunny locale of Trinidad and Tobago. Written by different authors, the stories use the beauty of the natural environment and juxtapose it with the violence, political corruption, poverty, and drug culture found on the island. Danticat, Edwidge. Krik! Krak! New York: Soho Press, 1995. Print. A collection of autobiographical stories that illuminate Danticat’s sorrow at leaving her tyrannized country of Haiti and her difficulty adjusting to a new land. Several of the stories explore the immigrant experience. Neptune, Harvey R. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007. Print. In this informative history, Neptune chronicles the installation and operation of U.S. military bases on Trinidad and Tobago during World War II and the uneasy relationship between the two countries in the postwar years. Nunez, Elizabeth. Beyond the Limbo Silence. Seattle: Seal Press, 1998. Print. In this autobiographical novel, a young Trinidadian woman receives a scholarship to a small Catholic women’s college in Wisconsin. Alienated from her privileged white classmates, she finds purpose in the burgeoning civil rights movement and a passionate relationship with a driven black activist.
Nunez’s PBS series on black writers, Black Writers in America, premiered in 2003. More information
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Margaret Haerens
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Bullet Collection By Patricia Sarrafian Ward
W Introduction The Bullet Collection is an account of two troubled girls growing up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War (19751991), told from the perspective of exile in the United States. The story is narrated by the younger of the two sisters, seventeen-year-old Marianna, whose memories move back and forth in time and space between her ravaged homeland and her difficult new life in America. The novel records a childhood in which regular daily activities—going to school, preparing meals, meeting boys—take place amid routine sniper fire, air raids, and shelling attacks, the debris from which is retrieved by the older sister, Alaine, in a failed effort to objectify the daily brutality and forms the collection of war relics of the title. Both girls suffer crippling depression from their inability to process the violence and the inexplicable unwillingness of the older generation to speak of it. The Bullet Collection is modeled on the personal experiences of the author. Like her protagonist, Patricia Sarrafian Ward was raised in war-torn Beirut by an American father and Lebanese Armenian mother. Her family, too, resolved to escape the bloodshed and fled to the United States in 1987. Although the Lebanese Civil War has inspired many works of fiction, in English as well as Arabic, The Bullet Collection is distinguished by its adolescent narrator and its disturbing portrayal of the psychological effects of war on children too young to understand it.
W Literary and Historical Context
In a 2005 essay, Syrine C. Hout drew attention to a recent corpus of Lebanese exilic writing that included The Bullet Collection. Hout noted, “The last decade has seen the rise of Anglophone and Francophone novels by
Lebanese-born first-time authors who spent their childhood and adolescence, fully or partially, in war-torn Lebanon between 1975 and 1991.” Hout went on to describe some typical features of this literature of exile, written not only from the vantage point of geographic dislocation but also in hindsight, giving the authors some critical distance from the immediacy of the violence that forced their relocation. The Lebanese Civil War caused an estimated one million people to flee the country; more than 100,000 people were killed, many of them civilians, and approximately 17,000 people went missing. The conflict largely developed along Muslim and Christian lines and was exacerbated by the presence of Palestinian guerrillas. Early in the strife, battles between Christian Phalangists and Muslims from the Lebanese National Movement destroyed much of Beirut and led to the establishment of a “green line” separating Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut. The city remained divided until the end of the conflict. Various foreign influences, including troops from Israel, Syria, France, and the United States, complicated the struggle, as did the increasing illegitimacy of certain home militias involved in criminal activities. The war caused the collapse of administrative and other public services in Beirut and disintegration of the infrastructure. It was amid this atmosphere that Ward—and the family in her book—left Lebanon for safety in the United States.
W Themes In her essay on Lebanese literature of exile, Hout identified several themes common to the genre: expatriation, memory, and identity. The idea of identity in The Bullet Collection takes on layered significance as it invokes Marianna’s premature coming of age, as well as her divided loyalty to her country. Throughout the story, Ward develops contrasting identities of the sisters. Marianna, fair and blue-eyed like her father, looks like
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The Bullet Collection
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALAINE is the sister of the narrator, Marianna, two years older and obsessed with visiting battle sites in Beirut. Her war souvenirs—bullets, grenades, shrapnel—form the collection mentioned in the title of the novel. She is severely damaged by the war psychologically but recovers in the United States. DADDY is the father of Alaine and Marianna. A respected historian in Beirut, he applies for a job at a supermarket in the United States. MARIANNA is the seventeen-year-old narrator who revisits wartorn Beirut in her disjointed memories. Once the stronger of the two sisters, she adjusts poorly to life in the United States while Alaine thrives. MUMMY is the mother of Alaine and Marianna. She suffers in silence or tears and is traumatized by the war’s effect on her family. UNCLE BERNIE is a member of the family, mysteriously kidnapped and then shot.
an outsider in her home country, while Alaine possesses the dark eyes and hair of Middle Easterners. In Beirut, it is Marianna who struggles to understand Alaine’s desperation but, once they arrive in the United States, Alaine adjusts well to their strange circumstances while Marianna begins skipping school and abusing drugs. It is now Marianna who becomes obsessed with cataloging images of war, which for her exist alongside reflections on the more idyllic Beirut of her earliest memories. Marianna is nostalgic and insists on maintaining a vital connection to Lebanon, but she is frustrated in her efforts to resuscitate this past by her family’s denial of all that came before. Ward frequently juxtaposes images of the United States and Lebanon to further explore Marianna’s conflicted loyalties to an America that has given her family safe shelter and to a Lebanon “that insists on being remembered even after forcing us to leave” (qtd. on DePauw University English Department website).
W Style The text of The Bullet Collection is divided into three seasons—autumn, summer, and winter—but Marianna’s
In the story, Alaine collects bullet casings and other debris left behind after battles in the Lebanese Civil War as a means by which to objectify the everyday violence. David Maska/Shutterstock.com
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The Bullet Collection
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, during the time of the civil war (1975-1991) that devastated the city, Patricia Sarrafian Ward and her family fled to the United States in 1987. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and then received an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for an early version of her highly praised debut novel, The Bullet Collection (2003). The Bullet Collection describes the impact of the civil war on a Beirut family from the perspective of a teenage refugee in the United States determined to maintain a connection with her homeland. Ward’s short stories have appeared in numerous publications. She has currently changed directions in her career, devoting her time to book arts, including printing and miniatures.
The Bullet Collection follows the story of two young sisters during the Lebanese Civil War, a conflict in which Yasser Arafat, pictured on the left, played an important role. ª Bettmann/Corbis
memories move freely back and forth between the past and the present in a manner some critics say evokes the disjointed thoughts of a child unable to comprehend her chaotic surroundings. The language of The Bullet Collection has been described as “sensual” (Salem) and “lyrical, dreamlike” (Armenian Reporter International). A writer for Kirkus Reviews referred to the style of the novel as “densely impressionist,” adding, “Ward orders her circuitous tale only by seasons, backtracking years behind, then fast-forwarding to the family’s sad, listless exile in America in what is perhaps an imitation of the erratic workings of childhood memory.”
W Critical Reception The Bullet Collection received the Anahid Literary Award from the Armenian Center at Columbia University as well as prizes recognizing talented new writers from the Hala Maksoud Foundation and the Great Lakes College Association. The novel has been frequently praised for its insight into the psychological effects of war, especially the sisters’ self-destructive tendencies as substitution for a repressed emotional response to violence. Susannah Tarbush remarked, for example, “The girls’ psychological breakdown could be seen as a sane response to a world that has gone mad.” The depth of the characterizations has been considered all the more impressive in a novel that vividly documents the experience of war. Elise Salem
remarked on the balance achieved in The Bullet Collection: “I was especially pleased that Ward was able to maintain a plotline and a host of engaging characters while, at the same time, narrating the complex emotional dimensions of the war. Many other ‘war novels’ have drowned in the war itself.” Hout devoted a second essay entirely to The Bullet Collection as a representation of trauma theory. Donna Seaman also remarked on the book’s broader implications: “In Ward’s powerful debut novel, two sisters and their Beirut family serve as a microcosm for all the resiliency and magic of that war-torn city and all the tragedy of the endless bloodshed in the Middle East.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of The Bullet Collection, by Patricia Sarrafian Ward. Kirkus Reviews 71.3 (1 Feb. 2003): 179. Print. Hout, Syrine C. “Memory, Home, and Exile in Contemporary Anglophone Lebanese Fiction.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 46.3 (2005): 219. Print. ———. “Revisiting Lebanon: Testimony, Trauma, and Transition in Patricia Sarrafian Ward’s The Bullet Collection.” Middle Eastern Literatures 12.3 (2009): 271-88. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. “Patricia Sarrafian Ward.” DePauw University English Department Visiting Writers, Fall 2004. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. “Patricia Sarrafian Ward Wins GLCA’s New Writers Award.” Armenian Reporter International 36.44 (14 Aug. 2004): 22. Ethnic NewsWatch, ProQuest. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Salem, Elise. “Patricia Sarrafian Ward, The Bullet Collection.” Literary Review 46.4 (2003): 769. Print.
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The Bullet Collection
Seaman, Donna. “Ward, Patricia Sarrafian. The Bullet Collection.” Booklist 99.13 (1 Mar. 2003): 1143. Print. Tarbush, Susannah. “Patricia Sarrafian Ward and Her Novel The Bullet Collection.” Dar Al-Hayat [Saudi Arabia] 18 Sept. 2003. Author website. Web. 22 Sept. 2010.
For Further Reading
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Chadwell, Faye A. “The Bullet Collection.” Library Journal 128.5 (15 Mar. 2003): 118. Print. Complimentary synopsis concluding that Ward is a “writer to watch.” “Patricia Sarrafian Ward’s The Bullet Collection.” Armenian Reporter 5 Jan. 2008: C19. Ethnic NewsWatch, ProQuest. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Praises Ward for bringing to light a story that will ring true to the thousands afflicted by the civil war in Lebanon. Gale Resources
Rev. of The Bullet Collection, by Patricia Sarrafian Ward. Publishers Weekly 250.16 (21 Apr. 2003): 40. Plot summary emphasizing the well-developed contrast between Lebanon and the United States and the inversion of the girls’ roles. “Ward, Patricia Sarrafian 1969-.” Contemporary Authors. Vol. 224. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s website provides links to Ward’s biography, a list of her publications, and reviews of The Bullet Collection available online. http//www.patriciasarra fianward.com/Publications.html
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The website for Ward’s publisher, Graywolf Press, offers an excerpt from The Bullet Collection, highlights from reviews of the book, and discussion topics critical to the story. http//www.graywolfpress.org/Related_ Content/Discussion_Topics/Discussion_Topics_ Bullet_Collection/ Alameddine, Rabih. The Perv: Stories. New York: Picador, 1999. Print. Eight short stories describing the alienating effects of the diaspora on people caught up in the Lebanese Civil War. Al-Shaykh, Hanan. Beirut Blues. New York: Anchor, 1996. Print. Novel told in the form of letters written by a woman trying to make sense of her life in a warravaged Beirut. ———. The Story of Zahra. New York: Anchor, 1996. Print. Records the devastating psychological effects of the Lebanese Civil War on a directionless young misfit mistreated by men, including a boyfriend who may or may not be a rooftop sniper in Beirut. This novel was banned in several Arab countries as giving a false impression of Arab culture. Jarrar, Nada Awar. Dreams of Water. New York: Harper, 2007. Print. Novel in which the author records her own exile from Beirut in the form of a story about a Lebanese family whose son goes missing in the civil war. ———. A Good Land. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print. Considers the effect of Israel’s 2006 bombing of Beirut on several characters from different generations, all connected by the same city block and their displacement in the earlier civil war. Janet Mullane
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Camouflage By Joe Haldeman
W Introduction Camouflage, written in 2004 by Joe Haldeman, tells the story of a strange vessel that crashed to Earth millions of years ago and the evolution of the two beings who presumably came from it. The novel switches among three points of view, as two serial flashbacks follow the two shape-changers, named The Changeling and The Chameleon, through history, while a third narrative charts the discovery of the artifact in 2019 and researchers’ subsequent attempts to open it. Like many of Haldeman’s novels, Camouflage deals with what it means to be human, the ways in which we evolve and learn to love, and the struggle to build and maintain a personal moral code. Haldeman has been called “one of the most important science fiction writers of our time,” and Camouflage adds to his list of successes, having won the James Tiptree Award for Science Fiction in 2004, and the Nebula, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in 2005 (Graham).
W Literary and Historical Context
Joe Haldeman believes that “the science fiction writers are some of the few people who are trying to understand what the true drivers of our times were” (“Science Fiction”). Science fiction writing “tells a ripping yarn while also asking serious questions about mankind, about mankind’s place in the universe, about the universe itself” (Sallis). Haldeman’s time in Vietnam greatly influences his writing, and Camouflage is no exception. The author uses the Changeling’s evolution to explore the theme of war, and the “necessity of maintaining a strict moral code in opposition to humanity’s predominant amorality” (“Joe Haldeman 1943-”). The creature contends “the gulf between the two sides was so large it was as if they were two different species.” The Changeling wishes it “had an
opportunity to observe other cultures than American without the complication of war.” Even when the war ends, it observes, “It looked as if there might be just one World War, with breathing spaces for rearming, that would last until somebody won” (129). Cecilia Tan, one of the jurors for the James Tiptree Award, said of Camouflage, “This book explores the human condition as thoroughly as any literary work, with understanding of gender at the crux of that understanding” (James Tiptree Award website). The Changeling comes ashore in 1931, an “ageless, sexless entity,” (Le Guin, qtd. in “Camouflage, Joe Haldeman”) but after assuming many identities, both male and female, it finally settles, in 2021, on a female identity. “As it grows more human, the choice becomes more important to it; it ends up a woman by preference. If gender isn’t the central concern of this novel, it’s near the center, and the handling of it is skillful, subtle, and finely unpredictable” (Le Guin).
W Themes As James Sallis writes in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Camouflage seeks an answer to the question, “What does it mean to be human?” Haldeman’s writing frequently features characters who “attain selfawareness as a result of their moral opposition to the corrupt and uncaring systems they purportedly represent” (“Joe Haldeman 1943-”). As the Changeling makes its way through history, it becomes, at one point, a prisoner on the Bataan Death March. After watching several Japanese soldiers encourage a group of American soldiers to drink water from a stagnant pool, and then shoot them for it, the Changeling realizes it is “having difficulty trying to generalize about human nature” (109). Haldeman grapples with the problem of evil, the ways in which we learn, and the foundations of ethics, as the Changeling not only realizes “it had seen enough killing in the Pacific to reserve it as a course of last resort”
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MAJOR CHARACTERS THE CHAMELEON is a shape-changer of unknown origin, come to Earth before the time of Jesus Christ. The Chameleon can instantly adopt any human shape, delights in destruction and killing, and is seemingly immortal. THE CHANGELING, a shape-changer from the globular cluster Messier 22, landed on Earth in a vessel that crashed into the Pacific Ocean more than one million years ago. Eventually forgetting its origins, the creature has taken various forms, eventually coming ashore as a human in 1931. The Changeling, unlike the Chameleon, can assume both organic and nonorganic forms. JAN DAGMAR is an exobiologist brought in by NASA to head up the artifact research team. JACK HALLIBURTON is the scientist and ex-military man who approaches Russell Sutton with a proposal to explore the artifact. RUSSELL SUTTON, the researcher who famously raised the Titanic, is the head of Poseiden Projects, an organization devoted to marine resource management and exploration. After the discovery of a strange vessel in the TongaKermadec Trench off the coast of Samoa, Sutton leads a team in their efforts to bring the artifact ashore and attempt to open it.
but also eventually learns to love a human (Sallis). The creature comments that she knows not only love, but “human nature, darling, maybe better than you do. And outsider with almost a century of observation. . . . I know xenophobia, too. I’ve been black and Asian and Hispanic in America . . . a white prisoner on the Bataan Death March. . . . There’s nobody on this planet more ‘different’ than me” (275). Haldeman says “of course I hope that the world will read my books and renounce war and prejudice and bad food,” but that in the end, “all anybody reasonable can hope for is that the world has a little more meaning or complexity or love because you were in it” (qtd. in “Joe Haldeman, Contemporary Authors Online).
Journal, cites the author’s “customary economy of words,” and Cecilia Tan, one of the jurors for the Tiptree Award, compares Haldeman’s style to the minimalist prose of Ernest Hemingway. Haldeman himself has said that the rhythm of his writing is almost as important as the story itself. “I’ll say a line over and over until it sounds right, and then write it down. I go over it . . . once backwards, so I don’t pay attention to the text, but rather to the patterns of words. I know that one error I always make is repetition, so I’m on the lookout for individual words repeated, and rhetorical patterns as well” (“Joe Haldeman,” Contemporary Authors Online). Camouflage also reflects the writer’s typically dry sense of humor: When the Chameleon, an immortal shape-shifter, hears of Jesus, Haldeman writes, “It was as a Parthian that he heard the story of Jesus Christ, which interested him. Killed in public and then resurrected, he was evidently a relative. He would keep an eye out for him” (66).
W Critical Reception
W Style As Gregory Feeley points out in the Washington Post, Haldeman’s skillful development of the plot helps the reader accept its more implausible details. Yet, Feeley continues, while “Haldeman’s adept plotting, strong pacing, and sense of grim stoicism have won him wide acclaim, . . . for me the great virtue in his fiction lies in its style. His prose is laconic, compact, seemingly offhand but quite precise.” Jackie Cassada, writing for Library
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The novel Camouflage is based on the arrival and evolution of two alien beings that most likely emerged from an unidentified spacecraft millions of years ago. Yellowj/Shutterstock.com
Most reviewers of Camouflage agree with Cecilia Tan, juror for the Tiptree Award, who called it “one of the best science fiction books I have read in years” (Tan, qtd. in “Camouflage, Joe Haldeman”). According to Carl Hays of Booklist, “Haldeman proves as engaging a storyteller as ever, especially given this book’s irresistible premise and page-turning action.” Many praise the skill with which Haldeman handles the complexity of the novel’s three story lines. “Haldeman handles this TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Camouflage
complicated scheme effortlessly, and the ending is satisfying whether or not you have figured out who is who” (Jonas). The only bone of contention seems to be the ending, which some found unsatisfying. “Wellconstructed and intriguingly set up,” commented a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews, “but ultimately a disagreeable surprise: the story slips away, and you’re left holding an empty coat.” However, most called the climax “stunning,” and Gregory Feeley, writing for the Washington Post, states, “That it does not push the envelope doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.” James Sallis contends that it is our attachment to Haldeman’s characters that makes his novels so ultimately satisfying, regardless of any issue taken with the ending. “And that is of course what makes Joe Haldeman a first-rate novelist . . . his characters are forever real to us, forever authentic. They choke up, and we find ourselves clearing our throats.” Roland Green, writing in Booklist, noted, “Haldeman couldn’t write a bad book to win a bet” (qtd. in “Joe Haldeman,” Contemporary Authors Online).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph William Haldeman was born in 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and earned his BS from the University of Maryland in 1967. He wanted to be an astronaut, but he was drafted into the U.S. Army that same year and was badly injured in Vietnam when, as he describes it, he “stood too close to a booby-trap when a booby set it off” (qtd. in Hicks). After returning home, Haldeman sold two science fiction stories he’d written while taking an undergraduate creative writing course. He eventually earned his MFA. in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1975. The winner of numerous science fiction awards, Haldeman has published more than twenty novels and a half dozen short story collections and has also received the Rhysling Award, for science fiction poetry. Haldeman is an adjunct professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Kirkus Reviews 15 May 2004: 477. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010.
“Joe Haldeman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 July 2010.
“Camouflage, Joe Haldeman.” The Official Website of The James Tiptree, Jr., Literary Award Council. Web. 4 Aug. 2010.
“Joe Haldeman 1943-.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz, Cathy Falk, and Mary K. Gillis. Vol. 61. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990. 168-87. Print. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 30 July 2010.
Cassada, Jackie. “Haldeman, Joe. Camouflage.” Review of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Library Journal Aug. 2004: 72. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Feeley, Gregory. “From a Gathering of Lost Pilgrims to a Nation’s Capital of the Future-Four Forays into the Magical.” Review of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Washington Post 3 Oct. 2004. Print. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 July 2010. Graham, Mark. “Books at a Glance.” Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Rocky Mountain News 17 Sept. 2004. Print. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 July 2010.
Jonas, Gerald. “Science Fiction.” Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. New York Times Book Review 18 July 2004: 19. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 July 2010. Sallis, James. “Life.” Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Dec. 2005: 38. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. “Science Fiction.” Media in Transition website. 29 Aug. 1998. Web. 2 Aug. 2010.
Haldeman, Joe. Camouflage. New York: Penguin Group, 2004. Print.
Additional Resources
Hays, Carl. Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Booklist Aug. 2004: 1913. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010.
“Ace Books.” Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Library Bookwatch 1 Sept. 2004. Print. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 July 2010. A short review of Camouflage.
Hicks, James Scott. “Joe (William) Haldeman.” TwentiethCentury American Science-Fiction Writers. Ed. David Cowart and Thomas L. Wymer. Detroit: Gale Research, 1981. Print. Also covered in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 8. Detroit: Gale Research, 1981. 198-201. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 July 2010.
Criticism and Reviews
“SF/Fantasy/Horror Notes.” Rev. of Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman. Publishers Weekly 26 July 2004: 42+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. A short, mixed review of Camouflage, with a focus on the novel’s problematic ending.
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Camouflage Gale Resources
“Joe Haldeman.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 38. Gale Group, 2001. Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2010. Web. 30 July 2010. “Joe W. Haldeman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. “Joe (William) Haldeman.” St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Biography Resource Center. Web. 30 July 2010. Stableford, Brian. “Joe Haldeman.” Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Everett Franklin Bleiler. New York: Scribner’s, 1982. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Joe Haldeman’s official website at http://home.earth link.net/˜haldeman includes biographical information about the author, as well as an autobiographical essay, interesting FAQs, information about Haldeman’s books, his hobbies, the courses he teaches at MIT, and his travel and cumulative diaries. Haldeman’s blog on Live Journal, http://joe-haldeman. livejournal.com/ has new entries nearly every day, with comments from readers. The website for the James Tiptree Award, http://tiptree. org/, includes information about the award—an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores the understanding of gender—as well as information about current and past winners. The website for the Nebula Awards, http://www .nebulaawards.com/, managed by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has information
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about past winners, as well as interviews and links to guest blogs. For Further Reading
Clement, Hal. Needle. New York: Avon, 1976. Print. In Clement’s science fiction classic, an alien detective on the trail of a murderer of the same species crashes to Earth on an isolated island. Requiring a host, the detective, called The Hunter, takes up residence in a fifteen year-old boy to track his quarry. Also published as From Outer Space, Needle is out of print but used copies are available on Amazon, as well as an audio version. Haldeman, Joe. The Forever War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974. Print. In Haldeman’s story of an interstellar war between humans and an alien race called the Taurans, special ships called collapsars are used to travel to enemy planets. Among the many difficulties the soldiers must face, one of the most difficult is that because time in space passes at a different rate, the soldiers return home to find that they have aged only a year in the passing of three decades on Earth. “Sci-fi Fans Embrace Worlds Beyond.” Gazette 23 Jan. 2005. Print. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 July 2010. A short article about the annual COSine Science Fiction Convention, which Joe Haldeman attends every year with his wife. Westerfeld, Scott. Polymorph. New York: Roc, 1997. Print. In Westerfeld’s novel, a young shape-shifter makes her way through a futuristic New York City, changing her appearance at will. She believes she is the only one of her kind, until she meets another, older shape-shifter with evil intentions, and must stop him. Bisanne Masoud
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Captain of the Sleepers By Mayra Montero
W Introduction Originally published in Spanish as El capitán de los dormidos (2002), Captain of the Sleepers (2005) is Mayra Montero’s story of traumatic events that haunt two men for more than five decades. At the opening of the novel, J. T. Bunker, an eighty-three-year-old former pilot, is dying of cancer. Seeking peace, he asks Andrés Yasín, the son of his former lover, to meet him on St. Croix; he wants to discuss a dramatic incident from their shared past. As the two men enter into uneasy conversation, their memories take them back in time to Vieques, Puerto Rico, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The two men take turns narrating as their shared history unfolds and glimpses of the truth of the central mystery emerge. Set against the backdrop of the failed struggle for Puerto Rican independence, Captain of the Sleepers traces the aftereffects of both personal and national traumas. It has been praised for its portrayal of lost innocence and political strife.
W Literary and Historical Context
Much of Montero’s novel is set on Vieques, a small island that is part of Puerto Rico. In 1898, with the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico fell under American control. During World War II the United States began to use the islands as a naval base. Many of the country’s agricultural workers, already suffering from the decline of the sugar industry, were evicted from the lands they had occupied. In the novel, Andrés’s mother makes frequent trips to a camp of dispossessed islanders, delivering food and old clothing. The residents must also deal with navy bombing
maneuvers and the constant stench of the fish killed by the bombs. The Puerto Rican independence movement is another focus of the novel. Puerto Rico has a lengthy colonial history, first under Spain and then under the United States. During the 1930s and 1940s, several attempts to gain independence from American rule failed. On October 30, 1950, nationalists launched attacks on American targets throughout Puerto Rico. In Captain of the Sleepers, Andrés’s father, Frank Yasín, is committed to the nationalist cause and recruits J. T. to smuggle weapons in his plane. The novel is dedicated to the memory of two historical figures who appear in the story as friends of the Yasín family: Roberto Acevedo, a nationalist who was killed in the uprising, and Vidal Santiago, a barber who served a lengthy prison sentence for his role in the uprising.
W Themes Questions of Puerto Rican nationalism, cultural identity, and relations with the United States are central to Captain of the Sleepers. Montero also explores the lifelong effects of childhood trauma. The pivotal crisis of the novel occurred some fifty years in the past, when twelve-year-old Andrés saw (or thought he saw) J. T. perform an act of sexual violence so taboo and grotesque that, as Andrés explains, “I turned into a half-crazed boy, staring at the wall and talking to imaginary lights.” J. T. insists that Andrés misunderstood what he saw. Equally haunted by that moment, J. T. avows: “My life ended that day, Andrés. I got sick too. A sickness that’s lasted fifty years.” Sexual violence is tied to another of the novel’s thematic concerns: political oppression and the displacement of Puerto Rican people by American forces. In the narrative, a young woman who makes money offering herself sexually to American soldiers is brutally murdered. The servicemen responsible are never brought to
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Captain of the Sleepers
MAJOR CHARACTERS SANTA makes money selling sexual favors to American servicemen. She also provides Andrés with his earliest sexual experiences, allowing him to touch and kiss her naked body. She is later murdered by servicemen. ROBERTO ACEVEDO, a historical figure, was killed in the October 30, 1950, uprisings in Puerto Rico. In the novel, he is Estela Yasín’s lover. JOHN TIMOTHY (J. T.) BUNKER, an American pilot, is one of the novel’s narrators. The titular Captain of the Sleepers, he gained his nickname ferrying dead bodies from one island to another for burial. In the 1940s he was in love with Andrés’s mother. In the present-day narrative, he is eightythree years old. Suffering from terminal cancer, he meets with Andrés and attempts to explain the events that unfolded many years earlier. VIDAL SANTIAGO, a barber and nationalist revolutionary, is also a historical figure. In the story, he is a frequent guest at Andrés’s father’s hotel. ANDRÉS YASÍN, the other narrator, is a sixty-two-year-old Columbia University-educated former district attorney who comes to St. Croix to meet with J. T. Bunker at the older man’s request. He has been haunted throughout his life by his mother’s suicide and by what he believed he witnessed afterward. ESTELA YASÍN is the wife of Frank and the mother of Andrés. She has a brief affair with J. T. Bunker before turning her affections to her childhood friend, the nationalist revolutionary Roberto Acevedo. The two plan to run away. After Roberto is killed, she commits suicide. The events surrounding her death have haunted Andrés for fifty years. FRANK YASÍN is Estela’s husband and Andrés’s father. The owner of a hotel on the island of Vieques, he becomes involved in revolutionary activity. He is close friends with J. T. Bunker, whose help he enlists in smuggling arms for the nationalist cause.
justice, though their identities are widely known. A review by the Nation’s Kate Levin suggests that this murder “reveals one of the novel’s great strengths: Montero’s ability to convey how people viscerally experience the depredations of colonialism.”
W Style Captain of the Sleepers is in part a historical novel, drawing on real-life events and figures. Montero, who has been active in calling for Puerto Rican independence,
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sympathetically depicts the plight of the people of Vieques, demonstrating how they have been dispossessed by the American military presence. In bringing to life Roberto Acevedo and Vidal Santiago, she humanizes the nationalist movement. The work also reads as a mystery novel. The plot opens with Andrés’s mention of the central traumatic incident, but the details are not revealed until much later in the novel. As the narrative alternates between Andrés’s present-day confrontation with J. T. and the late 1940s and 1950s, the events that shaped both men’s lives come to light. The often rapid shifts between the two time periods emphasize how deeply the past affects the present. Hilda Lloréns writes in the Women’s Review of Books, “Montero tells a brilliant story, skillfully using the past to narrate a tale of the present. With delicate and forceful prose, she evokes feelings of heartbreak and rage.” While Andrés recounts most of the story in the first person, the narration is occasionally assumed by J. T. Through him, the reader learns details that Andrés could not have known and others that, as a child, he could not have understood. Often, events that Andrés remembers are later recounted by J. T., who gives them a new layer of meaning. The interplay between the two narratives further develops the themes of truth, subjectivity, and history.
W Critical Reception When El capitán de los dormidos was published in 2002, Montero’s earlier works had already made her popular with Spanish-speaking readers. The 2005 publication of the novel’s critically acclaimed English translation earned Montero international recognition. Readers and critics alike have been captivated by the book’s suspenseful plot. Kirkus Reviews attributes to Montero “a wizard’s ability to transfix readers’ attention as she peels away successive, deceptive layers of plot and meaning.” In addition, the author has been widely praised for her sensitive treatment of childhood trauma and its aftereffects; and her elegant writing and storytelling powers have drawn admiration. Publishers Weekly raves, “Montero’s atmospheric, minimal prose beautifully conjures the sensitivity, ardor and craving for normality that define adolescence.” Cherie Thiessen’s review for January Magazine describes the work as “an evocative, haunting story, as fatalistic, moody and inevitable as a Greek tragedy.” Edith Grossman (best known for her translations of Gabriel García Márquez) has been lauded for the grace of her English translation. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Captain of the Sleepers BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Kirkus Reviews 15 June 2005: 660. Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Publishers Weekly 25 July 2005: 42. Levin, Kate. “All about My Mother.” Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Nation 5 Dec. 2005: 34-38. Print. Lloréns, Hilda. “The Power of Secrets.” Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Women’s Review of Books 23.2 (2006): 28-29. Print. Montero, Mayra. Captain of the Sleepers. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Farrar, 2005. Print. Thiessen, Cherie. “Sleeping Sickness.” Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. January Magazine Sept. 2005. Web. 5 October 2010. Additional Resources
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mayra Montero was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1952 and grew up in Puerto Rico. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico. While continuing her career as a journalist, she established herself as a noted fiction writer. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled Veintitrés y una tortuga, was published in 1981. She gained a larger audience with the publication of her first novel, La trenza de la hermosa luna, in 1987. The volume was short-listed for Spain’s prestigious Herralde Award. Over the next two decades, she produced eight more novels, including La última noche que pasé contigo (1991; The Last Night I Spent with You, 2001) and Son de Almendra (2005; Dancing to “Almendra,” 2007), Montero became famous for her storytelling abilities and the often sexually explicit character of her work. She is also known as a political activist who has lent her voice to the cause of Puerto Rican independence.
Criticism and Reviews
“Chatting with Mayra Montero.” Criticas 2.4 (2002): 8. Print. An interview in which Montero discusses her novel and its English translation.
Grossman, Edith, and Mayra Montero. “A PrizeWinning Translator and a Distinguished Cuban Novelist Share Ideas on How They Work.” Washington Post
Puerto Rican soldiers guard a group of Nationalists. Much of Captain of the Sleepers is based on the unsuccessful fight for Puerto Rican independence in the 1940s and 1950s. ª Bettmann/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Captain of the Sleepers
A large portion of Captain of the Sleepers is set on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. kai hecker/Shutterstock.com
25 Dec. 2005: T10. Print. A conversation between Montero and Grossman, who translated the book into English. Lopez, Adriana. “Captain of the Translators: PW talks with Edith Grossman.” Publishers Weekly 25 July 2005: 43. Lopez briefly interviews the translator of Captain of the Sleepers, who discusses the novel and its eroticism. Seaman, Donna. Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Booklist 1 Sept. 2005: 66. A brief review that focuses on the work’s treatment of the haunting effects of both sex and death. Shreve, Jack. Rev. of Captain of the Sleepers, by Mayra Montero. Library Journal 1 Aug. 2005: 70. The author praises the novel, calling for more widespread recognition of Montero among English-speaking readers.
Open Web Sources
The Web site of HarperCollins Publishers offers a brief biographical sketch of Montero and information about her novels. http://www.harpercollins.com/ author/index.aspx?authorid=6842 The educational Web site WorldAtlas provides facts about Puerto Rico and its history. It also features a map of Puerto Rico that is helpful in visualizing the locales of Montero’s novel and the trips that the characters make between Vieques and the Puerto Rican mainland. http://www .worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/ caribb/pr.htm For Further Reading
Gale Resources
Barreto, Amílcar Antonio. Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican Politics. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2002. Print. This nonfiction volume analyzes recent developments in the relationship between the U.S. Navy and the community of Vieques, where protests against American forces escalated in 1999.
“Mayra Montero.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007.
Montero, Mayra. In the Palm of Darkness. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Harper, 1997. Print. The first
Taylor, Ihsan. “Paperback Row.” New York Times Book Review 18 Feb. 2007: 28(L). Taylor provides a brief overview of the novel’s plot.
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of Montero’s novels to be translated into English, In the Palm of Darkness is the story of an American scientist searching for a rare species of frog in Haiti and the native guide who aids him in his quest. Negron-Muntaner, Frances. Puerto Rican Jam: Rethinking Colonialism and Nationalism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Print. This collection of essays attempts to find alternatives to the opposition between the colonialist and nationalist positions in the debate over Puerto Rico.
Rigau, Jorge. Puerto Rico Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay, 2009. Print. Rigau’s text and photographs introduce Puerto Rico and provide useful context for Montero’s novel. Rodengen, Jeffrey L. The Legend of Cessna. Ft. Lauderdale: Write Stuff, 1998. Print. The nonfiction work offers a history of Cessna aircraft, the type of plane flown by J. T. Bunker in the novel.
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Greta Gard
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Carpentaria By Alexis Wright
W Introduction Focusing on a conflict concerning land rights in the Carpentaria Gulf region of Australia, Alexis Wright’s novel, Carpentaria (2006), depicts the layers of disharmony between the Aboriginal and white residents of the fictional mining town of Desperance, and within the indigenous community itself. The work traces the interactions of the varied Aboriginal groups that exist on the outskirts of Desperance with the residents of Uptown, the white portion of town. The story explores, on the surface, the debate over the land rights to the mine. On a deeper level, Carpentaria examines the sources of racial conflict, reveals the sense of spiritual interconnectedness with the land felt by the indigenous people, and fleshes out the despair and discord within the Aboriginal communities. Several features of the story, including character names that suggest larger, archetypical meaning, and the references to the spiritual beliefs of the Aboriginal people, combine to lend Carpentaria a mythical, fable-like quality. Praised for its blend of mysticism and reality, the novel won a number of Australian literary awards and became an international best seller.
W Literary and Historical Context
As a member of the Aboriginal Waanyi nation, and an activist dedicated to Aboriginal rights, Wright drew on the realties of white and Aboriginal conflict for her novel Carpentaria. She writes at a time when debates over rights to land and land use, as well as Aboriginal human rights issues, are in the forefront of Australian politics. According to Sandy Wood’s 1999 article for American University’s Human Rights Brief, the Native Title Amendment Act of 1998 was designed to aid in settling disputes regarding land rights, but aboriginal rights
activists found much in the act to criticize. Wood further contends that many politicians and a “substantial portion of the public” do not support native title rights. There continues to be much discussion regarding the breadth of legal implications concerning native title rights. A 2009 Native Title Amendment Act continues to be debated, and 2010 reform discussions are underway. Other sources of conflict between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, informs Tara Ravens in a 2007 article for AAP General News (Australia), involve the Australian government’s attempts to purge the child abuse of indigenous children on Aboriginal lands by banning alcohol use on indigenous lands and removing the need for non-Aboriginals to have a permit to access the land of indigenous people. Ravens reports that Wright herself spoke out against the government’s approach. Other activists supported the government’s intentions of controlling the plague of child abuse, but questioned the actions designed to support the measures. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, an increasing number of Australian historians and writers are addressing Australia’s treatment of its indigenous people, both historically and in contemporary society. Wright lends her voice to that of other Aboriginal and nonAboriginal writers who seek to address in their writing the reality of Australia, past and present. As Margaret Allen indicates in a 2001 essay for Hecate, many nonAboriginal Australians are rousing themselves “from what has been termed the ‘great Australian silence’ about Aboriginal history in Australia.” In addition to Wright, other Australian writers who address the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal history of conflict in some way include Kim Mahood, Kenny Laughton, Sally Morgan, and Nicholas Jose.
W Themes Among the major themes Wright treats in Carpentaria is the conflict between the Aboriginal community and
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MAJOR CHARACTERS STAN BRUISER is the corrupt mayor of Desperance. Bruiser is also considered the ring leader of the part of town known as Uptown, and its white mob. ANGEL DAY is Normal Phantom’s wife, and has fashioned her home out of the rubbish heap near which the family lives. Often described as beautiful, and as the queen of the rubbish pile, she leaves her husband for Mozzie Fishman, and leaves Desperance behind. MOZZIE FISHMAN is depicted as a religious zealot or evangelist who periodically appears in town with his followers, some of whom inhabit the spirit world. They travel through the country seeking the spiritual resting places of their ancestors. HOPE is an Eastender and Joseph Midnight’s granddaughter. She falls in love with Will Phantom and bears his child, Bala. Stranded with Normal and Bala at the end of the novel, Hope leaves her son with his grandfather in order to search for Will.
Carpentaria is based on an Australian land dispute between white Australians and Aboriginals. ª Bettmann/Corbis
non-Aboriginals concerning the mining land at the heart of the story. The complete segregation of the town of Desperance that Wright depicts establishes a thematic structure by which all things may be viewed as a dichotomy: home versus despair, white versus black, for example. Yet Wright’s treatment of such conflicts is more complex than this binary approach initially suggests. As Frances Devlin-Glass observes in a 2007 review of Carpentaria for Antipodes, Wright possesses an insider’s understanding of the political machinations of the small, segregated towns that Desperance represents. Her “long history of working in Aboriginal bureaucracies” has generated “a fine contempt for self-serving small-town mindsets” that makes its way into her novel. Such a background allows Wright the ability to view the conflicts she explores from the inside out; her characters are all imbued with human frailties and shortcomings, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. Wright also explores the relationship between the Aboriginal sense of spirituality and their worldview. Connected by their ancestral and spiritual beliefs to the land, the Aboriginal community is surprised to learn that the white community of Uptown lacks a history filled with heroes, and is devoid of holy ground. Such discoveries diminish, in the eyes of the Aboriginal community, the rights of the whites to the land, land that was once their own. In tracing the Aboriginal connection to their own history and their spiritualism,
JOSEPH MIDNIGHT is regarded as the leader of the Eastside mob, or the group of Aboriginals who live on the east side of Desperance. They claim to be the true inhabitants of the area. Midnight allowed the mine to be established and was paid for his agreeing to this use of the land. He is considered the enemy of Normal Phantom and the Westenders. BALA PHANTOM is the son of Will and Hope Phantom. NORMAL PHANTOM is the narrating character of Carpentaria. A onetime fisherman, Normal, also known as Norm, is married to Angel Day, who later leaves him for Mozzie Fishman. Norm and his family belong to the Westside mob, or the group of Aboriginals who live on the west side of Desperance; they are also known as the Pricklebush people. The larger Aboriginal community to which the Westenders and the Eastenders once belonged became fractured, in part due to Joseph Midnight’s agreement with the mining company. Some of Pricklebush people are known to travel in a land of ghosts and gather the stories of the elderly. Norm and his family are at the center of the novel’s narrative. Following the cyclone at the end of the novel, Norm is adrift at sea for forty days with Hope and his grandson Bala. After Hope disappears to look for Will, Norm and Bala return to the wreckage of Desperance. WILL PHANTOM is the son of Normal Phantom and Angel Day. Will becomes involved in the dispute for land rights and he takes a stand against the mine, seeking its violent destruction. Will falls in love with an enemy to the Westenders, the Eastender, Hope. The couple has a son together, Bala. After the town is decimated by a cyclone at the end of the novel, Will drifts alone on an island composed of floating detritus.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on November 25, 1950, Alexis Wright is a member of Australia’s Waanyi nation. Wright’s father was a white cattleman who died when Wright was five years old. After his death, she was raised by her Waanyi mother and grandmother in Cloncurry, Queensland. She has worked as an indigenous researcher, administrator, and educator, and as an activist for Aboriginal rights. Prior to her publication of Carpentaria in 2006, Wright wrote the nonfiction study of alcoholism and alcohol legislation in Aboriginal communities, Grog War in 1997, and the novel Plains of Promise, also in 1997. Carpentaria won a number of literary awards, including, among others, the Miles Franklin Award, the Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, all 2007.
Wright emphasizes the link to the past possessed by the indigenous people, but also a curiosity about the white world. Through the exploration of this interplay between the two cultures, Teresa Podemska-Abt maintains, in a 2010 article for Kultura—Historia—Globalizacja (Culture—History—Global Studies) “Carpentaria pushes readers to realize that Indigenous cultures and societies are in a constant progress.” Modern indigenous communities, as Wright demonstrates, evolve in part based on their interactions with other, non-Aboriginal individuals and groups. At the end of the novel, the survival of Normal Phantom and some of his family members, and their return to the area that was once their home suggests the ability of Aboriginal communities to adapt, survive, and maintain their connection to their land as well.
W Style Incorporating supernatural and realistic elements, Carpentaria is often described as a work of magical realism. The term was first used in 1925 in relation to visual arts, and in 1949 in association with fiction, and includes any work that synthesizes elements of the supernatural, absurd, fantastic, or mystical with a story that is otherwise rooted in realism. Throughout the novel, Wright fuses the Aboriginal myths with her narrative, making the supernatural an integral part of the reality of the story. As the story opens, for example, the natural landscape of the area is described in terms of indigenous myth, as the “ancestral serpent” carves a channel from the sea into the land and back again, creating in its wake the tidal rivers of the region. In one of these rivers, the reader learns, the “up-to-no-good Mission-bred kids accidentally hanged Cry-baby Sally.” The reference to a contemporary event, the death of Cry-baby Sally, is incorporated into the ongoing tale of the river serpent, whose breath is
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mentioned a beat later. The interconnection between myth and reality is an integral part of the Aboriginal community Wright describes, and of the narrative itself. Carpentaria fuses the magical with the realistic through the figure of Normal Phantom, an elder of the indigenous community, who also serves as the point-ofview narrating character. Phantom lends the story the air of an oral tale, and breathes life into the supernatural-filled stories and legends—both ancient and contemporary—of his people. The supernatural is already a part of Normal Phantom’s reality. His narration is as much infused with the spiritual and mystical as it is with the mundane and commonplace. Through Phantom, Wright allows her complex novel its moments of levity and humor. As a narrator, Phantom has his own biases, and the reader must embrace the overlay of his attitudes and sense of mysticism or attempt to see through it.
W Critical Reception It is often noted that Wright’s Carpentaria, which eventually became an international best seller, was not initially well received by Australian audiences, despite the early critical acclaim it received from Australian reviewers. Jane Perlez, in her 2007 New York Times Book Review assessment, cites the “highly laudatory reviews” that failed to translate into sales. Perlez attributes the initial failure of the novel to the fact that Australian independent bookstores are operated “by political liberals, who have often expressed embarrassment at the sorry treatment of Australia’s indigenous people,” and consequently were unwilling to promote the novel. The novel’s style—its blending of the mystical or supernatural with the realistic—has been a source of much discussion among other critics. Ross Chambers, in a 2008 article for Australian Literary Studies, comments on the way the surrealism or magical realism of Carpentaria may be regarded as an example of the postcolonial appropriation of the surrealist mode. Similarly, Frances Devlin-Glass, in a 2007 review of the novel for Antipodes, explores the work’s “hybridized genres,” questioning whether it is a work of “social realism, magic realism, Aboriginal traditional stories straight or fictionalized.” Devlin-Glass goes on to suggest like Chambers that the novel’s approach is ultimately postcolonial in its appropriation of these genres. Katy Guest, in her assessment of the novel in a 2008 review for the Independent, praises the work as a “massive achievement” but is unable to determine whether it is to be taken as magical realism, an old man’s stories, or simply, a dream. Guest describes the plotting as “absurd” and the narrative as scattered, but also states that the novel is a “monstrous work of genius.” Paul Sharrad evaluates Carpentaria in a 2009 essay for Australian Literary Studies. He states that Wright’s narrative challenges mainstream audiences by “asserting cultural difference from white society” and TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“speaking through communal, senior and oral voices rather than focusing on an individual tale of selfdevelopment.” In assessing the style of Carpentaria, Sharrad likens Wright’s work to that of Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie—others known for their use of magical realism—and states that like Marquez and Rushdie, Wright transforms “didactic data into symbolic figures that fit with the social practices and narrative devices of the novel.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allen, Margaret. “The Brothers Up North and the Sisters Down South: The Mackay Family and the Frontier.” Hecate. 1 October 2001. Web. HighBeam Research. 26 July 2010. Chambers, Ross. “‘Isn’t There a Poem about This, Mr. DeMille?’ On Quotation Camp and Colonial Distancing.” Australian Literary Studies 23.4 (2008) 377+. Print. Questia. Web. 27 July 2010. Devlin-Glass, Frances. “Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria.” Antipodes 21.1 (June 2007): 82. Print. Guest, Katy. “Carpentaria, by Alexis Wright.” Independent [London]. 25 April 2008. Web. 27 July 2010. “Native Title Reform.” Australian Government: Attorney-General’s Department. Web. 27 July 2010. Perlez, Jane. “Aboriginal Lit.” New York Times Book Review 18 Nov. 2007. Book Review Desk: 31(L). Print. Podemska-Abt, Teresa. “Anti-Nativism in Australian Indigenous Literature.” Kultura—Historia— Globalizacja, no. 7 (2010). Web. 27 July 2010. Ravens, Tara. “NT: Skepticism and Distrust Greets Aboriginal Reforms.” AAP General News (Australia) 22 June 2007. Web. HighBeam Research. 27 Jul. 2010. Sharrad, Paul. “Beyond Capricornia: Ambiguous Promise in Alexis Wright.” Australian Literary Studies 24.1 (Apr. 2009): 52+. Print. Vernay, Jean-Francois. “An Interview with Alexis Wright.” Antipodes 18.2 (Dec. 2004): 119. Print. Wood, Sandy. “Aboriginal Land Rights in Australia.” Human Rights Brief 6.3 (Spring 1999). Web. 27 July 2010. Wyndham, Susan. “Gulf Country’s Voice Shines in Australian Epic.” Sydney Morning Herald 22 June 2007. Web. 27 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Devlin-Glass, Frances. “A Politics of the Dreamtime: Destructive and Regenerative Rainbows in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria.” Australian Literary Studies
23.4 (2008): 392+. Print. Examines the symbolism and the elements of magical realism in Carpentaria. Joseph, Laura. “Opening the Gates of Hell: Regional Emergences in Carpentaria and Dreamhunter.” Southerly 69.2 (Summer 2009): 66+. Print. Explores the way Wright and Elizabeth Knox, from Australia and New Zealand, respectively, emphasize in their work the transcendence of the regional over the national. Lake, Ed. “Carpentaria: A Mother Load of Mystery.” Telegraph.co.uk 19 Apr. 2008. Web. 27 July 2010. Provides a brief review of Carpentaria in which the work is compared with James Joyce’s Ulysses in terms of its status as a national epic and in the way it employs the particular details of regional space and the habits of regional expression. Gale Resources
“Alexis Wright.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
The National Native Title Tribunal website is a resource that aids in explaining the issue of native land rights in Australia. The site provides links to pertinent legislation and resources for Aboriginal Australians. http:// www.nntt.gov.au/What-Is-Native-Title/Pages/ Approaches-to-Native-Title.aspx Alexis Wright’s American publisher, Simon and Schuster, provides an author biography, bibliography, and updates regarding the author’s upcoming works. http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Alexis Wright/47814863 The Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade provides a brief overview of the history of indigenous Australians and their relationship with European settlers. http://www.dfat.gov. au/aib/history.html For Further Reading
Heiss, Anita and Peter Minter, eds. Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature. Allen & Unwin Australia, 2008. Print. The first anthology of Aboriginal Australian literature, Heiss and Minter’s collection spans two centuries of Aboriginal writing. Mahood, Kim. Craft for a Dry Lake. Anchor, 2000. Print. Mahood’s memoir delineates the transformation of her relationship to her Aboriginal ancestry and her sense of connection to the land of the Tanami region, which was her childhood home. Wright, Alexis. “Embracing the Indigenous Vision: Novelist and Artist Alexis Wright Proclaims the Need for Complete Self-Determination by Aboriginal Peoples in Framing and Administering Policies for
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Their Futures.” Meanjin 65.1 (Mar. 2006): 104+. Print. Wright discusses her work with indigenous communities and the challenges they face as they seek to maintain their sovereign rights within Australia.
Aboriginal communities and their conflict with the Europeans who colonized their land. The tensions between Aboriginal spirituality and the Christianity of the colonists is a main focus of the novel.
———. Plains of Promise. U of Queensland P, 1997. Print. Wright’s first novel, this work is concerned with
Catherine Dominic
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Carry Me Down By M. J. Hyland
W Introduction M. J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down, published in 2006, is a firstperson narrative written in the present tense from the perspective of John Egan, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in Ireland in 1971. At nearly six feet, John is unusually tall for his age. Although he has the body of an adult, he still has the mind of a child, something that unsettles his parents, who no longer know quite how to relate to him. Meanwhile, John becomes obsessed with discerning the difference between lies and truth. In part this obsession stems from his own traumatic life, including the pressures of living in poverty and his parents’ marital troubles. John eventually comes to regard himself as a sort of human lie detector, but because he is still very young and literal-minded he lacks the maturity to understand adult nuances and the ability to process his own complex emotions, both of which lead to significant troubles over the course of the novel. Carry Me Down was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, as well as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Eurasia Region). It won the Encore Award for Best Second Book and the Hawthornden Prize for Best Work of Literature.
W Literary and Historical Context
Carry Me Down is written as a coming-of-age novel, and employs a stream of conscious style of narration, using the voice and cadence of a young male narrator. Focusing on the thought processes of eleven-year-old John Egan, the narrative voice in Carry Me Down is very reminiscent of the writing style used by J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye. This is particularly true of Hyland’s use of an episodic narrative structure relating a number of mundane, seemingly unconnected events. John Egan’s
narrative voice is also reminiscent of Christopher John Francis Boone, the young protagonist of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime. Similar to other stream-of-consciousness novels, Carry Me Down does not emphasize the context in which the story is set. The reader is aware that the novel is set in Ireland, in the 1970s, but Hyland does not focus on providing situational detail in the novel. In fact, Hyland mentioned in an interview with Andrew Lawless for Three Monkeys Online that she was not “particularly concerned … with time and place” for this book. She insists that she did not “set out to say anything about Irish culture—nothing.” Despite her stated intent, Lawless opined that Carry Me Down provides a “keen psychological profile” of Ireland in the 1970s. Ireland was rife with religious and political conflict during the 1960s and 1970s. After centuries of being a British dominion state, Ireland had split in two during the 1950s. Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland remained under British rule while the rest of the Irish counties declared themselves a republic in 1948. Sentiment for a united Ireland remained strong, however, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) sponsored years of violent, terrorist attacks on Northern Ireland during the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, in an effort to break ties between the north and England. Despite the violence that characterized Irish history during this time, Ireland’s economy grew significantly during the 1960s and 1970s. Ireland became part of the European Community in 1973. As noted earlier, Hyland does not draw significantly on the social and cultural milieu of 1970s Ireland in Carry Me Down. Her decision to focus closely on the musings of her narrator has been compared unfavorably to similar works set in contemporary Ireland, most notably Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Butcher Boy, by Patrick McCabe (Thompson). While Thompson faults Hyland’s novel for a meandering plot and other shortcomings, she does assert that Carry Me Down “introduces some interesting themes. There are Oedipal
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BRENDAN is John Egan’s best friend, but their relationship breaks down over the course of the book. JOHN EGAN, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is an abnormally tall, poor, introspective, eleven-year-old boy who becomes obsessed with determining the difference between truth and lies, and thinks of himself as a human lie detector. MR. EGAN, John’s father, is a rough, violent man who drinks too much and cheats on his wife while telling his family that he is studying in order to get a job. John is under the impression that his father does not love him. MRS. EGAN, John’s mother, loves her son, but is frightened by him and does not know how to relate to him. MR. ROCHE is a teacher who serves as an inspiration to John, despite the fact that he is physically violent with some of his other students.
undercurrents when John succeeds in getting his father removed from the flat and moves into his mother’s bed. There is a concern, very relevant today, about the effects upon a child when he is taken into the confidence of adults and told more about family relationships than he is mature enough to understand.” These themes, along with Hyland’s portrayal of adolescence and difficult family life in the novel, have been praised by other reviewers.
W Themes Carry Me Down is a novel that explores the dichotomy between honesty and dishonesty and the impact of telling lies on others. The lies depicted in the novel have thematic resonance, hiding the truth about the relationships in the book. For example, John’s father kills an entire litter of kittens before his wife can return home and discover that her cat has given birth. When John vomits at the sight of this grisly scene, he claims that his reaction is not related to the killing. The truth is, John is appalled because Mr. Egan has told him that he was not bothered by the idea of killing the cats. John is extremely sensitive to lies and throughout the novel, he feels sickened when others lie to him. He is so literal-minded, however, that he has trouble distinguishing between serious lies and white lies, and uses the distinction between “lies” and “truth” as his emotional road map. Late in the novel, his father makes up a story about a pair of socks that he presents to John, and although the intent is to delight John, the action angers him instead. Similarly, John misinterprets other actions throughout the story, and he is not emotionally or intellectually
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mature enough to understand the full implication of people’s actions. Ironically, one of the times his intuition is on target occurs when he realizes that his “Da” is cheating on his mother. Unfortunatly, the truth simply makes his mother furious at John. Hyland also introduces the subtle irony that, no matter how much John claims to hate lying, he habitually lies to cover his tracks. As Mrs. Egan bitterly scoffs, “An eleven-year-old in the body of a grown man who insists on the ridiculous truth and has got into a bad habit of lying” (275).
W Style Carry Me Down is written in first-person present tense, a method that serves to place the reader directly inside the protagonist’s mind, experiencing the events in John’s life, both mundane and traumatic, at the same time that he does, without giving readers any type of buffer. Writing from this vantage point injects readers into the immediate situation with the character, not allowing them any reassurances that the storyteller has ultimately survived the experience at hand. Hyland’s writing style, sparse and direct, additionally serves to enhance the immediacy, the claustrophobia, and the tension within John’s life experiences. Hyland also makes use of the “unreliable narrator”— a literary device common in many postmodern works, in which the narrator is not to be trusted and may even be directly lying to the audience. Besides being a tool by which an author is able to misdirect a reader, the “unreliable narrator” also speaks to the idea that there can never be such a thing as complete truth, because everyone has a different perspective. Because of his youth and inexperience, John thinks he is telling the truth. However, Hyland anticipates that perceptive readers will take John’s words with a grain of salt, being fully aware that John is a young boy who makes certain leaps in judgment. Thus, using the “unreliable narrator” allows Hyland to convey to his readers a fuller picture of what is actually happening. This is particularly true of John’s mental state. From his own point of view, John is completely normal. However, when he attacks his mother, readers will comprehend the full extent of his mental instability, while John remains confused about the reasons and consequences for his actions.
W Critical Reception Carry Me Down met with overwhelming praise upon its release and subsequently won a number of prestigious literary awards. It was also nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Charlotte Moore, in the Spectator, praised Hyland for exploring the “frightening and unsavoury frontier land between childhood and adulthood with unswerving TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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sympathy and clear-sightedness.” Meanwhile, the New Statesman’s Simon Baker was impressed with Hyland’s knack for conveying “a sense of horror even when describing everyday life. She presents us with a family in which weakness and brutality coexist, and portrays a troubled childhood with accuracy and style.” In Booklist, Hazel Rochman declared, “the child’s naïve first-person . . . narrative brings achingly close his helplessness in a powerful adult world.” She went on to applaud the novel for dealing with a complex philosophical issue, that of “pain . . . [being] harder than ignorance. Who needs the truth?” Publishers Weekly called the novel a “piercing testimony to the bewilderment and resiliency of youth.” Its reviewer found John, as a narrator, to be “singular and powerful throughout. . . . By the subtle, satisfying denouement, one is . . . saving a space for . . . [John] among the year’s memorable characters.” Some critics faulted Hyland for a lack of narrative cohesiveness. For example, Entertainment Weekly’s Michelle Kung felt that “Hyland fails to instill . . . [John] and his family with enough empathy for us to be invested in their fates.” A critic in the London Observer wrote,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR M. J. Hyland was born in London to Irish parents. The family moved from Australia to Dublin and back again. Hyland endured an unhappy childhood, with an abusive, alcoholic father and her childhood experiences often inform her work. According to the London Observer, “Hyland specialises in characters fatally out of step, misfits struggling with self-pity and deceit, caught in an undertow of violence and sexual menace.” Her novels are also known for their dense, precise detail. This atmosphere, described by reviewers as almost “claustrophobic,” reverberates throughout her novels, including How the Light Gets In, Carry Me Down, and This Is How. Hyland’s work has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. She has won several awards, including the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelist Award, the Encore Award for Best Second Book, and the Hawthornden Prize for Best Work of Literature.
This photo shows the demolition of a residential tower in Dublin, Ireland, the setting of the novel Carry Me Down. ª George Carter / Alamy
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“John never quite rings true as a narrator, failing to elicit the suspension of disbelief so vital for a book of this kind.” Furthermore, Guardian reviewer Kate Thompson criticized the narrative for being slow paced and “somewhat meandering, with many repetitive and redundant scenes. . . . A mild, ghoulish curiosity kept me turning the pages, but the novel’s tidy resolution left me with more questions than answers.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Baker, Simon. “Light and Dark.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. New Statesman [1996] 135.4791 (8 May 2006): 56+. Print. Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Publishers Weekly 253.3 (2006): 38. Print. Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Observer [London] 25 Feb. 2007: 25. Print. Hyland, M. J. Carry Me Down. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Print. Kung, Michelle. “Carry Me Down.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Entertainment Weekly 869 (24 Mar. 2006): 74. Print. Lawless, Andrew. “Carry Me Down—M. J. Hyland in Interview.” Three Monkeys Online, May 2007. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Moore, Charlotte. “The Trouble with Being a LieDetector.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Spectator 29 July 2006. Print. Rochman, Hazel. “Hyland, M. J., Carry Me Down.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Booklist 102.12 (15 Feb. 2006): 44. Print. Thompson, Kate. “Helping Hands: Kate Thompson on a Tale of Disturbed Adolescence: Carry Me Down by M. J. Hyland.” Guardian [London] 22 Apr. 2006: 16. Print. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“A Boy against the World.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Europe Intelligence Wire 8 Apr. 2006. This review discusses how M. J. Hyland’s troubled childhood informs the narrative of Carry Me Down, and the character development of the protagonist, John, in particular. “Hyland Games.” Scotsman [Edinburgh, Scotland] 11 July 2009: 9. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. This in-depth interview with M. J. Hyland was held when This Is How was released, but its discussion of Hyland’s background and influences is equally applicable to Carry Me Down.
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“I’m a Human Lie Detector, Honest: An Enthralling Novel Tells the Story of a Boy Who Thinks He Has Special Powers.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Observer [London] 23 Apr. 2006: 24. Print. This review analyzes how Carry Me Down functions as a potent and effective character study. “Listening to the Child Within; Fiction.” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Times [London] 8 Apr. 2006: 14. Print. This review places Carry Me Down into the context of the coming-of-age novel tradition, discussing the evolution of the child narrator. Scurr, Ruth. “‘You Vomited at the Sight of the Dead Kittens.’” Rev. of Carry Me Down, by M. J. Hyland. Daily Telegraph [London] 22 Apr. 2006: 10. Print. This review focuses on the disturbing imagery in Carry Me Down, exploring how the traumatic events influence John’s obsessions. Gale Resources
“Hyland, M. J. (1968-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009. From Student Resource CenterCollege Edition Expanded. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
M. J. Hyland’s official site includes a significant amount of information, including news, reviews for all of her books, blog postings, and more at http://www. mjhyland.com A comprehensive biography, bibliography, list of awards, and a critical essay on M. J. Hyland can be found online at the British Council Contemporary Writers website. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ authors/?p=auth5181C8790ebf71D73DjLq2A B4EE9 For Further Reading
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Vintage, 2003. Print. This forerunner to Carry Me Down is also written in the first-person, told from the perspective of a young boy who has a learning disability. Hyland, M. J. How the Light Gets In. New York: Canongate, 2004. Print. This earlier novel by Hyland deals with themes similar to those presented in Carry Me Down, this time through the character of a sixteen-year-old girl trying to overcome the trauma of having grown up in an unsupportive, verbally abusive family. ———. This Is How. New York: Black Cat, 2009. Print. This Is How reads as a thematic sequel to Carry Me Down, telling the story of a troubled young man who undergoes a mental breakdown at TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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the age of fourteen, and becomes obsessed with mechanics. McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. New York: Touchstone, 1999. Print. A memoir of a poor boy growing up impoverished in Ireland.
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown, 1951. Print. This seminal coming-of-age classic focuses on a troubled young male protagonist struggling to understand the intricacies of the adult world around him. Robert Berg
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Celestial Harmonies By Péter Esterházy
W Introduction Celestial Harmonies (2003) is the title of the English translation of the Hungarian novel Harmonia Caelestis (2000) by the noted postmodernist Péter Esterházy. The complex and often challenging 800-page work is an account of the author’s aristocratic Hungarian family, but it is not a conventional historical narrative. The first of its two parts is an inventive, allusive reflection on all the “fathers” (real and fantastic) of the Esterházy lineage from its rise in seventeenth-century Hungary through its extraordinarily powerful position in European affairs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to its decline in the changing social conditions of the twentieth century. The second part is a more personal account of the author, his father, Mátyás Esterházy, and their life under Communist rule in postwar Hungary. Harmonia Caelestis received the Hungarian Literature Prize and the Sándor Márai Prize, as well as the Premio Circeo in Italy and the Herder Prize in Germany. The English translation by Judith Sollosy was well received by critics and brought Esterházy to the attention of a wider audience.
W Literary and Historical Context
The two parts of Celestial Harmonies deal with history very differently. Part 1, titled “Numbered Sentences from the Lives of the Esterházy Family,” contains 371 passages set in many different times and places. Each passage is organized around an allegorical “father,” who may in any given instance be a mythic figure or a real member of the Esterházy family. The Esterházy line descended from Paul, Fürst Esterházy von Galantha (1635-1713), who was elected regent of Hungary in 1681 and who established the family’s importance by regaining Hungary from the Ottomans. His grandson began the family’s
illustrious patronage of music and the arts, appointing Franz Joseph Haydn to his court in 1761. Haydn went on to become one of the greatest composers of the time while in the service of the Esterházys. During the nineteenth century the immensely wealthy family continued amassing political power and position in Hungary, Austria, and Germany. Count Móric Esterházy, the author’s grandfather, served briefly as prime minister of Hungary during World War I before a series of revolutions destabilized the country. Following World War II, Hungary came under Communist rule, and Péter Esterházy’s family was impoverished. Part 2 of Celestial Harmonies, “The Confessions of an Esterházy Family,” focuses on the difficult life of his father, Mátyás, who was detained as an enemy of the state, beaten, and forced into agricultural labor.
W Themes Julian Evans observes in his Guardian review of the novel that “there are other themes to Celestial Harmonies, questions of homeland, dictatorship, history and how to face it, but Esterházy’s overwhelming business here is with his father.” In part 1, Evans continues, “this father is plural, encompassing all the narrator’s fathers, back to the dynasty’s beginnings.” The plural father is variously depicted as good and bad, real and fantastic, lofty and ridiculous, loving and destructive. He is shown in many different times and places, under circumstances ranging from the ordinary to the extreme. Through the juxtaposition of several hundred passages about “my father,” Esterházy creates a thematic resonance that reveals the universal nature of fatherhood as expressed through the men of one diverse, historic European family. In part 2 the “real” father and the relationship between father and son take over the narrative, serving as the central figures in Esterházy’s exploration of family and depiction of life in a totalitarian regime. Although his
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parents endured hardship and fear during most of the author’s early life, the family is shown to be close and often surprisingly happy. As one commentator, writing in Kirkus Reviews, puts it, “rather than a lament about how the mighty have fallen, the story is a more rueful tale of how the mighty coped.” In this sense Celestial Harmonies is a tribute to the endurance of the Esterházy family, not only through the upheavals of Hungarian history over many centuries but also in its eventual transition from great importance to complete powerlessness.
W Style Barbara Hoffert, in a review for Library Journal, characterizes Celestial Harmonies as “not exactly a novel but more like an extended prose poem on family, nation, and history.” This assessment applies particularly to part 1, which depends almost entirely on allusions, imagery, and inventive language, providing very little in the way of conventional narrative or structural coherence. The 371 passages vary in length (ranging from a few words to several pages), point of view, and tone. Throughout, Esterházy uses material from a wide variety of sources, frequently weaving quotations into the text without direct reference or reworking phrases and sentences drawn from other works of literature. This technique (sometimes referred to as “intertextuality”) is characteristic of Esterházy’s writing in particular and postmodern writing in general. In a concluding section of Celestial Harmonies, the author lists many of the sources from which material was borrowed or incorporated, but he does not provide their location in the text. By this means he creates a kind of identification game for the reader, reflecting the idea that literature is a shared product of human culture. As Marianna Birnbaum observes in World Literature Today, “Esterházy is a magician of the word: each of his sentences may incorporate archaisms, political and street jargon, puns, and his own neologisms.” Although part 2 takes a more conventional approach to storytelling than part 1, it too challenges the reader’s expectations and relies as much on style as on substance. The 201 “chapters” of part 2 move unpredictably through the different times in his father’s life and show events from different perspectives, building up a multilayered view not only of Esterházy’s father but also of their relationship and of the world in which they lived.
MAJOR CHARACTERS MÁTYÁS ESTERHÁZY is the author’s actual father. Born into one of Europe’s most famous and powerful aristocratic families, and later stripped of his wealth and title, Mátyás Esterházy worked in a variety of menial jobs to care for his wife and children. “MY FATHER” is a recurring character in part 1 of the novel. Esterházy applies the characterization to many different men, both real and imagined, in order to create a composite image of the Esterházy patrimony and of the universal qualities of fatherhood. “MY FATHER’S SON” is a recurring characterization that refers to the author, Péter Esterházy.
W Critical Reception
Images
Despite its challenging style, Celestial Harmonies has been admired by most critics. In a starred review Kirkus describes the novel as “daunting at first, then richly rewarding,” calling it “a major achievement.” Publishers Weekly also stars the work, asserting that “Esterhazy has
created a vast anti-epic splicing the fine-grained nostalgia of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory with the anarchic spirit of Looney Toons.” The broad range of interpretations applied to the novel is demonstrated by James Crossley’s
Péter Esterházy, author of Celestial Harmonies. Ulf Andersen/Getty
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Celestial Harmonies
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Péter Esterházy was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1950, shortly after Hungary had effectively become a client state of the Soviet Union. He finished secondary school in 1968 and then studied mathematics at the Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest, where he graduated with a BS degree in 1974. For the next four years he worked as a mathematician in the Informatics Institute of the Ministry of Furnaces and Heavy Machinery, but during this period he also began writing. His work was soon published in literary journals, and by 1978 he began writing full time. His inventive, personalized version of postmodernism soon became admired in Europe, but his work was not published in English until the 1990s. Esterházy and Gitti Reen, an artist, were married in 1973 and have three children. Esterházy had believed all his life that his father, Mátyás, was an opponent of the Communist regime and that he had been punished for his resistance. Shortly after completing Celestial Harmonies, however, Esterházy learned from the release of previously secret government documents that his father had been a Communist informant. In 2002 Esterházy published Avitott Kiadás (Corrected edition), which he called an “appendix” to Celestial Harmonies. In the new volume he combines extracts from his father’s reports to the government with his own comments and an account of the process by which he came to terms with this unexpected revelation. Although Esterházy is unsparing in his assessment of Mátyás’s double life, his account retains affection and a measure of understanding.
assessment in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, which focuses on the novel’s narrative scope. Crossley contends that “the two parts of the novel . . . seem to address all the aspects of human endeavor, which means that the most appropriate adjective to employ in describing this novel is epic.” The Guardian reviewer Julian Evans acknowledges both the epic and the antic qualities of the work, noting that its “expansive, deeply coloured, visionary picture” is enhanced by “Esterházy’s always flickering lightness and humour.” A few commentators, however, feel that Celestial Harmonies takes on too much and does not fully succeed. A brief review in the New Yorker, for example, concludes that “ultimately, Esterházy’s attempt to explode epic until it resembles the shards and mirrors of his own style doesn’t quite live up to its ambition, though it yields many extraordinary moments.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Birnbaum, Marianna D. Rev. of Harmonia Caelestis, by Péter Esterházy. World Literature Today 74.3 (2000): 611-12. Print.
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Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2003: 1412. Print. Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. New Yorker. Condé Nast Digital, 10 May 2004. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Publishers Weekly 2 Feb. 2004: 58. Print. Crossley, James. Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Review of Contemporary Fiction 24.3 (2004): 132+. Print. Evans, Julian. Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Guardian [London] 12 June 2004: 27. Print. Hoffert, Barbara. Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Library Journal 15 March 2004: 104. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bazsányi, Sándor. “A Literary Approach towards Aristocratism.” Hungarian Literature Online. Hlo.hu, 1 Feb. 2006. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. This thoughtful analysis provides a Hungarian view of the novel. Bermel, Neil. “Fathers and Sons.” Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. New York Times Book Review 30 May 2004: 13. Print. Bermel’s extended review, which focuses on Esterházy’s postmodernism, is positive, on balance. Bernstein, Michael André. “Dynasty.” New Republic 12 April 2004: 42-45. Print. In a long and serious essay, Bernstein argues that Celestial Harmonies and Avitott Kiadás (Corrected edition), must be read together. Kavenna, Joanna. “The Giant My Father: Péter Esterházy’s Flotsam and Jetsam of Family Memoirs.” Times Literary Supplement 30 Apr. 2004: 21-22. Print. Kavenna’s thorough consideration of the text finds both messiness and splendor, resulting in a mixed verdict. Zamoyski, Adam. “Voyage round My Fathers.” Rev. of Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy. Spectator 8 May 2004: 45. Print. In a generally positive assessment, Zamoyski finds the novel both enthralling and difficult. Gale Resources
Kappanyos, András. “Péter Esterházy.” TwentiethCentury Eastern European Writers: Third Series. Ed. Steven Serafin. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 232. “Péter Esterházy.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. “Péter Esterházy.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 251. Detroit: Gale, 2008. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Celestial Harmonies Open Web Sources
An interview with the author is available at Words without Borders. http://wordswithoutborders.org Hungarian Literature Online offers excerpts from the novel. http://www.hlo.hu A video of Péter Esterházy talking with the poet Wayne Koestenbaum can be viewed at the New York Public Library’s Web site. http://www.nypl.org For Further Reading
Aczel, Richard. “Hungary.” Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing. Ed. John Sturrock. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996: 194-202. Print. This chapter discusses the broad outlines of Hungarian literature during the latter half of the twentieth century and places Esterházy’s writing in context.
societies provides a helpful background for understanding Esterházy’s work. Esterházy, Péter. Helping Verbs of the Heart. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Print. The first of Esterházy’s works to be widely available in English, this avant-garde novella revolves around his mother’s death. Land, Thomas. “Beaten into Betrayal?” Times Literary Supplement 13 Sept. 2002: 24. Print. Land’s review discusses Avitott Kiadás (Corrected edition), in which Esterházy documents the discovery that his father had been an informant. Molnár, Miklós. A Concise History of Hungary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print. The complex political, geographic, and social history of Hungary is well explained in this accessible volume.
Boyers, Robert. The Dictator’s Dictation: The Politics of Novels and Novelists. New York: Columbia UP, 2005. Print. Boyers’s examination of fiction in totalitarian
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The Changeling By Kenzaburo Oe
W Introduction The Changeling (2010), originally published in Japan in 2000 as Torikae ko, chronicles the friendship between two Japanese men over five decades. The narrator, Kogito, is a successful writer married to the sister of his friend Goro, a famous filmmaker. Goro has developed the habit of sending Kogito recordings of his reflections on their shared experiences. When Goro unexpectedly commits suicide, Kogito returns to the tapes, reviewing them obsessively in an effort to understand his friend’s life and death. As he listens to the recordings Kogito is drawn back into the years following World War II, during which he and Goro became involved in a charismatic leader’s attempt to launch a symbolic suicide attack on the occupying forces. Trying to understand Goro’s suicide forces him to revisit and attempt to come to terms with those traumatic events from long ago. The novel is set in present-day Japan and Germany, with flashbacks to Kogito’s and Goro’s youth. Drawing heavily on author Kenzaburo Oe’s life, The Changeling explores issues such as artistic production, death, friendship, and change. The novel has been praised for its meditative qualities and its blurring of the boundaries between life and art.
W Literary and Historical Context
Although The Changeling is set primarily in twenty-firstcentury Japan, Kogito’s memories carry him back to the years following Japan’s defeat in World War II. With the occupation of the Allied forces came the restructuring of the Japanese government and the transfer of power away from the emperor, whose role became purely symbolic. During this time democratic principles, such as universal suffrage, were also introduced. In the novel, as the
occupation winds to a close, Goro and Kogito become involved with a group of rebels planning an attack on the unchallenged American occupiers. They are aided by an American soldier named Peter, who is motivated by his desire for Goro. In what turns out to be one of the defining moments in both of their lives, Goro and Kogito learn that some of the rebels want to turn on Peter, knowing they can use his desire for Goro to lure him to his death. is an accomplished student of world literature, Oe and his novel includes references to numerous works of literature and translation. Goro and Kogito engage in extended discussions of Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), a French poet known for his experiments with language and poetic form. Near the close of the novel Kogito discovers Goro’s rendering of their discussion of Rimbaud’s “Adieu” in his unfinished screenplay and interprets it as an admission of his friend’s planned suicide. The work’s governing allusion, however, surfaces only at the novel’s end. Kogito returns from Germany, where he has spent one hundred days “quarantining” himself from Goro’s tapes, with a copy of Maurice Sendak’s Outside over There. The book tells the story of a girl named Ida whose baby sister is stolen away by goblins while in her care. After Ida discovers that her sister has been replaced with a goblin changeling, she undertakes a dangerous quest to free her sibling. The changeling appeals to Goro’s sister and Kogito’s wife, Chikashi, as a metaphor for her brother’s postwar transformation, and “outside over there” becomes a metaphor for the dark world of trauma that Goro experienced among the rebels in his youth.
W Themes Death is one of the foremost themes of Oe’s novel. While Goro’s suicide is the most visible instance of this subject in the work, discussions of suicide and death pervade many of the conversations that take place
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MAJOR CHARACTERS DAIO is a former disciple of Kogito’s father and a charismatic leader determined to carry out a symbolic attack against the occupying forces aimed at raising Japanese anger against the occupiers. PETER is an American soldier who aids Daio’s cause, apparently out of his desire for Goro. Although his fate is never discovered, one of the two endings to Goro’s screenplay suggests that he was brutally murdered by the rebels. TAGAME is the personified recording device that connects Kogito to his deceased friend Goro. Named after a species of water beetle that its headphones resemble, the device becomes Kogito’s constant companion, frustrating his wife and frightening his son. AKARI CHOKO is Kogito’s son. Although a birth defect left him cognitively challenged, Akari shows considerable musical talent. CHIKASHI CHOKO is Kogito’s wife, who is known for her straightforward, no-nonsense approach to life. At the end of the novel she clarifies many points that her husband had not been able to see. KOGITO CHOKO is the narrator of Oe’s novel, whose experiences roughly parallel the author’s own. The character’s name is derived from the French philosopher René Descartes’s famous line, “cogito ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am.” In The Changeling, the character of Goro is based on Japanese filmmaker Juzo Itami, the real-life brother-in-law of author Kenzabur o Oe. ª TWPhoto/Corbis
between the characters both before and after Goro’s suicide. Kogito witnesses the tragedy of his friend’s slow decline from cancer and feels the composer’s pain at having to scale back his artistic endeavors in creating an “Abridged Composition Plan for the Remainder of My Life.” It is also revealed at critical times during the novel that those around Kogito have feared that he would commit suicide, even before the death of his friend. After Goro’s death Chikashi, begging her husband to end his obsession with Goro’s recordings, comments that “it isn’t that I think you’re doing these late-night séances as a way of gearing up for your own journey to the Other Side, but still . . . ” Later she associates Goro’s death with the dark trauma of “outside over there,” understanding that such a place holds power over Kogito as well. Kogito, on the other hand, clings to the belief that the “other side” referenced by Goro in his final tapes is a positive state through which the two might continue to communicate. Tied into the theme of death is the metaphor of the changeling. At the end of the novel Chikashi explains
GORO HANAWA is the brother of Chikashi and the close friend of Kogito. Before committing suicide he records a number of cassette tapes for Kogito that reflect on his memories of their relationship as well as events from his own life. He leaves behind the storyboards for the film he never made, and his notes suggest the truth of the trauma he experienced.
the breakthrough she experienced when first encountering Outside over There, immediately relating to the protagonist’s feelings of responsibility for her stolen sibling. She realizes that Goro was himself a changeling, forever altered by his postwar experiences. She explains that she hoped that in giving birth to her first child, she would be giving birth to Goro as he once was—a desire that deepened her depression when her child was born disabled. At the end of the novel Chikashi encounters a young woman named Ura, with whom Goro had shared a highly erotic but unconsummated relationship in Berlin. When she finds out the woman is pregnant and has been abandoned by the child’s father and her parents, Chikashi offers to help support her because Ura, like Chikashi, believes the child will bring new life to Goro.
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The Changeling
ABOUT THE AUTHOR was born on January 31, 1935, in the small Oe Kenzaburo village of Ose, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, where he was raised with the stories of his ancestors and the history of his birthplace. These stories deeply affected his later career as a was exposed to writer. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, Oe the democratic principles of the new Japan, which inspired him to leave his village for Tokyo. There he studied French literature and began to write. His first novel, Memushiri kouchi (Budnippng, lamb shooting), was published in 1958 and depicts the continued to write devastation of war on young people. Oe novels, short stories, and essays, and his work came to the attention of international audiences. In 1994 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Changeling shares with Oe’s many other works an interest in history and philosophy and a reliance on autobiographical elements.
In the story, Goro commits suicide by jumping off the roof of an office building. Sincere Image
W Style The Changeling is told in the third person, with the narrator’s focus remaining almost exclusively on Kogito until Chikashi takes over in the novel’s concluding chapters. This unexpected shift contrasts the different styles and approaches to life of husband and wife, shedding light on their clearly troubled relationship while adding important information to the story. In several concise chapters Chikashi outlines a version of Goro’s life and experiences that makes clear the limits of Kogito’s knowledge and interpretation. Several critics have noted that her version is much more enlightening than the many chapters devoted to her husband’s memories and philosophical reflections. The novel is, in part, a work of fictional biography that draws heavily on the author’s own life, depicting characters and events that would have been familiar to like his protagonist Kogito, is a Japanese readers. Oe, well-known novelist, and many of the events that Kogito describes are based on the writer’s own experiences. Goro is also clearly based on a real person—Oe’s brother-in-law, the Japanese filmmaker Juzo Itami, who killed himself in 1997. Furthermore, Oe’s oldest son, Hikari, was born with a birth defect that left him cognitively impaired. Like Hikari, Akari, the son of Kogito, develops a talent for music that transcends his disabilities. The Changeling is also a philosophical novel, or novel of ideas. In philosophical fiction issues more commonly raised in philosophical texts are central to the narrative. Notable works in this tradition, which can be traced back as early as the fourth century, include Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-1834), Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus
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Spoke Zarathustra (originally published in German as Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-1885), and Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea (first released in French as La Nausée, 1938). The Changeling’s defining philosophical issues include the meaning of death and the importance of art.
W Critical Reception Upon its English publication The Changeling was praised by commentators for its intricacy and philosophical style. Many lauded the book for its concluding shift to Chikashi’s consciousness. Akshita Nanda’s review of the novel in the Straits Times, praises its understated complexity, describing the work as “surprisingly light yet multi-layered.” Peter Pierce’s review in the Sydney Morning Herald calls the book “an illuminating study of art, friendship, and identity” that ultimately achieves “a kind of serenity and optimism.” Not all critics reacted positively to The Changeling, however. Many were bothered by the book’s many unresolved problems and unanswered questions. Writing in the Washington Post, for example, Michael Dirda suggests that the book “sadly lacks a clear and compelling narrative line” and that it “isn’t only long, it feels long.” Others found fault with the obscurity of the book’s allusions, particularly for English-speaking readers. In a related critique some commentators have suggested that the novel suffers from an awkward translation. Christopher Tayler’s review of the novel in the Guardian, for example, critiques Deborah Boliver Boehm’s translation, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Changeling
particularly her attempts to explain Japanese culture to an English-speaking audience. Tayler suggests that Boehm “often appears to be clumsily incorporating footnote-type information into the text.” This criticism is echoed by Nanda, who notes that “a few chunks of explanatory text would have been better placed as footnotes.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kenzabur ——— “Oe o.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 331. (1935-).” Contemporary Literary “Kenzabur o Oe Criticism. Ed. Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 149-283. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 28 Aug. 2010.
Works Cited
Open Web Sources
Bares All.” Dirda, Michael. “Through a Thin Veil, Oe Washington Post 25 Mar. 2010: C10. Print.
The online magazine Bookslut offers a review of the novel that describes it as a complex, difficult read full of obscure allusions but praises it as worth the effort. http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/ 2010_04_015958.php page on Grove/Atlantic’s Web site The Kenzabur o Oe provides a biographical sketch and bibliography, an overview of the author’s major works and awards, and study guides for some of his better-known works. http://www.groveatlantic.com/grove/bin/wc.dll? groveproc˜genauth˜571˜0
Nanda, Akshita. “Till Death Do Us Part.” Rev. of The Straits Times [SingaChangeling, by Kenzabur o Oe. pore] 4 July 2010: n. pag. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 28 Aug. 2010. Kenzabur Oe, o. The Changeling. Trans. Deborah Boliver Boehm. New York: Grove, 2010. Print. Pierce, Peter. “Reflections on a Life Revisited.” Sydney Morning Herald 14 Aug. 2010: 32. Print. Tayler, Christopher. Rev. of The Changeling, by Guardian [London] 12 June 2010: Kenzabur o Oe. 10. Print. Additional Resources
The official Web Site of the Nobel Prize features brief and his work. http://nobel information about Oe prize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1994/ oe-bio.html
Criticism and Reviews
For Further Reading
Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. Rev. of The Changeling, by Library Journal 1 Apr. 2010: 69+. Kenzabur o Oe. Lauds the novel for its exploration of the relationship between the past and present, and likens it to works by Czech writer Milan Kundera and German author Günter Grass. New Yorker Rev. of The Changeling, by Kenzabur o Oe. 29 Mar. 2010: 101. Notes favorably the novel’s autobiographical qualities. Publishers Rev. of The Changeling, by Kenzabur o Oe. Weekly 30 Nov. 2009: 26. Offers incidents from the author’s life as context for the novel.
Keene, Donald. The Pleasure of Japanese Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Print. Developed from his lectures on the same topic, Keene’s book explores the origins and aesthetics of Japanese literature. Oe, Kenzabur o. The Silent Cry: A Novel. Trans. John Bester. New York: Harper, 1974. Print. This earlier focuses on the relationship between two novel by Oe adult brothers whose lives take different paths.
McCulloch, Alison. “Fiction Chronicle.” Rev. of The New York Times Book Changeling, by Kenzabur o Oe. Review 16 May 2010: 28(L). Praises the contemplative nature of the novel. Olson, Ray. Rev. of The Changeling, by Kenzabur o Oe. Booklist 1 Mar. 2010: 48. Commends the novel’s merging of elements of the autobiographical novel and the roman à clef. Gale Resources
Kenzabur Hirano, Hidehisa. “Oe o.” Japanese Fiction Writers since World War II. Ed. Van C. Gessel. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 182.
Richie, Donald. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2001. Print. This nonfiction volume provides a history of Japanese cinema, examining popular films and prominent Japanese directors, including Oe’s brother-in-law Juzo Itami, on whom the character of Goro was based. Toland, John. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. New York: Random, 1970. Print. Toland’s work of nonfiction chronicles Japanese history in the years leading up to and during World War II. Williamson, Kate T. A Year in Japan. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2006. Williamson’s journal of her year in Japan offers insight into the people and culture of the country in which The Changeling is set.
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Greta Gard
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Child 44 By Tom Rob Smith
W Introduction A murder mystery set in the 1950s in the Stalinist Soviet Union, Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 (2008) has been regarded as a work more complex and literary than the typical novel in this genre. The novel centers around MGB (state security police) officer Leo Demidov, an ideologue who investigates what he is told to investigate and dutifully hides whatever he is told to make disappear. Demidov adheres to the Soviet notion that crime, except for that related to political challenges to the State, does not exist in the workers’ paradise that is the socialist republic. In the course of pressuring the father of a dead boy to rescind his insistence that the child has been murdered, Demidov is drawn into the perplexing mystery of the child’s death. Forced to investigate his own wife in order to prove his loyalty to the State, Demidov refuses to implicate her in any wrongdoing. His insubordination, which would normally have severe consequences, is punished in the aftermath of Stalin’s death, and consequently results only in a demotion and relocation from Moscow to a remote village. He resumes his investigation into what he now believes is a string of serial, ritualized killings of children, while continuing to struggle against the interference of Vasili Nikitin, an MGB agent investigating Demidov and his wife. At the novel’s conclusion, Demidov is revealed to be one of the two boys in the 1930s vignette with which the novel opens, the older brother of the boy who grew up to be the serial killer Demidov has been chasing.
W Literary and Historical Context
Although Tom Rob Smith’s novel is set in the 1950s, the historical figure upon which the story is loosely based was a Russian serial killer who murdered over fifty people in the
1970s and 1980s. Andrei Chikatilo, who became known as the Ripper of Rostov, murdered and cannibalized women and children. Chikatilo was later tried and executed for the crimes. Smith takes the notion of this type of killer and situates him in the Stalinist Soviet Union during a time period in which violent crimes were ignored by the State. To admit that such crime existed in what was ostensibly a worker’s paradise, an ideal communal state of existence, would be to admit that Soviet socialism was a failure. In Smith’s novel, then, the government that allows such crimes to occur and instead punishes innocents who speak out against the government, becomes the true villain. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Following Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin, then the general secretary of the Communist Party, portrayed himself as Lenin’s heir and gradually consolidated power. Under his leadership, the people of the Soviet Union suffered many abuses. He forced the collectivization of agriculture and oversaw the rapid industrialization of the country. In the 1930s, during what became known as the Great Terror, Stalin purged the Communist Party of its so-called enemies—a move that led to execution or exile to labor camps for countless citizens. Despite the emaciated state of the Red Army and his lack of preparedness for Adolf Hitler’s invasion in 1941, Stalin led the Soviet Union to victory over the Nazis, but at a huge cost. In 2010, on the anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany, a day known as Victory Day, Russian President Medvedev offered harsh criticism of the Soviet Union, Communism, and particularly Stalin, an attack that stood in sharp contrast to the more positive assessment offered by Medvedev’s predecessor, the former president and now prime minister Vladimir Putin. According to a 2010 article by Tony Halpin in the United Kingdom’s online journal the Times, “Mr. Medvedev said that Stalin had committed unforgivable crimes regardless of any progress made by the Soviet Union under his rule.” Medvedev further condemns the “mass crimes against the people” for which Stalin was responsible.
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Child 44
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANDREI is introduced to readers as a young boy. He avoids contemplating the horrors his village is experiencing— starvation, disease—by hiding in his room with a deck of cards given to him by his father. Andrei perpetually waits for his older brother, Pavel, to play with him, but Pavel is always busy. Andrei is perceived as clumsy and stupid, but in reality he simply needs glasses. Throughout the course of the novel, messages are sent to Pavel in the form of victims of a serial killer, who is in fact Andrei. As Andrei tells Pavel, his goal in life is to make Pavel regret abandoning Andrei during their childhood. ARKADY is the little boy who eventually becomes known in Demidov and Nesterov’s investigation as Child 44, or the 44th victim of the serial killer Demidov pursues. LEO DEMIDOV/PAVEL is the protagonist of the novel. Attacked and later raised by the man who would have murdered him, Leo begins a new life when he is taken to Moscow. After growing up in fear, he becomes a soldier, and eventually a war hero. Promoted to the rank of officer for the secret State police, Demidov arrests anyone who is suspected of questioning the government or threatening the illusions the government wishes to sustain, and he does so knowing that horrible fates—in prisons, work camps, or at the hands of torturers or executioners—will meet those he has arrested. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin with a young girl. Child 44 is a murder mystery novel that takes place in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1950s. Henry Guttmann/Getty Images
W Themes In Child 44, Smith intertwines the theme of personal redemption with that of government corruption. The protagonist’s loyalty to a corrupt state is not defended, but portrayed bluntly. Demidov knows that the fear he fuels is an effective means of controlling the people. Yet he seems to believe in the notion of a greater good; he views himself as serving a higher cause, one that ultimately benefits the society in which he lives. However, faced with the murder of a child, along with having to investigate his own wife, Demidov’s feelings about justice and truth begin to change. The mechanism through which this personal transformation happens is the State itself, combined with Demidov’s growing understanding of its corrupt nature. Under Stalin’s rule, Demidov likely would have been executed, but Stalin’s death provides a reprieve for Demidov, and the agents responsible for his punishment send him into exile with his wife instead of a work camp or ordering his immediate death. In the small town to which he has been sent, Demidov discovers that another child has died, and that this murder has been covered up as well. As the political corruption he faces becomes undeniable,
RAISA DEMIDOV is Leo’s wife. Her relationship with her husband evolves as the novel progresses. She admits to having married him out of fear; through the course of the novel, she becomes an object of Leo’s investigation, as he is forced to prove his loyalty to the state by implicating Raisa in political misdeeds. While he suspects her of infidelity, the State suspects her of espionage. At the end of the novel, she and Leo seek to adopt two children whose parents were killed as a result of Leo’s actions. GENERAL NESTEROV is a militia officer with whom Leo Demidov works to solve the murders, although their cooperative relationship takes time to develop. Nesterov enables Demidov to continue the investigation by helping Demidov and Raisa escape, when the nature of the investigation—that it is focusing on a serial killer, and that there are no firm suspects—makes it dangerous to pursue. VASILI NIKITIN, an MGB agent, is Demidov’s rival and enemy, and charges Raisa Demidov with espionage. Demidov is tasked by Nikitin to verify this claim. Once Leo and Raisa become enemies of the state, Nikitin doggedly hunts them, following their trail to Andrei’s home. As Nikitin is about to shoot them, Andrei stabs and kills Nikitin.
Demidov’s road to personal redemption becomes clearer. While pursuing the case puts him and his wife in danger, Demidov is driven by a desire to arrive at the truth, rather
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Child 44
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on February 19, 1979, in London to a Swedish mother and an English father, both antique dealers, Tom Rob Smith was raised in London. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2001, and spent a scholarship-funded year writing. He worked as television assistant storyliner before landing a position that sent him to Cambodia, as a British Broadcasting Corporation writer on a local soap opera. After publishing Child 44 in 2008, Smith sold the film rights to director Ridley Scott. He published his second novel, The Secret Speech, in 2009.
than the fabrications of the State. He seeks to stop the killer before more children are killed. The focus of the novel, the stolen innocence of children, is another thematic thread that is woven throughout the work. In the vignette with which the novel opens, the two impoverished boys are forced to learn about loss, hunger, and death at a very young age. The older boy, Pavel, has had to take on the role of the man of the house following his father’s death, while the younger boy, Andrei, idolizes his older brother. While he is hunting a cat for food, Pavel is caught, beaten and taken away, himself destined to become food for a couple’s starving son. When Pavel’s would-be murderer discovers that his own son has died, he and his wife raise Pavel as their own child. Andrei is left with a grieving mother, who blames her younger son for Pavel’s disappearance. Andrei grows up to become the serial child killer whom Leo/Pavel, is hunting. The lives of forty-four children are cut short, ended torturously, as Andrei tries to get the attention of his brother, whom he strongly suspects works for the MGB. Smith indicts the State for this tragic loss of innocence—if the Soviet government had allowed for the notion that crime exists, Andrei would have been arrested years before he killed so many innocent people.
goes beyond the scope of a typical murder mystery. The personal transformation of Demidov, from a Stalinist automaton to a thinking, caring individual, is the primary feature that allows the novel to transcend the traditional boundaries of the genre. From the omniscient narrator point-of-view, Smith explores the emotional conflicts not only of Demidov, but of other, often minor characters as well, fleshing out details often lost in the hurried pace of many genre mysteries. Such a narrative strategy lends the story emotional weight and highlights Smith’s central theme of the brutality of the State.
W Critical Reception Long-listed for the Man Booker prize in 2008, Smith’s Child 44 has been praised by some critics as a genre novel with literary overtones. Critics such as Barry Forshaw, in a 2008 article for the Independent, find that despite its status as a “crime novel,” the work “has the texture of more serious writing.” Janet Maslin, in a 2008 New York Times review, describes Smith’s novel as “tightly woven,” and goes on to praise the work’s complexities and plot twists, although the critic does fault Smith’s prose as “slightly ponderous.” Similarly, Marilyn Stasio, in a 2008 piece for the New York Times Book Review, states that some portions of the novel suffer from a “static and wordy” style. Stasio, however, praises the tightening of the prose as the novel’s plot advances. In these later sections of the book, Smith’s style becomes “more fluid and cinematic,” Stasio argues. Smith’s plot development is a source of commendation among critics as well. Thomas Gaughan, in a 2008 review for Booklist, finds the pace of the plot to be “relentless,” while Henry Sutton in a 2008 article for the Mirror, describes the work as “tense, atmospheric, inventive, and surprisingly timely.” Commenting on the deeper thematic concerns of the novel, Andrew Nagorski, in a 2008 Newsweek article characterizes Smith’s work “as a penetrating deconstruction of the myths of what passed for justice in the Soviet Union.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
W Style
Works Cited
Although Smith’s work is ostensibly a work of genre fiction—a murder mystery—its prose style, in combination with some of its themes, has led to it being regarded as a literary novel as well. The work is written from the perspective of an omniscient, third-person narrator, providing Smith with access to the thoughts of all his characters. In focusing on the crisis of conscience the protagonist endures, Smith’s novel shares “the preoccupation, in fact, of many a literary novel,” states Barry Forshaw in a 2008 review of Child 44 for the Independent. The fact that the novel also made the long list for the Man Booker prize is indicative that the novel
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Forshaw, Barry. “Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith.” Independent [London] 14 Apr. 2008. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Gaughan, Thomas. Rev. of Child 44. Booklist 104.11 (1 Feb. 2008): 4. Print. Halpin, Tony. “Medvedev Denounces Stalin for ‘Mass Crimes against the Russian People.’” Times [London] 8 May 2010. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. “Joseph Stalin.” BBC History: Historic Figures. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Maslin, Janet. “Forget It, Comrade. This Is Moscow.” New York Times 8 May 2008. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Child 44
Nagorski, Andrew. “When a Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.” Newsweek 2 May 2008. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Smith, Tom Rob. Child 44. London: Simon and Schuster, 2008. Print. Stasio, Marilyn. “Forbidden Questions.” New York Times Book Review 4 May 2008: 26(L). Print. Sutton, Henry. “Books: Red Menace; Book of the Week, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.” Mirror 29 Feb. 2008: 11. Print. Questia. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
The Biography Channel’s Web site, at www.biography. com, offers a brief biography of the serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, the murderer upon whom Smith loosely based his novel. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, at www. soviethistory.org, explores critical events in the history of the Soviet Union, including detailed coverage of Stalin’s rule. Tom Rob Smith’s Web site offers biographical information, news of upcoming events, and a complete bibliography of Smith’s works. http://www. tomrobsmith.com
Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith. Kirkus Reviews 1 Mar. 2008. Contends that despite the unlikely coincidences in the novel, Child 44 is commendable for its exciting pace and fascinating setting. Rev. of Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith. Publishers Weekly 255.9 (3 Mar. 2008): 29. Print. Favorable review of Smith’s Child 44 in which the anonymous critic praises Smith’s plot, characterization, and historical detail. Conaty, Barbara. Rev. of Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith. Library Journal 133.5 (15 Mar. 2008): 63. Print. Offers a brief overview of Smith’s novel and praises the pace and plotting of the story. Geard, Amanda. “Thriller Set against Sinister Backdrop of Stalin’s Russia.” Cape Times 5 Dec. 2008. HighBeam Research. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Review of Child 44 in which Smith’s thorough research is applauded. Guttridge, Peter. “In Pursuit of a Russian Ripper.” Observer [London] 2 Mar. 2008. Web. 21 Aug. 2010. Commends Smith’s novel as an exciting, complex thriller, and provides a brief interview with the author. Gale Resources
“Tom Rob Smith.” Contemporary Authors. Ed. Elisabeth Fuller. Vol. 282. Detroit: Gale, 2009: 387-89. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 Aug. 2010.
For Further Reading
McCauley, Martin. Stalin and Stalinism. 3rd ed. London: Longman, 2003. Print. Originally published in 1982, McCauley’s work studies the way Stalin transformed the Soviet Union and its interpretation of socialism. McCauley examines both the advances made in the realm of industrialization and the brutality of Stalin’s regime. Pridemore, William Alex. Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, and Justice in a Changing Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. Print. Pridemore explores the way the dramatic changes in Russian society, in terms of culture, politics, and economics, shaped the evolution of its legal and criminal justice systems. Smith, Martin Cruz. Gorky Park. New York: Random House, 1981. Print. Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 has been compared to this novel by Martin Cruz Smith, in which homicide investigator Arkady Renko faces threats from the KGB and other sources as he pursues the perpetrator of a triple homicide in Moscow. Like Child 44, Gorky Park is the first novel in a series of thrillers featuring a recurring investigatorprotagonist. Smith, Tom Rob. The Secret Speech. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Print. Smith’s second thriller resumes the story of Leo Demidov, the protagonist of Child 44, and his family, who once again find themselves at the center of a web of crime and political intrigue. Catherine Dominic
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The Children’s Book By A. S. Byatt
W Introduction A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (2009) is an intricate portrait of several families living through a time of profound social change, from the last few years of the Victorian era to the end of World War I. Byatt, a prolific author who won the Man Booker Prize for her immensely popular novel Possession (1990), took several years to complete The Children’s Book. The result pleased many reviewers but disappointed some, who found the work overly didactic. The main character, Olive Wellwood, is a successful writer of fairy tales, a social idealist, and the mother of a large family. She is also the center of a complicated social network that becomes part of the narrative. Through this large cast of characters, Byatt depicts aesthetic and political movements of the time and explores the complexities of creative life. As destructive secrets chip away at the seemingly enlightened existence of the Wellwoods, the families become increasingly entangled. In the end the events of World War I eclipse the domestic and artistic dramas created by the characters. The Children’s Book was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Children’s Book begins in 1895, during Britain’s transition from the late Victorian tradition of repression to the social ferment of the Edwardian era (1901–1910), and ends by portraying the impact of World War I (1914–1918) on the lives of the characters. Several cultural developments of the period are critical components of the novel, in particular the Arts and Crafts movement and Fabianism, both of which reached their peak of influence between 1880 and 1910. The Arts and Crafts movement promoted a return to simpler principles
of design and a more authentic approach to workmanship. It had a strong impact on aesthetic trends not only in Britain but also internationally. Many of its proponents opposed industrialization, emphasizing the social value of handwork, and some pursued such utopian ideas as the formation of craft communities for artisans. In this respect the Arts and Crafts movement shared common ground with socialist groups such as the Fabian Society. Founded in 1884, the society advocated gradual economic reform and social transformation rather than revolution. Among its members were literary notables George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf. The novel also addresses the era’s changing view of women and children. A romanticized ideal of childhood innocence emerged during this period, but at the same time, children were often neglected—left to the care of nannies and boarding schools or exploited through child labor. Women began to seek higher education and to campaign for the right to vote, establishing the foundations of the feminist movement in England. A historical figure who was engaged with many of these social developments, children’s author and Fabianist Edith Nesbit, served as an inspiration for the character of Olive Wellwood.
W Themes An ambitious work, The Children’s Book explores the tensions between men and women, parents and children, art and life, conformity and individuality, and appearance and reality. By structuring the novel around four households—those of Olive and Humphry Wellwood, Humphry’s brother Basil, the Fludds, and Major Prosper—Byatt illuminates her varied themes from four different vantage points. The thematic strands of the novel are woven together most dramatically in the story of Olive and her family, whose apparently idyllic life at Todefright (their picturesque country home) conceals secrets and darker realities. The self-indulgence of Olive
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The Children’s Book
MAJOR CHARACTERS BENEDICT FLUDD is a brilliant but unstable ceramicist who abuses his daughters while his laudanum-addicted wife neglects them. PHILIP WARREN, a poor but gifted boy, is rescued by Olive’s circle of friends after he is found hiding in a museum. He is apprenticed to Benedict Fludd and becomes a successful potter. DOROTHY WELLWOOD is the most sensible of the Wellwood children. She wants to become a physician and is determined to find out who her actual parents are. HUMPHRY WELLWOOD, Olive’s upper-class husband, is a womanizer who turns from banking to social activism. Like Olive, he is more concerned with his personal interests than with the children. OLIVE WELLWOOD is a successful writer of fairy stories and the matriarch of a large family. Having escaped from the poverty of her childhood, she pursues a variety of utopian ideas and creative explorations while leaving much of the household management to her sister. TOM WELLWOOD is the eldest Wellwood son and Olive’s favorite. He prefers nature to society, is mistreated at boarding school, and ultimately feels betrayed by his mother. Portrait of A. S. Byatt, author of The Children's Book. ª ANDY RAIN/ epa/Corbis
and her husband results in a house full of ambiguously related children, and Olive finds it difficult to separate her creative role as a writer from her practical role as a mother. Her seemingly benign exploitation of the children—whom she uses to feed her imagination—has tragic consequences. The gap between appearance and reality is even more sinister at Purchase House, where the deranged Benedict Fludd memorializes the sexual abuse of his daughters in hidden works of art. As the story unfolds, all of the characters are shaken by unexpected and unalterable realities, from the suicide of Olive’s favored son, Tom, to the terrible toll of World War I.
W Style The Children’s Book depicts a great variety of personalities and relationships while also creating an involved portrait of a social setting and a historical era. Byatt accomplishes her objective by building an intricate yet logical network of associations around a charismatic central character. She employs the arrival of an outsider, Philip Warren, to reveal this network and to set off a chain of events that forms the essential outline of the novel. Tom discovers
young Philip in the museum where Olive’s friend Prosper Caine holds an important position. The two adults make the boy into something of a protégé. He is first presented to Olive’s diverse, eccentric social circle at an annual midsummer party where most of the many characters are assembled. Then he is apprenticed to Benedict Fludd, whose derangement eventually affects everyone’s fate. As the narrative structure develops, some of the characters introduced at the party disappear, while others become unexpectedly important. In addition, the political alignments and aesthetic ideals defined early in the novel provide motivation and background for the many activities of the characters, such as a visit to the dazzling 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Byatt uses a third-person omniscient narrator. This strategy and the structure of the novel enable her to manage a large cast of characters engaged in complex, overlapping plotlines. She uses the device of children’s books to provide a more intimate view into Olive’s relationships with her children, especially Tom. The larger narrative is interspersed with excerpts from the special stories Olive writes for each of the children. The reader gradually realizes that these are more than imaginative tales; they are psychological documents that Olive uses to define her visions of the children.
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The Children’s Book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
characterisation and narrative drive” but contends that it succeeds as a novel of ideas. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antonia Susan (Drabble) Byatt was born on August 24, 1936, in Sheffield, England, to parents John Frederick and Kathleen Marie Drabble. She earned a BA from Newnham College, Oxford, in 1957 and took graduate courses at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and at Somerville College, Oxford, before marrying economist Ian Charles Rayner Byatt in 1959. The couple divorced in 1969. Byatt married Peter John Duffy the same year. She had two children in her first marriage and two in her second. From 1962 to 1983, she taught literature at several institutions. A prolific writer, Byatt is best known for her 1990 novel Possession, which won the Man Booker Prize (1990), the Irish Times-Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize (1990), and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in the Eurasia Region (1991). Her 1992 novella Morpho Eugenia served as the basis for the film Angels and Insects (1995). Byatt, who has also written a critical biography of Iris Murdoch and has edited several anthologies, was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 1999.
Works Cited
“Byatt’s a Winner: Critics Full of Praise for The Children’s Book.” Bookseller 15 May 2009: 40. Print. Rev. of The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt. Kirkus Reviews 15 June 2009: 620. Print. Dunmore, Helen. Rev. of The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt. Times [London] 24 Apr. 2009: n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Hoffert, Barbara. Rev. of The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt. Library Journal 134.13 (2009): 64. Print. Jones, Radhika. “Mother Grimm: A. S. Byatt’s Latest Novel.” Time 19 Oct. 2009: 62. Print. Rubin, Martin. Rev. of The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt. San Francisco Chronicle 25 Oct. 2009: F1. Print. Schuessler, Jennifer. “Dangerous Fancies.” New York Times Book Review 11 Oct. 2009: BR10. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
W Critical Reception Bookseller reports that The Children’s Book “attracted a wealth of reviews, finally becoming the most reviewed title” on the weekend following its publication. The majority of assessments have been positive. Kirkus Reviews calls the novel “ambitious, accomplished and intelligent,” noting that “Byatt’s concern is the vast area where utopian visions collide with human nature.” Writing for Library Journal, Barbara Hoffert describes The Children’s Book as “pitch perfect, stately, told with breathtakingly matter-of-fact acuteness.” A Time magazine review by Radhika Jones concludes that although Byatt’s latest novel is not the equal of Possession, it is still “a rich and ambitious work, steeped in ideas and capped with a lacerating final act.” In his appraisal in the San Francisco Chronicle, Martin Rubin lauds Byatt’s “imaginative capacity to transmogrify what she has studied into something truly felt.” Some reviewers were less patient with Byatt’s informational excursions, and several found the novel too long and sprawling. Jennifer Scheussler, for example, comments in the New York Times Book Review that “so much is stuffed into The Children’s Book that it can be hard to see the magic forest for all the historical lumber—let alone the light at the end of the narrative tunnel.” However, even reviewers who acknowledge flaws in the book typically take a balanced view. Writing in the London Times, Helen Dunmore notes that “the panoramic quality of The Children’s Book is achieved at some cost to brilliance of
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Clark, Alex. “Her Dark Materials.” Guardian [London] 9 May 2009: 6. Print. Clark’s appreciative review focuses on Byatt’s dark vision of artistic creation in The Children’s Book. Lowry, Elizabeth. “Repossessed by A. S. Byatt.” Times Literary Supplement [London] 13 May 2009: n. pag. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. This review examines the Edwardian view of childhood as a context for Byatt’s novel. Tillinghast, Richard. “An English Saga.” New Criterion 28.9 (2010): 73+. Print. A positive assessment that focuses on the novel’s historical setting. Walden, George. “Period Pains.” New Statesman 27 Apr. 2009: 48+. Print. Walden suggests that Byatt’s novel possesses certain characteristics of the late Victorian era that is its subject. Wood, James. “Bristling with Diligence.” London Review of Books 31.19 (2009): 6-8. Print. Wood provides a thoughtful overview of style and themes in The Children’s Book and a mixed opinion of the novel’s merits. Gale Resources
“A. S. Byatt.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine. “A. S. Byatt (24 August 1936-).” British and Irish Short-Fiction Writers, 1945–2000. Ed. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm and David Malcolm. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 319. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Children’s Book
Detroit: Gale, 2005. 39-47. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. Musil, Caryn McTighe. “A. S. Byatt (24 August 1936-).” British Novelists since 1960, 1st series. Ed. Jay L. Halio. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 14. Detroit: Gale, 1983. 194-205. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. Parris, P. B., and Caryn McTighe Musil. “A. S. Byatt (24 August 1936-).” British Novelists since 1960, 2nd series. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 82-97. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site provides a biography, a lengthy bibliography, and interviews, including a link to a radio discussion of The Children’s Book with Diane Rehm. http://www.asbyatt.com and http:// thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2009-10-05/byattchildrens-book-knopf For Further Reading
Briggs, Julia. Edith Nesbit: A Woman of Passion. Stroud: Tempus, 2007. Print. Author of such famous stories as The Railway Children, Nesbit was also a noted social activist. Byatt’s interest in Nesbit influenced her creation of Olive Wellwood, the matriarch in The Children’s Book.
Cambridge UP, 1982. Print. This detailed examination focuses on the time period covered in The Children’s Book, illuminating political and aesthetic trends that affect Byatt’s characters. Byatt, A. S. Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage, 2002. Print. Published in 1990, Byatt’s novel intertwines a modern love story with a parallel tale that explores art and life in the Victorian era. Through both similarities and differences, this earlier novel provides an interesting counterpoint to The Children’s Book. Harries, Elizabeth W. Twice upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. Print. Examining a feminine style of storytelling in the context of fairy-tale traditions, Harries presents useful background for understanding the character of Olive Wellwood. She also discusses Byatt and several of the author’s earlier works. Kelly, Kathleen C. A. S. Byatt. New York: Twayne, 1996. Print. Kelly surveys Byatt’s work and examines the author’s relationship to postmodernism. Von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1996. Print. Von Franz, a Jungian analyst, explores some of the fairy tale’s psychological aspects, including shadow symbolism and the role of evil. Her views provide insight into the function of fairy stories for the Wellwood family.
Britain, Ian. Fabianism and Culture: A Study in British Socialism and the Arts c. 1884-1918. Cambridge:
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Citizen Vince By Jess Walter
W Introduction A crime novel by a highly respected journalist, Citizen Vince won the 2006 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Author Jess Walter has been praised for writing complex characters inhabiting the crime world, as well as for his gritty, realistic dialogue. Citizen Vince begins by introducing the reader to Vince Camden, who is working as a baker in a Spokane, Washington, doughnut shop. It is soon clear that Vince is not a law-abiding citizen; he also steals credit card numbers and runs another side business in which he hides marijuana in souvenir jars of volcanic ash from Mount Saint Helens as a way of using tourists as unwitting drug distributors. Vince has a long criminal history, and his previous dealings with credit cards landed him in the witness protection program after he testified in court against several organized crime bosses. No longer Marty Hagen of New York, he gets a new start as Vince Camden. Vince finds the daily routine of working at Donut Make You Hungry to actually be refreshing, but he cannot seem to avoid the allure of the criminal activities. He dreams of a life where he enjoys a modest home, wife, and children, so he saves the money he earns from selling stolen credit card numbers and marijuana. Receiving a voter registration card under his new name also inspires visions of becoming a citizen participating in American democracy, something he could not do as Marty Hagen. Vince’s old habits catch up with him when Lenny and Doug, the men with whom he works in the credit card scheme, begin to suspect that Vince is hoarding more than his share of the profits. Lenny brings in a mob hit man named Spike from New York. Recognizing Spike from his days back East, Vince suspects that his past is catching up
with him and that the mob has somehow figured out he is really Marty Hagen. Going back to his old stomping grounds in New York, Vince finds the mob boss who put the hit out on him in an effort to pay him back. His plan goes awry, however, and Vince is sent back to Spokane to become a hit man himself. This leads to a confrontation with Spike and a surprise climax.
W Literary and Historical Context
Citizen Vince is set in the days just before the 1980 U.S. presidential election in which incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter lost to Republican Ronald Reagan. Vince becomes intrigued by the politics of the day both because of his recently received voter’s registration card and because he is attracted to a woman named Kelly, a regular visitor to his doughnut shop who is also campaigning for her attorney boss, Aaron Grebbe, who wants to become a state senator. The mood at the time is a desire for change. President Carter’s administration has been politically damaged by a long-standing hostage crisis in Iran. In 1979 the U.S.-supported shah of Iran was overthrown during an Islamic fundamentalist revolution led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In November 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed by young revolutionaries who took more than sixty Americans as hostages. The incident became a political crisis for Carter because the Iranians’ demands for the release of the hostages were so extreme that the president could not give in to them. Carter’s inability to resolve the problem, and an embarrassingly unsuccessful helicopter mission to rescue the hostages, caused him to be seen as weak in comparison to Reagan, whose campaign portrayed the Republican and former California governor as a tough
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Citizen Vince
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANGE is one of Johnny Boy’s men. Like many of the characters in the book, he takes a liking to Vince, and he plays a key role in the novel’s climax. DAVID BEST is the deputy U.S. marshal who is Vince’s contact in the Witness Protection Program. JOHNNY BOY is the crime boss of the Gamino crew in Queens and puts the hit on Vince. Johnny, still in grief over his daughter’s death in a car accident, forgives Vince’s debt to the mob, but at a price. VINCE CAMDEN is the novel’s thirty-six-year-old protagonist. Born Marty Hagen, he went into the Witness Protection Program after testifying against mob bosses. DONNIE CHARLES is the crooked cop who is temporarily Dupree’s partner in New York. Often unnecessarily violent, Donnie still manages to be a sympathetic character when his personal loss is revealed. DOUG works with Lenny and Vince in the credit card scheme. He is the owner of Doug’s Passport Photos, where he also makes phony IDs for underage teens who want to drink alcohol.
The events of Citizen Vince take place just prior to the 1980 U.S. presidential election. ª David J. & Janice L. Frent Collection/Corbis
leader who would strengthen the U.S. military and negotiate from a position of strength. The political debate becomes a background tapestry for the novel, as Vince tries to decide whether his voting would really matter and, indeed, whether or not it really matters which side wins the election. The concept of trying to overcome a two-party system is also addressed by the author when he refers to the campaign of independent candidate John Anderson. Vince realizes Anderson has no chance of winning the election and says so to a campaigner for Anderson, who struggles to come up with a reason why anyone should vote for a man who cannot win.
W Themes The main theme of Citizen Vince focuses on the idea of whether or not it is possible to change one’s lot in life. Vince is repeatedly portrayed in the book as very intelligent and likable, yet he seems incapable of escaping the criminal, lower-class world into which he was born. A talented chess and card player, Vince also came up with the idea of distributing marijuana by hiding it in souvenir
ALAN DUPREE a rookie detective who takes on the Vince Camden case. Honest and determined, he is the only cop in Spokane that suspects Vince was somehow involved in Doug’s murder, and he pursues the case all the way to New York City. AARON GREBBE is an attorney running for the Washington state legislature. A Republican, he is earnest in his conservative beliefs and a Reagan supporter. His belief in gun ownership rights proves to be a key element in the story. LENNY HUGGINS is Vince’s boss in the credit card operation. He suspects that Vince is keeping more than a fair share of the profits and therefore hires a hit man. KELLY, an attractive law firm worker whom Vince becomes attracted to after she visits his doughnut shop. She works for attorney Aaron Grebbe, and it soon becomes known that the two are having an affair, much to Vince’s disappointment. RAY “STICKS” SCATIERI (Ray LaRue) is a hit man for the mob who seemingly has no moral qualms whatsoever. Like Vince, he was put into the Witness Protection Program, but even as Ray LaRue he lacks Vince’s desire to go straight. BETH SHERMAN is a 33-year-old prostitute who dreams of becoming a realtor. She is trying to turn her life around, quitting drugs and becoming an attentive mother to her son, Kenyon. She would like to be Vince’s girlfriend, as well, but feels unworthy of his attention.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jess Walter is a resident of Spokane, Washington, where much of his fiction is set. A graduate of Eastern Washington University, he worked as a crime reporter and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for spot news reporting, as well as a two-time Livingston Award finalist, a prize that goes to journalists under the age of thirty-five. His first two books are nonfiction, true crime works: 1995’s Every Knee Shall Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family, which was later reprinted in 2001 as Ruby Ridge, and In Contempt (1996), written with Christopher Darden. His experience reporting on real criminals provided a solid background for writing crime fiction, beginning with 2001’s Over Tumbled Graves. After winning the Edgar for Citizen Vince, Walter was a finalist for the National Book Award for The Zero (2006).
volcanic ash. He is also very street smart. However, he has known no other life than that of the criminal, having a jail record that goes back to when he was fifteen. Given a new identity under the Witness Protection Program, Vince has been offered a golden opportunity to change his ways and become a new man. Although his job at the doughnut shop, where he is the head baker, is rather menial, routine, and boring, Vince relishes it. It is his first legitimate job, and he has been working there two years without taking a vacation because he enjoys it. He becomes enamored with the successful law office worker Kelly, but considers her out of his league, so he reads literary novels in the hope of impressing her. When he learns that she is having an affair with one of her bosses, however, Vince reconsiders his friend Beth as a possible partner. Although Beth has been surviving as a prostitute, she dreams of becoming a real estate agent. Both Beth and Vince, despite their longings for a modest home and family, seem fated to their predetermined lives. Beth repeatedly studies for her real estate exam, never passing it, but she has successfully quit drugs and loves being a mother to her son. Her inability to succeed in a legitimate job keeps her working on the streets, however. For Vince, it is his voting card that prompts him to think about changing his life by becoming a respectable citizen who participates in democracy. He becomes interested in the political debate, not just for president, but for lower offices as well. Critics have noted that Walter spends ample time on the political background of the story, arguing that by doing so, the author creates a plausible reason for Vince to change his life. “The way Walter uses the presidential election as a backdrop in this story adds a subtle finishing touch. Without the attention given to the election the reader would not be able to see
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how Vince manages to overcome his criminal ways” (Plucker). Despite his yearning to make good on his debt to the mob and live a clean life, however, Vince seems unable to break the cycle into which he was born. The theme of fate is related to the theme of trying to change one’s position in life. And the ultimate fate is that of death. Significantly, Vince obsesses about death at the book’s beginning by scanning his memories of people he has known who are now deceased. Vince, knowing he cannot avoid the ultimate end, ponders whether he can at least change his days on Earth. Fate also deals harshly with several secondary characters in Citizen Vince. For example, the crooked New York cop Donnie Charles was once a good police officer, but when his only daughter is stricken with a heart defect, he cannot afford the medical bills and so he becomes corrupt in efforts to pay. The reader is initially led to dislike Donnie, but this revelation makes readers empathize with him a bit more. Walter creates other sympathetic villains in the book as well, including crime boss Johnny Boy whose hateful temperament was inspired by the tragic death of his own daughter in a car accident. Several critics have lauded Walter’s ability to invent characters whose personalities appear to be genuinely molded by their environments and circumstances.
W Style Written in the third person unlimited, present tense, Citizen Vince has an immediate feel reminiscent of noir detective novels. This is compounded by the gritty, streetsavvy dialogue of the novel’s characters. Walter’s narrative, especially at the beginning of the book, tends to the telegraphic and reportorial, a style befitting his journalism background. Several characters are described in asides reminiscent of detective dime novels of the 1930s, but the style is still distinctly modern in its setting and dialogue.
W Critical Reception Citizen Vince has been praised by reviewers for its sympathetic, complex characters and lively, action-filled plot. Even critics who found flaws in Walter’s novel felt that it was redeemed by several strong points. One reviewer noted that although the prose suffers from “indulgent free verse” the author “manages to pull it off with zippy dialog and a likable, if extremely flawed, main character” (Perkins). Another critic felt the novel lacked literary depth, describing the contents as “empty calories,” but went on to say that “it’s twisty, it’s surprisingly light, and it goes down real easy” (Geier). Several critics particularly enjoyed the main character, who, though a flawed criminal, is also an engaging protagonist with many admirable traits. Many reviewers TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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noted that Vince is intelligent and he expresses genuine sympathy for others in his life. “Walter has created what may be the most charming small-time hood since Elmore Leonard’s Stick” wrote Elmer DeWitt, while Marianne Fitzgerald added: “What makes Walter’s third novel . . . so enjoyable is Vince, a flawed but sympathetic character trying to find redemption. Not only is Vince engaging, but so are many of the other secondary characters, observed some reviewers: “[A] . . . great aspect of this book is that while each character has an internal battle to pursue, there are still other intriguing plot occurrences” (Plucker). This critic then went on to write: “There is enough action in this book to hold a reader with an extremely short attention span, yet at the same time enough internal reflection to help each character solve their dilemma.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that Citizen Vince is “a story full of wonderful small surprises—among them Vince’s way of finally achieving citizenhood. Dispassionate and compassionate by turns, and always engrossing.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Review of Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. Kirkus Reviews 72.17 (1 Sept. 2004): 836. Print. DeWitt, Elmer. “5 Mystery Writers Worth Investigating.” Time 167.26 (26 June 2006): 71. Print. Fitzgerald, Marianne. Rev. of Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. Library Journal 130.5 (15 Mar. 2005): 76. Print. Geier, Thom. Rev. of Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. Entertainment Weekly (29 Apr. 2005): 155. Print. Perkins, Christine. “The Financial Lives of the Poets.” Library Journal. 134.15 (15 Sept. 2009): 54. Print. Plucker, Carrie. “Engaging ‘Citizen Vince’ Is Worth a Read.” America’s Intelligence Wire 10 Nov. 2005. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Sennet, Frank. Rev. of Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. Booklist 101.6 (15 Nov. 2004): 566. Print. A positive assessment of Citizen Vince in which the critic asserts that the author’s skillful use of dialogue and characterization makes the rather unlikely plot work.
Open Web Sources
The Fact Index, at www.fact-index.com, includes a page titled “U.S. Presidential Election 1980” that provides election results and discussion of party primaries and the general election. The Jess Walter Home Page, at www.jesswalter.com, includes a brief biography, list of the author’s books, and book signing schedule. The U.S. Marshals Service Witness Security Program, found at www.usmarshals.gov/witsec, explains briefly the purpose of this program and its history. For Further Reading
Bazell, Josh. Beat the Reaper. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print. Pietro Brwna has been a criminal since he was fourteen and killed the man who murdered his grandparents. Recruited by the mob, he works as a hit man until entering the Witness Protection Program. Trying to turn his life around, he becomes a doctor, but a chance acquaintance with a mobster brings his past rushing back. Egan, Timothy. Breaking Blue. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print. Based on research about the true murder of a man in Spokane, Washington, during the Great Depression, this novel combines crime fiction with the experience of a journalist (Egan was Seattle bureau chief of the New York Times) who reopens the case in the present day. Leonard, Elmore. Stick. New York: Arbor House, 1983. Print. The hero of this crime novel, Ernest “Stick” Stickley, has served jail time, but he now wants to set his life straight. His plan to put his life back together in Miami is thwarted when he becomes the victim of a crime. When he realizes that getting revenge could also prove financially profitable, Stick goes back to his old criminal ways. Pileggi, Nicholas. Wiseguy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print. Gangster Henry Hill turns against the mob to testify and help convict members of the Luchese family. Written by an experienced crime reporter. Russo, Richard. Empire Falls. New York: Knopf, 2001. Print. Walter’s writing style has been compared to that of Russo, who here writes about a likable loser who becomes the hapless target of the police and a wealthy family in a economically depressed Maine town. Kevin Hile
Gale Resources
“Jess Walter.” Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Vol. 163. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 396-99. Print.
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The City & the City By China Miéville
W Introduction China Miéville’s The City & the City is often classified as a work of fantasy fiction, specifically of the subgenre called the New Weird. However, elements of outright supernatural influence are rare to nonexistent. Rather, the work focuses on human psychology and the potential power of the human mind as the mechanic behind the strange state of affairs in The City & the City. The two cities referred to in the title are located in Eastern Europe and are named Beszel and Ul Qoma, respectively. Although both cities occupy the same geographic space, they are separated more by culture, perception, and human psychology than anything else. The plot follows the actions of Inspector Tyador Borlú as he investigates the brutal murder of a young woman. His investigations eventually lead him from his native city of Beszel to its counterpart, Ul Qoma, and he eventually uncovers intimations that there may be yet a third city hiding between the other two. The book was nominated for a Nebula Award and a Hugo award in the Best Novel category, and won both the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
The City & the City, while a work of new weird fantasy fiction, owes a great deal to the tradition of detective novels and police procedurals. As Denise Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times describes it, “Miéville mines the tropes of detective fiction—the murder scene, the coroner’s autopsy, the witnesses who saw nothing.” The City & the City takes those tropes, builds upon them and fuses them
with other diverse elements to produce the narrative of the story. Adding to the mystery that serves as the foundation of the novel as a police procedural, Miéville creates other mysteries of a more esoteric nature, questions which explore the laws of reality as they apply to the “plural” nature of his created city. The protagonist of the book, Inspector Borlú, represents one of the classic detective archetypes, the veteran gumshoe. Other archetypes are used to create characters like Quissim Dhatt, a native of Ul Qoma and example of the “badcop” character who physically shakes down the perps to get the information he wants, or Lizbyet Corwi, the young beat officer with a finger on the pulse of the city around her. With its concept of Breach (a mysterious force that acts to keep the borders between the two cities and their peoples and culture intact), The City & the City also brings to mind elements of dystopic novels such as 1984. Likewise, parallels can also be made with “wartime Sarajevo or Cold War Berlin” (Hamilton). In many ways, the cities themselves, with their distinct cultures and styles, are characters in their own right, just as Inspector Borlú or Lizbyet Corwi are characters in the novel.
W Themes The “crosshatching”—defined by authors John Clute and John Grant in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy as “two or more worlds [that] may simultaneously inhabit the same territory”—of Beszel and Ul Qoma in The City & the City provides a solid structure for the examination of a number of the book’s central themes. Miéville is, in fact, known for writing which melds theme and structure, so much so that one “cannot help but be impressed by the fact that the central concept of the book is . . . a natural continuation of the themes” (McCalmont). The separation of the cities is accomplished, in part, by the psychological conditioning of the inhabitants to
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MAJOR CHARACTERS TYADOR BORLÚ is an Inspector with the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad. Borlú is a veteran detective with a penchant for travel and extensive experience. He is a citizen of the city of Beszel. The protagonist of the novel, Borlú is drawn into events by the mysterious murder of a young woman. LIZBYET CORWI is a young beat officer. Borlú befriends Corwi early on in the book, and she quickly becomes his assistant. Borlú values Corwi because she has the ability to talk intimately with younger people of Beszel with whom Borlú does not easily interact, due to the generation gap that exists between them. QUISSIM DHATT is a senior detective in Ul Qoma, Beszel’s “sister city.” Borlú joins up with Dhatt when Borlú's investigations lead him to Ul Qoma. Dhatt can be seen as the “badcop” to Borlú’s “gudcop.” Dhatt swears constantly, beats what he needs to know out of suspects and generally embodies the archetype of the hard-boiled detective.
W Style
The City & the City features a pair of twin European cities. Ul Qoma is a beautiful, vibrant city, while Beszel is a rusting urban graveyard like the one in this picture. ª Pablo Corral Vega/Corbis
“unsee” anything relating to the “other city.” This brings up themes of perception and the question of how to define boundaries, as well as a comment on the power of the human mind (a theme that is echoed in Inspector Borlú’s murder investigation). Themes of cultural identity also dovetail into the structure, all the more so because the two cultures in conflict literally occupy the same space. Beszel and Ul Qoma were once enemies, and are still rivals, for every person in each city occupies the same physical space. Each city nevertheless maintains a distinct culture and the separation of the cities works to preserve that culture. Miéville’s use of neologisms reinforces this. As Jonathan McCalmont puts it, “The obsession with the layering complexity and ultimate arbitrariness of language feeds the idea that culture is not something that is born of essential properties but of habit, custom and will. . . . The cities of Beszel and Ul Quoma are manifestations of the ultimately arbitrary and essence-free nature of human culture: two cultures, one shared space.”
The City & the City is a departure from Miéville’s customary style. Hamilton, who describes Miéville’s earlier works (particularly Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council) as “baroque, dense and lyrical,” observes that “where earlier books were drunk on language, detail, color and character, [The City & the City] is gray, chilly and stripped down.” This departure in style reflects a noir aesthetic, and calls to mind the gritty black-and-white feel of such noir film masterpieces as The Maltese Falcon. The noir format does not, however, completely define the style of the novel. More than anything else, The City & the City is a work of the new weird. It pushes the literary boundaries of the fantasy genre and blends inspirations, tropes and literary devices from a number of sources to produce the overall narrative. The noir format, and its attendant archetypes provide a baseline structure for plot and character, from which Miéville departs and refines his novel. The noir archetypes are particularly evident in the characters, from the veteran detective Inspector Borlú to the “badcop” Senior Detective Dhatt. The damsel in distress, however, is already dead—a victim of plot. Her death is the inciting incident that sets the narrative in motion, a narrative that contains numerous twists and dangers befitting any example of the noir detective novel or police procedural. This narrative is thus familiar and yet different. The thread of “familiar yet different” in The City & the City is also evident in Miéville’s use of neologisms.
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The City & the City
ABOUT THE AUTHOR China Miéville is an award-winning English fantasist whose work is often considered part of the New Weird movement in speculative fiction. His work often blends a variety of elements or bridges speculative fiction with other fiction genres, such as the sea quest (The Scar), American Western (Iron Council), or detective noir (The City & the City). Miéville is also well known for his work in literary theory and his left-wing political thought, having published both essays and books on those topics. These impulses manifest themselves in many of Miéville’s works, including Iron Council, considered by many critics to be Miéville’s most overtly political novel to date. As Miéville explains in an interview in the Believer, however, his novels, while they may express his political interests, are not vehicles for his politics, but expressions of his passionate love for “monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism.”
The new words he has created help explain unfamiliar concepts and give us an additional insight into the culture(s) of the novel. Words such as “unsee” (72), “unsmell” (66) and “topolganger” (144) take familiar roots and combine them to express unfamiliar concepts expressed in the book.
“The City & the City is, in many ways, an extraordinary piece of writing. But it is not the novel it should have been. It is competent where it should have been challenging, abstract where it should have been concrete and timid where it should have been bold.” McCalmont later expresses the belief that the book, while “not a bad novel,” was not deserving of the BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke, and Hugo awards that it won. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Clute, John, and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: Macmillan, 1999. Print. Hamilton, Denise. Rev. of The City & the City, by China Miéville. Los Angeles Times 25 May 2009. Web. 1 August 2010. McCalmont, Jonathan. “The City & the City.” Rev. of The City & the City, by China Miéville. Zone-SF.com. Web. 1 August 2010. Miéville, China. “China Miéville [Science Fiction Author].” Interview by Lou Anders. Believer Apr. 2005. Print. ———The City & the City. New York: Del Rey, 2010. Print. Moorcock, Michael. “The Spaces in Between.” Rev. of The City & the City, by China Miéville. Guardian [London] 30 May 2009. Web. 1 Aug. 2010.
W Critical Reception
Additional Resources
The City & the City garnered postive responses from readers and critics overall. In addition to winning an Arthur C. Clarke Award, a Hugo Award for Best Novel and a British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award, as well as nominations for a number of other awards, The City & the City was lauded by many reviewers. A veteran writer of science fiction and fantasy, Michael Moorcock reviewed the book for the Guardian, saying “As in no previous novel, the author celebrates and enhances the genre he loves and has never rejected. On many levels this novel is a testament to his admirable integrity. Keeping his grip firmly on an idea which would quickly slip from the hands of a less skilled writer, Miéville again proves himself as intelligent as he is original.” Reservations about the novel were expressed by some critics, albeit most often as part of a “mixed review” response or as a single reservation about the work as a whole. Denise Hamilton noted that “Borlu seemed an archetype more than a fleshed-out character,” but concluded that “that’s OK,” as the cities are the real protagonists of the book. One critic, Jonathan McCalmont, of Zone-SF.com, went further. In his view, the novel was disappointing due to failed potential, more than anything else. He writes,
“Divided City of Mental Maps: A Political Allegory Masquerading as a Straightforward Crime Novel Delivers a Thrilling Narrative on ‘Selective Vision’” Times [London] 16 May 2009: 11. Academic OneFile. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Feature article from the Times of London discussing The City & the City as political allegory.
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Criticism and Reviews
Hollands, Neil. “Miéville, China. The City & the City.” Library Journal 134.5 (2009): 101. General OneFile. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Review of The City & the City, calling it an “existentialist thought piece.” McKie, Andrew. “Unseeing Is Believing.” Spectator 20 June 2009: 32. General OneFile. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Review of The City & the City, featuring some discussion of both allusions and comparative authors. Moyer, Jessica. “The City & the City.” Booklist 105.15 (1 Apr. 2009): 23. General OneFile. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Review of The City & the City, considering the work as a detective novel. Nicoll, James Davis. “PW Talks with China Miéville: Investigating the Strange: In The City & the City (Reviews, Apr. 13), British Fantasy Author Miéville Gives an Old-Fashioned Police Procedural a TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Makeover.” Publishers Weekly 256.16 (2009): 36. General OneFile. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The City & the City, featuring an interview with China Miéville. Wolfe, Gary K. “Gary K. Wolfe Reviews China Miéville.” Rev. of The City & the City, by China Miéville. LocusMag.com 3 June 2009. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Review of The City & the City, including a discussion of the idea of crosshatching, where two similar worlds simultaneously occupy the same space. Gale Resources
“China Miéville.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
found here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi China_Miéville For Further Reading
D’Ammassa, Don. Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror. New York, Facts on File, 2006. Print. General reference encyclopedia for fantasy and horror fiction; includes a biographical entry on China Miéville. Lyall, Sarah. “Making Squid the Meat of a Story.” Rev. of Kraken, by China Miéville. New York Times 23 July 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Provides a New York Times profile of China Miéville.
“China Miéville (1972-)”. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 235. Detroit: CengageGale,2007.187-223. Literature Criticism Online. 22 July 2010.
Miéville, China. Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005. Print. Miéville’s book on political theory and international law was adapted from his PhD thesis.
Open Web Sources
———. King Rat. London: Macmillan, 1998. Print. Miéville’s first novel, nominated for an International Horror Guild Award and a Bram Stoker Award.
China Miéville’s personal website and blog, “rejectamentalist manifesto,” is located at http://chinamieville.net/. It features thoughts expressed by the author, as well as numerous quotations, author opinions, and vintage photographs. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database at http:// www.isfdb.org/ includes an entry on China Miéville, as well as coverage of speculative fiction authors of all subgenres. A summary bibliography (including links to several interviews) of China Miéville’s work can be
VanderMeer, Ann, and Jeff VanderMeer, eds. The New Weird. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2008. Print. A collection of new weird short fiction and essays, includes an examination of the new weird as a genre, as well as fiction by China Miéville.
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City of Thieves By David Benioff
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
In City of Thieves (2009), David Benioff creates a fictional protagonist, Lev Beniov, an average seventeen-year-old, and his likable soldier-sidekick, Kolya, within the setting of the brutal and horrific Siege of Leningrad. The action opens with Lev, a member of the Kirov Fifth-Floor Brigade, sitting on the rooftop of his building on New Year’s Eve. He is orphaned by the disappearance of his Jewish poet-father at the hands of the NKVD (Russian Secret Police) and his mother and sister, who have fled the city, as the nine-hundred-day Nazi siege begins. The daily fight for survival as bombs fall and food grows scarce makes Lev and his friends careless. One night Lev reluctantly saves a female friend when they are pursued by the Secret Police but ends up arrested. His arrest occurs when the attrition of the siege forces Lev and his friends to loot the dead body of a German paratrooper. He is caught by the NKVD and thrown into the Crosses, an infamous Soviet prison. There he meets Kolya, a charismatic soldier, who has been arrested on charges of desertion. Execution is imminent until a Soviet colonel offers them a chance to win their freedom and ration cards by undertaking a suicide mission. Lev and Kolya agree to find a dozen eggs required to make a wedding cake for the colonel’s daughter, who is to be married in a week. The prospect of locating such a valuable commodity underscores the hardships that come with war—a seemingly simple task such as finding a chicken becomes near impossible. The two journey throughout the region, seeking food, subsistence, avoiding troops, gunfire, and avoiding other predators, including cannibals. Despite their surprising success at survival, and if ultimately finding the eggs, lives are lost.
In The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, Harrison Evans Salisbury explains that Adolf Hitler sought to starve the city into submission. In The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995, Lisa A. Kirschenbaum discusses incidents of starvation that created predators of corpses, as well as murderers of citizens, for the purpose of feeding on human flesh in a twisted bid for survival. In the face of the overwhelming oppression of the Nazi assault, Leningrad citizens continued to carry on, despite facing additional threats from within by the Soviet communist government. Benioff fictionalizes the unbelievable adventures of Lev and Kolya but relies on history for its context. On the one hand, Hitler’s offensive was merciless and unrelenting, from falling bombs to Nazi death squads. On the other, the harsh penalties for exceeding rations, such as stealing (even from the enemy), included death by firing squad. Though nearly half of the three million inhabitants perished, the city never yielded. The corruption of Communist Party members and military high command on both sides during the siege resulted in additional losses among the lesser ranks and citizens. Hitler’s strategy of cutting supply lines to Leningrad amplified the Soviet command’s hoarding of food and supplies in general. Both the Nazi and Communist elite ensured themselves the luxury of fine cuisine at the expense of people like Lev and Kolya. In addition to depicting the mutually corrupt high command of the Nazi and Soviet armies, Benioff describes instances of cannibalism, which actually occurred. Scholars such as Kirschenbaum have documented these horrific conditions and events from this period.
Context
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W Themes A main theme within City of Thieves concerns the experience of coming of age under extreme circumstances. Lev’s father is a victim of the communist purge due to his controversial views. Despite his legacy as a poet, he vanishes without a trace, leaving Lev fatherless and naive. At seventeen, the puny, boyish Lev is still at the mercy of biological forces typical of all young men: he wants to lose his virginity. By contrast, Kolya is a natural romantic with considerable experience. He resolves to facilitate Lev’s right of passage into manhood, oftentimes in the most hopeless and darkly humorous of situations. The indomitable resilience of the human spirit in the face of war and starvation serves as another theme within this novel. Lev and his original companions, Vera and Oleg, dream of better times they have known and those they hope to know, in efforts to overcome the horrors and deprivation of war. They are hungry and cold but still driven by youthful urges. Moments after they loot the dead German paratrooper’s body, the Soviet police give chase. Vera, the object of Lev’s daydreams, trips and falls behind as Lev makes his escape. He thinks better of his own salvation, however, and helps Vera over the fence, only to be taken into custody. Vera, to his disappointment, never looks back. Finally, Benioff’s novel suggests that extreme and unthinkable circumstances of war reveal the worst and best of humanity. Cannibalism stands on one end, and loyalty and self-sacrifice stand on the other. Virtual strangers, Lev and Kolya become fast friends out of mutual recognition of their individual value as men. Their devotion to one another provides their greatest chance at surviving the impossible situation in which they find themselves. As they reveal their individual secrets, they unite against the dark side of the human condition that war provokes.
W Style City of Thieves is a first-person novel narrated by Lev Beniov. However, the first chapter, which serves as a kind of preface, is a first-person narration by David Benioff, in which the author explains the main source for the story that is to follow. Typical of the bildungsroman, a genre about the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist to adulthood, the main character in this novel seeks his right of passage during the great siege of Leningrad. Benioff’s prose is straightforward and pragmatic in contrast to the horrifying events he describes. The novel is plot-driven by the grisly Nazi siege of Leningrad, which gives the tone and setting of Lev and Kolya’s absurd adventure qualities of a black comedy. In terms of historical accuracy, though, Benioff displays
MAJOR CHARACTERS MAJOR ABENDROTH, the Nazi commandant of a prison camp, becomes a target for Lev and Kolya because it is rumored he has eggs. Lev beats him at chess in exchange for the eggs. OLEG “GRISHA” ANTOKOLSKY is one of Lev’s friends who escapes arrest the night they loot the body of the dead German paratrooper. LEV BENIOV, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, is offered freedom from prison if he can find a dozen eggs needed to make a wedding cake for a Soviet colonel’s daughter. GALINA is one of the young women forced to serve the sexual needs of the Nazis in exchange for food and lodging outside Leningrad. SONYA IVANOVNA has an intimate relationship with Kolya and gives refuge to him and Lev. KORSAKOV is the leader of the Soviet partisans whose group Lev and Kolya infiltrate. VIKA, the crack-sniper who works for Korsakov, is also a member of the NKVD. Lev falls in love with her. NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVICH VLASOV, called Kolya, is the deserter Lev meets in the Crosses prison. ZOYA, a fourteen-year-old forced to join Galina and Nina as a prostitute for the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads.
a serious grasp of this chapter in the Soviet resistance to German invasion, as he presents an unusual cast of characters at odds and in concert with a traditional quest motif. Lev and Kolya become unlikely quixotic heroes in search of a chicken who can lay eggs and thus save them from execution, combining elements of folk tale with twentieth-century battle intrigue. Reminiscent of coming-of-age stories, City of Thieves relies on overcoming obstacles whose singular reward is living to tell the tale.
W Critical Reception City of Thieves was generally well received. Already regarded as a successful screenwriter for his first novel’s adaptation to film (25th Hour), Benioff enjoyed praise from many critics for his City of Thieves. In her review in the Library Journal, Barbara Conaty remarked that Benioff’s portrayal of starving Leningrad is done with aching realism. She recommended the novel to readers of all ages. Similarly, Booklist critic Ben Segedin wrote in his young-adult review that the “high-spirited adventure” of the novel’s seventeen-year-old protagonist “will thrill mature readers.” In his audio review on All Things
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Benioff was born in 1970 in New York. He earned a BA at Dartmouth College in 1992, and an MA at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Before achieving success as a screenwriter, author, and producer, Benioff earned his living variously as a bouncer, disc jockey, educator, and wrestling coach.
Considered, Alan Cheuse found City of Thieves “psychologically satisfying and historically authentic,” despite its “mythic proportions.” Writing in Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer Reese applauded City of Thieves as a “funny, sad, and thrilling novel.” However, the book also encountered a fair share of detractors. In a somewhat negative review in the Los Angeles Times, Donna Rifkind wrote that the novel would fail to strike an emotional chord with readers, and she cited specifically the “barrier between its characters’ emotions and the reader’s.” Jane Ridley was even less kind in her article in the Spectator. She concluded, “Benioff’s novel is under-researched and lacking in psychological insight.” But Gerald Jacobs, casting a vote with other positive reviews, asserted that City of Thieves
constituted a successful blend of historical fact and absurd adventure, told with the “economy and immediacy of Benioff’s style.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Benioff, David. City of Thieves. New York: Plume, 2009. Print. Cheuse, Alan. “Books to Read over the Long Weekend.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. All Things Considered. npr.org. National Public Radio, 4 July 2008. Radio. Conaty, Barbara. “Benioff, David. City of Thieves.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Library Journal 133.6 (2008): 72. Print. Jacobs, Gerald. “Danger and Friendship in Wartime Leningrad: City of Thieves by David Benioff.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Sunday Telegraph [London] 27 July 2008. Print. Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995. New York: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print. Reese, Jennifer. “City of Thieves.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. ew.com. Entertainment Weekly 20 May 2008. Web. 2 Sept. 2010.
City of Thieves is set at the time of the Nazi invasion of Leningrad, Russia, during World War II. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
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Ridley, Jane. “Truth Is Stranger than Fiction.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Spectator.co.uk. Spectator 28 June 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Rifkind, Donna. “Siege Mentality.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. latimes.com. Los Angeles Times 11 May 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Salisbury, Harrison Evans. The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. New York: De Capo Press 2003. Print. Segedin, Ben. “City of Thieves.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Booklist 104.16 (2008): 31. Print. Additional Resources
Mergendahl, Peter. “Best Thriller.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Rocky Mountain News 6 Dec. 2008. Print. Sums the novel up by declaring it a “thrilling adventure that’s also a cinematic romp of friendship, love and memory.” Gale Resources
“David Benioff.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000186074&v=2.1&u =itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Criticism and Reviews
For Further Reading
“City of Thieves.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. New Yorker 84.21 (2008): 87. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Echoes the critics who found City of Thieves an entertaining read, though too sentimental and lacking in “emotional engagement” of the reader.
Butler, Rupert. Stalin’s Secret War: The NKVD on the Eastern Front. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010. Print. Traces the use of terror as a political force from the Okhrana of czarist Russia to the KGB of the Soviet Union.
House, Christian. “He’s Ready for His Close-Up.” independent.co.uk. Independent 6 July 2008. Web. 24 Sept 2010. Interview with Benioff noting his keen attention to history, evident in “intriguing details” surely “moulded by extensive research.”
Jones, Michael. Leningrad: State of Siege. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Print. Military historian’s account of the siege drawn from eyewitness accounts, diaries, and discovery of suppressed incidents, such as cannibalism.
Fishman, Boris. “Wartime Rations.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. nytimes.com. New York Times 6 July 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Writes a lively, affectionate take on Benioff as an enviable but talented writer who should not be criticized.
Lasker, Emanuel. Lasker’s Manual of Chess. Milford: Russell Enterprises, 2009. Print. General strategies for chess by acclaimed chess master who held the Second World Class Champion title from 1894 to 1921.
Kakutani, Michiko. “City of Thieves: Books, Nonfiction.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. www. military.com/entertainment/books/book-reviews/bookreview-city-of-thieves. New York Times 8 July 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Suggests that “Benioff’s book lets its characters inhabit the human condition in all of its sometimes compromised versatility.” McDowell, Lesley. “City of Thieves.” Rev. of City of Thieves, by David Benioff. independent.co.uk. Independent 5 July 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Singles out the character of Kolya as the key to the novel’s success in overcoming the absurdity of the premise; declaring him a “mesmerising enough character, witty and irreverent, to carry the tale.”
Magellas, James. All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe. New York: Presidio Press, 2004. Print. World War II lieutenant’s memoirs of battle experiences after the Pearl Harbor attack, including his part in the bloody Operation Market Garden, where Allied casualties exceeded those of the Normandy invasion. Wettlin, Margaret. Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman’s Life in the Soviet Union. New York: Wiley, 1994. Print. Intimate account of a Philadelphia student who remains in Soviet Union after marrying a theater director. Includes her challenges as an idealistic member of the KGB and firsthand experiences with hardship. Doris Plantus-Runey
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Clara Callan By Richard B. Wright
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
In Richard B. Wright’s epistolary novel Clara Callan (2003), the eponymous protagonist lives in Whitfield, Ontario, a small village of six hundred people, where gossiping about one’s neighbors is a way of life. On the surface, Clara’s life seems empty and lonely, but Clara actually has a rich life, filled with secrets, passion, and tragedy. Clara’s younger sister, Nora, flees small-town life for New York City, where she finds success as an actress. The novel begins in 1934 and covers some four years of Clara’s life. Clara’s story begins six months after the funeral of her father. With Nora’s departure for New York, Clara is alone in the large house. She has no close friends and spends her time reading and playing the piano. One Sunday, she suddenly realizes that she no longer believes in God. This loss of faith sets her even more apart from her neighbors, who are accustomed to seeing one another at church each week. Clara’s absence is noted. One day a drifter attacks Clara as she walks alone. This act consumes Clara’s life for the next two years; she searches for this man, traveling to places where she thinks she might find him. Nora finds success in New York. She is chosen for some small stage roles, but her biggest success is on a radio soap opera that is broadcast across the United States and Canada. Nora’s life is exciting, and she assumes that Clara’s life back in Whitfield is quiet, even empty. However, Clara has met a married man, with whom she has an affair. The whole village knows about Clara’s affair, which further sets her apart from her neighbors. There are no secrets in a small village when people listen in on telephone calls and watch their neighbors from behind curtains.
Clara Callan is set in the mid-1930s the time of the Great Depression and high unemployment. War in Spain and Adolf Hitler’s rise in Germany generated fear of Nazis and fascism in North America. The possibility of another world war in Europe worried people in Canada and in the United States. For a brief time, the 1936 Olympics in Germany were mistakenly interpreted as a sign that Germany would not wage war, either against its own Jewish citizens or those of neighboring countries. The love affair of England’s Edward VIII was big news, as was his subsequent abdication in 1936 and marriage to the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Their life before abdication and after a tabloid subject across Canada during the mid-1930s. Most transportation across Canada was limited to automobile and train, and travel to Europe was by ocean liner. The Hindenburg, which was the first transcontinental airship, exploded at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. After this disaster, it was widely believed that transatlantic air travel would never be resumed. The Dionne quintuplets were born in Canada in 1934 and were displayed in a glass enclosure for many years; people paid an admission charge to view them at Quintland. In 1936 readers were enthralled with a new novel, Gone with the Wind, and radio soap operas kept listeners close to their radios; Hollywood movies, which allowed audience members to forget about the Depression for a couple hours, were very popular. During the 1930s, many women were limited to employment as teachers, secretaries, or nurses, but some women challenged these old rules. In some locations, women formed Housewives’ Leagues to picket companies that were guilty of unfair employment practices toward women. There was a general fear that women were taking jobs from men; as a result, by 1932, women who married were routinely fired from public schools,
Context
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CHARLIE is the drifter who rapes Clara. CLARA CALLAN is a thirty-one-year-old single woman when the novel opens. She is a schoolteacher with a vivid imagination and a highly creative mind. She is likable, inviting, and warm but also secretive. Her sexual awakening further isolates her from her rigid and sexually repressed neighbors, who also condemn Clara for her lack of religious observance. NORA CALLAN is Clara’s twenty-nine-year-old sister, an impulsive and generous woman who goes to New York to pursue an acting career. Although her relationships with men are not always successful, Nora is never deeply affected by their failure. EVELYN DOWLING is a writer, who works with Nora. She is sophisticated and provides Nora with friendship and emotional support. She is also a friend to Clara, when she needs help. LEWIS MILLS is a journalist, with whom Nora has an affair. He takes Clara and Nora to Italy on a vacation, where he behaves as the stereotypical ugly American, offending almost everyone he meets. FRANK QUINLAN is a married man, with whom Clara has an affair. Frank has many affairs and is easily bored with women.
People walk in front of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1930s. In Clara Callan, Nora moves to New York City to become an actress. ª The Print Collector/Alamy
public utilities, transportation systems, and nearly all other public or government jobs. Only unmarried women were permitted to work. Single women were also expected to be chaste, and unmarried women who became pregnant were not permitted to teach in schools.
W Themes Clara Cullen presents readers with an interesting dichotomy—Clara’s struggle to be the woman she wants to be and the woman she really is. This struggle is a major theme in the novel. Clara wants to be a poet, but she writes less than perfect poems. She plays the piano, but when her playing lacks perfection, she quits. Clara assumes that if she cannot achieve perfection, there is no point in continuing to try. She can read the poetry of great poets and listen to professional pianists on a recording. In this sense, her need for perfection
provides a life that is limiting and prevents her from enjoying creative expression and participation in these arts. Clara often ponders the nature of truth. She realizes on the trip to Italy that people rarely know the truth about people or events. Clara values truth but understands that absolute truth is elusive. She understands that just as she is keeping secrets from people, people are keeping secrets from her. The interior life is true, but very few people experience that level of truth and knowledge. Clara does not apply truth to history. Clara and her correspondents often mention historical events, but only in passing and without critical commentary. History occurs in the background and is not relevant to Clara. Her focus is on the individual and not on the greater community beyond her village. Clara possesses a rich imagination. After she is attacked, she becomes obsessed with her attacker and at one point even refers to him as her “errant knight” (188). For nearly two years, she looks for him in crowds. She imagines what his life is like and whether he has a family. Clara also imagines that he attacks other women. When she sees him at an amusement ride, she learns his first name, which makes her thoughts about his life more concrete. Clara is
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard B. Wright was born in Midland, Ontario, Canada, on March 4, 1937. For much of his career, he taught English at Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario. His third novel, In the Middle of Life (2003), was awarded the Faber Memorial Prize for Fiction. Wright’s eighth novel, The Age of Longing, was nominated for both the Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award. Clara Callan, Wright’s ninth novel, was awarded three prestigious Canadian literary awards and led his publisher to reissue Wright’s earlier novels and also guaranteed an audience for the novels that followed, including Adultery (2004), a novel about betrayal, and October (2007), which is set in World War II Quebec. In 2007 Wright received the Order of Canada in recognition of his contributions to Canadian literature.
ostracized in her community. She shocks her neighbors, who then shun her. The conventional women of her small town lack imagination and are outraged by Clara’s view of the world.
W Style Clara Callan is an epistolary novel, that is, primarily composed of the letters that Clara exchanges with her sister, Nora. Clara occasionally writes to other people as well, but the letters to Nora constitute the one constant in her life. Through the letters, readers learn about Nora’s life in New York, but Clara’s life is less open. The letters make clear that Clara is keeping secrets from nearly everyone. Clara also keeps a journal, the entries in which reveal what she really thinks and feels. Comparing Clara’s journal entries with her letters reveals how she masks her life private and proves that she is not the demure, boring woman that so many people judge her to be. The epistolary format and the journal entries show the difference between inner reality and social façade. The afterword explains what eventually happens to Clara. In this section, which takes place in 2000, Clara’s now elderly daughter reveals what happens to her mother. Clara’s journal reads like an interior monologue, providing Clara’s candid sense of her life. She describes the rape in graphic terms. Much of what she thinks and feels is expressed without self-consciousness. As a result, readers experience what Clara experiences
This photo shows the skyline of New York City in the 1930s. In Clara Callan, Nora finds success as a radio actress in New York City. Natalia Bratslavsky/Shutterstock.com
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directly, without a sense of filter or analysis that would distance it.
W Critical Reception Wright received several important Canadian literary awards for his ninth novel, Clara Callan. In awarding Wright the Giller Prize, Robert Fulford, a member of the Giller Prize jury, noted that Wright’s novel is neither dramatic nor sensational, and yet, two months after reading the novel, he could not forget the characters (Bemrose). Clara Callan also won the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Trillium Prize. Each of these three awards brings with it a financial award. Clara Callan was also the first choice of readers, who voted in the 2002 Pearson Canada Readers’ Choice Book Award. Reviews of Clara Callan were generally complimentary. In a review of Clara Callan for the Toronto Sun, Jane Van Der Voort called Clara a “true-to-life” fictional heroine, who is believable, someone “you can believe you once knew.” Fiction writer Paul Quarrington admitted at the onset of his review of Clara Callan that he was not “predisposed to like . . . Clara Callan.” In a review that appeared in the Globe and Mail, Quarrington confessed he does not like epistolary novels and that a male writer assuming a female heroine’s voice is risky. However, in reading the book, Quarrington found that he liked both the format and the characters. Quarrington stated that Wright did an “admirable job” in creating Clara, a character, who “seems a living, breathing human being.” While most reviews were positive, one review stood out for its negativity. The review of Clara Callan that appeared in Canadian Literature was particularly unfavorable. Writer Marta Dvorak pointed out that Wright “sets out to construct the chronicle of a society,” using the stories of two sisters, Clara and Nora. This intention allows Wright to focus on an important decade in “North American social evolution.” Dvorak argued that Wright falls short of his goal and that his weaving of history and fiction “is contrived yet obvious.” Dvorak also criticized Wright for his use of clichés, which “abound,” and for a narrative that is “simplistic and predictable.” Other complaints included redundancy, bad sentence structure, and language that is “wooden,” “stilted,” and “mechanical” (Dvorak). Lest it appear that Dvorak could find nothing to admire in a novel that so many others celebrated, she finished her review by noting that “certain meditative passages are remarkably fine,” as are “contemplative phrases or an arresting beauty.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bemrose, John. “Hero of the Humdrum.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Maclean’s, 3 Dec. 2001: 64. Print.
Dvorak, Marta. “An Epistolary Tandem.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Canadian Literature 177 (2003): 193-94. Print. Quarrington, Paul. “Can’t Help Loving That Gal.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Globe and Mail, 1 Sept. 2001: D2. Print. Van Der Voort, Jane. “The Kind of Woman You Thought You Knew.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Toronto Sun, 17 Feb. 2002: S27. Print. Wright, Richard B. Clara Callan. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2001. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
D’Entremont, Joelle M. “Clara Callan.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. cercles.com Cercles, n.d. Web. 26 July 2010. Real women’s experiences and rich character development reveal the loneliness and isolation of small village life. Dinka, Nicholas. “The Tender Trappings of Success.” quillandquire.com. Quill & Quire 1 Sept. 2004. Web. 26 July 2010. Author profile focuses on Wright’s literary career and discuses many of his novels. Jackson, Lorna. “Clara Callan.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. quilllandquire.com. Quill & Quire Sept. 2001. Web. 26 July 2010. Suggests that Wright is a compassionate writer, whose characters are both good and dishonest and complex enough to be profound. Martin, Sandra. “The Wrighterly Stuff.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Globe and Mail, 1 Sept. 2001: D3. Print. Wonders if Clara Callan will finally provide Wright with the fame he deserves. Preston, Edwina. “Contrasts in the Early Radio Days.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Age, 24 Aug. 2002: 7. Print. Points out that Clara Callan is about a woman who struggles to escape 1930s clichés, while illustrating the traps that women faced in that decade. Simonds, Merilyn. “Every Letter a Revelation: A Master Storyteller’s Epistolary Novel Is a Many-Layered Marvel.” Rev. of Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright. Ottawa Citizen, 2 Sept. 2001: C11. Print. Praises epistolary form that allows readers to experience a character’s life, as she experiences it. Gale Resources
Doyle, James. “Richard B(ruce) Wright.” Canadian Writers since 1960: First Series. Ed. William H. New. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 53. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1200004626&v=2.1 &u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
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“Richard B. Wright.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000108465&v=2.1&u =itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
An interview with Wright, in which he discusses writing a new novel after the success and fame that came with Clara Callan, is available at http://www.cbc.ca/ arts/books/wright.html For Further Reading
Berton, Pierre. The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama. New York: Norton, 1978. Print. A history of the Dionne quintuplets that attempts to provide a balanced look at the girls’ lives and the community that chose to put them on display. Brendon, Piers. The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000. Print. Focuses on the political and economic changes that fueled fascism, Nazism, and communism and led to militaristic and totalitarian governments.
Toronto: UP of Toronto, 2009. Print. Uses primary documents—letters, memoirs, newspapers, and government records—to illustrate the difficulties that people faced in the Great Depression in Canada. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson: McFarland, 1999. Print. Presents a history of the radio soap operas that were popular from the 1930s to 1960. Kruger, Arnd, and W. J. Murray, eds. The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2003. Print. Explores the political ramifications of the 1936 Olympics and includes essays about the games’ effect on the United States, Great Britain, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Triece, Mary. On the Picket Line: Strategies of WorkingClass Women during the Depression. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. Print. Examines the efforts of working-class women to challenge traditional ideology regarding the interplay of marriage, family, and work. Sheri Karmiol
Campbell, Lara A. Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression.
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The Clothes on Their Backs By Linda Grant
W Introduction The Clothes on Their Backs (2008) is a novel by the British writer and journalist Linda Grant. The story of Vivien Kovaks is narrated in flashback, from Vivien’s perspective in middle age. The only child of Jews who fled Hungary for London just before World War II, Vivien grows up in a stifling atmosphere of suppressed fear. As a teenager, she rebels by giving rein to her flamboyant fashion sense. Her ultimate rebellion, however, occurs when she seeks out her uncle, Sándor Kovacs, an infamous slumlord and convicted criminal whom she has seen only once and whom her father loathes so much that he changed the spelling of his last name. After meeting Sándor, Vivien agrees to help him write a memoir. In the process she learns her family’s history. Her gratitude for this opportunity, however, is tempered by her revulsion to Sándor’s evident brutality. It is only after he acts to defend her from hatred in the only way he knows—and dies as a result—that Vivien is able to gain an appreciation for him. In 2008 The Clothes on Their Backs was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It received the South Bank Show literature award in 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the first chapter, and again near the end of the novel, Vivien’s narration takes place in the early twenty-first century, and she notes its terrorist attacks and scares, including an attack on the London Underground in 2005. Several decades of London’s history pass by, however, in Vivien’s flashback during the course of the novel. Her young adulthood is touched by the racist violence of the skinheads and the National Front, a Fascist political party that was most active in the 1970s.
She hands out leaflets for the Anti-Nazi League, an organization that was founded in 1977 to counter the rise of far-right groups in Britain. Terror played a role in Vivien’s immediate family history, but she knows little about it until she begins to help Sándor write his memoir. He tells her about the Hungarian village where he and her father were born, about the race laws that cost her grandfather his livelihood and drove Sándor to make pimping his profession, and, finally, about the labor unit in the Hungarian army in which he and her grandfather served during World War II. Jewish men were conscripted into the labor-service system to build railroads, dig trenches, clear rubble, and perform other heavy labor for the Hungarian—and, later, German—forces. Tens of thousands of Jewish men served in these labor units, and thousands died from malnutrition, disease, exposure, and physical abuse and torture. Sándor Kovacs’s character is based on Peter Rachman, a Polish refugee who became a landlord in the Notting Hill section of postwar London. Rachman was known for his ruthless exploitation of tenants, which led to the coining of the term Rachmanism to describe similar unscrupulous practices.
W Themes The Clothes on Their Backs revolves around themes of identity, belonging, appearances, and inner truths. In growing up while being cut off from the past and the present by her immigrant parents’ fearfulness, Vivien becomes impatient with her life as a “mouse person.” As a university student she strikes out into the world with a persona she has fashioned for herself from the previous generation’s designer castoffs, but this carapace can only protect her for so long. After she marries and her husband dies on their honeymoon, she is forced to return to the “arid,” “inert” life of her parents’ home.
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The Clothes on Their Backs
MAJOR CHARACTERS SÁNDOR KOVACS is Vivien’s uncle. A survivor of the Hungarian army’s notorious labor service in World War II, Sándor fended for himself after his arrival in London by buying up cheap properties and chopping them up into miserable flats that he rented to West Indian immigrants. His reputation for brutality notwithstanding, Sándor is Vivien’s only link to her past and, of her three remaining relatives, the one to whom she feels closest. BERTA KOVAKS is Vivien’s mother and Ervin’s wife. She longs for Vivien to assimilate quietly into English life and deflects her questions about the family’s history. ERVIN KOVAKS is Vivien’s father and Sándor’s brother. Ervin is a fearful man who is particularly fearful of his crime-stained brother, whom he tries to shut out of his life. Ervin does not understand at all why Vivien wants to know about the family’s history. VIVIEN KOVAKS, the narrator and protagonist, searches for her identity as a young woman and begins to find it when she meets her father’s estranged brother, Sándor, soon after he has served time in prison for his activities as a slumlord. Repelled by Sándor’s evident brutality, Vivien is also drawn by his charisma and recognizes in him her own appetites for life and its pleasures. EUNICE is Sándor’s black girlfriend and the successful manager of a fashionable dress shop. Almost thirty years after Sándor’s death, Eunice still blames Vivien for spoiling the happy life that she and Sándor had together and for sending him to an early grave. CLAUDE, one of Sándor’s tenants, becomes Vivien’s lover after she starts helping her uncle write his memoir. Vivien feels a powerful physical attraction to Claude, but he has little to offer her emotionally. He completely fails to understand why she is angered by his wish to have a swastika tattooed on his body.
By asking her help in writing his memoir, Sándor offers Vivien the opportunity to learn about her origins for the first time. Her nascent sense of who she is, however, is beset by challenges. Her lover, Claude, one of Sándor’s tenants, accuses her of murder after learning that she aborted her dead husband’s child. Moved by Vivien’s distress, Sándor decides to evict Claude. He finds the younger man wearing a leather jacket decorated with a swastika, the sight of which sends Sándor into a murderous rage. Claude survives his attack, but Sándor in his rage suffers a series of strokes and dies. Almost thirty years later, Vivien cherishes both Sándor’s “enduring gift” to her—her past—and their time together for teaching her “the only truth that matters: that suffering
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Picture of Linda Grant, author of Clothes on Their Backs. ª STEPHEN HIRD/Reuters/Corbis
does not ennoble and that survivors survive because of their strength or cunning or luck, not their goodness, and certainly not their innocence.”
W Style Grant’s novel is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, Vivien Kovaks. Most of the narration takes the form of an extended flashback that covers the period between the arrival of Vivien’s parents, Berta and Ervin Kovaks, at their flat in London in 1938 to the death of Sándor Kovacs, Vivien’s uncle, in 1977. As noted by Barbara Carey in the Toronto Star, Grant’s prose “is more substance than style. She isn’t a snappy writer, but the unfussy thoroughness of her storytelling has a strong, cumulative effect.” The Clothes on Their Backs is a character study, an exploration of the ways in which environment interacts with the deep inner truth of an individual to shape a life. The horrors of war transform the street-savvy Sándor into a brutal businessman who sees no crime in renting squalid, unheated rooms to West Indian immigrants at top market price. Sándor nonetheless remains capable of the tenderness, passion, and lust for life that Vivien feels TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Clothes on Their Backs
her parents may never have had. Unmoored from her past, Vivien drifts in English society, first trying on, briefly, the role of wife to an English lord and then becoming a punk, albeit a punk who hands out leaflets for the Anti-Nazi League. There is a gap in her identity that she eventually understands only Sándor can help her fill, by describing for her the lives from which her own life has sprung. Sándor’s goodness is vouched for by someone Vivien at first considers a doubtful source, his girlfriend, Eunice. When the two women first meet, Vivien sees only Eunice’s mask for the outside world: her elegant clothing, perfect makeup, and graceful comportment. Not until the end of the novel does the now-elderly Eunice reveal to Vivien the scars left behind by racial hatred and tell her of the passionate gratitude and love she still feels for the long-dead Sándor, whose love helped heal her wounds.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Linda Grant was born on February 15, 1951, in Liverpool, England, to Russian and Polish Jewish parents. She studied English at the University of York and holds an MA in English from MacMaster University. From 1995 to 2000 she was a feature writer for the Guardian, and in 1997 and 1998 she also wrote a weekly column for the newspaper. Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore (1996), won the David Higham First Novel Award and was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize. When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) won the Orange Prize for Fiction. In these and her other novels, Grant explores themes of identity and purpose through her female protagonists. She addresses similar concerns in her nonfiction. In Remind Me Who I Am, Again (1999), for example, Grant reflects on the centrality of memory to the concept of self in her account of her mother’s struggle with dementia.
W Critical Reception The Clothes on Their Backs has won accolades for its astute characterizations and masterful storytelling. In his review for Independent, Michael Arditti describes the novel as “at once a beautifully detailed character study, a poignant family history, and a richly evocative portrait of the late 1970s.” Barbara Carey likewise declares that the novel’s “greatest strength is its characterization” and singles out Sándor Kovacs as “a particularly compelling figure.” The character of Vivien, notes Jane Shilling in the Times (London), “resembles a rawer, angrier version of one of Anita Brookner’s dutiful daughters, waiting in a tightly suppressed agony of longing for life to happen.” The relationship between Vivien and Sándor forms the rich center of Grant’s novel. Kamila Shamsie comments in the Guardian that “the best part of the novel is in Vivien’s interactions with her uncle, the way he constantly challenges her notions of reality,” provoking her to try to “understand something of this loud, flamboyant figure . . . so disturbingly filled with impulses she recognized in herself.” Reviewers have also been impressed with Grant’s ability to pack powerful themes into a story whose pace never flags. Writing for the Guardian, Viv Groskop observes that “there is nothing lightweight about [the novel’s] themes and yet it is so artfully constructed that you barely feel that you’re reading it at all, so fluid and addictive is the plot.” The prominent clothing imagery in the novel, on the other hand, has drawn mixed reviews. Shamsie writes that the notion that “the clothes we wear define us and change us” is “a fascinating idea, but one which is not fully woven into the narrative.” Similarly, Arditti contends that the novel’s “sole significant flaw is its failure to establish its extensive clothing imagery as the overarching metaphor for which it strives.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Arditti, Michael. “The Slum Landlord Settles His Accounts.” Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 15 Feb. 2008. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Carey, Barbara. Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Toronto Star 14 Sept. 2008: ID04. CPI. Q (Canadian Periodicals). Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Grant, Linda. The Clothes on Their Backs: A Novel. New York: Scribner's, 2008. Print. Groskop, Viv. “London’s Burning.” Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 17 Feb. 2008. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Shamsie, Kamila. “The Warp of History.” Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 23 Feb. 2008. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Shilling, Jane. Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Times [London]. Times Newspapers Ltd, 24 Jan. 2008. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Kirkus Reviews 15 Nov. 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. Praises the novel’s psychological insights and its portrayal of Vivien’s search of her identity. Cooke, Rachel. Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Evening Standard [London]. ES
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London Ltd, 12 Sept. 2008. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. A positive review that highlights the novel’s combination of “big ideas” and coming-of-age story. Perrick, Penny. “She Wears It Well.” Rev. of The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant. Sunday Times [London] 3 Feb. 2008: 66. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. A detailed review that addresses the novel’s psychological complexity and Grant’s skill in capturing the inner truths of her characters as well as their surface appearances. “To London with Only ‘The Clothes on Their Backs.’” All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 28 Jan. 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. A transcript of a brief review that praises the depiction of the tension between the generations of the Kovaks family. Gale Resources
“Linda Grant.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Linda Grant’s Web site features a biography, excerpts from her works, selected journalism, reviews and other information about her books, and a schedule of readings and other public appearances. http://www .lindagrant.co.uk The Holocaust History Project has a collection of photographs that depict the Holocaust in Hungary, including photographs of forced-labor battalions. http://www.holocaust-history.org/hungarianphotos//
For Further Reading
Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. Condensed ed. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2000. Print. The condensed version of Braham’s history of the Jewish ordeal in Hungary during World War II includes a section on the Labor Service System of the Hungarian armed forces. Grant, Linda. The Cast Iron Shore. London: Picador, 1996. Print. Grant’s prizewinning first novel follows a privileged young British Jewish woman on a lifechanging journey to New York City. ———. Remind Me Who I Am, Again. London: Granta Books, 1999. Print. In this reflective work on her mother’s struggle with dementia, Grant explores her family’s Eastern European heritage, noting that her immigrant parents, like Berta and Ervin Kovaks, were happy to leave their history behind. Green, Shirley. Rachman. London: Joseph, 1979. Print. Grant referred to this biography of the notorious London landlord Peter Rachman in creating the character Sándor Kovacs. Knight, Nick. Skinhead. London: Omnibus Press, 1982. Print. Photographs accompany this history of skinheads in London from the group’s origins in the 1960s through its revival in the mid-1970s. Watson, Gavin. Skins and Punks: Lost Archives, 1979– 1985. New York: VICE Books, 2008. Print. This photographic retrospective of the skins and punks of English youth culture in the late 1970s and 1980s also features commentaries and first-person accounts. Janet Moredock
Exploring 20th Century London offers photographs, time lines, and articles for delving into various periods and themes in the city’s recent history. http:// www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/
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Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell
W Introduction David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) is a complex, epic novel composed of a series of six interlocking novellas set over a span of centuries, each story belonging to a different genre and style. The first novella is a journal by an American notary returning home via ship from the Chatham Islands in 1850. The second is an epistolary novel, composed of letters written by a struggling musician to his male lover in 1931 Belgium. The third novella is a mystery, tracing a female journalist as she investigates corporate espionage in California, 1975. The fourth is a thriller set in the early twenty-first century about an independent publisher running from the mob. The fifth and sixth sections are science fiction tales, the first of which is set in the near future and centers on a fabricant, or manufactured clone, sentenced to death for rebelling against its dystopian government, and the second of which takes place far into the future and focuses on a primitive tribesman struggling for survival on a postapocalyptic Earth. Cloud Atlas was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Nebula, and won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award, and the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year.
W Literary and Historical Context
David Mitchell’s writing belongs to a postmodern tradition that follows in the footsteps of such esteemed writers as James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Paul Auster. Notable traits of postmodern fiction include experimentation with language, fragmentation of narrative, the use of unreliable narrators, literary deconstruction, irony, satire, pastiche, intertexuality, and
metatextuality. Also characteristic is the propensity to invent words and play with language in unusual ways, especially in works by such authors as Joyce and Nabokov. Many of these elements are present in the writing style Mitchell uses in Cloud Atlas, especially his use of the concept of a text that is, in large part, aware of being a text. Many postmodern writers include or write themselves into their stories, such as Paul Auster in his New York Trilogy. While Mitchell does not employ this technique quite so literally in Cloud Atlas, the manner in which each section eventually reveals itself as a story read or viewed by a character in the successive section calls attention to each chapter as a manufactured work of fiction. Often, characters in one chapter will go so far as to point out the deficiencies of the previous chapter. For example, Robert Frobisher, in the second novella, reads the diary that forms the first novella, and deems it unconvincing and poorly written, concluding that it is a fake. Of course, on a metatextual level, it is. The character Sonmi˜451 believes the film of Timothy Cavendish’s story (the story preceding hers) to be melodramatic and overwrought. Mitchell’s purpose in doing this seems to be to make the reader constantly, actively aware of each novella as being a meticulously structured satire or pastiche.
W Themes Arguably Cloud Atlas’s major recurring theme is that of man’s capacity for cruelty. Practically every story in the book involves some form of enslavement, or examples of a stronger entity asserting power over a weaker one. “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” discusses colonialism and its devastating effects on native populations. “Letters from Zedelghem” centers on a more petty type of enslavement—in this tale, a narcissistic composer treats a young assistant as a personal servant, heaping abuse and humiliation upon him. “Half-Lives” depicts a journalist trying to expose a billion-dollar corporation running a
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Cloud Atlas
MAJOR CHARACTERS VYVYAN AYRES is an elderly, famous composer, who hires Robert Frobisher to write out his compositions for him. TIMOTHY CAVENDISH is a small-press publisher in the early twenty-first century who finds himself in trouble when he is pursued by the brothers of a gangster whose memoirs he published. ADAM EWING is an American notary in 1850, journeying home on a ship across the Pacific from the Chatham Islands. ROBERT FROBISHER is a poor, young musician from England in 1931, who obtains a job in Belgium writing out the compositions of a famous composer, Vyvyan Ayres. LUISA REY is a young journalist in 1975 who investigates corporate espionage and corruption at a power plant. SONMI ˜ 451 is a genetically cloned chain-restaurant server, sentenced to execution for rebelling against the dystopian society that created her, in the not-too-distant future. ZACH’RY is a primitive tribesman in the far distant future, living a miserable existence long after most of humanity is wiped out.
nuclear power plant that is, in fact, unstable. In “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish,” a elderly man is trapped in a nursing home against his will. “An Orison of Sonmi ˜ 451” is about a dystopian future society in which people are manufactured specifically to work as menial laborers, with no hope for advancement or legal protection. “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After” examines the fallout following the destruction of Earth. Despite the focus on cruelty in the novel, the second half of the book provides a more optimistic view. In the end, the stories highlight humanity’s flaws while pointing to the capacity of individual people for growth and change.
W Style Cloud Atlas is composed of a series of six novellas bound together by recurring imagery and themes. Additionally, the separate stories (each a pastiche of a different writing style) are structurally presented in a manner reminiscent of Russian nesting dolls. Specifically, in the first half of the book, each story is contained within the story that immediately follows it. “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” is a diary being read by the protagonist of “Letters from Zedelghem;” the letters in turn are being read by the protagonist of “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery,” a mystery novel being read by the protagonist of “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.” That novella, in turn, is a film being viewed
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Photo of David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. Dave M. Benett/ Getty Images
by the protagonist of “An Orison of Sonmi˜451,” which is the holy text of the protagonist of “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After.” While the first half of the novel goes inward, the second goes outward. “Sonmi˜451” turns on the film, in which Timothy Cavendish reads the Luisa Rey book, and with the progressioin continuing to the end of the book. This fragmentary style accomplishes two goals. First, it mimics the act of reading a book. In other words, each story eventually cuts to the successive story because a character in the next story is reading the current story. This character is usually interrupted by the events that will eventually become the story read by a character in the following story. Secondly, it allows Mitchell to emphasize one of the novel’s major nuances, the connection between people in seemingly different cultures and time periods. On a metatextual level, Mitchell also seems to be arguing that characters across vastly divergent styles of literature possess many more similarities than first meets the eye. In other words, although the outside circumstances may change, most stories follow a common arc, regardless of author or genre. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Cloud Atlas
W Critical Reception Cloud Atlas was well received by critics, and many reviewers have hailed Mitchell as a genius, an adjective that recurs throughout criticism of his work. He is specifically praised for his uncanny ability to capture a wide variety of voices and styles. For example, Tom Bissell in the New York Times heaped lavish praise upon Mitchell, saying, “He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel’s every page.” He went on to add, however, that Cloud Atlas “is frustrating not because it is too smart but because it is not nearly as smart as its author.” Criticism of Cloud Atlas focuses heavily on the structural aspects of the work, with some reviewers faulting Mitchell for the complexity of its literary arrangement. For example, Troy Patterson notes in Entertainment Weekly that the novel is weaker than the sum of its parts—“Mitchell’s talents for riotous incident and energetic prose keep the pages turning, but Atlas’ disparate strands are linked only by the flimsiest of pretenses. . . . The six cylinders never function as one engine.” On the other hand, Robert K. J. Killheffer writes, “Taken by themselves, each of the stories . . . are utterly, even slavishly, conventional. . . . Nevertheless . . . [a] sense of unity emerges from the repetition of images, metaphors, and coincidences—an almost metaphysical awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence of things.” Overall, the book was well received. Newsweek International called it “a wild, wonderful ride . . . Mitchell . . . seduces you with his compelling characters and their narratives.” Over the course of the novel, “the fine threads that link the narratives multiply, and the stories become increasingly interwoven. In the hands of a lesser writer, this book would be, at best, the sum of its disparate parts. It’s a testament to Mitchell’s formidable skill and imagination that Cloud Atlas adds up to so much more.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bissell, Tom. “History Is a Nightmare.” Rev. of Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. New York Times 29 Aug. 2004: n.p. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Killheffer, Robert K. J. “Edenborn.” Rev. of Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Apr. 2005: 33+. Print. Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. New York: Random House, 2004. Print. Patterson, Troy. “Cloud Atlas.” Rev. of Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Entertainment Weekly 20 Aug. 2004: 133. Print. “Pushing the Envelope: David Mitchell’s New Book Is Brilliantly Exasperating.” Rev. of Cloud Atlas, by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Mitchell is one of the most acclaimed young British novelists writing today. Known for his evocative prose and chameleon-like ability to capture a wide variety of voices and tones, two of Mitchell’s most critically acclaimed novels, Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas are tightly woven collections of short stories and novellas whose various pieces intersect and interlock in numerous ways, both in theme and narrative. A major thematic thread in his works is the interconnectedness of human beings on a global scale, from differing countries and even time periods. Mitchell has been short-listed twice for the Man Booker Prize, was selected by Granta magazine as one of the Best of Young British Novelists, and was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
David Mitchell. Newsweek International 30 Aug. 2004: 57. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hensher, Philip. “Roller-Coaster of a Ride.” Spectator 294.9158 (14 Feb. 2004): 34+. Print. A glowing review of Cloud Atlas that focuses, in large part, on the thematic and literal connections between the various novellas in the book. Iyer, Pico. “The Concertina of Time: In Cloud Atlas David Mitchell Makes Writing a High-Wire Act— Brave, Dazzling but Too Far Aloft.” Rev. of Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Time 23 Aug. 2004: 67. Print. This review places Cloud Atlas into the context of Mitchell’s previous novels, discussing their overlapping themes and styles. Mitchell, David. “Review: Guardian Book Club: Week Three: David Mitchell on Writing Cloud Atlas.” Guardian [London] 12 June 2010: 6. Print. In this article, Mitchell discusses his writing process, and addresses critics’ concerns with Cloud Atlas. Skidelsky, William. “A World of Tricks.” New Statesman [1996] 22 Mar. 2004: 55. Print. In this positive review, Willam Skidelsky analyzes the major thematic concerns explored in Cloud Atlas, and follows these threads across the arc of the six novellas that comprise this work. Wood, James. “The Floating Library.” New Yorker 5 July 2010: 69. Print. This article from the New Yorker examines all of the major works Mitchell has released to date, examining common themes and explaining why he is highly acclaimed by many readers.
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Cloud Atlas Gale Resources
“Mitchell, David (1969-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
The Washington Post has an in-depth interview of David Mitchell, discussing the genesis, structure, and meaning of Cloud Atlas at http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17231-2004Aug19. html For Further Reading
Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Print. Mitchell has cited Paul Auster as a major influence on his own writing. Auster’s work often explores the the concept of metafiction, examining the role of the narrator in literature. Similar to Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Auster’s New York Trilogy is a collection of three thematically linked stories. Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968. Print. This dystopian, science-fiction story about human-looking androids was the basis for the noted film Blade Runner and an
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important influence on the “Sonmi˜451” section of Cloud Atlas. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922. Print. James Joyce’s masterpiece shares a great deal in common with Mitchell’s writing and is documented as one of Mitchell's major influences. Joyce and Mitchell use similarly creative prose, elements of metafiction, and multiple voices in their work. Mitchell, David. Black Swan Green. New York: Random House, 2006. Print. Arguably Mitchell’s most intimate work, this semiautobiographical tale of a young boy growing up in England showcases the author’s ability to capture unique points of view, in this case that of a child, and features the interconnected short story structure of his more epic novels. ———. Ghostwritten. New York: First Vintage International, 1999. Print. Mitchell’s first novel, Ghostwritten, is structurally similar to Cloud Atlas and is composed of numerous short stories, told from many different perspectives. Robert Berg
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Corrections By Jonathan Franzen
W Introduction The Corrections (2001) is a seriocomic saga of the Lamberts, a midwestern family on the verge of falling apart. Chip Lambert, the novel’s protagonist, chronicles the tensions between his parents’ old-fashioned worldview and their children’s contemporary East Coast sensibility, as Enid, the clan’s matriarch, tries to gather them all together one last time for Christmas. The narrative weaves together the stories of each family member. Enid decides to try to ignore her husband’s Parkinson’s and advancing dementia by planning a cruise for the two of them. After being fired from a tenure-track teaching position at a New England college for having sex with one of his students, Chip struggles to support himself with editing work, script-writing, and a bizarre Internet scam in Lithuania. His sister and brother try to cope with relationship difficulties. Recognizing that this may be their last Christmas together, Enid insists that they try to reconcile their differences and come home. The power of this semiautobiographical novel lies in Jonathan Franzen’s humorous and lyrical portraits of family life and of his poignant, sympathetic narrative of the tensions that can erupt among family members. The novel’s title becomes it dominant metaphor as it reflects the Lamberts’ struggle to make corrections in their own lives as well as in their relationships with each other.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Corrections takes place in the United States during the 1990s, a time of rampant consumerism and materialism. During this prosperous decade, unemployment hovered between 4 and 5 percent, the stock market was
booming, and salaries were increasing. With this prosperity came a significant rise in consumer spending, fueled by Americans’ appetite for designer goods and the latest technological gadget such as compact disc players, cellular phones, and personal computers. Many cultural critics argued that this new materialism turned Americans away from traditional values. One such value was the ideal of pursuing advanced education in order to improve others’ lives. In the 1990s, more young people explained that they decided to attend college in order to get better paying jobs. More Americans idolized and tried to emulate the rich and famous, a trend exploited by advertisers who hired celebrities to endorse products. Consumers got instant gratification when they bought these products as symbols of their social status. Franzen’s characters share this obsession with money and the benefits it provides while ignoring the human connections in their lives.
W Themes The Corrections provides a critique of modern culture, specifically its consumerism and its promotion of pharmaceuticals for treating depression and anxiety. Ironically, Chip condemns materialism in his classes, yet when he loses his job, he gripes about not being able to buy what he considers to be the essentials of a good life, such as fine wines, gourmet foods, and Adobe Photoshop, and so he continually borrows money from his sister. He also chides his mother’s midwestern frugality, which prompts her to write letters instead of spend money for phone calls and to get one of the cheapest berths on the cruise she and Albert take. As she saves her pennies, she envies others’ wealth and continually complains that she and her husband missed out on the rewards of the stock market boom. Franzen also criticizes the overuse of pharmaceuticals as he depicts each member of the family at different times
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The Corrections
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALFRED LAMBERT, Chip’s father, has Parkinson’s disease and is experiencing the beginnings of dementia. CAROLINE LAMBERT, Gary’s wealthy wife, continually argues with her husband over his support of his aging and often demanding parents. CHIP LAMBERT, the novel’s main character, struggles to find an authentic life while redefining his relationship with his parents. DENISE LAMBERT, Chip’s sister, a chef at a successful Philadelphia restaurant, finds contentment in a lesbian relationship. ENID LAMBERT, Chip’s mother, who is both manipulative and supportive of her children, tries to get the family together for Christmas. GARY LAMBERT, Chip’s older brother and a bank president in Philadelphia, suffers from clinical depression.
in the novel taking pills for various emotional troubles. His view seems to be that these medications prevent the characters from dealing with the problems that cause their depression and anxiety. Another important theme centers on family relationships. Alfred’s physical and mental decline ultimately forces the characters to reevaluate their familial ties and to rediscover the importance of family. Toward the end of the novel, when the family members come together to help move Alfred into a nursing home, they experience the healing power of compassion and forgiveness.
W Style The novel’s title provides its ironic controlling metaphor. All of the members of the Lambert family make corrections in their lives, but very few of these bring them happiness and contentment. The siblings try to correct their parents’ midwestern lives by establishing more meaningful and authentic ones for themselves on the East Coast, but Chip has trouble finding a rewarding job and keeping it, Gary’s marriage is falling apart, and Denise has a series of failed relationships, including one with a married man. Enid tries to correct her life by living through her children, but they refuse to let her in enough to accomplish this goal. They all take pills to correct their anxieties and depression, including one appropriately named Corecktall, which helps them avoid confronting the problems that caused these ailments.
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Photo of Jonathan Franzen, author of the novel The Corrections. James Keivom/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
The elderly Lamberts live in St. Jude, and the town’s name provides another metaphor that enriches the novel’s thematic message. St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, an appropriate place for Albert, who is struggling to maintain his physical and mental well-being, and Enid, who is trying to assert her relevance in a world that no longer values her.
W Critical Reception Winner of the prestigious National Book Award in 2001, Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling third novel, The Corrections, won over many critics for its compelling portrait of a dysfunctional American family. One such critic, Valerie Sayers, in her review of the novel for Commonweal, praised Franzen’s “deft, often dazzling” portrait of a family that is falling apart and admitted that she was “as charmed as Oprah herself must have been when she first announced her [book club] pick.” Sayers added, “the surprising pleasure is his gradual move to warm sympathy for the souls he has been skewering.” In his review in New Statesman, Nicholas TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Corrections
Blincoe determined that Franzen linked his themes in “poignant, non-trivial ways” and that the novel is a “triumph.” A review in the Atlantic echoed this assessment in its claim that “Franzen is a wizard, endlessly inventive in his thematic connections and scene setting.” Many critics also responded positively to the construction of the novel. The Atlantic review, for example, praised the book’s narrative and claimed that Franzen’s “powers of language are astonishing.” The reviewer concluded that “The Corrections is a wide-open performance, showcasing the full range of his skills and his eclectic intelligence.” Some reviewers, however, found fault with the novel’s construction. Philip Hensher, in his review in Spectator, argued that the novel’s characters “are rather cloudy . . . none of them leaps off the page or stays in the mind.” He also claimed that “there is a constant sense of overloading, of weighing down characters and objects with explicit significance.” In fact, Hensher found this type of long-windedness throughout the novel, arguing that Franzen “is tiresomely over-explicit, always explaining when he should be dramatizing.” He did conclude, though, that “these faults noticeably diminish as the book progresses, and after 150 pages or so Franzen starts to seem in some control of his material.” Max Watman in an article for New Criterion also found occasional fault with Franzen’s narrative, insisting that “Franzen’s mellifluousness . . . gets the best of him at times.” Yet, Watman determined that this flaw was only a small “distraction” in an “adroit” novel, “both hilarious and stirring,” and deserving of its many positive reviews. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Blincoe, Nicholas. “High Art Lite.” Rev. of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. New Statesman 10 Dec. 2001: 52+. Print. Rev. of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. Atlantic Sept. 2001: 136. Print. Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Print. Hensher, Philip. “Writing beyond His Means.” Rev. of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. Spectator 24 Nov. 2001: 44+. Print. Sayers, Valerie. “Caffeinated Realism.” Rev. of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. Commonweal 21 Dec. 2001: 23+. Print. Watman, Max. “On the Hysterical Playground.” New Criterion 20.3 (2001): 67+. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1959, but he grew up in a St. Louis suburb, which became the setting for two of his novels. In 1987 he became a literary celebrity after his first novel, The Twenty-seventh City, was published. His second novel, Strong Motion (1992), did not achieve the acclaim of the first, but his third novel, 2001’s The Corrections, lived up to the promise he showed in the first and won the National Book Award for Fiction that year. Franzen’s later publications include a novel, Freedom (2010), essays, and articles for the New Yorker. As of 2010, Franzen lived in New York City.
compares the novel to other twentieth-century works, including those by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Don DeLillo. Greer, Bonnie. “Magnum Oprah: The Great American Novel.” Rev of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. New Statesman 7 Jan. 2002: 30. Print. After commenting on the fracas over the novel’s selection for the Oprah Winfrey book club, discusses the difference between critically acclaimed and popular novels. Hutchinson, Colin. “Jonathan Franzen and the Politics of Disengagement.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 50.2 (2009): 191+. Print. Analyzes Franzen’s first three novels, including The Corrections, as social novels and critiques of twentieth-century consumerism. Rakoff, Joanna Smith. “Making The Corrections: An Interview with Jonathan Franzen.” Poets & Writers 29.5 (2001): 27+. Print. Discusses the autobiographical elements of the novel. Wood, James. “Abhorring a Vacuum.” New Republic 225.16 (2001): 32+. Print. Analyzes the novel’s narrative and Franzen’s role as a cultural ironist. Gale Resources
“Jonathan Franzen.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com. ezproxy.pgcc.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1000033707&v=2.1&u=pgcc_main &it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
Jonathan Franzen News on the New York Times Web site, available at http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/refer ence/timestopics/people/f/jonathan_franzen/
Gessen, Keith. “A Literary Correction.” American Prospect 12.19 (2001): 33+. Print. Favorably TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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index.html, contains links to several current and archived articles on Franzen and his work. For Further Reading
Franzen, Jonathan. How to Be Alone: Essays. New York: Straus, 2002. Print. Twelve of Franzen’s articles, ranging from autobiographical details of his family life to an analysis of the contemporary novel. ———. The Twenty-seventh City. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1988. Print. Presents a fictionalized account of life in St. Louis in 1984, a city run by Asian Indians.
Kershner, R. B. The Twentieth-Century Novel: An Introduction. New York: Bedford-St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Print. Presents an overview of the modern, post-modern, and contemporary novel as well as historical and social contexts. Ochoa, George. America in the 1990s. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Print. Decades of American History. Explores through commentary and photographs popular culture and the arts in the last decade of the twentieth century. Wendy Perkins
Glickman, Lawrence B. Consumer Society in American History: A Reader. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999. Print. Collected essays presenting a comprehensive view of American consumerism patterns from the 1600s to the present.
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Crabwalk By Günter Grass
W Introduction Crabwalk, written by German Nobel laureate Günter Grass and published in 2002, is based on the sinking of a German passenger liner, the Wilhelm Gustloff, on January 30, 1945. In Grass’s fictional account of the tragedy that cost nine thousand lives, one of the few survivors is a child, Paul Pokriefke, born as his mother is being rescued. This momentous birth annoyingly shadows Paul throughout his life as his mother continuously retells the story and hounds her son, a journalist, to write their story. In Paul’s fifties, he is compelled by a famous author to begin the project. In his research, he discovers that his estranged teenage son, under the influence of his grandmother, has a Web site dedicated to neo-Nazi sentiments about the Gustloff’s sinking. The struggle of the German people to come to terms with the legacy of World War II is the overriding theme of the novel. The title reflects Paul’s description of his investigation method—like the way a crab walks, in appearance a backward movement, but actually a rapid sideways step that manages to move it forward. Thus the story moves back and forth between present and past, between historical data and the lives of its fictional characters. Written in his seventies, Crabwalk is a part of Grass’s long-term campaign to urge Germans to realize not just their responsibility for but their victimization and suffering in World War II.
W Literary and Historical Context
In German literature, social and critical novels revived after World War II through the work of authors such as Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, and Max Frisch. Organizations were formed to promote literary activities (for
example, Group 47 in Germany and the Vienna Circle in Austria) and fostered experimental writers such as H. C. Artmann and Ernst Jandl of Austria. While West German writers explored various styles, East German writers tended to use socialist realism. Both groups were heavily focused on Nazi history from the 1970s to the 1990s. Neo-Nazism is an extremist, anti-intellectual, rightwing offshoot of Nazi ideology that developed at the end of World War II and persisted into the early 2000s. This social/political movement copies the symbols of Nazism such as the swastika and the straight-arm salute but differs in some ways, too. In those countries where its activities are not banned by law, neo-Nazism actually functions as just another political party. Neo-Nazis are less focused on anti-Semitism, although they deny that the Holocaust occurred. Their fanatical nationalism causes them to fear and hate foreigners and immigrants. The social aspect of the movement—the drinking, singing of battle songs, and marches—is attractive to the members who tend to be discontented loners from poor areas. Neo-Nazism gives these individuals a feeling of superiority and a way to blame others for their own social, political, and economic problems. Consequently, neo-Nazism has been successful in gaining members in the economically strained area that used to be East Germany, but it exists in many other countries as well. Some groups, especially in Germany, advocate violence. In the United States, neo-Nazis are associated with other white dominance groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
W Themes A major theme of Crabwalk concerns the price Germans paid for the suppression of their sufferings during World War II. Many Germans were so preoccupied with war crimes, reparations, and guilt over Nazi military aggression and the Holocaust that they did not allow themselves to consider that they, too, had suffered during this terrible period. Germans were so tormented by their
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MAJOR CHARACTERS DAVID, whose real name is Wolfgang Stremplin, is the supposedly Jewish person who argues in the chat room with Konny over issues surrounding the Gustloff. KONRAD POKRIEFKE, called Konny, is Paul’s son, an unbalanced loner who becomes a Nazi apologist on a Web site about the Gustloff. PAUL POKRIEFKE, the narrator and a mediocre journalist bitter about being fatherless and a failed father, is compelled to write about the Gustloff and its effect on his life. TULLA POKRIEFKE is Paul’s overbearing mother and a Stalinist who perpetually retells the details of the Gustloff’s sinking and influences Konny adversely.
past that they, like Tulla and Paul, had difficulty basing their lives on anything else. Nonetheless, they did move on, building a better nation, only later to discover that some of their children wanted to revert to Nazism. They
looked away from incidents such as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, but the legacy was an open wound that some in the next generation discovered and exploited with resentment instead of healing with more appropriate ways of grieving. Grass uses an oblique crabwalk approach to this subject because approaching directly was taboo in German society. He uses the Gustloff to embody all the horrors experienced by the German people during the war. The tale shows that collateral damage and war crimes occurred on both sides. It also warns that the problems brought on by fascism and Stalinism might never end if guilt and grief are turned into hatred and fear again, just as the oppressive treaty after World War I drove the German people to nationalistic fanaticism as a response to their humiliation. Another theme is the search for fatherhood. The Germans obsessed over the fatherland, Paul repeatedly wonders about his father’s identity, and Konrad joins a neo-Nazi community to find the family that his father did not give him. Paul’s own bitterness towards his parents turns into a distracted parenting that, paradoxically for someone so affected by the past, leads to his becoming involved with his son over the Internet.
Crabwalk recounts the sinking of a German passenger ship and describes how the tragic event continues to affect survivors years later. Hugo Jaeger/Timepix/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
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W Style The most obvious element of style in Crabwalk is Grass’s time framework that is presented in a sideways manner similar to the movement of a crab. A half century of German history is woven together in a back and forth motion that incorporates historical facts into the fictional narrative. Grass moves from the present to various places in the past, not in chronological order but in the sequence in which memories and the researched history surface in the mind of the first-person narrator. This presentation reflects the reluctance and confusion of the harried narrator. The research also allows the inclusion of various subplots about Wilhelm Gustloff, his killer, and the Russian submarine commander who torpedoed the story’s fated ship. Another stylistic feature is the use of three generations. Each represents a specific period and political position: Tulla as the fascist who accepts life in East Germany, Paul as the politically moderate person who chooses to live in the West, and Konrad who embraces right-wing neo-Nazism. Each has a certain take on the meaning of the sinking of the Gustloff. None of them is a likable character since each, according to Grass’s design, exemplifies flaws in German society. To counter Paul’s ambivalence about his birth, Grass creates the mystery figure who sees the need to tell the story of the Gustloff. This figure is described as the author of Dog Years, so he is most likely Grass himself, who believes that the German people need to tell their own war stories.
W Critical Reception Crabwalk (2002) was called by some Grass’s best work since The Tin Drum in 1959. As Sarah Schaeffer stated in a review for the New Statesman: “Crabwalk is compulsive, leading you towards the final, shattering twist . . . Grass could scarcely be delving deeper into the German soul and challenging its demons to do their worst.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly concurred that Grass is “A writer who refuses to avert his eyes from unpleasant truths, [who] remains an eloquent explorer of his country’s troubled twentieth-century history.” In an article in the New York Times Book Review, Jeremy Adler remarked: “Grass’s control over this scenario is masterly. Repeatedly switching between frames, he deftly keeps his metaphor in view, to illuminate the zigzag narrative line.” Adler added that the crab, a scavenger crustacean, is a good symbol for “the book’s underlying meanings, notably the criminal debris, the unregenerate guilt, that lies buried in the deep” and shows that “it takes a hard shell to survive.” Magdalena Ball, in a review for the Compulsive Reader, found that there is “much in this work that is beautiful—showing Grass’s keen poetic voice,” and she complimented Crabwalk as “a complex and difficult
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Günter Grass was born October 16, 1927, in the Free City of Danzig (known after 1945 as Gdansk), Poland. Drafted into the German army at fifteen, Grass spent 1945 and 1946 in an American prisoner of war camp. Afterward, he survived as a laborer and eventually as an apprentice stonecutter where his artistic talents led him to enroll first in the art academy in Düsseldorf and then the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts (19531955). Grass married Anna Schwarz in 1954, and they had four children; in 1979 he married Utte Gruner. An accomplished graphic artist and sculptor, Grass began his literary career writing poetry. However, his novel The Tin Drum (1959), considered one of the finest of the twentieth century, catapulted him into international celebrity. Among his multiple literary association memberships and awards is the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
novel which challenges the reader to think about history, about perspective, and narrative truth.” Ball also noted that Grass deliberately “keeps the reader at arm’s length” by making the characters “too wooden and unlikeable,” but she admitted that the characters represent values that are also unattractive. Despite the novel’s acclaim, it is not without its detractors. Reflecting the concerns of other reviewers, Irmgard Hunt commented in a World Literature Today review that Grass’s “themes and style are worn.” She complained that Grass has been obsessing over German history in the same style for decades but was at least in this work he was contemporary and “very clever” in his “use of the Internet and the world of the chat room.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adler, Jeremy. “Ship of State.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. New York Times Book Review 108 (2003): 12. Print. Ball, Magdalena. “Crabwalk by Günter Grass.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. compulsivereader.com. Compulsive Reader, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. “Crabwalk.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Publishers Weekly 250.9 (2003): 51. Print. Grass, Günter. Crabwalk. New York: Harcourt, 2002. Print. Hunt, Irmgard. “Review of Im Krebsgang.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. World Literature Today 77.1 (2003): 128-29. Print. Schaeffer, Sarah. “Germany’s Titanic.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. New Statesman 132.4632 (2003): 54. Print.
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Crabwalk Additional Resources
Gale Resources
Criticism and Reviews
Caso, Frank. “Grass, Günter. Crabwalk.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Booklist 99.12 (2003): 1047. Print. Briefly summarizes the story and comments on how the ship’s tragedy leads to a family’s tragedy. Cone, Edward. “Grass, Günter. Crabwalk.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Library Journal 128.1 (2003): 154. Print. Comments that Grass successfully conveys the horror of the ship’s sinking and the situation of German society following World War II. “Crabwalk.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Kirkus Reviews 71.1 (2003): 11. Print. Remarks on the tension and disdain Grass expresses regarding fascism, Stalinism, capitalism, and poor parenting. Franklin, Ruth. “The Tin Book.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. powells.com. New Republic Online 7 Aug. 2003. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Reviews the controversy over German suffering under the Nazis and concludes that Crabwalk is a repeat of Grass’s previous literary statements. Gimson, Andrew. “A Parable of a Lost Talent.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Spectator 291.9112 (2003): 49. Print. Negatively reviews the novel and asserts that Grass has lost his touch and manages only wooden techniques. Lezard, Nicholas. “Almost Taboo.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian 17 Apr. 2004. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Discusses the story’s background, Grass’s persona in the book, and the faults of the English translation. McCann, Sean. “Crabwalk.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. Book Mar.-Apr. 2003: 74. Print. Refers to the novel as a poetic description of German suffering and identity. Parker, Ian. “Günter Grass, Crabwalk Synopsis.” warwick.ac.uk. University of Warwick 28 Nov. 2006. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. A synopsis of the novel that remarks on Grass’s themes and motivation. Updike, John. “Suppressed Atrocities.” Rev. of Crabwalk, by Günter Grass. New Yorker 79.9 (2003): 185. Print. Thoroughly summarizes the story while commenting about its messages on parenting and the German conscience. Youngman, Paul A. “The Realization of a Virtual Past in Günter Grass’s Crabwalk.” Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature 32.1 (2008): 179. Print. A critical analysis of the various forms of media used in the novel to narrate the past, particularly the role of the Internet.
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“Günter Grass.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&o=DataType& n=10&l=d&c=1&locID=itsbtrial&secondary= false&u=CA&t=KW&s=2&NA=Gunter+Grass Mayer, Sigrid. “Günter Grass.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 2. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 330. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. http://galenet. galegroup.com/servlet/DLBC_Online? vrsn=1.0&dd=0&srs=ALL&locID=itsbtrial&b1= KE&srchtp=b&c=1&ste=10&stp=DateDes cend&dc=tiPG&d4=0.25&n=10&docNum= BK1560675017&b0=Gunter+Grass&tiPG=0 Open Web Sources
A review by Mary Whipple, a Grass bibliography, a list of related links, and a brief biography are provided by Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, at http://www.mostly fiction.com/history/grass.htm For Further Reading
Adler, J., ed. From Prague Poet to Oxford Anthropologist: Franz Baermann Steiner Celebrated, Essays and Translations. London: Institute of Germanic Studies, U of London P, 2003. Print. Contains the poem “Prayer in the Garden” that was the literary model for Crabwalk. Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum. New York: Mariner, 2010. Print. The 1959 magical realism tale told from the viewpoint of a three-year-old boy when Danzig is retaken by Germany, with themes about fatalism and survival. Niven, William, and James Jordan, eds. Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany. Rochester: Camden House, 2003. Print. A collection of essays that explore the relationship between politics and the arts in Germany from World War I to 1998. Sellwood, A. V. The Damned Don’t Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. Print. One of the few books that describes the tragedy, this history focuses on four passengers. Wellington, Hubert. Journal of Delacroix. London: Phaidon Press, 1995. Print. An influence on Grass, this diary of a great French painter that is a classic study on art, literature, and life. Lois Kerschen
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Crescent By Diana Abu-Jaber
W Introduction Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (2003) is a romance novel told from the perspective of Sirine, a thirty-nine-year-old Iraqi American. Sirine lives in Los Angeles with her uncle, who raised her after her parents’ death. She is the cook at Nadia’s Café, a Lebanese restaurant in a predominately Arab section of Los Angeles. Crescent combines political discourse and romance in a novel that is also a human rights story about the displacement that war creates. Sirine falls in love with Hanif Al Eyad (called Han), a literature professor, who is an Iraqi refugee. It would be dangerous for Han to return to Iraq, and Sirine has never lived there. Their relationship is defined by their mutual longing for Iraq and by the poetry and food that help these expatriates create a place in the United States. Sirine’s cooking reminds Han of home and reminds Sirine of the home she once shared with her parents. Crescent brings together many markers familiar to the immigrant experience. Westernization and loss of culture, as well as loss of home and all it represents, are common to the immigrant experience. The emphasis on color and race is especially important, since it allows Abu-Jaber to focus on profiling and stereotypes, as Arab Americans try to fit into American society. Woven into the story of Sirine and Han is her uncle’s telling of an Arabic legend about Abdelrahman Salahadin, who like Sirine and Han, is also on a journey to find love, his home, and himself.
W Literary and Historical Context
Crescent is set in Los Angeles approximately nine years after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991. Thanks to CNN and twenty-four-hour television news, Iraq and politics were given continual attention in the United
States in 1999. Saddam Hussein was still in power, and his secret police murdered whomever they wished and did so with little provocation. Economic sanctions against Iraq in 1990 remained in place in 1999. Malnutrition was common among Iraqi citizens, and there were few medical resources for treating illness or injury. Beginning in 1998 and continuing for the next several years, the United States and Great Britain engaged in air attacks against Iraqi missile factories and airfields. Abu-Jaber’s Crescent is set in 1999, six years after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Tension between Arab Americans and other racial or ethnic groups was common during the 1990s. This tension was also evident in American society much earlier, primarily because people knew little about the Arab world. Most Americans regarded all Middle Eastern men—exclusive of Jews—as Arabs, without differentiating among them by religion or country of origin. To be a Muslim means to be a follower of Islam, but not all Arab Americans are Muslim. Many Americans did not realize that fewer than 20 percent of Muslims are Arabs. Instead, stereotypes about Arabs were common. Even before the terrorist attacks of 2001, there was a common perception among uninformed Americans that all Arab men were terrorists. This misguided view led to acts of violence against Arab American men. When Crescent was written in 1999, many Americans believed that Islam was a violent and repressive religion and that gender roles were strictly maintained, often at the expense of women, who were considered inferior. In 1999 Westerners were still unfamiliar with veiling, or the wearing of a hijab or veil. Many non-Muslim people in the United States continued into the early 2000s to think that veiling is repressive, but many Arab women feel that the veil is simply a way to maintain their modesty. To wear a veil is a personal choice. In Crescent, Rana wears a veil, which might seem to suggest that she is a repressed Muslim woman, and yet, this character is a feminist, who is enrolled at the university, and has divorced her abusive husband. In addition, many Arab American women in this novel forgo the veil.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS AZIZ ABDO is an Iraqi womanizer and poet who sets out to seduce Sirine. HANIF AL EYAD is an exiled Iraqi literature professor who falls in love with Sirine but longs to return to Iraq. He feels guilt, isolation, and regret because of the loss of his family and homeland. MIREILLE is the waitress at Nadia’s Café and Nadia’s daughter. NATHAN is a young photographer who watches Han and Sirine and surreptitiously takes their picture many times. He is mysterious about his past and why he follows Han everywhere. RANA is a young divorced Muslim, who wears a veil and is a feminist. SIRINE is a thirty-nine-year-old blond Iraqi American with no cultural identity. She uses food as a way to connect to her Iraqi past and as a substitute for the love she fears will be taken from her, just as her parents were when she was nine years old. Food is also a way for Sirine to nurture those around her. UM-NADIA is the Lebanese owner of the café where Sirine cooks and functions as a pseudo mother. UNCLE, whose name is not given, is a storyteller and the head of Near Eastern Studies at the university. He raises Sirine after her parents die.
W Themes Racism and prejudice against Arabs are important themes. Crescent was written before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but Abu-Jaber reminds readers that bias against Arab men predates the 2001 attacks. Crescent offers commentary on contemporary issues involving ethnicity, profiling, and stereotyping of Arab immigrants. Um-Nadia chases away the two government men who come to Nadia’s Café to observe the Arab men who eat there. Aziz also relates his own experiences with bias when he explains being mistaken for a terrorist because he is Arab. The use of food to heal and to function as a bridge between the homeland of the past and the immigrant’s new life as an American is an important second theme. Food is, as Abu-Jaber tells Robin Fields, a “cultural memory” (Field 217). The Arabic Thanksgiving dinner, in which Sirine blends Arab foods with American foods, is one example of how food symbolizes both the culture of Iraq and American traditions. A third theme is the pain of loss or of exile. Sirine has lost her parents to death, but she recalls as a child how
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they traveled extensively on humanitarian missions, leaving her behind. Sirine fears loss and fears falling in love, and yet, this is a novel about the search for love and the need to assuage loneliness. Han is similar in his inability to give himself totally to Sirine. His fear is based on the pain of exile from his home and the loss of his family.
W Style Abu-Jaber uses evocative descriptions and symbolism in Crescent to convey a sense of ethnicity and the immigrant experience. The book is filled with lush descriptions of food and of the people in the café, but the descriptions of home and the longing to return are especially poignant, as when Han tries to describe his feelings about Iraq and tells Sirine that “the night that seems to start two thousand years ago, it’s so light and dry” (82). The title of the book refers to the crescent moon, an important cultural signifier of Muslim life. The crescent is the new moon that symbolizes the beginning of the Islamic new month, but it also is a reminder to return to one’s home, which is not possible for many Arab immigrants in Nadia’s Café. The yearning for their cultural and ethnic past is a common feeling among all of the refugees and immigrants described in Crescent. The story that Sirine’s uncle tells about Abdelrahman Salahadin contains elements of magical realism. The story suggests ancient Arabian Nights legends but is peopled with actors such as Omar Sharif and Richard Burton, who is present in the story as an actor and archaeologist. The uncle’s fable also serves as a mirror to Sirine and Han’s romance. The story that the uncle tells is drawn from Hollywood movies about Arabs, but it also recalls the oral transmission of narrative, which preceded written texts in the ancient Middle East. The fable parallels the main story until the end of the book when the two stories merge. The use of third-person omniscient point of view allows readers to understand what Sirine does not herself understand. The narration of the central story never leaves Sirine, but since she is often blind to her own motives, the omniscient narrator provides a larger understanding. The story the uncle tells of Abdelrahman Salahadin is a separate narration that uses third-person point of view, just as with the story of Han and Sirine.
W Critical Reception Crescent is the second novel published by Abu-Jaber. This work received several awards, including the PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction in 2004. It also received the American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels for 2003 by the Christian Science Monitor. Reviews of Crescent were exceptionally positive and enthusiastic. After noting how cleverly Abu-Jaber weaves TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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together the story of Sirine and Han and the fable about Abdelrahman Salahadin, Yasmine Bahrani told USA Today readers that Abu-Jaber “takes pains to evoke a sense of place and of community” in locating the novel in Nadia’s Café. However, after celebrating Abu-Jaber’s efforts to chronicle the lives of Arab Americans, Bahrani lamented that the author offers so little information “about the Arab milieu,” beyond the menu for food at Nadia’s Café. Bahrani viewed this as a minor complaint, though, given that Crescent provides a “normalizing” picture of the Arab community engaging in the same kinds of activities as any other group of immigrants.” Several reviewers noted the timing of Crescent, so soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In his review in the Christian Science Monitor, Ron Charles wrote that Abu-Jaber’s novel allows Americans a view of “Iraqis outside the ‘axis of evil,’” an expression used by George W. Bush. Charles also celebrated the complexity of the novel, with its mix of “romantic comedy, political protest, fairy tale, and cultural analysis.” In a Prairie Schooner review, Amelia Montes also noted how effectively Abu-Jaber creates characters that “defy common stereotypes” in a “beautiful
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Syracuse, New York, on November 5, 1959, Diana AbuJaber grew up in both New York and in Jordan. She has published one memoir and three novels. She also has written occasional op-ed pieces about the challenges Arab Americans face. Arabian Jazz (1993) is about the tensions felt by those who try to live in both the Arab and American world. The Language of Baklava (2005) is a memoir. Origin is a mystery novel, in which the focus is no longer on the Arab American world. As of 2010, Abu-Jaber lived in Portland, Oregon, and taught at Portland State University.
braiding of story” that is a “quiet meditation” and an important depiction of Arab Americans postSeptember 11. Crescent explores what it means to be an exile and to experience the loss of a homeland, and much of its appeal lies in its humanizing of Iraqi expatriates.
In Crescent, Sirine is a chef at a Lebanese restaurant in a part of Los Angeles that is heavily populated by Arabs. ª Sergio Pitamitz/Corbis
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Crescent BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Abu-Jaber, Diana. Crescent. New York: Norton, 2003. Print.
Web. 20 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000114206& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Bahrani, Yasmine. “Crescent Meshes Two Tales of ArabAmerican Culture.” Rev. of Crescent, by Diana AbuJaber. usatoday.com. USA Today, 15 May 2003. Web. 19 July 2010.
Diana Abu-Jaber’s official Web site includes links to her books, with brief summaries and reader guides. It is available at http://www.dianaabujaber.com.
Charles, Ron. “An Iraqi Love Feast Spiced with Despair.” Rev. of Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber. csmonitor.com. Christian Science Monitor 27 Mar. 2003. Web. 19 July 2010.
For Further Reading
Montes, Amelia. “Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent.” Rev. of Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber. Prairie Schooner 80.1 (2006): 211-14. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bader, Eleanor J. “Abu-Jaber, Diana. Crescent.” Rev. of Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber. Library Journal 128.1 (2003): 116. Print. Discusses Crescent as an examination of the cost of politics on human life. Fadda-Conrey, Carol. “Arab American Literature in the Ethnic Borderland: Cultural Intersections in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.” MELUS 31.4 (2006): 187205. Print. Argues that the protagonist in Crescent, the cook Sirine, is a bridge between the Iraqi homeland and immigrant life in the United States. Field, Robin E. “A Prophet in Her Own Town: An Interview with Diana Abu-Jaber.” MELUS 31.4 (2006): 207-25. Print. An interview in which AbuJaber explains her purpose in writing and her efforts to merge Arab and American cultures. Gana, Nouri. “In Search of Andalusia: Reconfiguring Arabness in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.” Comparative Literature Studies 45.2 (2008): 228-46. Print. Explains that Crescent demystifies Arab life, while focusing on the importance of maintaining a cultural heritage. Mercer, Lorraine, and Linda Strom. “Counter Narratives: Cooking Up Stories of Love and Loss in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Poetry and Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.” MELUS 32.4 (2007): 33-46. Print. Explores the ways in which food communicates love and reveals memory. Shalal-Esa, Andrea. “Diana Abu-Jaber: The Only Response to Silencing . . . Is to Keep Speaking.” Aljadid: A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts 8.39 (2002): 4-6. Print. An interview in which Abu-Jaber discusses exile and the crisis of identity that lies at the center of Crescent.
Abu-Jaber, Diana. The Language of Baklava. New York: Pantheon, 2005. Print. A memoir that uses food to relate the experiences of the author in growing up in an Arab American family. Dahmash-Jarrah, Samar. Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts. Tampa: Olive Branch, 2005. Print. Contains twelve interviews with Arab Americans who hope to dispel stereotypes, while advancing knowledge of Arab life in the United States. Foster, Benjamin R., and Karen Polinger Foster. Civilizations of Ancient Iraq. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Print. Traces the history of Iraq from 8000 BCE to 637 CE and provides a political and cultural overview of the ancient country of Iraq. Halaby, Laila. West of the Jordan: A Novel. Boston: Beacon, 2003. Print. About four young Arab American women trying to establish their own identities, while also trying to bridge two very different cultures. Kaldas, Pauline, and Mattawa Khaled, eds. Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2009. Print. Short stories by nineteen authors of Arab descent who write about their experiences as Arab Americans. Malek, Alia. A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories. New York: Free Press, 2009. Print. A series of shared experiences of Arab immigrants who find it difficult to become part of American cultural life. Sasson, Jean. Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman’s Survival under Saddam Hussein. New York: Dutton, 2003. Print. Describes a woman’s imprisonment in an Iraqi jail and the friendships forged in prison that made it possible for her to survive. Shakir, Evelyn. Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States. Westport: Praeger, 1997. Print. A history of Arab immigration to the United States from a woman’s perspective. Sheri Karmiol
Gale Resources
“Diana Abu-Jaber.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time By Mark Haddon
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
In Mark Haddon’s first-person novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), the narrator Christopher John Francis Boone is an autistic savant. This fifteen-year-old boy discovers the neighbor’s dog, Wellington, murdered with a garden fork. Perplexed by the crime and encouraged by his teacher to write a book, Christopher begins his murder mystery much to the disapproval of his single father, Ed. In one sense, the novel is the book Christopher writes as he goes about detecting the mystery of who killed Wellington, Mrs. Shears’s poodle. In another sense, the novel is about the experiences Christopher has while solving the mystery and writing about it. Ed Boone becomes a single father upon his wife’s departure. He tells his son that she went to the hospital unexpectedly and then died there of a heart attack. Ed faces maintaining the household, holding a job, and meeting the special needs of his son. Christopher circumvents his father’s order to stop investigating Wellington’s death and undertakes a journey that takes him to neighbors in Swindon and from there to London in search of his mother. Reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective fiction, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time portrays its protagonist as someone ruled by dispassionate deductive reasoning. Christopher negotiates the environs of an English suburb despite his disorder (perhaps a type of autism called Asperger’s syndrome), which he handles by applying special breathing and other techniques he has learned in school. He is prone to bouts of groaning and overreacts to the proximity of others and being touched, to metaphor, and to yellow and brown. He finds comfort in prime numbers and mathematical proofs. Haddon has recast the conventional detective as a boy whose phobias and fancies reveal the mental environment of an autistic child trying to make sense of human behavior.
In the character and point of view of Christopher Boone, Haddon suggests the world as it is understood by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Previously confused with other mental conditions, such as schizophrenia, the complex developmental disorders referred to collectively as autism were studied throughout the twentieth century; however, as of the early 2000s, much about these conditions remained unknown. In the 1980s one type of autism was identified as Asperger’s syndrome, using the independent studies of Hans Asperger (1906-1980) and Leo Kanter (18911984). One of a subgroup of ASD, Asperger’s became an official diagnosis in 1992, when it was recorded in the tenth edition of the diagnostic manual International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), published by the World Health Organization. Christopher Boone illustrates this disorder: He has high brain function but is unable to act normally in social interaction, and in stressful situations, he resorts to nonverbal sounds and mechanical rocking or pounding. By the 1990s, special needs schools began to appear, with teachers trained to assist and educate students with such disorders. Other contextual references in the novel are identified by Christopher’s interests. For example, he is fascinated by astronomy, studies the Apollo missions, and fantasizes about being an astronaut alone in space. Reaching his teens in the 1990s, Christopher is affected by the technology revolution that transformed countries in the West in the last third of the twentieth century. Like millions of other teens, Christopher spends many afterschool hours alone in his bedroom, entertaining himself with computer games and videos. Another reference is to automated teller machines (ATMs), which first came into use in the United Kingdom in late 1972. Quite suddenly, a card and password were all individuals needed to access bank accounts from remote locations. Thus, Christopher
Context
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
MAJOR CHARACTERS CHRISTOPHER JOHN FRANCIS BOONE, the narrator and protagonist, is fifteen years old, gifted in mathematics, and has Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. He lives with his father and attends a school for students with special needs. ED BOONE, Christopher’s father, owns and runs a heating maintenance and boiler repair business. JUDY BOONE, Christopher’s mother, has had difficulty meeting her son’s needs and two years earlier she moved to London with her lover, Roger Shears. EILEEN SHEARS is a neighbor. Wellington was her dog and her husband left town with Christopher’s mother. SIOBHAN is Christopher’s main teacher.
has the means to withdraw money from his father’s account by using an ATM machine in the Swindon train station.
W Themes In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time people struggle to find meaning and maintain stability in a dynamic world. The narrator, Christopher Boone, strives to control his life, including keeping a schedule of before-and-after school activities, preparing for his math exams, and taking care of his pet rat Toby. He thinks about the world as if his brain were a computer. He also tries to understand his mother’s absence and obey his father. Certain random events, such as the appearance and number of yellow cars in traffic, cause Christopher to reach irrational conclusions about daily experience and to seek relief in the predictability of mathematical and thought problems. Another theme pertains to loss and how people cope with it, and related to this subject is the novel’s focus on how crimes are solved. The first event is the discovery of the murdered dog, which dramatizes how Christopher and Mrs. Shears react to loss. Using his knowledge of Sherlock Holmes's mysteries, Christopher realizes that the absence of any telling behavior on the part of Wellington, the murdered poodle, is actually a clue to solving the crime. The same idea of absence and loss with regard to his mother, Judy Boone, leads Christopher to discover that she did not die, but rather left Swindon with her lover, Roger Shears. The novel is also about language, about verbal communication that works or does not work and about written text as a means for defining reality. Christopher
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When a neighbor’s dog is murdered with a garden fork, Christopher John Francis Boone tries to find the person responsible for the animal’s death in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime. Christopher Elwell/Shutterstock.com
understands language literally and is keen on defining unusual words. He experiences clichés and metaphors as dissonance. His unique way of comprehending words leads readers to see how language can convey meaning and obscure it. In this sense, the novel is about language use and about the difference between writing about life and experiencing it directly.
W Style The strictly observed first-person point of view conveys the narrator’s autism without labeling it. Christopher’s literal perspective and mathematical prowess come across in his unusual attention detail. But when he is overstimulated by too much sensory information, he uses diagrams and pictographs, or orthographic devices, such as capitalization or bold font, to impose order on his subject. The point of view remains Christopher’s, but because he has total recall, adult dialogue is reported TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Northampton, England, on September 26, 1962, Mark Haddon worked various jobs, including assisting patients with multiple sclerosis and autism. He earned a BA in English from Merton College, Oxford University, in 1981 and an MA from Edinburgh University in 1984. Before publication of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Haddon wrote and illustrated children’s books. He also worked in television and won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for his work on episodes of Microsoap. As of 2008, Haddon lived with his wife and children in Oxford, England.
Christopher John Francis Boone tries to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of his neighbor's dog, a poodle named Wellington, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime. ª INTERFOTO / Alamy
verbatim. The statements by adults around Christopher inform readers about how others interact with Christopher and react to his autistic symptoms. When Ed Boone discovers the book Christopher is writing about solving Wellington’s murder, he says to his son, “How stupid are you?” Unable to access normal emotional response and inclined to comprehend literally, Christopher responds: “This is what Siobhan says is a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer.” Despite or because of his disability, Christopher embodies the characteristics of an effective, calculating detective. He is practical, methodical, and unsentimental. Haddon’s style effectively portrays the autistic genius he has created, so that regardless how convoluted the text can get with its odd syntax and permutations, the tone remains honest and as incapable of lying as Christopher Boone is.
W Critical Reception Mark Haddon had a successful career as a writer and illustrator of children’s books before writing his critically acclaimed first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It was well received by critics, who generally praised it for the reliable narrative voice. The
novel delighted critics because the strength of Haddon’s narrative rests on artful prose rather than on Christopher’s disorder, which is never mentioned in the book. Apart from his behavior problems, Christopher is a junior detective who rises victoriously above his limitations or capitalizes upon them in order to solve a mystery or two. In the New Statesman, David Annand wrote: “Although Christopher was emotionally stunted, his inadvertent wittiness and honesty made him instantly adorable.” Sharon Kirkes praised Haddon’s grasp of the character and his condition in her review appearing in Library Journal: “Mark Haddon brilliantly captures the voice and logicality of high-functioning teenager Christopher, who, in the course of investigating a minor mystery— the death of a neighbor’s dog—challenges himself, and his parents, to confront unforeseen issues and events.” But some reviewers found the book off-putting. For example, Nicholas Barrow, writing in Spectator, and informed by his own experience with Aspberger’s, found Christopher irritating and tedious. Barrow felt that Haddon spends too much time shoring up his protagonist’s zeal for math with equations and diagrams, which Barrow thought “pointless.” Nevertheless, many critics praised Haddon’s accomplishment in his successful first novel. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Annand, David. “Shaking Things Up.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. New Statesman 17 Apr. 2006: 55. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 July 2010. Barrow, Nicholas. “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. Spectator 17 May 2003: 65+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 July 2010. Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Vintage-Random, 2003. Print.
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Kirkes, Sharon. “Fiction on the Spectrum.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. Library Journal 132.7 (2007): 132. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Edwards, Jacqueline. “Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a Novel.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. Kliatt July 2004: 18. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Haddon’s novel viewed as a bildungsroman. Maryles, Daisy. “Poodlecide Pays.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. Publishers Weekly 14 Feb. 2005: 14. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Credits success of this detective story to its autistic protagonist. McInerney, Jay. “The Remains of the Dog.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. New York Times Book Review 15 June 2003: 5. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Observes that the novel is open-ended and that the real mystery is not the crime but the literal and logic-driven boy detective. Muller, Vivienne. “Constituting Christopher: Disability Theory and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature 16.2 (2006): 118+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Identifies the reader as an ethnographer with a privileged view of an autistic savant’s mind and emphasizes the relevance of Haddon’s portrayal of Christopher in terms of readers’ perceptions of the abled and disabled. Rorke, Robert. “A ‘Curious’ Coincidence: In Britain, Young Adult Readers Read Mark Haddon’s Novel at the Same Time as Grownups.” Rev. of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. Publishers Weekly 252.28 (2005): 164. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. Notes Haddon’s novel has the distinction of being a successful crossover novel. Gale Resources
“Mark Haddon.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010.
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Open Web Sources
Haddon maintains a Web site called Mark Haddon Home Page, at http://www.markhaddon.com, which contains images, such as simultaneous drawings he has done with his children and comments by the author about current cultural and popular events. The blog Web site called Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, at http://www.mostlyfiction.com, contains a review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. For Further Reading
Atwood, Tony. The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2008. Print. An informative and accessible compilation of research and clinical experience on children and adults who suffer from Asperger’s, appropriate both to professionals as well as individuals and families interested in fresh approaches to this condition. Glendening, Daniel J. “Author Mark Haddon Takes a Novel Approach to Autism.” America’s Intelligence Wire 19 Jan. 2004: n. p. Print. Review that emphasizes the novel’s literary accomplishment over a clinical treatment of autism. Greenspan, Stanley, Robin Simons, and Serena Weider. The Child with Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth. New York: Perseus Books, 1998. Print. Covers a variety of disorders, including autism, and suggests ways parents can maximize emotional and intellectual development of children with special needs. Lemke, Donald B. The Apollo 13 Mission. Bloomington: Capstone Press, 2006. Print. A work designed for children that features a graphic presentation of the Apollo 13 mission. Sicile-Kira, Chantal. Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Complete Guide to Understanding Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and Other ASDs. New York: Perigree Trade-Penguin, 2004. Print. Winner of the 2005 Autism Society of America’s Outstanding Literary Work of the Year Award, an excellent reference guide for parents and professionals. Wells, David. The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Numbers. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print. Essentially a dictionary of numbers, highlighting unusual features of many numbers. Doris Plantus-Runey
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Curse of Chalion By Lois McMaster Bujold
W Introduction The Curse of Chalion (2001) is the second fantasy novel by the popular science fiction author Lois McMaster Bujold. It is the first of three works set in a richly detailed fictional world based loosely on Spain in the late Middle Ages. The novel is regarded as a crossover work that combines elements of the romance novel with high fantasy and employs a sophisticated yet accessible writing style that appeals to both teens and adults. Critics as well as readers have praised The Curse of Chalion for its interesting, well-developed characters and for its carefully drawn background of complex political events and theological concepts. The story follows a betrayed nobleman on his reluctant quest to save the royal house of Chalion and to find personal healing. In 2002 The Curse of Chalion was nominated for a Hugo Award, a Locus Award, and a World Fantasy Award. The novel received a Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Curse of Chalion is set in a carefully developed fictional world whose social system closely resembles that of medieval Europe and whose religious system is similar to that of ancient Greece. The geography of the Chalion world is roughly an upside-down version of the Iberian Peninsula, and the cultural terminology is a recognizable variant of Spanish. For example, the country of Chalion is called a “royacy,” the king is the “roya,” and so on. The plot revolves around an arranged marriage, much like the marriage between Isabella and Ferdinand that united Spain in the fifteenth century. As in that period of Spanish history, in the novel there are not only political intrigues but also religious divisions. In Chalion the Quintarian religion recognizes five gods, but in the rival land of Roknar, the Quadrene religion considers one of the five
to be a demon rather than a god. As a result of this difference, Chalion society is more permissive and inclusive than that of Roknar. The two powers have been at war for some time, and the situation is complicated by a civil war in the nearby kingdom of Ibra. Conventional factors, such as political intrigue and personal conflict, drive many of the problems besetting Chalion, but supernatural forces are also involved. In the Chalion world, magic does work, the gods are real, and, as it turns out, a secret curse is afflicting the royal family.
W Themes The major themes of The Curse of Chalion, which include sacrifice, redemption, and the relationship of fate and free will, derive mainly from the novel’s speculative theology. The Quintarian religion and its “heretical” Quadrene offshoot are reminiscent of Greek polytheism, featuring a hierarchy of priests and a profusion of rituals dedicated to one or another of the gods. The “holy family” (Father, Mother, Daughter, Son) has similarities to the Greek pantheon and to aspects of Christianity. Some aspects are also based on pagan religions and natural magic. For example, the gods are associated with seasons and elements, and they govern different aspects of daily life. The fifth deity in this system is Bastard, who was begotten by a demon on the Mother. In the Quintarian view, Bastard is the god of balance, who governs the difficult, the irregular, and the unseemly. In the Quadrene view, Bastard is a demon like his father, and Quadrene adherents regard as evil everything associated with Bastard. Like the Greek deities, these gods are a mixture of capriciousness and compassion, and their actions are unpredictable. In the Chalion world, however, they must obey certain rules, and they can act in human affairs only with the willing cooperation of a human being. Humans have the opportunity to choose their allegiances and the degree to which they become involved with the gods.
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The Curse of Chalion
MAJOR CHARACTERS BETRIZ is Iselle’s companion, with whom Cazaril falls in love. DONDO DY JIRONAL is a march (marquis) of the powerful Jironal family. He and his father are scheming to take control of the government through an arranged marriage between Dondo and Iselle. ISELLE is the teenage royesse (princess) of Chalion. She matures and develops political skill while trying to avoid an arranged marriage. LUPE DY CAZARIL is a castillar (equivalent to a baron) of Chalion who was a respected military leader and scholar until he was betrayed by Dondo dy Jironal and sold into slavery. He escapes and returns to Chalion, where he becomes Iselle’s tutor and is swept into court intrigues. TEIDEZ is Iselle’s naive younger brother and as royse (prince) of Chalion is next in line to the throne. He is manipulated by the Jironals.
This power of choice is tested when Lupe dy Cazaril, the protagonist of The Curse of Chalion, must decide whether to risk his own soul in the pursuit of justice.
W Style Bujold uses two techniques to make the world of Chalion believable. The first is a somewhat formal style of writing that suggests a historical novel rather than a modern fantasy. The dialogue is natural and unstilted, however, and the descriptive passages are colorful without being flowery. The second technique is indirect development of the background. Information about the Chalion world is revealed through references in the narrative rather than through direct exposition, gradually building up a picture of the society through the characters, their reflections, and their experiences. Bujold develops the narrative environment methodically in the first half of the novel, which focuses on setting up the problem. The second half then takes a sharp turn, adding metaphysical layers to the action and intrigue already established.
A knight with armor and sword. In the story, Cazaril must undertake a difficult quest wrought with danger to save the kingdom of Chalion. Vladimir Nikulin/Shutterstock.com
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The Curse of Chalion
The novel’s third-person viewpoint is controlled by the protagonist, but the other main characters contribute their perspectives through expressive dialogue. In addition, several of the minor characters are vividly drawn and in some cases turn out to be unexpectedly important to the story, enriching the plot development. Cazaril dominates the novel, not only through his observations and actions but through his personal journey. In the beginning of the story, he is depicted as a man wounded in body and spirit, seeking only a retreat into anonymity. As fate draws him back into the center of political intrigue, he must make a series of choices. By following his own principles at each turn, he finds the path to healing both for himself and for Chalion. Through this structured interconnection of the hero’s interior journey with the exterior action, Bujold effectively blends characterization and plot to create a satisfying outcome.
W Critical Reception The Curse of Chalion has drawn praise from most reviewers. Carol Reich, writing for Kliatt, calls the novel “an extremely well-crafted story,” noting that “Bujold excels at creating complex characters you care for, and at catching them up in terrific action/adventure stories laced with thoughtful ponderings on ethics and religion.” In a review for Booklist, Roland Green describes the novel as “nicely detailed and wittily accented,” while Jackie Cassada, writing in Library Journal, concludes that “compelling characters and richly detailed world building make [The Curse of Chalion] a strong addition to fantasy collections.” Almost all of the many online reviews of the novel are highly enthusiastic. A few critics, however, have found the novel too formulaic or too conservative. For example, writing for Emerald City, Cheryl Morgan complains that “The Curse of Chalion is hopelessly transparent and hardly ever does anything that might upset the delicate sensibilities of a brain-dead middle class readership.” Morgan’s opinion reflects the view that contemporary fantasy should be more experimental and intellectually challenging than The Curse of Chalion is. Paul Brink, on the other hand, sums up the novel’s mainstream appeal in School Library Journal, arguing that “a finely balanced mixture of adventure, swordplay, court intrigue, romance, magic, and religion makes this book a delightful read.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brink, Paul. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. School Library Journal 47.10 (2001): 194. Print. Cassada, Jackie. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Library Journal July 2001: 131. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lois McMaster Bujold was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1949. Her father, Robert Charles McMaster, was an engineer famous for his pioneering work on nondestructive testing of materials. He was also a science fiction fan, passing on to his daughter the books and magazines he enjoyed. Bujold began writing at an early age. From 1968 to 1972, she studied English, photography, and biology at Ohio State University but did not graduate. In 1971 she married John Fredric Bujold, also a science fiction fan. Bujold worked as a pharmacy technician until she became a full-time mother. She finished her first novel in 1983 but did not find a publisher for it until 1986. Almost immediately she became a popular science fiction author, writing skillful space operas with memorable characters. She is best known for the Miles Vorkosigan series, which includes more than a dozen novels set in a complicated future reality and featuring a brilliant, disabled mercenary hero. Bujold has won four Hugo awards and two Nebulas. She lives in Minnesota.
Green, Roland. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Booklist 1 May 2001: 1672. Print. Morgan, Cheryl. “The Curse of Brain Candy.” Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Emerald City 81 (2002). Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Reich, Carol. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Kliatt Jan. 2005: 40. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
D’Ammassa, Dan. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Science Fiction Chronicle May 2001: 40. Print. Offers a positive assessment of Bujold’s writing. Kelso, Sylvia. “Evolutions of the Fantasy Hero in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion.” Paradoxa 20 (2006): 247-62. Print. Compares Lupe dy Cazaril with Aragorn (Lord of the Rings) in an examination of older fantasy heroes. ———. “The God in the Pentagram: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Fantasy.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18.1 (2007): 61+. Print. Discusses The Curse of Chalion in the context of contemporary trends in fantasy. Wagner, Thomas M. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. SFReviews.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Brief, enthusiastic review that outlines key points of the novel.
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Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. In The Curse of Chalion, a betrayed nobleman sets out on a journey to find redemption and save the royal house of his native Chalion. godrick/Shutterstock.com
Wilde, Thursa. Rev. of The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. SFX Magazine Sept. 2002. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Favorable review that provides a useful overview of the novel, focusing especially on its speculative theology.
———. “Mind Food: Writing Science Fiction.” Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 10.2 (1997): 157. Print. Bujold discusses her development as a writer and explains the six characteristics of fiction that she feels are vital in creating audience engagement.
Open Web Sources
———. Paladin of Souls. New York: EOS, 2003. Print. This Hugo winner is the second novel set in the Chalion world. A continuation of The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls follows a pilgrimage undertaken by Iselle’s mother, Iste, who is cured of her curse-induced insanity in the first volume.
The author’s official Web site provides news, links, and reference materials, including maps of the Chalion world and a glossary of characters and terms. http:// www.dendarii.com/
Kelso, Sylvia. Three Observations and a Dialogue: Round and About SF. Seattle: Aqueduct, 2009. Print. This work includes a wide-ranging dialogue between Kelso and Bujold concerning contemporary science fiction.
Gale Resources
“Lois McMaster Bujold.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008.
For Further Reading
Bujold, Lois M. The Hallowed Hunt: A Novel. New York: Eos, 2005. Print. Although set in the Chalion world, this novel departs completely from the previous story line to explore a different geographic area, a different type of culture, and a different set of theological and supernatural elements.
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Reid, Robin A. Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Westport: Greenwood, 2009. Print. This encyclopedic volume contains essays by a variety of scholars and includes a profile of Bujold. Cynthia Giles
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dancing to “Almendra” By Mayra Montero
W Introduction Reporter Joaquín Porrata, the protagonist of Mayra Montero’s Dancing to “Almendra,” would like to be on a crime beat, but his editor has him assigned to cover an animal’s death at the local zoo. Thanks to some whispered clues by a beleaguered zookeeper, as well as his own stubbornness, Joaquín uncovers a twisted connection between the story about the hippopotamus death that he is covering and the simultaneous death of a mob boss in New York City. Traversing Havana as he searches for links between the two crimes, Joaquín must deal with his strained family and his brother’s increasingly erratic behavior while also negotiating a strange love affair with a one-armed woman whose own past contains an association with the mob. Dancing to “Almendra” takes place in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, just two years before Fidel Castro’s revolutionary forces successfully overthrew the government, and the city itself is the most compelling character in the novel. Beautiful, wild, and wealthy, Havana seethes under the threat of the revolutionaries hiding in the hills, and it displays all the desperate joy and uninhibited love and betrayals of a society that knows its end is near. Mary Margaret Benson notes that the novel functions as “both social commentary and a wellconstructed mystery” yet the most compelling element of the novel is what Marcel Berlins describes as “a vivid portrait of a louche, exciting underworld that was soon to disappear.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Dancing to “Almendra” is set in Cuba in 1957, in the years preceding Fidel Castro’s successful overthrow of the government of Fulgencia Batista. The struggle against
the Batista government, known for its brutality and corruption, began with an uprising in 1953 in which Batista’s men captured Fidel Castro and his brother, Raúl. Batista, under external political pressure, released the brothers, and the revolutionary forces retreated for several years. The novel is, therefore, set in a time of political uncertainty that was characterized by decadence and money. The Mafia influences that Joaquín has been obsessed with since his childhood are an indication of the corruption of the Cuban government and its shaky economy.
W Themes The novel provides a historical portrayal of 1950s Cuba, a time and place not often used as a literary setting. It focuses on the turmoil and beauty of the years between Castro’s failed rebellion in 1953 and his successful takeover of the Batista government in 1959, a period filled with dancehalls, beautiful women, and sultry evenings. Joaquín is seduced by the lives of the rich and notorious, even while he investigates an international Mafia crime syndicate that deals in cavalier murder. The novel focuses on emotional as well as political secrets, and Joaquín’s journalistic task is complicated and often sidetracked by his personal life. The personal and political are, in Montero’s depiction of Havana, difficult to separate. As personal secrets proliferate—facts about Yolanda’s past, his brother’s secret political life, Lucy’s homosexuality—the connections between the characters multiply and maintaining trust either at the private or public level begins to seem impossible.
W Style Dancing to “Almendra,” which is divided between Joaquín’s investigations and his lover Yolanda’s memories, is difficult to categorize stylistically or generically. It contains characteristics of the hard-boiled 1940s crime
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MAJOR CHARACTERS UMBERTO ANASTASIA is the New York-based Mafia executioner who is murdered as the novel begins. Although he is a fictional character, he is based on real-life Mafioso Albert Anastasia. Dancing to “Almendra” was inspired by Anastasia’s murder at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City in 1957, an incident that Montero researched extensively in writing the novel. AURORA is the mother of Joaquín’s best friend and his first love interest. LUCY, Joaquín’s sister and ally, is shunned by her parents because of her homosexuality. Joaquín refers to her as “the great ambiguity that was Lucy.” MADRAZO is the managing editor of Prensa Libre, the paper that hires Joaquín to investigate the connection between the death of Anastasia and the dead hippopotamus. JOAQUÍN PORRATA is the twenty-two-year-old protagonist of Dancing to “Almendra.” A journalist in Havana in the 1950s, he is frustrated by the stories he is assigned to cover. A story about an escaped hippopotamus that is killed at the Havana zoo, however, turns out to be mysteriously related to the murder of Mafia executioner Umberto Anastasia in New York City on the same day. Porrata becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth behind this mysterious link, while at the same time dealing with his love for Yolanda and the secrets that emerge about his own tangled family relationships. SANTIAGO is Joaquín’s brother. Overwhelmingly social, he puts Joaquín in touch with Yolanda. After Santiago’s death, his family learns of his involvement with Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement. YOLANDA, whose real name is Fantina, is a beautiful, onearmed circus performer with whom Porrata falls in love. Yolanda has a mysterious past filled with odd lovers that weighs on her and confuses Joaquín. The narrative is interspersed with passages in which she remembers her early life and childhood, her start with the circus, and the events that lead to her meeting Joaquín.
novel, the detective novel, the memoir, and magical realism. The novel is structured like a detective story as it follows the investigation into the death of a hippopotamus at the Havana Zoo. When one of the zookeepers discloses to Joaquín a connection between the animal and a dead mob boss, Joaquín begins to investigate it and seeks to untangle lies from the truth. Although Joaquín’s adventures are wild and often surreal, the narrative voice is that of a journalist. He establishes the facts and explains as he proceeds the interconnections he finds between events and persons. The slightly flat realist tone contrasts
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Joaquín Porrata finds a connection between the death of a hippopotamus at a zoo and the assassination of Mafia kingpin Umberto Anastasia in Dancing to “Almendra”. ª Bettmann/Corbis
with the often terrifying events of the novel in the style of noir novelists such as Dashiel Hammett. A long-standing journalist, Montero effectively gives Joaquín the voice of a young newspaperman, capturing his desire for factual clarity, his wonder at a world of overwhelming decadence and fading beauty, and his growing recognition of the consequences of his actions. Several reviewers discuss magical, or magic, realism in relation to Dancing to “Almendra.” Magical realism, a term coined by the Caribbean writer Alejo Carpentier in the 1940s, refers to a style typically associated with Latin American writers in which fantastical events are narrated in a deadpan style. Montero’s style in the novel is not strictly magical realism, but it cultivates a similar tone by employing the manner and creed of a reporter against the nearly fantastical world of wealth and glory in Havana. Moreover, the aspects of the novel that tend towards the grotesque (Yolanda’s loss of an arm, the cast of circus performers, Lucy’s oddly expressed sexuality, a hippopotamus) are evocative of a carnivalesque world that is very close to magical realism. Yolanda’s memories, narrated in chapters interspersed within Joaquín’s story, are more lyrical and tend toward the nostalgic. Though her memories are far from TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dancing to “Almendra”
happy, they seem to match the beautiful melancholy that Joaquín sees in her and that the reader sees in the last days of Cuba’s decadent 1950s.
W Critical Reception Dancing to “Almendra” received mostly positive coverage, though it was not reviewed widely. Reviewers agree that Montero’s book is engaging and imaginative and that its survey of prerevolutionary Havana and Cuban society is both unusual and important. Bill Ott, in Booklist, lauds the novel for “probing beneath the surface to expose the tangled emotions and complex allegiances within a society on the brink of destruction,” and the reviewer in Publishers Weekly similarly remarks, “the drama of a nation disintegrating in a crisis is made very personal.” Reviewers also concur that Montero’s book is well researched and that the historical content does not interfere with the imaginative content of the novel. As
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mayra Montero was born in 1952 in Havana, Cuba, and spent part of her childhood in Puerto Rico. Montero’s father, the wellknown comedian and actor Manuel Montero, worked in both Cuba and Puerto Rico. She studied journalism in Puerto Rico and Mexico and worked as a foreign correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean region. Montero today lives in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column called “Antes que llegue el lunes” (“Before Monday arrives”) for the Puerto Rican daily newspaper El Nuevo Día. Montero writes in Spanish. Her books are widely translated, and most of them have been translated into English by Edith Grossman. Her books include Twenty-three and A Turtle, The Braid of the Beautiful Moon (a finalist for the Herralde award), and The Messenger. Dancing to “Almendra” is her first novel set in the Cuba of her childhood.
Dancing to “Almendra” begins two years before rebel forces led by Fidel Castro overthrow the Batista government in Cuba. ª Lester Cole/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dancing to “Almendra”
Publishers Weekly states, “Montero blends fact and fiction with narrative aplomb.” According to Laura Wilson for the Guardian, the wealth of content combined with Joaquín’s enthusiastic investigative spirit add to the “galloping pace” that makes Dancing to “Almendra” an “exuberant and riveting read.” More than one reviewer, however, found the wealth of detail, long list of characters, and energetic narrative to be confusing. As the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews comments, “there’s simply too much of everything.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Berlins, Marcel. Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Times [London]. Times Newspapers Ltd, 30 June 2007. Web. 22 Oct. 2010. Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Kirkus Reviews 74.23 (2006): 1193. Print. Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Publishers Weekly. 243.47 (2006): 30. Print. Montero, Mayra. Dancing to “Almendra”. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Farrar, 2007. Print. Ott, Bill. Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Booklist 1 Jan. 2007: 56. Print.
from the 1950s. http://cuba1952-1959.blogspot. com/2009/09/cuba-1950s-life-on-google-books. html Poet and critic Dana Gioia gives a brief historical account of magical realism (referred to here by Gioia as magic realism), followed by a detailed reading of its role in Gabriel García Márquez’s story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” http://www.danagioia.net/ essays/emarquez.htm This Web site, maintained by Dr. Antonio Rafael de la Cova, a professor at Indiana University at Bloomington, contains a wide selection of historical resources about the Cuban revolution. http://www. latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-revolution.htm For Further Reading
Chomsky, Aviva, Barry Carr, and Pamela Marie Smorkaloff, eds. The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. Print. This comprehensive sourcebook on Cuba ranges from the first descriptions of the island written by Christopher Columbus through the present today, including historical documents, images, fiction, and political writings.
Criticism and Reviews
English, T. J. Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution. New York: William Morrow, 2007. Print. English’s book gives an engaging, strongly narrative history of the commercial interests that the American Mafia held in 1950s Cuba and how Castro’s revolution brought the mob’s involvement in Cuba to an end.
Lewis, Jim. “Havana Nights.” Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. New York Times Book Review 18 Feb. 2007. Print. A long review in which the author expresses delight in the work.
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper, 1970. Print. This complicated genealogical novel is one of the seminal examples of magical realism.
Omang, Joanne. “Havana Noir.” Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Washington Post 13 May 2007. Print. A review that lauds Montero for her gritty, beautiful portrait of Havana.
Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana. New York: Viking, 1958. Print. Greene’s novel, set in Havana during the Batista regime, depicts a corrupt world of British spies. In 1959 it was made into a movie starring Alec Guinness.
Wilson, Laura. “Crime: Roundup of Recent Releases.” Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. Guardian [London] 27 June 2007. Print. Additional Resources
Wyman, Anna Julia. Rev. of Dancing to “Almendra,” by Mayra Montero. San Francisco Gate 29 Jan. 2007. Print. A positive review that attempts to catalog the many characters, events, ideas and themes in the novel. Gale Resources
“Mayra Montero.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
This Web site contains a collection of links to Life magazine covers and articles about Cuba that date
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Zamora, Lois Parkinson, and Wendy B. Faris, eds. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Print. Zamora and Faris’s collection of documents and articles about magical realism extend beyond Latin American literature, attempting to place the style in a global context. They include seminal manifests from Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Márquez and more recent critical accounts that place magical realism within the context of globalization and postcolonial studies. Jenny Ludwig
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dark Palace By Frank Moorhouse
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Set largely in 1930s Geneva, Dark Palace (2000) follows the career of Edith Campbell Berry, an Australian officer of the League of Nations. The League, convened in 1920 in the aftermath of World War I, was the first attempt to establish a world peacekeeping body. The character of Edith was originally introduced in Frank Moorhouse’s first novel, Grand Days (1993), which depicts the institutional history of the League. In Dark Palace, the companion book, Edith’s personal and professional experiences are intimately connected to the ill-fated outcomes of the international body. Dark Palace opens in 1931 as Edith celebrates a renewed five-year contract with the League. She is the private secretary to Swiss Under-Secretary-General Bartou. Despite the fact that her marriage to British journalist Robert Dole is failing, she strives to be an efficient employee and a polished cosmopolitan married woman. Through her service to the League, Edith pursues her ambition to become a new breed of international citizen, one deeply committed to the League’s goals of ensuring peace and disarmament. Edith’s professional challenges are played out against the vast backdrop of post-World War I diplomacy: the novel depicts the League’s intricate diplomatic responses to, among other crises, the United States’ flirtation with membership, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, and the Nazis’ obvious and threatening rise to power. In her work Edith’s actions and thoughts show her grappling with political, social, and personal realities. Constraints—and failure—plague both Edith and the League at all levels. At the close of the story in 1946, the League has collapsed and the United Nations is set to take its place.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, one of several settlements between Germany and the Allied powers at the end of World War I, gave birth to the League of Nations. Germany signed the treaty under protest, and despite President Woodrow Wilson’s support, the U.S. Congress refused to ratify it, weakening the League’s powers from the outset. The body’s main goal was to prevent another war through disarmament, arbitration of international disputes, and the implementation of social programs to foster the participating nations’ independence and strength. This shift toward peace, however, was inconsistent with the preceding century’s modus operandi, and the rubble and disillusionment that World War I left in its wake added to the organization’s appearance of naiveté. The perception of weakness created an undercurrent to the concrete challenges the League faced: encroaching Italian Fascism, German Nazism, U.S. isolationism, and British appeasement. In Grand Days Frank Moorhouse depicted the institutional history of the League of Nations. Dark Palace continues the story, tracing the League’s decline and eventual eclipse by the establishment of the United Nations. Edith embodies the ideals of the League. According to John Scheckter in World Literature Today, “She asserts her belief that self-regulation of appetites, adherence to declared principles, and alliance of selfinterest with the greater good will lead to enlightened resolution of personal and public issues.” What the League attempts in international relations, Edith tests in her personal life. The irony is that the reading audience knows that the League ultimately fails, and tension is created in the suggestion that Edith will, too. Few novels have focused on the historical involvement of women in the League. Several well-known women served as delegates to League assemblies and
Context
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Dark Palace
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALVA is Edith’s best friend from her university days. When Edith visits her former home, she renews her connection with Alva, and Edith realizes that many of her old friends remain parochial in habit and thinking. The meeting both confirms and isolates Edith in her role as an international citizen. EDITH CAMPBELL BERRY, the protagonist of both Grand Days and Dark Palace, is originally from rural southeast Australia. An officer of the League of Nations, she is deeply dedicated to its work of ensuring peace in the years after the Great War (World War I). Her personal and professional accomplishments and challenges are inextricably intertwined. In the face of disappointments on both fronts, she struggles with her idealism and eventually matures. ROBERT DOLE, a British journalist, is Edith’s brutish husband. As the novel opens, Edith and Robert’s marriage has failed. JOHN LATHAM is Edith’s mentor. Latham is a historical figure. A lawyer and politician, he led the Australian delegation to the League of Nations General Assembly in Geneva in 1926. Latham was eventually named chief justice to the High Court in 1935. SCRAPER is one of Edith’s university pals. She runs into him during a trip to Australia to visit her dying father. Scraper was horribly disfigured by a bomb in World War I, and in a scene of both pathos and intimacy, Edith overcomes her repulsion and offers him sexual pleasures. AMBROSE WESTWOOD is Edith’s transvestite bisexual lover, first introduced in Grand Days. In the aftermath of her failed marriage, Edith rekindles her ties with Ambrose. He is charming, intelligent, and a master of good taste with a sardonic sense of humor.
pressured the body on behalf of their causes. Within the organization, however, women were primarily offered lower-status appointments than men and had less significant responsibility. Moorhouse places Edith Campbell Berry in a position higher than any historical woman actually achieved.
W Themes In 1931, when Dark Palace begins, the League of Nations is already on the road to failure. International idealism has little leverage against misbehaving nations such as Italy, Japan, and Germany. The body has no military to enforce its decisions, and the imposition of economic sanctions is generally ineffective. Edith’s idealism and hope—generalized in the novel to everyone working for the League, from the national leaders on down—shows the human element tied to the
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organization’s decline. According to Peter Porter in the Guardian, “The League, as well as the people caught up in it, demonstrate for Moorhouse that human frailty is independent of country of origin.” Although Edith commands center stage in the novel, Moorhouse creates a parallel between the fate of the League and the protagonist’s personal life. The author builds up his readers’ desire that the League should succeed. The dramatic presentation of the rise of Nazism and the fall of Paris at the end of the 1930s, however, leads to the loss of all hope of peace and confirms the powerlessness of international law. Edith’s life, too, is presented in terms of idealism and morality. The failure of the League does not quite allow readers to infer that Edith’s optimism was entirely misplaced, only supremely challenged. In this arena Moorhouse inverts traditional assumptions of what is good and bad. Edith’s wellintentioned, conventional marriage to Robert has failed, and she resumes a former relationship with Ambrose, a cross-dressing bisexual who offers her greater satisfaction. By the close of the novel, Edith has decided to take another chance at love, her hope tempered by the hard realities she has experienced.
W Style Before the publication of Grand Days, Frank Moorhouse was primarily known as a short story writer. In A Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Bruce Bennett contends that as a stylist Moorhouse “has a special interest in the hints and clues that short fiction can provide on the changing myths of region or nation.” In his novels the author both solidifies and expands these ideas, shifting his ground to the myths of nation and world. Edith represents Australia in the changing international world order. Perceived as a lesser colonial power, Australia is positioned in the novel to be a significant actor in its own national life, and Edith has the same self-determining power in her professional position with the League. Both Grand Days and Dark Palace are historical novels. Moorhouse’s meticulous research and deft imagination are palpable, revealing a skill in blending actual incidents and people with those he creates. Dark Palace is also a romance. Edith’s continued affair with Ambrose, including the presentation of their sexual conduct, is rendered with sympathy yet without illusions. Moorhouse’s love story is rich in detail and psychological insight. The third-person narration of Dark Palace is limited to Edith’s point of view, following her every action and thought, including her dialogues with herself. In this way Moorhouse creates a fully realized, compelling heroine. Her self-awareness is effectively juxtaposed with the international action, and both are presented with wit and wordplay. Writing in the Australian, Brian Kiernan notes that the novel is “driven by dialogue . . . TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dark Palace
intricately and subtly structured, remaining eminently readable . . . and carried off so impressively.”
W Critical Reception Upon its publication Dark Palace received mainly positive reviews. In the Sunday Telegraph Julia Flynn remarks that the novel is “somber in tone, yet not cynical . . . spacious and leisurely, filled with long, chatty conversations” and that Moorhouse “handles diffuse material with a sure hand.” Quadrant’s P. P. McGuinness lauds the book as “one of the finest historical novels of [Australian] literature which, unlike the narrow ‘Australian’ point of view of so much of our literature, is able to place itself and Australia confidently in a world context.” Other reactions to the novel were more mixed or even unenthusiastic. Francis Henry King of the Daily Telegraph calls Moorhouse’s prose style—which employs short sentences and paragraphs—“jerk[y]” and “lurching.” King commends the story, however, and praises Moorhouse’s Edith as a “creation of whom any novelist would be proud.” Writing in the Weekend Australian, Peter Craven complains that “everything is done with a kind of cluttered slow-motion fluffiness.” He suggests
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Frank Moorhouse was born on December 21, 1938, in Nowra, New South Wales, Australia. He began his writing career as a newspaper journalist: in 1956 he served as a cadet reporter for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and in 1959 he moved to the Wagga Wagga Advertiser in New South Wales. He continued at various papers throughout the 1960s. In the 1970s he became a full-time writer, focusing on short fiction. Moorhouse’s early reputation rested on several story collections, including The Americans, Baby (1972) and The Electrical Experience (1974). His collection Forty-Seventeen (1988) won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and the Age Book of the Year Award. In a dramatic public relations fumble, after Grand Days was presented with the Miles Franklin Award, the prize was withdrawn because the novel was not sufficiently “Australian.” Moorhouse lives in Sydney.
that the prose is “best read in rapid gulps, like an airport novel. If it is read slowly, for the grain of voice, the cadence and the syntax, what becomes apparent is a level of infelicity, highlighting the book’s crudeness of effect.”
The League of Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland. Dark Palace is a fictional account of the failure of the League of Nations. ª Bettmann/ Corbis
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Dark Palace
In the story, Edith Campbell Berry—a young Australian officer in the League of Nations—witnesses the ongoing problems and eventual failure of the peacekeeping organization. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
Alan Lawson, in Australian Writers, 1950-1975, and Kiernan both remark on the Jamesian nature of Dark Palace. Lawson claims that Moorhouse “writes ‘about’ Australia in the way that Henry James wrote ‘about’ America,” by extricating his characters from their natural environments so that their national characteristics can be played out and examined against a European backdrop. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bennett, Bruce. “Moorhouse, Frank.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Thomas Riggs. 2nd ed. Detroit: St. James, 1999. 438-39. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 Nov. 2010. Craven, Peter. “Burdened by History.” Weekend Australian [Sydney] 2 Dec. 2000: R10. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Flynn, Julia. “Peacenik in Our Time: Julia Flynn Praises an Elegant Evocation of the Inter-War Years.” Rev.
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of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Sunday Telegraph [London] 3 Feb. 2002: n. pag. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Kiernan, Brian. “Libertarian Rules.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Australian [Sydney] 14 Feb. 2001: B16. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. King, Francis Henry. “The World Is Not Enough; Francis King Is Irked and Enthralled by a Saga about the League of Nations.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Daily Telegraph [London] 26 Jan. 2002. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Lawson, Alan. “Frank Moorhouse.” Australian Writers, 1950-1975. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 289. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. McGuinness, P. P. Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Quadrant Nov. 2000: 83. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Dark Palace
Porter, Peter. “How to Be Good: Peter Porter Admires a Saga of Idealism under Threat from History and Love under Threat from Convention.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media, 9 Mar. 2002: 10. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Scheckter, John. Review of Grand Days, by Frank Moorhouse. World Literature Today 69.1 (1995): 218(1). Educator’s Reference Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bliss, Carolyn. Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. World Literature Today 77.1 (2003): 91(2) Educator’s Reference Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. This largely positive review admires the novel’s heroine and calls Moorhouse “an old-school social realist with a postmodern appreciation of the kinky.” Howe, Renate. “Oral Sex and the League of Nations: The Genre of Faction in Grand Days and Dark Palace.” Journal of Australian Studies 71 (2001): 101+. Student Resource Center-College Edition Expanded. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Howe argues that the increasing professionalism of fiction writers in the postmodern era presents a challenge to historians. Dark Palace, she says, provides the opportunity to examine the “difference between fiction and fact, between what is imagined and what is real.” Hurley, Michelle. “Grand National.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Daily Telegraph [Surry Hills] 2 Dec. 2000: G11. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 28 Nov. 2010. In her eclectic review of the novel, Hurley quotes liberally from a discussion with Moorhouse about his feelings regarding the League of Nations, his protagonist Edith Campbell Berry, and the years he spent traveling and researching in preparation to write Dark Palace and Grand Days. Turner, Geoff. “Past Master.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Sunday Mail [Brisbane] 3 Dec. 2000: 30. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. Turner touts Edith’s strengths and suggests that reading Grand Days and Dark Palace in succession will double the reader’s pleasure. Walker, Nicola. “A Brilliant Career.” Rev. of Dark Palace, by Frank Moorhouse. Literary Review 45.1 (2001): 181+. General OneFile. Web. 23 Nov. 2010. This review of Dark Palace highlights the protagonist’s professional and personal relationship dynamics. Gale Resources
“Frank Moorhouse.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.
Detroit: St. James, 2001. 722-23. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 Nov. 2010. Open Web Sources
The United Nations’ League of Nations Archives offers links to research resources, photo archives, a time line, and a selected bibliography of scholarship on the League of Nations and its history. http://www. indiana.edu/~league/index.htm The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National Web site presents a talk Frank Moorhouse gave at the National Library of Australia in 2005. Moorhouse reflects on how writers use research material to invent fictional worlds or explore others’ lives. The library’s rich archives, he explains, fueled his imagination as he prepared to write Grand Days and Dark Palace. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/ stories/s1393994.htm The online edition of the Australian National University’s Australian Dictionary of Biography provides career and personal biographical information about Sir John Greig Latham (1877-1964). Latham led the Australian delegation to the League of Nations General Assembly in 1926 and appears in the novel as Edith’s mentor. http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/ A100002b.htm For Further Reading
Coltheart, Lenore. Laughing at Boundaries: The Idea of Edith Campbell Berry. Ed. David Lowe. London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, U of London, 1994. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. Working Papers in Australian Studies 99. Coltheart examines the role of women internationalists involved in the League of Nations and places Edith Campbell Berry in this setting. Duggan, Stephen Pierce, ed. The League of Nations: The Principle and the Practice. Ithaca: Cornell U Library, 2009. Print. Originally published in 1918, this volume describes the workings of the League of Nations at its inception. Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. Princeton UP, 1995. Print. Knock traces President Woodrow Wilson’s concept of the League of Nations as it evolved, examining it within the context of U.S. neutrality during the first two years of World War I. Moorhouse, Frank. Grand Days. New York: Pantheon, 1993. Print. The precursor to Dark Palace is set in the 1920s and introduces a younger Edith Campbell Berry to readers. Marta Lauritsen
Frost, Lucy. “Moorhouse, Frank.” Contemporary Novelists. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. 7th ed. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Day We Had Hitler Home By Rodney Hall
W Introduction The Day We Had Hitler Home (2000), by the Australian novelist and poet Rodney Hall, takes as its basis a fictional interlude in the life of its infamous title character. Just after the end of World War I, the future dictator shows up among a group of returning veterans in the remote Australian town of Yandilli. Despite his obvious personal defects, Hitler captures the attention of the young Audrey McNeil, the book’s protagonist, who eventually pursues him all the way back to Munich, Germany. There she dabbles in the artistic high life of interwar Germany before ultimately encountering the horrifying truth of what Hitler represents and of who she, in her acquiescence to the distorted morality of Nazism, has become. The book constitutes a seventh installment in a series that explores the history of Australia’s colonization through metaphorical and sometimes fantastic tales. Short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award in 2001, it won an Australian Literature Society Gold Medal that year. Though some reviewers have faulted the author for taking an approach that leaves readers little room to judge the story and characters for themselves, many others have lauded what Katharine England in the Advertiser calls “an admirable feat of creative erudition.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Throughout 1919, the year in which the story begins, soldiers made their way home from the battlefields of World War I (1914-1918). These veterans included not only the Australians and others on the victorious Allied side but also the defeated forces of Germany and the nations aligned with it. Among these was a thirty-year-old enlisted man named Adolf Hitler.
Little about Hitler’s biography up to that point suggested that he would one day become one of history’s most diabolically influential figures. A frustrated artist, he had been a vagabond before the German declaration of war in August 1914 presented him with an opportunity for glory in battle. He excelled as a soldier fighting on the Western Front in France, but a poison gas attack left him hospitalized, his face blistered and his eyes bandaged. When a chaplain delivered the news of Germany’s surrender on November 11, 1918, Hitler wept bitterly. He would later say that in this moment he realized that his life’s mission was to make Germany a great power. Hitler never traveled outside of Europe, let alone to Australia, but The Day We Had Hitler Home depicts him arriving in the remote Australian village of Yandilli among a boatload of returning soldiers. In reality he left the German army in 1919 to take a job in Munich as a police spy investigating radical groups. Among these was a small organization called the National Socialist German Workers Party—“Nazi” for short. Attracted by the Nazis’ brutal power tactics, Hitler soon quit his job to devote himself full time to the party. He had found the means of fulfilling his “mission,” which in time would bring about untold horrors that claimed millions of lives.
W Themes The central thematic concern of The Day We Had Hitler Home is the concept of “otherness”—that is, the recognition of differences between one’s own existence and the existence of others. In this novel, as in earlier works by Hall, Australia is depicted as the ultimate physical and geographical “other” to the rest of humanity, which views it literally from the opposite side of the planet. Likewise, the Australian characters gaze outward to the world beyond their shores and see things from a reversed viewpoint.
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The Day We Had Hitler Home
MAJOR CHARACTERS BELLO is an actor of Senegalese origin who becomes Audrey’s lover in Germany. His murder by the Nazis and Audrey’s realization that she is carrying his baby force her to abandon both Germany and her fascination with Hitler and Nazism. ETTY is an Aborigine who works for Sybil, Audrey’s older sister. As Audrey matures, she comes to regard Sybil’s abuse of Etty, and by extension the white Australians’ mistreatment of the Aborigines, as a crime not unlike the one Hitler seeks to perpetrate against the Jews. ADOLF HITLER is the object of Audrey’s fascination. He captivates her when he appears in her hometown of Yandilli among a group of Australian veterans returning from World War I. (This premise is entirely fictional: in reality Hitler never left Europe.) He travels with Immanuel to the former German colony of Papua New Guinea and thence to Germany, where Audrey later goes in search of the future dictator. AUDREY MCNEIL is the book’s protagonist. Eighteen years of age when the story begins, she is living with her sister, Sybil, and Sybil’s husband, Immanuel. Audrey resists Immanuel’s lecherous designs on her. When Hitler shows up in her remote hometown of Yandilli, she is captivated by him and ultimately travels to Germany on the pretext of returning a journal that supposedly belongs to him. Photo of Rodney Hall, author of the novel The Day We Had Hitler Home. Gaye Gerard/Getty Images
Audrey, who becomes fascinated with Hitler and ultimately follows him to Munich, explores further meanings of otherness. Her journey places her amid the poisonous atmosphere of Nazism, which has its own notion of the “other”: Jews, communists, and anyone else perceived as a threat. Although Audrey at first embraces Nazism, in time her exposure to life on the far side of the planet gives her a new perspective on the lives of her fellow human beings. Earlier Audrey had ignored her sister Sybil’s mistreatment of her servant Etty, an Aborigine whose people had lived in Australia long before the arrival of whites. As the novel progresses, however, Audrey’s view changes completely: “I accept something I never understood until today. That this land, the entire continent, once belonged to Etty’s people . . . living where they have belonged since before the pyramids were built. Imagine that: fugitives who belong.” She goes on to recognize that whereas she had viewed the Aborigines as the ones to be observed from the standards of Western society, she now realizes that “We are observed” by the Aborigines.
DILYS MCNEIL is Audrey’s mother, who, Audrey has been told, abandoned her to be raised by Sybil. IMMANUEL MOLOCH is Sybil’s rakish husband, an entrepreneur and adventurer who spies on Audrey and attempts to coax her into bed. SYBIL MCNEIL MOLOCH is Audrey’s sister, seventeen years her senior. Childish and petulant, she abuses her Aboriginal servant Etty and tries to ignore her husband’s philandering. When Hitler appears near the beginning of the book, she mistakes him for her German friend Dieter Leppert. OTTOLINE is Audrey’s child by Bello. The protagonist’s relationship with her mixed-race offspring serves as a benchmark of her increased understanding, both of herself and of the larger political events taking place around her.
W Style The Day We Had Hitler Home is a highly stylized book, though not so much in the writing as in the way it is presented. Consistent with the theme of opposition or otherness, the novel—in the view of Andrew Riemer, a critic for the Sydney Morning Herald—is “constructed in the manner of a palindrome,” or a word (such as radar) that reads the same backward and forward. “The turning
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rodney Hall was born in England in 1935 and later immigrated with his family to his mother’s native Australia. He worked as a freelance scriptwriter and actor during the 1950s and 1960s and earned a BA from the University of Queensland in 1971. Beginning with a book of verse in 1962, Hall has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry and nearly as many novels. Most notable among the latter are the six books that comprise the trilogies A Dream More Luminous than Love (1988-1993) and The Island in the Mind (1996), in which Hall employs imaginative literary motifs in an exploration of Australian history. He and his wife, Maureen Elizabeth MacPhail, have three children.
point,” Riemer explains, “is clearly identified by a page containing no more than these words: ‘so the tale hinges to look in on itself, the two equal leaves of a mirror’. Until that turning point, and for a good many pages beyond, Hall’s writing . . . allows the reader to enter into a troubling complicity with Audrey’s infatuation with Herr Hitler and her growing admiration for his ideals.” Beyond that page, Audrey’s attitude toward the “other” gradually reverses itself. Audrey narrates the story in a series of flashbacks and, true to her adopted profession of filmmaker, begins each chapter with an outline of how she would have shot the scene that follows. Though this method “might strike one immediately as lazy writing,” Stephen Corby comments in the Daily Telegraph, “it is in fact extremely effective. Hitler may be a central character, ducking and weaving through the text, but this is very much Audrey’s story.” In fact, the title character disappears from the foreground of the narrative early in the book, when, soon after his arrival in Yandilli, Audrey’s brother-in-law spirits Hitler away to the former German colony of Papua New Guinea. Thenceforth the improbable premise of the book fades away, and the Hitler of the narrative gradually blends with the one who actually existed. In Munich, where Hitler is by now emerging as a powerful leader, Audrey glimpses him from afar and encounters him directly only in a single, anticlimactic meeting. For the most part, however, he remains more a figment of Audrey’s imagination than a genuine character in the novel.
W Critical Reception The critical response to the novel has been mixed. Some commentators have praised Hall’s achievement in tying the narrative to the larger thematic landscape of the two
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preceding trilogies. Others, however, have faulted the author for a didactic, predictable approach both to the title character and to the story as a whole. In raising these objections, such reviewers are certainly not defending a mass murderer or even expressing reservations concerning the novel’s implausibility; rather, they question whether a character as farcically unappealing as the one in Hall’s book could really have wooed a nation of millions to commit crimes on a massive scale. Joanna Griffiths, writing in the Guardian, suggests that “Hitler . . . behaves as if he is Charlie Chaplin just dropped in from [the comedy] The Great Dictator: he stuffs himself with cream cakes, falls over, grunts and sneers and is highly sensitive about his moustache.” Quoting a scene in which Hitler attempts to molest Audrey (“lips slobbered along my jaw. . . . Terrified, I smelt wrecked things on his breath.”), Corby asks, “Was Hitler such a cad? We don’t know, but Hall knows we suspect he would have been.” Riemer criticizes the plot, commenting that “absurdity caps absurdity in a manner that would seem appropriate to a Mel Brooks farce, perhaps, but not to the work of an accomplished poet and novelist.” Writing in the Scotsman, Michael Faber observes that “Hall is so worried we won’t ask ourselves the right questions that he relentlessly feeds them to us.” Nevertheless, Faber also describes The Day We Had Hitler Home as “a sincere and generous-spirited book, commendably ambitious and adventuresome,” and Riemer judges it “quirky and almost consistently fascinating.” In the view of the Advertiser’s Katharine England, “Rodney Hall has filled a vast canvas with brilliant invention and bold surmise,” while Corby concludes that Hall’s “latest novel offers language to languor in. One turns some phrases over and over. It’s almost a pleasure to have Hitler home.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bradley, James. “The Lost Island.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Australian 11 Oct. 2000: B5. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Corby, Stephen. “Unleashing a Monster in Print.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Daily Telegraph [Sydney]. News Limited, 25 Nov. 2000: G10. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. England, Katharine. “Vast, Brilliant Canvas.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Advertiser [Adelaide]. Advertiser Newspapers Ltd, 11 Nov. 2000: M23. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Faber, Michael. “Fumblings with the Fuehrer.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Scotsman. Johnston Press Digital Publishing, 21 Apr. 2001: 7. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Griffiths, Joanna. “G’day, Adolf, Fancy a Tinny?” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 29 Apr. 2001. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Hall, Rodney. The Day We Had Hitler Home. Sydney: Picador, 2000. Print. Riemer, Andrew. “A World off Its Hinges.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 28 Oct. 2000: 3. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bennett, Vanora. “Ordinary Folk Who Helped Hitler to the Top.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall, and The Right Hand of Sleep, by John Wray. Times [London]. Times Newspapers Ltd, 11 Apr. 2001. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Compares The Day We Had Hitler Home and John Wray’s The Right Hand of Sleep, which is likewise set against the backdrop of events in central Europe during the interwar period. Bennie, Angela. “Unchained Melody.” Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 3 Feb. 2007: 30. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Interview with Hall that discusses The Day We Had Hitler Home in the context of his two trilogies and the later novel Love without Hope (2007). Brown, Phil. “Nazi Business.” Brisbane News 1 Nov. 2000. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Profile of Hall focusing on the personal experiences that influenced the writing of The Day We Had Hitler Home. Crawford, Stuart. “Flight of Fancy in Mid-Air Crash.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Herald [Glasgow]. Herald & Times Group, 28 Apr. 2001: 12. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Negative review that faults the novel for its improbable plot and its “simplistic and clumsy” portrayal of Hitler. Dempsey, Dianne. “Carrying the Can.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Courier-Mail [Brisbane]. Queensland Newspapers, 21 Oct. 2000: M9. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Positive review that notes Hall’s condemnation of Australian atrocities against the Aborigines. Horspool, David. “Today New South Wales, Tomorrow the World.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Daily Telegraph [London] 24 Mar. 2001: 5. Print. Favorable review citing other novels about Hitler, including Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge and The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H. by George Steiner. Meek, James. “Nuremberg Rally, Invasion of Poland, Dunkirk . . . ” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall, and other works. London Review of Books 6 Nov. 2001: 28-29. Print. Comparative review of nine novels, among them The Day We Had Hitler
Home, involving World War II and the events leading up to it. Sharkey, Michael. “The Sound and the Fuhrer.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Weekend Australian 21 Oct. 2000: R15. Positive review that cites the popularity of Hall’s work in both Australia and Germany. Sullivan, Jane. “Balancing the Monstrous and the Banal.” Age [Melbourne] 28 Apr. 2007: 30. Print. Discussion of The Day We Had Hitler Home in the context of other novels about Hitler, including Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest. Taylor, D. J. “Echoes of War.” Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 21 Apr. 2001. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Overview of recent fiction and nonfiction works involving military history, among them The Day We Had Hitler Home. Vile, John. “Tyrant Who Went the Distance.” Rev. of The Day We Had Hitler Home, by Rodney Hall. Hobart Mercury 16 Sept. 2000: 50. Print. Mixed review that questions whether Hall successfully presents plausible reasons why Germans would have rallied to Hitler’s cause. Gale Resources
“Rodney Hall.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 69. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 October 2010. “Rodney Hall.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 51. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. “Rodney Hall.” Contemporary Novelists. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. 7th ed. Detroit: St. James, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. “Rodney Hall.” Contemporary Poets. Ed. Thomas Riggs. 7th ed. Detroit: St. James, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. “Rodney Hall.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Selina Samuels. Vol. 289: Australian Writers, 19501975. Detroit: Gale Group, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
A doctoral thesis, The Grotesque Poetics of Rodney Hall’s Dream Trilogies (2000) by Greg Ratcliffe of the University of Wollongong, Australia, is available on the Research Online page of the university’s Web site. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/845 The Web site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation includes a recording and a transcript of Hall’s Alfred Deakin lecture, “Being Shaped by the Stories We Choose from Our History.” http://www.abc.net. au/rn/deakin/content/session_4.html
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An interview with Hall appears on the Booktopia Blog Web site. http://blog.booktopia.com.au/2010/04/ 27/feature-rodney-hall-author-of-popeye-nevertold-you-answers-ten-terrifying-questions/ A guide to the papers of Rodney Hall, held by the National Library of Australia, is available on the library’s Web site. http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms4834 On its Web site, the Australian newspaper the Age features an overview of the Miles Franklin Award short-list writers and books, including Hall and The Day We Had Hitler Home. http://www.theage.com. au/news/books/the-prize-writers/2008/06/12/ 1212863841291.html?page=fullpage For Further Reading
Bainbridge, Beryl. Young Adolf. London: Duckworth, 1978. Print. Like The Day We Had Hitler Home, Young Adolf depicts the future dictator in a setting he never actually visited, in this case the British city of Liverpool in 1912. Hall, Rodney. A Dream More Luminous than Love: The Yandilli Trilogy. Sydney: Picador, 1994. Print. This trilogy, which includes the novels Captivity Captive (1988), The Second Bridegroom (1991), and The Grisly Wife (1993), portrays Hall’s fictional town of Yandilli during the nineteenth century. ———. The Island in the Mind. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996. Print. This trilogy consists of the novels Terra Incognita, The Lonely Traveller by Night, and Lord Hermaphrodite and chronicles the period leading up to the discovery and colonization of Australia. The Day We Had Hitler Home is the seventh installment in a series made up of The Island in the Mind and the books in the Dream More Luminous than Love trilogy.
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Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939. Print. Providing a view inside Hitler’s mind, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) is both autobiography and blueprint for the crimes he would unleash when he took power. A committee from the New School for Social Research performed the translation for this edition. Mailer, Norman. The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007. Print. In this last work of the prominent American writer’s career, Hitler is envisioned through the eyes of a demon named Dieter. Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. New York: Random House, 1998. Print. Rosenbaum studies the moral and psychological aspects of the dictator’s character. Rosenfeld, Alvin. Imagining Hitler. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985. Print. This volume offers a highly critical examination of novels about Hitler, including George Steiner’s The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H. Rosenfeld, Gavriel. The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print. Rosenfeld examines a wide range of fiction works on Hitler. Steiner, George. The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H. Boston: Faber, 1981. Print. In Steiner’s novella, widely cited as one of the most controversial fiction works on Hitler, the dictator is captured in South America thirty years after the end of World War II and put on trial. At the story’s climax, Hitler proclaims himself the Jews’ benefactor because the Holocaust made possible the establishment of Israel as a state. Judson Knight
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The Days of Abandonment By Elena Ferrante
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment (2005) tells the story of a woman’s reactions across approximately six months to the unexpected news that her husband is leaving their marriage. The story begins in April when the husband quietly announces his decision, and it extends through August as the wife’s emotional state reaches its nadir and then begins to stabilize. Told in the first person from the wife’s point of view, the events are shaped and interpreted through the haze and growing paranoia of Olga’s descent into near-madness, including her beating up the family dog, stalking her husband and his mistress and later attacking them physically in the street, driving dangerously, and putting her children at risk in several ways. She stops personal hygiene, neglects the apartment, and sleeps through the day, ignoring the time she ought to pick up the children from school. At the same time, her refined language deteriorates into vulgarity and obscenity. During the summer her mental state reaches psychotic levels as she dissociates and hallucinates, suffers short-term memory loss, and fails to make meals or pay the bills. By August 4, which she calls “the hardest day of the ordeal of [her] abandonment” (88), she is at a point of near-total incapacitation, hearing voices, seeing her face distort or come apart in the bathroom mirror, and failing to address the urgent needs of a sick son and the family dog that is near death. The rise from this point is in the near term assisted by her neighbor Aldo Carrano and in the longer term by her gradual realization that she does not love her husband any more. She begins to get a grip on her daily tasks and finds work; the suggestion is she finds comforting companionship with Carrano. Originally published in 2002 as I giorni dell’abbandono, Ferrante’s novel was a controversial best seller in Italy for a year or more.
The literary context for The Days of Abandonment lies in two allusions to literature about adultery and the dissolution of marriage and the disastrous effects these experiences can have on women. These allusions occur on the morning of the “hardest day,” when Olga looks through her notebook and sees quotations from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed (1967) and from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). She does not remember writing the quotations in this notebook, does not remember underscoring the Tolstoy quotations in red. The transcribed passages consist of questions Anna Karenina asks herself right before the train runs over her, killing her: “Where am I? What am I doing?” A writer herself and feeling similarly desperate, Olga identifies with the suicidal Anna. Both Tolstoy and de Beauvoir saw the potential dangers for women in marriage, saw the way male prerogative can exercise itself at women’s expense, and saw the way sexual impulses can ruin people’s lives. In the scene in which Olga examines her notebook, Ferrante draws the reader’s attention to this novel’s literary context. Ferrante invites the reader to consider the persistence of stories about scorned woman, about marriages that run amuck, about sexual relationships that are culturally defined and individuals who fail to fit the assigned mold or press themselves into it only to awaken one feeling distorted and cheated. These issues are widely known and can make for predictable plots, as some reviewers of The Days of Abandonment noted, but Ferrante’s handling is fresh and interesting: In this particular scene, Ferrante has her character wonder about having written down and underscored the questions another novelist’s character asks, thus identifying the dangerous condition Olga has reached and the universality of her experience. One historical context for The Days of Abandonment is the subject of divorce in predominantly Catholic Italy.
Context
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CARLA becomes Mario’s mistress at the age of twenty-one. ALDO CARRANO, a cellist, lives in the apartment below Olga and develops a sexual relationship with her and helps her and her children. EMILIA, called the poverella (meaning poor one), a Naples woman long-since deceased, was abandoned by her husband and tried to commit suicide. As a child Olga knew Emilia, and after her own marital separation, Olga often thought about her. LEA FARRACO, wife of Mario’s colleague, is Olga’s friend and serves as a go-between for Mario and his estranged wife. GIANNI, ten, is the son of Mario and Olga. ILARIA, seven, is the daughter of Mario and Olga. MARIO, forty, is an engineer at the Polytechnic in Turin, who suddenly leaves his wife Olga for the much younger Carla. OLGA, thirty-eight, is suddenly abandoned by her husband Mario and develops severe depression in the months that follow his departure. The Days of Abandonment follows a woman named Olga as she reacts to being left by her husband. ª Ikon Images/Corbis
The Roman Catholic Church historically prohibited divorce and controlled under what specific circumstances the church would grant an annulment. Given that the Vatican is located in Rome and most Italians are Catholic, the church has exerted a particularly strong influence on Italians, shaping for centuries the national attitude toward marriage and divorce. Indeed, it was not until 1971 that divorce became legal in Italy. A referendum in 1974 passed by a broad majority, preserving the legality of divorce. By the early 2000s, adultery and divorce were facts of life, however scandalous they might seem to many Italians.
W Themes The main theme of The Days of Abandonment concerns the psychological and emotional adjustment a wife undergoes in the aftermath of a husband’s decision to leave the marriage. It depicts the progression through grief and depression during which the abandoned wife reacts and adjusts to the husband’s departure, depicting the way a woman’s psyche and the world she inhabits can virtually come apart during the traumatic process of reconstruction and the challenge of starting anew. Olga must envision herself and her world in a new way, and doing so takes time. Told from the woman’s point of view, the novel takes the reader into the typically hidden part of this adjustment, describing how a woman reviews
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her own life, thinks about the lessons she learned as a child from her mother and from other women, reflects on the way she saw herself before marriage and after having children. Part of the adjustment requires this painful selfexamination that engenders growing awareness but at the cost of letting go of one’s past hopes, one’s past beliefs about oneself. The message in Ferrante’s handling seems to be that survival of the death of a marriage is possible, but uglier and more painful than perhaps people realize. Another theme in the novel concerns how time is experienced by a person going through such emotional upheaval and self-doubt. Olga loses track of time, misses whole days in sleep, feels suddenly a child again and at the same time old beyond her years. She looks at her sevenyear-old daughter and imagines her “old, her features deformed, near death” (89). She thinks back to when the children were babies, how she waited for the moment before her pregnancies to recur when she was “young, slender, energetic, shamelessly certain [she] could make [herself] a memorable person” (92). Even on her hardest and most delusional day, Olga realizes her “grammatical tenses weren’t correct” (89), yet she begins to intuit that the past is past. She tells herself, “Time is a breath . . . today it’s my turn, in a moment my daughter’s, it had happened to my mother, to all my forebears” (89). As she realizes the death of her marriage, Olga goes into a warp about what being a mother and having TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Days of Abandonment
children means, and maybe these distortions are akin to her distorted sense of time and her losing a grip on her verb tenses. In her worst mental condition, she imagines that motherhood turned her into “a lump of food” her “children chewed without stopping, a cud” (92). Her children were “bloodsuckers,” and she was permanently polluted with a “stink of motherhood” (93) that could not be washed off. Ferrante ran the risk of creating a protagonist that many readers may find reprehensible; the author ran this risk in order to dissect the internal experience of abandonment, an experience so grave it threatens to cause the character to abandon her own sense of self and all she once was able to do to fulfill societal expectations. The message seems to be that when a person is traumatized as Olga is, the person’s sense of self deteriorates and assessment of relationships turns dark.
W Style The Days of Abandonment consists of forty-seven brief chapters that move the plot ahead at different rates. The first chapter describes only the lunch announcement by Mario of his decision to leave the marriage. Subsequent chapters cover a week, even several weeks at a time. But for the hardest day, August 4, the pace slogs into slow motion, hours stretching across sixteen chapters, a long, drawn-out day in which Olga stalls and breaks apart, and readers feel increasing tension regarding the urgent problems she cannot address. As Olga’s psychic condition worsens, her ability to function constricts as well. This constriction is conveyed literally by the setting, with is described with enclosure details. Olga and her children are locked into the hot apartment without neighbors, without a phone, without a computer hook up, without any way to get outside help. Olga goes out of her husband’s study, closing the door on the dying dog. She locks herself into the bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror as the tub overflows. She cannot operate the dead-bolt security locks she had installed in the apartment door. The vicelike tightening described in these passages underscore Olga’s paralysis. The story is told in first-person point of view in the past tense. The protagonist looks back on this time from some future point when she is better, when she is holding a job, managing household tasks and her children’s needs, when “the obscene language suddenly disappeared” and she was “ashamed” of having used it (154). Yet to convey the immediacy of the experience, she does not frame the memory by putting it into a healthy perspective. Rather, especially during the interminable hardest day, she describes how she hallucinated that Emilia, the scorned woman of her childhood, appeared in the apartment, sitting at Mario’s desk, writing in Olga’s notebook; she describes hearing her warning that there
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym) was born in Naples, Italy. Her first novel, L’amore molesto, 1992, was published in English as Troubling Love in 2006, and her second novel, I giorni dell’abbandono, 2002, was published in English as The Days of Abandonment in 2005. She also published La frantumaglia (2003) and La figlia oscura (2006), the latter published in English as The Lost Daughter (2008). A celebrated contemporary Italian novelist, Ferrante eschews public attention and keeps her actual identity a secret.
was little time left. Olga remembers not wanting to engage in “so gaudy” (16) a grief, as the poverella (the poor woman) expressed, whining and crying out in the night for all the neighbors to hear. Olga describes how frightened she was by “the nearly imperceptible images of the mind, the scarce syllables . . . a simple violet flash of meanings, a green hieroglyphic of the brain” (154-55). She describes how she smacked herself in the face and then smiled, and only when her daughter mentioned it, did she realize she had bloodied her own nose. In these and other ways, Ferrante uses the narrowest point of view to telescope back into psychosis and examine it close up, not as if with a magnifying glass but as from within the smear on the slide beneath that glass.
W Critical Reception Published first in 2002, The Days of Abandonment made it to the best-seller lists in Italy and stayed there for about a year. The story of adultery and a wife abandoned for a mistress nearly half her age, once it was published in English by Europa Editions, made a popular read in the United States, although critics were not unqualified in their praise. Many commented on the extreme emotionality, obscenity, and violence that make up much of this novel. A review in the New Yorker called the novel “excruciatingly blunt”; Lisa Nussbaum described the novel as “raw and gut-wrenching,” and Olga’s emotions as boiling over “like molten lava, searing everything they touch.” Jean Hanff Korelitz described the deserted wife Olga as going through “a purgatory of rage and bereavement.” Many found the raw depiction of Olga’s deterioration striking, but some found it shocking, even repugnant. While critics admired the prose, they did so despite Ferrante’s reliance on a predictable plot. Korelitz, for example, stated that “The novel . . . progresses in a predictable, even classic, order,” and the familiar signposts of “anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance” are
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easily identified. Janet Maslin also commented on the predictability, but she explained what makes this novel different from others: “The template for the hot-blooded Italian best seller . . . is familiar, in fiction and in life. But the raging, torrential voice of the author is something rare.” The voice, the first-person narrative of the wife, Olga, makes this work different, according to Maslin. Connected to the effect of voice is the shift in the novel from standard English to vulgarity and obscenity. Korelitz commented on this progression, noting how alarmed Olga is by her descent from refined language to sarcasm to obscenity. Radhika Jones explored Olga’s progression, linking it to Olga’s memory of the poverella (the poor woman abandoned by her husband whom Olga knew as a child). Jones pointed out that the central issue is how one copes with this kind of abandonment. The answer is that there are a range of ways, and at one extreme is the poverella “whose noisy, ceaseless grief . . . was so excessive that it became repellent” and at the other extreme is “the relentless interiority of Olga’s anguish, her obsession with fantasizing her husband’s new life and questioning her own.” Jones explained that the “abandonment” is not only Mario’s decision to leave his marriage but also “the danger that Olga will abandon herself—her identity, her sanity, her capacity to live.” This risk reaches its most serious state on that longest and most painful day, August 4, when Olga is hounded by the dog’s death and her son’s rising temperature and cannot get help. Jones explained it this way: “As her psychic world narrows, so does her physical one, until she must literally combat death within the walls of her own apartment, and time seems to slow down to draw out the epic nature of her struggle.” Jones concluded that “what is perhaps most amazing about this novel . . . is that [Ferrante] is able to steer her characters toward a point of grace, not beyond pain, but through it.” That description of the ending is stated more strongly than the one given by the New Yorker reviewer, who said the novel ends on a “redemptive note,” which is a “welcome reprieve.” Motoko Rich commented on the good work of Europa Editions, a press that was established in 2005. Maslin agreed, noting that Europa Editions promised to be an excellent source “for European fiction for Englishspeaking readers.” Maslin also gave a nod to the translator, Ann Goldstein, who gives the novel its “breathless grammatical momentum.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Briefly Noted.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. New Yorker 31 Oct. 2005: 87. Print. Ferrante, Elena. The Days of Abandonment. Trans. Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2005. Print.
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Jones, Radhika. “Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. Literary Review 22 Sept. 2005. Print. Korelitz, Jean Hanff. “Il Divorzio.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. New York Times Book Review 25 Sept. 2005: 27(L). Print. Maslin, Janet. “The Days of Abandonment: Books/ Fiction.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. International Herald Tribune 8 Sept. 2005. Print. Nussbaum, Lisa. “Ferrante, Elena. The Days of Abandonment.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2005: 44. Print. Rich, Motoko. “Publisher Finds Success in Translations.” New York Times 26 Feb. 2009: C1. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. complete-review.com. Complete Reviews, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Faults Ferrante for relying on “fairly obvious devices,” such as the breakdown in communications, and cautions that this novel may not appeal to some readers. Saunders, Kate. “The Days of Abandonment.” Rev. of The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante. Times [London], 22 July 2006. Print. Calls novel a “harrowing dissection” of the experience of being dumped and a warning to anyone considering adultery. Gale Resources
“Elena Ferrante.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Sept. 2010. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1000186758&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w For Further Reading
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Destroyed Woman. New York: Collins-G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969. Print. The title story, one of three, is about a woman dealing with the fact that her husband is having an affair, a story alluded to in The Days of Abandonment. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Norton, 1993. Print. In the Norton Critical Edition, complete with secondary materials, the story of a woman who cannot resolve the conflict between being a mother and being an artist. Ferrante, Elena. Troubling Love. New York: Europa Editions, 2006. Print. Tells the story of a woman who returns to Naples to investigate her mother’s mysterious death by drowning and to uncover the family history of marital abuse and the private life the mother had. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Regarding the title story in this collection, a firstperson account of a nineteenth-century woman who descends into madness as a result of receiving the so-called rest cure.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. George Gibian. New York: Norton, 1995. Print. The great novel about adultery, cruelty, and suicide, mentioned in The Days of Abandonment as important to the abandoned wife Olga.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Print. Famous novel about depression that leads to suicide attempt by an ambitious young woman growing up in the 1950s.
Adaptations
The Days of Abandonment. Dir. Roberto Faenza. Perf. Margherita Buy, Goran Bregovic, Luca Zingaretti, and Alessia Goria. 2006. Film. Melodie Monahan
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De Niro’s Game By Rawi Hage
W Introduction Canadian photographer Rawi Hage’s debut novel, De Niro’s Game, is the coming-of-age story of a young Lebanese man struggling to escape the senseless and random sectarian violence raging in Beirut in the 1980s. It also chronicles Bassam’s friendship with his childhood friend, George, whose predilection for violence and the game of Russian roulette earns him the name De Niro, after the American actor and the role he played in the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter. As both young men get involved in the underworld of crime, politics, and drugs endemic in 1980s Beirut, they are faced with moral choices that will determine their future paths. De Niro’s Game was published to laudatory reviews and was nominated in 2006 for both the Giller and Governor General’s literary prizes. In 2008 it received the highly regarded International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Reviewers praise the novel as a powerful debut that provides insight into the political turmoil in Lebanon in the 1980s and into how that violence affected Beirut citizens. As Stephan Christoff observes, “Turning the pages of De Niro’s Game, one is transported to the war-torn streets of Beirut in the midst of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, a tragic reality of flying bombs and bullets.”
W Literary and Historical Context
De Niro’s Game is set in 1980s Beirut, Lebanon, a country torn apart by sectarian strife, an Israeli invasion, and a string of bloody assassinations of national political figures. Once part of the Ottoman Empire, and then under French control in the early twentieth century, Lebanon is a country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Syria and Israel. Independent since 1943, Lebanon has been buffeted by
strife for many years but is also recognized as a regional center for finance and trade. In 1975 civil war broke out in Lebanon between the pro-Western, right-wing Christian Maronite leadership and Muslim antigovernment militias, who were bolstered by massive waves of Palestinian refugees crossing the border from Israel and the support of the militant Islamic group the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Rapid urbanization and a widening gap between rich and poor also contributed to civil unrest. In April 1975 a busload of Palestinian refugees was ambushed by a militia associated with the Christian Maronite Phalangists, the main Christian political party in Lebanon. The attack sparked retaliatory strikes by pro-Palestinian and antigovernment groups, quickly blossoming into widespread sectarian strife. In 1976 Syria intervened to impose a peace deal. When a rift between Syria and the Maronite government led to more conflict, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and bombarded urban areas, causing massive death and injury. That same year, the Phalangists carried out a massacre of Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, killing between eight hundred to fifteen hundred people. Later evidence showed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) facilitated the massacres. Israel withdrew from Beirut, and Syria stepped in again in 1986. By this time, factions, splinter groups, organized crime, and warlords were also involved, trying to advance their own interests, with Beirut as their battleground. After a power struggle in 1988, a new president, Michel Awn, was appointed, but was driven out in 1990 after alienating the United States and Syria. By 1990 the civil war was over, killing an estimated 150,000 people and devastating the country’s economy.
W Themes One of the central themes of De Niro’s Game is religion and the damage human beings can cause in the name of religion. During the novel, Beirut is torn apart by
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sectarian violence between Christian and Muslim militias, and many innocent people are killed. Lives are ruined and irrevocably changed, with people having to do things they would never have thought they would have to do, just to survive. As Nigel Beale observed in his Washington Post review of the novel, “If anything, the book champions secularism and highlights the evil of which organized religion, regardless of brand name, is capable. Attacking God so directly makes the book a statement against all religion, Hage says, against the imposition of narrow standards of morality on society, not just in the Middle East, but around the world.” Hopelessness is another key thematic concern in De Niro’s Game. With constant bombardments, deaths, and chaos surrounding them, young people such as Bassam and George look forward to a future without hope or promise. Survival is often by luck, as the bombs falling from the sky fall indiscriminately. Without hope, many of the young people turn nihilistic and adopt games that reflect their despair. Hage’s novel is named after one such game: De Niro’s game is Russian roulette, played by Robert De Niro’s character in the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter. In the game, players take a gun and load one bullet, leaving the other chambers empty. They then spin the chambers, put the gun against their head and pull the trigger, hoping that the bullet is in another chamber. The randomness of the game mirrors the randomness of living in a war-torn country, where innocent people on the street are killed every day simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
W Style De Niro’s Game is narrated by the protagonist, Bassam, and traces his coming of age in war-torn Beirut to his escape to Paris, where he begins to reflect on his experiences and figure out what has happened to him and his friendship with George. Reviewers often comment on Hage’s filmic narrative approach to the novel—blunt, quick, with flashes to other characters and scenes. As Nigel Beale contends, “The feel of the novel is frenzied, with great movement and cinematic cuts. Passages of reflection, contemplation and quiet suddenly break to violence. This, explained Hage, is what the war was like for him.” Many critics focus on the flatness of Hage’s prose— not necessarily a pejorative term in this case. “Applied to Rawi Hage’s debut novel of violence and revenge in the bombed-out streets of Beirut, the word flat is praise,” argues reviewer Craig Taylor. “Throughout this novel Hage barely wavers from a flattened, declarative style that feels weighted with that particular dread that characterizes places where bombs rain down and most people have access to firearms. In the midst of its civil war, Lebanon is a place where nothing stays upright for long. Beirut has been flattened, and the aspirations of those who traverse its rubble have been destroyed with it.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS BASSAM is the narrator of De Niro’s Game. Living in Beirut during the brutal civil war, Bassam’s situation further deteriorates when his best friend, George, becomes involved with the Christian militia and starts selling drugs. After Bassam’s parents are killed during a bombing and he finds his own life in danger, he escapes Beirut, and arrives in Paris. It is there that he meets Rhea and begins to process his experiences in order to come to terms with his life. GEORGE is Bassam’s childhood friend, disenfranchised by the Lebanese Civil War. Nicknamed De Niro, George works at a small betting parlor and distinguishes himself by his recklessness. He is drawn to the Christian militia and soon gets involved with the world of drugs and violence surrounding it. He eventually betrays Bassam and steals Rana, his girlfriend. RANA is Bassam’s girlfriend in Beirut. She eventually leaves him for George. RHEA is George’s half-sister. Bassam and Rhea meet when he arrives in Paris. She is curious about George, and asks Bassam to tell her of their lives and hardships in Beirut during the war. Unable to tell her the truth, he makes up stories to tell her.
Other critics have praised Hage’s ability to depict action and avoid didacticism and melodrama. As M. Wayne Cunningham notes, “The excitement of Hage’s action-packed plot is supplemented by his visually and viscerally descriptive language, often of the war’s violent impact upon the innocent—whole neighborhoods destroyed, mothers mourning, a child dying in Bassam’s arms. There is no preaching about the excesses of war, only the showing.”
W Critical Reception Critics regard De Niro’s Game as a highly successful debut novel. It was nominated in 2006 for both the Giller and Governor General’s literary prizes, and two years later received the highly regarded International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. As M. Wayne Cunningham maintains, “In all, De Niro’s Game is an amazing feat for an author writing in English as his third language— after Arabic and French—and well-deserving of ten thousand plaudits.” A number of reviewers focus on Hage’s prose and his ability to make the violent streets of Beirut come alive for readers. Craig Taylor notes that Hage has “vividly retrieved a time of pockmarked streets, cratered houses, and despair. But Hage, who survived nine years of civil war, is not planting any trees or prettifying the area in this
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rawi Hage was born in 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon. He was raised a Christian Maronite. When he was boy, a bloody civil war broke out in Beirut between Muslim-backed political groups and Christian Maronite forces. When he was eighteen years old, he moved to New York, where he lived for nine years and attended the New York Institute of Photography. He then settled in Montreal, Canada, in 1992. He worked as a retirement home security guard, then as a commercial photographer while attending Dawson College. He later received a BFA from Concordia University. He became involved in writing after keeping a journal for a photography exhibit. Hage received a grant from the Quebec Art Council to write a book of short stories, but wrote a novel, De Niro’s Game, instead. It was published in 2006 and was nominated for both the Giller and Governor General’s literary awards, and received the 2006 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. In 2008 De Niro’s Game received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. That same year his second novel, Coachroach, was published. Hage’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He currently lives in Montreal.
look back. This is a grim, flat book. Hage’s flatness gives it the right tone of bruised emotion, disconnectedness, and violence; it’s what makes this such an effective debut.” Hage’s treatment of the friendship between Bassam and George is also a focus for some critics. “It’s a hallucinatory vision of how war corrupts even friendship,” Nigel Beale contends in his review of the novel. “De Niro’s Game is a work of literature, but due to its subject matter it also contributes to history and memory. Hage stays away from conclusions, preferring to present ambiguous, complex characters as representatives of humanity’s dark side, which he believes we should all face and talk about.” Beale also notes the novel’s universal appeal. “Written in English and calling upon Arabic poetry and French philosophy, De Niro’s Game forms an intriguing trilingual hybrid that should cement its appeal worldwide.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Beale, Nigel. “Sudden Death for the Home Team.” Washington Post Book World (24 June 2008). Web. 23 July 2010.
A destroyed car is evidence of a bombing attack in Beirut, Lebanon. In De Niro’s Game, Bassam leaves the violence of Beirut after a bombing kills his parents. ª M.I Stock photos / Alamy
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In De Niro’s Game, Bassam tries to escape the violence of the Lebanese Civil War during the 1980s. ª Megapress / Alamy
Christoff, Stephan. “Lebanon: Shadows of War.” Dominion 44 (13 Apr. 2007). Web. 23 July 2010. Cunningham, M. Wayne. “Ten Thousand Plaudits.” January Magazine (May 2007). Web 23 July 2010. Taylor, Craig. Rev. of De Niro’s Game, by Rawi Hage. Quill & Quire (June 2006). Web. 23 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Rawi Hage’s Long Day’s Journey into Secularism.” Arts & Opinion 6 (2007). Web. 23 July 2010. Interview with Hage that traces his evolving relationship with religion and his literary influences. Wagner, Vit. “De Niro’s Game Wins Rich Prize.” Toronto Star 13 June 2008. Web. 23 July 2010. Considers De Niro’s Game a Canadian novel and discusses the impact of receiving the IMPAC prize on Hage’s life and work. Waters, Juliet. “Dogs of War.” Montreal Mirror 22-28 June 2006. Web. 23 July 2010. Discusses Hage’s success with the publication of De Niro’s Game and some of the key themes of the novel.
Gale Resources
“Hage, Rawi.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
To learn more about Lebanon’s civil war, the Global Security website at http://www.globalsecurity.org traces the origins of the conflict, chronicles the major figures and events, and provides background on the key political factions involved in the war. The Tanbourit website, at http://www.tanbourit.com/ lebanon_war.htm, also has a comprehensive overview of the conflict. Rawi Hage’s HarperCollins website, at http://www. harpercollins.com, has a short biography of the author and information on De Niro’s Game. Lebanon’s Ministry of Tourism’s website offers a plethora of information on attractions, events, and sightseeing opportunities in the country. More than twelve thousand pictures of Lebanon are on the site, which also includes historical and cultural background for interested readers http://www.lebanon-tourism. gov.lb.
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De Niro’s Game For Further Reading
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Mentioned in De Niro’s Game, The Stranger explores the senseless killing of a stranger by a young Algerian man. Critics regard Camus’s novel as one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Atheneum, 1990. A detailed history of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath.
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Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. Rev. ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. A historical and psychological study of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War. This work received the 1989 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Hage, Rawi. The Cockroach. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2008. Hage’s second novel follows a misanthropic, thieving immigrant living in Montreal. Margaret Haerens
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Dead Europe By Christos Tsiolkas
W Introduction In Dead Europe, Christos Tsiolkas examines the forces, both ancient and modern, that have shaped the lives of Europeans in the twenty-first century. The primary narrative focuses on the thirty-six-year-old Isaac Raftis, a gay Australian of Greek heritage, as he explores the dark underbelly of both modern Europe and his own psyche. A secondary plotline set in a Greek village during the 1940s delves into ancient tales of ghosts and vampires to uncover the roots of a curse hanging over Isaac and his family. Although it has earned acclaim from a wide array of critics and won the Book of the Year Fiction Award from the Australian newspaper the Age in 2006, Dead Europe has also elicited strong negative responses. The book offers an almost unrelievedly grim portrayal of the characters and events it depicts, and its pages abound with scenes of furtive sexual couplings, abuse, and bloodlust. Most controversial of all is its employment of anti-Semitic imagery to explore what judges for the Age prize describe as “poisonous, atavistic hatreds that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization.”
W Literary and Historical Context
As a travel narrative, Dead Europe belongs to a literary tradition that dates back to Homer’s Odyssey and that includes hundreds of fiction and nonfiction works by authors ranging from Marco Polo to Mark Twain. Tsiolkas’s novel is far more than a travelogue, however; rather, it exposes the history of ethnic and political strife, with its attendant uprooting and displacement of whole populations, that has shaped the peoples of Europe. The son of immigrants, Isaac is a product of one such displacement, the Greek diaspora. (Diaspora, a Greek word, means “scattering” or “displacement.”) The
history of the Greek diaspora is almost as old as Greece itself, but whereas Greek merchants of ancient times willingly migrated to trading colonies along the Mediterranean, in more recent times large numbers of Greeks have been forced from their homeland by war. Its location in the Balkan Mountains of southeastern Europe has placed Greece at the crossroads of numerous modern conflicts. Germany invaded Greece in April 1941, and Nazi forces continued to occupy the nation until October 1944. A brief period of relative peace ended in March 1946, when the communist Democratic Army of Greece revolted against the pro-Western government. The Greek Civil War, which was part of the larger cold war, ended in September 1949 with the defeat of the communists. Four decades later, as communist domination in Eastern Europe began to erode with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, new ethnic wars broke out in the Balkans. These events brought with them further migrations, in this case to rather than from Greece, both by war refugees and by members of the Greek diaspora who had long been trapped in communist countries.
W Themes Although critics have identified many themes in Dead Europe, these can be summed up in a single word: separation. This is manifested in a variety of ways, including the separation Isaac’s parents made from their homeland by moving to Australia. His father, who dies just before the story begins, still longs for the old country, but his mother, Rebecca, has chosen never to return. Isaac, a second-generation member of the diaspora born on foreign soil, likewise experiences a sense of separation from his countrymen when he travels through Greece. A decade has passed since his last visit, and people he remembered as warm and sympathetic seem to have been transformed into suspicious strangers. Several of them confront him with the accusation that his mother
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ANDREAS is a friend and an occasional traveling companion and sexual partner of Isaac, the novel’s protagonist. COLIN is Isaac’s working-class lover. Isaac leaves him behind in Australia to embark on his harrowing journey through Europe. ELIAS is a Jewish boy whom Lucia and Michaelis, despite their anti-Semitism, agree to protect from the Nazis. Although the couple abuses him horribly, Lucia is aroused by him, and after a hasty coupling, she conceives his child. Later she persuades Michaelis to murder Elias, giving rise to a curse that will haunt her family forever. GERRY is an old Jewish friend of Isaac’s family who lives in Paris. Revelations about his relationship with Rebecca suggest that he may be Isaac’s real father. GIULIA is Isaac’s cousin, with whom Isaac travels to his grandmother’s village in Greece. “KING KIKE” is a grotesquely obese Jewish porn maven whom Isaac meets in Prague. CHRISTOS PANAGIS is the son of Lucia and Elias, though Michaelis believes the boy to be his. Lucia develops an instant oedipal attraction to the boy and forces him to breastfeed even when he is much too old to do so. Later Christos’s paternal grandmother strangles him in an attempt to rid her village of a curse. LUCIA PANAGIS is Isaac’s grandmother. “The most beautiful woman in Europe” in her youth, she is the protagonist of the novel’s secondary plotline, set in Greece during the 1940s. MICHAELIS PANAGIS is the husband of Lucia and the father of Rebecca, whom he takes with him to Australia at the end of the 1940s story line. ISAAC RAFTIS is the novel’s protagonist and narrator. A thirtysix-year-old Australian photographer of Greek descent, he travels to Greece for an exhibit of his works and then embarks on a journey through Europe’s—and his own— dark underside. REBECCA PANAGIS RAFTIS is the daughter of Lucia and Michaelis and the mother of Isaac. She grows up in an atmosphere of abuse, first from her mother and then at the hands of racist thugs in Australia.
has forgotten the loved ones she left behind, and a heated argument ensues. In the end he mutters, “It is you who have forgotten us.” On a larger scale, there is the separation of modern Europeans who are alienated from one another and themselves by a globalist consumer culture that purports
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Portrait of Christos Tsiolkas, author of Dead Europe. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
to unite them. There is also the separation of peoples dispersed by wars and the rise and fall of regimes. Emblematic of these conditions is Isaac’s experience in Prague, where freedom from communist oppression makes possible all manner of debauchery. In working out his themes, Tsiolkas employs a variety of recurring motifs, including traditional myths and superstitions that keep people in fear of dark, unseen forces; ethnic hatred, particularly anti-Semitism; and sexual abuse, which transforms what should be an act of intimacy into an act of violence.
W Style Several critics have described Dead Europe as a “magic realist” novel, referring to a literary style in which supernatural or otherworldly elements are woven into an otherwise realistic landscape. Though the tale abounds with ghosts, vampires, and ancient curses, the writing style is far grittier than that of most magic realism. Indeed, Dead Europe is not a book for readers of delicate sensibilities. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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In Prague, Isaac meets a truly horrifying figure, a grotesquely fat Jewish pornographer called “King Kike” who puts on a live sex show in which an adult male performs fellatio on, and then rapes, an eleven-year-old boy. By then Isaac is well on his way to becoming a fervent anti-Semite, a journey that begins literally in the book’s first sentence: “The first thing I was ever told about the Jews was that every Christmas they would take a Christian toddler, put it screaming in a barrel, run knives between the slats, and drain the child of its blood.” The person who relates this vampirelike myth (an example of “blood libel,” whereby Jews were accused of killing Christian children in order to use their blood in religious rituals) is Isaac’s mother, and the scene opens up a whole array of horrors from the past, present, and future. These horrors, and their meaning for Isaac, unite the novel’s two story lines, which are presented in alternating chapters. The first of these plotlines is the present-day saga, set in various European locales and narrated by Isaac in the first person; the second, told in the third person, takes place in a Greek village during the 1940s. In keeping with the “magic realist” tag, several critics compare this second line of narrative to a fairy tale, and indeed it begins like one: “High in the mountains, where the wind goes home to rest, lived Lucia, the most beautiful woman in all of Europe.” This is a fairy tale of the most gruesome kind, however, involving numerous scenes in which children are abused—sexually or otherwise—and even murdered.
W Critical Reception The book’s portrayal of life in general, and of Europe in particular, is anything but pretty. Clara Iaccarino observes in the Sun Herald that “far from the postcard view of cosmopolitan European cities, Tsiolkas strips away the romance of Paris, Venice, Athens and Prague to reveal a culture deeply changed by the grip of globalization.” Jason Steger summarizes the uncomfortable experience of reading the novel, stating matter-of-factly that “Dead Europe is a book that divides people.” Robert Manne, writing in the Monthly, an Australian magazine, is far more critical. Whereas many other commentators view the book’s depictions of anti-Semitism as cautionary, Manne maintains that Dead Europe flirts with the boundaries of incitement to hatred. The novel’s portrayal of Jews is almost unrelentingly negative; many of the leading characters give vent to violent antiJewish sentiment. Manne asks, “Are we meant to assume [that] there is some direct cultural continuity between the traditional Christian anti-Semitism of the Greek villagers and the contemporary left-wing political anti-Semitism concerning the dispossession of the Palestinians and the fusion of Jewish and American power?” Manne’s criticism, however, represents a minority view. Sentiments expressed by Sacha Molitorisz in the
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1965 to working-class Greek immigrant parents, Christos Tsiolkas was raised in Richmond, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. Lively discussions of politics and the traditions of the family’s southern European homeland (including strange tales of vampires, ghosts, and other peculiar items of folklore) animated the daily life of the household and exerted a strong effect on Tsiolkas’s worldview. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1987 and pursued a career as a journalist, a playwright, a screenwriter, a filmmaker, and ultimately a novelist. His first novel, Loaded (1995), was later filmed as Head On (1998). Besides receiving the Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for Dead Europe, Tsiolkas won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Novel in the South-East Asia and South Pacific Area for The Slap (2008). Tsiolkas lives in Melbourne with his longtime partner, Wayne van der Stelt.
Sydney Morning Herald are more common: “Dizzying in its ambitions and intensity, Dead Europe is an impressive achievement.” Clara Iaccarino, reviewing the work for the Sun Herald, calls the book “a wake-up call for the millennium.” Steger quotes the judges who awarded Tsiolkas the Age’s fiction prize. They characterize the work as “a confronting novel that is both startlingly original and passionate in its pursuit of an authentic sense of self—one that is freed from the tainted legacy of inherited beliefs and prejudices.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Iaccarino, Clara. “Old World Yields to Modern Woes.” Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. Sun Herald [Sydney]. Fairfax Media, 3 July 2005: 58. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Lloyd, Paul. “Meet the Author: Christos Tsiolkas: Wrestling Demons.” Advertiser [Adelaide]. Advertiser Newspapers Ltd, 18 June 2005: W11. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Manne, Robert. “Dead Disturbing: A Bloodthirsty Tale that Plays with the Fire of Anti-Semitism.” Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. Monthly. Morry Schwartz, June 2005. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Steger, Jason. “Haunted by Europe’s Demons.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 26 Aug. 2006: 27. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Tsiolkas, Christos. Dead Europe. Sydney: Vintage, 2005. Print. ———. “European Vocation.” Interview by Sacha Molitorisz. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 18 June 2005: 22. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.
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Dead Europe Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cañadas, Ivan. “Exhuming History: Neo-Conservatism and Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe (2005).” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice (2007): n. pag. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A discussion of the novel from a Marxist perspective; it makes reference to Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. Dooley, Gillian. Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. Adelaide Review 19 Aug. 2005: 19. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A mixed review in which Dooley maintains, “I will not say it’s a ‘must read,’ although it is the most compelling book I’ve read for some time.” Iaccarino, Clara. “Facing the Darkness of Our Times.” Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. SunHerald [Sydney]. Fairfax Media, 29 May 2005: 65. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A positive review that contrasts the novel’s tone with the personality of the author, who “is nowhere near as embittered as his writing would have you believe.” Kelly, Matthew. “The Fuss over Super-Fine Fiction.” Australian 4 Oct. 2006: 12. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A wide-ranging discussion of recent literary fiction, including Dead Europe. Mansfield, Nick. “‘There Is a Spectre Haunting . . . ’: Ghosts, Their Bodies, Some Philosophers, a Novel and the Cultural Politics of Climate Change.” Borderlands 7.1 (2008): n. pag. Academic OneFile. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. An analysis of the politics of global climate change that makes reference to Dead Europe.
Infanticide in Dead Europe and Drift.” Australian Literary Studies 23.2 (2007): 230. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. An assessment of the role of the mother in Dead Europe and Brian Castro’s 1994 novel Drift. Open Web Sources
An interview with Tsiolkas appears on the Bookslut Web site. http://www.bookslut.com/features/ 2009_09_015115.php Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, a publication of the University of Technology, Sydney, offers the text of “The Possibility of a ‘Dead Europe’: Tsiolkas, Houellebecq and European Mythologies,” by Nicholas Manganas. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ ojs/index.php/portal/article/viewArticle/495 A videotaped interview with Tsiolkas is posted on Paul Reynolds’s PeoplePoints Web site. http://www. peoplepoints.co.nz/2009/05/wordshed-christostsiolkas-from-his.html The independent Australian bookseller Readings features the text of a short interview with Tsiolkas on its Web site. http://www.readings.com.au/interview/ christos-tsiolkas The transcript of an interview with Tsiolkas is available on the Web site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National program Book Talk. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/booktalk/stories/ s1404914.htm For Further Reading
Marr, David. “Journey through Cursed Lands.” Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 25 June 2005: 20. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A positive review of “a story that would collapse in a squalid heap but for the hell-bent exhilaration of the writing.”
Ellis, Bret Easton. Less than Zero. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print. With its depictions of homosexuality, drug abuse, meaningless sexual encounters, and even snuff films, Ellis’s debut novel was as shocking in its time as Dead Europe is to early-twentyfirst-century readers.
Rosenblatt, Les. “A Place Where Wolves Fuck.” Arena Magazine 79 (2005): 46-48. General OneFile. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A discussion of anti-Semitic imagery in Dead Europe.
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Print. In his 1989 essay “The End of History,” here presented in expanded form, Fukuyama argues that Western liberal democracy represents the culmination of human social evolution. Highly influential, Fukuyama’s work also elicits strong reactions from many, and several reviewers cite Dead Europe as a rebuttal to it.
Sornig, David. “Specters of Berlin in A. L. McCann’s Subtopia and Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe.” Antipodes 21.1 (2007): 67. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. An examination of imagery in the two novels that relates to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Syson, Ian. “A Taste of European Decay.” Rev. of Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas. Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 28 May 2005: 4. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. A highly positive review of the novel that later won the publication’s Book of the Year Fiction Award. Van den Berg, Jacinta. “‘Are You Weaker than a Woman, Weaker than Even a Mother?’: Abjection and
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Kaplan, Robert D. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Print. In this work written in the aftermath of communism’s demise, noted international correspondent Kaplan discusses the influence of ancient hatreds on the affairs of the Balkan region. The book received an unexpected publicity boost when President Bill Clinton was photographed with a copy under his arm. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Muravchik, Joshua. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. San Francisco: Encounter, 2002. Print. Heaven on Earth examines a political system that, even after its demise, has continued to influence events in Europe. The book is a companion to a Public Broadcasting System documentary series of the same name. Sedaris, David. When You Are Engulfed in Flames. New York: Little, 2008. Print. Like Tsiolkas, American essayist Sedaris is a gay man of Greek heritage, but his humorous and apolitical style could not be more different from that of his Australian counterpart.
In this collection, Sedaris offers his own take on the life of a visitor in Europe. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2003. Print. The original novel of vampirism in southeastern Europe, Dracula, was based on ancient folktales. von Rezzori, Gregor. Memoirs of an Anti-Semite. New York: Viking, 1981. Print. In his novel, expanded from his 1969 New Yorker story of the same title, von Rezzori examines the roots of anti-Semitism.
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Death with Interruptions By José Saramago
W Introduction Death with Interruptions (also published as Death at Intervals) is a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago. Originally published in Portuguese as As intermiténcias da morte (2005), the novel was translated into English by Margaret Jull Costas. The story takes place in a small, unnamed country during an unspecified year. On the first day of the year, people stop dying. What seems a wondrous blessing soon takes shape as a national disaster of unprecedented scale, as months pass and the numbers of those who should die but cannot climb rapidly. So begins Saramago’s dark and humorous fantasy on the rigors of eternal life and the benefits of death. Later in the novel, death emerges as a protagonist. She has resumed her normal activities, but now, she sends courteous letters to warn people of their approaching demise. One day, to death’s dismay, a letter is returned. She discovers that the intended recipient is a cellist, a bachelor, and a lover of music and nature who lives with his dog. Death cannot force herself to dispatch the man. She falls in love with the cellist, and she is last seen in bed with her arms around him, doing something that death is not supposed to do: sleeping.
W Literary and Historical Context
Death with Interruptions has characteristics of both fantasy and fable. Its central premise is absurd or fantastical, a feature shared with other novels by Saramago. In The Stone Raft (A jangada de pedra, 1986), for example, the Iberian Peninsula, severed from Europe by an earthquake, floats freely in the Atlantic Ocean. In Blindness (Ensaio sobra a cegueira, 1995), nearly the entire population of a large city is struck blind.
The approach is similar to that employed by German novelist Franz Kafka, whom Ron Charles of the Washington Post calls Saramago’s “literary ancestor.” The novel’s moral intent gives it the air of a fable. Beneath the breathless flow of words describing the unnamed country’s crisis, there is a simple tale about how death gives structure and meaning to life. In the first half of the novel, the characters, though human, are known only by their titles or roles, and they speak and act accordingly. Such titles as “funeral director” and “grammarian” have certain connotations or values attached to them, which Saramago exploits rhetorically, just as Aesop does with the fox and the lamb. Saramago’s satirical novels have inspired comparisons with the works of George Orwell. Both writers demonstrate an ear for the abstruse language of bureaucracy, and in Death with Interruptions, Saramago revels in it, to great ironic effect: “The prime minister ended by stating that the government was prepared for all humanly imaginable eventualities, and determined to face with courage and with the vital support of the population the complex social, economic, political, and moral problems that the definitive extinction of death would inevitably provoke, if, as everything seemed to indicate, this situation was confirmed.”
W Themes The themes of Death with Interruptions radiate from the novel’s opening sentence: “The following day, no one died.” Such an event is incomprehensible, prompting the reader to question why no one died and to wonder what life would be like without death. In the novel’s first pages, there is a sense that “humanity’s greatest dream since the beginning of time, the happy enjoyment of eternal life here on earth, had become a gift within the grasp of everyone.” Soon, however, the dream turns to nightmare, as the country groans under the weight of an ever-increasing population of gravely ill, injured, or simply aged people
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who are unable to live or die and require constant care. Industries are destroyed by lack of demand (funeral homes) or faced with impossible workloads (nursing homes). Church leaders must contemplate their demise, for death was the foe that religion was supposed to help people overcome. Philosophers, too, are left with nothing to do but “philosophize about . . . the void.” When death returns to work, people celebrate with champagne. Order is restored. In the end, death is shown to be a greater blessing than eternal life. Nonetheless, death remains humanity’s greatest source of fear, loss, grief, and regret. How can people make peace with death? As the cellist demonstrates, the way to be reconciled with death is to love life and all of its wonders.
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE CELLIST is an ordinary, middle-aged bachelor, neither ugly nor handsome, who lives with his dog. He has no idea that death has been trying to send him a letter, and he is unaware of her investigations in his apartment. He gets to know her when she assumes human form and charms him from a box seat during a concert in which he performs. Their first few meetings do not go well: Death is, unsurprisingly, cold, abrupt, and peremptory in her behavior. Finally, his performance of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suite no. 6 brings them into each other’s arms.
Stylistically, Death with Interruptions shares similarities with other works by Saramago, including The Stone Raft and Blindness. Characters are designated only by their official titles or roles—prime minister, department head, cellist, or son-in-law, for example. Entities whose names normally are capitalized—the “catholic apostolic church of rome,” for example—are not granted that distinction in Saramago’s world.
DEATH, at the beginning of the novel, is spiteful and grumpy, a frostbitten skeleton in a sheet who lives in a cold, dark room underground. She stops killing people because she feels that they do not appreciate the order and meaning that she brings to their lives. The chaos that accompanies her work stoppage appalls her, and so, after seven months, she resumes her duties, but with one new rule: From now on, she will send violet-colored letters to people one week before they are to die so that they will have time to put their affairs in order. This system works well until, one day, a letter comes back. This unprecedented development draws death into the cellist’s life.
In Saramago’s novel, the character Death stops claiming souls for a period of time. Here, a hand sifting sand represents the transient nature of human life. Vibrant Image Studios/Shutterstock.com
The novel is narrated in the third person from an omniscient point of view. The narration is hectic and chatty. Writing in the New Yorker, James Wood describes Saramago’s narrative style as “unidentified free indirect style—his fictions sound as if they were being told not by an author but by, say, a group of wise and somewhat garrulous old men, sitting down by the harbor in Lisbon, having a smoke, one of whom is the writer himself.” This impression is conveyed by Saramago’s junglelike syntax, a hallmark of his work. Sentences flow on for a page or more. Punctuation is idiosyncratic, and periods appear infrequently. In a self-deprecating passage in the novel, a grammarian who is called in to analyze a letter written by death describes her prose as an “insult” to the art of writing. Sounding like an exasperated editor, he singles out among death’s grammatical sins “the chaotic syntax, the absence of full stops, the complete lack of very necessary parentheses, the obsessive elimination of paragraphs, the random use of commas and, most unforgivable of all, the intentional and almost diabolical abolition of the capital letter.” In satirizing government and religion, Saramago makes skillful use of irony in Death with Interruptions. An example is the liberal sprinkling of clichés and aphorisms throughout the text. As James Wood notes, these platitudes, often placed in the mouths of politicians, are “neither quite validated or disowned; they are ironized by the obvious gap . . . between the knowing Nobel laureate writing his fictions and the person or persons seemingly narrating these fictions.”
W Style
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR José de Sousa Saramago was born on November 16, 1922, in the village of Azinhaga, Portugal. “Saramago,” a pejorative nickname for the writer’s father meaning “wild radish,” accidentally was added to his birth certificate. Saramago published his first novel, Terra do pecado (The land of sin) in 1947, but he did not publish another until Manual de pintura y caligrifia (The manual of painting and calligraphy) in 1977. He produced four novels during the 1980s, including Memorial do convento (Memoir of the convent, 1982), whose English translation, Baltasar and Blimunda (1987), finally brought Saramago international recognition. Many consider The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1991) to be his greatest work. An atheist and a communist, Saramago was known for his pointed satires of religion and capitalist politics. In 1995 he received the Camões Prize, Portugal’s highest literary honor, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, on June 18, 2010.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Basilières, Michel. “Saramago’s Death Takes a Holiday.” Toronto Star 12 Oct. 2008: ID04. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals). Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Bollig, Ben. “Hold the Grim Reaper.” Rev. of Death at Intervals, by José Saramago. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 10 Feb. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Charles, Ron. “Death Takes a Holiday.” Washington Post 26 Oct. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Bookmarks Jan.-Feb. 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Max, D. T. “Stay of Execution.” New York Times Book Review 26 Oct. 2008: 19(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
W Critical Reception Death with Interruptions has been well received by critics, though some have felt that it lacks the artistic vision and verve of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, 1984) or Blindness. James Wood asserts that the novel “efficiently mobilizes its hypothetical test case, and quickly generates a set of sharp theological and metaphysical questions about the desirability of utopia, the possibility of Heaven, and the true foundation of religion.” Michel Basilières finds the novel “as complex and subtle as any Greek tragedy, but no less simple and direct than a fable by Aesop, La Fontaine, or Borges.” Many reviewers have responded positively to the love story between death and the cellist. Ron Charles praises the way this development “catches us off guard”: “How can the most tender relationship that Saramago has ever written involve death as a nervous lover? This is a story that can’t possibly work or affect us, but it does, deeply, sweetly.” Some reviewers have found the first half of the novel, a frenetic satire of politics, religion, and capitalism, longwinded and tedious. “One senses,” D. T. Max writes in the New York Times Book Review, “that the author, a lifelong critic of capitalism, is mostly interested in pricking the modern state. Critique muscles out character.” Lydia Millet echoes this complaint in the Toronto Globe and Mail: “Painfully absent in Interruptions are the tensions and subtleties of immediate relations between persons— those that so cleverly drive more conventional and more powerful narratives, such as the one that holds Blindness together.” Margaret Jull Costa’s translation of the novel has received high marks. A Bookmarks reviewer praises
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Costa’s ability to “rein in the author’s difficult style . . . and bring [his] genius to the page.” Ben Bollig of the Guardian likewise observes that Saramago’s “distinctive, multi-voiced style [is] skillfully maintained in Costa’s translation.”
Millet, Lydia. “Death Takes a Holiday, and Falls in Love.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 11 Oct. 2008: D14. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals). Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Saramago, José. Death with Interruptions. Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. Orlando: Harcourt, 2008. Wood, James. “Death Takes a Holiday.” Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. New Yorker 27 Oct. 2008: 88. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allen, Bruce. “Saramago’s Genius.” Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Kirkus Reviews 8 Aug. 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. An enthusiastic review that praises the novel’s structure and thematic development. Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Publishers Weekly 21 July 2008: 136. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. A brief review that characterizes Saramago’s novel as “a philosophical page-turner.” “Death’s Absence, Writ Large and Small.” Rev. of Ghost in Love, by Jonathan Carroll, and Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 9 Dec. 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Praises the range of Saramago’s satire and his ability to fashion appealing stories from satire. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Deveson, Tom. Rev. of Death at Intervals, by José Saramago. Sunday Times [London] 3 Feb. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Criticizes the satirical first half of the novel for its “labored prolixity.” Hopkinson, Amanda. Rev. of Death at Intervals, by José Saramago. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 11 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Hails the novel for its imaginativeness and “fresh ideas,” but notes the challenges that the author’s prose poses for readers. Miller, Laura. Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Salon.com 30 Oct. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Gives a nod to the novel’s satirical first half as its most original component and worries that the ending is perhaps a little too neat. Preto-Rodas, Richard A. “José Saramago: Art for Reason’s Sake.” World Literature Today 73.1 (1999): 11. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Reynolds, Susan Salter. “The Bell Stops Tolling.” Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Los Angeles Times 9 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Expresses concerns about the artificiality of the novel’s first section and its runaway narrative. Turner, Forest. Rev. of Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2008: 122. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Praises the introduction of death as a character as a key to the novel’s success. Gale Resources
“José Saramago.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. “José Saramago.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 275. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Ornelas, José N. “José Saramago.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 4. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 332. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
Nobelprize.org features a video of Saramago’s Nobel acceptance speech (with English translation) and an autobiography, a bibliography, a transcript of the
award presentation, and a collection of photos from the award ceremony. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_ prizes/literature/laureates/1998/ Times Topics: José Saramago from the New York Times features reviews, interviews, and articles from the newspaper’s archives, as well as biographical information and links to other online resources. http:// topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/ people/s/jose_saramago/index.html?scp=1-spot& sq=jose%20saramago&st=cse For Further Reading
Bloom, Harold. José Saramago. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House-Infobase, 2005. Print. Literary critic Harold Bloom introduces a representative selection of critical essays on Saramago’s works. Eberstadt, Fernanda. “José Saramago, Nobel PrizeWinning Portuguese Writer, Dies at 87.” New York Times 18 June 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. New York Times obituary includes biographical information and excerpts from interviews with critics and the author. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Trans. Joyce Crick. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. “The Metamorphosis,” one of Kafka’s best-known stories, describes the life of a man who awakes one morning to discover he has been transformed into a hideous creature. Saramago, José. Blindness. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. New York: Harcourt, 1997. Print. Saramago’s novel, originally published in 1995, describes the struggles of a small group of people to survive in a city where nearly all of the residents have lost their sight. ———. Interview. “José Saramago: Death Interrupted.” LA Weekly 5 Aug. 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. In this posthumously published interview, Saramago discusses the subjects of his novels, his writing style, his views on religion and political ideologies, and the significance of love and death. ———. The Stone Raft. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. New York: Harcourt, 1995. Print. This novel, originally published in 1986, follows the political chaos that ensues after an earthquake sends the Iberian Peninsula floating off into the Atlantic Ocean.
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Declare By Tim Powers
W Introduction Tim Powers’s novel Declare opens in 1963, when Andrew Hale, a former British spy, is recalled to duty from his current post as a lecturer at University College of Weybridge. He is asked to complete a mission, which failed in 1948 on Mount Ararat, Turkey, the reputed site of the final resting place of Noah’s Ark and home to fallen angels, also referred to as djinns. Hale agrees to be reactivated and meets up with his former colleague, the historical British master spy and mole for the Soviet Union, Kim Philby. He also reconnects with former colleague and love, Elena, a Spanish-born communist. The center of the plot involves supernatural djinns who inhabit the mountain, one of whom was kidnapped by the Russians and made a ghula, or guardian angel, in the form of an old woman, called Machikha Nash. She had protected Russia since 1883. Her Majesty’s Secret Service was tasked with destroying the old woman, hence, ensuring the downfall of the Soviet Union. The original mission ultimately failed, however, because Hale had used the wrong bullets. The Cold War that followed World War II motivated the British to send Hale back to the Ahora Gorge, but this time Hale learns the full import of his role. He discovers that Philby is really his half brother and that they share a mystical bond; Hale and Philby are two halves of one person. In order for Hale to complete the mission successfully, he must shoot Philby with bullets made from a special meteorite, called the Shihab stone, but not kill him. The djinn, instead, lured by the Shihab particles, would consume Philby and, following their mutual death, Russia too would no longer enjoy special protection.
W Literary and Historical Context
Powers uses historical persons and events around which to develop his novel. Kim Philby’s scandalous activities as
a double agent are, therefore, factually accurate; however, Powers creates fictional explanations to fill in gaps and magnify the intrigue. For example, he gives supernatural causes for Philby’s difficult relationship with his father, St. John Philby, who is also Hale’s father. References to and anecdotes regarding other notable historical figures, such as T. E. Lawrence, known also as Lawrence of Arabia, and British double agent Guy Burgess, correspond with the Cold War timeline and espionage operations. In his book, The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby, Phillip Knightley corroborates many of Powers’s details about Philby, Burgess, and the Cold War. Mount Ararat, as a long suspected site for the final docking of Noah’s Ark, acknowledges both archaeological speculation and popular myth. Powers blends these scientific inquiries with legends, folklore, and biblical references, including apocryphal sources, to suggest additional, though alternate reasons, for British activities in the Middle East. Political interest in the paranormal and supernatural forces is well documented, particularly on the part of Russia and Nazi Germany. The fallen angels who did not drop straight to Hell, but were trapped on Mount Ararat, became the focus of Allied and Axis powers who would exploit them for political gain, as Powers suggests the Russians had done. In addition to historical records, Powers uses other apocryphal sources to assert that the Devil hitched a ride on the Ark by hanging onto the roof, to bolster the credibility in the presence of djinns on Mount Ararat. The geopolitical importance of the location provides the embellishment of Russian and Nazi preoccupation with the region, so the variety of characters in the novel is itself based on fact, into which Powers injects plausible versions of history. Powers also incorporates the rise of socialist and communist sympathizers in the West during the Cold War in Declare. Philby’s own memoirs reflect the trend in many British universities toward communist sensibilities by men, such as Guy Burgess, an historical figure. The novel also employs diverse sets of jargon that correspond to code talking between the secret agents and a lexicon of
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MAJOR CHARACTERS GUY BURGESS is colleague and co-conspirator with Kim Philby, along with another double agent named Maclean. CLAUDE CASSAGNAC is an MI5 consultant whose life is sacrificed to provide cover for Andrew Hale. Hale agrees to take the blame for his colleague’s murder in order to complete his mission. ELENA TERESA CENIZA-BENDIGA becomes a devoted communist when her parents are murdered by fascists in Spain. She is paired with Hale who is working uncover, and they fall in love. ANDREW HALE, born in Palestine, is a spy with the British Secret Service who is recalled to duty. He must complete a failed mission called Declare. MRS. HALE, Andrew’s mother, is a former Catholic nun who hides the identity of her son’s father. When he is only seven, she introduces Andrew to Jimmie Theodora, who eventually becomes his handler.
Launching of a spy satellite. In Declare, Andrew Hale is a former British spy who is asked to complete a doomed mission. RALPH CRANE
SALIM BIN JALAWI, an Arab, is Hale’s oldest friend in the Middle East who accompanies him on his journey to the Ahora Gorge. He is assassinated before they reach their destination. HAKOB MAMMALIAN is an Armenian assigned to Hale as his handler on behalf of the Russian spies.
artifacts, talismans, and amomon root, which promised eternal life, as cited by many sources, including the firstcentury historian Josephus. After Hale shoots Philby with Shihad buckshot, he offers his half-brother the root in exchange for Elena.
W Themes One of the novel’s major themes is the nature and power of deception as a powerful force over moral choice. The main protagonist, Andrew Hale, suffers from strange dreams and, while very young, is introduced by his mother for no apparent reason to his future handler of the SOE, Jimmie Theodora. The identity of his father is not revealed to him until many years later. When he turns eighteen, he is officially recruited into the British Secret Service, where he is trained in the art of deception. Every mission requires a cover identity and the use of codes and ciphers. Hale learns to overcome morals and ethics as he fulfills every duty in service to his country. He first begins to reflect upon the invasive power of deception when he pretends to be a communist in order to infiltrate the movement and falls in love with Elena, an avowed communist. Another theme addresses the challenges of national loyalty in service of the greater good at the expense of personal happiness. Hale must deceive the woman he
HARRY ST. JOHN PHILBY is father to Kim and Andrew. He uses his knowledge as an Arabist and British explorer to conspire with supernatural forces for Kim’s perceived destiny as a potentially immortal being, under the protection of djinns. KIM PHILBY, master spy for the British Secret Service, shocks the world with his defection to Russian Intelligence after he is suspected of being a mole. He is Andrew’s half-brother by St. John Philby and can be in two places at once until Andrew is born. JIMMIE THEODORA is a seasoned British spy who mentors Andrew Hale.
loves by taking the blame for the murder of a mutual friend and colleague, in order to establish yet another cover identity. The life of Claude Cassagnac is sacrificed in order to convince the KGB that Hale is a genuine defector. Elena, however, comes to hate Hale for the murder and threatens to kill him despite her attachment to him. Hale, though conflicted, remains resolute to carrying out orders of the Crown, regardless of his own emotional bonds. The multiple storylines of the novel invoke as many themes as subplots; however, one of the more important ones is the relationship of family. St. John Philby exploits for personal ambition and through supernatural means the
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born February 29, 1952, Tim Powers earned his BA at California State University, Fullerton, and became a successful writer of science fiction. He has won several awards, including the 1984 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, for The Anubis Gates, and the 2001 International Horror Guild Best Novel Award, for Declare. In an interview for www.powells.com, Powers remarked on the historical events portrayed in Declare: “ . . . I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar—and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.” As of 2010, Powers lived with his wife in Muscoy, California.
destiny of his mystical son. As a result, Kim Philby struggles with disruptive feelings, even as he too becomes obsessed with his own possibilities, protection from harm with talismans or fox fur coats being one of them. Mrs. Hale refuses to disclose the name of Hale’s father, whose indiscretion with her while a nun is the very thing that forces the half-brothers to share one soul. Though compromised from all quarters by lies and deception, Andrew and Elena’s love emerges as the most honest and enduring bond of all.
W Style Powers is well regarded as a protégé in the tradition of John le Carré for espionage thrillers. Declare is a third-person novel in the espionage genre with parallel stories from the 1940s and 1960s. But Powers blends the traditional spy thriller with generous portions of science fiction and fantasy. The various intelligence operations of the Cold
War provide the foundation for the main action; however, Powers continuously blends, weaves, and smashes the different genres together in dense, complicated prose. Thus, the subplot of fallen angels is mixed with special forces to control the supernatural powers dwelling on Mount Ararat. Kim Philby has the power to be in two places at once until his half-brother is born, and Andrew Hale learns from Elena how to walk at a certain pace that renders him invisible. Supernatural abilities such as these allow the spies to achieve their separate and competing missions. But the novel also conceals a traditional love story, which has tragic elements rendered with sentimental flourish, that stands in contrast to the structure of a tale of espionage. The language shifts constantly from bureaucratic spy talk to foreign phrases, each of which refers to obscure bits of politics; covert phrases; or folklore, myth, and legend. While the suspense builds on several fronts, from Hale and Philby’s early conflicts to their joint confrontation with the djinns on Mount Ararat, flashbacks of Elena surface repeatedly and reinforce the power of love. Finally, the theme of extraordinary explanations for lacunae in the historical record suggests that truth and deception are two sides of the same coin. Powers uses enough fact to make the fictional elements of the narrative plausible, at least. For example, it is true that T. E. Lawrence had a significant role in British interests in the Middle East during the Arab Revolt of 1915-1916. It is also true that he died in a motorcycle accident; however, Powers offers alternative reasons for Lawrence’s activities in Arabia and his unexpected death.
W Critical Reception Declare was generally well received by critics for its ambitious scope as a multigenre work anchored by historical fact. In his review in Bookpage, William D. Gagliani praised
Mount Ararat, a key location of an important mission for Andrew Hale in Declare. Zorik Galstyan/Shutterstock.com
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Powers as a “masterful melder of fact and fiction.” He cited specifically the character of Kim Philby, the British spy, who defected to the Soviet Union. John Berlyne echoed Gagliani, stating in SFRevu that Powers “demonstrates his uncanny ability of wrapping his fiction around a tightly research historical framework.” Writing for Library Journal, Devon Hass, assured that “Fans of John le Carré will appreciate the authentic period detail, meticulous descriptions of the business of espionage, and portraits of actual spies.” Some serious reviewers dedicated to science fiction and fantasy genres outside the mainstream were more cautious of Declare. Despite general praise for the novel in his review in Eyrie, Russ Allbery concluded that the “strongest parts of this book by far [are] the elements of the supernatural.” But other traditional sources were less kind. For example, Publishers Weekly asserted that Declare is “all offbeat and daringly imaginative, but ultimately rather foolish entertainment.” But many critics appeared to agree with Eric Brown, who in his review in the Guardian called it “an immense hybrid of classic spy novel and supernatural thriller.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allbery, Russ. “Declare.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Eryie 23 Jan. 2005. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Berlyne, John. “Declare, by Tim Powers.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. SFRevu 1 Jan. 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Berry, Jedediah. The Manual of Detection. New York: Penguin, 2009. Brown, Eric. “The Passage, Declare, and Blood and Iron.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Guardian 5 June 2010. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Gagliani, William D. “Declare, by Tim Powers.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Bookpage Mar. 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Hass, Devon. “Declare.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Library Journal. 125.19 (2000): 97. Print. Knightley, Phillip. The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby. New York: Knopf, 1989. Print. Powers, Tim. Declare. New York: Harpertorch-HarperCollins, 2001. Print. Weich, Dave. “Tim Powers Rewrites the Cold War.” Powells.com 26 Jan. 2001. Web. 25 Jan. 2011. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Berry, Michael. “Declare.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. SFGate 18 Nov. 2001. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Refers to Powers’s adept use of historical figures as the main force in his hyperkinetic narrative.
Farrell, Eleanor M. “Declare, by Tim Powers.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Mythprint 38:3 (2001): n.p. Web (mythsoc.org/mythprint/2001). 6 Sept. 2010. Notes le Carré’s influence in terms of capturing Cold War espionage with all of its noble double-cross and suspicion and praises Powers’s main protagonist as well-drawn and sympathetic. Raines, Phillip. “Declare, by Tim Powers.” Rev. of Declare, by Tim Powers. Infinity Plus 9 Nov. 2002. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Acknowledges Powers’s grasp of geopolitical nuance and unflattering detail of the British secret service and notes similarities to le Carré. Gale Resources
“Tim Powers.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000079567&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w For Further Reading
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print. Presents the complicated history of the Cold War as told by a Yale professor. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen, and Philip J. Imbrogno. The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2011. Print. Explores the nature and dangers of djinns using quantum physics, folklore, and Islamic sources such as the Qur’an. Koltuv, Barbara Black. Amulets, Talismans, and Magical Jewelry: A Way to the Unseen, Everpresent, Almighty God. Lake Worth: Nicholas-Hays, 2005. Print. Discusses the history of magical artifacts used for creating a closer connection to God and uses author’s profession as clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst to defend the power of religious and cultural charms. Lawrence, Thomas Edward. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. New York: BN Publishers, 2009. Print. Lawrence of Arabia’s personal account of his role in unifying Arab factions against Turkish incursion. Philby, Kim. My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Print. Personal account of failings of the British Secret Service and Philby’s decision to side with the communists, despite the truth about Stalin’s leadership. Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil: Why Church Fathers Suppressed the Book of Enoch and Its Startling Revelations. Kearney: Summit UP, 2000. Print. Suggests that Jesus was well acquainted with the Book of Enoch, long suppressed by the Catholic Church.
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The Deposition of Father McGreevy By Brian O’Doherty
W Introduction Set in County Kerry in the west of Ireland during World War II, The Deposition of Father McGreevy (1999) tells the story of the decline and eventual demise of a remote hilltop village in the 1940s. Once a thriving farming community, the village is struck by a series of disasters. These begin during one exceptionally harsh winter during which the village is cut off by deep snow and a mysterious epidemic results in the deaths of all the women. Next, all the village children are separated from their fathers and sent to be educated at a convent in Dingle, the nearby town, and the men of the community sink into depression and sloth. Further misfortunes follow, as the villagers are ostracized after rumors of bestiality become rife in the town, and a major tragedy finally disperses the remaining inhabitants. The novel begins and ends with a framing device, as William Maginn, an Irish journal editor living in London, hears the story in the 1950s from an acquaintance and visits Dingle to find out more. Maginn acquires the deposition of the local priest, Father McGreevy, which then becomes the main part of the story. Brief accounts of Maginn’s meetings with two of the surviving community members follow the deposition. The novel concludes with an epilogue.
W Literary and Historical Context
The use of a frame (Maginn’s introduction and conclusion, in the case of The Deposition of Father McGreevy) is a common device in literature. It serves to set the scene and provide a broader context for the action. In the case of a story from the remote past, the frame may make the storyline more credible, as in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s handling of “The Custom House” in The Scarlet Letter (1850). The final section of the frame, which follows the
conclusion of the main story, may provide a resolution to the plot and/or an interpretation of it. In this novel, the existence of the frame allows for Maginn’s footnotes, which elucidate Irish terminology and explain literary and historical references. William Maginn is a fictional character, but an Irish journalist and editor of the same name lived and worked in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of World War II, when the action of this novel takes place, Ireland had only recently emerged from several hundred years under repressive English rule. Following the Irish War of Independence in 1922, the southern part of the country had become the Irish Free State, and in 1948 it was renamed the Republic of Ireland. Over the preceding centuries, followers of the dominant religion, Roman Catholicism, had been denied the vote. The Irish language, known as Gaelic, had also been suppressed, although English had only become the majority language in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The Dingle Peninsula, where the novel is set, is one of the remaining areas of Ireland, known as Gaeltacht, where Irish is still spoken as a daily language. Prior to the arrival in Ireland of St. Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the fifth century, the indigenous Irish people followed a religion later known as Celtic polytheism. Despite the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion of the country by missionaries, the rich body of mythology that accompanied the ancient religion was not suppressed. Folk beliefs, folktales, and folk heroes remained deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche, especially in remote country areas, even into the early 2000s.
W Themes A major theme of The Deposition of Father McGreevy is religious conservatism, as embodied by the traditional Irish Catholicism of Father McGreevy. McGreevy is a hardworking priest, dedicated to his parish and his flock, committed to his faith, and convinced that the church
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plays a vital role in the survival of his village. But he is also narrow-minded and naive, and his conservative views and prejudices limit his ability to deal with elements in the remote mountain culture and to serve more fully his parishioners. Set in opposition to this theme is that of Ireland’s pre-Christian past and its survival in the form of various local beliefs. This is mainly exemplified in the character of old Biddy McGurk, McGreevy’s housekeeper. Her beliefs and practices, once they are discovered by McGreevy, result in the priest’s coming to view her as a witch. The best of Ireland’s Celtic culture is demonstrated by Muiris O’Sullivan, an Irish speaker and a repository of the preChristian legends. Associated with these themes is that of aberrant sexuality in the form of bestiality. McGreevy is horrified when he discovers the brain-damaged Tadgh engaged in a sex act with a sheep, but when he unburdens himself of this knowledge to Dr. McKenna, the doctor brushes him off, saying this is a common practice in remote areas. Later, however, when rumors of the practice reach
MAJOR CHARACTERS WILLIAM MAGINN is a London-based Irish journalist and distant relative of Father McGreevy. He manages to get a copy of McGreevy’s deposition and publishes an annotated version of it. FATHER HUGH MCGREEVY is the parish priest of a small hilltop village in the west of Ireland. He struggles unsuccessfully to keep the small community together. BIDDY MCGURK, Father McGreevy’s housekeeper, embraces traditions of old Ireland, much to McGreevy’s distress. MUIRIS O’SULLIVAN is one of the villagers whose wife dies during the epidemic. TADGH O’SULLIVAN, Muiris’s brain-damaged older son, is the unwitting cause of much of the village’s tragedy after McGreevy finds him copulating with a sheep.
Decaying buildings and homes make up the ruins of a deserted village in Ireland. The Deposition of Father McGreevy tells the story of a similarly abandoned Irish village in the 1940s. ª David Lyons / Alamy TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Deposition of Father McGreevy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1934, in County Roscommon, Ireland, Brian O’Doherty studied medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, and Cambridge University Medical School. After a brief period working as a doctor, he immigrated to the United States in 1957 to conduct medical research at Harvard University. He then turned to the visual arts and became a sculptor, conceptual artist, and installation artist. In 1972, he began signing his work Patrick Ireland, in protest against the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry. He worked as an art historian and a filmmaker and wrote several books of art criticism in addition to two well-regarded novels. He taught film criticism for twenty years before becoming a professor of fine art at Long Island University. As of 2010, he lived on Long Island, New York, with his wife, art historian Barbara Novak.
Dingle, the villagers are abused and ostracized by the townspeople.
W Style The Deposition of Father McGreevy is written in the past tense. The prologue, the two chapters that follow the deposition, and the epilogue are narrated in the first person by William Maginn. The main body of the novel, called “The Priest’s Tale,” also in the first person, is in the voice of Father Hugh McGreevy, as recorded in his deposition to the local policeman in Dingle. Both narrators, and other characters whose voices are present in the novel, are native Irish speakers, meaning that Irish Gaelic is their first language. Maginn, as a journalist and an educated man, writes more or less Standard English. McGreevy’s section of the novel, however, is peppered with Gaelic words and phrases, which are translated in the footnotes. When the speech of the villagers is reported, it is frequently in what is known as Irish English, or Hibernian English, which differs from Standard English in its syntax and vocabulary, as in “Isn’t it glad I am that my little girl isn’t up here with the rest of us misfortunates” (254), for example. Biddy McGurk, especially in her decline as it is reported in the final chapter, uses frequent Irish English lexis, such as “Yiz is all the same, all of yiz. Little maneen with your hoity toity” (371). There are rich descriptions in McGreevy’s section, in which the priest describes the natural world, which to some extent seems to alleviate his pain and anxiety.
W Critical Reception The Deposition of Father McGreevy drew unqualified praise from many reviewers. Nicholas Lezard, writing in
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Photo of Brian O’Doherty, author of the novel The Deposition of Father McGreevy. ª Sion Touhig/Sygma/Corbis
the Guardian, described it as “remarkable and haunting” and saw it as both “powerful and understated” and “beautifully told and beautifully modulated.” For Melanie McDonagh of the Evening Standard, it is “a wonderful novel.” She admired the novelist’s use of “direct speech of extraordinary fluency” and wrote that the novel “breathes a gentle humanity.” A reviewer in the Atlantic wrote that it is “a morbid tale, but holds one’s interest” and praised Brian O’Doherty’s “eloquent prose.” Even the few reviewers who faulted the novel generally did so while acknowledging that these were minor flaws in an otherwise fine work. David Lloyd, for example, reviewing the novel in World Literature Today, called it “engaging and convincing” and its relationships “heartbreakingly real” but found fault with the character of Muiris, who, having been silent throughout most of the novel, becomes “inexplicably chatty” at the end, and described the footnotes as dissonant and unnecessary. A review in Publishers Weekly criticized the style of Father McGreevy’s account, stating that it “veers between believable dialect and over-the-top stage-Irish.” This reviewer felt that “his first person narration can be hard to TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Deposition of Father McGreevy
take,” but he ended the review by acknowledging that “readers will surely enjoy the history and myth O’Doherty spins out.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Atlantic May 1999: 130. Print. “The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Publishers Weekly 246.7 (1999): 85. Print. Lezard, Nicholas. “Bad Faith.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. guardian.co. uk. Guardian 21 July 2001. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Lloyd, David. “Brian O’Doherty: The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. World Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 148+. Print. McDonagh, Melanie. “The Story That Shamed a Town.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. thisislondon.co.uk. Evening Standard 16 Oct. 2000. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. O’Doherty, Brian. The Deposition of Father McGreevy. New York: Turtle Point Press Helen Marx Books, 1999. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cline, David. “The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Booklist 15 Apr. 1999: 1516. Print. Draws attention to Father McGreevy’s voice, as entirely convincing. Hogan, Kay. “The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Library Journal 124.4 (1999): 111. Print. Praises the novel for its effective detail. MacDonald, Hugh. “The Deposition of Father McGreevy.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Herald 11 Aug. 2001. Print. Praises O’Doherty’s ability to articulate his characters’ sensibilities.
McNabb, Deirdre. “Damned Villagers.” Rev. of The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O’Doherty. Press, [New Zealand] 2001. Print. Notes that O’Doherty builds the plot to a crescendo is this gripping novel. Gale Resources
“Brian O’Doherty (1934-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Draper, James P., et al. Vol. 76. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. 93-97. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. http:// galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLA/itsbtrial/ FJ3521050013 Open Web Sources
The Guardian Web site, available at http://www. guardian.co.uk/culture/2000/oct/13/artsfeatures. bookerprize2000, contains a report by Michael Ellison of a conversation with Brian O’Doherty after the October 2000 announcement that The Deposition of Father McGreevy had been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. For Further Reading
Bartlett, Thomas. Ireland: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. A comprehensive survey of Ireland’s history, politics, society, and culture, from prehistory to the early 2000s. Hickey, Raymond. Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. A study tracing the development of Irish English from the late Middle Ages to the early 2000s. Hindley, Reg. The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary. London: Routledge, 1991. Print. Studies the decline of Irish Gaelic and locates the areas where it survived as of the late 1990s. Moore-McCann, Brenda. Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland: Between Categories. Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2009. Print. In-depth study of the works of Brian O’Doherty, both literary and visual. O’Doherty, Brian. The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P. New York: Pantheon, 1992. Print. Set in eighteenthcentury Vienna, a fictionalized account of Dr. Franz Mesmer, inventor of animal magnetism or hypnotism.
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Harriet Devine
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The Dew Breaker By Edwidge Danticat
W Introduction The Dew Breaker has been described as an unconventional novel that tells its story through a series of loosely related vignettes that deal with the emotional devastation left by torture. The book’s central figure is a Haitian-born barber in Brooklyn, New York, whose daughter, an artist named Ka, believes he was imprisoned under the dictatorship of François Duvalier in the 1960s. When Ka finds out that her father was in fact employed by the state as a torturer, everything she believes is thrown into question. Stephen M. Deusner, reviewing The Dew Breaker for Bookreporter.com, described the succeeding chapters: “The story-chapters that follow travel back and forth between New York and Haiti, between the unfulfilled hope of America and the crushing disillusion of the island country. But each segment of the novel somehow refers back to Ka’s father and the agony and misery he inflicted on his people.” In the end, Ka—and the reader—finds that the situation is far more complex, and ultimately unknowable, than it at first appears.
W Literary and Historical Context
In Haitian Creole terminology, the term “dew breaker” refers to the government-sponsored torturers of the Duvalier regime who arrived at dawn, disturbing the fresh dew on the grass, to arrest their victims. This secret police was known as the Tontons Macoutes, or “Bogeymen,” instituted by Haitian President François Duvalier in response to concerns that the new revolutionary leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, and Dominican dictator General Rafael Trujillo might mount an attack on Haiti. Duvalier also feared opponents within his own country, particularly after his fraudulent 1961 presidential victory that led the United States to suspend all diplomatic ties to Haiti.
Undeterred, in 1964 Duvalier had Haiti’s constitution changed to name him “president for life.” Duvalier had been a respected physician and campaigner against disease in Haiti, who studied at the University of Michigan for a time and served as Minister of Health and Labor under Haitian President Dumarsais Estimé. He had opposed the takeover of the Estimé government by Paul Magloire in 1950, for which he was forced to go into hiding. In 1956 Magloire announced a truce with his political opponents, and his military government collapsed. Duvalier came out of exile and declared his intention to run for president. With the broad support of the people and running on a platform promising to end elitism and return Haiti to its African roots—including the official support of voodoo, of which Duvalier was an avid practitioner—Duvalier easily won the election in 1957 and became known as “Papa Doc.” His presidency was threatened, however, by insurgents, and in response Duvalier imposed ever-tighter military controls, including the creation of the Tontons Macoutes to act as his first line of security. By 1963 Duvalier had developed a cult of personality around himself, centered largely on his self-proclaimed status as a semidivinity and voodoo sorcerer. In the 1960s the Tontons Macoutes was responsible for killing as many as 60,000 Haitians, and thousands more fled the country to escape crushing poverty. In 1971 Duvalier had the Haitian constitution amended to declare his son, JeanClaude, president upon his death, which occurred in April of that year. At just nineteen years old, Jean-Claude had little interest in running Haiti. Upon pressure from the United States, he agreed to some reforms, but his regime was rife with corruption, and under his control the country plunged further into poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy. Additionally, the Tontons Macoutes continued to terrorize the citizenry. In 1986, however, a massive popular uprising rendered the “dew breakers” powerless, and Jean-Claude was forced into exile in France. Although he was accused of embezzling as much as $800 million from Haiti during his presidency, he
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The Dew Breaker
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANNE is the unnamed Dew Breaker’s wife. She is a native of Haiti and the sister of her husband’s last torture victim there. She is a figure of forgiveness and redemption, although it is unclear in the book if she knows the whole of her husband’s past. BEATRICE is a seamstress who is convinced that her Haitian torturer is one of her neighbors in Brooklyn. DANY is a Haitian immigrant whose parents were the victims of political violence. He is obsessed with finding and murdering the Dew Breaker. THE DEW BREAKER is the unnamed torturer from the Duvalier regime, who brutally beat and killed numerous Haitians. Now living quietly in Brooklyn as a barber and landlord, the Dew Breaker appears to have redeemed himself, although his past actions continue to torment those around him. KA is the daughter of Anne and the Dew Breaker. She is a thirtyyear-old artist living in Brooklyn who grows up believing her father was a political prisoner in Haiti and learns the truth only as an adult.
A Haitian militia member. In Dew Breaker, Ka, a young Haitian woman living in Brooklyn, learns that her father was once a torturer under Haitian dictator François Duvalier. Romano Cagnoni/Getty Images
remains in France, and as of 2010 Swiss courts ruled that he could reclaim the $6 million in assets that had been frozen in accounts since his exile began in 1986.
W Themes The primary theme of The Dew Breaker is the lifelong aftermath of the experience of torture and terror, for both victim and perpetrator, and the possibility of redemption. After the initial chapter, “The Book of the Dead”—in which Ka and her father travel to Florida to deliver a sculpture she has made of him to a wealthy buyer, her father destroys the statue en route, and then recounts the story of his past to his shocked daughter—the chapters of The Dew Breaker each focus on someone either in New York or Haiti, and it gradually becomes clear that they have all been affected in some way by the work of the torturer. In “The Bridal Seamstress” an older woman who works as a seamstress in New York and is highly regarded for her work making wedding dresses, insists she
lives on the same street as the man who tortured her in Haiti. Although she bears the scars from his beatings, the house she says he lives in is vacant, and her sanity is questioned by other characters, although the reader knows she is talking about the barber, Ka’s father. Other chapters feature the friends and family members of his victims, and in the final chapter, “The Dew Breaker,” readers are taken back to the Duvalier era in Haiti, where Ka’s father is depicted torturing and killing a preacher so brutally that even his superiors are stunned. Out in the street he meets a woman named Anne, whom he marries and moves with to New York. Here it is revealed that the Dew Breaker’s wife is the sister of the preacher he killed; he credits her with saving his soul, and their daughter, Ka, comes to understand the full complexity of her parents’ experience. In an interview on National Public Radio's Tavis Smiley show, Edwidge Danticat discussed the many facets of character in a single person and how she developed the character of the dew breaker: “I wanted him to be human in the way that we’re all human. I think often when we categorize people so simplistically; we either hate them or we love them, or they’re great or they’re angels or they’re saints, especially people who are put in front of us as leaders. And we take these people and give them halos or give them horns. And I think it’s never as simple as that. I think most of us are somewhere in between. But we have to understand the environments that create these types of people, and fiction allows one to do that.”
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The Dew Breaker
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969. Her father immigrated to the United States when she was two years old, and her mother two years later. Danticat and her younger brother lived with an uncle until her parents could afford to send for them eight years later. When she arrived in Brooklyn at the age of twelve, Danticat spoke no English and had a difficult time adjusting to American life. Nonetheless, she went on to attend Barnard College, graduating in 1990 with a degree in French literature. Next she received her master’s degree in creative writing from Brown University. Danticat has won numerous prizes and awards for her fiction, including a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2009.
W Style
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Several of the chapters of The Dew Breaker were first published as short stories, and critics have noted that most are able to stand on their own merits. Some reviews call the book a short story collection, while others maintain that it is a novel. The book’s chapters are tied together by the sense that all the characters are haunted by what they experienced in Haiti. Stylistically, this novel follows closely in the Haitian tradition of historically based fiction immersed in the politics, culture, physical surroundings, and popular storytelling forms of the Haitian people. The stories in The Dew Breaker revolve primarily around displaced Haitians and a network of Haitian-Americans whose lives have been impacted by the dew breaker in the past. The first tale in the novel, according to Danticat, focuses on “telling stories from the point of view of people who hurt us as opposed to the people that are hurt.” The following eight stories intertwine the personal histories of Haitians whose lives have been marked by a dew breaker’s acts of violence. Danticat employs a variety of broken communications to relate the fractured nature of the Haitian-American experience: “ . . . dropped cell phone calls; unplayed answering machine messages; sleep-talking; miscommunication in English-as-a-second-language classes; recognition and non-recognition between fathers, sons, and brothers; fellow expatriates mistakenly . . . identified as former Macoute torturers,” according to Kevin Meehan and Bernadette A. Davis. This technique effectivey portrays the sense of displacement and the struggle to maintain contact and communication that diasporic characters experience.
W Critical Reception The Dew Breaker was widely praised by critics, who found Danticat’s restrained storytelling to be a perfect foil for the
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outrageous crimes she recounts. According to New York Times book editor Michiko Kakutani, The Dew Breaker is “Ms. Danticat’s most persuasive, organic performance yet. As seamless as it is compelling, the novel recounts its harrowing tale in limpid, understated prose, using a looping structure of overlapping stories to tell the Dew Breaker’s story by indirection.” Robert McCormick, reviewing the book for World Literature Today, found the story of the Dew Breaker too elliptical, and blamed the book’s construction as a series of short stories for what he sees as lapses in Danticat’s disclosure of vital information. Regardless of the fine line the book treads between novel and story collection, however, Sam McManis, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, notes that Danticat’s writing ability cannot be faulted. The stories in The Dew Breaker, he writes, are “presented in sparkling prose that evokes sentiment but never descends into sentimentality. It is tough, muscular writing, unsparing as an executioner. Danticat chills your spine as she breaks your heart.”
Works Cited
Cox, Tony. “Interview: Edwidge Danticat Discusses Her New Book, The Dew Breaker.” Tavis Smiley, National Public Radio. Web. 18 Mar. 2004. Deusner, Stephen M. “The Dew Breaker.” Bookreporter. com. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Kakutani, Michiko. “Books of the Times; Hiding from a Brutal Past Spent Shattering Lives in Haiti.” New York Times, 10 Mar. 2004. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. McCormick, Robert. Rev. of The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat. World Literature Today, 1 Jan. 2005. Print. McManis, Sam. “The Heartbreaking Horrors of Haiti.” Chicago Sun-Times, 21 Mar. 2004. Print. Meehan, Kevin, and Bernadette A. Davis. “Edwidge Danticat.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Wanda H. Giles and James R. Giles. Vol. 350. Detroit Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cobham, Rhonda. “The Penance of Speech.” Women’s Review of Books, 21.8 (May 2004): 2-3. Print. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 100. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Gibb, Lorna. “The Torturer’s Wife.” Times Literary Supplement 5275 (7 May 2004): 22. Print. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 100. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Dew Breaker
Valbrun, Marjorie. Rev. of The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat. Black Issues Book Review, 6.4 (July-Aug. 2004): 43. Print. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 100. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Watman, Max. “Not to Comment, but to Illustrate.” New Criterion, 22.9 (May 2004): 58-65. Print. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 100. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Gale Resources
“Edwidge Danticat.” Contemporary Authors Online. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. “Edwidge Danticat.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
“Times Topics: Edwidge Danticat.” http://ww.nytimes. com. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/ timestopics/people/d/edwidge_danticat/index.html Web. 8 Sept. 2010.
Union, 25 Apr. 2004. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Interview in which Danticat discusses her creative process, as well as her personal feelings about her character the Dew Breaker. Norris, Michele. “Interview: Edwidge Danticat Discusses Her New Book The Dew Breaker and the Country of Haiti.” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 15 Mar. 2004. Broadcast. Interview in which Danticat explains how she views the character of the dew breaker, as well as the pride Haitians feel for their country. Press, Joy. “The Dew Breaker.” Village Voice, 24 Mar. 2004. Print. Interview with Danticat in which she discusses how spending her childhood in Haiti affected her, as well as the experience of learning about one’s parents’ pasts. Danticat, Edwidge. “Less Than Human.” Progressive, Dec. 2007. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Danticat’s written testimony to the U.S. Congress on the mysterious death of her elderly uncle—and other immigrants— while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami.
For Further Reading
Barnes, Steve. “Ghosts of Haiti; Novelist Edwidge Danticat’s Dew Breaker Explores the Echoes of the Island’s Violent Past and Present.” Albany Times-
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Diary of a Bad Year By J. M. Coetzee
W Introduction Diary of a Bad Year (2007) by J. M. Coetzee chronicles one year (2005) in the life of C, an aging author who enlists the services of Anya, a twenty-nine-year-old beauty, to transcribe for a German publisher a series of essays called “Strong Opinions.” Jealous of the affection developing between Anya and C, Anya’s boyfriend, Alan, installs spyware on C’s computer, giving him access to the writer’s financial holdings, which are considerably larger than Anya and Alan would have guessed. The novel has been praised for an intricate three-part structure in which each of the pages is divided into halves or thirds. One of C’s essays, or “strong opinions,” appears at the top of every page. Subjects for these pieces cover a wide range of topics, including pedophilia, intelligent design, the failings of the British prime minister Tony Blair, animal rights, and the torture of political prisoners. Below the essay, C records his feelings for Anya in a diary entry. Often below the diary entry is a third section featuring snippets of Anya and Alan’s running conversation about the quality of C’s work and the ethical implications of manipulating his finances. By separating each page in this manner, Coetzee elucidates the novel’s ethical concerns in essay form and in dramatic form simultaneously.
W Literary and Historical Context
Diary of a Bad Year is set in 2005, when a coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom was fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. These two operations were the largest campaigns in what the coalition called the war on terror, a global military effort directed against radical Islamist terror organizations and the regimes suspected of supporting them. The war on terror began
in 2001, when the coalition sent troops to Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization believed to be responsible for attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In 2003 the coalition invaded Iraq in response to dubious intelligence reports that established a link between President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The reports also cited evidence that Hussein was storing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the following year, 2004, reports appeared claiming that the U.S. government sanctioned the torture of political prisoners detained at the Abu Ghraib facility in Baghdad, Iraq, and at the Guantánamo Bay facility in Cuba. Soldiers at these holding centers were allegedly forcing confessions from inmates by using electrocution, rape, and more sophisticated techniques, such as strappado hanging and waterboarding, which leave no physical marks on the victim. Grouchy and polemical through most of the first half of Diary of a Bad Year, Coetzee’s narrator reserves the worst of his bile for U.S. president George W. Bush and U.K. prime minister Tony Blair. Of what awaits Bush, C writes in mythological terms: “In the outrages that he and his servants perform, notably the outrage of torture, and in his hubristic claim to be above the law, the younger Bush challenges the gods, and by the very shamelessness of that challenge assures that the gods will visit punishment on the children and grandchildren of his house.” The narrator calls Blair a man with “no moral compass save personal ambition.” The novel also considers the politics of contemporary Australia, where Coetzee took up residence in 2002 and where the narrator of Diary of a Bad Year also lives. The narrator considers John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, a fiscal conservative in the tradition of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher and laments that, given Howard’s support of the Bush administration, Australia may be losing some of its old charm. The narrator writes, “What I liked best about Australia, when I first visited in the 1990s was the way in
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which people conducted themselves in their everyday dealings: frankly, fairly, with an elusive personal pride and an equally elusive ironic reserve. Now, fifteen years later, I hear the sense of self embodied in that conduct disparaged in many quarters as belonging to an Australia of a past now outmoded.” He concludes this thought by noting that “Australian society may never—thank God!— become as selfish and cruel as American society, but it does seem to be sleepwalking in that direction.”
W Themes Comprising fifty-five diverse essays and a subplot involving both Anya’s romantic love for Alan and her platonic love for C, Diary of a Bad Year covers a wide range of themes. Underpinning all of the novel’s darker musings is the idea that the transformative power of art may trump the worst of what humans have wrought. The narrator concludes the essay “On National Shame,” a piece about the torture of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, with a reflection about a performance of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s fifth symphony. He wonders how a Finn would have reacted to hearing the piece the first time it was performed in Helsinki one hundred years ago and concludes that such a person “would have felt proud, proud that one of us could put together such sounds, proud that out of nothing we human beings can make such stuff.” Turning his thoughts back to Guantánamo, the narrator observes, “Musical creation on the one hand, a machine for inflicting torture on the other: the best and the worst that human beings are capable of.” Here, early in the novel, the narrator gives vice and virtue equal measure. However, as the subplot develops and as the narrator warms to Anya, his opinions gradually soften. By the end of the novel, the scales tip in favor of art. The last two pieces in the book are tributes to the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The narrator argues that “the best proof we have that life is good, and therefore that there may perhaps be a god after all is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. It comes as a gift, unearned, unmerited, for free.” The last essay focuses on a moment in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov when Ivan returns to God his ticket to the universe because the world is too terrible. Although the narrator of Diary of a Bad Year may have begun rejecting the world as Ivan does, by the end of the novel he is overwhelmed with tears, sobbing with joy because he lives in a world where such a book exists.
W Style Coetzee introduces the novel’s three-part structure gradually. Initially he splits each page in half with a line
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALAN is a forty-two-year-old financial planner and Anya’s live-in boyfriend. He devises what he believes is a foolproof plan to skim off some of the interest of Señor C’s financial holdings, but Anya calls a halt to the scheme. ANYA is a twenty-nine-year-old former model enlisted by Señor C to type the recorded versions of his essays. As the novel progresses, Anya’s role in the writer’s life and work grows with her first critiquing and editing some of the pieces and eventually serving as Señor C’s protector and muse. JOHN C, or Señor C as he is called by Anya and Alan, is a seventy-one-year-old writer who has been asked by a German publisher to submit a set of essays to be released alongside the work of five other leading writers under the title “Strong Opinions.”
separating the essay at the top of the page from the diary entry at the bottom. The opening diary entries chart the narrator’s attempts to enlist Anya’s services as a typist. About twenty-five pages in, after Anya agrees to help, Coetzee introduces the third strand of the novel, breaking the page with another line and placing Anya and Alan’s conversations about the narrator at the bottom third of the page. Initially the three sets of prose are distinct and self-contained. The essays may run for a couple of pages, but each diary entry is concluded on one page, as is each snippet of conversation. The voice and subjects of the early essays are unaffected by the material below. Gradually this structure changes, and the parts begin to overlap and converge on each other. Anya begins to criticize some of the essays, causing the narrator to write more in his diary and to soften his tone in his essays. The diary entries grow longer, spilling onto the next page. Recognizing that her criticism is heard, Anya warms to the narrator; her boyfriend notices, and the conversations at the bottom of each page become longer. Suddenly the reader has to decide how to read the novel: whether to read each page top to bottom or to read each part to its conclusion and double back to finish the other parts. One effect this structure—especially juxtaposing the personal essays and diary entries of a narrator bearing the same initials and living in the same town as the book’s author—is to tempt the reader into viewing Diary of a Bad Year as a confession in which Coetzee airs his political views in the essays and his private insecurities in the diary entries. At times Coetzee seems to warn readers not to regard the novel this way. For example, when Anya assumes that she knows the narrator’s soul because she has read a few of his essays, he says to her, “Tread
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carefully. You may be seeing less of my inmost depths than you believe.”
W Critical Reception Diary of a Bad Year has earned predominately negative reviews, with critics agreeing for the most part that Coetzee’s formal experimentation is tedious, that the characters are banal, and that the novel is not a worthy successor to the works that earned the author a Nobel Prize in 2003. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly notes that “Anya is little more than a trophy to be disputed, and Alan as an unscrupulous, boorish reactionary is a caricature.” The reviewer goes on to claim that while
“C’s essays, especially the later ones inspired by Anya, hold some interest,” Diary of a Bad Year “is not one of Coetzee’s major efforts.” Writing for the Observer, Adam Mars-Jones argues that the novel’s “ambitions to threedimensional status are fitful—it bears the same relationship to a novel as a hologram does to a sculpture.” Among the harsher voices, an Atlantic reviewer declares that “the main action of Coetzee’s disjointed novel consists of C’s contemplating his navel and reflecting, endlessly and not very artfully, a seemingly limitless disgust.” A reviewer for Kirkus agrees, suggesting that “there’s something wrong with a novel in which a twisted, exploitative sexual relationship is far less interesting than are dozens of pages of discursive commentary.”
Photograph of J. M. Coetzee, author of Diary of a Bad Year. ª Micheline Pelletier/Corbis
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Critics who have praised the book have found the main character sympathetically drawn and the novel’s resolution satisfying. Writing in the Telegraph, Caroline Moore calls Diary of a Bad Year “a thoroughly unselfpitying portrayal of loneliness: of an old man, stranded in a foreign country and left behind by the tides of change.” Christopher Tayler, reviewing the work for the Guardian, finds the novel to be “funnier than anything else” Coetzee has written and argues that by the end, the book “becomes unexpectedly moving, offering surprises while avoiding a final thunderclap with the restraint that Coetzee’s readers have learned to expect.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Coetzee, J. M. Diary of a Bad Year. London: Vintage, 2007. Print. Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Atlantic Mar. 2008: 104+. Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2009: n. pag. Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Publishers Weekly 17 Sept. 2007: 31. Mars-Jones, Adam. “Even Nobel Winners Can Make Mistakes.” Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Observer [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 26 Aug. 2007. Web. 10 Oct 2010. Moore, Caroline. “The Prejudices of an Ageing, Lonely Writer.” Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Telegraph [London]. Telegraph Media Group, 13 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Tayler, Christopher. “Just Like Life.” Rev. of Diary of a Bad Year, by J. M. Coetzee. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 1 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Chapman, Michael. “The Case of Coetzee: South African Literary Criticism, 1990 to Today.” Journal of Literary Studies 26.2 (2010): 103+. Argues that with the political ambivalence of Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace and the formal innovations of Elizabeth Costello and Diary of a Bad Year, Coetzee may be drawing critics’ attention away from political issues and back to what Chapman calls “the intricacies of the text,” as Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad did with their stylistic innovations. Collellmir Morales, Dolors. “J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year: Ethical and Novelistic Awareness.” Miscelanea 40.2 (2009). Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Claims that by the end of the book, as the material from the three parts of each page overlaps and converges, Coetzee achieves the unity of a traditional novel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, has published twenty volumes of fiction and nonfiction in a career spanning more than thirty-five years. He was born on February 9, 1940, in South Africa to parents of Afrikaner descent and studied English literature and mathematics at the University of Cape Town. In the early 1960s Coetzee moved to London, where he worked as a computer programmer while completing the requirements for an MA in English from the University of Cape Town. In 1965 Coetzee quit programming to focus exclusively on literature, enrolling in the University of Texas on a Fulbright scholarship and completing a PhD in linguistics in 1969. Coetzee began to establish his literary reputation with his third novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), which was well received by critics, if not widely read. In 1983 Coetzee won the first of his two Man Booker Prizes for Life and Times of Michael K, the story of a simpleton forced to live off the land in the South African countryside. The second Booker Prize came in 1999 for Disgrace, which most readers and critics regard as Coetzee’s masterwork. In 2006 Coetzee obtained Australian citizenship. He currently resides in Adelaide with his partner, Dorothy Driver, a fellow academic.
Deresiewicz, William. “Foes.” Nation 25 Feb. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Compares Coetzee’s novel to Philip Roth’s Exit, Ghost, citing both works as part of a small emerging canon of contemporary books about old age. Also claims that the essays that appear embedded in Diary of a Bad Year and Elizabeth Costello are more interesting and elegant than the nonfiction Coetzee has published in recent years. Mantel, Hilary. “The Shadow Line.” New York Review of Books 17 Jan. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Contrasts C’s robust voice on the top third of each page with his equivocations below the page breaks, noting how over the course of the novel, C’s opinions soften and his character recedes, while Anya comes to inhabit the moral center of the novel. Marcus, David. “The Ambivalence Artist.” Dissent 56.1 (2009): 115+. Project Muse. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Argues that whereas in the three works immediately preceding the novel Coetzee had adopted a direct and confessional style, in Diary of a Bad Year he returns to the ambivalence of his earlier work, in which, Marcus claims, Coetzee’s position on the ideas he examines is considerably more difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain. Ruttenburg, Nancy, and Mark Sanders. “Introduction: J. M. Coetzee and His Doubles.” Journal of Literary Studies 25.4 (2009): 1+. Asserts that Coetzee uses characters who are authors to examine the limits of a
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writer’s authority over the characters and ideas in his or her text. Spencer, Robert. “J. M. Coetzee and Colonial Violence.” Interventions 10.2 (2008): 173+. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Suggests that whereas Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians revives in readers “a moral and ultimately political sensibility” that rejects torture, Diary of a Bad Year makes an “unusually explicit” call for action against the hateful ideologies that sanction such violence. Wood, James. “Squall Lines.” New Yorker 24 Dec. 2007: 140. Traces the themes of dishonor and cruelty throughout Coetzee’s oeuvre and examines the similarities in structure and content between Diary of a Bad Year and Elizabeth Costello, one of Coetzee’s previous novels. Gale Resources
“J. M. Coetzee.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale, 2000. Biography Resource Center. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. “J. M. Coetzee.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. “J. M. Coetzee (1940-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 161. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 205-56. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Marais, Michael. “J. M. Coetzee.” South African Writers. Ed. Paul A. Scanlon. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 225. Detroit: Gale, 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Marais, Michael, and Merritt Moseley. “J. M. Coetzee.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 1. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 329. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The official Web site of the Nobel Prize provides videos of Coetzee’s Nobel lecture, banquet speech, and receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature. http:// nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=555 Kultur & Noje, a Swedish online newspaper, features Coetzee’s interview with David Attwell, considered one of the world’s leading authorities on Coetzee’s work. Attwell speaks with Coetzee about the 2003 Nobel Prize and the writers who have influenced Coetzee’s fiction. http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/ an-exclusive-interview-with-j-m-coetzee-1.227254 Michael Tomasky, American editor-at-large for the British newspaper the Guardian, discusses a Republican Party-funded commercial that criticizes U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to incarcerate prisoners currently held at Guantánamo Bay in prisons on the U.S.
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mainland. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis free/michaeltomasky/video/2009/may/08/obamarepublican-attack-ad-guantanamo-detainees Writing for BOOK Southern Africa, an Internet newspaper that reviews South African books, Peter Singer, Australian philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton University, discusses the ethical problems of sex and race, the treatment of animals, and the role of reason in Coetzee’s work. http://book.co.za/ blog/2010/08/05/podcast-peter-singer-on-coet zee-and-ethics-plus-cbc-interview-with-coetzee/ For Further Reading
Blair, Tony. A Journey: My Political Life. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print. The former British prime minister offers his account of the decision to back the U.S.-led war in Iraq as well as justifications of other questionable policies. Two of the narrator’s essays in Diary of a Bad Year explicitly criticize Blair’s leadership, and several others discuss the failures of the coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print. Considered Coetzee’s masterwork, this novel examines the manner in which Lucie Lurie, a rape victim, responds to police indifference and to the dishonor foisted upon her by her father and her neighbors in the aftermath of the crime. In Diary of a Bad Year, the narrator’s argument with Anya over who suffers the greater dishonor in a rape, the rapist or the victim, almost ends the narrator’s relationship with his typist. ———. Elizabeth Costello. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print. Similar to Diary of a Bad Year, this novel uses an inventive structure to give the main character a platform for discussing ethical issues. Throughout the book, the aging novelist Elizabeth Costello attends lectures and gives speeches on topics including the ethical treatment of animals, the role of the absurd in the works of the German writer Franz Kafka, and sexual dynamics between men and women. Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print. Coll, an editor for the Washington Post who covered Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, offers a comprehensive study of the failure of American intelligence operations and the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the years leading up to September 11, 2001. Several of the entries in Diary of a Bad Year cite the failures of American politics in the Middle East and Afghanistan from the Cold War through the present day. Hirst, John. Sense and Nonsense in Australian History. Melbourne: Black, 2009. Print. One of the chapters in Hirst’s book examines the dispossession of Aboriginal Australians and their wars with white TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Australians. Coetzee’s narrator in Diary of a Bad Year cites Hirst’s book in an entry that considers whether white Australians should apologize to Aboriginal Australians for taking their land. Leist, Anton, and Peter Singer, eds. J. M. Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print. This anthology of essays by contemporary philosophers examines Coetzee’s treatment of such ethical issues as the relationship between humans and animals, the dynamics of
sex between men and women, the possibility of justice in postcolonial society, and the origin of moral values. Roth, Philip. Exit, Ghost. New York: Vintage, 2008. Print. Like Señor C, Nathan Zuckerman, the main character in Roth’s novel, is an aging writer who falls in love with a twenty-something beautiful woman who is in a troubled relationship.
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Dirt Music By Tim Winton
W Introduction Tim Winton’s Dirt Music (2001) examines the journey for personal change undertaken by forty-year-old lost soul Georgie Jutland and by Luther Fox, a musician in his thirties who has been trapped for three years by the grief of losing his entire family. Despite the small-town social stricture that seems to forbid their being together, Georgie and Luther fall in love and help each other begin to heal and grow. Composed over a decade, Dirt Music is memorable for its vivid depictions of Western Australian landscapes. The novel won the 2001 Western Australia Premier’s Book Awards for fiction and overall; the 2002 Book of the Year Award from the Australian Booksellers Association; the 2002 Miles Franklin Award; the 2002 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction from the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards; and was short-listed for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
Settled by Europeans beginning in the eighteenth century, twenty-first-century Australia is largely populated by immigrants and dislocated natives. Historically, Australia provided a place where immigrants could redefine themselves, but as Europeans arrived, the aboriginal way of life was threatened and indigenous people had to cope with sharing the land with these newcomers. The country’s history engendered a literature that deals with selfdiscovery, written by people who examined the landscape and their own identities as immigrants and natives. For example, at the turn of the twentieth century, Barbara Baynton wrote short stories about ordinary life in the bush. Another author connected to the setting is Henry Lawson, particularly remembered for his character, Jack Mitchell, who exemplifies the Australian bush philosopher.
Nearly a century later, Australian identity is still an unresolved problem that writers address. Christos Tsiolkas, son of Greek immigrants to Australia, wrote about this identity crisis in his award-winning novel The Slap (2008). Peter Carey deals with issues of postcolonialism in his novels as modern Australia strives to be more independent of influences from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. Winton, with his focus on Australian landscapes and environmentalism, writing about strong women and damaged men, is an important part of the literary identity of Australia in the early twenty-first century.
W Themes Salvation is a key theme in Dirt Music. Georgie and Luther are each on a quest of personal discovery, having reached a point in their lives where something must change, for better or for worse. Luther is the source of salvation for both Georgie and himself. Georgie, who has been adrift in her life since she lost her call to nursing, rediscovers her instincts to care and nurture in her love for Luther. With Georgie as his catalyst, Luther returns to his music, which helps him resolve his grief and move on with his life. Jim is also on a quest of personal discovery. Circumscribed by family history, Jim wants to rise above the brutish Buckridge past, but he ultimately fails to find salvation. He seeks out Luther on a mad journey into the backcountry of Western Australia, but Jim cannot completely articulate what he needs from Luther, and so he cannot find him. Salvation, in this novel, is a deeply emotive experience. “Music wants to be heard. Feeling wants to be felt” (362), Georgie thinks to herself near the end of the novel while looking for Luther. Luther’s emotions are reflected in his music, a music that is raw, visceral, and rises up out of the land, plucked by his hand. Georgie expresses herself physically, by swimming, cooking, saving a woman who has been in a car accident, and renovating the Fox farmhouse. Salvation in Dirt
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Music is personal, earthy, and uplifting in this novel that otherwise tends toward grimness.
W Style Setting is an important aspect of Winton’s style. Establishing the time and place of a story, setting can be general or specific, actual or fictitious, but it is typically significant to the plot. In the case of Dirt Music, the setting is specific, significant, and a combination of actual and fictitious. The novel is set in Western Australia during the early twenty-first century; however, the small town of White Point and Coronation Bay and its archipelago are fictional. Winton, who grew up in Western Australia, often makes the landscape a vivid, sensual part of the story—almost a character in itself. In Dirt Music, Winton takes his readers from the windy southwest coast, across the floodplain farmland just inland to the arid mulga country, into the colorful Pilbara region, and finally to the tropical northern coast. Western Australia’s landscape is varied, loud, vibrant, and emotive, making it the perfect setting to Winton’s novel about music and self-discovery.
W Critical Reception Dirt Music, like Winton’s other novels, was popular with audiences, but critics gave it mixed reviews. Critics concurred that his skill as a wordsmith and his talent as a storyteller are evident, but the plot and characters of this novel did not hold up to close, critical scrutiny. Tom Gibbons, writing in the Australian journal Quadrant, stated that “Winton’s comparatively restricted narrative point of view made it difficult for this reader to empathise with his characters, consequently difficult to believe in and attach importance to their experiences.” New Statesman critic Martyn Bedford pinpointed the problem, stating that Georgie’s narrative was less “engrossing” than Luther’s. Peter Porter, reviewing the novel for the Guardian, was more forgiving, declaring the novel to be “very well written.” Porter’s only criticism was that the pacing was slow. Bedford ultimately summed up the critical appraisals of Dirt Music by concluding that “with a writer as good as Winton, even this near miss of a novel leaves echoes in your mind long after you have shut the book.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bedford, Martyn. “Novel of the Week. (Books).” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. New Statesman, 27 May 2002: 53. Print. Gibbons, Tom. “The Way Wa Lives Now.” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Quadrant, 1 Nov. 2002: 85-86. Print.
MAJOR CHARACTERS BEAVER, an ex-biker who runs the local gas station, has dirt on everyone in town. BESS, Horrie’s wife, is dying of bowel cancer. She is a former English teacher and talks to Luther about books. JIM BUCKRIDGE, Georgie Jutland’s boyfriend, is a great fisherman and an undeclared leader in the community of White Point. LUTHER FOX, grieving the loss of his entire family from unnatural causes, abandons music and becomes a shamateur (fish poacher). He and Georgie embark on an affair that rocks him from his grief. HORRIE, an ex-merchant marine who loves Russian composers, is on a final road trip with his wife Bess. He gives Luther a ride for part of his journey. JUDE, Georgie’s favorite sister, becomes depressed after the death of their mother and attempts suicide. GEORGIE JUTLAND, forty years old and without direction or motivation, is brought back to life when she meets Fox. NORA is a sixteen-year-old hitchhiker whom Luther tries to help when she appears caught in Rusty’s net of anger and drugs. RUSTY is a young drug-addicted surfer with a peg leg with whom Fox travels for a while.
Porter, Peter. “Rednecks of the Outback.” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Guardian, 8 June 2002: 26. Print. Winton, Tim. Dirt Music. New York: Scribner's 2001. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Craven, Peter. “Perils of the Popular.” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Meanjin 62.1 (2003): 133-43. Print. Finds Dirt Music lacking as compared to Winton’s other works and the two other novelists reviewed. “Dirt Music. (Fiction).” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2002: 366. Print. Reviews the novel positively, discussing the importance of growth and change for the central characters. “Dirt Music. (Fiction).” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Publishers Weekly, 22 Apr. 2002: 46. Print. Discusses the landscape as an important and unique element in Winton’s novel.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tim Winton was born August 4, 1960 in Perth, Australia to a father who was a police officer and a mother who was a homemaker. He spent his childhood holidays swimming and reading, the latter of which inspired him to become a writer. Between the ages of ten and 18, he wrote approximately fifty stories. Winton studied creative writing at the Western Australia Institute of Technology. His first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982) was published the same year he married his wife, Denise. Winton’s work has consisently been recognized with awards from 1982 forward, including two Commonwealth Writers Prizes and four Miles Franklin Awards; Dirt Music received the Miles Franklin Award in 2002. Winton was declared a Living Treasure by the Australian National Trust. As of 2010, Winton lived in Fremantle, near Perth, with his wife and children.
Mytton, Leigh. “Dirt Music Paints a Bleak Picture.” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. news.bbc.co.uk. BBC News 16 Oct. 2002. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Declares the novel to be a “page-turner.”
Nesbitt, Robin. “Dirt Music. (Fiction).” Rev. of Dirt Music, by Tim Winton. Library Journal 1 Mar. 2002: 141. Print. Celebrates Winton’s handling of the issues of love, death, and maturity. Winton, Tim. Interviewed by Andrew Denton. Enough Rope with Andrew Denton. ABC1. ABC, Sydney. 25 Oct. 2004. Television. Winton discusses his past and his inspiration for his stories and novels. Winton, Tim. Interviewed by Maura Murizzi and Andrew Lawless. “‘You Kill Them If Pressed’—Tim Winton.” www.threemonkeysonline.com. Three Monkeys Online May 2006. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Shares his approach to writing characters and discusses his view on being seen as a quintessential Australian author. Gale Resources
Rossiter, Richard. “Tim Winton.” Australian Writers, 1975-2000. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 325. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. “Tim Winton.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.
Dirt Music is set in a small town in the Australian Outback. Tommaso Lizzul/Shutterstock.com
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“Tim Winton.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 251. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. “Tim Winton (1960-).” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 119. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009. 303-48. Print. Open Web Sources
The British Council Contemporary Writers maintains a Web page about Tim Winton. Available at http:// www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p= auth03c7l393712635104, the page includes a biography, bibliography, awards information, an essay on Winton’s critical perspective, and contact information. For Further Reading
McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree. New York: Vintage, 1992. Print. Published in 1979, this novel features the story of a man who has abandoned a mundane yet successful life to be a fisherman on the Tennessee River. Smith, W. Ramsay. Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines. Minneola: Dover, 2003. Print. Stories about the origins of the world and the cultural practices of indigenous Australians. Winton, Tim. Cloudstreet. New York: Scribner's, 2002. Print. Published in 1992, tells the story of a two very different families who share a house in Perth after World War II. ———. The Turning: Stories. New York: Scribner's, 2006. Print. Examines life in small-town Australia in this collection of seventeen short stories.
Carey, Peter. Illywhacker. New York: Vintage, 1996. Print. Published in 1985, tells the tale of a 139-yearold con man who exemplifies one aspect of the Australian identity.
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A Distant Shore By Caryl Phillips
W Introduction Caryl Phillip’s seventh novel, A Distant Shore (2003), is the story of a middle-aged woman on the brink of a nervous breakdown or mental collapse. In the opening pages, readers learn that she is recently retired and is divorced. Her parents have died, and her sister has died just weeks earlier. Dorothy is alone in the world, but she is also a woman who further self-isolates herself. From the vantage point of her home at the top of a hill, she can stand in her window and watch her neighbors and the villagers below. She watches but does not join them. She also watches the local night watchman Solomon polish his car. Solomon is much younger and he is black, an anomaly that stands out in Dorothy’s small English village, where there are very few inhabitants who are not native Caucasian English people. When Solomon offers to drive Dorothy on her errands and to her doctor’s appointments, these two disparate personalities with nothing in common but their loneliness, become friends. Solomon is murdered by a group of white hoodlums early in the novel, but after his murder, Phillips provides Solomon’s back story and explains how he arrived in England. In an unnamed African country, Solomon was a rebel war leader, who killed frequently. After his family was massacred, he was smuggled out of Africa and eventually arrived in England, where he was arrested for rape. Solomon was soon freed after the young woman refused to testify, but upon release, he was told to move where his arrest would not be known. There are people who welcome immigrants, but many English people do not, and so Solomon’s life is one of tension and stress because he is in England illegally. Solomon is lucky enough to find someone who gives him shelter and helps him with the legal process for becoming a citizen. After Solomon moves to a small village to start over, he sees Dorothy, who appears very
lonely. Solomon sets out to be a friend to her, just as people had earlier befriended him and helped him. He wants to rescue her from her loneliness. In the next section of the book, readers learn Dorothy’s back story. Dorothy’s parents showed her no love, and her unhappy marriage ended when her husband of thirty years ran off with a younger woman. Dorothy was forced to take an early retirement after a colleague filed a charge of sexual harassment. Dorothy’s two affairs with married men ended badly, but in relating these events, she is incapable of seeing that the wives of these men are entitled to hate her. As trauma upon trauma is heaped upon Dorothy, she slowly begins to lose her mind. She cannot function, cannot sleep, drinks too much, and acts inappropriately in public, often laughing in a crazy manner. Soon she is committed to a mental hospital, where she resides at the end of the novel.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the late 1990s and during the first decade of the twenty-first century, England had a significant problem with illegal immigration. In 2005 the number of illegal immigrants in England was estimated to be 430,000, but many in government believed that the true estimate might be as high as 570,000. By 2009 the number of illegal immigrants was estimated to be near one million. Many of these illegal immigrants were people whose asylum requests were denied or who overstayed their visas. In A Distant Shore, Phillips describes the prejudice that immigrants face in England. Groups opposed to immigration cite 2010 employment statistics that suggest immigrants take jobs that have traditionally gone to young people, leaving many native Englanders unemployed in this age group. Other studies indicate that
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many other jobs are also going to immigrants, with estimates as high as 80 percent of newly created jobs being filled by immigrants. The perception that immigrants take jobs from native English people explains much of the criticism directed toward the government’s open-door immigration policy. Lack of employment opportunities also account for much of the hostility directed toward immigrants. A 2008 poll revealed that 60 percent of people thought that there were too many immigrants in Great Britain and half of the people polled said that all foreigners should leave. Phillips does not identify the African country from which Solomon flees. There are many countries that Phillips might have chosen. Between the 1960s and early 2000s, civil war raged in Nigeria, Mozambique, Congo, and Sierra Leone. Civil wars resulted in genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, while there was thirty years of conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
W Themes Loss of home is the most compelling theme of A Distant Shore. Dorothy is not at home in her own space or in her
MAJOR CHARACTERS SOLOMON BARTHOLOMEW is a refugee from Africa, who befriends his neighbor Dorothy. In Africa, he was known as Gabriel, but once he became a rebel leader, his name was Hawk. He adopts a different personality to fit each name. BRIAN is Dorothy’s husband, who flees their sterile marriage for a younger woman. DOROTHY JONES is an emotionally damaged middle-aged woman, who is neglected and needy. The harder she tries to make someone love her, the more that person withdraws and the more emotionally fragile she becomes. MAHMOOD is a local newspaper seller, with whom Dorothy has an affair. SHEILA, Dorothy’s younger sister, runs away from her abusive parents as a teenager, leading to an estrangement that ends only as Sheila is dying. GEOFF WAVERLY is the teacher who charges Dorothy with sexual harassment.
In A Distant Shore, Dorothy’s friend Solomon was a civil war leader in Africa before he was smuggled into England. ª Patrick Robert/Sygma/ Corbis
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Caryl Phillips was born March 13, 1958, on the Caribbean of island St. Kitts. He grew up in Leeds, England, and attended Oxford University. Phillips began his literary career by writing for the theater, but he also wrote for radio and film. In 1992 he was named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for his novel, Cambridge. Phillips’s Crossing the River (1993) was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. A Distant Shore, Phillips’s seventh novel, was a finalist for the PEN/ Faulkner Award. A Distant Shore was also the New York Times and the Chicano Tribune’s Best Book of the Year and a Hurston/Wright Award finalist. As of 2010, Phillips taught at Yale University.
own village. She is recently divorced and retired. Her only sister has died, as have her parents. In addition, she harbors a family secret—her father sexually assaulted her younger sister. Dorothy cannot sleep and sometimes acts irrationally, sees a psychiatrist, and has been confined to a mental hospital. She does not feel at home in her own country, and as she notes in the final sentences of the novel, the mental hospital is not her home, either. Likewise Solomon has no home. He must flee his native country after war destroys his family. He knows that he is also a hunted man and will be killed if caught. He is forced to change his name, and thus, he has no identity associated with his home. In England, he is unwelcome because he is black. His racial difference means he can never be a true Englishman, as the hate mail he receives makes clear. Dorothy and Solomon become friends because they are lonely and socially isolated. Dorothy is disgusted by the lack of manners that she sees in the people around her. She is impressed with Solomon because he is unfailingly polite and is always neatly dressed. Dorothy, however, is rarely neatly dressed. Her life is out of control, and her appearance shows it. Her clothing is dirty and wrinkled, which she notes but considers unimportant in her own dress, since she can fix it if she wishes. Dorothy is different from her neighbors and acts in some ways irrationally, which makes her noticed, something most fifty-five-year-old women do not experience. Her strange appearance and often irrational behavior cause her to be all the more isolated and lonely. In A Distant Shore, both Dorothy and Solomon seek asylum. Solomon seeks a safe haven from his native country. Dorothy is a stranger in her own country. She does not recognize England anymore. There are new communities and new houses. The names of towns are changed and the people in her old community have values that are different from hers. New immigrants of color are clearly not English. Dorothy, who no longer fits
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into this new England, is a woman seeking asylum in her own country.
W Style A Distant Shore does not have a chronologically linear plot. Phillips shifts back and forth, jumping from the novel’s present time to a nonspecific time in the past and then jumping still further back to a more distant past. In telling the story of Solomon’s life in Africa, when his name is Gabriel, Phillips begins with the massacre of Gabriel’s family, which leads to his need to escape from Africa. Then Phillips takes the reader back in time to when Gabriel was a rebel leader known as Hawk. Time then moves forward to his escape to France and then forward again to Gabriel in jail, and then back in time again to his escape from France, before moving forward again to his release from jail and flight from London. Phillips’s novel also shifts back and forth between points of view. There are five sections in the novel. The first section is Dorothy’s narration and is told in the present tense. In this section, readers learn about Dorothy’s damaged emotional and mental state. Readers learn about Solomon, from Dorothy’s point of view, and hear about his death. The second section is Solomon’s story, but it is told in third person. The third section describes Dorothy’s life, this time in third person. In the fourth section, Solomon describes the last year of his life and his friendship with Dorothy. In the final section, Dorothy tells the story of her life in a mental hospital, where she has been sent to recover. In the final section of A Distant Shore, Phillips uses an interior dialogue to relate Dorothy’s experiences in the mental hospital. She does not speak and the jumble of thoughts might best be compared to stream of consciousness. Her thoughts seem deranged, mirroring her emotional turmoil.
W Critical Reception Reviews of A Distant Shore were mixed. Laurence Wareing’s review in the Glasgow Herald was typical of praise for Phillips’s novel. Wareing celebrated A Distant Shore because it captures both the public and the private reactions of England’s sometimes contentious welcome of new immigrants. According to Wareing, A Distant Shore is a “powerful novel of asylum seekers” and a depiction of “a nation deeply affected by changes in the world around it.” In its depiction of a small English village struggling with change, Wareing claimed that Phillips “exposes the myth of the serene” English village, which is so focused on preserving the old ways and for generations has been unwelcoming to strangers. Linda Watkins’s review of A Distant Shore in the African American Literature Book Club, an online site, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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also praised Phillips’s book. Watkins was especially complimentary of Phillips’s characterization of Dorothy as a “depressed-obsessed” teacher and of Solomon, as a former solder who is trying to start over in England. Watkins also admired how Phillips created two protagonists, whose “perspectives of the world are clear and humanistic, even though both come from extremely different backgrounds.” Watkins called the novel “accomplished” and “unique.” On the negative side, Natasha Walter’s review in the Guardian was significantly less enthusiastic. Walter complained that Phillips’s novel is an idea, rather than a reality, that the work “doesn’t have enough flesh on its bones to come alive.” Walter’s complaint was that the two protagonists appear to be lecturing from memorization and “explaining things point by point to the reader.” According to Walter, A Distant Shore lacks sufficient energy, and instead of revealing experiences, Phillips simply “explained” experiences to readers. As a result, in this novel, the experiences of the protagonists are generic, rather than specific. BIBLIOGRAPHY
the reader from becoming too comfortable in a world of prejudice and bigotry. Evans, Diana. Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. independent.co.uk Independent 21 Mar. 2003. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Argues that monotonous prose and careless repetition in A Distant Shore distract readers from an otherwise important story. Mantel, Hilary. “Anyplace, England.” Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. telegraph.co.uk Daily Telegraph 8 Mar. 2003. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Claims that stereotypes, not individuals, make A Distant Shore a flawed novel. Sarvan, Charles P., and Hasan Marhama. “The Fictional Works of Caryl Phillips: An Introduction.” World Literature Today 65.1 (1991): 35-40. Print. Offers a good general introduction to Phillips’s earliest novels. Whittier, Darryl. “High Tides and Missed Endings.” Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. theglobeandmail. com Globe and Mail 13 Dec. 2003. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Contends that A Distant Shore provokes readers to question ideas about morality and the need for survival.
Works Cited
“430,000 Illegal Immigrants in UK.” Guardian 30 June 2005. Print. Doughty, Steve. “80% of New Jobs Have Gone to Migrants since Labour Came to Power.” dailymail. co.uk. Mail Online 11 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Phillips, Caryl. A Distant Shore. New York: Vintage International, 2003. Print. Walter, Natasha. “The Sadness of Strangers.” Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. guardian.co.uk Guardian 15 Mar. 2003. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Wareing, Laurence. “Seeking a Life More Ordinary.” Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. heraldscotland.com Herald (Scotland) 15 Mar. 2003. Web. 12 Aug. 2010.
Gale Resources
“Caryl Phillips.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Document URL http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1000113763&v=2.1&u=itsbtria l&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Sander, Reinhard. “Caryl Phillips.” Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers: Third Series. Ed. Bernth Lindfors and Reinhard Sander. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 157. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Document URL http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1200004243& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Watkins, Linda. Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. aalbc.com. African American Literature Book Club, n.d. Web. 11 Aug. 2010.
The Caryl Phillips Web site, at carylphillips.com, provides information on the author, his works, and appearances.
“Young People Think Immigrants Are a Threat to National Identity and Jobs.” dailymail.co.uk. Daily Mail 27 Sept. 2008. Web. 11 Aug. 2010.
Random House provides an author page for Caryl Phillips at http://www.randomhouse.ca/author/results. pperl?authorid=23875
Additional Resources
For Further Reading
Criticism and Reviews
Alao, Abiodun. Brothers at War: Dissidence and Rebellion in Southern Africa. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Print. Examines the ideological and ethnic differences that have fueled wars in Mozambique and Angola.
Cooper, Rand Richard. “There’s No Place Like Home.” Rev. of A Distant Shore, by Caryl Phillips. nytimes. com. New York Times 19 Oct. 2003. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Claims that in spite of some irritating prose habits, Phillips creates a novel that is designed to keep
Campbell, Greg. Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones. Boulder:
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Westview, 2002. Print. Examines the use of diamonds to finance the civil war in Sierra Leone and even to fund al-Qaeda terrorists. Gberie, Lansana. A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005. Print. Exposes the corruption and violence of the war between the Revolutionary United Front and the government of Sierra Leone. Johnson, Douglas H. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003. Print. Provides a summary of the events and an analysis of the cause of the war in Sudan.
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Panayi, Panikos. An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800. London: Longman, 2009. Print. Explores several important issues linked to the history of immigration in Great Britain, including employment, racism, and poverty. Reynolds, Jill. The Single Woman: A Discursive Investigation. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print. Provides a collection of interviews about how single women live in Great Britain that focuses on identity and social expectations. Sheri Karmiol
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Dive from Clausen’s Pier By Ann Packer
W Introduction Carrie is already falling out of love with Mike, the fiancé whom she has been dating since high school, when he makes a dive into too-shallow water at a quarry, breaking his neck. If he survives, he will be quadriplegic. Carrie is torn between being the dutiful girlfriend who stays and suffers beside him and freeing herself from a life she had already decided she did not want before tragedy struck. After a few weeks of playing the part, she flees her home in Madison, Wisconsin, for New York City, where she can reinvent herself. She shows up on the doorstep of a gay friend from high school and moves in, begins taking courses in design, and embarks on a love affair with the mysterious Kilroy, who is everything Mike is not. Although Carrie struggles with discovering what the right course of action is, and though her life in New York seems idyllic, she cannot bear the guilt of abandoning Mike without some kind of resolution. Eventually, she returns to Madison to make peace with Mike. Praised for its beautiful prose, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier was selected as the first Good Morning America book club title and became an immediate best seller.
W Literary and Historical Context
Set in the same period in which it was written, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier is divided between Madison, Wisconsin, and New York City. During the early 2000s, Madison was named one of the best places to live in the United States. According to the New York Times Book Review, during the decade that led up to the release of the novel, Madison held rankings in the top ten best cities to live in for women and for families; it was ranked fourth most-child friendly, fifth fittest, and all around best
medium-sized city in the United States. Much of the emphasis however, is on families, rather than on young singles looking for adventure. New York has long had a reputation for being a place where people go to start over or re-create themselves. Its population topped eight million in the 2000 census, making it an easy place to lose oneself. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier appeared during the year that Oprah Winfrey decided to end her book club. The talk-show host’s book club had made famous several novels, and when she discontinued the program, several television hosts stepped in to try to fill the gap. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier was selected as the title to launch Good Morning America’s new monthly book club. The debut novel sped up the charts, both in the New York Times and in such industry magazines as Publishers Weekly. The original print run of 30,000 copies was increased exponentially, and experts estimated that within the week of the announcement from Good Morning America, nearly 250,000 copies of the novel were in print (Maryles).
W Themes The Dive from Clausen’s Pier centers on the ideas of the cost of emotional relationships, and on how to balance what is owed to family and friends with being true to oneself. Carrie once loved Mike, but she feels their relationship is coming to an end. Mike’s tragic accident serves to bind her to him more thoroughly, because she does not simply want to abandon him. But Mike does not want her pity, either. Ann Packer focuses on what happens to love and friendship in the face of adversity, showing how different characters react to what they feel are betrayals. Carrie’s best friend, Jamie, bluntly tells Carrie she should not be the type of girl who dumps her boyfriend after an injury like this one. And yet, Carrie longs for freedom, not only from the responsibilities she now has in an already
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CARRIE BELL wants more than marriage to her high school sweetheart and a life in her hometown, but when tragedy causes her fiancé, Mike, to become a quadriplegic, she feels it is her duty to stay. However, when duty and expectations become too much for her to bear, she flees Madison, Wisconsin, for New York City, hoping to start a new life while continuing to tell friends and family that she plans to return. While in New York, Carrie embarks on a relationship with the exciting and mysterious Kilroy, whose moody and brooding attitude is exactly the opposite of the calm she shared with Mike. Eventually, despite the positive experiences she has in New York, Carrie returns to Madison to set things right. JAMIE is Carrie’s best friend, who believes that Carrie needs to stay in her relationship with Mike, especially now that Mike needs her most. KILROY becomes Carrie’s lover while she is in New York. He is the opposite of what Carrie sees in Mike. But Kilroy also has a past that weighs on him, and he, like Carrie, is trying to escape the expectations of others.
In the story, Carrie is beginning to regret her engagement to her high school sweetheart Mike, and then he breaks his neck after diving into shallow water. costall/Shutterstock.com
MIKE MAYER is aware that his relationship with Carrie is on the rocks, and that knowledge is precisely what encourages him to take the risky dive off Clausen’s Pier. The resulting catastrophe—an injury that causes him to become a quadriplegic—serves to put further strain on their relationship and it completely changes Mike’s life. Despite wanting to save his relationship with Carrie, Mike does not want her to stay with him out of pity—he wants, and misses, her love.
daily life into her narrative to create a sense of realism. “As keenly observant of the everyday world as she is of the subtle interactions between people, Packer deftly captures life in contemporary America,” Kathy Pohl described in the Writer. Packer described her process in an interview to Pohl, explaining that she began with the characters and their conflicts, and she knew where they started and where she wanted them to end in relationship to one another. Packer does not use flashy prose, instead building suspense through her descriptions of Carrie’s inner journey. Carrie’s ultimate decision about whether to stay in New York or to return to Madison is up in the air, and even the ending, when Carrie returns to make her peace, is a surprise, due to the way it is approached. This look into Carrie’s motives and her ultimate decision—despite the pleasures she experiences in New York—gives the novel psychological depth and make the tale more complex than it seems on the surface. For a portion of the story, the tale seems to be about Carrie’s escape and her experiences finding herself in a new life. But Packer builds those expectations of her audience, only to twist them in a resolution which still feels absolutely true to Carrie’s character. While Packer’s settings are drawn very clearly—she uses both New York and Madison, Wisconsin, both of which she has lived in—it is the characters and their relationships that are continuously noted as the core of the book. In the New York Times Book Review, Rob Nixon wrote, “Packer’s quick gift for capturing a character’s voice infuses the novel with a generous cast
ROOSTER is Mike’s best friend and his main defender.
unwanted relationship, but from the burden of expectations that surround her. Carrie’s actions seem divided into two categories: betrayal or self-betrayal. But Packer also looks at her choices in terms of selfishness versus self-preservation. Carrie struggles to find the balance between those two things. She cannot continue to keep up her act as the suffering, devoted girlfriend whose love has never been stronger because the role is not true, and it prevents her from being true to herself.
W Style Packer centers her stories around characters, rather than around plot, weaving very detailed observations about
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of memorable friends. . . . [T]he author’s deft sense of character ensures that the inner movements of Carrie’s journey keep us off balance and enthralled.” Other critics, including a contributor to Publishers Weekly, noted her keen ear for dialogue, feeling that the way the characters speak makes them seem more like flesh-and-blood people, thinking their own thoughts, than characters on the page. The characters are largely ordinary people, but their expression in dialogue are so true to who they are in terms of their relationships and their identities in the story that they are immediately recognizable.
W Critical Reception The Dive from Clausen’s Pier was a commercial success beyond the expectations of either the publisher or Packer. Packer explained to Pohl that the experience of success “was wonderful; it was so beyond my wildest dreams. Honestly, I’d been working on that book alone in a room for 10 years, never ever being at all sure I would be published, let alone by a wonderful publisher, let alone to critical acclaim or great sales. I mean, it was just one sort of surprising delight after another.” The novel received a Great Lakes Book Award and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. Reviews were typically complimentary, and focused on the vivid lives of the characters. Even reviewers who found Carrie hard to identify with thought that aspect made her more interesting (“Ann Packer”). Nola Theiss of Kliatt commented on how engaged she became with the characters’ lives, explaining, “When an author leaves the reader thinking about the future of the characters, as if they have lives beyond the final page. that’s a sign of good writing, and this book is full of good writing.” A Publishers Weekly critic found The Dive from Clausen’s Pier to be an “engrossing debut novel” and “the sort of book one reads dying to know what happens to the characters, but loves for its wisdom.” Booklist critic Carrie Bissey focused on Carrie’s difficulties in finding her answers, writing, “her struggle to do what’s right and her revelations about the life she wants for herself will keep readers turning page after eloquently written page.” A critic for Kirkus Reviews found that while the ending was surprising, “there’s not a false note in the story’s tentative resolution,” and concluded that the novel is “Very fine fiction indeed.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Although writing was highly valued in Ann Packer’s family, she herself never intended to become a writer. The daughter of a creative writing teacher and a law professor, both of whom worked at Stanford University, Packer was born on March 4, 1959. Though her mother also worked as a writer, and though her brother was interested in literature early on, Packer loved reading but had no inclinations to write herself. During her senior year of college at Yale, a friend persuaded her to take a fiction-writing course, despite her lack of interest. Packer quickly fell in love with writing, describing the process as “almost like a conversion experience” (Pohl). She completed a degree in English at Yale, then moved to New York and worked for Ballantine Books. She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned her MFA, and sold her first short story before graduating. Packer has taught creative writing at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing in Madison, where half of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier is set. Her first book, a short story collection titled Mendocino and Other Stories, was published in 1994; many of the stories had been previously published in Ploughshares, the New Yorker, and other magazines. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier was published in 2002, and Songs without Words followed in 2007. Packer has been included in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards and has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the James Michener Award, and the Kate Chopin Literary Award.
Maryles, Daisy. “Kudos for Knopf. (Behind the Bestsellers).” Publishers Weekly 24 June 2002: 20. Nixon, Rob. “Guilt Trip: In This novel, a Young Woman from Wisconsin Flees to New York to Get away from Her Responsibilities.” New York Times Book Review 12 May 2002: 11. Pohl, Kathy. “Writing from the Heart: When Tragedy Strikes, Friendship Becomes a Mixed Blessing in Ann Packer’s Heartbreakingly Poignant Novels.” Writer Feb. 2008: 18. Theiss, Nola. “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, a Novel. (Paperback Fiction).” Kliatt July 2003: 25+. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bissey, Carrie. “Packer, Ann. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.” Booklist 15 Mar. 2002: 1213. Rev. of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. Kirkus Reviews 1 Jan. 2002: 14+. Rev. of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. Publishers Weekly 4 Mar. 2002: 54.
Maryles, Daisy. “Kudos for Knopf. (Behind the Bestsellers).” Publishers Weekly 24 June 2002: 20. Maryles discusses The Dive from Clausen’s Pier’s commercial success, as well as the new book groups springing up to replace the Oprah Book Club. Watman, Max. “Guileless Games. (Fiction Chronicle).” New Criterion 20.9 (2002): 66+. Watman reviews The Dive from Clausen’s Pier among other
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When Carrie runs off to New York City in The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, she decides to get involved in fashion design. ª Vladimir Godnik/ moodboard/Corbis
novels about the turmoil lurking beneath seemingly normal lives. The other reviewed titles include Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer and Spies by Michael Frayn. Gale Resources
“Ann Packer.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008.
For Further Reading
Open Web Sources
Ann Packer provides excerpts, a reading group guide, quotes from reviews, and award information about The Dive from Clausen’s Pier on her Web site. Additional information about the author and her projects is also available. http://www.annpacker. com/the_dive_from_clausens_pier A review of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Karen Valby is accessible on the Entertainment Weekly Web site. The review laments the loss of Oprah’s Book Club, suggesting that the novel would have been an excellent selection. http://www.ew.com/ew/ article/0,,234460,00.html Reviews of the film version of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier are available through the Internet Movie
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Database. Most of the reviews are by audience members, rather than professional critics. http:// www.imdb.com/title/tt0452611/ Discussion questions and a synopsis of the novel are available from Reading Group Guides.com, a Web site dedicated to providing helpful conversation starters about novels. http://www.readinggroupguides. com/guides3/dive_from_clausens_pier1.asp Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft Blue Water. New York: Picador, 2003. Print. By Native American novelist Dorris, this novel follows the lives of several women who are abandoned, or abandon each other. Rayona, half-black, half-Indian, is left by her mother to live with her aunt; later, Rayona leaves her aunt behind to become a rodeo star. The story follows all three women as they deal with their choices and the events life hands them. Ellison, Brooke. Miracles Happen: One Mother, One Daughter, One Journey. New York: Hyperion, 2002. Print. This is the true story of Ellison, who was paralyzed at age eleven. With the help and encouragement of her mother, she became the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard University. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
Listfield, Emily. Waiting to Surface. New York: Atria, 2007. Print. Based on the disappearance of Listfield’s own husband, this novel follows Sarah Larkin on a search to discover what happened when her husband, Todd, vanished. Todd had been living a double life, and Sarah, along with Todd’s ex, a policeman, and a private investigator try to piece together what happened to lead up to his disappearance. Packer, Ann. Songs without Words. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print. Packer’s second novel also focuses on friendship, this one between two women. Liz and Sarabeth are childhood friends who became close due to Sarabeth’s mother’s suicide. As adults, Liz has a family life with two children; Sarabeth is eccentric and
has a bohemian lifestyle, leaving Liz feeling as though she’s taking care of Sarabeth. A crisis with Liz’s daughter leaves Liz wondering if she is a good mother and makes Sarabeth relive moments in her past. Adaptations
The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. Dir. Harry Winer. Perf. Michelle Trachtenberg, Sean Maher, and Will Estes. Lifetime. 25 Jul. 2005. Television. The Lifetime channel’s adaptation of Packer’s novel, filmed as an 86-minute short movie for television.
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Alana Abbott
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Douglass’ Women By Jewell Parker Rhodes
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
A great deal is known about the public life and endeavors of Frederick Douglass, a seminal figure in the abolitionist movement of nineteenth-century America, largely due to his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass published new versions of his autobiography in 1855 and 1881, and his work earned him great renown in the abolitionist movement, as well as iconic status in the women’s rights movement. Jewell Parker Rhodes tackles the lesser-known area of Douglass’s personal life in her historical novel, Douglass’ Women (2002). Douglass was married to an illiterate, free black woman named Anna Murray Douglass for forty-four years, until her death in 1882. She was instrumental in helping Douglass escape from slavery to the North and she took pride in assuming a traditional, familial role, performing the traditional “women’s work” of maintaining the household and raising children. Although Douglass rarely spoke or wrote of her, Rhodes tells Anna’s story in the style of an oral slave narrative, reconstructing their life together. The sections dedicated to Anna are juxtaposed with sections written from the point of view of Ottilie Assing, a white, half-Jewish, half-Christian German woman, with whom Douglass carries on an affair for nearly three decades. The sections written in Ottilie’s voice are in the style of letters and diaries, and describe how she satisfies Douglass’s intellectual needs in ways that Anna is incapable of. Working with Douglass as a translator, Ottilie spends time as a guest at the Douglass’s home, a situation that provides much of the tension in the novel. After Anna dies, Douglass marries Helen Pitts, which proves to be tragic for Ottilie.
Context
In Douglass’ Women, Rhodes confronts a variety of controversial issues contemporary to Douglass’s lifetime. After Douglass escapes slavery with the help of Anna, he publishes his first autobiography. When the book does well in the marketplace, he becomes a recognizable figure and is threatened with recapture by his former slave master. With Anna’s consent, Ottilie takes him to London, where their affair begins. When his freedom is bought by fellow abolitionists, Douglass and Ottilie return to America and Anna realizes the nature of their relationship. Douglass is believed to have maintained controversial relationships prior to his affair with Ottilie, too. According to Douglass scholar Richard Yarborough (UCLA), “He also was connected with a white British abolitionist earlier in the 1850s that hit the press. William Lloyd Garrison, with whom Douglass had fallen out, brought it to the attention of the public, although people had been muttering about it for a while” (qtd. in Chadwick). Two years after Anna’s death, Douglass remarries. His second wife, Helen Pitts, the daughter of a friend of Douglass’s, is twenty years his junior, and is also white. Rhodes’s fictionalized account of the story veers from reality when, devastated by Douglass’s marriage to Pitts, Ottilie Assing commits suicide in a Paris hotel. Through alternating narratives by Anna and Ottilie, Rhodes allows each woman to emerge from Douglass’s shadow, explaining their own motivations and ultimately understanding and respecting each other. In one section, Ottilie comments on Anna, saying, “I shouldn’t have hated her. She loved him, just like me.” Likewise, referring to Ottilie, Anna says, “Miss Assing wasn’t a Delilah. I see that now” (Rhodes). Structured in such a way, both women are given the advantage of hindsight as
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MAJOR CHARACTERS OTILLIE ASSING is a German, half-Jewish, half-Christian white woman with whom Douglass has a twenty-eight-year-long affair, frequently spending summers at the Douglass household. She translates Douglass’s work and considers herself his “intellectual wife.” ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS falls in love with Douglass upon first meeting him. She helps him escape slavery and they marry. She bears him five children, and maintains his household while he travels and organizes for the abolitionist cause. FREDERICK DOUGLASS is a former slave, married to Anna Murray Douglass for forty-four years while carrying on a decades-long affair with Ottilie Assing. Douglass becomes famous for his civil rights activism. After the death of Anna Murray Douglass, he marries Helen Pitts. OLUWAND is a slave on board a ship with Ottilie Assing as she travels to America. Oluwand, rather than return to slavery, takes her own life by jumping over the ship’s rail. Ottilie is haunted by Oluwand throughout Douglass’ Women.
Douglass’ Women explores the romantic relationships of Frederick Douglass, the famed American abolitionist and author. ª Bettmann/Corbis
a means to tell their stories. According to Karen Grigsby Bates, “Anna Douglass has been in history’s shadows, so Jewell Parker Rhodes decided to bring her out through this fictionalized memoir” (qtd. in Chadwick). Ottilie Assing sacrifices for Douglass, as well. According to Susan Tekulve in her review for Books, “[Rhodes] explores the desperate reasoning that allows Ottilie to give up her own freedom in order to remain Frederick’s ‘spiritual wife.’”
W Themes A primary thematic concern in Douglass’ Women is that of freedom and identity. Both of the women central to the story give up a degree of personal freedom in order to maintain a relationship with Douglass while, according to
the Washington Post, “Rhodes suggests that neither could compete with the man in his mirror”(Washington Post) The author has commented on her website, “My novel is about two free women who, ironically, become enslaved by love in a romantic triangle.” The way that Anna retains her personal sense of freedom is, ironically, by choosing to remain illiterate, despite Douglass’s encouraging her to learn to read and write. According to Rhodes, “For me, Anna’s illiteracy signified a passive-aggressive reaction to her husband’s frequent absences, his infidelities, and his growing sense that she was, as he often suggested, ‘an old black log.’” Ottilie, conversely, submits completely to Douglass, having been raised by parents of different ethnicity and religion, according to the romantic notion that true love was worth losing her own sense of self and individuality. The Washington Post observes, “Ottilie shares her mother’s opinion that a woman should choose ‘passion over propriety (Washington Post).’” Ultimately, both women lose to “the man in his mirror.” Ottilie takes her own life when her idealistic view of their relationship is corrupted by Douglass’s marriage to Helen Pitts. Anna, after bearing five of Douglass’s children and raising them, alone, while he advances the abolitionist and suffrage causes with Ottilie at his side, dies and is given an enormous public funeral.
W Style In Douglass’ Women, Rhodes employs different styles of communication for the narratives of each of the principal
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Douglass’ Women
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Jewell Parker Rhodes was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earned a BA in drama criticism, an MA in English, and a doctor of arts degree in English from Carnegie Mellon University. She has written six novels, a children’s novel, and two writing guides for black authors. She has won several literary awards and her work has been anthologized in four collections. Her work has been published throughout North America and Europe. Dr. Rhodes is the artistic director for global engagement and chairs the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
women. The sections written from Anna Murray Rhodes’s perspective are written in the form of the traditional slave, or captivity, narrative. Slave narratives were very popular with the public of the time—Frederick Douglass’s own narrative sold thirty thousand copies between 1845 and 1860. Giving Anna voice through the style of the slave narrative lends historical authenticity to the work. Since many slaves, like Anna, were illiterate, their narratives had to be dictated to abolitionists. According to Rhodes, on her website, “Because of her illiteracy, Anna tells her life story in the oral tradition. Like a slave narrative, she begins the substance of her speech with ‘I was born’ and works her way forward.” Juxtaposed against chapters written from Anna’s point of view are the sections written from the perspective of Ottilie Assing. To tell Ottilie’s story, Rhodes uses the conventions that were available and popular among women of means during that period. Since Ottilie is a German heiress, she is given more formal means of communication. Rhodes says, “Ottilie, as a white woman of letters, a German, half-Jewish, halfChristian draws upon the nineteenth century women’s tradition of using letters, journals, and diaries to tell her tale.” By constructing the story in chapters that alternate between each woman’s story, Rhodes gives each the opportunity to reflect on her actions and to come to terms with her feelings about Douglass and about each other. According to the author, “[I]t’s the whole idea that in loving, women need to value self-love, value themselves enough to survive sometimes problematic or negative relationships” (qtd. in Chadwick). Conspicuously absent in the novel is the point of view of Douglass himself. Both women portray the Douglass character through the lens of their own experience, giving voice to the character that, because of the novel’s style, does not have a voice of his own.
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W Critical Reception Winner of several awards, including the 2003 American Book Award and the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing, Douglass’ Women has garnered great critical and popular acclaim. Called a “masterpiece of historical fiction” (Carroll), the novel has been praised for its vivid reimagining of the personal life of one of American history’s great civil rights activists. According to Karen Grigsby Bates, Rhodes said she “relied on a skeleton of historical facts as the foundation for her novel” (qtd. in Chadwick). Some critics, however, have questioned her interpretation of the facts. The Washington Post has reported that, “[I]n Love across the Color Lines, Maria Diedrich’s nonfiction book about the Douglass-Assing relationship, the author quotes from the memoirs of Helene von Racowitza, an actress who socialized with the pair: ‘Our good Ottilie was . . . entwined in passionate love with the beautiful dark Fred. . . . but she honored his marriage bond’” (Washington Post). Rhodes, however, maintains that a sexual relationship did exist, saying, “There were . . . approximately 200 letters in which Ottilie and Frederick talk about their relationship that suggests a really heartfelt intimacy. But according to the letters, it does seem as though they had a very sexual, romantic relationship, as well” (qtd. in Chadwick). Few critics have registered complaints about Douglass’ Women. Although conceding that “Douglass’ Women is an enthralling novel, more often triumphant than not, a novel of passion and tenderness and strength and remarkable power,” critic and novelist Lee Martin contends that, “There are moments that are overwrought. The dialogue is sometimes exaggerated, and Rhodes occasionally forces emotional responses from her characters.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Carroll, Denolyn. “Douglass’ Women. Book Review.” Black Issues Book Review Sept.-Oct. 2002. Print. BNET. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Chadwick, Alex. “Profile: Different Side of Frederick Douglass Told in the New Book, Douglass’ Women.” NPR Special. National Public Radio. 2003. HighBeam Research. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Martin, Lee. “A House Divided.” Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 13 Oct. 2002. Print. HighBeam Research. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Douglass’ Women. New York: Atria, 2002. Print. ———. “How I Came to Write Douglass’ Women.” JewellParkerRhodes.com. 2009. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Tekulve, Susan. “Douglass’ Women.” Rev. of Douglass’ Women. Book Sept.-Oct. 2002: 81. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Douglass’ Women
“The Washington Post Book Club; Douglass’ Women, by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Presented by Jabari Asim.” Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 1 Feb. 2004. Print. HighBeam Research. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bush, Vanessa. “Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Douglass’ Women.” Booklist 15 Sept. 2002: 208+. Print. “Cover to Cover.” New Pittsburgh Courier. Real Times, Inc. 13 Sept. 2003. Print. HighBeam Research. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Brief review in the context of other African American novel reviews. Discusses the metaphysical concerns of the novel set against the historical reality. Rev. of Douglass’ Women. (Fiction).” Kirkus Reviews 15 July 2002: 988. Print. Rev. of Douglass’ Women. (Fiction).” Publishers Weekly 5 Aug. 2002: 50+. Print. “Profile: Different Side of Frederick Douglass Told in the New Book, Douglass’ Women.” Day to Day 20 Aug. 2003. Rhodes, Phyllis. “Douglass’ Women by Jewel Parker Rhodes.” Apooo Bookclub. Apooobooks, 25 Oct. 2002. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Review of Douglass’ Women that discusses the relationship between Anna Douglass and Ottilie Assing in the novel. Gale Resources
Open Web Sources
The Apooo Bookclub website offers commentary about Douglass’ Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes that discusses the context of the book and relates it to her personal life and opinions. http://www.apooobooks. com/anna-murray-douglass-a-twenty-first-centurysister-by-jewell-parker-rhodes/ Jewell Parker Rhodes’s official website includes information about her books, a brief biography, events listings, and her blog and podcast. http://www. jewellparkerrhodes.com/index.html For Further Reading
Diedrich, Maria. Love across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Print. Interpretation of the DouglassAssing relationship that considers nineteenth-century racial, class, and gender issues. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. 6th ed. London: H. G. Collins, 22, Paternoster Row, 1851. Print. Sixth edition of Douglass’s first autobiography. Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Voodoo Dreams. 4th ed. New York: Macmillan Picador, 1995. Print. First novel by Jewell Parker Rhodes, a fictionalized account based on the life of a nineteenth-century voodoo priestess. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: Random House: Bantam Classics, 1982 (1852). Print. Antislavery novel credited by many historians for contributing to the outbreak of the Civil War.
“Jewell Parker Rhodes.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
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Todd Breijak
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Down River By John Hart
W Introduction Down River won the prestigious Edgar Award. By most critical accounts, Down River excels as a mystery because it seamlessly blends a story of murder and other violent crime with a family saga reminiscent of the best literature of the American South. Like the Southern authors with whom John Hart has been compared—Harper Lee, Pat Conroy, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams—Hart evokes a strong sense of place, directing his protagonist, Adam Chase, to return to his beloved Rowan County, North Carolina, even after his acquittal in an unsolved murder case there five years previous has left most of the community and some of his family still convinced of his guilt. The family, and the community, to which this prodigal son returns is burdened by long-kept secrets that push their way to the surface in a wave of more recent crime that is coincident with Adam’s return home. In the end, the violence turns out to be linked to the refusal of Adam’s wealthy father, Jacob Chase, to sell his 1,400-acre family farm to developers. Seeking to clear his name of the earlier murder charge and brought back to Rowan County at the request of an old friend who has now disappeared, Adam must now also solve the new crimes, which the townspeople are only too eager to blame on an unwelcome and already suspect member of local royalty. Referring to Down River and its predecessor, The King of Lies (2006), Oline Cogdill observed, “Hart found his niche weaving tenets of crime fiction into the Southern novel, with multilayered plots that focus on greed, power and the strength and fragility of families.”
W Literary and Historical Context
An attorney with an accounting degree, Hart might have more logically chosen to write legal thrillers in the
manner of John Grisham. Indeed, much of his inspiration derives from the noir detective stories and movies of the 1940s. But, in all three of his novels to date, Hart has combined these elements of crime fiction with features associated with the traditional Southern novel, including a strong sense of place and an awareness of family and community as the nexus of events. Down River has more specifically been associated with the Southern Gothic for its focus on the secrets and betrayals of an old and wealthy family long established by its connection to the land, now trying to hang on to a bygone era. The sometimes grotesque family portrait is complete with a wicked stepmother who, in this case, swears eyewitness testimony to Adam’s presence at the scene of the murder of local football hero Gray Wilson. Her accusations result in Adam being arrested for a crime he did not commit. Although Adam is acquitted, no one else has been charged in the crime in the five years since Adam escaped to New York City to avoid the lingering taunts of the community and the suspicions of his own family. The mystery that envelops Down River grows out of a history of family dysfunction that recalls Faulkner’s Compson clan, horribly troubled by greed, mental illness, pride, and violent squabbles over property that has been in the family for generations.
W Themes The story of Down River moves along two subplots, described by a reviewer for Publishers Weekly: “The almost Shakespearean snarl of family ties is complicated by a very modern struggle between economic progress and love for the land, between haves and have-nots” (“Down River”). Another reviewer, Vy Armour, observed, “Greed, love, passion, family secrets—any of these could describe the currents of Down River.” This complicated tangle is enriched by the theme of the return of the prodigal son in the figure of Adam Chase. Always volatile and contentious, Adam is now back home
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Down River
MAJOR CHARACTERS ADAM CHASE is the main character, acquitted of a murder five years earlier and now returned to the scene of the crime to clear his name and seek the understanding of his family. Trouble seems to follow Adam, and he becomes a suspect in other crimes in the insular community of Salisbury, North Carolina. JACOB CHASE is Adam’s estranged father. He is refusing to sell his family farm in the face of significant pressure and threats from other members of the community who want the nuclear power plant. JAMES CHASE is Adam’s younger step-sibling, involved now in several shady business deals, gambling, and drinking. JANICE CHASE is Adam’s stepmother, the mother of James and Miriam. Janice falsely accuses Adam of being at the scene of Gray Wilson’s murder in bloodied clothing. Her testimony at Adam’s trial divides the family. MIRIAM CHASE is James’s twin sister and Adam’s step-sibling. Troubled by depression, she has recently sliced her wrists in a failed suicide attempt. DANNY FAITH is Adam’s friend, the one who pleads with Adam to come back home. He disappears and his body is found sometime later, part of a series of new crimes in Salisbury. John Hart, author of Down River, holds his Best Novel Award at the 2010 Edgar Awards. Matthew Peyton/Getty Images
to help out an old friend, Danny Faith, and convince his family and the community of Salisbury, North Carolina, that he is not responsible for Gray Wilson’s death or the current rash of crime: the assault near the banks of the river of Grace Shepherd, the teenage daughter of Dolf Shepherd, a school friend of Adam and one of the few people in town who welcomed him back; the discovery of Danny Faith’s decomposing body; arson associated with the production of crystal methamphetamine in the trailer of a dying old man who shoots himself. Suspense builds as the townspeople, unaware of Danny’s reasons for returning home and with an ax to grind against the Chase family, hope to point the evidence against him. The puzzle is further complicated by Adam’s continuing affections for the girlfriend he left behind, Robin, now a member of the Salisbury police force. Indicative of the importance of geography to the thematic development, the novel unfolds from Danny’s perspective upon first sighting the river after an absence of five years: “The river is my earliest memory. . . . Everything that shaped me happened near that river. I lost my mother in sight of it, fell in love in its banks. I could smell it on the day my father drove me out. It was part of
ZEBULON FAITH is Danny’s father, the proprietor of a motel and recently involved in illegal drug activities to pay off his debts. ROBIN is Adam’s ex-girlfriend, now a police officer on the Salisbury force. DOLF SHEPHERD is Adam’s friend from school days. He is accused of Danny Faith’s murder and Adam seeks to find the real killer. GRACE SHEPHERD is Dolf’s teenage daughter. Local law enforcement wants to pin her assault by the river on Adam. GRAY WILSON is the local football hero whose murder is still unsolved. Adam Chase is accused but acquitted at trial.
my soul, and I thought I’d lost it forever” (qtd. in Penzler). The flood of memories unleashed by the river takes the reader back to Adam’s youth and his approach to manhood, his already uneasy relationship with his father made more so by his discord with his stepmother, Janice, and the emotional instability of his twin stepsiblings: the flamboyant James, now plagued by gambling debts and alcoholism, and the timid Miriam, failed in a recent suicide attempt. Adam’s current search for acceptance must penetrate these family dynamics as well as the barriers presented by the town itself,
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Down River
ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Hart has been widely heralded for his mastery of the literary thriller in his three published novels, The King of Lies (2006), Down River (2007), and The Last Child (2009). All three New York Times best sellers, the first one was nominated for an Edgar Award and the second two are winners of the prize. An attorney and banker with a degree in French literature as well, Hart combines his love of crime fiction with a poetic reverence for the rural South of his upbringing. His works have been compared to such masters of American Southern fiction as William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams for their strong sense of the importance of place in the history of prominent families torn apart by divided loyalties and long-standing grudges tied to the land. His novels have also been classed with those of his more experienced predecessors in the genre of the contemporary literary thriller, including James Lee Burke and Michael Malone.
between crime fiction and general literature. Rich with traditional elements of detective stories—family secrets, least-likely suspects and red herrings—it is equally abundant in the poetic language, striking imagery, and layered subtexts of America’s most significant books and authors. If you value Harper Lee, James Lee Burke, Truman Capote, and Michael Malone . . . it’s time to add John Hart to your bookshelves.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Armour, Vy. Rev. of Down River, by John Hart. BookBrowse, BookBrowse Recommends 8 Nov. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Cogdill, Oline. “For Lawyer John Hart Not to Write Would Be Criminal.” South Florida Sun-Sentinel 22 Feb. 2009. South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. “Down River.” Publishers Weekly 254.31(6 Aug. 2007): 168.
which, as many critics note, operates as a character in its own right.
Maslin, Janet. “Adam, Grace and Faith: Roles in a Humid Thriller.” New York Times 4 October 2007. Web. 3 Aug. 2010.
W Style
Penzler, Otto. “Thumbs Up for Down River.” New York Sun 24 October 2007. NewsBank, Access World News. Web. 28 July 2010.
Applauded as a “literary thriller,” Down River melds stylistic attributes on two planes, dialogue and description. The river of the title, the Yadkin, and the surrounding landscape and town are evoked in what reviewers have praised as lush and sensual language establishing the primacy of place to the action of the novel. Hart’s skill at character portrayal has been admired as equally poetic and nuanced, slowing and mysteriously bringing his most unbalanced characters to the edge of despair. Through dialogue, on the other hand, Hart develops scenes of overwrought emotion signaling the instability of personal relationships that threaten to turn ugly and violent at the slightest provocation. The speech of the characters is derivative of 1940s hardboiled detective stories, creating what Janet Maslin referred to as “deep-dish noir dialogue” and a “hothouse atmosphere.”
W Critical Reception Reviewers have been divided in their opinions of the plot development of Down River, with some arguing that it is a taut thriller and other noting that its suspense is sometimes undercut by melodrama and hyperbolic emotion. However, the novel has been almost universally applauded as a promising mixture of crime fiction and Southern family drama. Otto Penzler was enthusiastic in his appraisal: “Down River successfully erases the line
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Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Alesi, Stacy, and John Hart. “John Hart.” Library Journal 134 (15 Mar. 2009): 96. Print. An interview with Hart describing his transition from attorney to writer and his attachment to Rowan County, North Carolina. Hart also explains that the idea for the child protagonist of The Last Child developed out of the character of the youngster Adam Chase encountered fishing by the banks of the river when he first returned to Salisbury. “Down River.” Bookmarks (Jan.-Feb. 2008): 48. Print. Provides a sampling of the reviews of Down River. “Hart, John: Down River.” Kirkus Reviews 1 Aug. 2007. Print. A concise plot summary. Hartlaub, Joe. Rev. of Down River, by John Hart. bookreporter.com. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Positive review describing Down River as a novel that “invokes the spirit of the best of southern literature.” Kimball, Sue. “Down River Is a Winner for Hart.” Fayetteville (NC) Observer 14 Sept. 2008. NewsBank, Access World News. Web. 27 July 2010. Sorts through the tangled plot in summary fashion. Smith, Deirdre Parker. “Mysteries Muddy the Water ‘Down River.’” Salisbury (NC) Post 30 Sept. 2007. NewsBank, Access World News. Web. 27 July 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Down River
Describes the plot of Down River and accords it “edge-of-the-seat” suspense. Gale Resources
“John Hart.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 193. Open Web Sources
Hart’s author website, http://www.johnhartfiction. com/, provides biography, synopses of his books, his own comments on his rapid success, and a list of his scheduled appearances. For Further Reading
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. A Norton Critical Edition, edited by David Minter. New York: Norton, 1994. Print. Faulkner’s most highly
esteemed work in a series of books about the Compson clan of Jefferson, Mississippi, a prominent Southern family with skeletons in its closet. Hart, John. The King of Lies. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006. Print. Hart’s debut novel, also set in Rowan County, North Carolina, about a Southern lawyer searching for the murderer of his wealthy and domineering father. ———. The Last Child. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2009. Print. Hart’s most recent book, considered reminiscent of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel follows a young boy to the dangerous side of his neighborhood as he embarks on a quest to find his abducted twin sister.
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Janet Mullane
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Duma Key By Stephen King
W Introduction Stephen King’s 2008 novel Duma Key tells the story of wealthy builder Edgar Freemantle, whose life is thrown into turmoil after a disastrous accident at a building site. The accident results in the amputation of his arm, damage to his hip, and a serious head injury that impairs his memory and speech and leaves him susceptible to fits of rage. Shortly after the accident, his wife leaves him, and though he considers suicide, he agrees to his therapist’s advice to try a change of venue. He moves to Duma Key, a small Florida island with few residents. There he tries his hand at sketching and painting, an old hobby that quickly blooms into an obsession. He also meets the mysterious Elizabeth Eastlake, a wealthy elderly woman who owns most of the island, and her affable caretaker, Jerome Wireman. Mrs. Eastlake has some odd advice for Edgar regarding his art and life, which Edgar and Wireman write off to her Alzheimer’s—at first. It soon becomes apparent that Edgar is no ordinary painter, and Duma Key is no ordinary island. His paintings become premonitions, and then he discovers he is able to alter reality through his art. Impressed by his paintings, a gallery in Sarasota schedules a show featuring his work, but as the show grows nearer, Edgar begins to suspect that something besides his own talent is guiding the creation of his art—something much darker, which puts Edgar and those he loves in jeopardy. King’s novel blends horror and fantasy with an exploration of the mysterious workings of the human mind, especially the power of memory and imagination. Edgar’s accident, Mrs. Eastlake’s childhood head injury, and a bullet lodged in Wireman’s brain from a failed suicide attempt, all seem to give Edgar and Mrs. Eastlake special abilities that create a sympathetic bond between them from their first
meeting. As the details of Mrs. Eastlake’s past surface, Edgar learns just how strong this bond really is.
W Literary and Historical Context
Though the main action of Duma Key takes place in the early 2000s, the history of Florida in the 1920s becomes relevant when Edgar begins learning more about Elizabeth Eastlake and her family. In the novel, fictional tycoon John Eastlake was a good friend of Dave Davis, a real-life real estate magnate who created Tampa’s Davis Islands out of swampland, making a fortune in the process. King embellishes Davis’s history by making him a part-time bootlegger as well. South Florida was a prime site for bootleggers during Prohibition, due to its proximity to the Bahamas and its many ports. Tampa— Davis’s home—was such a hot spot for the smuggling illegal alcohol and related criminal activity that it earned the nickname “Little Chicago.” Three of the novel’s main characters—Edgar, Wireman, and Elizabeth Eastlake—have all sustained serious head injuries. Mrs. Eastlake is also suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Certain medical studies have shown that Alzheimer’s patients are nearly ten times more likely to have sustained a head injury that left them unconscious than the rest of the population. In the 1990s and early 2000s increased research on Alzheimer’s disease led to the development of several new drugs used to treat its symptoms, as well as new theories about direct genetic manipulation as a possible treatment in the future. Unfortunately Alzheimer’s was considered incurable as of 2010; treatments at that time served only to alleviate its symptoms. The death of Ronald Reagan in 2004 from Alzheimer’s focused attention on the use of controversial stem cell research in finding a cure.
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Duma Key
W Themes King uses the major characters of Duma Key to explore the untapped powers of the human mind. Each of these characters has experienced brain damage in some way, but each has been given, in return, unusual powers: prescience, clairvoyance, the power to create reality from imagination. Imagination and self-expression are powerful tools that come with a heavy responsibility, as they can affect the material world. Both Wireman and Edgar tell the reader repeatedly, “God punishes us for what we can’t imagine” (286). Though this is said in a negative context—referring to the horrors one fails to imagine— it can also be read as a comment on how most humans use a small fraction of their mental capacity. Significantly, all three characters with brain injuries have been injured on the right side, the side of the brain associated with creativity and self-expression. An associated theme concerns memory and how memory works. Edgar, whose verbal memory is impaired by his injury, uses the technique of thinking sideways to remember words and names when he cannot easily access them, making associations between words until he arrives at the correct one. Afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, Elizabeth Eastlake is losing her memories, but through her artwork, Edgar is able to access them. Elizabeth tells Edgar, “Art is memory, Edgar. . . . The clearer the
MAJOR CHARACTERS JACK CANTORI is hired by Edgar’s real estate agent to assist Edgar while he is on the island. ELIZABETH EASTLAKE, a wealthy elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, owns almost all the property on Duma Key. Edgar comes to know her after meeting Wireman, her caretaker. EDGAR FREEMANTLE, former CEO of a building company who was seriously injured in an accident on a building site, has moved to Duma Key in hopes of aiding his recovery. ILSE FREEMANTLE, Edgar’s younger and favorite daughter, is in college. MELINDA FREEMANTLE, Edgar’s older daughter, teaches in France. PAM FREEMANTLE, Edgar’s former wife, divorced Edgar shortly after his accident. XANDER KAMEN, Edgar’s psychologist, recommends the move to Florida. JEROME WIREMAN is Edgar’s newest friend and caretaker of wealthy octogenarian Elizabeth Eastlake.
Author Stephen King’s Duma Key is set on a fictional Florida Key off the coast of Sarasota. ª Mirek Weichsel/First Light/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine, and was raised in Maine by his mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, and married fellow writer Tabitha Spruce in 1971. King supported himself by teaching high school English and selling short stories to men’s magazines until 1973, when the success of his novel Carrie allowed him to write full time. In 1999 King was hit by a van while out on a walk near his home in Maine and was seriously injured (many critics speculated that he used this experience to inform his portrayal of Edgar Freemantle in Duma Key). After his recovery, he continued to write, and as of 2010 had written over fifty books. King’s work has won numerous awards, including multiple Bram Stoker Awards (from the Horror Writers Association), the O. Henry Award for Best Short Story of 1996, the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003. King and his wife spend their winters in Florida and the rest of the year in Maine.
memory, the better the art” (492). Memories, unfortunately, are not always positive, as Edgar finds when Elizabeth’s memories literally come back to haunt him. As Edgar says, “Loss of memory isn’t always the problem; sometimes—maybe even often—it’s the solution” (518).
W Style Duma Key is written in the first person, from the perspective of Edgar Freemantle. Edgar tells the story in retrospect, about four years after the events have occurred. Because Edgar already knows the end of the story, he can draw conclusions and foreshadow events in a way he could not if he were relating the events in the present tense, as they happen. For instance, when Edgar describes his last glance of his daughter Ilse as she boards the airplane leaving Florida, he says, “I wish with all my heart that I could have seen her better, because I never saw her again” (538). King alternates between Edgar’s story and the childhood tale of Elizabeth Eastlake’s head injury and resulting artistic flowering. The installments of Elizabeth’s tale are titled “How to Draw a Picture,” I through XII, printed in italics. At first, the reader is unaware whose story is being told in these installments, until Edgar meets Elizabeth Eastlake and learns more of her history. The novel concludes with the last installment. King earned his reputation writing horror novels, and elements of that genre are present in this work. Though the first half of the book centers more on
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In Duma Key an injured builder moves to one of the Florida Keys to recover and begins creating strange paintings with mysterious powers. Martha McGowen/Shutterstock.com
psychological aspects of Edgar’s recovery, later chapters include deaths, blood, ghosts, and creatures from the underworld. King refers to Greek mythology as well with the character of Persephone, first introduced as the name of a macabre ship Edgar paints repeatedly without knowing why. In Greek mythology, Persephone is the mate of Hades, god of the underworld; her name means “bringer of destruction.” She lives up to that name in the final chapters of Duma Key.
W Critical Reception Critics have typically been divided over Stephen King’s work, and Duma Key was no exception. Though many critics agreed that the novel is an enjoyable read, there were differing opinions as to its literary merit. James Campbell, in a largely negative review in the New York Times Book Review, called King’s characterization “flimsy,” claiming that Edgar is not a likable protagonist and that his friend Wireman is “annoying.” However, a review in Publishers Weekly praised King’s “ability to create fully realized characters” and called the novel “well crafted.” Other points of contention included the amount of time it takes King to reach the more horrific events of the novel. Adele Hartley, in a review for the Guardian, stated that King spent too long on Edgar’s recovery. She wrote: “It’s hard not to feel impatient as the clues and nightmares proliferate” (though she went on to praise the eerier portions of the book). Janet Maslin of the New York Times weighed in with the opposite opinion: “Mr. King constructs his story with patience and rigor. His own past tendency to wander untethered into the world of dreams is under control.” The Publishers Weekly review TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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questioned the necessity of the novel’s ghastlier elements, stating, “The transition from the initial psychological suspense to the supernatural may disappoint some.” It seems that King’s work is an acquired taste, a taste that, fortunately for King, has been acquired by millions of loyal readers. Benjamin Percy of Esquire is one of those; in his review, Percy wrote, “Stephen King has always been good, but with his latest novel, Duma Key, he once again approaches greatness.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Campbell, James. “Dark Art.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. New York Times Book Review 2 Mar. 2008: 9(L). Print. “David Paul Davis and His Islands.” tampapix.com. Tampa Pix, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. “Duma Key.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007: 37. Print. Hartley, Adele. “Books, Evil Dolls and Other Weirdness.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 16 Feb. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. “Head Injury and Alzheimer’s Disease–Study.” fi.edu. Franklin Institute Online, 2004. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. “History of Alzheimer’s Disease.” hod.kcms.msu.edu. Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies, 2004-2005. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. King, Stephen. Duma Key. New York: Pocket BooksSimon and Schuster, 2008. Print. Maslin, Janet. “Darkness in the Land of Steady Sunshine.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. nytimes. com. New York Times 21 Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Percy, Benjamin. “Still King.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. esquire.com. Esquire 21 Feb. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bancroft, Colette. “With Duma Key, Stephen King Brings Horror to Our Backyard.” sptimes.com. St. Petersburg Times 20 Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Looks at Floridian aspects of the novel; compares themes from Duma Key to those of King’s earlier works. Dugdale, John. “Duma Key by Stephen King.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. timesonline.co.uk. Sunday Times 20 Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Examines allusions to classic horror tales within Duma Key and the understated (for King) use of horror elements.
Graham, Mark. “King Plot No Accident.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. rockymountainnews.com. Rocky Mountain News 18 Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Describes parallels between King’s personal injury and the novel’s plot and looks at recurrent device of auto accidents in King’s novels. Karim, Ali. “King’s Florida Nightmare.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. januarymagazine.com. January Magazine Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Points out allusions and parallels between this novel and other King works and examines the theme of randomness in the events of the characters’ lives. “King, Stephen: Duma Key.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2007. Print. Compares theme of this novel with that of The Shining. Rahner, Mark. “Stephen King’s Absorbing New Thriller, Duma Key.” Rev. of Duma Key, by Stephen King. seattletimes.com. Seattle Times 22 Jan. 2008. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Criticizes King’s recycling of themes and plot lines from earlier works and suggests areas of book that need editing. Gale Resources
“Stephen (Edwin) King.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1103890000 &v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w Open Web Sources
The extensive Web site http://stephenking.com features complete lists of all of King’s works and awards, news about upcoming books and movies, a biography, a message board, and more. For Further Reading
Alexandrian, Sarane. Surrealist Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. Print. Examines the development of the surrealist movement in art from 1916 to 1966; discusses a wide range of surrealist artists and features many color illustrations of their work. King, Stephen. On Writing. New York: Pocket BooksSimon and Schuster, 2001. Print. Offers advice on writing tools and techniques; begins with autobiographical chapters, including a description of the 1999 incident in which King was near-fatally wounded by a minivan. Mason, Michael Paul. Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print. Describes the case histories of several patients dealing with the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), the few resources available to them through the health care system, and the different ways in which TBI can occur.
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Wiater, Stanley, et al. The Complete Stephen King Universe: A Guide to the Worlds of Stephen King. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin-St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Print. Offers analyses of King’s works, grouped in categories. Describes the ways in which the various novels overlap in theme, character, and setting. Includes analyses of novels written under King’s various pseudonyms as well.
Williams, Joy. The Florida Keys: A History and Guide. 10th ed. New York: Random House, 2003. Print. Combines history and travel guide to create a comprehensive look at the Florida Keys. Includes offbeat sites to visit, nature lore of the region, and little-known historical facts. Written by a novelist and resident of the Keys. Laura Pryor
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El Dorado By Dorothy Porter
W Introduction El Dorado (2007) is a crime thriller told in verse rather than prose. The story itself is a harrowing one, following the hunt for a serial killer (the title character) who targets children in Victoria, Australia. Catching the killer is the job of detective inspector Bill Buchanan, who turns for help to his childhood friend Cath. A secondary plot concerns the erotic attachments of these protagonists, not only Bill’s unrequited love for Cath, who is a lesbian, but also Cath’s steamy affair with a much younger woman, Lily. The tale, which is divided into six sections, explores not only the disturbing topic of the primary plot but also themes such as lost worlds that serve as a metaphor for the loss of childhood innocence. Dorothy Porter published numerous collections of poetry in her lifetime, along with four novels in verse. Her employment of poetry in the novel form, particularly in the crime thriller, won her a much wider audience than most poets enjoy. Praised by critics in a variety of Australian publications, El Dorado was shortlisted for the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award and nominated for the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
The verse novel is a format as old as literature itself, dating from such early epics as the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey through such notable works as Don Juan by Lord Byron and Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the fast-paced electronic age, however, the form might seem to be outdated. As Jaya Savige observes in Australia’s Courier Mail, “These days the words poetry and page-turner are hardly synonymous. But for Dorothy Porter . . . there is no reason why they shouldn’t be.” In answer to the question
“Why write verse novels?” Geoffrey Lehmann in the Weekend Australian quotes Porter: “Like most poets I was sick of not being read.” Through the use of poetry in the form of a novel, and a fast-paced crime novel at that, El Dorado brought Porter a much wider audience. Her Monkey’s Mask, for example, appeared as a major motion picture, starring Kelly McGillis, in 2000. El Dorado is not a typical crime story, as it deals with a particularly heinous act: the serial murder of children. The text references a real unsolved case of child abduction (and presumably murder) that transformed Australian society. On January 26, 1966 (Australia Day, a national holiday), Jim and Nancy Beaumont allowed their three children, ranging in age from four to nine, to journey alone by bus to Glenelg Beach, five minutes from their home in Adelaide. The parents never saw their children again, and the case—which, despite a number of suspects, remained unsolved four decades later—forever changed the way Australian parents regarded the matter of protecting their children’s safety.
W Themes A central theme in El Dorado is one that springs quite obviously from its grisly portrayal of murdered children: the loss of innocence. Images of Peter Pan and his “Lost Boys” proliferate throughout the story, as does the concept of vanished and imaginary worlds. Even the killer’s pseudonym harkens to such a vision, referring as it does to the legend of a “lost city of gold” in South America. He believes that by killing the children he is sending them to a better place. Entwined with this concept of fictional worlds is Cath’s profession as a Hollywood illusionist, or “imaginary worlds specialist director,” whose “job was to make/ the imaginary world/plausible.” Bill characterizes her as one possessed with “the lateral thinking/of an intelligent child/spliced with/an intuitive adult’s experience.” Every film she has worked on involves
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BILL BUCHANAN is one of the story’s protagonists. A fiftysomething detective inspector for the Victoria Police in Australia, he has the task of finding and capturing the killer, a quest that for him has particular significance because he is the father of a young girl, Caitlin. In solving the crime, Bill turns for help to Cath, a friend since childhood, for whom he feels a strong but unrequited love. CAITLIN BUCHANAN is Bill’s rebellious teenage daughter, who resists his efforts to protect her and whose safety becomes a matter of major concern as her father hunts for the killer. CATH, along with Bill Buchanan, is one of the story’s central characters. She works as an “imaginary worlds specialist director” in Hollywood, and Bill turns to her, with her knowledge of the world of illusion, for help in solving the crimes. Bill has a romantic attachment to her that she does not share, not least because she is a lesbian. JASMINE COOK is a rookie police constable who works alongside Bill in pursuit of the killer. EL DORADO is the killer whose murders of young children form the basis for the book’s plot. He is so named because he leaves a gold mark on his victims’ foreheads (El Dorado was the name for a legendary city of gold in South America), and his identity is revealed only near the end of the story. LILY is a young herpetologist (a scientist concerned with the study of snakes) who, despite a significant age difference, develops a romantic relationship with Cath. This story, along with Bill’s unrequited love for Cath, forms the book’s secondary plot. AXEL PINE is a trauma counselor who, in Bill’s view, goes too far in attempting to protect children. “If Axel Pine had his way,” Bill observes at one point, “there’d be mandatory detention / for anyone who looks twice / at any child—/ under thirty.” PUT-PUT is a childhood acquaintance of Bill’s and Cath’s whom they, along with other children, persecuted mercilessly for being a “weird kid.”
water, leading to her nickname, Noah, and blending easily with the idea of another famous imaginary world, Atlantis, which is also the title of the book’s second section. Working as she does in the world of fantasy, Cath is obsessed with holding on to the illusion of youth. Thus Bill, looking at the unlined face of his “fifty year something” contemporary, surmises that she has undergone cosmetic surgery. More pointedly, Cath attempts to hold on to youth through her pursuit of Lily, whom she describes as “absurdly young.” She fears that when people see them together in public, they may mistake
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Photo of Dorothy Porter, author of the novel El Dorado. ª MARKA/ Alamy
them for mother and daughter, and Cath worries that she is merely “a stupid deluded/leering embarrassing/old tart.”
W Style Rather than a single long poetic work, El Dorado is structured around separate poems, with titles such as “Howzat,” “The Facts of Life,” and “Bill’s Nightmare.” These are grouped within the larger framework of the book’s six sections: “The Stolen Child,” “Atlantis,” “Neverland,” “Lovers’ Cave,” “El Dorado,” and “The First Snake.” Commenting on this marriage of two quite different stylistic elements, the verse novel and the murder mystery, fellow poet Lisa Gorton observes in the Sydney Morning Herald that “the two forms, apparent opposites, work well together. The verse novel’s line breaks build suspense and its accelerated pace adds to that expectation of the end, which is the first charm of murder mysteries.” Although the verse-novel format sets it apart from most crime fiction, in other respects El Dorado is faithful to the conventions of the genre. Such stories necessarily TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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involve not only the crimes themselves but also the clues that help solve them, including evidence at the crime scenes and the killer’s taunting of the authorities through the media—in this case by letters to the editor of the Age, an actual Australian newspaper. There is also the “red herring,” or false clue, which appears in a number of forms, for instance when Bill incorrectly judges one of the murders to be a copycat killing. Likewise Bill, as often happens with detectives in crime stories, becomes too personally involved in the case, especially after his daughter Caitlin disappears. Wordplay and literary allusion also characterize the style of El Dorado. Porter employs a number of words and images peculiar to Australian English. “Howzat,” for instance, is a local variation on “how’s that,” the standard form of an appeal for an umpire’s decision in a cricket match. She also uses standard English in unusual ways, for example by having Cath describe her love for Lily as “radioactively festive like an X-ray on ecstasy.” Allusions to literature and popular culture abound, with references to works ranging from fairy tales and ancient myths to Mickey Mouse cartoons and James Bond movies.
W Critical Reception Critics laud Porter’s skillful use of language, her employment of the verse-novel form within the crime genre, and—to a lesser degree—her balancing of the primary plot against the secondary one. According to Geoff Page, writing in the Canberra Times, “The Cath/ Lily romance (too tame a word perhaps) threatens at times to derail things but also adds an extra and poignant depth” to the relationship between Bill and Cath. Likewise, Geoffrey Lehmann writes in the Weekend Australian that “about halfway through I was beginning to wonder whether the Cath and Lily affair would overwhelm the El Dorado narrative and whether Porter was writing two novels in one. However, like an expert juggler . . . by the end of the novel Porter manages to balance her themes.” Lehmann goes on to say that “for those unfamiliar with the verse novel as a form, El Dorado is a good place to start,” while Gillian Dooley, in the Adelaide Review, maintains that “narrative verse is an unusual art form these days, probably rightly so, because it’s hard to imagine many writers doing it as well as Porter does.” Gorton, in the Sydney Morning Herald, praises the author’s use of language. Noting that Porter has cowritten songs with jazz musician Paul Grabowsky, Gorton observes that “Porter’s verse novels also work like jazz. Her short-line stanzas . . . have a raw, involving jazz style; and you could think of her plots as improvisations on the set pieces of her imagery.” The author, Gorton concludes, “fits complex characters, elaborate images and strung-out verse into a fast-paced murder mystery.” In a
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dorothy Porter was born in Sydney, Australia in 1954. Her father was a barrister (lawyer) and her mother was a highschool chemistry teacher, and both continued to work into their eighties. Her career as a writer began at the Queenswood School for Girls, where she enthralled classmates with stories, and at age fourteen she began her diary with the words “I’m going to be a writer.” Graduating from the University of Sydney in 1975 with a BA in English and history, she set out to make a living as a poet. Though poetry books typically do not enjoy large sales, Porter found great success by melding the versenovel form with the crime thriller in such works as The Monkey’s Mask, adapted for the screen in 2000. A selfdescribed pagan and an open lesbian, Porter lived with fellow writer Andrea Goldsmith from 1993 until Porter’s death in 2008 at age fifty-four from breast cancer.
similar vein, Corrie Perkin writes in the Weekend Australian that “Porter weaves a masterly narrative of changing rhythms that pull the reader across an unpredictable, rolling ocean of words . . . . But aside from its poetic strengths, El Dorado is also a riveting murder mystery.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Dooley, Gillian. Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter. Adelaide Review. Adelaide Review 20 July 2007: 24. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Gorton, Lisa. “Crime’s Last Stanza.” Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 26 May 2007: 34. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Lehmann, Geoffrey. “Innocence Lovingly Stolen within Familiar Verse.” Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter. Weekend Australian. News Limited, 9 June 2007: 8. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Page, Geoff. Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter. Canberra Times. Fairfax Media, 16 June 2007: 12. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Perkin, Corrie. “Venturing into Disturbing Terrain.” Weekend Australian. News Limited, 21 April 2007: 12. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Porter, Dorothy. El Dorado. Sydney: Picador Pan Macmillan Australia, 2007. Print. Savige, Jaya. “Crime Thriller Bursts into Verse.” Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter. Courier-Mail [Brisbane]. Queensland Newspapers, 5 May 2007: M33. Web. 14 Oct. 2010.
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El Dorado Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
A lengthy review of El Dorado, followed by an interview by Magdalena Ball with Porter, appears on the Web site of M/C Reviews: Culture and Media, an Australian online journal of popular culture. http:// reviews.media-culture.org.au
Craven, Peter. “A Piece of Work, and Then Some.” Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 10 Jan. 2009: 33. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Craven, a judge for the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2008, for which El Dorado was short-listed, examines Porter’s life and work. Goldsworthy, Peter. “Tall Tales and True in Chapter and Verse.” Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter, and other works. Australian. News Limited, 2 May 2007: 12. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. This is a comparative review of El Dorado, along with two other poetry works by Australians: Lawrie and Shirley: The Final Cadenza by Geoff Page and Fredy Neptune by Les Murray. Knight, Stephen. “Our Dark Materials: Crime Fiction.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 20 June 2009: 26. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. The author gives a lengthy overview of Australian crime fiction, including El Dorado. Knobel, Paul. “Poet Pushed Boundaries and Encouraged Others.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 12 Dec. 2008: 18. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. This obituary discusses El Dorado in the context of Porter’s larger career. Neill, Rosemary. “Pulping Our Poetry.” Weekend Australian. News Limited, 7 July 2007: 4. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Neill gives a lengthy discussion of Australian poets’ efforts to reach wider audiences, including Porter’s employment of the novel-in-verse format in El Dorado and other works. Ryan, Gig. “Of Lucid Verse and Passionate Truths.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 20 Dec. 2008: 23. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. This is a discussion of Porter’s career and works, including El Dorado. Smith, Tony. “The Destruction of Childhood—It’s Criminal.” Rev. of El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter, and other works. AQ: Australian Quarterly 79.4 (2007): 36-40. General OneFile. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. Smith examines El Dorado, along with two other crime stories by Australian writers: Gabrielle Lord’s Shattered and Jane Goodall’s The Calling. Gale Resources
“Dorothy (Featherstone) Porter.” Contemporary Poets. Seventh edition. Detroit: St. James, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. “Dorothy Porter.” Australian Writers, 1975-2000. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 325. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. “Dorothy Porter.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.
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An appreciation of Porter’s life and works is available on a site dedicated to the author. http://dorothyporter. wikispaces.com An interview, conducted by Rosanna Licari, is featured on the Web site of Stylus Poetry Journal. http:// www.styluspoetryjournal.com An interview with Porter is available on the Compulsive Reader Web site. http://www.compulsivereader.com Porter’s Australian publisher offers a study guide that includes an overview of the novel’s plot, characters, and themes, along with discussion questions, on its Web site. http://www.panmacmillan.com For Further Reading
Carr, Caleb. The Alienist. New York: Random House, 1994. Print. A novel that, like El Dorado, concerns the hunt for a killer of children, The Alienist is set in New York City during the 1890s, when psychologists were known as “alienists.” The novel features real people, most notably Theodore Roosevelt, and portrays a fictional early effort to apply psychological profiling in catching a criminal. Jones, Tayari. Leaving Atlanta. New York: Warner, 2002. Print. One of several books relating to the murders of more than two-dozen children in Atlanta in the early 1980s, Leaving Atlanta is a novel depicting the lives of several children during the time of the murders. Mailer, Norman. The Executioner’s Song. New York: Little Brown, 1979. Print. Critic Don Anderson has described Porter as “Australia’s Norman Mailer.” In The Executioner’s Song, Mailer portrays the crimes, conviction, and execution of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first U.S. prisoner executed after the reinstatement of the death penalty the year before. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Putnam, 1962. Print. Pale Fire, like El Dorado, employs poetry and explores the twisted mind of a killer, but it does so in quite a different way. Whereas the tone of El Dorado is serious, Pale Fire is a highly satirical book. The title refers to a long poem by the murder victim, and the book is composed primarily of the killer’s annotations to the manuscript. Porter, Dorothy. The Monkey’s Mask: An Erotic Murder Mystery. New York: Little Brown, 1994. Print. Porter’s most successful work (it was adapted for the stage and ultimately to film), The Monkey’s Mask TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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prefigures El Dorado in its use of the verse-novel format for a crime thriller. Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. New York: Little Brown, 2002. Print. Sebold’s novel, later adapted as a motion picture, concerns a young girl who was abducted, raped, and murdered.
Melbourne: Wiley, 2006. Print. This book examines the 1966 case, referred to in El Dorado, which forever altered Australian parents’ views about protecting their children’s safety. Judson Knight
Whiticker, Alan. Searching for the Beaumont Children: Australia’s Most Famous Unsolved Mystery.
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The Electric Michelangelo By Sarah Hall
W Introduction Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo (2004) tells the story of Cy Parks, born in 1907 and raised in the working-class seaside resort town of Morecambe, England. His mother runs a hotel that caters to the sick and dying; as a teenager Cy becomes apprenticed to the town’s misanthropic tattoo artist, Riley. Cy becomes the Electric Michelangelo of the title, first in Morecambe and then in Coney Island, New York. The novel revels in the often violent lives of boardwalk entertainers who are marginalized from society. The physical pain inflicted by Cy’s tattoo needle serves as a metaphor for the often brutal psychological pain of his existence. The novel received excellent reviews and was shortlisted for Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Hall’s realism in depicting the art of tattooing was informed by the three tattoos she received herself in the process of researching the book, which allowed her to delve into the history of the folk art. As she told Benedicte Page in an interview for Bookseller, “tattooing is a record of life, because you commemorate events with a picture, so your skin becomes a kind of history.”
W Literary and Historical Context
At the turn of the twentieth century, England’s resorts on the Irish Sea were popular vacation destinations for factory workers in the northern industrial towns of Manchester and Liverpool. Although Morecambe was not as well known as Blackpool, a much larger resort to the south, it contained all the amusements British vacationers expected: wide beaches, music halls, game arcades, amusement rides, fortune tellers, restaurants— and tattoo parlors. The salty air was advertised as being
healthful, and many people flocked to the region in hopes that the fresh breeze would alleviate their consumption or tuberculosis, just as Reeda’s guests at the Bayview Hotel do. By the 1930s, when Cy arrives in Coney Island, the seaside oasis is already past its prime. The major amusement parks—Dreamland, Steeplechase, and Luna Park—had all suffered major fires and been torn down or scaled back, yet the island’s reputation for decadence remained. Just a subway’s ride from all the boroughs of New York, the attractions on Coney Island were within reach of millions who had neither the money nor the time to travel beyond the confines of the city. As with Morecambe, tattoo artists were a fixture on the Coney boardwalk. The electric tattoo machine, the same used by Riley and Cy, was developed by New Yorker Samuel O’Reilly in 1891. O’Reilly adapted Thomas Edison’s 1876 electric engraving machine for use on human skin. In 1899 Englishman Alfred Charles South improved this design into the modern two-coil system still used today. During the time the novel takes place, tattoos were closely associated with the circus and those who spent their lives at sea. Many sideshows featured completely tattooed individuals, and tattoo artists could be found wherever circus performers congregated—especially seaside resorts such as Coney Island and Morecambe. The execution of Lulu the elephant in The Electric Michelangelo is based on a real event. Topsy the Elephant was a popular circus attraction at Coney Island’s Luna Park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the years, the ill-tempered Topsy killed three of her handlers. After the death of the third (who had tried to feed her a lighted cigarette), her owners decided to kill her. Her execution was scheduled for January 4, 1903, and was turned into a media event that was filmed for posterity. Thomas Edison suggested electrocuting Topsy with alternating current (AC) as a way of demonstrating to his competitors George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla that AC was more dangerous than the direct current (DC) generated
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MAJOR CHARACTERS GRACE is a circus performer and refugee from Eastern Europe who lives in Cy’s apartment building with her horse, Maximus. She is intelligent and independent, and Cy falls in love with her during the long hours it takes to cover her body in tattoos of eyes. When an acquaintance douses her in acid, her skin dissolves and she nearly dies. CYRIL PARKS, known as Cy, is the Electric Michelangelo of the title. As a boy he grows up in his mother’s no-frills Bayview Hotel and tends to the sick guests; he becomes apprenticed to the town’s tattoo artist as a teenager. Haunted by the deaths of his mother and his mentor Riley, Cy leaves Morecambe for Coney Island, where he meets Grace, whose body he covers in tattoos of green eyes. After he gouges out a man’s eyes in retaliation for the man attacking Grace with acid, Cy returns to Morecambe. He revives his shuttered tattoo business and takes on a young apprentice.
In The Electric Michelangelo, Cy Parks is a tattoo artist living in Morecambe, England, who moves to New York City to practice his trade on Coney Island. ª Bettmann/Corbis
by the Edison Company. A crowd of 1,500 gathered to watch as Topsy dined on carrots dipped in potassium cyanide and then as smoke poured from the soles of her feet as the switch was thrown. In a few short seconds, the 28-year-old elephant toppled over like a felled tree to the delight of the spectators.
W Themes Pain and suffering is one of Hall’s major themes in The Electric Michelangelo. Cy grows up surrounded by pain. The guests at his mother’s hotel are dying, painfully and slowly, and it is his job to clean up after them. When his mother harbors girls and women undergoing painful abortions, young Cy grows accustomed to their anguished, frightened cries. Despite the proximity of so much misery, Cy comes to understand that his mother, while she does not romanticize suffering, feels that it is her duty to help people endure it. As a tattoo artist, Cy’s livelihood requires that he cause pain, and in the roughand-tumble circles in which he travels, brute force is a way of life. Riley wallows in pain both mental and physical as a tortured artist, a situation that comes to a head when his hand is smashed and he commits suicide by swallowing bleach, which proves to be an incredibly agonizing death. Grace, who has submitted to hundreds of hours of tattoo
REEDA PARKS is Cy’s mother and the proprietor of the Bayview Hotel. Charitable in nature, Reeda believes it is her duty to provide a decent vacation for factory workers who have toiled their whole lives in the service of others. She also provides a safe harbor for girls and women who seek abortions, although she does not perform them herself. When she is diagnosed with breast cancer in 1922, she meticulously closes down the hotel and teaches Cy everything he needs to know to survive without her. ELIOT RILEY is the eccentric, misanthropic tattoo artist who chooses Cy to carry on his business. He torments Cy but teaches him well, becoming his father figure and drawing the boy into his marginal existence. Riley has a foul mouth and drinks constantly, but he considers himself an artist and takes his work seriously. When his hand is smashed in a fight, he has nothing left to live for and commits suicide. MALCOLM SEDAK is a mentally unstable man who feels threatened by Grace’s proto-feminism. He tries to kill her by drenching her in acid, which lands him in the mental ward of a prison. In retaliation for his crime, Cy gouges his eyes out.
needle discomfort, is splashed with acid and her skin dissolves, nearly killing her. She is disfigured for life, permanently, painfully cobbled and scarred to the point of freakishness. Cy gouges out the eyes of Grace’s attacker, using his unflinching familiarity with human flesh to exact revenge. Living on the fringes of the mainstream seems to leave the characters disproportionately exposed to pain and suffering. As much as the book is about pain, it is also about healing. Cy inherits a sense of benevolence from Reeda and malevolence from Riley. He balances these opposing
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sarah Hall was born in 1974 in the northern English county of Cumbria, close to the seaside town of Morecambe where the first half of The Electric Michelangelo takes place. She graduated from Aberystwyth University in Wales and received a master’s degree in literature from St. Andrews University in Scotland. Although she regards herself first as a poet, she received accolades for her first novel, Haweswater (2002). Haweswater is a fictionalized account of the flooding of a reservoir in 1936 in the Cumbrian village of Mardale, an event that irrevocably changes the lives of the Lightburn family, who have farmed the land for generations. Critics praised Hall’s deft use of language and water imagery in the book, and it received the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book and the Betty Trask Award. After The Electric Michelangelo, Hall published The Carhullan Army (titled Daughters of the North in the United States), the story of a near-future dystopia also set in Cumbria, which serves as a cautionary feminist tale of a fragile, post-oil, ravaged-climate world. The book received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. How to Paint a Dead Man (2009) tells the intergenerational story of four artists with ties to a reclusive Italian landscape painter who died in the 1960s. Hall divides her time between England and North Carolina.
forces successfully, for the most part. At any time his precarious circumstances could justify a descent into hatred, as happened to Riley, but instead he chooses a path toward hope and reconciliation. He does lash out, however, when Grace is harmed. He commits a heinous crime—his first—in retaliation for the pain she suffers. He chooses to heal himself—to leave behind the brutality that befell him on Coney Island in favor of Morecambe, a place made painful by ghosts but in which he can leave a positive artistic legacy. In the end he reconciles himself to mentoring Nina, choosing this new beginning over a languishing decline into old age. Another theme of The Electric Michelangelo is folk art. In interviews, Hall has stated that her interest in the folk art of tattooing compelled her to write the novel. Folk art is created by those not formally trained and its skills are passed down from one generation to the next through informal mentoring. Unschooled painting, woodcarving, and quilting are forms of folk art that have been disparaged by experts for generations; they give great pleasure to the artists and their recipients but are deemed inferior to works created and sold as art. Tattooing has existed for centuries, yet until recent times those who underwent the procedure in Western cultures were considered to be on the fringes of society. Riley imparts to Cy an appreciation for the seriousness
Portrait of Sarah Hall, author of The Electric Michelangelo. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
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and beauty of tattoos despite their alienation from respectable society. As folk art, their tattoos are made for and enjoyed by the working class, who see them as totems of their life experiences. Cy’s customers use their tattoos to give them a sense of individuality amid the anonymity of the modern, industrialized world. Grace uses her whole body as a canvass for folk art, allowing Cy to live up to his nom de plume. As the real Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, so Cy is the Michelangelo of Grace’s body, turning it into a cathedral of folk art. And as with the predicament of folk art throughout most of history, her tattooed eyes are seen as a hideous aberration by the man who attacks her.
W Style Hall regards herself as a poet first and a novelist second. Thus, it makes sense that The Electric Michelangelo is infused with poetic imagery and that critics consistently commend Hall for her evocative lyricism. As she told Benedicte Page in an interview for the Bookseller, “In this book I was going for an old-fashioned, lyrical feel to suit the setting, with a lot of internal rhyming within the sentences.” The result, according to Michelene Wandor of the Sunday Times is “muscular, glinting prose.” Lilian Pizzichini, writing in the Financial Times, complimented Hall’s “gorgeously embellished prose” that gives “tantalizing glimpses” of the characters’ lives. Likewise, Susann Cokal, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said the “novel is more about images than plot” and concluded that readers should revel in the novel’s “slow grace” and “allow the language and imagery to sweep [them] up.”
W Critical Reception Hall had already made a name for herself with her first novel, Haweswater, and reviews for The Electric Michelangelo were just as positive. Jem Poster, writing in the Guardian, called it “a work of unusual imaginative power and range.” Writing in Booklist, Carol Haggas admired how Hall “explores timeless themes of loss and redemption with an ageless wisdom and grace.” A writer for Kirkus Reviews grew weary of the characters and poetic language, but a critic from Publishers Weekly called the writing “pure joy.” Cokal concluded that “Hall’s novel is to be admired for its own slow grace.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cokal, Susann. “Body of Work.” New York Times Book Review 6 Nov. 2005: 17. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2005: 806. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Rev. of The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2005: 211. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Haggas, Carol. Rev. of The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Booklist 15 Oct. 2005: 30. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Page, Benedicte. “Recorded on the Skin: Sarah Hall’s Second Novel Explores the Mysterious Art of the Tattooist.” Bookseller 21 Nov. 2003: 26. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Pizzichini, Lilian. Rev. of The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Financial Time 17 April 2004: 33. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Poster, Jem. “Written in Skin: Jem Poster Traces a Tattoo Artist’s Compelling Journey.” Guardian, books. guardian.co.uk (27 Mar. 2004): 27. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Wandor, Michelene. Rev. of The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall. Sunday Times [London], 16 May 2004: 52. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Guest, Katy. “Interview: Writer Sarah Hall’s Novels Paint Communities Teeming with Life and Teetering near Death.” Independent 10 Aug. 2007. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. A lengthy interview with Hall in which she discusses all her novels, especially her research for The Carhullan Army and its ties to her own life. Thwaite, Mark. “Interview with Sarah Hall, Author of The Electric Michelangelo.” Ready, Steady Book 5 Dec. 2008. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In this brief interview Hall talks about the differences and similarities between Haweswater and The Electric Michelangelo, writers who inspire her, and her research and writing process. Gale Resources
“Sarah Hall.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Sarah Hall’s official website at sarahhallauthor.com includes biographical information, overviews of her novels, and a schedule of events and personal appearances. For Further Reading
Baker, Kevin. Dreamland. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Print. Baker’s expansive novel is set in Coney Island at the turn of the twentieth century. It blends multiple storylines featuring low-life carnies and hucksters with Tammany Hall politics and real-life
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historical figures that filtered through the park during its heyday. Brodie, Allan, and Gary Winter. England’s Seaside Resorts. London: English Heritage, 2007. Print. This history of English resorts focuses on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the shore became the favored destination for Britain’s working classes. The authors focus on the special character of resort towns and include both new and historical photos. Caplan, Jane, ed. Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print. This scholarly collection of essays traces the history of tattooing in the West, particularly its roots in European and American history. Contributors conducted original research, with several examining the link between tattooing and slavery and tattooing and sexuality.
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Hall, Sarah. Haweswater. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print. Hall’s first novel won Britain’s Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. Set in the rural north of England, the book concerns the destruction of the Lightburns’ way of life when a reservoir is built that will flood their ancestral land. Kasson, John F. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. Print. This nonfiction account of Coney Island outlines its cultural significance in the pre-World War I era and includes numerous photos. Kathleen Wilson
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog By Muriel Barbery
W Introduction Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a complicated novel. It explores ideas from such diverse areas as art and esthetics; literature and composition theory; film and music; sociology; economics; psychology; and French versus Japanese culture, particularly regarding the social implications of interior design. Faulted by some readers for investing in ideas at the expense of plot, the novel ingeniously weaves together two journals, written by characters who are astute thinkers and observers. One is fifty-four-year-old concierge Renée Michel, widowed since the mid-1980s, who reports on her life (both public and private) and develops theories about art, culture, and upperclass French society. The other is Paloma Josse, a precocious twelve-year-old who resides with her parents and sister in the upper-class apartment building that Renée manages. As different in class, age, and appearance as they are, these journal writers share common values and interests (for example, in music and Japanese culture); for different reasons, each chooses to reserve her insights for the safe precinct of her journal—that is, until a new resident, Kakuro Ozu, sees their real natures and manages to bring each out of her shell and into friendship with each other. For more than two decades, Renée has maintained the appearance of a low-class, uncultivated concierge, mostly adept at hiding her broad tastes in literature and gourmet cooking. In a sense, she believes doing so is part of her job as a concierge—to fulfill rich people’s expectations of some one in such a lowly position. Thus, every day she plays into the assumptions of snooty tenants and “perpetuates the charade of social hierarchy” (20). Paloma, a precocious and studious prepubescent child, entrusts her cunning descriptions of social intercourse and her conceptualization of profound thoughts to her journal
and habitually withdraws to hiding places in an effort to keep undercover her exceptional intelligence. Thus, she seeks to avoid the work that would befall her if her welleducated and ambitious parents ever saw her intellectual potential. Barbery’s second novel, L’élégance du hérisson, was published in French in 2006. Having held a place on the French best-seller list for more than one hundred weeks, it became a candidate for translation. That work was done by Alison Anderson, and The Elegance of the Hedgehog, published by Europa Editions, appeared in 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
The literary and broader cultural context for The Elegance of the Hedgehog reflects Barbery’s formal education in philosophy and her love of literature and the arts. The novel begins with an allusion to Karl Marx, which immediately establishes the class consciousness that separates the concierge from the wealthy apartment residents. Barbery also demonstrates Renee’s familiarity with theoretical and philosophical texts when she quotes Feuerbach’s eleventh thesis (18) on the spur of the moment and compares herself to another “notorious concierge,” Legrandin, in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. She eschews popular romance, such as the works of Barbara Cartland, but loves Anna Karenina so much she has named her cat Leo, after the novel’s author, Leo Tolstoy. She loves film, alludes to Gone with the Wind and Blade Runner, and recalls that the last outing she enjoyed with her terminally ill husband was to see The Hunt for Red October. Startled in Kakuro’s bathroom, she immediately recognizes the piped-in music as the Confutatis in Mozart’s Requiem (221), and she responds emotionally to his exceptional reproduction of a still life by Pieter Claesz (199). While
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
MAJOR CHARACTERS PIERRE ARTHENS is the famous food critic who lives on the fourth floor. His death allows Kakuro Ozu to move into the luxury apartment building. COLOMBE JOSSE, older sister of Paloma, is a typical elitist styleconscious teenager. PALOMA JOSSE is the precocious twelve-year-old journal writer who narrates part of the novel. MANUELA LOPES, the Portuguese cleaning lady and mother of four, is the refined friend and confidante of Renée Michel. RENÉE MICHEL, a fifty-four-year-old concierge, is a cultivated, well-read widow who hides her cultural interests and social views from the apartment-building residents for whom she works. KAKURO OZU, a wealthy exporter of film equipment, moves into the apartment vacated by the Arthens family after Pierre’s death and changes the status quo in the building. OLYMPE SAINT-NICE, nineteen, aspires to being a veterinarian and talks to Renée at length about animals in the building. ANTOINE PALLIÈRES is the youngster who comments on Marx and whose wealthy father is in the arms industry.
Renée’s main ruse is to fool the apartment-building residents into thinking she is “a typical French concierge” (19), in fact, the novel sets out to deconstruct the very class system that Renée outwardly complies with in such minute detail. Renée is, in truth, a rare individual, as much “a permanent traitor to [her] archetype” (22) as her refined friend, the Portuguese cleaning woman, Manuela. The historical context for this novel pertains first to the class society of urban Paris, represented in the novel by the concierge and the apartment-building residents. Traditionally, and particularly in Paris, where many people live in apartment buildings, the concierge (generally male) fulfills the duties of a full-time doorman or lobby manager, a person who assists residents as they come and go, monitors their mail, takes messages, holds packages, and is entrusted to check on apartments when residents are away on vacation. The concierge historically occupied a small apartment on the ground floor, adjacent to the lobby, arranged in such a way that he could register the lobby activity and respond quickly to residents’ and visitors’ needs. With its origins in medieval times, the position of concierge developed apace with the popularity of urban apartment living. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, the position became somewhat less common. Seen as expensive and perhaps mostly unnecessary, the role of concierge was gradually replaced by that
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The events of The Elegance of the Hedgehog take place in a Paris apartment building like the one seen here. ª Image Source/Corbis
of a doorman who worked a standard shift and lived elsewhere.
W Themes Equally interesting and central themes abound in this novel, but the title points to one that may be the most important. The difference between how a person appears and what that person is like inside is depicted in the two journal writers and in other characters as well. The most direct application of this idea occurs when Paloma responds to Kakuro Ozu’s observation that Renée “radiates intelligence” (143). Paloma says, “Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, . . . on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary— terribly elegant” (143). Related to the theme of appearance versus inner reality is one about what prevents people from connecting and what is required for connections to form. One of Paloma’s profound thoughts provides an explanation: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born May 26, 1969, in Casablanca, Morocco, Muriel Barbery was raised in France. She attended École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (1990-1994) and received her MA in 1991 and her DEA in 1994, both in philosophy, from the Sorbonne. She worked as an assistant student monitor at the Université de Bourgogne, from 1994 to 1997; as a training instructor at Lower Normandy-Saint-Lô IUFM, from 1998 to 2007; and as a teaching coordinator there from 2004 to 2007. Her first novel, Une goumadise, appeared in 2000; it was translated and published in English as Gourmet Rhapsody in 2009. Her second novel, L’Élégance du hérisson, appeared in 2006; it was published in English as The Elegance of the Hedgehog in 2008. The second work remained on the French best-seller list for more than one-hundred weeks and was translated into fourteen languages. As of 2010, Barbery lived with her husband in Japan.
In the story, the death of food critic Pierre Arthens makes it possible for Kakuro Ozu to move into the apartment building. ª Hussenot/ SoFood/Corbis
people cling to their assumptions and see others as a reflection of those assumptions. In order for people to see others for what they really are, those assumptions must be set aside. Paloma writes: “We never look beyond our assumptions and . . . we just meet ourselves. We don’t recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors” (144-45). Mr. Ozu is adept at setting his assumptions aside; he sees Renée and Paloma for the intelligent people they are because he is free of preconceived beliefs about them. Other themes pertain to the nature of art and the proper use of intelligence. After seeing the Claesz still life in Kakuro’s apartment, Renée considers that excellent art is “perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed” and concludes that “art is emotion without desire” (204). She connects this concept of art to the human search for consonance amid dissonance. Like true connection that occurs when people set aside their assumptions, art delivers a universal purity that rises above particular human pretense and conflict. A related idea pertains to time, to how the present is experienced and the future conceptualized. Living fully in the present is connected to being able to appreciate its ephemeral beauty. Paloma conceptualizes this idea as she watches a rosebud fall: “Beauty consists of its own passing. . . . It’s the ephemeral configuration
of things in the moment, when you see both their beauty and their death” (272). Finally, the proper use of intelligence is in helping others. This application is fulfilled first in Paloma’s insight about healing through healing others and in the final wrenching event between Renée and the street person. What matters most is that people help one another, that they look past their assumptions and the constraints of social hierarchy to connect, assist and affirm others.
W Style Two distinct voices color the prose style of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and to prevent readers from confusing them, they are printed in different fonts. Among its many subjects, this novel is also preoccupied with style, with language and what is conveyed by the different ways it is used, and by composition theory. Grammar is so important that the term serves as a heading for one of the novel’s five sections. In these ways, the style of the novel can arguably also be said to be its subject. The importance of understanding grammar is explained by Paloma in her journal as she describes speaking up for the first time in class, challenging her teacher’s inept response and expounding on the utility and beauty of correctly used grammar, on how grammar is a conduit of meaning, how meaning is conveyed when it is unclouded by incorrect verb tense and confused handling of other parts of speech. Paloma goes on to explain that language is misused generally in society, and regrettably, ordinary people who do not understand grammar can “get screwed . . . by the fine talkers” (57). Knowing grammar well allows people to
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communicate effectively and appropriately; it also allows people to know when they are being manipulated or slighted. Renée expounds on the significance of elision that indicates lack of sincerity and consideration, for example, how a resident will ask her to do something, “would you,” without using the word, “please” or some other word of gratitude. She boils at the pretentious misuse of a word and spends fifteen minutes spewing over a misused comma. These irritations result from her sense that the grammatical mistakes her uppity residents make betray the thin veneer of their pretensions. But privately she waxes poetic thinking about a scene Tolstoy sets in Pokrovskoye, the point of which is the comfort in repetitive scything, which sweeps free of willful striving (123), a thought that takes her to the nature of writing itself. She likens writing her journal to being “adrift on some inner sea” for “writing has something of the art of scything about it”: “The lines gradually become their own demiurges and . . . I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will . . . teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure” (123). The action of this novel is, arguably, its style and the theory that attends it, for the action that matters most is the experience of writing and the composition that emerges from the two main characters, who are journal writers.
W Critical Reception L’élégance du hérisson was a huge popular success in France, bringing its author to global attention in a way her first novel did not. This success was considered justification enough for translating the novel into English. While some critics wondered if the English version would be as successful among readers in North America, many others thought it would be surprising if the novel was any less popular outside France than it was in France. Bruce Crumley, for example, stated that The Elegance of the Hedgehog “seems to have scored a direct hit on the global zeitgeist.” Heather Thompson explained the success, describing the book as “absurd and lyrical, cheery and bleak, contemplative and tender.” Thompson went on to highlight what she called the “key” to Barbery’s success, her “faith in human goodness. Amid ruminations about east and west, poverty and wealth, Racine and Bescherelle, phenomenology and Freudianism, it is the revelatory joy the characters afford each other—with recognition, with friendship, with love—that quietly rises to the top.” These elements in the novel, according to Thompson, made it a best seller.” But it was the work’s ruminations that made some critics find fault. For example, Caryn James found these parts impeded the plot: “Especially in the novel’s early stretch, Barbery . . . seems too clever for her own
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good. . . . Her brief chapters, more essays than fiction, so carefully build in explanations for the literary and philosophical references that she seems to be assessing what a mass audience needs.” Thompson agreed, pointing out that Barbery has “an infectious, if occasionally unsubtle, didactic ardour.” Heather Paulson also pointed out how the plot is burdened by its philosophy: “The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand.” Crumley conceded the point but ended positively regarding it: “Barbery demonstrates her own deep love and command of art, philosophy, and literature. Indeed, Elegance can be a bit intimidating when Renée’s philosophical references and brainier ruminations run thick. In the end, however, the novel wins over its fans with a life-affirming message, a generous portion of heart and Barbery’s frequently wicked sense of humor.” Crumley also quoted the author herself, who placed the theoretical parts in perspective: According to Crumley, Barbery stated: “For me, those factors were only anecdotal in telling the story of these two solitary women, and how they arranged their lives to give full rein to their passions.” A review in Kirkus Reviews took what others saw as drawback and celebrated it: “Barbery teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors.” That reviewer’s final assessment was affirmative: “With its refined taste and political perspective, this is an elegant, light-spirited and very European adult fable.” In addition, both Terry Ann Lawler and a reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the audio recording of the book. Lawler described the novel as “a beautiful love story that quietly takes on classism and the meaning of life.” The Publishers Weekly review of the audio recording drew special attention to the reading by Cassandra Morris as Paloma. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Trans. Alison Anderson. New York: Europa Editions, 2008. Print. “Barbery, Muriel: The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Kirkus Reviews 1 July 2008. Print. Crumley, Bruce. “Muriel Barbery: An Elegant Quill.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. www.time.com. Time, 27 Aug. 2008. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Print. Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Publishers Weekly 31 Aug. 2009: 52+. Print. James, Caryn. “Thinking on the Sly.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. New York Times Book Review 7 Sept. 2008: 23(L). Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Lawler, Terry Ann. “Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Library Journal 15 Sept. 2009: 30. Print. Paulson, Heather. “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Booklist 1 Aug. 2008: 34. Print. Thompson, Heather. “Charm and Cleverness.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. New Statesman [1996] 1 Sept. 2008: 51+. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Barbery, Muriel: The Elegance of the Hedgehog” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Kirkus Reviews 1 July 2008. Print. Touches upon the familial reason why Renée is so class-conscious and self-protective. Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Bookmarks Nov.-Dec. 2008: 41. Print. Describes briefly Renée’s and Paloma’s interest in Japanese culture. Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Publishers Weekly 19 May 2008: 30. Print. Describes the autodidact Renée and “supersmart” Paloma and alludes to how Kakuro sets about transforming them. Paulson, Heather. “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Booklist 1 Aug. 2008: 34. Print. Points out how the novel works to expose the ridiculous pretensions of the wealthy Parisian apartment residents. Popowich, Sam. “Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” Rev. of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Library Journal 15 June 2008: 53. Print. Largely negative review that faults the novel for being laden with Barbery’s particular interests.
Open Web Sources
A Muriel Barbery fan site, at http://murielbarbery.com, provides information about the author and her novels. The Web site Bookstore People, at http://www .bookstorepeople.com/2009/05/lost-in-translationii-a-conversation-with-muriel-barbery, contains notes from a May 16, 2009, interview with Muriel Barbery. For Further Reading
Barbery, Muriel. Gourmet Rhapsody. New York: Europa Editions, 2009. Print. First novel by Barbery, telling the story of the inner life and desires of Pierre Arthens, in his final days. Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Ed. Otto H. Frank. Trans. Susan Massotty. New York: DoubledayRandom House, 2001. Print. Claims to be the definitive edition of the famous diary by the child who perished in the Holocaust. Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print. Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about Iowa small-town living told in journal written by protagonist Reverend John Ames during the last year of his life. Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, consisting of journal entries, letters, recipes, and newspaper articles, presented as the compiled family papers of Daisy Stone Goodwill. Verghase, Abraham. Cutting for Stone. New York: Knopf-Random House, 2009. Print. Weaves medicine into narrative of twin boys who grow up in a medical facility in Ethiopia. Melodie Monahan
Gale Resources
“Muriel Barbery.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.
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The Emperor of Ocean Park By Stephen L. Carter
W Introduction The Emperor of Ocean Park is Stephen L. Carter’s first novel following seven nonfiction books on law and American society. A law professor at Yale University, Carter stirred controversy with his 1991 book, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, which questions the wisdom of continuing affirmative action and prompted him to be labeled as a conservative by many within the liberal-minded factions of the African American community. The novel, more than six-hundred pages and longer than typical mystery novels, centers on the suspicious death of a disgraced, conservative, African American judge named Oliver Garland and his son Talcott’s search for the truth about his father’s past. There are a number of subplots in the book, including a scathing look at academia and the process of appointing federal judges and justices, as well as the social tensions within the African American community as more blacks move into the upper class. The intrigue begins after Oliver Garland is found dead in his office of an apparent heart attack. His daughter, Mariah, thinks that the conservative judge, who had a number of enemies, was killed. She goes to her brother Talcott for help. Initially, Talcott is not convinced, but then he is approached by Jack Ziegler at the cemetery. Ziegler, an old friend of the judge’s, caused Garland to lose a Supreme Court appointment because Ziegler, who still associated with the judge, was a known organized criminal. Ziegler asks Talcott about “the arrangements,” but Talcott has no idea what he is talking about. What “the arrangements” are soon becomes more clear when Talcott finds out that his father may have been hiding important papers that could cause a lot of trouble for rich and powerful people. While Talcott remains uncertain about the circumstances of his father’s death, Jack Ziegler’s obvious
involvement leads him to suspect there are many things in his father’s past he did not know and that he needs to find out. Part of the mystery clearly stems from papers that the judge hid and that he wants Talcott to discover using clues involving their shared knowledge of chess. Talcott is soon pursued by several parties who seem to have an interest in the papers as well. Talcott fears for his life, despite assurances from Ziegler that he and his family will not be harmed. Along the way, Talcott learns more about events that start to explain his father’s odd behavior, including Oliver Garland’s obsession with finding those responsible for his youngest daughter Abby’s death years before. Meanwhile, Talcott’s search for the truth causes him problems at work and at home. His wife, Kimmer, fears that his behavior threatens her nomination to the court of appeals, and the university’s dean pressures Talcott to stop whatever he is doing because it is causing him to miss teaching his classes, and he verbally abuses a student whose father is a key donor to the law school. The many scenes set at Talcott’s home and at the university allow Carter ample space to comment on politics within academia, the judicial nomination process, the changing status of African Americans in the United States, and the strains that families face after shocking deaths. The Emperor of Ocean Park was a Today show book club selection, a Quality Paperback Book Club main selection, and a Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club/Mystery Guild alternate selection; it was also on the New York Times and Essence magazine best-seller lists in 2002.
W Literary and Historical Context
Written soon after the turn of the twenty-first century, The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in the period after
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MAJOR CHARACTERS MARIAH DENTON is Talcott’s surviving sister. Mariah married a white man and gave up a career as a promising journalist to become a housewife and mother. ABBY GARLAND was the youngest Garland sibling. Her death in a hit-and-run car accident devastates the family, especially Oliver, and sets into motion a series of other tragic events. ADDISON GARLAND is the oldest son of Oliver. Also an attorney, he has had a peripatetic career punctuated by a series of affairs. Addison is the son in whom Oliver first trusts to reveal an important clue about Abby’s death, but the information so disturbs him that he turns further away from his father. Photograph of Stephen L. Carter, author of The Emperor of Ocean Park. Ted Thai/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Democratic President Bill Clinton has left office and Republican George W. Bush has moved into the White House. The presence of a conservative, right-wing U.S. administration parallels a key event in the book’s backstory. During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the novel’s Judge Oliver Garland was nominated by the president to fill an opening in the U.S. Supreme Court. This fictional story line parallels the real-life nomination of conservative African American judge Clarence Thomas by President George H. W. Bush. But, while Thomas was named to the U.S. Supreme Court, Garland is rejected. Both nominations involved scandal: Justice Thomas was accused of sexually harassing attorney Anita Hill, who worked for Thomas when they were both involved with the Department of Education; the fictional Garland is accused of associating with Jack Ziegler, a powerful man in the underworld who has been charged with numerous crimes, including murder, but who has never been found guilty. Garland and Ziegler had gone to college together and Garland had asserted, unsuccessfully, that their meeting had been merely social. Carter sets his present-day story within the privileged world of academia and the upper classes. Within this context, he explores the implications of a growing elite class of well-educated African Americans and how they fit in—or do not fit in—to a traditionally white social, legal, and political environment.
W Themes A central theme in The Emperor of Ocean Park has to do with the growing African American upper class, racial
BENTLEY GARLAND is Talcott and Kimmer’s only child. The parents fear that he shows signs of developmental problems after birth, and Kimmer is wracked with guilt as she feels responsible due to drinking alcohol during the pregnancy. KIMBERLY “KIMMER” GARLAND is Talcott’s wife. While she seems to love Talcott, she is a workaholic and Talcott suspects she is having an affair with her law firm partner. OLIVER GARLAND, called “The Judge” by his son Talcott, was highly respected as an erudite attorney and adjudicator who was originally very liberal. Profoundly affected by the death of his daughter Abby, he becomes increasingly conservative, displaying erratic behavior over time. TALCOTT “MISHA” GARLAND is the main protagonist. A noted intellectual and law professor, he is an authority on tort law. He is the middle child in the family and viewed by his brother and sister as rather humorless and dour. WALLACE WARRENTON WAINWRIGHT is a U.S. Supreme Court justice who plays a key role in the novel’s conclusion. DANA WORTH is a professor at the university and the most loyal of Talcott’s university friends. She sticks by him when the dean and other professors wonder whether he is having an emotional breakdown. REV. DR. MORRIS YOUNG helps counsel Talcott, offering him support and boosting the law professor’s faith, which becomes an important theme. JACK ZIEGLER was in the CIA but is currently involved in the criminal underworld and has been charged with numerous crimes, including murder. His friendship with former college roommate Oliver Garland costs the judge his Supreme Court appointment.
tension, and the idea of what it means to be a successful black person in America. In an article published in the Michigan Law Review, critic Frank Wu noted how the
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, Stephen L. Carter was born in Washington, DC, and spent his childhood in Ithaca, New York. He went to Stanford University to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1976, before attending Yale Law School. He completed his JD in 1979 and moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals under Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III, as well as for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. From 1981 to 1982, Carter was an associate with the law firm Shea & Gardner. Yale University hired him to the law faculty as an assistant professor in 1982; he became a full professor just three years later. The author of several nonfiction and fiction titles, Carter also writes a column for Christianity Today. Lauded as one of the “Fifty Leaders of the New Millennium” in a 1994 Time magazine list, he has been awarded honorary degrees from Bates College, the Virginia Theological Seminary, and Colgate and Notre Dame universities, as well as the Louisville-Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Carter lives with his wife and children in Cheshire, Connecticut.
protagonist, Talcott Garland, makes a reference to University of Chicago sociology scholar Robert E. Park, who wrote a famous 1956 monograph about how the “black bourgeoisie were a self-deluded class who would never be accepted as either black or bourgeoisie.” Carter’s novel comments on the idea that African Americans have made gains in advancing up Western society’s economic ladder, but certain factions feel they are simultaneously forgetting or rejecting their heritage in an effort to fit into an elite class dominated by whites. This theme remains in the background for the entire novel. Wu notes that “ostensibly, his [Carter’s] book is a mystery-thriller, replete with false leads, false endings, and true surprises. Within that structure, it is also a study of the black bourgeoisie, a nation within a nation, as real as it is imagined, who are as black as they are bourgeoisie”. Many events and circumstances in the novel portray a grim view of the state of the modern world. Talcott, in his search to find out what happened to his father, is repeatedly disappointed by where his search leads him. Along the way, he discovers plagiarism at the academic level, judicial corruption, corporate influence on the legal system, students who are interested in becoming lawyers for all the wrong reasons, and a wife who is cheating on him. Among all this chaos, he begins to find some comfort in his religious faith. As Elizabeth Fox-Genovese noted: “Carter’s ubiquitous asides on the sorry state of our world jostle against his underlying faith in God’s goodness and the potential for even fallen humans to exercise free will to choose good, our capacity for
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friendship and loyalty, and parents’ capacity to love their children”.
W Style Written in the first person from the perspective of the main protagonist, Talcott Garland, The Emperor of Ocean Park falls within the category of what author Tom Wolfe called the “literary manifesto for the new social novel”—a work that comments on the ugliest sides of humanity and society using realistic narrative, according to Wu. To comment on all the areas of society—family, academia, politics, social class—that Carter tries to cover, the storyline takes a desultory, complex path. There are numerous subplots in the novel. Some critics have commented that this makes the book overly long and difficult to follow, while others have complimented the author’s ambitious efforts. Only one literary device in the novel is a clear symbol and ongoing motif: the game of chess (Talcott is even nicknamed “Misha” in honor of Russian champion Mikhail Tal). Talcott is an expert in the game, as was his deceased father, and Judge Garland gives his son a number of clues about the mystery through chess references and his obsession with creating a chess scenario called the “Double Excelsior.” In this optional rule of play, the black and white pieces cooperate to checkmate the black king, but Talcott’s father tried to create a strategy in which the underdog black pieces actually win against white. To do so, one white pawn and one black pawn must work together to become knights and checkmate the white king. In chess, as in American society, by and large, white has the distinct advantage and creating a chess situation where black actually wins, even with the help of white pieces, is nearly impossible. Another notable feature of this debut novel is that it contains many similarities to the author’s own life and experiences. Both Stephen L. Carter and the fictional Talcott Garland become respected law professors at Ivy League schools, following brief careers with law firms; both are fascinated by the game of chess. But Carter, in a lengthy author’s note at the end of the book, emphasizes that he and Talcott are in no way the same person. Carter has kept his novel realistic, and the settings are clearly based on Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and other towns and cities, though the author has changed a variety of facts to better suit his story. Likewise, he has “altered the history of America’s past two decades in minor but noticeable respects” to fit the story.
W Critical Reception Because Carter is so well known as an academic and author of provocative nonfiction, The Emperor of Ocean TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Park received considerable critical attention. The author received a $4-million book contract, which caused considerable buzz among literary critics. When the novel debuted, however, many reviewers considered the book ambitious but flawed. Critics appreciated the author’s characterizations and attention to themes and issues, but several found fault with his writing style, describing the novel as the obvious work of a fiction neophyte. As David Gates noted, “Ocean Park is hung about with kick-me signs that betray the amateur. He has a repertoire of naively vivid synonyms for the simple, completely adequate ‘says’ rivaling the word hoard of the late Mildred Benson (a.k.a. Carolyn Keene). . . . He’s addicted to cheesy foreshadowing (‘Or so I foolishly imagine. But another disaster is in store’), sudden illuminations (‘the final, astonishing piece of the puzzle clicks into place’) and portentous one-line paragraphs.” Other reviewers found fault in the book’s pacing and plotting, asserting that Carter’s interest in philosophical asides and characterization came at the expense of the story. For instance, Ann Hellmuth observed that “[a]lthough the book has aspects of a thriller, the plot moves at a snail’s pace. Everything Talcott does is framed against the background of race,” adding that “Carter packs his novel with insights, seemingly throwaway paragraphs that nevertheless cause the reader to stop, think and reread.” “Suspense falls flat,” remarked Jennifer Baker, “as the author delivers description for action and philosophy rather than plot.” “The large cast of characters and the convoluted and occasionally distracting twists of plot into which they lead Misha can occasionally confuse the reader, and they figure among the few signs of Carter’s novice status as a novelist,” said Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who continued: “But Carter weaves the tightening web of suspense and the intensifying aura of danger with sure professional skill.” A couple of critics observed that the book’s conclusion was somewhat disappointing. James Hopkin commented: “Unfortunately, the last 60 pages deteriorate into a rally of implausible events: a hurricane with a killer in the woods, a drowning, a resurrection (of a bad guy thought dead) and several shootings in the cemetery,” and a Yale Law Review contributor stated: “While Carter lays a masterly foundation over the first 500 pages, the climax is somewhat unconvincing and apt to leave the reader dissatisfied.” Despite such problems, many commentators felt that, overall, The Emperor of Ocean Park offers enough rewards to be worth the read. Brigitte Frase commented that “although The Emperor of Ocean Park gets off to a very slow start, and suffers from too many digressions, the patient reader will not regret having persevered.” Vanessa Bush countered the objections of colleagues by asserting: “An elegantly nuanced novel, with finely drawn characters, a challenging plot, and
perfect pacing,” and Gene Seymour thoroughly enjoyed the way that “Carter is very good at evoking the wonderlands of American life, whether the Vineyard, Aspen or Washington’s ‘Gold Coast’ enclave of wealthy, powerful African-Americans. He’s even better at describing the machinations and intrigue in law school faculty offices.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Baker, Jennifer. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Library Journal 127.7 (15 Apr. 2002): 123. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Bush, Vanessa. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Booklist 98.15 (1 Apr. 2002): 1283. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. “Carter, Stephen L. (1954-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student Resource Center College Edition Expanded. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Yale Law Review 112.5 (Mar. 2003): 1303. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. “The Way It Was before: Stephen Carter’s First Novel Offers a Compelling Mystery.” Books & Culture 8.4 (July-Aug. 2002): 30. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Frase, Brigitte. “Crime as a Vehicle for Culture.” New Leader 85.3 (May-June 2003): 45. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Gates, David. “Is It a Long Good Buy? Yale Professor Stephen Carter Got $4.2 Million for His Epic Novel of Suspense. The True Mystery Is Why.” Newsweek 139 (10 June 2002): 56. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Harris, Mark. “‘Emperor’ State: Stephen Carter’s Flawed, Fascinating First Novel Plumbs a Mystery at the Core of an Upscale Black American Family.” Entertainment Weekly 658 (14 June 2002): 90+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Hellmuth, Ann. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service 17 July 2002: K4504. Print. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Hopkin, James. “Novel of the Week.” New Statesman 131.4590 (3 June 2002): 55. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Seymour, Gene. “Poisoned Ivy.” Nation 275.4 (22 July 2002): 25. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Wu, Frank H. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Michigan Law Review 101.6
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(May 2003): 2209+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barsanti, Chris. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park. Book (May-June 2002): 80. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. The critic appreciates a book that explores the world of the upper-class African American while simultaneously feeling that the author lectures too much about race and academia. Bashir, Samiya A. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Black Issues Book Review 4.3 (May-June 2002): 49. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Bashir notes that the author touches on many issues that will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers and that the novel “Successfully liv[es] up to at least some of the hype.” Dodson, Angela. “Literary Checkmate: The Overwhelming Response to First-Time Novelist Stephen Carter Has the Publishing World Calling It the Next Bonfire of the Vanities.” Black Issues Book Review 4.3 (May-June 2002): 46. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. A discussion of the author’s background, publishing history, the publishing deal for his first work of fiction, plot summary, and the author’s intentions for the book. Rev. of The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. Publishers Weekly 249.16 (22 Apr. 2002): 45. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. A summary and positive assessment of the novel. Hamilton, Kendra. “Writing for Pleasure and Profit: Law Professor Spins a Tale of Mystery, Sex and Intrigue to the Tune of a $4.2 Million Book Deal.” Black Issues in Higher Education 19.11 (18 July 2002): 30. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. A look at Carter’s first large publishing deals in fiction and his interests in emphasizing complex characters in his novels. Monaghan, Peter. “The Novel Worlds of Stephen L. Carter.” Chronicle of Higher Education 54.44 (11 July 2008). Print. General One File. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Monaghan talks about Carter’s standing in the academic community and his center-left views on issues like affirmative action and religion that flavor his novels. Nelson, Michael. “Stephen L. Carter: The Christian as Contrarian.” Virginia Quarterly Review 79.3 (2003): 487-97. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. An exploration of Carter’s personal background, specifically focusing on the circumstances under which he wrote The Emperor of Ocean Park. Page, Benedicte. “The Last Judgement: This Summer’s Biggest Hype Is a Complex Legal Thriller Infused
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with Its Author’s Christian Faith.” Bookseller 3 May 2002: 27. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Quotes the author’s comments about liberalism versus conservatism, marriage, and religion in his fiction. Peterson, V. R. “Pages.” People Weekly 57.22 (10 June 2002): 47+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Peterson appreciates the mores expressed in Carter’s novel. “Telling a Terrific Tale; For Some, It’s Academic.” Connecticut Law Tribune (9 Sept. 2002). General OneFile. Web. 20 Aug. 2010. Comparing Carter to other lawyers-turned-novelists, the reviewer feels The Emperor of Ocean Park has some stylistic flaws but that this is countered by interesting characters and a complex plot. Gale Resources
“Carter, Stephen L.” Newsmakers 2008 Cumulation. Ed. Laura Avery. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 63-66. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. “Carter, Stephen L. 1954-.” Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Vol. 179. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 76-83. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. “Carter, Stephen L. (1954-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student Resource Center College Edition Expanded. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Judgepedia is an online encyclopedia that explains how state and federal courts work, including the nomination process and law changes that have affected the courts. http://judgepedia.org The Oyez Project provides information on all justices who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as a virtual tour of the building and audio recordings dating back to 1955 that were recorded at the court. http://www.oyez.org Stephen L. Carter’s author home page includes a list of his fiction and nonfiction books, a blog, and information on public appearances. http://www. stephencarterbooks.com Stephen L. Carter’s home page at Yale University offers background and contact information. http://www. law.yale.edu/faculty/SCarter.htm For Further Reading
Morrison, Tony. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Print. While having nothing to do with a murder mystery, this novel addresses a unique theme—the idea that white people are more beautiful than black people. The main character, Pecola, is a young black woman obsessed TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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with the desire to have blue eyes. Both Carter and Morrison explore social concepts about whether success and beauty should be based on racial standards. Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. New York: Norton, 1990. Print. Mosley’s Easy Rawlins debuts here, spawning a successful series of mystery novels. Rawlins, a black World War II veteran, loses a good factory job that was putting him on the path to becoming part of the established middle class. He takes work as an investigator, which leads to his involvement in the worlds of postwar gangsters and corrupt politicians. Mosley’s Rawlins resembles Carter’s Talcott in that both are decent men struggling to maintain their values in a corrupt world. Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. London: Gollancz, 1935. Print. A classic mystery novel set at Oxford University, Sayers’s novel also deals with social prejudices, though in this case it is about women’s roles in academia.
Thomas-Graham, Pamela. Blue Blood: An Ivy League Mystery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Print. This novel features a Yale University setting and an investigator who is an African American woman and also a Harvard University economics professor. Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York: Bantam Books, 1987. Print. Many of the themes of racism, social class, and greed found in Carter’s book are also examined in the Wolfe best seller, which is about a tragic car accident that kills a young black man, sending scandalous shockwaves among politicians and the Wall Street and religious elite. Adaptations
The Emperor of Ocean Park, Warner Brothers, 2010. Film. A movie adaptation starring Will Smith, directed by Carl Franklin, and with screenplay by Stephen Schiff.
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Kevin Hile
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The Emperor’s Children By Claire Messud
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Claire Messud’s third novel, The Emperor’s Children, received high acclaim when it was published in 2006. It is a satirical portrait of the New York literary circle and its pretensions. The main characters are three friends who meet while in college at Brown University: Danielle Minkoff and Julius Clarke, two Midwesterners who see New York City as the place to make their mark in the world; and Marina Thwaite, a native of the city who has returned to claim her supposed entitlements. Unfortunately, all three see themselves as deserving of preference and destined for greatness, even though none of them know how to achieve success. They are approaching thirty, but not maturity, and floundering in their careers. While Danielle has a job as a TV documentary producer, she cannot manage to land an impressively worthwhile project. Julius decides to trade his impoverished life as a freelance critic for a parasitical relationship with a wealthy attorney but cannot give up the excitement of occasional homosexual trysts. Marina has procrastinated for seven years over the writing of a trivial book and, after a failed romance, has moved in with her parents. Her mother is a lawyer who helps the downtrodden, and her father is the famous journalist Murray Thwaite, the emperor whom everyone else wants to emulate or destroy. Into this urban scene appears an Australian who is starting a new social criticism magazine and a nephew who worships the idea of Murray. Their entwinements with the Thwaite family and the events of September 11, 2001 raise questions about whether the tumult will break through the characters’ self-absorption. Messud’s skill with language and piercing yet compassionate insights make this novel highly readable and intriguing.
The action of The Emperor’s Children occurs between March and November 2001, mostly in New York City, at a time when people wondered what the new George W. Bush administration might bring. But certainly no one was expecting the radical changes that resulted from the attacks of September 11, 2001. The reaction among Americans was dramatic. Many who might not otherwise have done so joined the military. The Emmy Awards were postponed but eventually presented in a low-key manner. Security became a primary concern, so the Department of Homeland Security was created to coordinate and improve communications among intelligence agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, and local law enforcement. Airport security was tightened with additional personnel and requirements for passengers such as having to remove shoes when going through the metal detector and carry liquids separately, among other restrictions. Transport and passport transactions were examined carefully for potential dangers from chemical weapons and saboteurs. The so-called war on terrorism began, which led to intense and controversial military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, routine life and the national consciousness were altered permanently in the United States because of the events of September 11, 2001. In the literary world of 2001, the Pulitzer Prize for commentary went to Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal for her articles on American society and culture and to Gail Caldwell of the Boston Globe for her observations of contemporary life and literature. Proof, by David Auburn, won the Pulitzer and Tony for best play, while The Producers won twelve Tony awards. Furthermore, best-seller books were written by Amy Tan, Jonathan Franzen, P. D. James, Hampton Sides, and David McCullough.
Context
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MAJOR CHARACTERS JULIUS CLARKE, a freelance critic, has no steady work and one aging designer suit for social-climbing events. His situation forces him into temp work and a doomed domestic relationship with a wealthy attorney. DANIELLE MINKOFF is a TV documentary maker who yearns to tackle a significant subject but has to settle for a filler piece on liposuction. She introduces Marina to her future husband and has an affair with Marina’s father. LUDOVIC SEELEY, the Australian editor of a new magazine intended to lambaste prominent cultural figures, marries Marina to gain social acceptance. He wants to be Napoleon and assumes that everybody does. ANNABEL THWAITE, Marina’s mother and Murray’s wife, is the family anchor and a lawyer who gets involved in her hardship cases. The Emperor’s Children follows three young college friends struggling to find success in the stressful New York City business world and overcome their own self-absorption. ª Randy Faris/Corbis
W Themes Anthony Powell’s Books Do Furnish a Room provides the epigraph to The Emperor’s Children and identifies a theme of the book. Personal myths, the beliefs people have about themselves, can be shaped by unrealistic expectations and social pressures; they can make it hard to adapt practically to everyday life. When these beliefs are complicated by the demands of class or family, they can be crippling. The result, in the case of the three friends in The Emperor’s Children, is a neurotic preoccupation with doing something great without the work ethic needed to realize such ambitions. Marina, Danielle, and Julius are Ivy League graduates with a sense of entitlement. When the world does not fall at their feet, they feel sorry for themselves and become confused about how to proceed. They are alarmed that they might have been wrong about their privileged status, that they may be ordinary instead of extraordinary. Coming of age is also a theme of the novel. It is a late coming of age for these friends who have spent their twenties extending their college life of parties and potential while waiting for their intellect, education, and placement in the New York City literary scene to magically produce their hoped-for results. They waste time, trying to cover up their failures; they compete with the previous generation of their ideological set. Through these characters, Messud describes satirically the snobbery of the New York City elite. They believe they are smarter and better informed than the majority, whom they look down on as the ignorant
MARINA THWAITE, beautiful, shallow, and unemployed, lives with her parents while trying to finish a trivial book on children’s clothes. She goes to work for and marries Ludovic. MURRAY THWAITE, the center of attention, is a legendary liberal social activist and cultural critic and also a hypocrite and adulterer, who is egotistical enough to think that he could write a book about how people should live. FREDERICK TUBB (aka Bootie) leaves college to educate himself and find real life at Uncle Murray’s knee. Soon disillusioned, he writes a scathing exposé about Murray. An unstable, clueless geek, Bootie is nonetheless perceptive and uncompromising.
masses. However, their ideas are not based on any deeply held beliefs about much of anything, including God’s existence. Hollowness and hypocrisy shape the unrealistic personal myths of the three friends and the emperor, Murray, and Bootie, the pretender to Murray’s throne. The title of the book refers to the outward appearance of this New York clique; the book itself reveals these individuals’ fear of being exposed.
W Style Messud’s satirical work incorporates multilayered plots with intellectual depth and psychological analysis. Satire is an aspect of tone that is sometimes comic, but more often harshly critical. In this case, it is used to ridicule a certain class. Multilayered plots are apparent in the separate presentations of the three friends’ lives, particularly the unshared parts of Julius’s situation. The novel is an intellectual and psychological study of the self-absorbed
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on October 8, 1966, in Greenwich, Connecticut, to a Canadian mother and Algerian French father, Claire Messud had an international upbringing in Australia and Canada but went to Yale University and then Cambridge University where she met her husband, the literary critic James Wood. As of 2010, the couple lived with their two children, Livia and Lucian, in the Boston area. Messud has taught at Johns Hopkins University and Warren Wilson, Amherst, and Hunter colleges. Her four books have earned her a finalist nomination for the PEN/Faulkner Award (twice), and she has received several awards, including the Encore Award, Addison Metcalf Award, and Strauss Living Award.
characters, exploring how such attitudes develop and what they produce. Messud has an ability to pack descriptions with information and to bring alive diverse settings such as an ordinary home in Watertown, a gay bar, an office, an elegant apartment, or a coffee shop, with vivid scents, sounds, tastes, and textures. Her descriptions convey the pretentiousness of her characters and their inner doubts and desires. The plot does not unfold in chronological order. Rather, Messud moves back and forth in time, not with big jumps, but just enough to give readers background from one person’s perspective and information about what was actually happening to another character in the meantime. Messud’s distinctive style has been compared to that of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Iris Murdoch.
W Critical Reception The Emperor’s Children has often been described as a comedy of manners and Messud praised as a satirist who effectively describes modern urban society. Robin Nesbitt, writing in the Library Journal, explained that “This wonderful read is an insightful look at our time and the decisions people make.” He added that “The reader will be tugged in many directions as these characters’ lives intersect in the realms of love, family, friendship, and tragedy.” A review in Publishers Weekly declared: “Messud remains wickedly observant of pretensions– intellectual, sexual, class and gender.” Kirkus Reviews described the novel as “A stinging portrait of life among Manhattan’s junior glitterati.” Santiago Ramos surmised in Commonweal that the characters are not entirely detestable because “Messud is a subtle and compassionate satirist. Her character’s questions and doubts may once have been her own.” Messud’s fluid narrative and vibrant characters have also been praised. Carol Haggas wrote in Booklist: “Tangy
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dialogue, provocative asides, glittering imagery, and nimble postulations build toward an electrifying and edifying conclusion.” However, not every critic was happy with the conclusion. Elizabeth Judd, writing in the Atlantic, commented: “Messud misguidedly concludes with the obligatory 9/11 denouement, which compels her Manhattanites to shelve their vainglorious projects and engage in collective hand-wringing.” Paul J. Griffiths, in Commonweal, also detected a soap-opera sentiment: “none of the characters see 9/11 as anything other than a glass through which their own insecurities may be refracted and perhaps transformed; catharsis, or bathos?” Katie Roiphe, writing in Slate, agreed: “The only substantial weakness in this excellent book is the ending,” which other critics also found abrupt and hollow compared to the rest of the book. Nonetheless, The Emperor’s Children was considered generally to be wellwritten, intelligent, and entertaining. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Publishers Weekly 253.19 (2006): 43. Print. “The End of Irony.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. New York Times Book Review 27 Aug. 2006: 1(L). Print. Griffiths, Paul J. “Unclothed but Not Redressed.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Commonweal 133.19 (2006): 22+. Print. Haggas, Carol. “Messud, Claire. The Emperor’s Children.” Booklist 1 Aug. 2006: 42+. Print. Judd, Elizabeth. “New Fiction.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Atlantic Sept. 2006: 120. Print. “Messud, Claire: The Emperor’s Children.” Kirkus Reviews 15 June 2006: 596. Print. Nesbitt, Robin. “Messud, Claire: The Emperor’s Children.” Library Journal 131.10 (2006): 108+. Print. “Novel: The Emperor’s Children in New York.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. All Things Considered. National Public Radio 29 Aug. 2006. Ramos, Santiago. “Summer Reading.” Commonweal 135.12 (2008): 22+. Print. Roiphe, Katie. “Thirtysomething.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. slate.com. Slate 28 Aug. 2006. Web. 7 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Amidon, Stephen. “All that Glitters.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. New Statesman 135.4812 (2006): 58. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 June 2010. Explains that Messud TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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gives readers a closer insight into the characters than one might normally expect with a two-tiered narrative of satire and portraiture. Beck, Stefan. “Learning from Tools.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. New Criterion 25.1 (2006): 115+. Print. Beck discusses the accuracy of Messud’s insights into New York City literati and petty ambitions with his own apt analysis of the plot and its themes. Cooke, Rachel. “A Nest of Junior Vipers Meets Its Nemesis.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Evening Standard 18 Sept. 2006: 38. Print. Praises Messud for her ability to make readers care about characters even when they are not easily liked. Eckel, Sara. “On the Media.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Village Voice 51.32 (2006): 56. Print. Comments on Messud’s compassionate portrayal of despicable characters. “The Emperor’s Children.” Bookmarks Nov.-Dec. 2006: 43. Print. Includes review comments from six major newspapers and a short critical summary. Iannone, Carol. “Entitlement Crisis.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Commentary 123.2 (2007): 70+. Print. Includes short background on Messud and calls the novel’s ending a copout. Jackson, Lorne. “Showbiz: Worthy Newcomer Stakes Claim in the Twin Towers Aisle.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Sunday Mercury 6 May 2007: 2. Print. Concludes that Messud sharply delineates her characters and makes them sympathetic. Klinghoffer, David. “Before the Fall.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. National Review 58.23 (2006): 49+. Print. Comments on the self-involvement of the characters, the accuracy of the sense of entitlement of Brown graduates, and the quality of the writing. Steinberg, Sybil. “Discerning Displacement: A Sense of Dislocation and Exile Is Central to Claire Messud’s Fiction; Most of Her Characters Are Emotionally and Culturally Alienated.” Rev. of The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. Publishers Weekly 253.31 (2006): 25. Print. Identifies ties between Messud’s life and that of her characters. Gale Resources
“Claire Messud.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 June 2010. Open Web Sources
The New York Times Topics Section online has a selection on Messud that lists commentary and archival articles published in the Times as well as a
navigator list of resources about Messud from elsewhere on the Web. http://topics.nytimes.com/ topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/claire_ messud/index.html Messud, as guest fiction editor, wrote an article titled “Writers, Plain and Simple” that asks why women authors are so seldom award winners. It can be found in Guernica, an online magazine of art and politics, at http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1528/ seven_remarkable_women_claire On September 13, 2006, Messud was interviewed by Madeleine Brand about The Emperor’s Children for the National Public Radio program Day to Day. “Sept. 11 Plays a Role in Coming-of-Age Novel” can be heard at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?story Id=6067982 On August 27, 2007, the National Public Radio program All Things Considered aired an interview with Messud about books she recommends; this interview, conducted by Melissa Block, can be heard at http:// www.npr.org/templates/sotry/story.php? storyId=12871742 Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books maintains a Facebook page for Claire Messud, which provides updates on book tours, reviews, and news, at www.facebook. com/clairemessud. A list of and links to reviews relevant to The Emperor’s Children can be found at www.metacritic.com/ books/authors/messudclaire/emperorschildren. A review of The Emperor’s Children, by Cannonball Read/Dene, and comments from readers can be accessed at http://www.pajiba.com/book_reviews/ the-emperors-children-by-claire-messud.php Tulane University’s Newcomb College Center for Research on Women sponsored Messud as its twentyfourth Zale writer-in-residence; details as well as a biography and a few links to resources on Messud can be found at http://tulane.edu/nccrow/programs/ messud.cfm For Further Reading
James, Henry. The Ambassadors. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Similar to Messud’s novel stylistically, and follows an American who is seduced by Parisian life in the nineteenth century. McCarthy, Mary. The Group. New York: Mariner Books, 1991. Print. Follows eight Vassar graduates from 1933-1940 with critical descriptions of their society as they try to lead emancipated, meaningful lives. Murdoch, Iris. Under the Net. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Print. Similar in style to The Emperor’s Children, Under the Net follows complicated romantic attractions and work relationships among a set of young writers.
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Nemirovsky, Irene. David Golder, the Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2008. Print. With introduction by Messud, novellas by a Russian refugee who lived in France in the 1920s and 1930s. O’Neill, Joseph. Netherland. New York: Vintage, 2008. Print. Novel about the effects of 9/11 on the lives of a Dutch-born equities analyst, his wife, his gangster friend; and New York City.
Square Press, 2002. Print. Collection of eyewitness accounts of events of 9/11 and their aftermath by journalists and ordinary citizens to the online magazine Salon.com. Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Library of America, 2009. Print. Similar to Messud stylistically, focusing on the pressures of maintaining status in New York society during the Gilded Age. Lois Kerschen
Editors of Salon.com. Afterwords: Stories and Reports from 9/11 and Beyond. New York: Washington
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Empire Falls By Richard Russo
W Introduction Richard Russo’s Empire Falls tells the story of Miles Roby, the forty-two-year-old soon-to-be-divorced proprietor of the Empire Grill, a diner in the working-class town of Empire Falls, Maine. The diner, and practically everything else in Empire Falls, is owned by Francine Whiting, matriarch of the Whiting dynasty. The Whitings once employed most of Empire Falls in their textile mill and shirt factory, which were shut down years earlier. The beleaguered citizens of Empire Falls continue to hope that by some miracle, the mill and factory will reopen and the town will be prosperous once again. Miles’s wife Janine is leaving him for Walt Comeau, the cocky and somewhat dim owner of the fitness club where Janine teaches aerobics. Their sensitive teenage daughter Tick lives with Janine but prefers Miles and helps him out by busing tables at the Grill. Tick befriends John Voss, who is bullied by her ex-boyfriend Zack. Through Miles’s flashbacks, the reader learns that Miles’s late mother Grace once had an affair with a man named Charlie Mayne whom she met during a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Miles had never seen her so happy. But upon returning to Empire Falls, Grace was stuck with Max Roby, Miles’s ne’er-do-well father, such that Grace was forced to support the family by working at the shirt factory. After the affair, she began working for Francine Whiting, taking care of her disabled daughter Cindy. When Miles was in college, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and Mrs. Whiting offered Miles the job at the Empire Grill, so that he could be closer to Grace. Miles dropped out of school to run the Grill. Francine promised Miles that when she died, the Grill would go to him. But Francine Whiting is still very much alive and something of a mystery to Miles. Even though she is the
owner of the Grill, she does not seem pleased when business begins picking up. Only later, when the true identity of Charlie Mayne is revealed, does Miles realize Francine’s motive in employing him and his mother for all these years. This revelation, and a tragic event at Tick’s school, finally prompt Miles out of his passivity and force him to make a change in his life.
W Literary and Historical Context
The main action of Empire Falls appears to take place in the late 1990s or early 2000s (the period in which the book was written) though no actual time is specified. The late 1990s saw an epidemic of school violence, beginning with the 1997 shooting that killed three and injured five at a high school in West Paducah, Kentucky. Just a few months later, in March 1998, two boys, aged eleven and thirteen, shot and killed four students and a teacher at a middle school in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Then in 1999, two teenagers at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killed fifteen (including themselves) and wounded twenty-three others in the worst school shooting in the U.S. to that date. In the 1990s, a real crisis in the U.S. textile industry occurred. An increase in Asian imports beginning in 1997 cut severely into U.S. profits. Between 1997 and 2002, some 240 U.S. textile mills shut down. Unfortunately for Grace Roby, in the 1960s, divorce was still considered scandalous, and for a devout Catholic like Grace, it was unthinkable. The no-fault divorce laws of the 1970s made getting a divorce easier and reduced the stigma attached to it, but the Catholic Church maintained its position that marriage is indissoluble (annulments were possible, but difficult to obtain). Father Tom voices the attitude of Grace’s time toward divorce and adultery. When Grace confesses her sins to
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MAJOR CHARACTERS WALT COMEAU is the cocky, cheerful blowhard and fitness club owner known as “The Silver Fox,” who had an affair with Miles’s wife Janine. CHARLENE GARDINER is the well-endowed, wisecracking Empire Grill waitress for whom Miles has pined since high school. JIMMY MINTY is the Empire Falls policeman Miles has known and disliked since childhood. ZACK MINTY is the cruel, volatile, yet popular ex-boyfriend of Miles’s daughter Tick. DAVID ROBY, Miles’s younger brother, works at the Empire Grill. He used to have a drinking problem, until he nearly died in an auto accident. GRACE ROBY is Miles’s late mother, a beautiful woman who died of cancer when Miles was in college. JANINE ROBY is Miles’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, who is on a mission to make up for all the sex she missed in her marriage to Miles by marrying Walt Comeau. MAX ROBY is Miles’s derelict father, a lazy, inept housepainter who takes advantage of Miles and David. MILES ROBY, the protagonist, possibly the nicest man in Empire Falls, feels trapped in his present life at the Empire Grill. CHRISTINA “TICK” ROBY is Miles’s sensitive, rail-thin daughter, who is struggling beneath the emotional burden of her parents’ divorce. JOHN VOSS is an unnaturally quiet, ragged boy at Tick’s school, bullied by Zack Minty. HORACE WEYMOUTH is a regular at the Grill and a reporter for the Empire Gazette. CHARLES BEAUMONT WHITING is Francine Whiting’s deceased husband and the last male of the Whiting dynasty. CINDY WHITING is Francine Whiting’s disabled daughter, who pines for Miles. FRANCINE WHITING is the matriarch of the Whitings and owner of the Empire Grill.
Father Tom, he is without compassion. Young Father Mark expresses a more modern, compassionate attitude, though he is censured for it by the diocese.
W Themes One of the key themes in Empire Falls is repression and its consequences. In the cases of Miles Roby and John Voss, repression leads to violence. Miles, driven by his
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Empire Falls is set in the fictional town of Empire Falls, Maine, a community that is still struggling years after the closure of a large textile mill. Bob Orsillo/Shutterstock.com
decent nature and Catholic upbringing, gives everyone but himself the benefit of the doubt. He allows the man who had an affair with his wife to eat regularly at his diner and live in his former house; he lets Janine have nearly everything in the divorce settlement; he kowtows to Francine Whiting while she imperiously criticizes his motives and behavior. John Voss’s repressed anger and grief are so extreme that he rarely even speaks. Like Miles, who is afraid of what he will do if he ever openly admits how much he despises Walt, John Voss has too much rage to express it safely, so instead he becomes numb and emotionless. The consequence of this repression for both men is violence. Miles, finally pushed too far, breaks Walt Comeau’s arm while arm wrestling, and then gets in a fistfight with policeman Jimmy Minty. More tragically, John Voss kills several students and teachers at Tick’s high school. A related theme is guilt, Miles’s constant companion. Instead of being angry with Janine for having an affair, Miles feels guilty for not having been a better husband. He feels guilty about having never finished his college education, as his mother wanted, and it was guilt that prompted him to drop out of college to be with her. When forced to choose between his own desires and his guilt, guilt wins every time, and Miles represses his desires. Likewise, the guilt Miles’s mother feels over her affair keeps her working for Francine Whiting and married to Max Roby for the rest of her life. Though Miles chuckles at how Empire Falls looks to its past in the hope that it will somehow return, Miles’s present is crippled by his past as well. The memory of his mother, and her disappointment in him, as well as his memory of her brief moments of happiness with Charlie Mayne, color his whole outlook on life. He has learned to fear heights—emotional as well as physical—reaching the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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conclusion that it was his mother’s peak experience on Martha’s Vineyard that caused all her future suffering.
W Style Two hallmarks of Russo’s style are his rich, compassionate characterization and his humor. Empire Falls is written in omniscient point of view, allowing the reader to learn the inner thoughts and feelings of even relatively minor characters. Russo gives understandable motives to even the most annoying or hateful characters; he shows the reader why these characters are the way they are. The reader does not learn, however, the inner thoughts of Francine Whiting or John Voss; knowing their thoughts would reveal key plot developments that Russo wishes to keep hidden. The bleak setting and events of the novel are lightened by Russo’s abundant humor. Some characters, such as Miles’s completely tactless father Max, provide humor every time they appear. Walt Comeau’s brainless boasting and Horace Weymouth’s dry wit give humor to the scenes at the Grill. Likewise, Russo’s narration is often spiced with wry observations on human nature. Russo uses flashbacks, entire chapters written in italics, to tell the story of Miles’s boyhood and his mother’s affair. These chapters are interspersed with the present-day action and gradually unravel the mystery of Grace’s affair and Francine Whiting’s vendetta against her and Miles. A prologue and epilogue, also in italics, frame the novel with the story of C. B. Whiting, Francine’s husband, who committed suicide in front of his wife and daughter.
W Critical Reception Empire Falls was largely well received when it was released in 2001; Russo was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 2002. The panoramic scope of Empire Falls, with its large cast of characters and use of both past and present narratives, make it a more ambitious novel than any Russo had written before. Some critics, in fact, felt Russo had taken on too much; James Marcus of the Atlantic Monthly described the book as “overstuffed,” and Rita D. Jacobs of World Literature Today claimed that it “goes on for too long.” Others, however, felt that Russo handled the larger canvas of Empire Falls successfully. Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly called it “dense in the best sense of the word.” Many critics praised Russo’s empathy for his characters. A. O. Scott, in the New York Times, for instance, claimed that Russo displayed “humane sympathy for weakness and self-deception—a sympathy extended even to the manipulative Mrs. Whiting.” Maria Russo of Salon agreed, noting that Russo wrote the novel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born James Richard Russo in Johnstown, New York, on July 15, 1949, Richard Russo spent his childhood in Gloversville, New York, a once-prosperous small town similar to those he later portrayed in his novels. Russo taught at several universities while writing his early novels, Mohawk (1986), The Risk Pool (1988), and Nobody’s Fool (1993). Nobody’s Fool was the first of his novels to be made into a movie, starring Paul Newman, who admired Russo’s work. After writing Straight Man (1997), a satire of academia, Russo left teaching to write full time. Empire Falls (2001) was his next novel. Following the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, Russo published a collection of short stories, The Whore’s Child (2002). His next novel, Bridge of Sighs, was released in 2007, followed by the lighter novel That Old Cape Magic (2009). He has also written several screenplays, including the script for the HBO miniseries production of Empire Falls. As of 2010, Russo lived in Camden, Maine, with his wife Barbara.
“without sentimentality or nostalgia, just compassion for his characters’ foibles.” Russo’s trademark sense of humor, often praised in works such as Straight Man (1997), was a favorite aspect of Empire Falls for many reviewers. Ron Charles of the Christian Science Monitor admired the “devastating (and devastatingly funny) descriptions of small-minded people.” Fretts wrote that Russo’s “one-liners can make you laugh out loud.” Critics were divided, however, over the ending of the novel. Jacobs felt the school violence seemed incongruous with the rest of the story; she wrote, “when the surprises come at the end, they feel abrupt and forced.” Scott, however, disagreed with this assessment. He claimed that these surprises, though shocking at first, “seem, in retrospect, like inevitabilities.” Overall, Russo’s novel was well liked and, while not groundbreaking or avant-garde, was considered a finely crafted story filled with memorable characters. As Tom Bissell wrote in Esquire, “There are bound to be other, flashier novels published this year, but very few will find such a deep, permanent place in one’s heart.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
American Textile Manufacturers Institute. “The Current State of U.S. Manufacturing and the Impact of the Manufacturing Recession.” Statement to U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology, 21 June 2001: 1. Print. Bissell, Tom. Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Esquire June 2001: 42. Print.
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Charles, Ron. “Grease Spots on the American Dream.” Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Christian Science Monitor 10 May 2001: Features 18. Print. Fretts, Bruce. “Maine Attraction: Richard Russo’s Empire Falls Draws Readers into the Tangled Lives of Smalltown New Englanders.” Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Entertainment Weekly 18 May 2001: 72-73. Print. Jacobs, Rita D. Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. World Literature Today 76 (2002): 153. Print. Marcus, James. Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Atlantic Monthly June 2001: 104. Print. Russo, Maria. Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. salon.com. Salon 21 May 2001. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. Russo, Richard. Empire Falls. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 2002. Print. Scott, A. O. “Townies.” Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. New York Times Book Review 24 June 2001: 8. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
scope of Russo’s novel and examines his handling of the father-daughter relationship. Gale Resources
“Richard Russo.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
Random House’s Web site features profiles of its authors; the section on Russo, found at http://www. randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/russo, includes summaries of his works, an interview, and photos of Maine sites that Russo had in mind while writing Empire Falls. For Further Reading
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Chronicles small-town life in this classic 1919 collection of short stories. Gutman, Richard J. S. American Diner, Then and Now. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. Print. A history of the American diner, from horse-drawn lunch carts to the classic stainless steel diner, including photos.
Broun, Bill. “Down Home Folk.” Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Times Literary Supplement 5127 (2001): 22. Print. A lukewarm review of Empire Falls, citing sentimentality and imprecise language as its faults.
Moran, William. The Belles of New England: The Women of the Textile Mills and the Families Whose Wealth The Wove. New York: Thomas Dunne-St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. Includes such topics as New York industrialists moving into New England, immigration and ethnicity of workers, and protests.
Cryer, Dan. “Through the Mill.” Washington Post Book World 31.21 (2001): 7. Print. Examines Russo’s characterization of Miles Roby, comparing him to Russo’s previous protagonists.
Russo, Richard. Bridge of Sighs. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print. The story of Lou C. Lynch (nicknamed Lucy), living in Thomaston, New York, a town that has seen better days.
Epstein, Joseph. “Surfing the Novel.” Commentary 113.1 (2002): 32+. Print. Compares Empire Falls favorably to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, examining the difference in attitudes and outlook in the two novels.
———. “In Defense of Omniscience.” Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. Ed. Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2001. 7-17. Print. Russo’s contribution to a collection of essays on writing, explaining the advantages of using the omniscient viewpoint.
Hower, Edward. “Small-Town Dreams: Disappointment Haunts the Characters in Richard Russo’s Depiction of Life in a Hapless Maine Backwater Town.” World and I 16.10 (2001): 243. Print. Examines the characterization of the novel, which Hower cites as its main strength. Maslin, Janet. “Books of the Times; Turning against the Tide in a Backwater.” Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. New York Times 10 May 2001: E9. Print. Favorably compares the novel to Russo’s previous works, citing his effective use of metaphor and symbolism.
Adaptations
Empire Falls, HBO Home Video, 2007. DVD. Two-part miniseries starring Ed Harris as Miles Roby, Joanne Woodward as Francine Whiting, and Paul Newman as Max Roby. Laura Pryor
McLeese, Don. Rev. of Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. Book July 2001: 63. Print. Commends the grand
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English Passengers By Matthew Kneale
W Introduction Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers is a two-track novel about an expedition to discover the Garden of Eden in Tasmania and the demise of the Aborigines there in the 1800s. The expedition is headed by a minister and amateur geologist who wants to disprove the claims of Charles Darwin and others about the age of Earth. His companion is a physician who wants to study the natives to prove his theories of white racial superiority. Their captain and his crew are Manx smugglers (from the Isle of Man) who accept the passengers only as a cover for their real endeavors. Their misadventures provide a humorous contrast to their zealous passengers. Unique to this novel is its structure with twenty different narrators. Some appear only once; others many times. The result is a broad range of viewpoints that reveal the arrogant and misguided mentality of Victorian colonialists without the author having to overtly teach the history of the period. Two of the characters are based on real people: one the government agent who transferred the Aborigine population off the mainland to a separate island, and the other an Aborigine woman who led warriors against the whites while shouting obscenities in English. It took Kneale seven years of extensive historical research and skilled writing to produce this novel, which earned a nomination for the Booker Prize and for the Book Trust in 2000 and then won the Whitbread Prize, the award from the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland in 2000, and received the Prix Relay du Roman d’Evasion in 2002.
W Literary and Historical Context
Tasmanian literature originated in the early 1800s when Tasmanians produced some of the earliest books and
plays published in Australia. The history of colonization by convicted criminals, the unique flora and fauna, the breathtaking landscapes, the isolation of the continent and its proximity to Antarctica, and the destruction of the Aborigines remain common themes. Poetry has dominated over fiction, although modern novels have gained more distribution. In addition, a special Tasmanian Gothic genre has developed from its colonial history, natural beauty, and Aboriginal lore. There are two noteworthy literary publications—Island and Famous Reporter. Also, the Tasmanian government sponsors the arts by providing prizes and grants. The Tasmanian Aborigines, also called Parlevar, had possibly 15,000 members from various tribes prior to British colonization in 1803. By the 1830s, most were dead from violence and disease (usually flu, pneumonia, and tuberculosis). In 1833 George Robinson took two hundred survivors to Flinders Island, supposedly to protect them, but actually to free up the mainland. In 1847, forty-seven survivors were transferred back to the mainland at Oyster Cove. The last full-blooded Parlevar died in 1876. Scientists at the time vied for their skeletons for racial comparisons; in the early 2000s, remains were still being returned for respectful internment. With the people were lost all the indigenous languages, although some reconstructions were attempted. Children of the descendants were forcibly removed to special schools between 1900 and 1972; eventually an apology was issued by the government for these actions and monetary compensation offered to the families.
W Themes Two themes in English Passengers are readily evident: the cruelty and ignorance that led to the tragic decimation of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the stupidity of ethnocentrism, of assumptions based on religious and political arrogance. The latter, of course, contributed to the former. British colonial expansion was justified not only
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MAJOR CHARACTERS JACK HARP, Peevay’s father and a former convict, appears as the narrator five times in early chapters. ILLIAM QUILLIAN KEWLEY is the unlucky ship captain and smuggler from the Isle of Man who is forced by circumstances to take passengers to Tasmania. PEEVAY, the product of his mother’s being raped by Jack Harp, is the narrator who describes the lives of the Aborigines as they steadily die out. THOMAS POTTER is an arrogant physician and eugenicist seeking specimens to support his theories. He resents Wilson’s leadership and repeatedly causes conflicts. TIMOTHY RENSHAW is a young botanist and ne’er-do-well sent on the expedition by his parents in the hope that the journey will improve his character. GEORGE ROBSON moves the Aborigines to a new island, but they resent his attempts to Christianize and civilize them and just keep dying. TAYALEAH is Peevay’s half-brother who is found by settlers, taken to England and educated, then returned to Tasmania where he is torn between two worlds. WALYERIC, Peevay’s mother and named Mary by the British, rejects Peevay for being half-white. She spends her life wanting to kill white people, especially Jack Harp. GEOFFREY WILSON is a righteous minister and amateur geologist who thinks the Garden of Eden was actually located in Tasmania, so he leads an expedition there in 1857.
by demands of politics and commerce, but also by the belief in the benefits of the supposedly superior British civilization and Christian religion. With firm conviction in the righteousness of their endeavors, it did not occur to the British that they were bringing diseases and dangerous convicts to prey upon unsuspecting natives. They thought, with the best of intentions, that they were bringing modern advantages and Christian principles to a people who would be grateful for the enlightenment. So, with no regard for the ancient traditions, languages, and beliefs of the natives, the British, with corrupt colonial governments and businesses mixing with do-gooders, proceeded to destroy a culture with disease, starvation, humiliation, and exploitation. These themes are represented by the various characters. Mr. Robson is one of the misguided dogooders, Jack Hart one of those who exploited the natives, Rev. Wilson one of those who become delusional in their religious fanaticism, Dr. Potter one of the racists, and Peevay one of those who suffer because of the malice
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and colossal errors of others. These characters express the Victorian attitudes about race, phrenology, geology, and theology that grew more entrenched when challenged by such contrary visions as those suggested in Darwin’s research. What Wilson and Potter discover is that the world is not a place of absolutes, but a place where chance can determine one’s fate.
W Style Kneale employs twenty different first-person narrators to tell the story, each with a distinctive point of view that represents the attitudes, social system, and errors of British colonialism. Some of the voices are heard only once, some many times, but each provides a different perspective on the action. Kneale’s achievement in customizing each voice to fit each character is extraordinary. Although this assignment of speech characteristics might lock the frequently appearing characters into a type, the technique of periodically dropping in lesser characters keeps the narrative fresh and surprising and avoids routine in the rotation. The multiple narrators aid the movement of the action, and their placement emphasizes certain ironies. The structure of the novel incorporates two story lines: Peevay’s experiences and the expedition. These plots begin in two different time periods but eventually come together. The two stories also have different moods. Peevay’s story is always heartbreaking, but the expedition has the reader laughing at the antics and terrible luck of the Manx crew. This mix of tragedy and comedy is handled with great skill. The foibles of Captain Kewley and the misguided missions of Wilson and Potter are contrasted with an effect that lessens the tension the reader perceives as building toward a bad end. Strangely, Peevay’s mother, although an important figure, is not one of the narrators. Peevay speaks for all his people, perhaps to symbolize how alone and diminishing in numbers they are. Kneale depicts this painful lesson from history without ever coming across as didactic.
W Critical Reception English Passengers has received high praise from many reviewers. Peter Bacon stated in a Birmingham Post review: “Kneale stitches together a rich tapestry of swashbuckling adventure, social satire and serious historical/colonial critique, and manages it seamlessly.” Echoing that evaluation in a New Straits Times review, Shareem Amry declared: “English Passengers is a ripping yarn that manages to be many things at once: in some chapters, it’s a seafaring tale, in others, it’s a resurrection of a forgotten and shameful history.” Hugh MacDonald’s remarks about the novel, appearing in the Herald, also listed Kneale’s TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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English Passengers
accomplishments: “Kneale deftly handles his material, spinning a story which is in turns comic, instructive, and ultimately horrifying.” In a Birmingham Post review, Christine Barker focused on the novel as “an expose of human greed and the terrible exploitation of native races by so-called civilized aggressors” and as “a wonderful catalogue of human characteristics from the almost sublime to the absolutely abhorrent.” Similarly, Bernard D. Cooperman’s review, published in Kliatt, noted how Kneale showed “the self-delusions, greed, cruelty and stupidity through which the British justified their expansion and the accompanying extermination of the local population.” Cooperman praised Kneale’s technique of “carefully intertwined narratives . . . with plot twists and comic characterizations,” all the while juxtaposing “religious fundamentalists and Social Darwinists” and “aboriginal half-castes, imperial officials, rogue sailors, petty thieves, vicious convicts, and the occasional innocent.” Commenting on the extensive ground Kneale covers in English Passengers, John de Falbe concluded in a Spectator review that “the meticulously researched
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Matthew Kneale was born November 24, 1960, in London, England, to two famous authors—Nigel Kneale, the Manx screenwriter who wrote the Quartermass series, and children’s writer Judith Kerr. Matthew Kneale majored in modern history at Oxford University and graduated in 1982. He then taught English as a foreign language in Tokyo and in Rome, settling in Rome sometime later. He also worked as a tutor and a freelance photographer. Kneale’s first novel, Whore Banquets, was published in 1987. Like his father, Kneale won the Somerset Maugham Award for a first novel. Kneale has received awards for several other novels. In September 2000, he married Shannon Russell.
historical details and background are artfully deployed and always help to keep the novel afloat rather than threatening to sink it.” De Falbe called the novel “a tour de force of technical control and stamina.” Also controlled is
The city of Hobart is the capital of Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania is the setting of author Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers. ª 19th era/ Alamy
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the temptation to preach, according to Frank Wilson as published in the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service: “What you have here is a rip-roaring tale ingeniously told in language that frequently rises to the level of poetry. Moreover, Kneale achieves a powerful moral resonance without ever once climbing onto a soapbox.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Amry, Shareem. “Sailing into Forgotten History.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. New Straits Times 8 Aug. 2001. Print. Bacon, Peter. “Faith, Fear, and Foreboding en Route to Van Diemen’s Land.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Birmingham Post 16 June 2001. Print. Barker, Christine. “A Journey of a Lifetime into the Imagination.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Birmingham Post 18 Mar. 2000. Print. Cooperman, Bernard D. “English Passengers.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Kliatt 1 July 2002. Print. De Falbe, John. “Very Rum Shipmates.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Spectator 4 Mar. 2000. Print. Kneale, Matthew. English Passengers. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2000. Print. MacDonald, Hugh. “Paperbacks.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Herald 31 Mar. 2001. Print. Wilson, Frank. “English Passengers.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Knight-Ridder/ Tribune News Service 13 Sept. 2000. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cory, Charlotte. “Books: Dark Side of the Empire.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Independent 18 Mar. 2000. Print. Introduces the plot and characters and comments on the multiple narrators and Dr. Potter’s character. Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. M2 Presswire 6 Apr. 2000. Print. Finds the book original and comments on the craft of the two strands of the narrative. Fearn, Nicholas. “Books: Cabin Fever, Irritating Characters Make for a Long and Frustrating Read.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Independent 19 Mar. 2000. Print. Comments on Walyeric, the person upon whom Peevay’s mother is based, the annoying voice of Wilson, and the novel’s length. Guest, Katy. “The Modern Ventriloquist.” Independent 8 June 2007: n.p. Print. Interviews Kneale about English Passengers and discusses his career.
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Hochschild, Adam. “The Floating Swap Meet.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. New York Times 28 May 2000. Print. Reviews the plot and characters and the two-novel nature of the book. MacDonald, Hugh. “Whitbread Prize Turn-up for Book.” Herald 24 Jan. 2001. Print. Announces Kneale’s selection for the award and comments on his achievements with English Passengers and his other works. Miller, Laura. “English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. salon. com. Salon.com 21 Feb. 2001. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. Finds the book highly enjoyable and comments on the characters and their messages. Sanderson, Mark. “A Smuggled Message on the Ship of Fools.” Rev. of English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. Evening Standard 16 Oct. 2000. Print. Discusses the characters and themes and how the reading may be slowed by so many characters. Gale Resources
“Mathew Kneale.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
FantasticFiction hosts a Web page on Kneale that contains a short biography, and lists of his works, available at www.fantasticfiction.co.uk Bookreporter.com provides a picture of and an interview with Kneale at www.bookreporter.com/authors/ au-Kneale-Matthew.asp The Compulsive Reader presents an interview about English Passenger and Kneale’s awards and parents, available at www.compulsivereader.com/html/index. php?name=News&file;=article&sid;=87 For Further Reading
Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. New York: Grove Press, 2002. Print. A magical realism novel by a notable Tasmanian author about a convict on Van Dieman’s Island in the 1830s who records events and paints pictures of fish. Grimson, John. The Isle of Man: Portrait of a Nation. London: Robert Hale, 2010. Print. Provides the history of settlement as well as information about the island’s modern government, commerce, and social developments and images of the island’s landscapes and historic areas. Kneale, Matthew. When We Were Romans. Norwell: Anchor, 2009. Print. Kneale’s teen novel about a child who moves from London to Rome where he is expected to be the adult in place of his mentally ill mother. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Leigh, Julia. The Hunter. New York: Penguin, 2001. Print. Describes the search for the possibly extinct Tasmanian tiger by an unethical geneticist who hides his intentions from the locals who befriend him.
aboriginal family that disappeared and discusses the effects of aboriginal displacement on the Australian mentality.
Taylor, Rebe. Unearthed: The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island. Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2004. Print. Explores the mysterious story of a land-owning
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Everyman By Philip Roth
W Introduction Philip Roth’s 2009 novel, Everyman, moves from the funeral to the life and death of its unnamed protagonist. From the eulogies at graveside, Roth moves quite seamlessly into a third-person limited omniscient point of view that sketches out the story of this man’s life, which is shaped in part by his having inherited from his father a predisposition to certain medical conditions, along with the preoccupation with sickness and mortality that those induced.
W Literary and Historical Context
Roth’s title is an allusion to the fifteenth-century morality play, The Summoning of Everyman, frequently referred to simply as Everyman. This medieval work enacts the then widely held Christian belief that the good and bad deeds in a person’s life determine whether that person’s immortal soul goes to heaven or hell in the afterlife. The work assumes that God is the ultimate judge who makes this decision. Thus, the medieval work warns mortals to consider their actions, because ultimately their souls will be rewarded or punished accordingly. By contrast, Roth’s protagonist is a Jew by birth and an unbeliever by education, a man whose horror of death is linked to his belief that a human being is only the material body, and the material body’s destiny on Earth is determined by genetics. Set primarily in New Jersey and focused on the Jewish community in Elizabeth and Newark, Roth’s novel foregrounds the large number of Jews who settled in the state and thrived in business there. While Jews began settling the East Coast of North America as early as the seventeenth century, they did so in much larger numbers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They fled anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, in search of freedom and work in
the United States. Naturally, they followed relatives and friends in serial immigration patterns that caused extended families to settle in the same areas and communities to develop in which their original languages and culture were preserved. The jeweler father of Roth’s protagonist wants to build his business beyond his own Jewish community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, so he chooses to name it Everyman’s Jewelry Store and to display a Santa Claus in his window at Christmas time in order to draw Christians as customers. This strategy illustrates both the cohesiveness of the Jewish community and the necessity in the early twentieth century for small businesses to increase their customer base in order to grow. In the early 2000s, Jews in New Jersey constituted just under 6 percent of the total population, a percentage second only to New York’s 8 percent. Roth’s novel follows a life trajectory that is extended by medical advancements. His protagonist survives into his seventies because modern medicine compensates for his innate frailty. The use of antibiotics and surgery preserve him through a ruptured appendix in 1967; angioplasty and stents keep his arteries open; quintuple bypass surgery and a pacemaker keep his heart ticking; and a renal stent supports his kidneys. In 1999, a common vascular surgical procedure called carotid endarterectomy allows plaque to be scraped from his left carotid artery, and he drives himself home the following morning. In a literal sense, this man’s autobiography is identical to his medical history.
W Themes Roth’s novel, like the medieval morality play with which its shares its name, points to the subject it also shares: mortality. But unlike the morality play, Roth’s novel asserts that human beings exist only while their physical bodies live. The protagonist eschews all religious claims that life continues after death, that there is existence beyond the grave. Convinced there is not, he lives in
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CECILIA is the first wife of the protagonist and mother of his sons, Lonny and Randy. HOWIE, the brother of the protagonist, is blessed with robust good health he inherited from his mother and has made millions working for Goldman Sachs. He is also fortunate in his timing, retiring in the early 1990s before the investment firm hits trouble in the early 2000s. MERETE JESPERSEN, a Copenhagen fashion model, is the third wife of the protagonist. NANCY is the devoted daughter of the protagonist. PHOEBE is the second wife of the protagonist and mother of Nancy. THE PROTAGONIST, the unnamed son of a New Jersey jeweler, succeeds in the New York advertising industry but fails in marriage and faces repeated medical crises.
Some deny their own aging and are shocked to recognize their increasing frailty. Others surrender to the battle of aging and, in the face of widowhood and physical pain, opt out with an overdose of pain medication. In all, the novel explores the fact of physical mortal existence and how the human psyche deals with it, issues that each person faces in his own way. Philip Roth, author of Everyman. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
W Style
dread of dying and faces death as annihilation. Having inherited a frail constitution like his father’s (and not the robust one of his mother and brother Howie), the protagonist from early on obsesses about physical illnesses and the constant threat of dying. Roth explores the way his protagonist’s materialistic worldview shapes his perception of aging. A related theme maps out how a person’s actions are affected by their hormones and libido. Roth’s protagonist is a womanizer, and while having three failed marriages troubles him, he persists in acting out sexually, even in his retirement community when as an elderly man he tries to pick up an attractive young jogger on the boardwalk. Though he has some compunction about his behavior and particularly the pain it causes his family members, the protagonist is driven by sexual urge. So, in other words, character is plot at the hormonal level. A third theme has to do with how facing death shapes how people act. Many people think about what they want to leave their descendants. They work hard to amass an estate, like the protagonist’s father; they write wills and amend them continuously, like the protagonist.
One striking aspect of style in Everyman is the use of the third-person limited point of view in order to individualize the protagonist and to demonstrate his universality. This man is a particular New Jersey Jew who lives from 1933 to 2005. He is a New York advertising director, who succeeds in business and who exploits his position of power in order to engage in illicit sex with his female employees. He has a specific medical history of clogged arteries and heart trouble. He regrets three failed marriages and failed relationship with his two sons. He loves his daughter. At the same time, the handling of point of view deftly works toward the opposite emphasis, portraying this man as very much like other men. This nameless protagonist is, in effect, every man. He appreciates his parents and laments their deaths, he is competitive with his sibling, and he faces his mortality and the inevitability of death. Like everyone else, he ages, becomes ill and increasingly dependent, and dies. He is one of a group in a waiting room, waiting for medical treatment, waiting for burial. On the day of his funeral, hundreds of other individuals in New Jersey are buried, too.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on March 19, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey, Philip Roth attended Rutgers University and then completed his BA at Bucknell University. He received his MA from the University of Chicago in 1955 and returned to pursue a PhD in 1956. The following year, he dropped out of the program and began writing reviews for the New Republic. Roth’s 1959 collection of stories, Goodbye, Columbus, won the National Book Award for that year and was made into the iconic film by the same name. Many of his novels became best sellers, among them Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for American Pastoral. In 1959 Roth married novelist Margaret Martinson, but the couple divorced in 1963. In 1990 he married longtime companion English actress Claire Bloom, but they too were divorced within four years. Roth won the PEN/ Faulkner award three times, on the third occasion for Everyman.
Given the novel’s somber subject, it is surprising how much humor Roth incorporates in it. For example, as the protagonist is being pushed into surgery, his dim-witted third wife wrings her hands and calls out, “What about me?” (44). The surgeon later describes her as “an absence and not a presence” (45). After the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, the protagonist decides to leave New York: “I’ve got a deep-rooted fondness for survival,” he says. “I’m getting out of here” (66). At the retirement home on the Jersey shore, he tries to paint but soon loses enthusiasm for it. He laments to his daughter that he has had “an irreversible aesthetic vasectomy” (103). Indeed, comedy is most effective when it links the individual with the universal, and that seems to have been Roth’s goal in writing Everyman.
W Critical Reception Philip Roth’s twenty-seventh book, the novel Everyman, was generally well-received, and it won the 2007 PEN/ Faulkner award for fiction. Ihsan Taylor called it an “elegant novel,” and Gurumurthy Neelakantan described it as “a sustained meditation on mortality.” Henry Carrigan agreed, stressing as he identified its theme how much this novel is like other works by Roth: “This brilliant little morality play on the ways that our bodies dictate the paths our lives take is vintage Roth.” Several critics pointed out that Roth makes his protagonist both unique and universal. John Hiett, for example, wrote that “Roth’s achievement here is to particularize this very generic life.” Roth seems to be performing more than one trick at a time, using the morality play and arguing against it, focusing on an
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Everyman character and defining this twentieth-century New Jersey Jew who succeeds in the New York advertising scene and fails at marriage. In his combination of traits, Laurie Hartshorn noted that the protagonist has “the right combination of pathos and bravado.” Several critics wrote about the morality play that provides Roth with a title for his novel and with which the novel is compared. For example, Neelakantan explained that Roth sustains “the ethos of the morality plays which were usually enacted in cemeteries,” by situating “large chunks of action in the cemetery.” Taking a slightly different stance, John Leonard remarked that the graveyard scenes are “all stage props in an operatic descant of despair as the flesh fails, the mind blinks out, and there’s nothing left ever to wake up to.” Comparisons to Leo Tolstoy were drawn. Leonard pointed to similarities between Roth’s novel, which begins with the protagonist’s funeral, and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which begins with Ivan’s colleague reading the newspaper report of the protagonist’s death and funeral arrangements. “Not since the last mad days of Tolstoy,” Leonard wrote, “has a writer been so furious knowing we must die, and so visceral about it.” John Garvey also noted such connections but explained that as “creations,” the character of Everyman and the character of Ivan Ilyich do not die like real people. They live on in art as, what Garvey called, “helpful reminders.” In all, critics offered warm praise for Roth’s slim novel, impressed by the way it conflates the particular and the universal and the way it explores how one’s medical history can, as Neelakantan wrote, “make death unmitigatingly real.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. “Roth, Philip. Everyman.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2006: 86. Print. Garvey, John. “Death Becomes Him.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Commonweal 133.13 (2006): 20+. Print. Hartshorn, Laurie. “Everyman.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Booklist 1 Nov. 2006: 72. Print. Hiett, John. “Roth, Philip. Everyman.” Rev. of the audiobook Everyman, by Philip Roth. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2007: 130. Print. Leonard, John. “New Books.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Harper’s Magazine May 2006: 79+. Print. Neelakantan, Gurumurthy. “Everyman.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Shofar 25.4 (2007): 168+. Print. Roth, Philip. Everyman. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print. Taylor, Ihsan. “Paperback Row.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. New York Times Book Review 6 May 2007: 32(L). Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Everyman Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
Byatt, A. S. “The Dying Animal.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. New Statesman [1996] 24 Apr. 2006: 44+. Print. Points out Roth’s use of the diamond as “imperishable,” by way of contrast to human lives. Gordimer, Nadine. “Lust and Death.” New York Times Book Review 7 May 2006: 1(L). Print. Explains how in the works of Fuentes, García Márquez, and Roth, acting out sexual urge in old age is how men oppose death. Nelson, Sara. “Everyman.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Publishers Weekly 20 Feb. 2006: 132. Print. Explains how the book is both universal and general and how Roth melds anger, grief, and humor. Omer-Sherman, Ranen. “Philip Roth. Everyman.” Rev. of Everyman, by Philip Roth. Philip Roth Studies 2.2 (2006): 161+. Print. Explains how the banality of death is contrasted with the individuality of the loveable protagonist. Royal, Derek Parker. “Grave Commentary: A Roundtable Discussion on Everyman.” Philip Roth Studies 3.1 (2007): 3+. Print. Presents verbatim the discussion of a group of scholars on Roth’s novel. Gale Resources
Helterman, Jeffrey. “Philip (Milton) Roth.” American Novelists since World War II: First Series. Ed. Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 2. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 July 2010. “Philip Roth.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 July 2010.
The Web site of the Philip Roth Society, at http:// rothsociety.org/writings.htm, provides a range of information on the author. For Further Reading
Ard, Patricia M. The Jews of New Jersey: A Pictorial History. Piscataway: Rutgers UP, 2002. Print. Through pictures, gives a sense of the Jews who lived in New Jersey from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Bova, Ben. Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life—and Changing the World. New York: Avon Books, 1998. Print. Popularizes certain scientific research in cellular life and gene therapy in order to put forward the prediction that people will live increasingly longer lives. King, Alan. Matzo Balls for Breakfast and Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish. New York: Free Press-Simon and Schuster, 2004. Print. Collected essays by famous people, many of whom are entertainers, about growing up Jewish. Roth, Philip. The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1997. Print. An episodic, somewhat fictionalized autobiography in which the author’s alter ego plays a part in evaluating the work. ———. Patrimony: A True Story. New York: VintageRandom House, 1996. Print. Biography of the author’s father, Herman Roth. ———. The Plot against America. New York: VintageRandom House, 2004. Print. A fictionalized historical novel covering the early years of World War II, which presents the effects of Charles Lindbergh being elected president instead of Franklin Roosevelt.
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Melodie Monahan
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Everything Is Illuminated By Jonathan Safran Foer
W Introduction Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, begins when the hero, also named Jonathan Safran Foer, embarks on a journey to Ukraine. His goal is to find a woman who he believes helped his grandfather escape the Nazis during World War II. Accompanied by his guide and translator, Alex Perchov; Alex’s grandfather, their driver; and his grandfather’s dog, Sammy Davis Jr., Jr., they set off to find the village of Trachimbrod. The story unfolds through Alex’s description of their journey and letters he writes to Safran Foer—in what Laura Miller called “hilariously mangled English”—after its completion. A separate narrative written in the style of magical realism details the colorful history of the village of Trachimbrod, and the stories eventually converge in a shattering climax. Janet Maslin of the New York Times called Everything is Illuminated “a complex, ambitious undertaking . . . a fearless, acrobatic, ultimately haunting effort to combine inspired mischief with a grasp of the unthinkable.” The book proves “that the novel is not just alive, but still the most dangerous, exhilarating and affecting genre in literature.”
W Literary and Historical Context
According to Sam Munson, writing in Commentary, “Jonathan Safran Foer has a natural gift for choosing subjects of great import and then pitching his distinctive voice sharply enough to be heard above their historical din.” In the case of Everything Is Illuminated, that subject is the Holocaust. Foer visited Ukraine in 1997, when he was nineteen, on a quest to find a woman, perhaps named Augustine, who had apparently helped his grandfather escape from the
Nazis during World War II. Armed with only an old photograph, the author found no traces of this woman, and nothing remained of her village of Trachimbrod except a plaque (Authors and Artists for Young Adults). Foer says, “I didn’t know the trip was going to become a book. I started writing about it as nonfiction, but I became bored. What struck me most about the whole trip was that I had found nothing: not an artistic nothing, not an inspiring nothing, just the most mundane nothing, and from that I had to make something” (qtd. in Llewellyn Smith). Everything Is Illuminated has been referred to by many critics as the next Great American Jewish Novel, but Foer does not consider himself religious, and says he “surprised himself by writing about a culture he had always neglected” (qtd. in Llewellyn Smith). About writing in the Jewish tradition, the author says, “I didn’t write towards it or away from it. I just wrote what I wanted and needed to write” (qtd. in Hartog). In doing so, Foer paints “a vivid and hectic portrait of the lost world of European Jewry, whose inhabitants squabble and cheat, love and lust their way into oblivion, willfully blind to the apocalyptic fate that awaits them” (“To Hell and Back”).
W Themes Memory, one of the central themes in Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, is described by Foer as a sixth sense. “Jews have six senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing . . . memory. . . . For Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks . . . that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: ‘What does it remember like?’ (199). As the novel hurtles toward its climax, and Alex’s grandfather gives his account of the Nazi invasion of his village, “memory
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becomes the most important issue, its denial futile” (“Pain in the Ukraine”). The novel is also concerned with the ways we imagine the past, and our connection to it. Foer’s use of magical realism is “a self-conscious device for imagining the past, but one which always announces the gap between itself and the past as it was experienced” (Behlman). By “making fictions that announce their fictiveness, fictions that ultimately surround historical experience but do not present that experience directly,” the author highlights the difficulty of accessing and understanding past experiences, both personal and collective (Behlman). This is especially true when these events surround loss or trauma, and Foer demonstrates that under these circumstances “language becomes a leaky vessel for meaning” (“An Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer”). As each character seeks his own illumination, the novel explores the issues of why and how we write about memory, and how language can begin to “approach the unspeakable nature of joy or terror” (“Postmodern Proof”).
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALEX’S GRANDFATHER, also in the employ of Heritage Touring, serves as the driver for Alex and Jonathan’s journey to find the village of Trachimbrod. BROD is the baby that floats to the surface when Trachim B’s axle wagon sinks into the Brod River. JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the young hero of the novel, who goes to Ukraine in search of the village of Trachimbrod and a woman named Augustine who may have helped his grandfather escape the Nazis during World War II. ALEXANDER PERCHOV, employed by his father’s company, Heritage Touring, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Ukrainian translator and guide. YANKEL D is the disgraced usurer who adopts the baby Brod, after she is mysteriously “born” from the Brod River.
W Style
Portrait of Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated. David Levenson/Getty Images
In Foer’s highly stylized novel Everything Is Illuminated, the author uses two distinctly different voices to tell his story. The first is that of Alexander Perchov, the Ukrainian translator and guide who aids Jonathan Safran Foer on his journey. “Written in the most deliriously idiosyncratic English,” these sections portray a “thesaurus-raiding, dictionary-defying wrestle with language” (“Postmodern Proof”). Much of the novel’s humor comes from these passages, though they foreshadow the darker parts of the novel, as Alex writes in one of his letters to Jonathan, “I know that you asked me not to alter the mistakes because they sound humorous, and humorous is the only way to tell a sad story” (53). In stark contrast, Foer employs magical realism to create “the literary equivalent of a Marc Chagall shtetl painting” in his descriptions of the history of the village of Trachimbrod (“To Hell and Back”). Reviewers compare his “mastery of voice and technique” to that of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka as “one passage of bravura writing follows another” (Hitchings). This “stylistic gamble . . . allows for a simultaneous vision of possibilities,” rather than simple comedy or tragedy (“Postmodern Proof”). Safran Foer writes of the last celebration in Trachimbrod, “this was celebration, unmitigated by imminent death. This was imminent death, unmitigated by celebration” (270). In Everything Is Illuminated, the author transmits “linguistically a message that lesser writers might have conveyed editorially: the unreliability of reconstructing foreign events”; Alex’s struggle with English “represents and echoes
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977 in Washington, D.C. He attended Princeton University and majored in philosophy, but a writing class taught by Joyce Carol Oates made him seriously consider pursuing a writing career. After a trip to Ukraine when he was nineteen, Foer wrote Everything Is Illuminated while still studying at Princeton. Sections of the book were published in the New Yorker in 2001, and the novel was published in 2002, garnering overwhelming critical acclaim and winning the Guardian Prize for a First Book, the National Jewish Book Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lion Award, and the Saroyan Prize. Actor Liev Schreiber optioned the book and directed the film adaptation, which was released in 2005. Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, was published in 2005 and has been optioned for film. Foer is also the author of the nonfiction work Eating Animals. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, author Nicole Krauss, and their son, Sasha.
Safran Foer’s distance from the history he is trying to see” (Lawson). This technique is used to searing effect at the end of the book, when Alex’s grandfather gives his account of what happened when the Nazis reached his village. His narrative “slips into a stream of painful consciousness . . . a brutal directness that conveys the panic of a mind unable to hold in all the horror” (“Pain in the Ukraine”).
W Critical Reception Rarely do books spark the kind of polarizing reaction resulting from Foer’s debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Indeed, B. R. Myers noted that “the reaction to the book was more interesting than the book itself”. Marilyn H. Karfeld wrote, “He’s been called the next Philip Roth and mentioned in the same breath as Gabriel García Márquez, Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges. Everything Is Illuminated is his startlingly inventive, funny, wise, and poignant first novel.” Marie Arana of the Washington Post said, “Rarely does a writer as young as Jonathan Safran Foer display such virtuosity and wisdom. His novel is madly complex, at times confusing, overlapping, unforgiving. But read it, and you’ll feel altered, chastened—seared in the fire of something new” (qtd. in Authors and Artists for Young Adults). Conversely, Melvin Jules Bukiet called it a work of “mawkish, selfindulgence,” and Harry Siegel dubbed it a mixture of “shtick and sentiment, the most self-involved work about the Holocaust since Maus, with all the gravitas of Robin Williams’ Jakob the Liar.” Critics disagree on the subject of the book’s humor, which B. R. Meyers believes “is to verbal comedy what
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cream pies are to the visual kind. The question, then, is how so many could have found this mangled-language schtick both screamingly funny and searingly new. It isn’t as if Safran Foer handles it particularly well.” On the other hand, writer Francine Prose claims it is difficult to get through the initial chapters of the book, because “you keep laughing out loud, losing your place, starting again, then stopping because you’re tempted to call your friends and read them long sections of Jonathan Safran Foer’s assured, hilarious prose.” Prose goes on to say that “Not since Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio.” In response, the author comments that he has “never fumed over a bad review. The thing I really don’t like is reviews that say, ‘This is a nice book’” (qtd. in McDonald). “If people say I approached an inapproachable subject in an inappropriate way, or say when I tried to be moving I was just sentimental, then that to me is interesting and worth talking about” (qtd. in Llewellyn Smith). “The point of a novel,” Safran Foer goes on to say, “is not to appeal to as many people as you can, but to find readers who will say, “This is my favorite book that was ever written” (qtd. in McDonald). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Behlman, Lee. “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.” Shofar 22.3 (2004): 56-71. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 265. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Bukiet, Melvin Jules. “Wonder Bread: Come with Us to a Place Called Brooklyn, Where the Stories Are HalfBaked, and Their Endings Bland and Soft.” American Scholar 76:4 (2007): 22+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything Is Illuminated. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Print. Hartog, Kelly. “Fame and Fatherhood.” Jerusalem Post 10 Nov. 2006. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Hitchings, Henry. “Elliptical Idiolects.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. TLS Historical Archive 14 June 2002: 21. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. “An Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer.” New Zealand Herald 4 July 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. “Jonathan Safran Foer.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults.Vol.57.CengageGale,2004. Biography TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Resource Center. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2010. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. “Jonathan Safran Foer.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Karfeld, Marilyn H. “Everything Illuminated? Maybe Not. And That’s O.K.” Cleveland Jewish News 15 Nov. 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Lawson, Mark. “Saturday Review: Fiction: Guile by the Mile: A Sly Take on the Holocaust Pays Off.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Guardian [London] 8 June 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Llewellyn Smith, Julia. “Jonathan Safran Foer is the Latest Literary Sensation to Arrive from America. But Can Such a Precocious Talent Survive the Hype? He Talks to Julia Llewellyn Smith.” Daily Telegraph [London] 31 May 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Maslin, Janet. “Books of the Times; Searching for Grandfather and a Mysterious Shtetl.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. New York Times 22 Apr. 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. McDonald, Alyssa. “Jonathan Safran Foer.” New Statesman 22 Mar. 2010: 51. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Miller, Laura. “Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Salon.com 26 Apr. 2002. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Munson, Sam. “In the Aftermath.” Rev. of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Commentary 119.5 (2005): 80+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Myers, B. R. “A Bag of Tired Tricks: Blank Pages? Photos of Mating Tortoises? The Death Throes of the Postmodern Novel.” Atlantic May 2005: 115+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. “Pain in the Ukraine.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Scotsman 8 June 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. “Postmodern Proof of the Novel’s Power.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Scotland on Sunday 16 June 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Prose, Francine. “Back in the Totally Awesome U.S.S.R.: The Immigrant Hero of This Antic Novel Loves His New Country, Macerates His New Tongue, and Just Wants to Go Carnal.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. New York Times Book Review 14 Apr. 2002: 8. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010.
Siegel, Harry. “Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False.” Rev. of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. NYPress.com 20 Apr. 2005. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. “To Hell and Back; New American Fiction.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Economist, 6 July 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bolonik, Kera. “The Century’s First Great American Jewish Novel.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Forward 26 Apr. 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. A positive review of the book, focusing on the ways in which it both recalls the Jewish literary tradition and brings a fresh, new perspective to the American Jewish Novel. Collado-Rodriguez, Francisco. “Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narratives in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Journal of Modern Literature 32.1 (2008): 54+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. An essay examining the ways in which myth and magical realism can be combined with traditional linear narration to offer a fresh perspective on the trauma narrative in fiction. Deb, Siddhartha. “Novel of the Week.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. New Statesman 1 July 2002: 55. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. In this slightly mixed review, Deb focuses on the ways the postmodern devices employed in the novel sometimes interfere with its storytelling. Feuer, Menachem. “Almost Friends: Post-Holocaust Comedy, Tragedy, and Friendship in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Shofar 25.2 (2007): 24+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. An essay exploring the friendship that exists in the novel between Jonathan Safran Foer and his Ukrainian guide and translator, Alex Perchov. Kohn, Robert E. “Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Explicator 65.4 (2007): 245+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Kohn details the ways in which postmodern fantasy fiction and magic realism can be employed as a valid means to balance the historical record to include “histories of the excluded, those relegated permanently to history’s dark areas.” McCulloch, Jamie. “Creating the Rogue Hero: Literary Devices in the Picaresque Novels of Martin Amis, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Steve Tesich.” International Fiction Review 34.1-2 (Jan. 2007): 13-26. Rpt. in Contemporary
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Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 265. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. McCulloch explores the ways in which the rogue hero is portrayed in picaresque fiction. Zabawski, James. “Everything Is Illuminated: A Bright Debut for Author.” Rev. of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Capital Times 18 Apr. 2003. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. A favorable review of the novel in which Zabawski especially commends Safran Foer’s decision to insert himself into the story, and the ways in which this device enhances the meaning of the novel. Gale Resources
“Jonathan Safran Foer.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults.Vol.57.CengageGale,2004. Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2010. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. “Jonathan Safran Foer.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Jonathan Safran Foer’s official website at http://www. theprojectmuseum.com includes information about the author and his novels and awards. The website for the Guardian First Book Award, at http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstbook2002/ 0,,779641,00.html, includes reviews of Safran Foer’s novel, excerpts, links to two interviews with the author, and two links to audio files: one of Safran Foer’s awards acceptance speech and another of him reading a story at the ceremony. The website for the William Saroyan International Prize For Writing, at http://library.stanford.edu/saroyan/ index.html gives information about the award, past winners, judges, and an entry form. For Further Reading
Anderson, Hephzibah. “Road Fiction Takes a New Direction.” Evening Standard [London, England] 26 July 2004. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Anderson meets with author Jonathan Safran Foer in Prague to discuss how his trip to Ukraine in 1997 inspired his novel. Bernard, Sarah. “The Natural Surrealist.” Independent on Sunday [London] 21 Apr. 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Bernard accompanies Safran Foer to New York’s indoor flea market in Chelsea to discuss the success of his novel, and his collection of framed blank pages from famous writers. Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. New York: Picador, 2000. Print. Chabon’s
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Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set against the backdrop of World War II, follows the lives of cousins Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as they launch a comic book and create the superhero character The Escapist. “Everything Is Illuminated, but the Path Isn’t Always Clear.” Washington Post 23 Sept. 2005. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. A positive review of the film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated. “Everything Is Illuminated, Movie Analysis.” Daily Variety 6 Sept. 2005. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. A mixed review of the film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated, focusing on the film’s transformation of a very stylized book into a straightforward, somewhat limited linear narrative. Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print. Safran Foer’s second novel follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was killed in the 2001 World Trade Center attack. After finding a mysterious key his father left behind, he begins his search of New York City for the matching lock. Hernandez, Nelson. “Town Lives Only in Memory; Washingtonians Share Story of a Place Lost in the Holocaust.” Washington Post 14 Apr. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Avrom Bendavid-Val—whose father was from Trachimbrod, the village where Safran Foer sets his novel—hosts a reunion for the descendants of the village. Safran Foer attended the reunion in Washington, D.C. Houpt, Simon. “I Hit the Book Lottery.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 21 Apr. 2003. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Safran Foer discusses his gratitude at the warm reception he has received by the community of successful writers he admires. “Interview: Jonathan Safran Foer Discusses Writing His First Book, Everything Is Illuminated.” Weekend All Things Considered. National Public Radio (NPR) 7 Apr. 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. In his NPR interview, Foer talks about the development of his writing career, including the encouragement he received from his professor, author Joyce Carol Oates. Jones, Alison. “Light in Times of Darkness; Alison Jones Talks to Liev Schreiber about Everything Is Illuminated.” Birmingham Post [England], 28 Jan. 2006. Highbeam Research. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Jones talks with actor and director Liev Schreiber about the connection he feels with Safran Foer’s novel, and his excitement about meeting the author and adapting the book for film. Mullan, John. “Review: Guardian Book Club: John Mullan on Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Week Four Readers’ Responses.” Guardian 27 Mar. 2010: 6. InfoTrac Newsstand. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Jonathan Safran Foer talks with book club members about their reaction to his novel. Schulz, Bruno. The Street of Crocodiles. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Print. Schulz’s interlocking stories of reality and illusion defy categorization. What began as a prose experiment is now one of Schulz’s best-known works. Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Random House, 1973. Print. A graphic novel based on Spiegelman’s interviews with his father, a Holocaust survivor. ———. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Random House, 1986. Print. The second installment of Spiegelman’s critically acclaimed novel.
Styron, William. Sophie’s Choice. New York: Random House, 1976. Print. The story of the young Southerner Stingo, an aspiring writer who comes to Brooklyn and befriends Sophie, a Polish immigrant who survived internment at Auschwitz, and her lover, Nathan. Adaptations
Everything Is Illuminated. Dir. Liev Schreiber. Warner Independent Pictures, 2005. Film. The film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, which marks Liev Schreiber’s debut as both director and screenwriter.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Bisanne Masoud
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Twenty-First Century Novels THE FIRST DECADE
VOLUME 2 F-O
Jeffrey W. Hunter EDITOR
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Contents VOLUME 2 Volume 2 Contents by Title .................................................................................................... Entries F-O Title Index
....................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................
Author Index
...................................................................................................................................
Major Prizewinners Nationality Index
....................................................................................................................
...........................................................................................................................
vii 423 xi xvii xxiii xxv
v (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 2 Contents by Title Family Matters Rohinton Mistry...........................................................
423
The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Mohja Khaf ......................................................................
478
Far and Beyon’ Unity Dow .......................................................................
427
The Girl Who Played Go Shan Sa ..............................................................................
482
The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa ....................................................
431
The Glass Room Simon Mawer .................................................................
487
Fleshmarket Alley Ian Rankin ........................................................................
437
Gould’s Book of Fish Richard Flanagan .........................................................
492
Fox Girl Nora Okja Keller .........................................................
442
The Great Fire Shirley Hazzard ............................................................
497
Frida’s Bed Slavenka Drakulic ........................................................
447
The Great Man Kate Christensen ..........................................................
502
Gabriel’s Story David Anthony Durham ........................................
452
Grotesque Natsuo Kirino ................................................................
507
Galileo’s Dream Kim Stanley Robinson .............................................
456
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ..............................
511
Garden of Beasts Jeffery Deaver ................................................................
461
A Happy Marriage Rafael Yglesias ................................................................
516
The Garden of Last Days Andre Dubus III..........................................................
464
Harbor Lorraine Adams ............................................................
520
Ghosts of El Grullo Patricia Santana .............................................................
468
The Harmony Silk Factory Tash Aw .............................................................................
524
Gilead Marilynne Robinson..................................................
471
The “Harry Potter” Series J. K. Rowling..................................................................
530
Gilgamesh Joan London...................................................................
475
The Hiding Place Trezza Azzopardi ........................................................
535
vii (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 2 Contents by Title
His Dark Materials Philip Pullman ...............................................................
540
Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami........................................................
623
Home Marilynne Robinson..................................................
545
The Keep Jennifer Egan..................................................................
628
Hominids Robert J. Sawyer ..........................................................
550
The Keepers of Truth Michael Collins .............................................................
633
The Human Stain Philip Roth .......................................................................
554
Killing Time with Strangers William S. Penn ............................................................
638
The Hummingbird’s Daughter Luis Alberto Urrea .....................................................
558
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini ...........................................................
642
Hunger Mohamed al-Bisatie ...................................................
562
The Known World Edward P. Jones ..........................................................
647
If I Die in Juarez Stella Pope Duarte .....................................................
566
The Lacuna Barbara Kingsolver
...................................................
653
Ilustrado Miguel Syjuco ................................................................
569
Landscape of Farewell Alex Miller ........................................................................
657
The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant Sahar Khalifeh ................................................................
573
Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann ...........................................................
661
In the Country of Men Hisham Matar ................................................................
578
Liberation Joanna Scott ....................................................................
665
Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand Gioconda Belli ...............................................................
583
Life of Pi Yann Martel .....................................................................
669
The Informers Juan Gabriel Vásquez...............................................
588
The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst .......................................................
675
The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai .......................................................................
592
Liquidation Imre Kertész ...................................................................
680
Inkheart Trilogy Cornelia Funke .............................................................
597
The Invention of Hugo Cabret Brian Selznick ................................................................
The Little Stranger Sarah Waters ...................................................................
685
602
The Janissary Tree Jason Goodwin .............................................................
Local Brian Wood .....................................................................
689
606
A Long Long Way Sebastian Barry ..............................................................
693 697
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth Chris Ware........................................................................
610
The Lost Dog Michelle de Kretser....................................................
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke ..............................................................
614
Love Toni Morrison ...............................................................
701
618
Man Gone Down Michael Thomas...........................................................
705
Journey to the Stone Country Alex Miller ........................................................................
viii
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 2 Contents by Title
The Manual of Detection Jedediah Berry ...............................................................
710
Nation Terry Pratchett
............................................................
785
March Geraldine Brooks .........................................................
714
Netherland Joseph O’Neill ...............................................................
789
The March E. L. Doctorow ............................................................
718
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro .............................................................
794
The Master Colm Tóibín ...................................................................
723
The Night Watch Sarah Waters ...................................................................
799
The Maytrees Annie Dillard ..................................................................
728
No Man’s Land Duong Thu Huong ...................................................
803
Memories of My Melancholy Whores Gabriel García Márquez .........................................
733
No One Will See Me Cry Cristina Rivera-Garza ...............................................
808
Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides .........................................................
738
The Northern Clemency Philip Hensher...............................................................
813
The Millennium Trilogy Stieg Larsson...................................................................
743
Novel about My Wife Emily Perkins..................................................................
817
Minaret Leila Aboulela ................................................................
748
Of Kids & Parents Emil Hakl ..........................................................................
821
Mister Pip Lloyd Jones ......................................................................
753
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout ...........................................................
825
Montano’s Malady Enrique Vila-Matas ....................................................
757
Omega Minor Paul Verhaeghen ..........................................................
829
Moral Hazard Kate Jennings .................................................................
761
On Beauty Zadie Smith .....................................................................
833
Mother’s Milk Edward St. Aubyn ......................................................
765
On Chesil Beach Ian McEwan ....................................................................
838
Mudbound Hillary Jordan ................................................................
769
Opportunity Charlotte Grimshaw ..................................................
842
Mystic River Dennis Lehane ..............................................................
773
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood ........................................................
846
The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri ................................................................
777
Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson ..................................................................
851
The Naming of the Dead Ian Rankin ........................................................................
781
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
ix
Family Matters By Rohinton Mistry
W Introduction Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters (2002) is the story of how a Parsi family’s tragic past impacts their daily life, amid the violence and political corruption of Bombay in the 1990s. Nariman Vakeel is a seventy-nine-year-old retired professor of literature who is struggling with Parkinson’s disease. He is cared for in the beginning by a resentful stepdaughter and stepson, who cannot forgive him for betraying and causing the death of their mother. Flashbacks reveal that in his youth Nariman was bullied by his parents into a loveless marriage with a Parsi widow, Yasmin, with two children, Coomy and Jal. He was not allowed to marry his true love, Lucy, a Goan Catholic. The marriage, however, produces a daughter, Roxana, who, along with her husband, Yezad Chenoy, and their children, Murad and Jehangir, provide the only sunshine in Nariman’s old age. Roxana’s family is eventually forced into taking Nariman into their cramped two-room apartment to give him round-theclock care as his condition worsens. The pressure forces the Chenoy family into immoral ways to get more money for survival, which involves Yezad in the dirty politics of Bombay. Nariman slips into daydreaming as his body deteriorates, and he tells the grandchildren, Murad and Jehangir, stories of his past. The sensitive Jehangir collects the fragments of family history, intent on making sense of them. It is he who finishes the family chronicle after Nariman dies, telling how Murad repeats his grandfather’s crime of wanting to go with a non-Parsi girl, thus bringing the family history full circle. Woven into the tragedies are moments of family sharing, love, coping, and the ceremonies of life and death.
W Literary and Historical Context
The novel takes place against the background of Bombay politics in the 1990s. On December 6, 1992, Hindu
militants destroyed the Babri Mosque at Ayodyha, a site sacred to the Hindu god, Rama. This act led to riots in Bombay with angry Muslims confronting Hindu activists. The violence left eight hundred dead and many homeless. This event was a shocking blow to Bombay’s reputation for multicultural tolerance. The Hindu nationalists pushed for Hindutva, the rule by the Hindu majority. In 1995 the Hindu extremist group Shiv Sena (Army of Shiva) formed a coalition government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Bombay’s name was changed at this time to the Hindu version, Mumbai. The Shiv Sena was implicated in terrorist acts and in criminal underground activities such as the illegal lottery, the Matka, on which Yezad gambles the household money. The moral question the novel poses—how to behave ethically in an unethical environment—is embedded in the Parsi religion, Zoroastrianism, the minority religion of the main characters. The Parsis came to India from Iran in the tenth century BCE. Their prophet, Zarathustra, lived in the sixth century BCE and taught there are two forces in the universe, good and evil. Humans must choose the good. Parsis are required to have good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. The Parsi community in the novel worries about the social plight of its members, for they are diminishing in numbers, due to intermarriage and emigration. Parsis once had a privileged status under British rule: They spoke English, were excellent at business and cosmopolitan in taste. In the 1990s, as the novel shows, they were losing their religious and social identity.
W Themes A major concern of Family Matters is decay and corruption in the physical self, the civic realm, and characters’ ethics. Detailed descriptions are given of Nariman Vakeel’s reduced bodily functions. Corruption in politics caused by extremist groups such as the Shiv Sena destroys the safety and morale of the city.
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Family Matters
MAJOR CHARACTERS LUCY BRAGANZA is Nariman Vakeel’s true love forbidden to him because she is a Goan Catholic. JEHANGIR CHENOY is the grandson of Nariman Vakeel, a sensitive boy who loves his grandfather and his stories about the past. MURAD CHENOY is the rebellious older brother of Jehangir, who, like his grandfather Nariman, falls in love with a non-Parsi girl. ROXANA CHENOY is the daughter of Yasmin and Nariman, the mother of Jehangir and Murad, and the wife of Yezad. She is devoted to caring for her dying father, despite hardship. YEZAD CHENOY is the son-in-law of Nariman, who begins as liberal, balanced, and tolerant but changes into a fanatical Zoroastrian when he gets down on his luck. COOMY CONTRACTOR is the daughter of Yasmin by a previous marriage and Nariman’s bitter spinster stepdaughter, who blames Nariman for her mother’s death. JAL CONTRACTOR is the peace-making and hard-of-hearing stepson of Nariman; he is unmarried and lives with his sister Coomy. YASMIN CONTRACTOR, widowed with two children, Coomy and Jal, becomes Nariman’s wife in an arranged marriage. She is jealous of Lucy. VIKRAM KAPUR is the owner of Bombay’s Sporting Good Emporium where Yezad is employed. A liberal and generous Hindu, he is murdered by the Hindu right wing, Shiv Sena. VILAS RANE is a bookseller and Yezad’s best friend, who writes letters for illiterate people with relatives living abroad. NARIMAN VAKEEL, the protagonist, is the patriarch of the family, whose mistakes in youth still trouble the younger generations. He is a retired professor of English literature suffering from Parkinson’s disease but still sweet and humorous as he is dying.
Corruption also invades the moral fiber of otherwise decent people such as Yezad and Jehangir, who give in to baser impulses just to cope with financial need. Related to the theme of decay is a sense of loss. Nariman and Yezad long for their lost childhood and the past. The characters lose their financial security, health, loved ones, and opportunity. The past can never be recovered, although it continues to influence the present. The conflict between family duty and personal need is another important theme, evinced in Nariman’s and Murad’s forbidden love affairs. The Parsis have been a tight-knit community, with strong family ties. If Nariman
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Rohinton Mistry holds a copy of his book, Family Matters. John Li/ Getty Images
married a Catholic the price would be cultural purity and identity. Another important thread in the novel concerns the ambiguity of moral action. The Parsi desire for purity and goodness is central to Mistry’s work. Yezad, for instance, turns to religion after losing his job and becoming disillusioned. Instead of gaining purity, he becomes fanatical and estranges his family. Good intentions can still go wrong. Family love and humane acceptance of others, however, are affirmed as stabilizing influences against uncertainty.
W Style Mistry, like Indian author Salman Rushdie, settled in the West and wrote about Bombay. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) depicts Bombay in a postmodern fantastic style. Rushdie’s style became the standard for Indian postcolonial fiction. Postmodernism emphasizes fragmentation, discontinuity, pastiche, irony, and self-conscious narration. By contrast, Mistry’s realistic mode of depicting Bombay is similar to much nineteenth-century fiction with its straightforward TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Family Matters
storytelling and accumulation of detail about everyday life. Mistry is able to show a complex and diverse society full of contradictions, striving to remain coherent through human sympathy. Like Charles Dickens, he is able to produce individual portraits against a large social canvas The prose is polished but economical. Mistry is a master of metaphor. For instance, in Family Matters, the decay of Nariman’s body becomes a metaphor for the general corruption in society. Other metaphors come from literature, such as Nariman’s comparing his demise to that of William Shakespeare's character King Lear as he is shunted from one relative to the next the play. The novel has an omniscient narrator who quickly and deftly switches among the various perspectives of the characters. An epilogue narrated in the first person by fourteen-year-old Jehangir, Nariman’s grandson, provides a personal perspective on the family history. Although the accumulated detail is unhurried, giving the reader the impression of having lived through a whole life, the pace is somewhat nervous and jumpy, befitting the rhythm of city dwellers. Mistry is less able to draw female than male characters. In Family Matters, the focus goes from one generation to another through the male figures: from Nariman, the grandfather, to Yezad, the son-in-law, to Jehangir, the grandson. Roxanna is a strong female character, but she remains in the background. The women, Coomy, Lucy, and Yasmin, all meet tragic ends, for they are less free to shape their own lives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rohinton Mistry was born in Mumbai, India, on July 3, 1952, and earned a degree in mathematics and economics from Mumbai University in 1973. After moving to Canada in 1975, he worked in a bank before he returned to school at the University of Toronto to study English and philosophy. His short stories were published in the 1987 collection, Tales from Firozsha Baag. His three subsequent novels, Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance, and Family Matters, were short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Such a Long Journey was made into a 1998 film. As of 2010, Mistry lived near Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.” Allen did not think a comparison of Mistry with Leo Tolstoy or Dickens was exaggerated. Like those famous nineteenth-century authors, Mistry uses large metaphors to focus readers’ attention on the disintegration of family life. John Updike agreed in the New Yorker, calling Mistry’s realism Tolstoyan, with every detail illustrating “the eventually crushing weight of the world.” Updike noted that although some minor characters seem flat, the author treats his characters with compassion. He has “the patience,” Updike stated, “to tease narrative and moral interest out of domestic life.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
W Critical Reception Family Matters is Mistry’s third novel and third nomination for the Man Booker Prize. Mistry earned widespread respect from reviewers in 2002, who lauded his clear style but noted the depressing picture he paints of family life. Lee Langley, for instance, in the Spectator, claimed: “Mistry is good at families, the abrasive nature of propinquity.” Because he depicts “the minutiae of everyday suffering,” his “world is not a happy one.” Referring to its depiction of religion, John Sutherland in his New York Times review asserted that the reader needs background in the Parsi religion to understand the moral dilemmas posed by this novel. He pointed out the novel’s title seems to ask whether family in itself is significant in a modern age, concluding that the ambiguous novel does not give a clear answer. Rocio Davis, in a review in Canadian Ethnic Studies, noted that although the book affirms Parsi culture, Mistry clearly attacks fundamentalist bigotry in any religious group. Amid Mistry’s juxtaposition of opposites, such as happiness and sorrow, he shows us “moments of redemptive humanity.” Davis also thought Mistry showed skill with the minor characters. Concerning Mistry’s writing style, Brooke Allen, in the Atlantic, stated unreservedly that Mistry “ought to be
Works Cited
Allen, Brooke. “Loss and Endurance: Rohinton Mistry’s Tragic and Triumphant Vision.” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. Atlantic 290.2 (2002): 165. Print. Davis, Rocio G. “Family Matters. (Book Reviews).” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal 34.1 (2002): 159. Print. Langley, Lee. “Grim Home Thoughts from Abroad.” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. Spectator 288.9060 (2002): 41. Print. Mistry, Rohinton. Family Matters. New York: Vintage, 2002. Print. Sutherland, John. “King Lear in Bombay.” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. New York Times Book Review 107.41 (2002): 7. Print. Updike, John. “Home Care.” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. New Yorker 30 Sept. 2002. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Aldama, Frederick Luis. “Review of Family Matters.” Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. World
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Literature Today 77.2 (2003): 77-78. Print. Explains how Mistry looks through the veneer of family life to find its suffering yet affirms the role of storytelling in keeping families together.
www.postcolonialweb.org/canada/literature/mistry/ takhar4.html, has a page of resources on Rohinton Mistry, includes an overview of contextual materials and themes in Mistry’s work as well as a biography.
Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Nandini. Rohinton Mistry: An Introduction. Delhi: Foundation Books, 2007. Print. Explains themes in Mistry’s work.
An interview of Mistry by Linda L. Richards from January Magazine, at http://www.januarymagazine. com/profiles/mistry.html, gives a sense of Mistry’s personality and provides background on his work.
Heinegg, Peter. “Wandering Between Two Worlds.” America 188.8 (2003): 30-32. Print. Praises scope of Family Matters with its details about the plight of the Parsis in Bombay and descriptions of individual lives. Morey, Peter. “Communalism, Corruption, and Duty in Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters.” Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation, and Communalism. Eds. Peter Morey and Alex Tickell. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 141-60. Print. Discusses moral ambiguity in the novel, with reference to the Zoroastrian idea of goodness. Rich, Katherine Russell. “Ties that Blind.” O: The Oprah Magazine 3.10 (2002): 90. Print. Views the novel as an accurate depiction of the hypocrisy often found in family life. Tullo, Ellen. Rev. of Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry. British Medical Journal 339.7712 (2009): 111. Print. Praises Mistry’s novel for its depiction of Parkinson’s disease. Gale Resources
Genetsch, Martin. “Rohinton Mistry.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 334: Twenty-first-Century Canadian Writers. Edited by Christian Riegel. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 187-91. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Web. 21 July 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/ Servelet/GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true Siddiqi, Yumna, “Rohinton Mistry.” British Writers: Supplement 10. Ed. Jay Parini. Detroit: Scribner’s, 2004. Scribner Writers Series. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010.http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1483000035& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
For Further Reading
Clark, Peter. Zoroastrianism: An Introduction to an Ancient Faith. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Print. An overview of the basic beliefs of the Zoroastrians and their relevance in the late 1990s. Hansen, Thomas Blom. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. Bombay politics in the period described in Family Matters, including the Shiv Sena and the sociological changes that led to the city’s name change. Luhrmann, Tania. The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Print. Describes how Parsis enjoyed an elite position under the British Raj because they adopted British ways and culture. Their domination of Bombay deteriorated with Indian independence. Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance. New York: Vintage, 2001. Print. Describes Dina, a poor widow turned seamstress, who, along with three other characters, survives Indira Gandhi’s rule in the 1970s during the State of Internal Emergency. ———. Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print. Eleven short stories, including the much-anthologized “Swimming Lessons.” Rushdie, Salman, and Elizabeth West, eds. Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997. New York: Holt, 1997. Print. Anthology of Indian postcolonial prose in English, both fiction and nonfiction, including works by Parsi writers Bapsi Sidhwa and Rohinton Mistry.
“The Canadian Literature and Culture” section of the Postcolonial Literature and Culture Web site, at http://
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Susan Andersen
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Far and Beyon’ By Unity Dow
W Introduction Far and Beyon’ (2000) is a novel set in the southern African country of Botswana. It tells the story of Mosa Selato, a girl whose family has lost two of its four children to AIDS. As nineteen-year-old Mosa struggles to resume her academic studies after an unplanned pregnancy and abortion, she must face the injustices of an educational system in which female students are often the victims of sexually predatory teachers. She and her younger brother, Stan, who lives with his teacher’s white family, must also navigate the cultural divide between the traditional African beliefs and values espoused by their family and the increasingly prevalent Western ideas and goods. Unity Dow, the author of Far and Beyon’, was Botswana’s first female high court judge, and her commitment to social justice pervades the work. The book has been recognized for its sensitive portrait of characters attempting to balance Western education with traditional teachings and for its strong statement about women’s rights.
W Literary and Historical Context
Far and Beyon’ is set in present-day Botswana. The country was under British control from 1885 to 1966, and English remains one of its two official languages (the other is Setswana). Greatly affected by the global AIDS pandemic, it has one of the world’s highest prevalence rates of the disease. In the novel Mosa’s two older brothers have both died of AIDS. Her mother, Mara, is unwilling to accept their diagnosis, choosing to believe that the young men were victims of a curse. In fact, the topic of AIDS is so taboo among Mosa’s family members that it is rarely referred to by name; instead, it is called “this disease,” “the radio disease,” or “the disease with a
short name.” At the end of the novel, Mosa faces her fears and has herself tested for HIV, and she and her brother Stan rejoice over the negative result. Dow’s novel also reflects Botswana’s struggle for gender equality after many years of rule by maledominated institutions. As a lawyer and judge, Dow built a reputation as a champion of women’s rights and cofounded two women’s advocacy organizations. The injustices she witnessed during her legal career inform her book. For example, when Mosa tries to help Cecilia, a family friend who is dying from complications of AIDS, she turns to the Kagiso Law Office, an association much like those run by Dow. Nevertheless, Cecilia dies soon after her case is dismissed by a sexist judge, and before long the child for whom she sought support also dies. Enraged, Mosa sends the judge a copy of her friend’s funeral program, but she knows that her small act of defiance will not bring about change.
W Themes Far and Beyon’ depicts the importance of removing the barriers to women’s education in developing countries. As the novel opens, Mosa has been on a break from school that began with an unplanned pregnancy. She desperately wants to complete her education, feeling that “school was her passport to a better life.” After convincing the school officials to allow her to return, she must deal with the lecherous Mr. Merake, who humiliates her in class after she refuses his advances. Inspired by the injustice she sees around her, Mosa recruits female classmates to describe their experiences of persecution in poems, artwork, and dance performances. They present their work at a school reception to which they have invited the country’s minister of education. The production is a success, and there is hope that conditions may finally change, allowing Mosa to go “far and beyon’.”
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Far and Beyon’
MAJOR CHARACTERS CECILIA is Lesedi’s daughter. Dying of AIDS, she asks Mosa to help her seek child support for the young daughter she will leave behind. LESEDI is an old friend of Mara’s. The two met during their first pregnancies and remained close as their children grew. Mara ends their friendship, convinced by diviners that Lesedi placed a jealous curse on her family, causing the deaths of her two oldest sons, Thabo and Pule. The two women are reunited by Cecilia’s illness. MR. MERAKE (OR “BONES”) is a teacher at Mosa’s school known for making sexual advances on students. Mosa exposes his wrongdoings when she invites the female minister of education to attend an awards ceremony at her school. MR. MITCHELL is the American mathematics teacher with whom Stan lives. MARA SELATO is the mother of Thabo, Pule, Mosa, and Stan. Determined to follow the traditional practices of her culture, she refuses to believe that her older sons’ deaths were the result of AIDS. Instead, she consults numerous diviners and allows them to convince her that her good friend Lesedi has cursed her family. MOSADI “MOSA” SELATO is Mara’s third child and her only daughter. Although Mosa was once a star student and the head of her school debate team, she left after becoming pregnant, and much of the novel chronicles her attempt to finish her education against overwhelming odds. STAN SELATO is Mara’s youngest child. He lives with the family of Mr. Mitchell, his white math teacher. While both he and Mosa struggle with the cultural rift between their family’s traditional African beliefs and their own exposure to Western culture and values, Stan suffers greater distress. SINAH is a classmate of Mosa’s who seeks her help when their teacher, Mr. Merake, begins to harass her.
Mosa’s stand against sexual harassment brings to the surface the issues of women’s rights that are an everpresent undercurrent in the text. Early in the novel, as family and friends gather for her son Pule’s funeral, Mara sees a woman with an injured leg being forced to give up her chair to an able-bodied man. At Mosa’s school, only girls are assigned to the rotating schedule of classroom cleaning. When Mosa attends court proceedings with her friend Cecilia, she witnesses firsthand the discriminatory practices that dominate the legal system. She is horrified to learn, for example, that a woman can never bring a charge of rape against her husband, no matter what the circumstances.
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Angered by such pervasive sexism, Mosa confronts her brother about their community’s marriage traditions. Their discussion of differing prewedding instructions for men and women also reveals the conflict between Western and traditional values that is thematically central to the novel. Stan, living with his teacher’s family, is caught in the middle of this struggle. The narrator explains that he “had learned over the years to separate his two lives.” While Dow emphasizes the ways in which traditional beliefs can hinder social and medical progress, she also sympathizes with those who cling to them. The novel includes a moving scene in which Cecilia’s family must convince her that she can die and join her ancestors.
W Style Far and Beyon’ is narrated in the third person; Dow uses her characters’ differing perspectives to dramatize the rift between Western and traditional values. The story focuses primarily on Mosa, whose skepticism about traditional practices is familiar to modern readers. The passages that depict Mosa’s mother, Mara, inspire sympathy toward those who believe their ancestors can communicate with and guide the living. Mara’s thoughts are conveyed in some of the novel’s most poetic writing, while the descriptions of Mosa’s beliefs are drier and at times didactic. Dow’s novel is a bildungsroman, a work that traces the protagonist’s transition from childhood or adolescence to adulthood. At the beginning of the story, Mosa is grappling with events that occurred a few months earlier, when a police officer who visited her school seduced her. After she became pregnant, he abandoned her, and she sought an abortion. Her forced absence from school has made her realize how much she values her education, and she returns as a strong young woman who refuses to submit to abuse and harassment. Her newfound resilience helps her stand up to Mr. Merake and inspires her fellow students to do the same. Though Mosa still faces an uphill battle as the novel ends, she has developed poise and confidence that will serve her well as an adult. Far and Beyon’ can also be considered a feminist novel in that it explicitly promotes equality between the sexes. Depicting the pervasive cultural bias that subordinates women to men in both public and private life, the book encourages all young readers to advocate for themselves.
W Critical Reception Although Dow was already well known in Africa as a groundbreaking female court justice, the publication of Far and Beyon’ established her reputation as an important TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Far and Beyon’
figure in contemporary African literature. Reviewing the book for the online magazine Women Writers, Moira Richards praises Dow’s treatment of such sensitive contemporary issues as sexism and AIDS, observing, “Dow has couched all these weighty issues into a very readable and life-affirming novel, accessible to the young adult reader and unforgettable to older readers who might have thought they knew most of what goes on in our world.” Many critics have traced connections between Dow’s legal career and advocacy for women and her literary themes. In an article in the New Zealand newspaper the Dominion about Dow’s dual careers as judge and author, Sarah Prestwood remarks, “Writing a novel became an unofficial way for her [Dow] to make a political statement.” She quotes Dow’s comment that “‘as a judge, every time I open my mouth, I have to watch what I say. In fiction, I have the right to say whatever I like.’” Commentators have also noted Dow’s careful handling of the gulf between traditional and Western cultures in the book. For example, Melinda Brown commends the novel in the Law Institute Journal for exploring “the paradoxes of a country where children
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Unity Dow was born in Botswana on April 23, 1959. She spent much of her early life in the village of Mochudi, later studying law at the University of Botswana and the University of Edinburgh. After completing her degree, she joined with other progressive academics, journalists, and lawyers to found the women’s advocacy group Emang Basadi! (Stand Up, Women!) and the Women and Law in Southern Africa research project, organizations that educate women about their rights and help them advocate for themselves. In the early 1990s Dow came to national attention when she successfully challenged a sexually discriminatory citizenship law. The victory led to a greater awareness of the women’s rights movement and to Dow’s appointment as the country’s first female high court judge, a position she held from 1998 to 2009. Her investment in justice for women has inspired her writing. Following the success of Far and Beyon’, she published The Screaming of the Innocent (2002), Juggling Truths (2003), and The Heavens May Fall (2006). She also cowrote Saturday Is for Funerals (2010; with Max Essex), an account of the AIDS crisis in Botswana.
Far and Beyon’ examines the many hardships faced by a young girl living in a small African village like the one pictured here, in Botswana. Lucian Coman/Shutterstock.com
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Far and Beyon’
wear Nikes and drink Coke, but people use witchcraft and traditional magic to try to treat AIDS.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brown, Melinda. Rev. of Far and Beyon’, by Unity Dow. Law Institute Journal 75.7 (2001): 9. Print. Dow, Unity. Far and Beyon’. Gaborone: Longman, 2000. Print. Prestwood, Sarah. “African Author Called to Judgment.” Dominion [Wellington] 20 Aug. 2001: 8. Print. Richards, Moira. Rev. of Far and Beyon’, by Unity Dow. Women Writers May 2003. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
De Vries, Fred. “The High Court of Writing.” Business Day [Johannesburg] 3 Mar. 2007. General OneFile. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. An interview in which Dow discusses the relationship between her writing and her judicial career. Rev. of Far and Beyon’, by Unity Dow. Africa News Service 23 Feb. 2001. General OneFile. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. A favorable review that provides a summary of the novel’s plot and political message. “The Little Known Talents of Unity Dow.” Africa News Service 17 Nov. 2008. General OneFile. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. A discussion of Dow’s role as both writer and judge, with brief notes about her novels, including Far and Beyon’. Reed, John. “The Novelist Judge and Her Small, Devoted Readership: Unity Dow Confronts a Society Tugged by Conflicting Forces.” Financial Times 20 June 2006: 4. General OneFile. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. An article that considers Dow’s life and the inspiration for her writing, along with a short description of Far and Beyon’. Rochman, Hazel. Rev. of Far and Beyon’, by Unity Dow. Booklist 1 May 2002: 1518. A review praising the novel for its evenhanded depiction of life in southern Africa.
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Open Web Sources
The Web site of Dunsford Publishing Consultants includes an overview of Dow’s novel and excerpts from reviews. http://www.dunsfordpublishing.com/ books.html#farBey The Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal offers a survey of Dow’s career and writings. http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/images/tow/ TOW2004/dow.htm For Further Reading
Dow, Unity, and Max Essex. Saturday Is for Funerals. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010. Print. In this nonfiction volume, Dow and Harvard medical researcher Max Essex present an overview of the AIDS crisis in Botswana, including history, stories of some of those infected, and an account of the country’s war against the disease. Engel, Jonathan. The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS. New York: Smithsonian/Collins, 2006. Print. Engel’s book chronicles the history of the global AIDS pandemic, examining the disease in its sexual, religious, economic, and political contexts. Good, Kenneth. Diamonds, Dispossession & Democracy in Botswana. Rochester: Currey, 2008. Print. This work of nonfiction by Good, an expert on Botswana, traces the history and politics of the country and its economy. Lewis, Suzanne Grant. Education in Africa. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 2005. Print. Lewis’s book explores education in contemporary Africa, documenting governmental responses to the need for increased access to educational opportunities. Smith, Alexander McCall. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1998. Print. The first in a popular series, Smith’s novel (which was made into a television series) tells the story of a female private detective in Botswana. Greta Gard
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The Feast of the Goat By Mario Vargas Llosa
W Introduction Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel The Feast of the Goat (2000; English translation by Edith Grossman, 2001) is a multifaceted novel about the individual and national trauma induced by the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The narrative reflects on the Trujillo dictatorship through three interwoven story lines. The first belongs to Urania Cabral, a successful New York lawyer who fled the Dominican Republic at the age of fourteen and returns to her native country in 1996, ostensibly to visit her aged and ailing father, Agustin, who was once one of Trujillo’s closest advisers. The second belongs to Trujillo himself, focusing largely on the last day of his life in 1961 and giving the reader direct insight into the consciousness of a corrupt but fascinating tyrant. The third story line follows the actions and memories of several of Trujillo’s assassins, many of whom had once been loyal to the president and his regime. As these distinct narrative threads finally intersect in the last few chapters of the novel, they comment on the insidious and far-reaching spiritual damage that is wrought by a cult of personality such as Trujillo’s.
W Literary and Historical Context
General Rafael Trujillo, also known as “the Goat,” ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination on May 30, 1961. He officially led the country as president from 1930 to 1938 and from 1942 to 1952; while out of office, he controlled the Dominican Republic through various puppet presidents. Trujillo was often capricious, manipulating people to his own ends. His tests of loyalty, abusive quid pro quos, meant Trujillo could demand the completion of atrocities that would serve the republic and his personal goals. Vargas Llosa’s portrait of
Trujillo shows a character deeply preoccupied with his own image. The Feast of the Goat belongs to a tradition of Latin American dictator novels, including Augusto Roa Bastos’s I the Supreme (1974), Alejo Carpentier’s Reasons of the State (1974), and Gabriel García Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch (1976). However, Vargas Llosa’s novel is a departure from magical realism, the style of Latin American writers from the period known as the “Boom.” The Feast of the Goat differs in two significant ways. First, according to Michael Wood in the London Review of Books and Andrew Foley in the Journal of Literary Studies, Vargas Llosa’s research grounds the story in reality rather than a mythical abstraction. Bastos, Carpentier, and García Márquez create pseudorealities for their despots, whereas Vargas Llosa achieves a gritty, inescapable realism for his. Second, Vargas Llosa’s organization signifies the complex connection between ruler and ruled. The Cabral father-daughter relationship dramatizes the complicity of a tyrant’s subjects in supporting the regime. Also, the conspirators understand the heavy price they have paid in serving Trujillo. Vargas Llosa weaves the memories and actions of historical and fictional characters to portray oppression and betrayal.
W Themes The Feast of the Goat exhibits the tension between nostalgia and trauma through the characters’ memories. The novel opens in 1996 with Urania returning to the Dominican Republic after thirty-five years. She revisits her memories of the city, her childhood, and the event that forced her departure. Over the course of a day she visits her father, now incapacitated by a stroke, as well as her aunt and cousins. Every place Urania sees naturally evokes memories. Some are pleasant; others have been suppressed. She was victimized by Trujillo and, in a profound betrayal, by her father. Through remembering and confronting her past, the traumatic details are set in
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The Feast of the Goat
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOAQUIN BALAGUER is Trujillo’s puppet president and supporter. Balaguer appears as a dutiful cipher; following Trujillo’s assassination, however, he fills the power vacuum. ANTONIO IMBERT BARRERA is a disillusioned politician who becomes angry at the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Trujillo regime. He joins other conspirators in plotting the Goat’s death. AGUSTIN CABRAL is General Trujillo’s former secretary of state and part of the regime’s inner circle. He is complicit in the atrocities at the hands of the country’s leader that are revealed in the story. URANIA CABRAL is the daughter of Agustin. Her family’s experiences illustrate historical events of the Trujillo government and its demise. Over the course of a day, her long-held secret and reason for self-exile is revealed. COLONEL JOHNNY ABBES GARCIA is head of Servicio Inteligencia Militar (SIM), the Dominican Republic’s intelligence service. He is a brutal and ruthless man, “an arch-demon of great refinement,” according to Kirn. As Trujillo’s enforcer, he does the dirty work. AMADO GARCIA GUERRERO, or Amadito, is a disillusioned army lieutenant. To prove his loyalty, he gave up his beloved and later was forced to kill her brother. Following Trujillo’s assassination, he and Maza fight the SIM members who come to arrest them. ANTONIO DE LA MAZA is one of Trujillo’s bodyguards. Because his brother is killed in a government cover-up, he vows revenge. He elects death rather than capture and torture after Trujillo’s assassination. GENERAL JOSE ROMAN, nicknamed Pupo, is a conspirator and vengeful former Trujillo supporter. He agrees to form a provisional government as soon as he is shown Trujillo’s corpse. When that actually happens, however, Roman freezes in apparent impotence. GENERAL RAFAEL TRUJILLO, known as the Goat, the Chief, and the Benefactor, is based on the historical dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. The novel depicts Trujillo’s political and personal life on his last day. RAMFIS TRUJILLO, the general’s son, is a well-known playboy. Although a disappointment to Trujillo, he serves in the military. He is also prominent in the vengeance-ridden postassassination developments.
front of the reader at the same time Urania is facing them. In another narrative thread, as the assassins anticipate their encounter with Trujillo, they privately remember the events that have brought them to this vengeful point. In this way, memory and motivation unite Urania’s story
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The central figure of The Feast of the Goat, Dominican Republic president Rafael Trujillo speaks to his countrymen about communism. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
to those of the assassins’. In connecting these characters thematically, Vargas Llosa helps readers understand the extent to which Trujillo’s evil penetrated society. Trujillo’s cult of personality determines his governance. In this immoral regime, Agustin offers Trujillo his fourteen-year-old daughter as appeasement. Agustin is the victim of his own ambition, Urania is sacrificed, and Trujillo’s impotence is witnessed by Urania. Humiliated, he deflowers her with his fingers and berates her in his thoughts. Trujillo’s encounter with Urania is the crucible of the action in the novel. During Trujillo’s reign his supporters grew in power, but the costs became intolerable. For Urania, confrontation with her past assuages her psychological pain, while the assassins choose murder as their revenge.
W Style The three interwoven story lines, delivered by an omniscient narrator, are an affecting and effective style choice. Because the focus alternates between first Urania, then Trujillo, and finally the assassin-conspirators, the individuals become part of a horrific tableau by the close of the novel. The tone of each strain is quite distinctive. The narrative voice is sometimes very close, mirroring TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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the individual at hand, or is set at a measured distance, allowing a sort of cinematic long shot. One of the prominent overall effects is an understanding of how each individual’s story is also an important part of the overall story of the Dominican Republic. As Laura Miller notes in Salon, Vargas Llosa’s structure of two time frames and three distinct narrative facets is “set up to deliver gobs of exposition.” The introspection of the characters offers a sort of intimacy that is at times compelling (in Urania’s case) and at other times repulsive (in Trujillo’s case, as when he tortures and abuses people). This is also where the author’s mix of researched historical detail combined with his imaginative genius accumulates both weight and significance as the story reaches its final scenes. The assassination of Trujillo comes roughly midway through the novel, but Vargas Llosa reinforces the continuance of the dictator’s influence by repeatedly shifting back to scenes of the living Trujillo.
W Critical Reception Reviewers of The Feast of the Goat have been impressed by Vargas Llosa’s research of the atrocities attributed to
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mario Vargas Llosa, born in Peru on March 28, 1936, is a prolific novelist, journalist, social critic, and political activist. All of Latin America took notice when his groundbreaking novel The Time of the Hero was published in 1963. The book won the Spanish Critics Award and the rage of Peru’s military. He soon rose to prominence during the Latin American “Boom.” Vargas Llosa’s many novels vary in tone, narrative style, and theme. They include The Green House (1965), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982), The War at the End of the World (1985), and Death in the Andes (1996). In 1990 Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency in Peru but lost to Alberto Fujimori. Disheartened by Fujimori’s harsh rule, he moved to Spain. He also has homes in London and in Lima, Peru. Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Trujillo’s military. Most see Vargas Llosa’s narrative choices as adeptly accomplished and praise his imaginative ventures into the thoughts of Urania, Trujillo, and the conspirators. Alan Cheuse of SFGate considers him a
This photograph shows the car in which Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the subject of The Feast of the Goat, was assassinated. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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“master of the intricate and complex relation of the far past to the near past and immediate present.” Reviewers seem united in their responses to the heinous nature of Trujillo’s brutality and authoritarianism. Laura Miller, in Salon, writes, “Never has a novel drawn the malignant political potential of crude, unfettered masculinity more ferociously.” Critics also note Trujillo’s physical weaknesses—incontinence and impotence—suggesting these private embarrassments are the underpinnings of the dictator’s more public humiliation of others. Most critics agree that Vargas Llosa maintains firm stylistic control. Michael Wood writes in the London Review of Books that the “individual stories do build up a satisfyingly intricate picture.” Also, as the novel “arrives at its truly mesmerizing pages . . . it’s no longer quite a dictator novel . . . but it is an intensely intelligent political novel.” The only one of the inner circle who escapes is President Balaguer, Trujillo’s puppet. Walter Kirn, in the New York Times, labels Balaguer an “unlikely savior” who undergoes “a transformation of dazzling subtlety that has to be read twice to be appreciated.” Kirn describes Edith Grossman’s translation as “crackling” and energized, whereas in Miller’s view the prose is “clunky” at times, a weakness that is not helped by Grossman’s “wooden and often inept” translation. Reviewers agree that Vargas Llosa has written an important novel, which can also be read, as Olga Lorenzo of the Age does, as a comment on the “irrational forces of dictatorship that can be understood.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cheuse, Alan. “Power Mad: Mario Vargas Llosa’s New Novel Serves Up the Horrors of Rafael Trujillo’s Reign in the Dominican Republic.” Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. SFGate. Hearst Communications, 25 Nov. 2001. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Foley, Andrew. “Power, Myth and Freedom.” Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Journal of Literary Studies 24.1 (2008): 1. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. Jaggi, Maya. “Fiction and Hyper-reality.” Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 16 Mar. 2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Kirn, Walter. “Generalissimo.” New York Times. New York Times, 25 Nov. 2002. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. Lorenzo, Olga. “Dissection of a Despot.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 15 July 2002. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. Menton, Seymour. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. World Literature Today 74.3 (2000): 676. General Onefile. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
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Miller, Laura. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Salon.com 6 Dec. 2002. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. Wood, Michael. “Memories of a Skinny Girl.” London Review of Books. LRB Limited, 9 May 2002. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bell-Villada, Gene H. “Thirty-One Years of Solitude.” Commonweal 128.19 (2001): 20-21. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Bell-Villada asserts that The Feast of the Goat “will most surely become THE book about the long Trujillo nightmare and the ongoing, sordid aftermath.” Hensher, Philip. “The Feast of the Goat. (Books: Anatomy of a Tyrant).” Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Spectator 30 Mar. 2002: 38+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Situates The Feast of the Goat well outside the popular idea of the Latin American novel, noting its strengths, obsessions, and direction. Howard, Gregory. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Review of Contemporary Fiction 22.1 (2002): 120-21. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Howard describes The Feast of the Goat as “a visceral lesson in the complex synergy of political intrigue, sex, machismo, and history.” Johnson-Wright, Heidi. “January Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa.” January Magazine Jan. 2002. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. An interview with Vargas Llosa that contains commentary on his most recent work and his creative process. Kakutani, Michiko. “Storyteller Enthralled by the Power of Art.” New York Times. New York Times, 7 Oct. 2010. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Offers a succinct overview and commentary on Vargas Llosa’s work and its legacy. Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. “Sensationalism and Sensibility.” New Leader 84.6 (2001): 30-31. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Takes issue with “the unalloyed cruelty” detailed in The Feast of the Goat as “neither complex nor interesting, and lingering on its details yields easily to sensationalism.” Shakespeare, Sebastian. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. New Statesman 131.4554 (2002): 57. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Provides a mixed assessment of The Feast of the Goat, noting that “even if this is not a great novel, Vargas Llosa is still a great storyteller.” Torch, Rafael. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Antioch Review 60.2 (2002): 342-43. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Asserts that The Feast of the Goat is “full of the tremendous power of the Latin American epic, and Vargas Llosa once again delivers a sweeping statement about the turbulent history of Latin America.” Gale Resources
“Edith Marian Grossman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. “Mario Vargas Llosa.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. “Mario Vargas Llosa.” Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Web. 8 Oct 2010. Open Web Sources
Vargas Llosa’s official Web site offers information on his novels and other publications, news links, and a short biography. http://www.mariovargasllosabooks. com/ The official site of the Nobel Prize committee features information on all laureates, including Vargas Llosa. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laure ates/2010/ The Complete Review holds a collection of reviews of The Feast of the Goat and links to the original publications. http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/vargas/ fiestac.htm The Historical Text Archive offers a good overview of the political history of the Dominican Republic and the often unpleasant involvement of the United States. http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?o p=viewarticle&artid=362 Oberlin College & Conservatory’s Web site presents sources and general resources on Latin America. http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/latinam.htm For Further Reading
Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies. New York: Plume, 1994. Print. Three of the four Mirabal sisters were murdered by Trujillo’s henchmen in November 1960 for their involvement in efforts to topple the Trujillo regime. Alvarez’s fictionalization of their story won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994.
Chaddick, Larissa, and Luis Rebasa-Soraluz. “Demons and Lies: Motivation and Form in Mario Vargas Llosa.” Review of Contemporary Fiction Spring 1997: 15. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. In this interview, Mario Vargas Llosa discusses his style and purposes in his fiction and recent nonfiction. He also responds to questions regarding the importance of the novel as a genre and touches directly on the writing of Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, García Márquez, and Franz Kafka. Chang, Jorge Villanueva, and Jimena Pinilla Cisneros. “An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa.” World Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 64(6). General OneFile. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. This interview features Vargas Llosa’s comments on the resiliency of the novel form, how technology will affect publishing books, and the contributions of several seminal writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner, Marcel Proust, and Kafka. Furtis, Richard Lee. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modern Dominican History. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Print. This nonfiction work looks beyond the Trujillo cult of personality and the oppressive state apparatus to find the basis for the political legitimacy of the Trujillo regime. García Márquez, Gabriel. Autumn of the Patriarch. New York: Harper, 1976. Print. Both a novel of the Latin American literature period known as the “Boom” and one of the premier dictator novels, García Márquez’s book is quite different in style but similar in topic to The Feast of the Goat. Lopez-Calvo, Ignacio. God and Trujillo: Literal and Cultural Representations of the Dominican Dictator. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005. Print. This nonfiction volume focuses on the personal and public life of the dictator, as well as his known and probable psychological traits, and traces the history of SpanishAmerican dictators in general and Trujillo in particular. Robinson, Nancy P. “Origins of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women: The Caribbean Contribution.” Caribbean Studies 34.2 (2006): 141+. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Robinson traces the development of the international human framework for women’s rights and explores the origins of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Latin American context, through the life stories of the Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic. Adaptations
The Feast of the Goat. Dir. Luis Llosa. Perf. Isabella Rossellini, Paul Freeman, Stephanie Leonidas, Tomas Milian. Future Film Group, 2005. Film. Director Luis Llosa, an accomplished filmmaker and the novelist’s
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brother-in-law, trims the triple focus of the original work to two dovetailed stories—those of Urania and the conspiracy to kill Trujillo. True to the novel is the creation of the atmosphere of terror, sycophancy, and savagery that pervaded Dominican society for more than three decades. The Feast of the Goat. Adapt. and dir. Jorge Triana. Repertorio Español. 2003 and 2007. Performance. New York City’s Repertorio Español’s stage
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adaptation of The Feast of the Goat is a critically acclaimed presentation by the father-daughter team of Jorge and Victoriana Triana. In 2007 the production moved to Lima, Peru, also to great acclaim. A prominent feature of the stage production is that the same actor who portrays Agustin Cabral also plays the dictator Trujillo. Marta Lauritsen
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Fleshmarket Alley By Ian Rankin
W Introduction Fleshmarket Close (2004), published in the United States as Fleshmarket Alley, is the fifteenth installment in Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series. As the novel begins, Rankin’s popular and tenacious John Rebus character is aging and surly. He is urged by his superiors to retire and is relegated to a new station, in Gayfield Square, where he feels uncomfortable and out of place. His case involves the death of an illegal immigrant— a Kurdish journalist—who was found murdered in an Edinburgh housing project called Knoxland. His investigation leads him to cross paths with Rankin’s secondary protagonist in the series, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, who is investigating the disappearance of the sister of a teenage girl who was brutally raped and subsequently committed suicide. A third plot involves the discovery of the skeletons of a woman and an infant, found buried beneath a concrete cellar in Fleshmarket Close. The exhumation of the skeletons leads Rebus through a labyrinth of connections that provide relationships between the various plotlines. Rankin’s Rebus character is drawn in the hard-boiled detective tradition of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but with Scottish dialect. The novel explores racial tensions and the contemporary issue of illegal immigration while maintaining a dark humor and an understated style.
W Literary and Historical Context
Many of Rankin’s novels are influenced by real crime events—often newspaper stories read by Rankin inspire the crimes investigated by Rebus. Fleshmarket Alley’s connection to real crime was the murder of an immigrant in Glasgow, which, according to Rankin, made him
“think a lot about the Scots and about racism and the myth of how welcoming we are to strangers” (Moore). The novel takes as its subject matter the real problem of illegal immigration in the country. Scotland’s Evening News has reported that “[T]he number of illegal immigrants stopped at the UK’s ports and airports increased by nearly two thirds between 2003 and 2005” (Picken), right around the time Rankin was writing the novel. Rebus’s investigation into the murder leads to the larger problem of an organized crime ring, and, though widely acknowledged for his realistic and accurate geographical descriptions of Edinburgh, the city’s criminal element is overstated in the novel. Speaking of the nature of crime in the city, Rankin has been quoted as saying that the “Edinburgh of [his] novels was criminologically fantastic,” and that “the real, ‘quite safe city’ had neither the murder rate nor the underworld activity of his writing” (Mullan). Inspector Rebus owes a debt of gratitude to the American hard-boiled detective. Rankin studied American literature, and he was inspired to write detective novels by 1940s American films. In the vein of the American hard-boiled detective, Rebus is very masculine and gruff, a hard-drinking, less than professional cop who generally occupies a moral high ground, demonstrated in Fleshmarket Alley by his social commentary about racism in Scotland.
W Themes Rankin uses Fleshmarket Alley as a vehicle for social commentary, focusing on the themes of immigration and racism in Scotland. Much of the story takes place around Knoxland, the housing projects where the body of Stef Yurgii, the murdered asylum seeker, was found. The tenements are squalid and dangerous dwellings, and, according to one critic, “Although it seems unlikely that Rebus would be ignorant of the inhuman living
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MAJOR CHARACTERS DETECTIVE SERGEANT SIOBHAN CLARKE is a secondary protagonist. She a protégée of Rebus’s, and is investigating the disappearance of Ishbel Jardine when the cases intersect. DONALD CRUIKSHANK was convicted of raping Tracy Jardine, the sister of Ishbel, whose disappearance is being investigated by DS Siobhan Clarke. ISHBEL JARDINE goes missing after her sister, Tracy, was raped by Donald Cruikshank and subsequently committed suicide. JOHN REBUS is the main protagonist in the story, a detective inspector who is investigating the murder of a Kurdish asylum seeker. He is approaching retirement age and is a cynical man who is a heavy drinker and smoker, distrusts authority, and is generally ornery.
conditions in Edinburgh’s crime-infested council housing, he is properly indignant about them. To his freshly opened eyes, Knoxland is ‘another culture, another country,’ a no man’s land that ‘tended to attract only the desperate and those with no choice’” (Stasio). The slums, where the majority of Edinburgh’s asylum-seekers live, are contrasted with detention centers, where other immigrants are detained while they wait for their fate to be determined by the police and the government. The story has been called “an opportunity for Rankin to open up the immigration debate with Rebus as the voice of reason. He finds that not only is racism alive and kicking within the police force, it’s thriving in Knoxland where angry adults and churlish children offload fired-up talk of bogus asylum seekers and terrorists posing as refugees” (Henry). The social issue is broadened to include human trafficking as the plot progresses and the cases of both Rebus and Siobhan Clarke intertwine and lead to Edinburgh’s red-light district and sex industry, leading a critic to observe that Fleshmarket Alley is “an uncomfortable read, reflecting only too well the nastiness of our society.”
Fleshmarket Alley deals with issues of illegal immigration. Many illegal immigrants are held in detention centers until the government determines their fate. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
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Fleshmarket Alley
W Style Fleshmarket Alley is written in the style of a police procedural—a genre that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s and presented audiences with a realistic representation of criminal investigations. It is a novel that in many ways challenges and subverts the conventions of the style. Typically, a police procedural will place the story’s crime and investigative techniques in the foreground, sublimating larger questions of justice, psychology, and social norms. In Fleshmarket Alley, however, this is reversed, and Rankin focuses on the issues of race and immigration. Rather than the usual first-person point of view, told from the detective’s perspective, Rankin uses a third-person omniscient viewpoint. The focus of the narrative is usually on Inspector Rebus, but occasionally shifts to the point of view of other characters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ian Rankin was born in Fife, Scotland, in 1960 and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He worked several jobs before becoming a full-time novelist, publishing his first novel, The Flood, in 1986. The first novel in the DI Rebus series, Knots and Crosses (1987), was his first effort at crime fiction. He has published more than two dozen novels, including ones written under the pseudonym Jack Harvey, short story collections, nonfiction, and a graphic novel. He has contributed to BBC documentaries, including a three-part series on the subject of evil. Rankin has won several awards, including two Dagger prizes from the Crime Writers’ Association, and an Edgar award.
Fleshmarket Alley, the fifteenth novel in Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series, takes place in present-day Edinburgh, Scotland. ª Malcom Fife/Corbis
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As is common in detective fiction, the story comprises more than one case—Rebus’s investigation into Stef Yurgii’s murder and Clarke’s investigation of Ishbel Jardine’s disappearance—and the two cases intersect with a third plotline involving two skeletons that are found to have been stolen from Edinburgh University. Also common to the genre, the personal life of the detective is central to the story, establishing Rebus’s personal interest in his work. This has led a critic from Glasgow’s Evening Times to the observation that “The hard-drinking cop is a bit clichéd in crime fiction but Rebus fans will observe how over the years the books have changed from the hunt for the perpetrator of a crime to our hero’s personal problems and relationship with colleagues.” The effect of highlighting Rebus’s personal life is to make the reader invested in the character as much as the story, which well serves a series with seventeen installments.
W Critical Reception Ian Rankin’s DI Rebus series is among the most popular and successful in contemporary crime fiction. Widely praised for his mastery of the genre, many critics note the expertise with which Rankin weaves complex subplots through his novels. One critic has observed, “As expected, Fleshmarket Alley begins with a murder, but it subsequently runs through several other scenarios— another murder, a runaway daughter, human smuggling” (Endelman). Critics have also noted that Rankin deftly handles his various plots, slowly letting them unfold. Writing about Fleshmarket Alley in the New York Times, Janet Maslin said, “It is in keeping with Rebus’s grudging manner that these novels are in no hurry to explain themselves. They take their own sweet time letting plots coalesce.” Fleshmarket Alley has also won praise for its social commentary, tackling the issue of immigration with “care and passion” (Robins). Romaine S. Scott III, writing for the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal, has commented, “Rankin’s storytelling skills are excellent. Although his style is understated, he keeps the reader engrossed by building intrigue around social commentary immersed in crystal-clear descriptions of the culture of everyday life in Edinburgh.” And, in the Evening Times, a critic said, “Rankin is a craftsman, but far from escapism, this is an uncomfortable read, reflecting only too well the nastiness of our society.” Rankin has been criticized for not writing literary fiction, but instead writing light, summer reading, saying such things as, “Rankin is an easy, comfortable fit for an airplane ride, a day at the beach or those quiet minutes before you turn out the light on a busy work day” (Scott). Rankin, however, does this self-consciously. Regarding his chosen genre, Rankin has been quoted as saying, “I thought, do I want to spend seven years at
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university writing books that are only read by people at university, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, or do I want to write the kind of books my Dad would read? It was a pretty simple answer” (Moore). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Endelman, Michael. Rev. of Fleshmarket Alley, by Ian Rankin. Entertainment Weekly 31 Jan. 2005. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. “Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin.” Daily Post [Liverpool]. MGN Ltd. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. “Fleshmarket Is a Little Too Close to the Bone.” Evening Times. Newsquest (Herald & Times) Ltd. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Henry, Andrea. “Book Reviews: Top Rankin; Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin.” Mirror [London]. MGN Ltd. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Maslin, Janet. “Complicated Mysteries, Complicated Detectives.” New York Times 14 Feb. 2005. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Moore, Clayton. “An Interview with Ian Rankin.” Bookslut Apr. 2005. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. Mullan, John. “Crime Praise.” Guardian [London] 16 Sept. 2006. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. Picken, Andrew. “Airport Security Catching Two Illegal Immigrants Every Week.” Evening News - Scotland. Scotsman Publications. 2007. HighBeam Research. Web. 9 Aug. 2010. Scott, Romaine S., III. “Fleshmarket Alley.” American Bankruptcy Institute Journal. American Bankruptcy Institute. 2006. HighBeam Research. 7 Aug. 2010 Stasio, Marilyn. “Dead and Bloated.” New York Times 6 Feb. 2005. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Kyle, Tom. “Edinburgh in the Flesh; Critic’s Choice.” Daily Mail [London]. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 11 Aug. 2010 Review of Fleshmarket Alley that discusses the novel’s plot and the psychology of DI Rebus. Lipkien Gershenbaum, Barbara. “Reviews.” Bookreporter. com. 2010. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Review of Fleshmarket Alley that includes a detailed summary and interview excerpts. Ross, Peter. “Sympathy for the Devil: Please Allow Us to Introduce Ian Rankin, a Man of Wealth and Taste. He’s Been Around for Years Writing about Inspector Rebus, but Now the Series Is Coming to an End, and Britain’s Most Successful Crime Novelist Must TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Decide What to Do Next. A Good Time, Then, for Peter Ross to Take a Magnifying Glass to the Fascinating Life and Career of a Very Scottish Literary Star.” Sunday Herald. Newsquest (Herald & Times) Ltd. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Critical essay on Rankin that discusses his history, themes, and the genesis of Fleshmarket Alley. Gale Resources
Gowers, Rebecca. “Murky Depths.” New Statesman [1996] 4 Oct. 2004: 54+. “Ian Rankin.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. “Ian Rankin.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 257. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
Perskie, Jana L. “Ian Rankin.” Mostly Fiction Book Reviews. MostlyFiction.com. 12 June 2005. Web. 9 Aug 2010. http://www.mostlyfiction.com/sleuths/ rankin.htm Smith, Jules. “Contemporary Writers.” British Council. 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2010, at http://www.contemporarywriters. com/authors/?p=auth02A17M435212626443
Minnesota Press, 1985. Print. Book about the social phenomenon and popularity of crime fiction. “Out of the Darkness: His Working Life May Be Murder, but Ian Rankin’s Motivation Is a Surprise.” Daily Mail [London]. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 2004. HighBeam Research. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Interview with Rankin during which he discusses his family, the Rebus character, and thematic concerns of Fleshmarket Alley. Rankin, Ian. Rebus: The Early Years—Knots and Crosses / Hide and Seek / Tooth and Nail. New Ed. Edition. London: Orion, 2000. Print. The first three novels in the DI Rebus series. ———. Rebus’s Scotland: A Personal Journey. London: Orion, 2005. Print. Nonfiction book about Edinburgh featuring 120 photographs. Adaptations
Rebus. STV Productions. Clerkenwell Films. Perf. Ken Stott, John Hannah, Gayanne Potter. ITV Network. 2000-08. Television show. Detective drama based on the DI Rebus series set in and around Edinburgh. Todd Breijak
For Further Reading
Mandel, Ernest. Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story. Minneapolis: University of
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Fox Girl By Nora Okja Keller
W Introduction Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl (2002) is the story of Hyun Jin and her half-sister Sookie, who reach their sexual maturity and brutal initiation in the slums that surround a U.S. military camp near Pusan, Korea. The novel follows Hyun Jin and Sookie as they discover the truth about their parents and are virtually thrown into the streets to manage on their own without familial support. Because of her biracial status, Sookie is considered one of the throwaway children, offspring of Korean prostitutes and African American GIs, abandoned by their African American fathers and left to be raised, abandoned, or killed by their impoverished prostitute mothers. These biracial children and teens are scorned by Korean society, with its engrained belief in racial purity and abhorrence of Korean prostitutes, particularly those who service African Americans. In this brutal environment, the biracial teenagers use the only resource they have: The females sell their bodies; the males hawk stolen goods and pimp. In this sordid world, certain women in business are dominant, for example, Hyun Jin’s shop-owning mother who dominates her husband; Bar Mama, who runs a bar and brothel; and Mrs. Yoon, who buys teenage girls and transports them illegally to Hawaii to work as sex slaves. The novel also portrays various roles played by men: the kindly yet hen-pecked Appah, father of Hyun Jin; Lobetto, the pimp; and Chazu, the African American soldier who is a client of both Duk Hee and her daughter, Sookie. The racially segregated America Town or shantytown around the military base is a prison for its diverse inhabitants, and each exercises power in certain ways in order to survive and in other ways is victimized in the process. Only through a chance opportunity is Hyun Jin able to exploit her illegal immigration to Hawaii, there to find herself bereft of
everyone who ever mattered to her except for the salvaged throwaway baby she has claimed as her own.
W Literary and Historical Context
Fox Girl is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel. This genre was especially popular in the nineteenth century, with such works as Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1861) in England and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1885) in the United States. Darker versions of the stories of initiation and loss of innocence appeared with Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and at the beginning of the twentieth century with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), both of which depict working-class squalor, corruption in industry, and deterministic factors such as birth, class, and social oppression that shape working-class people and the unemployed poor. The fallen woman has been a staple of literature through the centuries, perhaps one of the most famous being Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter (1850). Hawthorne also wrote a short story “The Birthmark” about how men devalue and eventually destroy flawed women. Regarding Asian American literature, the context for Keller’s novel lies in the more immediate past, with such works as Maxine Hong’s memoir Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1975) and Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), both of which are about the Chinese American experience. Fox Girl is set in the 1960s, a time of racial conflict and prejudice around the globe and the civil rights movement in the United States, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then took a blow with the 1968 assassination of one of its key leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. The seventeen-year-old Lobetto shows off a letter from his father, sent five years earlier, in which
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MAJOR CHARACTERS APPAH, Hyun Jin’s father, is sympathetic and kindly but dominated by his harsh and prejudiced wife, who owns the sweet shop that supports the family. BAR MOTHER is the boss of the bar and brothel where both Hyun Jin and Sookie work. CHAZU is the African American soldier who is a client of Duk Hee and then temporarily partners with Sookie and provides her with an apartment. DUK HEE is Sookie’s mother and the birth mother of Hyun Jin. She makes her living as a prostitute servicing African American soldiers. HYUN JIN, the Korean narrator, is a teenager living in the slums around the U.S. military camp. LOBETTO is a racially mixed teenager who early on expects his African American father to send for him but later must work as a pimp in order to make any money. MYU MYU is Sookie’s baby that Hyun Jin claims as her own. A young schoolgirl reacts to the loss of her school following an attack during the Korean War, a military conflict that serves as the backdrop for author Keller’s Fox Girl. ª Photos 12/Alamy
his father alludes to the I Have a Dream speech King made in Washington, D.C., in 1963, and expresses the hope that race relations and economic opportunities for African Americans will improve. American culture reaches Hyun Jin, Sookie, and Lobetto through exported goods and leads them to imagine an American culture of riches and ease. In her apartment, Sookie shows off the “American style” appliances, concluding, “In America, . . . it’s too much work even to turn your wrist” (102). Also, at the venereal disease clinic, mention is made of men who like teenage girls who have hardly any breasts. One woman comments, “Some men like that. . . . Did you see the styles in the American magazines? Cosumo, Vo-gu, all have that Twiggy girl who looks like a boy” (40). Twiggy (born Lesley Hornby in 1949) was arguably the first international supermodel, famous in the 1960s and 1970s for her pencil-thin figure and her elfin look. Her flat, narrow figure, completely free of womanly curves, became an ideal in the fashion world of the West.
W Themes A central theme in Fox Girl focuses on the concept of identity and group membership: biological, racial, social, and in the workplace. The novel explores how demarcations between groups of people are drawn and
SOOKIE is the half-sister of Hyun Jin, a racially mixed teenager whose mother works as a prostitute servicing African American GIs. MRS. YOON transports Korean prostitutes to Hawaii and exploits them there as sex slaves.
defined and how individuals in groups and excluded from them come to identify themselves. In the racially bifurcated America Town and in the animosity between pure Koreans and racially mixed offspring, there is a constant competition for limited resources and a longing for connection and home. Children born into this environment scarcely stand a chance, unless they adapt and learn the tricks of the streets. As they seek a way of making money, they typically lose track of their identity, their selfhood. Prostitution hurries this erosion of self, as Sookie explains: “the more you do it, the more you know it’s not the real you. The real you flies away, and you can’t feel anything anymore” (131). Hyun Jin is effective as a prostitute, intuiting what men want. She boasts, “I could be their idea of me” (208). It is not surprising that Sookie’s unwanted baby is named Myu Myu, “little no name” (199). Prostitution is a means of income, a way of getting thin soup and a blanket or box to sleep in; its price is selferasure. Connected to the question of identity and group membership is the question repeatedly raised concerning whether an individual’s life is a matter of genetics or the will to survive and the courage to make choices that work. Hyun Jin’s adoptive mother repeatedly asserts: “It’s in
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born December 22, 1965, in Seoul, Korea, to a Korean mother and a German computer engineer, Nora Okja Keller grew up in Hawaii and obtained her BA from the University of Hawaii. After that, she received an MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her first novel, Comfort Woman (1997), won the American Book Award for 1998 and the Cades Award for 1999. She married James Keller in 1990, and as of 2010, she lived with her husband and children in Waipahu, Hawaii.
the blood. Everyone’s life is mapped from the moment of birth” (50). This belief asserts that since Hyun Jin’s birth mother Duk Hee is a prostitute who services African Americans, Hyun Jin cannot escape prostitution herself; it is her genetically determined destiny. Sookie is even more
seriously condemned by her parents, one Korean and the other African American. Keller explores the forces that determine people’s lives, and in the world she depicts no one is a free agent. Many of the powerful forces lie beyond the individual’s control: facts of birth, economic circumstances, social class, and geographical and temporal location. When Hyun Jin’s father says, “You are what you are” (125), he seems to acquiesce to his wife’s beliefs about the forces shaping Hyun Jin’s life.
W Style Fox Girl is told in first-person point of view: It is Hyun Jin’s story of growing up in America Town, how she discovered her origins and was forced into learning the ways of the streets. It is a story of self-discovery, that is, one in which she discovers that what she has always believed about herself and her parents is a lie. The story is a sordid version of learning the facts of life, the facts of
U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower visits Korea around the time of the Korean War, the setting of the novel Fox Girl. ª Corbis
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one’s past. But looking back from her mid-twenties, Hyun Jin considers a different reading of her father’s rejection of her. She recalls leaving them the last time, how her father seemed to agree with her mother in saying, “Blood will tell!” (125). The older Hyun Jin looks back across five years and nearly five thousands miles and pauses: “Sometimes I think I could have changed my story at this point in my life” (125). Now she realizes that personal choice does play a role in shaping people’s lives and how they interpret others and events affects both their self-concept and their life paths, too. The story changes with a different perspective: Perhaps her father meant for her to take heart because she is his offspring as much as she is the offspring of Duk Hee, her birth mother. As the immediate story unfolds, however, Keller limits the point of view to the inexperienced young girl who needs to find a way to survive beyond her parents’ shop but who is unfamiliar with what her work will entail. The point of view widens as the narrator becomes more street-wise and resilient. In a sense, the process is one of transformation, and that is where the title and the myth of the shape-shifting fox play a part. Hyun Jin takes on other forms, other roles, and doing so helps her survive. It is fitting that in final scene Myu Myu rubs ointment on Hyun Jin’s hands, easing the soreness where her skin has sloughed off. In Hawaii, Hyun Jin has the possibility of becoming more nearly herself.
W Critical Reception Nora Okja Keller drew attention to Korean American perspectives when she published Comfort Woman in 1997, and by the time Fox Girl was published in 2002, the literary world of critics and scholars had taken note. Keller had, according to Logan Hill, exposed “another underimagined era of military occupation.” Maritess A. Tse agreed. The importance of Keller’s book is that through “her use of harsh vocabulary and images of rape . . . the reader [is forced] to face the ugly reality that millions are or have lived through when foreign soldiers occupy another land.” Keller’s accomplishment is the way she exposes the previously hidden or forgotten victims of sexual exploitation and dramatizes the sexualized Asian female, both forms of collateral damage left in the wake of war. Writing along similar lines, Jennifer Ho stated in her review that Fox Girl that Keller’s “poignant novel . . . shows the full humanity of the unseen and neglected people of America’s forgotten war.” She also explained that Keller’s “sympathetic yet flawed” characters are not “simply oppressed victims.” Rather they struggle under horrific conditions to survive. Ho wrote: “Describing Hyun Jin’s initiation into prostitution, Keller details the atrocities born by her body not for shock value but to bear witness to what countless teenage girls had to
endure (and still endure) in order to make money and stay alive.” Donna Seaman agreed, stating in her review that Fox Girl “unflinchingly explores the terrible nexus of sex and war and honors the resiliency of women.” According to Seaman, Keller’s achievement is “an empathic, valiant, and spellbinding” novel, with an effect “as harrowing as it is cathartic.” Shirley Quan described the novel as “a tale of sheer fortitude,” and a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews stated that Keller has created “an unself-pitying microcosm of outcasts so bedazzled by American culture that even rape and infanticide are tolerated on the way to a better life.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly agreed and went to point out that the novel is “unsentimental in portraying the callousness of human nature that’s been degraded by violence and deprivation” and eloquent in “describing the pureness of spirit to which even the most bitter victim can rise.” The Publishers Weekly review summarized Fox Girl as a “rare, honest picture of a marginal society unfamiliar to most American readers” and “a contribution to Asian American understanding.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Kirkus Reviews 1 Feb. 2002: 128. Print. Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Publishers Weekly 28 Jan. 2002: 267. Print. Hill, Logan. “Novel History Lessons: A Profile of Nora Okja Keller.” Poets & Writers 30.2 (2002): 30-37. Print. Ho, Jennifer. “Review of Fox Girl.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Amerasia Journal 30.2 (2004): 117-19. Print. Quan, Shirley N. “Fox Girl.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Library Journal 15 Mar. 2002: 108. Print. Seaman, Donna. “Keller, Nora Okja. Fox Girl.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Booklist 15 Mar. 2002: 1212. Tse, Maritess A. “Korean War Kids.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. International Examiner 30 Apr. 2002. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Driscoll, Amy. “Fox Girl: Bitterly Honest.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. Albany Times Union 12 May 2002. Print. A review that praises Keller for drawing attention to the forgotten victims of the Korean War. Hill, Logan. “Novel History Lessons: A Profile of Nora Okja Keller.” Poets & Writers 30.2 (2002): 30-37. Print. An interview in which Keller explains how
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writing her novels required her to find her own Korean American identity. Lee, Sung-Ae. “Re-visioning Gendered Folktales in Novels by Mia Yun and Nora Okja Keller.” Asian Ethnology 68.1 (2009): 131+. Print. Explores how Yun and Keller draw on culturally specific folktales and also engage in the gendered assumptions of those tales. Madsen, Deborah L. “Nora Okja Keller: Telling Trauma in the Transnational Military-(Sex)industrial Complex.” Interactions 22 Sept. 2006. Print. Explores the sexual exploitation of Asian women in general and Korean women specifically and suggests that Fox Girl asks whether prostitutes are born or made. Tse, Maritess A. “Korean War Kids.” Rev. of Fox Girl, by Nora Okja Keller. International Examiner 30 Apr. 2002. Print. A positive review, which appreciates that Keller directs attention to those invisible people who must reconstruct their countries and their lives after enduring war in their midst. Gale Resources
“Nora Okja Keller.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000126258&v= 2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Nora Okja Keller.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 281. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1103150000&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r &p=LitRC&sw=w
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For Further Reading
Choi, Susan. The Foreign Student. New York: HarperFlamingo, 1998. Print. The story of a young man who flees the Korean War by becoming a foreign student at a university in Louisiana with graphic depictions of the Korean War. Hara, Marie, and Nora Okja Keller, eds. Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press, 1999. Print. A collection of writings by mixed-race women. Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. New York: Viking, 1996. Print. Set in Hawaii and containing a portrait of a Korean woman who was forced to become a sexual slave, one of the comfort women who serviced Japanese soldiers during World War II. Moon, Katharine H. S. Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korean Relations. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. Print. Describes the camptowns that flourished around U.S. bases in Korea after the end of the Korean War and were a source of friction in U.S.-Korean relations because of the venereal disease, crime, and local antipathy. Pihl, Marshall R., Bruce Fulton, and Ju-Chan Fulton, eds. Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2007. Print. The 1993 collection of out-of-print short fiction translated into English, which depicts post-World War II South Korea, its culture, and society. Melodie Monahan
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Frida’s Bed By Slavenka Drakulic
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Slavenka Drakulic’s Frida’s Bed, published in Croatian as Frida ili o boli in 2007 and translated into English by Christina Pribichevich-Zoric in 2008, is a fictionalized portrait of painter Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907-July 13, 1954), told in both the third- and first-person point of view. The novel is in effect a loose life-review reverie that takes place as Frida lies in her bed on her final day, her health deteriorating quickly with pneumonia, death imminent, and considerations of hastening the end with morphine recurring as the day wanes. As she awakens on this day, she feels her body and searches for faint memories of being well before she was afflicted with polio at the age of six. Whether in third or first person, the point-of-view character is Frida herself, making this novel a fictionalized account of her inner reality, her way of seeing the world through what she calls the “carapace” (17), not only of the plaster body cast but of her body itself, so often fitted with rigid corsets and other support devices. Frida reviews her memories of all the pain that followed the bus and trolley crash in which she was severely injured at age eighteen and the multiple operations that followed it. She reviews her teenage relationship with Alex, handily shipped off to Europe in the months following the crash; her increasing interest in painting; her approaching Diego Rivera for his assessment of her artwork; their relationship and her several miscarriages; her relationship with her parents and siblings, particularly Cristina (called Kity) who has an affair with Rivera after he and Frida marry. Mostly Drakulic emphasizes the personality and physical challenges of Frida herself, but italicized portions of the text contain brief descriptions of some of her paintings, linking them to the biography.
The literary context for Drakulic’s novel lies in a variety of works that focus on the invalid and that dramatize the isolation that surrounds a person who suffers chronic pain. The protracted hospital stays and long periods of enforced bed rest suggest such nineteenthcentury works as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s long short story, “The Yellow Wall-paper” (1892), which depicts the infamous rest cure designed by Silas Weir Mitchell for the treatment of hysteria. Another work that is suggested by Drakulic’s novel is the diary of Alice James (1850–1892), sister of psychologist William James and novelist Henry James, who was a mostly eclipsed invalid in a family of important men. Susan Sontag wrote a play, Alice in Bed (1993), about Alice James’s invalidism. The primary historical context for the novel consists of the biographies of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, wellknown material that has been covered in various studies, in film, and in other works of fiction. In addition to this material and analyses of selected Kahlo paintings, Drakulic draws on the early-twentieth-century polio epidemic, long before the polio vaccine was discovered by Jonas Salk in the 1950s. In addition, Drakulic uses biographical information regarding the Riveras’ interest in communism, their belief in Stalin, and their support of Leon Trotsky, who with his wife Natalia sought political asylum in Mexico and lived for a time in the Kahlo family home. Another historical context for the novel is the nouveau art world of the early twentieth century that welcomed Kahlo and her work, notably after her New York and Paris exhibitions. The novel describes the appreciation Georgia O’Keeffe expressed to Kahlo during the 1938 New York exhibition. Drakulic also describes how the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp and surrealists André Breton, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso all embraced her
Context
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FRIDA KAHLO DE RIVERA, the protagonist and point-of-view character, is stricken by polio and later invalided by severe injuries from a traffic accident. She becomes a successful painter.
her isolation from family and friends, she had this reflection of herself always available, her chief subject and object of study. This sense of the divided self, a woman in bed facing a woman in mirror, is developed thematically as key to Kahlo’s psychological makeup. The fictional protagonist repeatedly experiences herself as split or divided, a pervasive sense of self as both self and other that makes up who she is, a psychic division that sharpens as the years go on. Chronic pain is the chief catalyst for this split and connected to it are the two lessons Frida states: “how difficult it is to imagine somebody else’s pain” (16) and “when pain rivets you to your body you have to step out of yourself if you are to survive” (22). In the first lesson lies her understanding of what sustains the gulf between herself and others; in the second lesson, she discovers the necessity of painting as a way of externalizing suffering and enduring it. Art provides for “self-separation” (16); it provides for and requires the disembodied point of view (23).
LEON TROTSKY, the communist revolutionary, accepts asylum in Mexico and with his wife, Natalia, lives in the home of Frida’s parents.
W Style
MAJOR CHARACTERS CRISTINA KAHLO, called Kity, is the youngest daughter who is devoted to Frida’s care and yet has an affair with her husband, Diego Rivera. DON GUILERMO KAHLO is Frida’s epileptic father, a successful businessman who encouraged his daughters and favored Frida among them. DOÑA MATILDA KAHLO, Frida’s mother, is a cold, critical woman who is unable to support Frida during her protracted hospitalizations and convalescence. DIEGO RIVERA, called the Maestro, is the famous Mexican mural artist who marries Frida but is insatiable in his pursuit of other women.
and her work during and after her 1939 Paris exhibition. While the novel explains how Rivera’s murals and his recognition as an artist eclipsed Kahlo and her work for decades during their marriage, it does not explain that after Kahlo’s death, interest in her work equaled and even at times overshadowed interest in his. Staying within Kahlo’s point of view, the novel describes the couple in Detroit, only covering Kahlo’s miscarriage during the stay and her depiction of it in her painting, Henry Ford Hospital; the novel ignores Rivera’s famous murals (1931), which he was commissioned by Edsel Ford to paint in the Detroit Institute of Arts, a tribute to the auto industry and Ford’s gift to Detroit.
W Themes The principal theme of Frida’s Bed is the correlation between Kahlo’s physical body and her body of work. Drakulic depicts the many ways in which Kahlo projected her self-concept, both her physical body and her psychological nature, onto her work. Most of Kahlo’s paintings are self-portraits, and many of them surrealistically depict traumatic moments in her life, an example of which is the painting Henry Ford Hospital, which depicts her hospitalization in Detroit for miscarriage. Drakulic emphasizes the fact that Kahlo began painting in bed using a mirror suspended above her. In
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Three features of style are striking in Frida’s Bed, the first being the way point of view slides between third person and first person. The split point of view is an effective stylistic choice to convey the split in Frida’s psyche. She is both observing from the outside (third person) and observing from the inside (first person). So the clever handling of point of view mirrors Frida’s own view of herself, her interior feelings and thoughts and herself as object in a work of art. The second feature of the style is the way sections on the paintings themselves are spliced into the reverie. These analyses of specific paintings are written in third person, a more objective-sounding point of view seemingly quite distant from the third person linked to Frida herself. Drakulic obviously selected the paintings deliberately to link them to certain moments in the artist’s life events, as the artist herself linked them. In this way, the novel mirrors the critical assessment of Kahlo’s oeuvre, tending to interpret her work autobiographically. Kahlo is at the center of her work, and in the novel, these analyses of her art enact that pattern in the art’s reception, pegging image to event. A third stylistic feature is the way time is handled subjectively. Sarah Norris, in her review of the novel, likened it to “a one-woman play,” pointing out how Drakulic “reserves analysis for Kahlo herself, overlaying scenes with internal monologue.” Some readers may miss the smooth handling of time that establishes the present moment as the day Frida dies and the scenes as her interior floating memory of scenes and moments, regrets and unanswered questions. Overlying these reveries is the third-person speaker who couches events in TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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interpretation or larger context. Kevin Clouther, in his review, found this handling allowed Drakulic to focus her emphasis regarding the biography: “Unlike other re-imaginings of Kahlo’s life, this novel avoids lingering on the most salacious details of her biography, dignifying instead her pain, her devotion to Rivera, and her startling paintings.”
W Critical Reception A criticism of Frida’s Bed that recurred in many reviews is that the novel covers material that is far from new. Eleanor J. Bader, for example, commented that the novel does not add anything new to the biography. Clouther stated that approaching Kahlo’s art as an expression of her suffering has been done repeatedly. Norris stated outright that “Drakulic’s contribution to material that has been covered extensively, in biographical books and movies, isn’t immediately clear.” But these reviewers also pointed out how Drakulic’s handling is fresh or unusual. For
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born July 4, 1949, in Rijeka, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, Slavenka Drakulic received a BA in comparative literature and sociology from the University of Zagreb (1976). In Zagreb, she worked as a staff writer (1982-1992) for the Start and Danas, both local newspapers, often writing on feminist issues. Drakulic has published articles, novels, and nonfiction and may be best known for her political work, for example, As if I Am Not There (1999), a novel about crimes against Bosnian women during the Balkan war, and They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (2005), a fictionalized portrait of genocide and its Serbian perpetrators, especially Slobodan Milosevic. In the 1990s, Drakulic left Croatia for political reasons. As of 2010, she has lived in Stockholm, Sweden; Vienna, Austria; and Zagreb, Croatia.
This photo shows painter Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, two of the main characters in Frida’s Bed. ª Bettmann/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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example, for Bader, the psychological penetration coupled with the art criticism is original: “What distinguishes the work is Drakulic’s impassioned—albeit imagined— interrogation of the psychological underpinnings of Kahlo’s artistry and daily routines.” Bader also stated that “the novel juxtaposes Kahlo’s first-person psychosocial analysis with art criticism to create something wholly new.” Clouther praised “Drakulic’s attempt to understand Kahlo’s many years of marriage to the oversized artist Diego Rivera” but regretted that “the complexities of their relationship are left messy and maddening, even illogical.” Norris concluded that despite its drawbacks, the novel is “a studied attempt to fill in the gaps of Kahlo’s life with empathy and grace.” The value of the italicized art criticism in the novel was also debated by many reviewers. Clouther was among those who felt it did not work, asserting that “these explorations feel more intrusive than illuminating.” However, Norris saw the device as linked to the novel’s overall strategy: “[Drakulic] pulls the narrative in outlying directions while remaining tethered—on a long leash—to the subject of Frida Kahlo’s paintings.” A review in Publishers Weekly suggested that the paintings fit as an integral part of the life story: “Frida’s paintings move from hobby to burning need, a way to survive his betrayal and her own cursed physicality,” and a review in Kirkus Reviews saw the necessity of linking Frida’s art to her life: “This often-downbeat work includes ample stream-of-consciousness musings and brief examinations of Kahlo’s art, and how it was influenced by her life.” The Kirkus Reviews reviewer may have reflected the conclusion of others by finding that the novel is, in sum, an “elegant portrait of an artist that grants Kahlo a vulnerability and complexity often missing from the kitschy images of her that abound today.”
Additional Resources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
———. S.: A Novel about the Balkans. New York: Penguin Group, 1999. Print. The fourth novel of Drakulic, which tells the story of an unmarried Bosnian woman, a Muslim and the daughter of a Serb, a raped by a Serbian soldier in 1992 and finds herself in a Stockholm hospital giving birth in 1993.
Works Cited
Bader, Eleanor J. “Drakulic, Slavenka. Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. Library Journal 133.19 (2008): 59+. Print. Clouther, Kevin. “Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. Booklist 1 Aug. 2008: 35. Print. Drakulic, Slavenka. Frida’s Bed. Trans. Christina Pribichevich Zoric. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print. “Drakulic, Slavenka: Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. Kirkus Reviews 1 Aug. 2008. Print. “Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. Publishers Weekly 255.30 (2008): 51. Print. Norris, Sarah. “Fiction Review: Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. SFGate.com. San Francisco Chronicle 13 Aug. 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.
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Criticism and Reviews
Marcus, Richard. “Book Review: Frida’s Bed by Slavenka Drakulic.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. http://blogs.epicindia.com/leapinthedark Leap in the Dark. 5 Sept. 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. A review from the perspective of a writer with chronic pain, which analyzes the effects of chronic pain and opiate use and how these drive a person to create. “Mexican Autobiography. (Art).” Time 27 Apr. 1953: 92. Print. Coverage of the first and only exhibition Kahlo had in Mexico. Norris, Sarah. “Fiction Review: Frida’s Bed.” Rev. of Frida’s Bed, by Slavenka Drakulic. SFGate.com. San Francisco Chronicle 13 Aug. 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. A long review that evaluates Drakulic’s contribution to well-known material, in part through her connecting the interior life to specific paintings. Open Web Sources
A Web site, titled Frida Kahlo: The Complete Works, available at http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/ biography.html, provides a biography, images of Kahlo’s paintings, and links. “The Real Frida Kahlo,” a collection of short film clips and photographs arranged together as a video, may be found online at various sites. For Further Reading
Drakulic, Slavenka. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print. A portrait of living under communism by the Croatian journalist and various ways she determines the gap between Eastern Europe and the West.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories. Ed. Robert Shulman. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print. The famous title story describing how a woman goes insane by being isolated and kept on strict bed rest. Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: HarperCollins, 1983. Print. Reissued in 2002, a respected biography of the artist covering her personal life, art, and political beliefs and activities. James, Alice. The Diary of Alice James. Ed. Leon Edel. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1999. Print. Private journal that secured a separate literary place for the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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historically eclipsed sister of two famous brothers, William and Henry James. Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon. New York: Macmillan, 1941. Print. Novel that portrays a communist revolutionary caught in the late 1930s Moscow show trials. Kovic, Ron. Born on the Fourth of July. New York: Akashic Books, 2005. Print. The 1976 memoir of a Vietnam soldier who is severely injured and returns to the United States to protest against the war, all the time coping with the dead weight of his body.
Marnham, Patrick. Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. Print. First biography since the 1960s, focusing on Rivera’s work, his financial arrangements, and political beliefs, without allowing attention to Kahlo to overshadow the book’s main subject. Sontag, Susan. Alice in Bed. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Print. A play that illustrates Sontag’s interest in illness as metaphor as it depicts Alice James’s lifelong physical struggles.
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Gabriel’s Story By David Anthony Durham
W Introduction Gabriel’s Story (2001) is a reimagining of the Western literary genre from the point of view of an African American teenager named Gabriel Lynch. Gabriel, who was raised in the East, is shocked by the harsh lifestyle of the Kansas frontier, where his family relocates in the late 1870s. Eager to experience life, he and his friend James, another black youth, take off with a group of cowboys led by the charismatic Marshall Hogg and his African American partner, Caleb. Soon, however, Gabriel and James witness atrocities that force them to grow up quickly and leave them longing for home. When an opportunity to escape presents itself, Gabriel embarks on a quest to find his way back to the Kansas home he had so desperately wanted to leave behind. Alternating Gabriel’s tale with the experiences of the family he abandoned on the frontier, David Anthony Durham explores issues of pioneer life, post–Civil War racism (which is directed not just at African Americans but at Native Americans and Mexican Americans as well), and social justice. The critically acclaimed novel won the American Library Association’s 2002 Alex Award, a prize given to works of literature for adults that are also appealing to young adult readers.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the decades following the American Civil War (1861– 1865), thousands of newly freed slaves headed west to seek a new life. The West appealed to many African Americans, largely because racial bigotry was less pronounced on the frontier than in other parts of the United States. In the novel, Gabriel’s stepfather Solomon tells him that “out here, a man ain’t so much fighting against white folks as he is fighting against the land.” Despite such optimism, African American settlers faced unique challenges
stemming from racial bigotry. Many young black men, like Gabriel, saw in the life of the cowboy a chance to experience real freedom and new opportunities. Generically, the novel is fixed in the tradition of Western fiction, a genre that has its roots in the frontier tales of notable American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851). The literary style flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Zane Grey (1875–1939) popularized a romanticized version of the West, and reached the height of its popularity in the 1960s, when Louis Dearborn L’Amour’s series of more than 100 works capitalized on the popularity of cowboys in American culture. Durham’s innovation in the Western genre is to present frontier life from the perspective of an African American character, reflecting on the unique challenges that minorities faced in the American West.
W Themes Issues of racism and racial injustice are at the forefront of Gabriel’s Story. As African American settlers, Gabriel and his family regularly face bigotry. After a hate-filled farmer prevents the local shopkeeper from selling him the plow blade he desperately needs, Solomon comments, “We’re still finding the course to better things.” It is while traveling with Marshall, however, that Gabriel experiences the most severe and troubling kinds of racism. Although Caleb, a former slave, has achieved status and respect as Marshall’s traveling companion, many of the men traveling with the group repeatedly speak to Gabriel and James in derogatory terms. The increasingly despondent James is ridiculed as a “damn fool nigger” and beaten by one of Marshall’s men. Marshall defends his trust in Gabriel on the grounds that he’s “the faithful dog type” of “nigger.” Racism is also apparent in the men’s reaction to Native Americans. After Marshall and his men refuse to help some native people they encounter because, in Marshall’s words, “they’re the wretched dregs of a wretched race,” Dunlop, another cowboy in the group, reflects that Native
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Americans have “been done a mighty wrong, if you ask me. It’s indecent, is what it is.” Later, as the cowboys pass through New Mexico, they slaughter a Mexican American family and take one of its daughters captive. They subject her to repeated sexual assaults as they travel, justifying the crimes based on the assertion that “Mexicans are the uppitiest sons of bitches next to niggers!” Racial tensions come to a head at the end of the novel when Marshall and Caleb arrive at Gabriel’s home in Kansas, intent on reclaiming the gold that was in the saddlebag of the horse that Gabriel used to escape from the cowboys. Caleb, who has shown little remorse to the group’s victims throughout the novel, unexpectedly kills Marshall in order to save Gabriel’s family.
W Style In addition to being a work of Western fiction, Gabriel’s Story is a bildungsroman, a novel that traces a protagonist’s development into adulthood, usually chronicling the struggles that he or she must overcome. To this end the narration is focused on Gabriel’s experiences, with sections detailing the lives of other characters set in italics. As the story unfolds the young Gabriel is bitter about his mother’s remarriage and the move to Kansas, which has taken him away from city life and his dreams of becoming a doctor. This resentment spurs his decision to leave Kansas with Marshall. What he sees of the world and its cruelty, however, leads not only to his maturation but also to his realization that home and family are of unparalleled value. When he finally reaches home, it is with a new respect for his mother and Solomon and a desire to be a part of their lives on the frontier. While the novel’s plot is typical of a bildungsroman, critics have noted that the author’s narrative talent differentiates it from other works of that genre. Reviewing Gabriel’s Story for the Washington Post, for example, Jabari Asim notes that “Durham’s richly detailed descriptions and imaginative plotting helped to elevate Gabriel’s Story above the humdrum routine of a typical coming-of-age tale.” Bob Minzesheimer’s USA Today review echoes this praise, commenting that “the best of Durham’s descriptions are rooted in the landscape.” As Asim and Minzesheimer point out, Durham describes the landscapes and nature through which his characters pass in poetic detail. As the band of men moves from Texas to New Mexico, for example, they encounter a new landscape in which “the plains stretched to the horizon, spotted by occasional prickly pear and tree cholla, all sharing muted colors that varied little except with the rising and setting of the sun, when that orb played tricks of light across the sand and set colors moving in ribbons.”
W Critical Reception Upon publication Gabriel’s Story garnered widespread critical acclaim. It was named a Notable Book by the
MAJOR CHARACTERS CALEB is Marshall’s traveling companion. Although Marshall does not realize it, he is also his half-brother, the product of Caleb’s mother’s rape by her master. He is known to be both perceptive and quite brutal. He is the one, for example, who is left behind to kill a Mexican American family after Marshall’s men rape and kidnap the family’s daughter. DUNLOP is a cowboy who is originally from Scotland. Like Gabriel and James, he is horrified by the atrocities that the men commit. After he protests the killing of the Mexican American family and the repeated rape of the young woman, he is tied up by the cowboys but manages to escape. He joins the young woman’s brother and helps him seek revenge against Marshall and Caleb. MARSHALL ALEXANDER HOGG is a magnetic cowboy who hires James and Gabriel. He is also a brutal man who kills and steals seemingly without thought. At the end of the novel he is killed by his longtime partner, Caleb. JAMES is a young African American orphan who joins Marshall’s group with Gabriel. He is deeply affected by the cruelty and violence he witnesses and begins to lose touch with reality. When the group plunges into a river to escape Mexican vigilantes, he does not fight the current. Dunlop later finds his body and buries him. BEN LYNCH is Gabriel’s younger brother, who is forced to grow up quickly after his brother leaves the homestead. His hard work helps the family survive on the frontier. ELIZA LYNCH is the mother of Gabriel and Ben. After her relatively prosperous husband died, she married Solomon, a man she had known while both were slaves. At the story’s conclusion she explains to Gabriel that she can understand the horrors he has witnessed because she has experienced similar atrocities firsthand. GABRIEL LYNCH is a young African American man who once dreamed of becoming a physician. Resenting his mother’s remarriage, he leaves the family’s homestead in Kansas to travel with a group of cowboys led by Marshall. After the group is separated in a frantic flight from a band of vigilantes who are pursuing them, he flees on Marshall’s horse and makes his way back home.
New York Times and was chosen for the Booklist Editors’ Choice list. In addition to the Alex Award, the novel received the 2001 First Novel Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the 2002 Legacy Award for Debut Fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. In his review of the novel for Book, Tom LeClair describes Gabriel’s Story as “a morally complicated, socially nuanced story of American violence and its discontents. Told with great economy and restraint, it is a very promising debut.”
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In Gabriel’s Story, Gabriel Lynch and his family set off in 1871 for the Kansas frontier with a group of other settlers. American Stock Archive/Getty Images
Not all reviews of the novel were entirely positive. Paul Spillenger, writing for the Washington Post, suggests that the book is a “concatenation of cliches from start to finish.” Most criticism of the novel, however, was tempered with praise. Maria Russo notes in the New York Times Book Review that “aspects of the plot don’t quite make sense,” that “some of its machinations strain credibility,” and that “the novel’s often exalted portrayal of women as purehearted repositories of all that is good and true almost calls to mind second-rate Victorian fiction.” Despite this, Russo ultimately concludes that the book is “both artistically impressive and emotionally satisfying, a serious work that heads off in exhilarating directions.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Durham, David Anthony. Gabriel’s Story. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Print. LeClair, Tom. Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Book Mar. 2001: 74. Minzesheimer, Bob. “Young Cowboy Seeks Spiritual Path in Wild West.” Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. USA Today 18 Jan. 2001: 6D. Print. Russo, Maria. “Growing Up with the Country: In This First Novel, a Black Teenager Comes of Age on the American Frontier.” Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. New York Times Book Review 25 Feb. 2001: 7. Spillenger, Paul. “First Novels, Lasting Lessons.” Washington Post 8 Jan. 2001: C5. Print.
Works Cited
Additional Resources
Asim, Jabari. “Liberated Promise.” Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Washington Post 16 July 2002: C03. Print.
Criticism and Reviews
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1 Nov. 2000: 101. A short review offering an overview of the novel’s plot. Franscell, Ron. “The Rough Ride Home for an AfricanAmerican Cowboy.” Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Christian Science Monitor 25 Jan. 2001: 18. Print. A positive critique that focuses on the novel’s attention to character and its coming-of-age plot. Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Booklist 1 Jan. 2002: 761. A short review that likens the novel to the work of notable Western author Cormac McCarthy. Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. New York Times Book Review 3 June 2001: 24. A review emphasizing the uniqueness of Gabriel’s character and his status as an outsider. Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Publishers Weekly 4 Dec. 2000: 54. A critique that lauds Durham’s prose style as well as his multicultural take on the traditional Western genre. Hopkins, Natalie. “Novel Treads on New Terrain with Odyssey of Black Youth.” Washington Post 3 May 2001: T23. Print. An overview of the novel as well as the author’s reflections on his work. Smothers, Bonnie. Rev. of Gabriel’s Story, by David Anthony Durham. Booklist 15 Dec. 2000: 788. A review highlighting the work’s multicultural perspective and the power of its carefully developed plot.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Anthony Durham was born in New York City on March 23, 1969. He spent his childhood in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he discovered his passion for writing. While still in college he won the 1990 Malcolm C. Braly Award for Fiction for his short story “August Fury.” Two years later another short story, “The Boy-Fish,” garnered the Hurston/Wright Fiction Award. In 1994 Durham entered graduate school at the University of Maryland in College Park. He wrote two unpublished novels while he was still a student and completed an MFA in 1996. After graduating, Durham moved to Great Britain and published several short stories. He then relocated to France, where he composed Gabriel’s Song in 1999. The author followed up on the success of his first novel with Walk through Darkness (2003); Pride of Carthage (2006); Acacia: The War with the Mein (2007); and Acacia: The Other Lands (2009), all of which were critically acclaimed. He currently lives with his wife and children in western Massachusetts. In addition to writing, Durham teaches at the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program.
novel traces the experiences of a fugitive slave and the man who is tracking him. Durham, Philip. The Negro Cowboys. New York: Dodd, 1965. Print. This nonfiction volume examines the lives of the often-forgotten African American cowboys who contributed to the settling of the West.
Open Web Sources
Gibson, Rob. Plaids & Bandanas: From Highland Drover to Wildwest Cowboy. Edinburgh: Luath, 2003. Print. Gibson’s work of nonfiction considers the lives of Scottish citizens who, like the fictional Dunlop, found a new life as cowboys on the American frontier.
The author’s official Web site offers a brief summary of the novel, as well as a biographical sketch, excerpts from his other works, and a blog. http://www .davidanthonydurham.com/novels/gabriels.html
Jakes, John. A Century of Great Western Stories: An Anthology. New York: Forge, 2000. Print. This collection brings together short pieces of fiction from the Western genre.
The blog Neth Space features an interview with David Anthony Durham in which the author discusses his Acacia series. http://nethspace.blogspot.com/2007/ 08/david-anthony-durham-answers-questions.html
Katz, William Loren. Black Pioneers: An Untold Story. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1999. Print. Katz’s volume of nonfiction explores the experiences of African Americans who settled in the American West.
Gale Resources
“David Anthony Durham.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
The Handbook of Texas Online includes an article on black cowboys and their role in the early history of Texas. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ online/articles/BB/arb1.html For Further Reading
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print. This bildungsroman is the first novel in the popular Border Trilogy by McCarthy. Durham’s work has frequently been compared with that of McCarthy.
Durham, David Anthony. Walk through Darkness. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Print. Durham’s second
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Galileo’s Dream By Kim Stanley Robinson
W Introduction Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream (2009) is both a biographical account of the most productive years of experimentation in the life of seventeenth-century scientist Galileo Galilei and a science fiction tale about thirty-firstcentury human colonists on the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Robinson likes to explore ideas about the human comprehension of time, and, in writing Galileo’s Dream, he looked at time in the context of quantum mechanics as some characters try to change both the past and the future. What emerges from this story is an understanding that time is not fixed and immutable but individual spirit may be. Robinson is a multiple-award-winning author most famous for his Mars trilogy, beginning with Red Mars (1992). He has won two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, six Locus Awards, a John W. Campbell Award, and a British Science Fiction Association Award for his short and long fiction, marking him as a major voice in the field of science fiction and fantasy literature. Given that he often writes about history (The Years of Rice and Salt) and utopias (Pacific Edge), some critics have commented that his work should have appeal beyond the narrow audience of science fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
The title of Robinson’s novel, Galileo’s Dream, is a reference to Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), the German astronomer who wrote a book called Somnium, published posthumously in 1634, although drafts were widely circulated during his lifetime. Somnium, translated as The Dream, is ostensibly a description of planetary movement but set within a fictional account of a man who travels to the moon. In Robinson’s novel, Galileo
laughs at Kepler for his imagination about what—and who—might be out there in space, which seems ironic given Galileo’s excursions to Jupiter. Kepler and Galileo were part of the scientific revolution, a period of marked growth in foundational scientific knowledge spurred by the 1543 publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory placed the sun at the center of celestial movement rather than Earth, a theory that the Catholic Church viewed as heretical. Galileo’s telescope observations supported Copernicus. Late in life, Galileo was found guilty of heresy for writing in support of heliocentrism. It was Galileo’s use of experimentation that further established the scientific method for research and learning, which continued the scientific revolution. With the rigors of the scientific method, subsequent scientists such as Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, and Benjamin Franklin were able to advance human understanding of natural phenomena.
W Themes Galileo’s Dream explores the concepts of fate and free will. The age-old debate of fate versus free will concerns whether a person’s life is predetermined to be what it becomes or whether individuals control their future by the choices they freely make. In Robinson’s novel, Galileo attempts to divert his fate from burning at the stake for heresy after being warned of this future by Hera, a resident of the Jovian moon Io from the thirty-first century. Ganymede, also from the future, tries to hasten Galileo’s martyrdom to further his own goals. For Robinson, the debate over fate versus free will cannot be resolved with a simple answer because time is not simple or linear. Time is the context in which fate or free will exists. Robinson describes the passage of time as a “river mouth, with braiding channels, each one of which is a kind of reality, or a potentiality” (292). The novel explores this concept of multiple dimensions or
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MAJOR CHARACTERS AURORA, a humanlike artificial intelligence from Europa in the thirty-first century, helps Galileo learn the scientific advancements of the past fourteen hundred years. MAFFEO BARBERINI is a clever man and a fan of Galileo’s work but changes dramatically after he becomes Pope Urban VIII. CARTOPHILUS is a time-and-space traveler from Ganymede’s time who works in Galileo’s household and assists with his trips to Jupiter’s moons. GALILEO GALILEI, the central character of the novel, is an extraordinarily talented mathematician and inventor living in early-seventeenth-century Italy. GANYMEDE, a righteous cult leader from the moon Ganymede in the thirty-first century, brings Galileo through time and space to further his own goals. HERA, resident of Io in the thirty-first century and Ganymede’s enemy, helps Galileo avoid his fate of burning at the stake.
In part, Galileo’s Dream examines the real-life accomplishments of renowned seventeenth-century scientist Galileo Galilei, pictured here. Georgios Kollidas/Shutterstock.com
potentialities. Galileo works to gain friends in high places only to have his friends die, his enemies ascend to power, and his own ignorance of worldly politics work against him. All of which gives the impression that Galileo’s personality—irascible, obsessed, exceedingly intelligent, and a know-it-all—works against him regardless. Robinson argues that Galileo, forewarned of his martyrdom, is able to mitigate his fate into house arrest, an argument for a middle ground in the fate versus free will debate. In a sublime moment of insight about how time works, Galileo realizes: “Everything was always changing, always: so it was change itself that was eternal” (393). Time, which is not linear, contains the existence of many Galileos.
W Style Imagery is descriptive language used by an author to convey a subject through sensory detail. Imagery makes scenes, characters, and events more vivid and engaging for the reader, even if what is being described is fantastical. Robinson describes Galileo’s joy of discovery as “his body ringing” like a bell (31). He describes the colors of Jupiter and its moons when Galileo travels to the planet in the future. Jupiter is shades of orange, yellow, and red and attracts quiet contemplation. Europa is cold and icy with weaker gravity than Earth and appears
MARIA CELESTE, also known as Virginia, is Galileo’s beloved daughter whom he commits to a nunnery because she is illegitimate and, therefore, unmarriageable.
in shades of blue and green. Europa’s capital city, Rhadamanthas Linea with its canals and balconies, reminds Galileo of Venice. Io is yellow and its lumpy sulfurous surface looks exactly like Galileo imagines hell would appear, which makes it a forbidding place. Robinson uses allusion to add depth of meaning to his novel. Galileo’s Dream includes allusions to Hera, the wife of Zeus, who is a major character and someone Galileo comes to love; Ganymede, the lover of Zeus, who is detested by Hera both in the novel and in the mythology; and the title of the book, which is an allusion to Johannes Kepler’s Somnium.
W Critical Reception Robinson wrote the highly acclaimed, multiple awardwinning Mars trilogy: Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). Reviewing for the Guardian, Adam Roberts praised Galileo’s Dream as “thought-provoking and moving in equal measure.” For him, Robinson is one of the best science fiction writers in the world, and Galileo’s Dream lives up to Robinson’s standard of excellence. “Elegant, charming, funny and profound, Galileo’s Dream is magnifico,” Roberts concluded. Jackie Cassada in Library Journal called the novel a “masterwork,” predicting that it will expand “the potential of the genre to reach out to a broad audience.” Cassada’s review underlined
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kim Stanley Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1952, and grew up in Southern California. He graduated with a BA in literature from the University of California in San Diego in 1974 and earned his MA in English from Boston University in 1975. Robinson returned to San Diego for his PhD, which he earned in 1982 with a thesis on the works of Philip K. Dick. Robinson married Lisa Howland Nowell in 1982, and with her had two sons. He published his first novel, The Wild Shore, in 1984 and went on to win many prestigious science fiction awards, including two Hugo Awards for Best Novel and two Nebula Awards. As of 2010, Robinson lived in Santa Ana, California, with his family.
Robinson’s blending of historical fiction and science fiction, a technique that has also been employed, as other critics have observed, by mainstreams authors
such as Joyce Carol Oates, but without the perceived stigma that the label science fiction can sometimes convey. Paul Kincaid took a rare negative position in his review of Galileo’s Dream for the Web site SF Site. Kincaid observed that the historical part of the novel is richly detailed and Galileo’s character fully realized, whereas the science fiction portions are not as well articulated and distract from the building drama in Galileo’s life. Kincaid wrote: “It is the science fiction that makes this novel weak, it is the history that makes it strong.” In a long review for the online science fiction literature magazine Strange Horizons, John Clute discussed the reliability of the narrator in Galileo’s Dream, which makes the science fiction element crucial to the story’s success. Clute concluded that the character “Galileo is a stunning creation, a histrion utterly real to the eye, a porridge of sensation who turns on a dime into icon.” Robinson also won over Michelle West, critic for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, who professed at the beginning of her review that while she generally found Robinson’s work to be “cerebral” and
Much of Galileo’s Dream takes place in the future on the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Stasys Eidiejus/Shutterstock.com
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“unapproachable,” she unequivocally found this book to be different. She concluded: “if a book can be said, without pretension, to be profound, it is Galileo’s Dream.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Spinrad, Norman. “On Books.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.asimovs.com. Asimov’s Science Fiction Oct.-Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Positively reviews Robinson’s novel but takes exception to the imbalance of detail between Italy and the Galilean moons.
Works Cited
Cassada, Jackie. “Robinson, Kim Stanley. Galileo’s Dream.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Library Journal 15 Nov. 2009: 59. Print. Clute, John. “Scores.” www.strangehorizons.com. Strange Horizons 18 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Kincaid, Paul. “Galileo’s Dream.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.sfsite.com. SF Site 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Roberts, Adam. “Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Guardian 15 Aug. 2009: 8. Print.
Gale Resources
“Kim Stanley Robinson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000083750&v=2.1& u=aadl&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Kim Stanley Robinson.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 248. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1119780000&v=2.1&u=aadl&it= r&p=LitRC&sw=w
West, Michelle. “Musing on Books.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.sfsite.com/fsf/. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction May-June 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2010.
“Robinson, Kim Stanley 1952–.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Ed. Amanda D. Sams. Vol. 173. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 328-35. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id= GALE%7CCX3070600120&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w
Additional Resources
Open Web Sources
Criticism and Reviews
MangalaWiki is an online encyclopedia dedicated to the works of Kim Stanley Robinson. This extensive Web site has a biography, bibliography, and detailed information about all of Robinson’s novels and collections and even some of his novellas and short stories. MangalaWiki is available at http://www .kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Main_ Page
Robinson, Kim Stanley. Galileo’s Dream. New York: Ballantine, 2009. Print.
Canavan, Gerry. “What Our Writers Are Reading: Galileo’s Dream.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.indyweek.com. Indy Week 23 Dec. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Commends Robinson’s treatment of a future utopia in this novel. Emsley, Iain. “Weft Counting.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. januarymagazine.com. January Magazine Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Applauds Robinson’s realistic and sympathetic portrayal of Galileo and the travails of the future. Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Publishers Weekly 30 Nov. 2009: 33. Print. Praises Robinson’s blended narrative of the past and the future. Kaveney, Roz. “Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.independent.co.uk. Independent 10 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Admires Robinson’s risk-taking in making an egotistical historical figure a sympathetic protagonist. Silver, Steven H. “Galileo’s Dream.” Rev. of Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. www.sfsite.com. SF Site 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Celebrates Robinson’s treatment of Galileo’s life interwoven with future politics of science.
Robinson’s publisher, Random House, maintains an author Web site with links to many of his books, which are available for browsing and full-text search as well as purchase. Robinson’s Random House Web site is available at http://www.randomhouse.com/ author/results.pperl?authorid=25839 For Further Reading
Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science. 3rd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print. Examines the scientific revolution from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Kepler, Johannes. Kepler’s Somnium: The Dream or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy. Trans. Edward Rosen. Mineola: Dover, 2003. Print. From 1634, describes planetary movement within a fantastical narrative about a journey to the moon.
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Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Years of Rice and Salt. New York: Spectra, 2003. Print. Explores an alternative history in which Europe is dominated by Asia with reincarnation as a unifying storytelling element.
Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. Print. Addresses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in a science fiction novel.
Sís, Peter. Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei. New York: Scholastic, 1997. Print. Presents an illustrated biography of the life and work of the seventeenth-century scientist.
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Garden of Beasts By Jeffery Deaver
W Introduction Jeffery Deaver was widely known for producing several successful crime novel series featuring likable detectives and well-regarded storytelling when, in 2004, he surprised his fans by publishing Garden of Beasts, a historical thriller set primarily in Berlin in 1936, at a pivotal point in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. As Garden of Beasts begins, readers are introduced to German American Paul Schumann, a World War I veteran who distinguished himself in combat with his excellent marksmanship and his ability to compartmentalize his emotions. Back in New York City after the war, Schumann opens a boxing gym and occasionally works as a freelance sports writer, but he earns extra money by performing contract killing for Mafia bosses. During one hit, it becomes apparent that he has been set up, and he finds himself given a choice by prosecutor Tom Dewey and the head of Naval Intelligence James Gordon: travel to Germany disguised as a sports journalist covering the 1936 Berlin Olympics and assassinate Reinhard Ernst, Hitler’s head of German rearmament, or go to prison and face the death penalty. Schumann accepts the assignment in Berlin, only to find himself involved in a series of double-crosses and hidden agendas. But in witnessing the brutality of the Nazi regime firsthand, he also comes to understand that his mission entails far more than just staying out of prison. Garden of Beasts won the Crime Writers Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in 2004. Rosemary Herbert, book review editor for the Boston Herald, noted Deaver’s nuanced portrait of his characters in Garden of Beasts: “Deaver ups the emotional ante by making the villains and the hero complex characters. The Nazis he portrays here are more than evil personified while the hero has a decidedly criminal past. The idea is to have readers feel for both sides
when the characters are pitted against each other in a lifeand-death crisis.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The historical setting of Garden of Beasts is the 1936 Berlin Olympics, often called the “Nazi Olympics.” Berlin had won the bid to host the 1936 Summer Olympics in 1931, two years before Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933. By 1936 the Nazis been openly persecuting Jews, and the myth of the superiority of the Aryan “race” had been perpetuated among Germans since the election of Hitler to office. Knowing Germany would receive international press during the Olympic games, Hitler reluctantly agreed to remove temporarily all anti-Semitic propaganda from Berlin, but he blocked German-Jewish athletes from competing. Initially, Hitler’s plan was to ban all Jews from competing in the games, but international pressure would not allow it. The United States seriously considered boycotting the games in protest of Nazi racial policies—which were by that time widely known—but the effort failed, and American athletes, including legendary African American track and field star Jesse Owens, won a total of fifty-six medals, second only to the host country’s eighty-nine. The Nazis’ success in hosting a major international event increased the wave of German nationalism and, for a brief time, created the illusion of a justifiably proud but peaceful country. According to the online exhibit “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936,” curated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other Western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that contemporary observers claimed might have restrained Hitler and bolstered international resistance to the Nazis. After the Olympics, Germany’s expansionism and the persecution of Jews and
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Garden of Beasts
MAJOR CHARACTERS TOM DEWEY is an ambitious Manhattan prosecutor who offers Schumann the deal to go to Germany on assignment or risk the death penalty. REINHARD ERNST is the head of the German rearmament program under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. A family man of ambiguous morality, Ernst is caught between wanting to make himself Hitler’s right-hand man and his wariness of Nazism. JAMES GORDON is head of Naval Intelligence. Along with Dewey and an American senator, he recognizes Schumann as the ideal candidate to infiltrate the international press corps of the Berlin Olympics. WILLI KOHL is a German police detective who is committed to his job but deeply ambivalent about the Nazi fanaticism he sees increasing around him. PAUL SCHUMANN is a World War I veteran and part-time hit man in New York City who is tapped to travel to Berlin during the 1936 Olympics to assassinate Reinhard Ernst, the head of Adolf Hitler’s rearmament program.
other ‘enemies of the state’ accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.”
W Themes In an interview on Bookreporter.com, Deaver explained that he was inspired to write Garden of Beasts by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “I wanted to write a book with a different villain—basically, pure evil, institutionalized evil, rather than your typical hit man or serial killer . . . I liked the Olympics as an image because of the stark irony: There was Hitler putting on a show for world harmony while at the same time preparing for war and murdering thousands of opponents in the early concentration camps.” The apparent contradiction between appearance and reality is one of the central themes of Garden of Beasts, exemplified by the characterization of the three main figures in the book. According to a review by John Orr in the Sunday Gazette-Mail, Paul Schumann, Reinhard Ernst, and German police inspector Willi Kohl—investigating the murder of what appears to be a member of the SS and on Schumann’s trail—all are depicted sympathetically, despite the Nazi connections of the latter two. While Schumann is a hit man in New York, he follows a strict code of killing only those who deserve to be punished for their transgressions—mainly, mob bosses. Kohl, Orr writes, is a “gifted detective” who “must deal with Nazi fanatics and members of other
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police agencies more interested in politics than in finding out who killed the man in the alley.” And even the fictional Nazi rearmament specialist whom Schumann is sent to kill, Ernst, is shown in scenes with his wife and children that serve to humanize him. Schumann discovers, as well, during his time in Berlin that the façade of Olympic glory embraced by the Nazis conceals disturbingly evil motives, and nothing is as it appears.
W Style Deaver is first and foremost a writer of thrillers, regardless of their historical backdrop. His works all follow an established pattern and style, including Garden of Beasts, widely categorized as a historical thriller. The historical thriller is a subgenre of the thriller, the hallmarks of which include red herrings, plot twists, and fast-paced action scenes. Historical thrillers place those elements in the past, usually mixing real and fictional characters and attempting to paint an accurate picture of a specific time period while focusing on a single, potentially explosive, event.
W Critical Reception Garden of Beasts was well received by critics and readers. While Deaver was aware that it represented a departure from his more typical publications, he sought to deliver, above all, a quality thriller. Deaver told CBS’s Early Show: “Garden of Beasts is typical of my thrillers. It takes place over about 48 hours—lots of twists and turns, big surprise ending, and yet, another surprise ending, on the last two pages, yet another big whammy ending.” According to John Orr, regular readers of Deaver’s thrillers might at first be put off by the ample historical background Deaver provides in Garden of Beasts: “There is not the razor’s edge of creepiness that puts adrenaline in the blood of readers, as in Deaver’s earlier books. Those fans may have to work a little harder to get into this book, but Garden of Beasts will reward the effort.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Author Talk.” Bookreporter.com July 2004. Web. 14 Aug. 2010. Herbert, Rosemary. “Deaver’s Latest Novel Enters ‘Garden’ of Evil.” Boston Herald 8 Aug. 2004. Print. Morales, Tatiana. “Garden of Beasts; Jeffery Deaver’s Novel Set in Nazi Germany.” The Early Show 20 July 2004. Web. 14 Aug. 2010. “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 14 Aug. 2010. Orr, John. “Where Evil Hides: Garden of Beasts Lacks Jeffery Deaver’s Trademark Creepiness, but It Has Nazis.” Sunday Gazette-Mail 22 Aug. 2004. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Garden of Beasts Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Laing, Allan. “Wicked Games; Jeffery Deaver Ponders Evil at the Berlin Olympics but, Says Allan Laing, His Novel Is a Thriller Not a History Lesson.” Herald, 4 Sept. 2004. Print. Interview in which Deaver discusses Garden of Beasts. Open Web Sources
Jeffery Deaver’s official Web site, http://www.jeffery deaver. com, contains brief descriptions of his work, excerpts from his books and short stories, and several related links. For Further Reading
Large, David Clay. Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936. New York: Norton, 2007. Print. Discusses how the 1936 Olympic Games changed the course of Germany, and world history, by successfully disseminating Nazi propaganda across the globe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeffery Deaver was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in 1950. He received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, followed by a law degree from Fordham University. Deaver practiced law before deciding to devote himself to writing fiction full time. While an attorney, during long commutes to his office, Deaver began to write suspense novels, the type of fiction he enjoyed reading most. His novels have won many awards in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, including the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Garden Of Beasts in 2004. His novel The Bone Collector was adapted as a feature film in 1999, and his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages.
Nancy Dziedzic
Spectators gather at a stadium during the 1936 Olympic Games, which were held in Berlin, Germany. In Deaver’s Garden of Beasts, hit man Paul Schumann goes undercover at the 1936 Olympics as part of a plot to assassinate a Nazi official. ª INTERFOTO / Alamy
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The Garden of Last Days By Andre Dubus III
W Introduction The Garden of Last Days (2008) begins on an early September night in 2001, in Florida. April, a stripper, is on her way to work at the Puma Club for men. April’s landlady Jean, who usually babysits three-year-old Franny, is in the hospital, so April has decided to bring her daughter to the club, where she can watch children’s videos in the office while her mother works. April quickly gets caught up with an unusual foreign client, whose name is Bassam. He has a great deal of money, all in cash, and he is extremely free with it, demanding private time with April. But while she is in the Champagne Room with Bassam, Franny gets scared and wanders out of the office looking for her mother. Meanwhile, another client, A. J., drunk and angry, is in the car park, having been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper. He has been denied access to his own beloved small son, and when he spots Franny alone and crying, he decides to take action, with disastrous results. The Garden of Last Days is a tense psychological thriller, which brilliantly illuminates an aspect of the period leading up to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Told from several different perspectives, the novel compassionately shows the underlying humanity of a group of flawed individuals.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Garden of Last Days takes place in the few days immediately before the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger planes. Two of the airliners were
intentionally crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Everyone on board was killed, and many others who were working in the buildings also died. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Overall, the attacks are estimated to have claimed nearly three thousand victims. The identity of the attackers was quickly established by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mohamed Atta, from Egypt, was the ringleader of the nineteen hijackers. Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt (Atta), and one from Lebanon. Responsibility for instigating and planning the attacks was claimed by Osama bin Laden, a prominent Saudi Arabian terrorist and founder of the Islamic extremist organization al-Qaeda. Prior to the attacks, several of the hijackers spent time in Jacksonville, Florida, where they stayed at the Ramada Inn. While they were there, they are known to have visited strip clubs and to have purchased pornographic videos and used the services of prostitutes. Doing so was breaking strict Islamic law, and a sin for these Muslim fundamentalists who were about to die for their faith, having been promised the pleasures of eager virgins in heaven.
W Themes A major theme of The Garden of Last Days concerns extremist Islamic fundamentalism and its results. Bassam is shown to be a rather naive young man, who, despite the warnings of his father, a good-hearted moderate Muslim, has been recruited by an extreme terrorist organization. The incentive that has persuaded him to die for his faith is the promise of heavenly rewards after death in the shape of willing and beautiful young virgins. But during the waiting period before the attacks, Bassam and his fellow hijackers indulge in supposedly sinful activities involving alcohol and sex.
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The Garden of Last Days
MAJOR CHARACTERS BASSAM AL-JIZANI, a young man from Saudi Arabia, is recruited as a suicide attacker by an Islamic terrorist organization. He visits the Puma Club and pays large sums of money for a private session with April. A. J. CAREY has been frequenting the Puma Club after being unwillingly separated from his wife and child. He decides to rescue Franny when he finds her alone and frightened. DEENA CAREY is A. J.’s estranged wife and the mother of his son Cole. APRIL CONNORS is a single mother who works as a stripper in the Puma Club. She is saving money to buy a house for herself and her three-year-old daughter Franny. FRANNY CONNORS, April’s daughter, wanders off after being left in the office at the Puma Club and is found by A. J. Carey. JEAN HANSON, April’s elderly widowed landlady, who is in poor health, is deeply attached to Franny, for whom she normally babysits while April is at work. LONNIE PIKE, intelligent but severely dyslexic, is a bouncer at the Puma Club and is in love with April.
In The Garden of Last Days, April’s young daughter, Franny, wanders alone outside of the strip club. ª David McGlynn / Alamy
Closely linked to this theme is that of sex and sexuality versus marital and parental love. April tolerates her degrading job as a stripper because she sees it as a way of securing a permanent home for herself and her muchloved small daughter. A. J., depressed and angry after the breakup of his marriage and his separation from his adored son, takes refuge in the strip club and develops a crush on one of the strippers. Bassam, the product of a loving family, becomes obsessed with the forbidden temptations of Western sexuality. A third important theme of the novel is the underlying humanity of characters who may initially appear morally culpable. A. J., angry and drunk, abducts a child in the belief that he is rescuing her from a worse fate. April could easily be judged as a bad parent for taking her child to the club, but she is a loving mother who only wants the best for Franny. Lonnie, whose job as a bouncer often entails violence, genuinely loves April and wants nothing more than to help her and care for her. And Bassam, despite the terrible commitment he has made to his faith, is shown to be a confused young man, torn between his religious beliefs and his more human urges.
W Style The Garden of Last Days is divided into a number of short chapters. These are all narrated in the third person, each from the point of view of a single character. Most of the chapters are in the past tense, but those that focus on Bassam are in the present tense. Despite the third-person narration, the novel closely follows the thought processes of the separate characters. They replay conversations in their heads, worry about the future, watch the world around them, experience anger, confusion, anxiety, and fear according to their individual circumstances. The prose style of the novel is intimate, idiomatic, and conversational. Much of the action is described through the observational gaze of the characters, and some attempt is made to differentiate between the styles of their chapters, as when Franny, for example, sees the world through the innocent eyes of a three-year-old. The most distinctive chapters are those of Bassam. Written in stilted English into which Arabic phrases are closely interwoven, they give a telling picture of his thoughts and motivations.
W Critical Reception The Garden of Last Days was greeted with enthusiasm by many reviewers. John Dufresne, writing in the Boston
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The Garden of Last Days
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Oceanside, California, in 1959, Andre Dubus III grew up on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in sociology and began writing fiction soon afterward, at the age of twentytwo. He worked as a self-employed carpenter and a college writing teacher. His novel House of Sand and Fog was made into an Academy Award-nominated motion picture. He is a member of a large literary family, and his father, the late Andre Dubus Jr., was a prize-winning novelist and short story writer. As of 2010 Andre Dubus III lived in Massachusetts with his wife, performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus, and their three children.
Globe, called it “storytelling of the finest kind: unforgettable and desperate characters caught up in a plot thundering toward catastrophe.” In the Guardian, Irvine Welsh praised Dubus’s writing style, describing it as “that missing link between the high literary novel and the superior thriller” and wrote that “tension and confusion are wrought from every spare yet evocative sentence.” The prose was also admired by James Gibbons, who wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the writing style often achieved “a vivid, muscular immediacy.” Not all reviewers agreed, however. Several reviews of The Garden of Last Days compared the novel unfavorably to Andre Dubus III’s previous best-selling novel, House of Sand and Fog (1999). Doug Johnstone, writing in the Independent, argued that the plot was sprawling and uneven and suggested that this was owing to two different plot lines that were never fully integrated. Although he acknowledged Dubus’s skill in getting inside the heads of ordinary lower-class Americans, he believed this was not enough to save “this unwieldy and uneven novel.” Jay McInerney, in the New York Times, was not impressed by the writing style, regretting that “the rich specificity of the prose in Dubus’s previous novel is seldom on display.” Overall, however, despite the slight disappointment expressed in some reviews, reviewers generally agreed that Dubus is a writer of real talent for empathy toward characters who are made to appear better than their actions might suggest. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Dubus, Andre, III. The Garden of Last Days. New York: Norton, 2002. Print. Dufresne, John. “The Wanderers.” Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. boston.com. Boston Globe 1 June 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010.
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The Garden of Last Days takes place days before the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. ª Aerial Archives / Alamy
Gibbons, James. “The End Game.” Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. latimes.com. Los Angeles Times 22 June 2008. Print. Johnstone, Doug. Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. independent.co.uk. Independent 25 Jan 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. McInerney, Jay. “The Devil Wears Nada.” Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. nytimes. com. New York Times 22 June 2008. Web. 24 Sept. P2010. Welsh, Irvine. Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 27 Sept. 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Formy-Duval, John M. “The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III.” Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. http://contemporarylit.about. com/od/fiction/fr/gardenLastDays.htm about.com. Contemporary Literature. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Praises the novel as interesting and thoughtprovoking reading, creating an utterly plausible world, and believes it to be the best novel of 2008. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Garden of Last Days
Gibbons, James. “The End Game.” Rev. of The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. latimes.com. Los Angeles Times 22 June 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Admires the novel for its ability to evoke sympathy for flawed characters but sees it as uneven and unable to fulfill its aspirations. McCullough, Laura. “In the Garden of Men: Considering Andre Dubus III’s The Garden of Last Days, and the Sins of the Fathers, Including His Own.” thepotomacjournal.com. Potomac Journal, Summer 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Sees the novel as Dubus’s attempt to outwrite his novelist father and argues that an important theme is the danger of gender-role expectations. Gale Resources
“Andre Dubus III.” Contemporary Authors Online, CengageGale,2007.Web.25Sept.2010.http:// galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/hits?r=d& origSearch=true&o=DataType&n=10&l=d&c=1& locID=itsbtrial&secondary=false&u=CA&u=CLC& u=DLB&t=KW&s=1&NA=Andre+Dubus+III “Andre Dubus III.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 292. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. http://galenet. galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/hits?r=d& origSearch=true&o=DataType&n=10&l=d&c= 2&locID=itsbtrial&secondary=false&u=CA&u= CLC&u=DLB&t=KW&s=1&NA=Andre+ Dubus+III
Dubus III, in which the author describes the source of the idea for The Garden of Last Days and his writing practice in general. The Identity Theory Web site, available at http://www. identitytheory.com/people/birnbaum3.html, contains an interview with Andre Dubus III, in which the author speaks at length about his influences and his writing practice. For Further Reading
Der Spiegel Magazine. Inside 9-11: What Really Happened. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. A minute-by-minute account of events on September 11, 2001, and an account of the hijackers’ lives during the preceding months. Dubus, Andre, III. House of Sand and Fog. New York: Vintage, 1999. Print. Novel showing the dark side of the immigrant experience in the United States at the end of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of two adversaries. Kepel, Gilles. The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print. History of Islamic fundamentalism and relations between Islam and the West. Weitzer, Ron. Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry. London: Routledge, 1999. Print. Essays on various aspects of the sex industry in the United States and elsewhere. Harriet Devine
Open Web Sources
The Blip TV Web site, available at http://blip.tv/file/ 851251, contains a video interview with Andre
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Ghosts of El Grullo By Patricia Santana
W Introduction Patricia Santana’s Ghosts of El Grullo is the coming-of-age tale of an incredibly smart young woman, Yolanda “Yoli” Sahagun. As she begins her journey, Yoli comes to realize that she cannot progress to the next stage in her life without first delving into her past and that of her parents, reconciling the ghosts of the past with her dreams of the future. Yoli grew up in a crowded house in San Diego during the 1970s, with eight siblings, an abusive father, and a kind mother. Shortly after she moved out of her childhood home to attend college, Yoli’s mother dies unexpectedly. This event prompts Yoli to return to El Grullo, Mexico, where her parents grew up, hoping that this knowledge will help inform her along the road to becoming the woman she is meant to be. What unfolds is a stream-of-consciousness tapestry of family history, memories, and dream sequences that detail Yoli’s emotional journey. Ghosts of El Grullo is the sequel to Santana’s Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility, which detailed Yoli’s childhood and the experience of her older brother after he returned home from the Vietnam War. Ghosts of El Grullo was awarded the Premio Aztlán Award, the American Book Award, and the San Diego Book & Writing Award, all in 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
Ghosts of El Grullo is part of a long-standing literary tradition, namely the coming-of-age novel. A seminal example of this type of novel is J. D. Salinger’s classic, The Catcher in the Rye, about a disaffected prep school boy, Holden Caulfield, trying to find his place in a world that seems full of hypocrisy and phoniness. On the surface, Ghosts of El Grullo seems very different from Catcher in
the Rye. Unlike Holden, Yoli is searching for answers in her family’s past. Also, in contrast to Holden, who is cynical and uses vulgar language, Yoli’s voice is softer and more yearning. She longs for her mother and is in search of answers. At their heart, though, both Yoli and Holden are young people who avoid returning to their family home and instead pursue a quest to discover some sort of truth. Both are caught in a liminal space between childhood and adulthood, feeling an equal pull in both directions, longing to strike out on their own and yet still very much influenced by the comfortable dreams of their youth. Yoli’s character is not new to Santana’s work. Santana first introducd readers to Yoli in Motorcyle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility, in which she was a young girl, distressed at the changes in her older brother, Chuy, after his return from the Vietnam War. Chuy appears, in a less prominent capacity, in this novel.
W Themes As the title suggests, the main theme of Ghosts of El Grullo is the past. Although the ghosts in the story are not literal ones or even supernaturally present, the novel uses the ghost metaphor to explore Yoli’s past. Laura Wilson, writing for Southwestern American Literature, describes them as ghosts “of memory, family, and cultural history.” Over the course of the novel, Yoli encounters many “ghosts,” including events and people from her family history, people from the past life her parents left behind, and those from her own childhood memories, the most poignant of which is Yoli’s beloved mother, whose loss leaves a palpable mark on the young protagonist. Yoli is also psychologically scarred by her father’s unpredictable nature. His kind and caring demeanor often turns instantly cruel and overbearing. His “ghost” is one of the key players in the novel, having spawned many “ghosts.” The “ghost” of her father, whom Yoli
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Ghosts of El Grullo
MAJOR CHARACTERS CHUY SAHAGUN is Yoli’s older brother, who struggles with the aftermath of fighting in the Vietnam War. DELORES SAHAGUN is Yoli’s mother. She dies of cancer early in the novel, inspiring Yolanda’s journey of self-discovery. LORENZO SAHAGUN is Yoli’s father. Lorenzo is described as “erratic,” because of his swift mood changes. YOLANDA SAHAGUN, or Yoli, is the protagonist, a young woman in her late teens who is inspired to travel to Mexico in an attempt to learn about her own past.
Two women wash clothing in the Mexican Riviera. In Ghosts of El Grullo, Yolanda ventures to her parents’ homeland of Mexico to try to understand her heritage. ª Charles O'Rear/Corbis
encounters by learning about his past in El Grullo, contrasts with the “ghost” of her own memory of her father from her childhood. Similarly, information she learns about her mother from the woman’s friends help Yoli assemble a fuller picture of both her mother and her own heritage.
W Style Patricia Santana writes Ghosts of El Grullo from the perspective of her young female protagonist, Yoli, who is in her late teens and a college freshman. Following her mother’s death, she decides to travel to El Grullo, Mexico, where her mother grew up. Santana presents Yoli’s journey in the form of a first-person, stream-ofconsciousness narrative that fully immerses the reader in the character’s emotional journey through her own and her family’s past. Stream-of-consciousness was a literary device made popular in the early twentieth century by writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The goal of this type of
writing was to capture human thought processes as they occur, with ideas unfolding nonlinearly, as they occur naturally in people’s minds, as opposed to the more stylized and formal manner used by earlier novelists to present internal monologues. As Southwestern American Literature’s Laura Wilson describes, “The narrative moves from real life to dreams or memories effortlessly. Through her reveries and travels, Yoli tries desperately to put the pieces together: her childhood memories, the complex relationship between her parents” along with the “emerging Chicana and feminist movements surrounding her, and her family’s history in Mexico.” Over the course of the novel, Santana writes in deliberately evocative prose meant in an effort to paint a three-dimensional picture that places readers directly within Yoli’s memories. Yoli describes her mother’s sewing in the following words: “[T]he rat-tat-tat-tat of the machine’s humming as my mother expertly slipped a fuchsia-colored palazzo pant through the machine’s needle plate, then the click of the presser foot lifter, then the scissor snip of thread indicating she was done sewing that portion of the garment.” Describing her family’s estate in Mexico, Yoli explains, “Huge spiders, poisonous scorpions, and anguished phantoms had dominion here.” Santana also sprinkles Spanish words and phrases throughout the text that ground it in the culture of its characters.
W Critical Reception Upon its release, Ghosts of El Grullo received three awards—the Premio Aztlán Award, the American Book Award, and the San Diego Book & Writing Award. Despite its literary honors, the book received lukewarm reviews that praised Santana’s writing style, but were not overly enthusiastic about the storyline. Whitney Scott, in Booklist, wrote that Yoli’s voice was “refreshing” and she praised the novel’s “vividly descriptive prose.” Meanwhile, Laura Wilson liked the novel overall, although she
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Ghosts of El Grullo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Patricia Santana’s two novels featuring Yolanda Sahagun, Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility and Ghosts of El Grullo, are somewhat autobiographical because of the number of similarities they reveal about the author’s own life. Like Yolanda, Santana comes from a family of Mexican immigrants, with nine siblings. Like Yolanda’s parents, Santana’s parents are also from El Grullo, and Santana also attended the University of California at San Diego. The evocative nature of Santana’s prose is vivid, leading some reviewers to theorize that her language derives from real-life characters. Santana’s novels are steeped in the Mexican immigrant culture, filtered through the influence of the United States. She won the University of California, Irvine, Chicano/Latino Literary Contest in 1999, the 2003 Best Books for Young Adults by the Young Adult Library Services Association Award, the 2008 Premio Aztlán Award, the American Book Award, and the San Diego Book & Writing Award, among others.
Scott, Whitney. “Ghosts of El Grullo.” Rev. of Ghosts of El Grullo, by Patricia Santana. Booklist 15 Mar. 2008: 27. Print. Wilson, Laura. “Ghosts of El Grullo: A Novel.” Rev. of Ghosts of El Grullo, by Patricia Santana. Southwestern American Literature 35.1 (2009): 85+. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Ramey, Julia. “Coming of Age: This Novel about a Mexican-American Teen Is Occasionally Whiny, but Overall Worthwhile.” Rev. of Ghosts of El Grullo, by Patricia Santana. Tucson Weekly 17 July 2008. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. This mostly positive review faults Santana with often making Yoli’s narration either redundant, mundane, or petulant. Gale Resources
“Patricia Santana.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Open Web Sources
found the plot lacking innovation. “Take away the incessant reminders of significance,” she writes. “Take away the cultural specifics that make this work’s content unique. What remains? We are left with the age-old story of one’s emergence into adulthood: the desperate need for independence, the desire to forge one’s own revolution, the formation of ‘the self’—certainly a story that we have all read, many times before.” A distinguishing characteristic of the novel for Wilson is Santana’s use of the English language. Wilson asserts that Santana “has the ability to make the dreadfully mundane extraordinary.” At the same time, Wilson deemed the “ghosts” metaphor obvious and repetitive, leading her to conclude that the author did not trust the readers to make connections for themselves, leading to a tendency to over-explain the significance of events. The Hispanic literary blog La Bloga took issue with what it regarded as Santana’s stereotypical depiction of Yoli’s parents. According to La Bloga, the father is too hyperbolically abusive and the mother too saintly: “I began to mistrust the narrator’s perception[s],” the blogger explains. At the same time, the blogger also found the imagery strong and the language compelling. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Ghosts of El Grullo, by Patricia Santana. La Bloga. 13 Jan. 2009. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Santana, Patricia. Ghosts of El Grullo. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2008. Print.
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Patricia Santana’s official Website includes a comprehensive biography, bibliography, news and events. http://patriciasantana.net For Further Reading
Agee, James. A Death in the Family. New York: Vintage, 1998. Print. This novel about a family coping with the loss of a family member, told from the perspective of each of the people affected, is reminiscent of Yoli’s mourning for her mother and her own investigation of the past. Castillo, Ana. So Far from God. New York: Norton, 2005. Print. This novel features ghosts of a more literal nature than those in Ghosts of El Grullo, but it also relates the story of a family of Mexican immigrants in America, confronting their past. McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Anchor, 2001. Print. This is a coming-of-age novel about a woman who spends her entire life haunted by a crime she committed as a child. Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown, 1951. Print. This seminal coming-of-age classic focuses on a troubled young male protagonist struggling to come to terms with his burgeoning adulthood. Santana, Patricia. Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2002. Print. Patricia Santana’s first novel introduces Yoli and the rest of the Sahagun family. Powder Thompson
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Gilead By Marilynne Robinson
W Introduction The narrator of Gilead (2004) is the Reverend John Ames, who over several months during 1956 writes a long letter to his son. At seventy-six and dying of heart disease, Ames writes what he calls his begats, hoping that his little boy will someday read this document and understand more about the father he will hardly remember. Ames describes events in the present year and reflects on his life in Gilead, Iowa, where his parents moved when he was two. He tells stories about his father and grandfather, who shared his name and were also clergymen. His recollections reach back to 1830 when his grandfather traveled west from New England to Kansas. Having written thousands of sermons, Ames aspires now to write with a candor his natural reticience typically disallows. As he progresses, he shifts from biographical and historical information to his private daily struggle with envy and anger. These hidden emotions are triggered, ironically, by Ames’s best friend, the Reverend Robert Boughton, who has enjoyed what Ames has been denied: a long marriage and fathering many children all of whom reached maturity. Ames wrestles specifically with his feelings about Boughton’s son Jack, who returns to Gilead during the months when Ames experiences declining health and writes his letter.
W Literary and Historical Context
Gilead refers to several important events in American history, including the conflict in the 1850s between abolitionist and pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and the American Civil War, specifically the battle of Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, where Grandfather Ames lost an eye. The novel alludes to regional differences regarding postCivil War racial laws and prejudice, particularly regarding miscegenation (intermarriage between the races). It
includes the Kansas drought and famine of 1892 and the Spanish influenza in 1915 and 1916. It also alludes to World War II, the integration of baseball in 1947, and the reelection of Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. The three generations of Ames clergymen are witnesses to these parts of American history. Slavery and race relations constitute the most important historical context for the novel. Grandfather Ames goes to Kansas to help settle the debate over slavery in the western territories and see these areas admitted as free states. Many Northerners wanted to limit slavery to the Deep South. Many people were adamant abolitionists, while others feared that if slavery spread west, plantation-type farming would squeeze out ordinary farmers. The conflict intensified with the KansasNebraska Act (1854), which divided Kansas territory into a northern and southern part and allowed local people to vote on whether their area would permit slavery. Free Soilers moved into this territory intent on outnumbering pro-slavery settlers and winning this vote. The resulting numerous gunfights caused the area to be known as Bleeding Kansas. By contrast, Iowa was solidly for abolition, and its towns served as safe havens on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of cooperation that assisted fugitive slaves. Many Iowa houses were built with secret cupboards and closets designed for hiding escaped slaves. After the Civil War, Iowa did not pass anti-miscegenation laws, and African Americans and white people lived in comparative peace there. This historical fact explains why Jack Boughton returns to Gilead in hopes of finding some modicum of social tolerance and a place where he and his black common-law wife and their son might be able to live.
W Themes One important theme concerns intergenerational relationships. As the Reverend Ames writes to the adult he envisions his own son will become, he reflects on the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS FATHER AMES, the narrator’s father, was a Congregationalist minister and pacifist who joined the Quakers as a protest against his own father’s belief in violence as the way to oppose slavery. GRANDFATHER AMES, the narrator’s grandfather, had visions of Jesus that prompted him to leave his home in Maine in 1830 and travel west to Kansas to join the abolitionists’ efforts. Grandfather Ames wanted to join the Union army when the Civil War began but was disqualified because of his age. He followed the troops anyway, in the role of clergyman, and was wounded at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, Missouri. JOHN AMES, the narrator and protagonist, is seventy-six years old and dying of heart disease. Married late in life, he has a young son to whom he writes. LILA AMES, the narrator’s late-in-life second wife, is an uneducated newcomer to Gilead when she meets the Reverend Ames and asks to be baptized by him. She is devoted to her husband and son and tries to educate herself with Bible studies on Sundays. LOUISA AMES, the narrator’s first wife, dies in childbirth, leaving John Ames a widower at age twenty-five. JOHN AMES BOUGHTON, called Jack, is the troubled son Robert Boughton cannot understand. Unable to tell his father about his wife and child, Jack confides in the Reverend Ames and seeks Ames’s blessing. ROBERT BOUGHTON, the narrator’s best friend and a Presbyterian minister, has a long married life and fathers eight children. His daughter Glory attends him in his final years. His prodigal son Jack returns the summer of 1956 but leaves again before Robert Boughton dies. THE SON of the Reverend Ames to whom the long letter is addressed is unnamed in this novel. (In Robinson’s subsequent novel, Home, readers learn that this child is named Robert Boughton Ames after his father’s best friend.) In 1956 this boy turns seven.
relationship between his grandfather and his father and between his elder brother Edward and their father. The novel explores intergenerational breaches and the longterm resentment they cause, and it offers one way forgiveness can be achieved. Ames ponders biblical stories of fathers and sons and of fathers who abandon their wives and sons. He seeks insight and forgiveness related to issues of betrayal and loss, and he wants peace as he confronts dying. Another important theme concerns faith and doubt and how religious belief changes across generations.
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Grandfather Ames gave his sermons with a gun in his belt. The narrator’s pacifist father went among the Quakers to worship in protest of his father’s militancy. The narrator’s brother Edward, a university professor, became an atheist and lived a few hundred miles away, completely out of touch with his parents and his brother. Incorporating Christian beliefs and other philosophies, the novel explores how individuals come to believe what they do and how they live in compliance with or rebel against the values of others. A third theme pertains to the act of writing and what happens when a person attempts to take stock of his life, his family’s experiences, and his beliefs. The Reverend Ames is experienced in writing homilies, but the writing he attempts here is new to him, and it takes him from autobiography and family history to the crux of his own psychological makeup. As he moves from the outer facts of his life to its emotional center, he gains self-awareness and forgiveness. The balm in this Gilead is love, historically associated with the state-wide efforts to help fugitive slaves escape north, in the Reverend Ames’s life with the love of congregation and family, including his namesake, Jack Boughton.
W Style Gilead reads like a private letter or journal, written over time and intended for one reader only, the writer’s son. Marilynne Robinson stays strictly inside the Reverend Ames’s voice and within his frame of reference. The effect is to give readers a sense of intruding on the most private thoughts and feelings of the narrator. The extended letter as a form shapes the novel’s content. The letter does not explain as much as one might expect. Restricted to the one point of view, others’ perceptions and views are not given. Also, the novel breaks off without describing how Ames dies; readers do not know what happens to his young widow or if his letter is ever read by the son. They do not know what becomes of Jack Boughton and his family. Ames is self-conscious and deliberate as a writer. He thinks about the books he has read and about words and what they mean. He ponders the Parable of the Prodigal Son and other relevant stories. He pays careful attention to the physical world, to details in the immediate setting, and his descriptions are vivid and memorable. Thus, the text has the kind of self-absorption or self-consciousness that might be found in the private document it claims to be.
W Critical Reception Gilead was heralded immediately as an important novel, and being awarded the Pulitzer Prize affirmed its positive reception. Many critics praised the characterization of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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narrator and the prose style. Michael Vander Weele, among others, noted how the novel requires readers to slow down to a small-town 1950s pace, slow down to the reverend’s flow of thoughts, as one would alter one’s pace to accommodate an elderly gentleman. Valerie Miner praised the work as a character study, noting Ames’s “fallibility, humility, and humor,” and she praised the novel for its “evocation of place and keen appreciation for history as well as for its candid, often gripping, examination of conscience.” Miner concluded that the “literary epistle” was movingly “threaded with supplication and atonement.” Simon Baker agreed that Ames is a skillful writer, given his piles of sermons, “the equivalent of 225 books,” but went on to theorize that Ames’s weekly homily production may account for why the prose is “almost too writerly.” James Wood explained some of the risks in having a clergyman as the main character. He pointed out that in the English tradition of the novel “the local vicar is usually safely contained as hypocritical, absurd or possibly a bit dimwitted.” Robinson bravely departs from this established tradition, Wood admitted, and succeeds in doing so. Vander Weele stressed that the success of Ames is in his voice, “its humor, counsel, risk.” Here is a clergyman to take seriously, a man who makes 1950s Protestantism meaningful to twenty-first century readers. Ames works to understand virtue and vice and achieve resolution. The professional commitment of a minister to his flock and his hidden moral dilemmas are portrayed in this novel with respect and love. Wood praised Gilead for having “a spiritual force that’s very rare in contemporary fiction.” Robinson’s Gilead is an accounting a man’s struggle with his own fallibility, and in the face of death, his affirmation that the world as it is—is a gift. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Baker, Simon. “Looking Back without Anger.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Spectator 297.9219 (16 Apr. 2005): 47. Print. Miner, Valerie. “Iowa Meditations.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Women’s Review of Books 22.3 (2004): 19. Print. Sayers, Valerie. “There Is a Balm.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Commonweal 132.4 (2005): 22. Print. Vander Weele, Michael. “Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and the Difficult Gift of Human Exchange.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Christianity and Literature 59.2 (2010): 217. Print. Wood, James. “Acts of Devotion.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. New York Times Book Review (28 Nov. 2004): 1. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marilynne Robinson was born in 1943 in Sandpoint, Idaho. She graduated from Brown University (1966) and received her PhD from the University of Washington (1977). Gilead is the second of three novels, including Housekeeping (1980) and Home (2008). Robinson has also published three works of nonfiction: Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1988), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), and Absence of Mind: Dispelling the Inwardness from the Modern Myth of Self (2010). Robinson is a professor of English at the University of Iowa where she teaches in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. As of 2010, she lived in Iowa City, Iowa.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bailey, Lisa M. Siefker. “Fraught with Fire: Race and Theology in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.” Christianity and Literature 59.2 (2010): 265+. Print. Examines Robinson’s use of fire, explains the biblical significance of the town’s name, and connects these to race issues. Hobbs, June Hadden. “Burial, Baptism, and Baseball: Typology and Memorialization in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.” Christianity and Literature 59.2 (2010): 241+. Print. Develops the premise that Ames is not fighting death in his letter writing but rather the way in which the passage of time causes people to forget. His letter to his son is a valiant effort to salvage what may be forgotten by the next generation. Leonard, John. “New Books.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Harper’s Dec. 2004: 87+. Print. Reviews Gilead, pointing out that like Housekeeping, this novel conveys its meaning with superlative style. Simpson, Mona. “The Minister’s Tale: Marilynne Robinson’s Long-awaited Second Novel Is an Almost Otherworldly Book—and Reveals Robinson as a Somewhat Otherworldly Figure Herself.” Rev. of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Atlantic Dec. 2004: 135. Print. Personable review that heralds the strengths of Housekeeping and Gilead. Tanner, Laura E. “‘Looking Back from the Grave’: Sensory Perception and the Anticipation of Absence in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.” Contemporary Literature 48.2 (2007): 227-252. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 276. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Print. Explains how the narrator’s awareness of his imminent death shapes his perception of immediate surroundings and events,
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and she explains the irony involved in Ames’s effort to represent his life in text as his hold on life wanes. Gale Resources
Marsh, Janet Z. “Marilynne Robinson.” Twenty-FirstCentury American Novelists: Second Series. Ed. Wanda H. Giles and James R. Giles. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 310-16. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 350. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 June 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200013923&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w Monahan, Melodie. “Critical Essay on Gilead.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 24. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 June 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id= GALE%7CH1420073749&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Guardian.co.uk presents an interview with Marilynne Robinson conducted by Emma Brockes on 30 May 2009, and available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ culture/2009/may/30/marilynne-robinson/print UI Pulitzer Prize Winners, at http://www.iowalum. com/pulitzerPrize/robinson.html, contains interviews with University of Iowa professors who have won the Pulitzer Prize, including an interview with Marilynne Robinson. This site contains a link to a National Public Radio interview with Robinson. Willow Springs from Eastern Washington University presents an interview with Marilynne Robinson at http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/interviews/ robinson.php
For Further Reading
Bernanos, Georges. The Diary of a Country Priest. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2002. Print. Written in Majorca in 1935, and reprinted many times, the story of a French priest who in his dutiful innocence and outward simplicity is unable to connect with his parishioners and thus takes up diary writing to commit to paper what he cannot speak. Freedom Writers. The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World around Them. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Print. Inspiring story of teacher Erin Gruwell and her inner-city students who studied the Freedom Riders of the 1950s and were inspired to write their own stories of prejudice and survival. The account served as the basis for a film with the same title. Pascoe, Peggy. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Laws and the Making of Race in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Spans 1863 to 2000 and explains that miscegenation laws grew out of two beliefs, that interracial marriage is unnatural and that whites are genetically superior to blacks; also discusses cross-ethnic unions between whites and American Indians, Hawaiians, Asians, and East Indians. Richards, Leonard L. The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2000. Print. Begins with the conflicts between Northern and Southern congressmen in Washington over the western territories and explores the slaveholding oligarchy so influential in the nation’s capital and the Free Soilers and Republicans who opposed it. Melodie Monahan
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Gilgamesh By Joan London
W Introduction Gilgamesh (2001) is the first novel by the award-winning short-fiction writer Joan London. Beginning in an isolated farming region of Australia just before the outbreak of World War II, this deftly crafted work follows an unlikely adventurer on a journey through Europe to Armenia and back again. The central character, Edith Clark, is an Australian teenager who falls in love with a visiting cousin’s Armenian friend. After the men have left, she learns that she is pregnant. Inspired by their tales of adventure and by the ancient Mesopotamian epic poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, she takes her infant son on a quest through wartime Europe to the fabled mountain land of his father. The critic William Cobb describes Gilgamesh, which was named the 2002 Book of the Year by the Australian newspaper the Age, as “a novel in the old-fashioned and much honored sense, a haunting and tender story of sacrifice and loss, an evocation of gritty and indefatigable life.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Edith Clark, the protagonist of Gilgamesh, travels widely in the course of the novel, but the principal settings of the tale are the Australian outback and Soviet Armenia. The story begins after World War I, when Edith’s parents meet and decide to move to South West Australia as part of the Group Settlement Scheme initiated in the 1920s. The program was intended to create a rural dairy industry, but there were many problems with its implementation, and most settlers failed. The novel begins and ends in the fictional settlement town of Nunderup, and London convincingly portrays the difficulties of the land and the isolated culture in which Edith and her sister grow up. On the eve of World War II,
Edith leaves Nunderup to find her Armenian friend Aram, who has returned to his home country without knowing he has fathered her child. Armenia, a mountainous region that lies at the juncture of eastern Europe and western Asia, became the first officially Christian country in 306 CE but was eventually absorbed into the Muslim Ottoman Empire, creating ethnic and religious tensions. A large number of Armenians are believed to have been killed by Turkish forces in 1915 (though these reports are disputed by the government of Turkey). Following a struggle for independence, Armenia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1922. Armenian patriots continued to oppose the Soviets during the 1930s. In the novel, Aram, whose family was killed in the massacres of 1915, goes back to join the Armenian underground.
W Themes The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest-known works of literature. The stories that make up the epic, which was probably written in Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE, are thought to be based on legends about a real Gilgamesh who ruled the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk. In the epic Gilgamesh becomes great friends with Enkidu, a “wild man” whom the gods had created to distract Gilgamesh from tyrannizing his subjects. The two have great adventures, but when Enkidu is killed, Gilgamesh is inconsolable. Although he journeys to the underworld in search of his friend, in the end he must accept the loss and learn from his experiences. This compelling story seems surprisingly contemporary, and it has been admired by readers since the first modern translation was published in the 1870s. In London’s Gilgamesh, Edith’s cousin Leopold, an archaeologist, carries a copy of the epic with him everywhere, and the volume becomes both a talisman and an inspiration for Edith and later for her son. Although the novel Gilgamesh is not intended to be a retelling of the epic, it explores the same themes: friendship, loss, journey, realization, and return. Leopold
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Gilgamesh
MAJOR CHARACTERS LEOPOLD is Edith Clark’s cousin, an English archaeologist who comes to visit the Clark family in Australia. He and his friend Aram tell Edith of their adventures, and Leopold gives her a copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh. EDITH CLARK is an Australian teenager who lives in an isolated farm community and falls in love with Aram, an Armenian visitor. After Aram leaves, Edith discovers that she is pregnant. With her infant son, she sets out for Armenia to find Aram. JIM CLARK is Edith and Aram’s son. After spending his early years in Armenia, Jim has difficulty adjusting to Australian life, but as a teenager he finds his own way, and at the end of the novel he embarks on a new adventure. ARAM SINANIEN is a fiercely patriotic Armenian who becomes Leopold’s driver and then his friend. Aram, whose family was killed in a Turkish massacre during World War I, returns to Armenia to join the resistance against Soviet occupation of his home country.
and Aram, like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are great friends who go on adventures together, and ultimately one of them must grieve the death of the other. Edith and her son, Jim, can also be seen as a pair of travelers who go on a quest for someone they have lost (Aram), and the rest of their lives is shaped by that adventure.
W Style In order to tell a large story in a relatively short book, London concentrates on carefully selected, sharply observed details that reveal a great deal without saying too much. Her sentences are generally short and unadorned, often depending for their effect on intense visual imagery and gracefully compressed description. Edith, the protagonist, is thoughtful but not introspective, so her characterization develops mainly through her actions, which advance the plot without taking up a great deal of the narrative. The novel’s third-person omniscient narration begins at a high level, telling the family’s background story in just a few well-structured pages. It then shifts to Edith’s perspective for the core events of the book and focuses increasingly on the viewpoint of her son, Jim, as the novel concludes. Edith’s share of the story seems to recede as she realizes that her future challenges will be about staying rather than leaving, while Jim’s share expands as he prepares to go in search of his own destiny. Overall London’s style is restrained, mixing judicious use of metaphor and occasional flights of lyricism into a narrative that is gracefully spare.
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W Critical Reception Gilgamesh was widely reviewed, for the most part with enthusiasm. Dan Neill and Jane Perry, reviewers for the Guardian, praise the novel for “its sleek storyline, its sharp, glittering narrative fragments, its carefully honed sentences, its heroic women and its shadowy men, its spanning of generations and continents, its epic allusions, its sense of the sublime.” Writing in the Daily Mail, Ned Denny concludes that “readers will finish [the novel] feeling that they are holding in their hands something rare and precious.” Alev Adil, reviewing the novel for the Independent, characterizes Gilgamesh as “a remarkable first novel,” noting that it is “beautifully written and constructed, dreamlike yet believable.” Most reviewers have praised London’s economical writing and restrained style, but a few have found the novel underdeveloped. In a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, Selina O’Grady calls the work “surprisingly slight,” adding that “London gives us too small a focus while paradoxically distancing us from Edith by endowing her with the quasi-invulnerability of epic.” Nevertheless, O’Grady finds the novel “charming” and observes that its ending may suggest a “hope that humanity can find heroism not just in violence but also in building communities.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adil, Alev. “The Monday Book: Utopian Dreamers in a World Scarred by War.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Independent [London] 1 Dec. 2003: 14. Print. Cobb, William J. “Restless Hearts Leave Home: Australian Characters’ Saga Parallels Mesopotamian Myth.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Houston Chronicle 24 Aug. 2003: 18. Print. Denny, Ned. “Savouring Friends and Solitude.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Daily Mail [London]. Associated Newspapers Ltd, 20 Aug. 2003. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Neill, Dan, and Jane Perry. “Kings and Criminals.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Guardian [London] 1 Nov. 2003: 26. Print. O’Grady, Selina. Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. San Francisco Chronicle 13 Apr. 2003: M-4. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bader, Eleanor J. Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Library Journal 1 Feb. 2003: 116+. Print. Bader gives the novel a “highly recommended” status. Blader, Bonnie. Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Rain Taxi Online Spring 2003. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Blader’s positive review focuses on the characterization of Edith. Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Kirkus Reviews 1 Feb. 2003: 168. Print. This mixed review finds the novel engrossing but derivative. Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Publishers Weekly 27 Jan. 2003: 232. Print. This positive review notes the novel’s powerful evocation of the Australian landscape. Lee-Potter, Charlie. “An Ancient Fable—with Power Cuts.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 7 Sept. 2003. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Lee-Potter admires London’s writing but finds the novel unsatisfying overall. Prose, Francine. “Imagining Armenia.” Rev. of Gilgamesh, by Joan London. New York Times Book Review 15 June 2003: 8. Print. In a long and balanced review, the noted novelist Prose offers detailed praise for Gilgamesh. Gale Resources
“Joan London.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
The Web site Australia’s South West offers maps, photos, and historical information about the area where the Clark family in Gilgamesh lives. http://www.austra liassouthwest.com/en/Pages/default.aspx The Armenian government’s tourism site presents the history of Armenia from the Armenian viewpoint, together with information about the land and its people. http://www.armeniainfo.am/about/ ?section=history For Further Reading
Avakian, Arra S., and Ara J. Movsesian. Armenia: A Journey through History. Fresno: Electric, 2003. Print. The rich, complicated history of Armenia is thoroughly documented in this volume, which provides useful background for understanding both the real and the imagined Armenia presented in Gilgamesh.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joan Elizabeth London was born in Perth, Western Australia, Australia, in 1948. After graduating from the University of Western Australia, where she studied English and French, London taught for a while and began writing short fiction. Her first collection, Sister Ships and Other Stories, appeared in 1986 and was named Book of the Year by the Age. In 1994 a second collection, Letter to Constantine, won a Steele Rudd Award and a West Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction. Although London was not well-known outside Australia when her debut novel was published, Gilgamesh was praised by critics in England and the United States and was considered for both an Orange Prize and an IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Good Parents, her second novel, was published in 2008 and received a Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. London lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, with her husband, Geoff, as of 2010.
Foster, Benjamin R., Douglas Frayne, and Gary M. Beckman. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, Analogues, Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Print. This critical edition of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains an English translation from original sources, a detailed introduction, explanatory annotations, and illustrations, offers a helpful context for understanding the classic work. London, Joan. The Good Parents. London: Atlantic, 2008. Print. London’s second novel also centers on an adolescent protagonist and explores the themes of journey and self-realization. ———. Sister Ships and Other Stories. New York: Penguin, 1988. Print. London’s first collection of stories features heroines who, like Edith Clark, do not fit into the worlds they inhabit. Sullivan, Jane. “The A-Z of Joan London.” Age [Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 5 Apr. 2008. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. This profile of the author includes London’s comments on the relationship between her life and her novels.
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The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf By Mohja Kahf
W Introduction The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006) opens in the 1970s and introduces Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy and her family. Khadra is an idealist and she is devoted to the Muslim community to which she and her family belong. Her youth is described in detail, as are the problems facing a young, conservative Muslim woman as she grows up in Middle America. As a young woman, she accompanies her family on their hajj—the trip to Mecca that is prescribed for all Muslims once in their lives—and she comes to the realization that the version of Islam that she has grown up with is not the only version. She begins to lose some of her idealism, a process that continues as her marriage to a more conservative Kuwaiti man falls apart. Khadra flees to Syria to live with her aunt but eventually returns to the United States, more liberal in her religious notions, but still a devoted Muslim who wears the hijab, or the traditional headscarf for women. Mohja Kahf’s novel draws on her own history—the author also grew up in Indiana—and the text critiques contemporary Muslim beliefs while showing the diversity of the Muslim world. Misconceptions about Muslims from the perspectives of their non-Muslim neighbors are also addressed, sometimes with violent consequences, as when the sister of one of Khadra’s friends is murdered early in the novel. Khadra is caught between two identities, Muslim and American, and over the course of the book, she learns how to come to terms with being both, as well as with being comfortable with herself.
W Literary and Historical Context
Written after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
is one among a body of novels by Muslim writers that offer insight into both Arab and Muslim culture from a native perspective. These novels attempt to counter the ideas propagated by many media images of Islamic fundamentalism. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf delves into the complexity of the Muslim world, showing diversity in beliefs and traditions among Muslim subcultures, both in the United States and the Middle East. The Muslim population of the United States has continued to grow since data began to be collected in the early 1990s. The actual number, however, is hotly contested; higher estimates by Muslim organizations have been countered by non-Muslim organizations. The latter groups have been accused of trying to marginalize Muslims, while the Muslim organizations are accused of misrepresenting their numbers in order to gain greater political representation (Robinson). During the 1980s, Muslims in America were an even smaller minority than their present numbers indicate. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) estimates that in 1990, Muslims made up 0.3% of the population of the United States. Both ARIS and the PEW Trust placed that number at 0.6% of the population in 2007-2008. That growing number means that more Muslims in America, like Khadra, must balance their identities as Muslims and Americans.
W Themes Culture clashes and identity are the dominant themes in Kahf ’s first novel. Like her poetry, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf depicts what it is like to be Muslim in America. Khadra grows up in Indiana, a minority, but firm in her faith and comfortable in her community until tragedy strikes and the sister of a friend is murdered. The event shows the violent racism present in Indiana of the 1980s and reveals the persecution that Khadra and her peers face. Her identity as a young woman, however, is
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solid in the face of this persecution: she knows what she believes and where she fits. In the middle of the novel, Khadra finds her idealism challenged. On hajj to Mecca with her family, she discovers that the Islam she has grown up with is not the same as the Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. She is arrested on her way to dawn prayer at the mosque, as women are barred from this service. Her cousin’s Saudi friends harass her. Later, after she is married, she questions her husband’s authority to forbid her riding a bicycle and she chooses to have an abortion rather than have to give up her studies at an American university. Against a backdrop of U.S. and Middle Eastern politics during the 1980s and 1990s, Khadra struggles to determine what it means to be both Muslim and American. Her travels take her to Syria, where she learns another interpretation of Islam from an aunt. When she returns to the United States, she avoids going home because she cannot identify with the naive beliefs she had as a child and does not want to confront the violence she remembers there. However, when she eventually returns home, she finds that she is comfortable with her own understanding of her faith, and she is confident in herself.
MAJOR CHARACTERS HAKIM is Khadra’s ex-husband from a disastrous marriage. KHADRA SHAMY is the protagonist of the novel. She begins as a young girl in Indiana and through her travels in the Middle East, she comes to question her understanding of her faith. Eventually, after living in Syria and returning to the United States, she grows to accept her beliefs and become comfortable with herself.
W Style The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf is written in the tradition of immigrant literature. Like novels of other cultural clashes, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf shows the journey of one character whose cultural identity is in conflict and uses her individual story to symbolize the universal search for self-awareness. Immigrant novels often include autobiographical details and anecdotes. Tarek el-Ariss of Banipal noted that the details in Khadra’s journey are
This photo shows two women wearing traditional Muslim clothing. In The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, the main character wears a hijab, a traditional Muslim headscarf for women. ª Janine Wiedel Photolibrary / Alamy
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mohja Kahf was born in Damascus, Syria, and came to live in the United States as a child. An associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas, Kahf’s first book is a scholarly text about the portrayal of Muslim women in literature. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque deals with how that representation changed from medieval writings to nineteenth century literature. In 2003 Kahf published a book of poetry, E-mails from Scheherazad; many of the poems in the collection counter the idea of what many non-Muslim readers think it means to be a Muslim woman in the modern world. For example, Kahf contrasts the idea of the clothing restrictions many object to in Muslim culture with the business dress code of high heels and nylons to which Western women have subjected themselves. Her first novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf draws on many of Kahf’s own childhood experiences in Indiana, though she has stated that the book is not autobiographical. In addition to her writing and teaching schedule, Kahf offers readings of her work, which are informal and often include song and dance.
mostly mundane; the events are of an everyday nature rather than highly sensationalized. “Clearly, such are the trappings of the autobiographical genre that sets out in this case to tell both a personal and a communal story,” wrote el-Ariss. Khadra’s voice through Kahf ’s narration offers critiques of both Muslim and American society. Khadra’s reactions to her unwanted pregnancy and her husband’s insistence that she not ride her bicycle show her questioning of traditional values. In other instances, Kahf ’s own voice finds its way into the narrative. According to a critic for Publishers Weekly, these “authorial incursions,” in which Kahf airs her thoughts on both religion and the cultures in which Khadra finds herself, “are heavy-handed.” However, el-Ariss found Khadra an “earnest” narrator, and felt that the character grows to achieve the “balance that allows her to hold on to Islam as home while acknowledging the limitations and the contradictions at the heart of its many practices.”
W Critical Reception Although Kahf is a well-respected scholar and poet whose literary criticism and poetry have received awards, her first novel received very few critical reviews. It was particularly successful commercially among Muslim American women, but received little press in the mainstream review periodicals or in scholarly journals. A Publishers Weekly critic found Khadra “a compelling protagonist” and felt the secondary characters were “varied and believable.” While el-Ariss of Banipal wrote that in the novel, “Kahf
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provides us with a kaleidoscopic view of growing up Muslim and female in America,” he also felt that Khadra’s voice was too earnest and held the novel back from becoming literature beyond a simple telling of cultural perspective in a particular moment in history. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“ARIS 2008 Report: Part 1A–Belonging.” American Religious Identification Survey 2008. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. el-Ariss, Tarek. “Little Mosque on the Prairie.” Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 30 (2007). Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Rev. of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, by Mohja Kahf. Publishers Weekly 14 Aug. 2006: 180. “PEW Forum on Religion & Public Life / U. S. Religious Landscape Survey.” CBS News. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Robinson, B. A. “Number of Muslims in the U.S.” Religious Tolerance Web site. 14 June 2010. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. “Tangerine Scarf: A Story of Muslims in America.” Morning Edition. National Public Radio. 7 Dec. 2006. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Abdurraqib, Samaa. “Making It Survive Here and ‘Dreams of Return’: Community and Identity in the Poetry of Mohja Kahf.” Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature. Ed. Layla Al Maleh. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 44962. Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English 115. This essay investigates the themes of Kahf’s poetry. The ideas of community and identity are also thoroughly explored in The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Hoyt, Heather Marie. “An ‘I’ for Intimacy: Rhetorical Appeal in Arab American Women’s Literature.” Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 67.6 (2006): 2156. Hoyt compares Kahf’s works to the writings of Suheir Hammad and Naomi Shihab Nye, two other female Arab American writers. Gale Resources
“Mohja Kahf.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
Kahf’s publisher, Public Affairs Books, offers a summary and excerpt of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf on their web page. A short profile of Kahf is also TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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available. http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/ publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book= 9780786715190
blending modern life with traditions such as wearing the hijab, providing a complex picture of growing up Muslim in Australia.
A profile of Kahf as a writer and a poet is available in the New York Times online archives. The article discusses Kahf’s poetry, her decision for Khadra to remain veiled, and one of Kahf’s readings. http://www .nytimes.com/2007/05/12/books/12veil .html?_r=1
Kahf, Mohja. E-mails from Scheherazad. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2003. Print. Kahf’s collection of poetry includes many of the same themes of belonging and self-discovery found in The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Many of the poems discuss being a Muslim woman in a Western world.
Online reviewer Zainab (AnonyMouse), a conservative Muslim, reviewed The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf from a conservative viewpoint, praising the novel for being so true to Muslim life in middle America, but criticizing the compromises Khadra makes in her faith. http://muslimmatters.org/2007/08/11/ the-girl-in-the-tangerine-scarf-book-review/
Mernissi, Fatima. Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Print. This true story describes life growing up in the 1940s in Morocco. Mernissi remembers the extended family structure of the modest harem where she grew up and she explains how her mother taught her to be rebellious, rather than accepting of her position in life.
On her Boston Bibliophile blog, reviewer Marie talked about her experience reading The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf with her interfaith book club, and what made the title a good choice. http://www. bostonbibliophile.com/2010/02/review-girl-intangerine-scarf-by-mohja.html For Further Reading
Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Does My Head Look Big in This? New York: Orchard, 2007. Print. Australian-born Amal, of Muslim Palestinian descent, is a devout Muslim teen faced with constant misunderstandings about her life and her faith. The novel, geared toward a young adult audience, follows Amal’s difficulties
Tan, Amy. The Hundred Secret Senses. New York: Putnam, 1995. Known for her novels about family relationships among women and feelings of being an outsider, Tan creates the story of two half-sisters from different world views. Kwan is superstitious; she was raised in China and believes she can see ghosts. Olivia is more assimilated to the modern culture around her, but she is fascinated by Kwan’s stories of ghosts. As adults, the sisters and Olivia’s ex-husband Simon go to China on a magazine assignment, where Olivia begins to understand her sister’s perspective.
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The Girl Who Played Go By Shan Sa
W Introduction Originally published in French as La joueuse de go (2001), The Girl Who Played Go (2003) traces the unlikely relationship between a middle-class Chinese teenager and a Japanese soldier. Set during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, the work depicts the ongoing game of Go between the two characters, who remain unnamed until the end of the novel. Go is an ancient strategy game in which two players battle for dominance of a game board using black and white stones. The book’s narration moves back and forth between the young woman and the soldier, replicating the movement of the game itself and the opposition between Japanese forces and the Chinese resistance. As the narration shifts between the two characters, it chronicles the events leading up to their first meeting, the contentious game to which they return over many weeks, and the slow development of their unspoken friendship. It also dramatizes the physical and psychological destruction of war and occupation, the cultural differences between the Chinese and the Japanese, and the imbalance of power between men and women. The novel has been praised for its unique storyline, its innovative narrative structure, and its treatment of sensitive issues.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Girl Who Played Go is set in Manchuria, a region in northeast Asia that has a long and contested history. During the 1930s Manchuria was under the control of the Japanese military, which had assassinated the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928, launched an invasion in 1931, and set up a puppet government. After the invasion numerous Japanese forces and settlers
poured into Manchuria, displacing native farmers and landowners. Although official Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation ended with a cease-fire on February 27, 1932, guerrilla forces continued to mount attacks on Japanese troops during the occupation, which lasted through World War II. The novel depicts the brutality of the conflict between the Japanese and Chinese armies. The female narrator, Song of the Night, remembers when “the Japanese besieged us, and the shelling went on for days.” She also recalls when, following the surrender of Chinese troops, “according to rumors, 3,000 men were taken outside the town and shot.” Song of the Night meets the Japanese lieutenant when he is sent undercover to the town’s square to play Go with suspected Chinese revolutionaries. Later she chances upon a guerrilla assault in the marketplace, and is saved by the young revolutionary Min, who becomes her lover. As her friendship with Min and his roommate Jing unfolds, she continues to play Go with the Japanese lieutenant. Eventually, Jing, Min, and their female friend Tang are arrested as revolutionaries. Jing confesses under torture, but Min and Tang are executed. In the aftermath of the executions, Song of the Night flees to Peking with Jing, only to face the horrors of a Japanese bombing campaign and capture by Japanese soldiers.
W Themes Shan Sa contrasts Song of the Night’s point of view as a middle-class Chinese woman with that of the Japanese lieutenant. At the beginning of the novel, the lieutenant notes with disgust that “the Chinese Empire has sunk irretrievably into chaos,” steadfastly believing that “we [the Japanese] are their saviors.” Fueled by his pride in Japanese history and culture, he writes to his younger brother that “We will all die some day. Only our nation will live on. Thousands of generations of patriots will together create Japan’s eternal greatness.” His
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perspective is altered over time by his war experiences and his love for Song of the Night. At the end of the novel, he encounters her after she has fled a bombing raid on Peking and been captured by his men, who are about to rape her. He persuades the men to let him have the first turn, then tries to comfort her as she begs him to kill her. After promising that “for your sake I’m going to turn my back on this war and betray my own country,” he kills Song of the Night and then himself. Song of the Night’s powerlessness at the end of the novel is just one of the many examples of sexual inequality described by Sa. Song of the Night’s friend Huong feels powerless when her father threatens to stop supporting her if she refuses to marry the man he has chosen for her, even though she sees the marriage as legally sanctioned rape. Song of the Night’s siser, Moon Pearl, explains that marriage to an unfaithful man ruined her: “I was like a silkworm, spewing the best of me from my insides, and now I’m just a barren husk.” The narrator herself concludes that “men are spiders who weave traps for women with their seed” when she becomes pregnant with Min’s child, only to have him betray her by marrying his friend Tang in prison. The Japanese lieutenant’s memories of Miss Sunshine, an apprentice geisha whom he loved before the war, also underscore inequalities between men and women in Japanese society. Traditionally geisha are “deflowered” by wealthy men who pay large sums of money for the privilege. Miss Sunshine’s mother attempts to protect her daughter from this practice by paying for the ceremony herself and asking the Japanese lieutenant to serve as her daughter’s first sexual partner.
W Style The Girl Who Played Go is composed in short chapters (some are little more than a page in length), with narration alternating between Song of the Night and the Japanese lieutenant. Although the two characters do not begin their game of Go until midway through the novel, many commentators have noted that the narrative structure parallels the back-and-forth movement of the game, in which players alternate placing stones on a game board. In representing the invasion and occupation from first one viewpoint and then the other, the novel mirrors the warfare it describes. The back-andforth motion continues after the characters begin their game, with each reflecting on the game’s progress, the opponent, and the day-to-day struggles of life in war-torn China. The novel concludes with the Japanese lieutenant’s narration of his own death: “I fall onto the girl who played go. Her face looks pinker than it did earlier. She is smiling. I try very hard to keep my eyes open so I can look at my beloved.” The novel is written in a style that Janice P. Nimura describes in the New York Times Book Review as “spare
MAJOR CHARACTERS HUONG is Song of the Night’s friend. She revels in the attention of her many male admirers, whom she has learned to manipulate for gifts. After her father arranges a marriage for her, she is faced with the decision to refuse the match and lose her father’s financial support or go forward with an unsuitable marriage. She ultimately becomes the mistress of a wealthy banker to avoid the marriage. THE JAPANESE LIEUTENANT is one of the novel’s two narrators. Because he speaks Mandarin, he is sent to play Go in the center of town disguised as a Chinese man, with the hope he might ferret out revolutionaries. Instead he enters into a lengthy game with a mysterious and silent Chinese girl, Song of the Night, with whom he falls in love. When she asks him to help her run away, he refuses and immediately regrets his decision. Despite his reverence for Japan, he chooses to honor his connection with Song of the Night over his ties to his country. JING is Min’s close friend and the son of the town’s new mayor. He confesses his love for Song of the Night despite her relationship with Min. After he and his friends are arrested, Jing confesses under torture. He is the only one to escape execution and lives on in constant fear and shame. MIN is Song of the Night’s lover. The two meet when he rescues her from a rebel attack. Jing suggests that Min was only using Song of the Night for pleasure and that he had always loved his fellow rebel Tang, whom he marries before they are both executed. MISS SUNLIGHT is the geisha whom the Japanese lieutenant loved in Japan. SONG OF THE NIGHT is the female narrator, whose name is only revealed right before her death. Although she came from a prosperous, Westernized family, she falls into despair after an unplanned pregnancy, the execution of her lover, and an abortion. She runs away with Jing but is captured by Japanese troops and killed by the Japanese lieutenant at her own request. TANG is a female revolutionary. A longtime friend of Min’s, she marries him in prison before the two are executed. Song of the Night later suspects they were lovers.
prose adorned with images that linger in the mind.” Sa employs numerous metaphors to describe her characters and their emotions. The Japanese lieutenant is particularly drawn to metaphor. Contemplating the mysterious girl with whom he has been playing a drawn-out game of Go, he explains that “she is a mountain that protrudes from a cloudy sky, only to melt all the more surely into the fog.” Song of the Night, though generally more direct and less poetic than her opponent, also frequently thinks in
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shan Sa was born Yan Ni in Beijing, China, on October 28, 1972. She began writing poetry at a very early age, publishing her first works when she was only eight years old. After the massacre at Tiananmen Square, she left China to live with her father in Paris. There she attended L’École alsacienne, where she studied philosophy and sociology. She also developed an interest in painting and worked with the avant-garde painter Balthus. Some commentators have noted the effects of Sa’s training as a painter on the descriptive detail of her later writings. Her first novel, Porte de la paix céleste, which means “gate of celestial peace,” was published in 1999. The work was met with critical acclaim and garnered a Prix Goncourt. Although her third novel, The Girl Who Played Go was the first to be translated into English. It too was awarded a Prix Goncourt. Sa has continued to write novels, several of which have been translated into English.
metaphors. Reflecting on her aging father, for example, she comments, “Life is a castle of lies slowly dismantled by the passage of time.”
W Critical Reception When it was first published in France in 2001, The Girl Who Played Go received numerous critical accolades, garnering Sa her second Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize. The work was the first of Sa’s novels to be translated into English, and the translation won the Kiriyama Prize, which recognizes works depicting the diverse peoples and experiences of the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Praising Sa’s work in East-West Connections, Andrea Kempf notes that “her greatest achievement is the creation of two compelling characters whose youth is betrayed by the events of their time and who carry the novel and the game of Go to its ultimately inevitable conclusion.” Many commentators have considered the effects of Sa’s artistic training on her language and eye for descriptive detail. Alan Cheuse’s World Literature Today review, for example, asserts that “the language is frank, yet lyrical, and the story exact yet elegiac, dreamburdened yet realistic.” Other reviewers, interested in Sa’s unique position as a woman of Chinese origin writing in French, have investigated how this straddling of cultures affects her work. Sarah A. Smith’s Guardian review contends that the book “marks Shan Sa out as one of several diaspora
A teenage Chinese girl and a Japanese soldier play the ancient Chinese game of Go in The Girl Who Played Go. ª Photo Japan / Alamy
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In The Girl Who Played Go, a young Chinese girl starts a friendship with a Japanese soldier. The novel is set during the 1930s when Japan occupied Manchuria. ª Bettmann/Corbis
writers currently experimenting with a fusion of western and eastern traditions.” Some reviews of the novel, however, have been less positive. Writing in the Washington Post, Amy Kroin describes Sa as a “purveyor of strained metaphors” and comments that “no detail or sentiment is allowed to exist on its own; it must be compared to something else, and generally in such an intricately specific way that the effect is distracting rather than revealing.” She also faults the novel for its numerous footnotes, which she suggests make it “feel more like an academic work.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cheuse, Alan. “Off the Air: Book Reviews from National Public Radio.” World Literature Today 79.3-4 (2005): 14+. Kempf, Andrea. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. East-West Connections 5.1 (2005): 194+. Kroin, Amy. “War Games.” Washington Post 4 Jan. 2004: T09. Print.
Nimura, Janice P. “More Violent Than Chess.” New York Times Book Review 26 Oct. 2003: 24. Sa, Shan. The Girl Who Played Go. Trans. Adriana Hunter. New York: Knopf, 2003. Print. Smith, Sarah A. “Rules of the Game.” Guardian [London] 24 May 2003: 27. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bantick, Christopher. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Sydney Morning Herald 17 May 2003: 16. Print. Explores the role of the game of Go in The Girl Who Played Go and praises the novel’s unexpected but fitting ending. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Kirkus Reviews 15 Sept. 2003: 1152. Lauds Sa’s historical insight and development of her central characters. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Publishers Weekly 29 Sept. 2003: 43. Emphasizes Sa’s depiction of her female protagonist’s budding sexuality.
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Hoffert, Barbara. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2003: 100. Admires Sa’s writing style but finds the novel somewhat cold. Lawson, Anthea. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Times [London] 14 May 2003: 20. Print. Focuses on the author’s biography and style of writing. Marler, Myrna. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Kliatt Mar. 2005: 23. Praises the novel’s imagistic language. Taylor, Alan. Rev. of The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. Herald [Glasgow] 31 July 2004. Print. Relates the events of the novel to the author’s family history and explores the political metaphors inherent in the characters’ game of Go. Gale Resources
“Sa Shan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site offers a biography, book overviews, and a list of her awards, as well as information about her art exhibits. http://shan-sa. com/profile.html The online magazine Bookslut features a review of The Girl Who Played Go that explores the tangled relationship between love, war, and the game of Go in Sa’s novel. http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/ 2004_02_001506.php PEN American Center provides a brief biography of Shan Sa on its Web site. http://www.pen.org/page.php/ prmID/758
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The WaterBridge Review has an online critique of The Girl Who Played Go as part of its series on Kiriyama Prize-winning novels. http://www.waterbridgere view.org/032004/rvw_girl_who.php For Further Reading
Gallagher, John. Geisha: A Unique World of Tradition, Elegance and Art. London: Collins, 2003. Print. This work of nonfiction introduces the geisha tradition, exploring the role of the geisha and the perception of these women both in Japan and among foreigners. Sa, Shan. Alexander and Alestria: A Novel. Trans. Adriana Hunter. New York: Harper, 2008. Print. Sa’s novel (originally published in French as Alexandre et Alestria: Roman, 2006) is a fictional biography of Alexander the Great. Shotwell, Peter. Go! More Than a Game. Boston: Tuttle, 2003. Print. This introduction to the game of Go includes a history of the game and essays about its role in Asian culture. Tsunetomo, Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. Trans. William Scott Wilson. New York: Kodansha, 2002. Print. Translated from the original Japanese text of Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719), this work serves as a manual for samurai. It outlines the traditions and beliefs that are so important to the male narrator of The Girl Who Played Go. Young, Louise. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998. Print. This nonfiction work traces Japan’s imperial role in Manchuria. Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Glass Room By Simon Mawer
W Introduction The Glass Room (2009) by Simon Mawer chronicles the lives of Viktor and Liesl Landauer, a prosperous couple living in Czechoslovakia during the late 1920s and 1930s. Viktor, a wealthy mogul who manufactures automobiles, marries Liesl, a forwarding-thinking woman with a passion for modern art and architecture. On their honeymoon the Landauers meet Rainer von Abt, the architect who will design their futuristic home, which features chrome, clean lines, and glass. The centerpiece of the house is the expansive Glass Room, with its onyx wall, sparse furnishings, and modern art. As the novel progresses and the events leading up to World War II begin to unfold, the Landauers are forced to flee their home. Viktor, who is of Jewish descent, fears the possibility of a German invasion and begins funneling money to Switzerland. The Landauers escape to Switzerland and eventually to America, while ownership of their prized house passes from one government to another, ultimately becoming a museum. A compelling story that is deeply engaged with history, ideas, and aesthetics, The Glass Room garnered numerous positive reviews and was a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
During the 1920s, as Europe was rebounding from World War I, a wave of modernism and rational thinking swept the continent. Dadaism, cubism, and surrealism, for example, were among the artistic movements that developed during this period in response to the complex political, social, and economic conditions of the industrialized world. The Nazis vehemently rejected modern art because of their belief that it was corrupted by Jewish influence, preferring instead the “purity” of classical
Greek and Roman art and architecture. In The Glass Room the cultured, progressive Landauers boldly embrace the ideals represented by modern art through the construction of their home, considered ahead of its time with its chrome pillars and glass walls. Mawer based the novel’s fictional Landauer House on the Villa Tugendhat in the city of Brno, Czech Republic, which was designed by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the late 1920s as a celebration of space and light. The Villa Tugendhat even features an onyx wall similar to the one in Mawer’s novel, as well as furniture designed specifically for the home. In the 1990s the villa was opened to the public as a museum (as is the Landauer House in The Glass Room). In the novel the undercurrent of social unrest and the eventual threat of a German invasion overshadow the Landauers’ life of ease and luxury. By the late 1930s Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was determined to annex Czechoslovakia. Ultimately the country ceased to exist and was divided and absorbed into the German Third Reich. These events, coupled with the growing antiSemitism that pervaded the German national mind-set, led to the persecution and displacement of many Jews in Czechoslovakia and throughout Europe. The Landauers are representative of this group, as they lose their beloved home, are forced to flee their country and later Europe, and are cut off from friends and loved ones to escape the horrors that Jews endured during World War II.
W Themes The Glass Room functions as the central symbol around which the book’s major themes develop. Upon the room’s completion, Liesl remarks that in the Glass Room “‘you feel so free, so unconstrained. The sensation of space, of all things being possible.’” Ironically, the transparency of the Glass Room draws attention to its occupants’ secrets, such as Viktor’s extramarital affair and
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MAJOR CHARACTERS RAINER VON ABT is the architect who designs Landauer House and conceives of the Glasraum, or Glass Room. His philosophy of architecture is to “capture and enclose the space within” rather than merely to “build walls and floors and roofs.” A devotee of the revered architect Adolf Loos, Abt believes that “ornament is crime,” preferring instead clean lines, modern materials, and understated furnishings. HANA HANÁKOVÁ is the best friend of Liesl Landauer. Hana, though married, is bisexual and openly promiscuous. She declares her love for Liesl, and the novel intimates that Liesl and Hana have a physical relationship. Hana’s husband is Jewish, and the couple suffers at the hands of the Nazis during the war. KATALIN KALMIN is the Jewish mistress of Viktor Landauer. She works as a seamstress and a prostitute to provide for herself and her young daughter. When the Nazis invade Austria, she becomes a refugee and by coincidence finds herself in Viktor’s home. Viktor’s wife, Liesl, not knowing that Katalin is her husband’s mistress, invites Katalin to stay with the family and serve as a caregiver to their children. LIESL LANDAUER, wife of Viktor Landauer, embraces modern art, architecture, and music. After Liesl’s long and difficult recovery following the birth of her second child, her marriage to Viktor becomes strained. Liesl eventually befriends Viktor’s mistress, Katalin. VIKTOR LANDAUER is a wealthy Jewish automobile manufacturing magnate. At the onset of World War II, he and his family are forced to flee to Switzerland to avoid persecution by the Nazis. Viktor develops a relationship with a Jewish prostitute who, in a twist of fate, comes to live with his family.
a rape that occurs there after Nazis take over the house. Also ironic is the fact that such a seemingly fragile structure remains intact amid the destructive forces of war, while human values and life seem almost disposable. Occupants come and go and ownership of the house changes hands, but the Glass Room remains. In their quest for racial purity, the Nazis use the Glass Room to conduct experiments to determine whether individuals possess physical qualities that are distinctly Jewish. These degrading trials prove inconclusive, and the Nazis abandon the project. In his Washington Post review, Ron Charles notes that in this regard “the architecture proves purer than the human spirit.” Themes of progress and innovation, also suggested by the Glass Room, resonate throughout the novel. Viktor fervently believes that “inovace and pokrok, innovation and progress,” are paths to peace and that the Czechs can “choose” their history. The Glass Room
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In The Glass Room, Viktor and Liesl Landauer are forced to flee their newly built Czechoslovakian home when German troops begin to invade. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
represents what people are capable of envisioning and creating when they are at liberty to pursue their own destinies. The architect who designs the Landauer House comments that “ever since Man came out of the cave he has been building caves around him, [ . . . ] but I wish to take Man out of the cave.” The Glass Room reflects the effort to lift humankind out of savagery, even as the war encroaches on freedoms and destroys lives. Viktor’s argument that people can choose their own history is negated as he is forced to flee from his homeland to avoid persecution by the Nazis.
W Style The Glass Room features an omniscient third-person narrator with a direct, matter-of-fact, almost clinical voice. In his analysis for the Guardian, Ian Sansom notes the “dreamlike simplicity” of Mawer’s prose. Anita Brookner, writing in the Spectator, observes that the novel is written with a “clarity” that is “almost unfamiliar.” Charles offers another perspective on Mawer’s writing style, suggesting that he “has written this novel as though it were a translation, endowing his prose with a patina of Old World formality that sounds all the more romantic.” For the contemporary, English-speaking reader, this foreign ambiance, or sense of cultural distance, is further developed by the author’s liberal use of German and Czech terms and his periodic inclusion of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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in-text definitions and explanations to clarify nonEnglish expressions. Thematically, the use of German and Czech terms reflects the intermingling of cultures and the growing German dominance in the region. As Charles points out, each language has significance in the context of the historical moment, as “choosing to speak Czech or German or English becomes a matter of resistance or collusion or hope.” In his approach to storytelling, Mawer avoids using a linear narrative, choosing instead to capture seemingly random events that, when viewed in the context of the whole, imbue the tale with a sense of continuity and dimension. The main action of the novel spans more than a decade, and each chapter propels the reader to some point weeks or months into the future. The buildup to World War II looms in the background, at first only in vague allusions in the novel, but increasing in prominence as the war intrudes bit by bit upon the lives of the characters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Simon Mawer was born in 1948 in England. His father served in the Royal Air Force, and the family moved frequently during the author’s childhood, spending several years in Cyprus and Malta in addition to England. Mawer credits these experiences with giving him an understanding of feelings associated with exile, a concept that he explores in The Glass Room. He attended Brasenose College, Oxford, earning a degree in zoology. Mawer has taught biology in several countries and has lived in Italy since 1977. At age forty he published his first novel, Chimera (1989), which won the McKitterick Prize. The Glass Room is Mawer’s eighth novel. His body of work also includes two nonfiction titles: A Place in Italy (1992) and Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics (2006).
Viktor Landauer, a man of Jewish heritage, and his wife escape from Czechoslovakia and move to Switzerland as the German invasion begins. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
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The Glass Room
W Critical Reception Upon its publication The Glass Room garnered largely positive reviews. Critics have particularly admired Mawer’s compelling plot structure and the straightforward, unadorned nature of his prose. Sansom, for example, characterizes the book as “a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry.” James Purdon, reviewing the work for the Observer, likewise argues that “like the house, the novel is flawlessly constructed, revealing the careful plan of its reflections and symmetries, the lines of force hidden in its surfaces and its concealed architecture.” Reviewers have also praised Mawer’s seemingly effortless ability to incorporate German and Czech terms without disrupting the natural flow of the text. Reviewing the work in the Washington Post, Ron Charles recognizes Mawer’s skill with language, remarking that the author’s “attention to foreign languages enriches every episode.” In addition, critics have lauded Mawer for his ability to bring to life the cold, impersonal space of the Glass Room. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Alison McCulloch asserts that the Glass Room becomes a “main character” in the novel, a passive and “unsympathetic” observer of the events that play out both in the world and in the lives of the characters. The Glass Room becomes “a window on the hopes and fears of its various inhabitants and the conflicts that rip Europe apart.” Some reviewers, however, have pointed out that the story loses some of its momentum later in the novel. Events become predictable, even inevitable, much like the real-life history that unfolded during the midtwentieth century. Nevertheless, critics insist that this slowdown in the novel’s final chapters does not detract from the overall success of the work. Brookner observes that even though “in the latter part of the novel the interest trails off, [ . . . ] like the house, the structure endures.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brookner, Anita. “Pure, but Never Simple.” Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Spectator 28 Feb. 2009: 29. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Charles, Ron. “The Windows of War.” Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Washington Post 11 Nov. 2009. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Mawer, Simon. The Glass Room. New York: Other Press, 2009. Print. McCulloch, Alison. “Fiction Chronicle.” Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. New York Times Book Review 24 Jan. 2010: 14(L). Print. Purdon, James. Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Observer 25 Apr. 2010. Web. 26 Aug. 2010.
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Sansom, Ian. “Design for Living.” Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Guardian 24 Jan. 2009. Web. 28 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Chamberlain, Lesley. Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Independent [London] 13 Feb. 2009. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Favorable assessment that explores historical context and character development in the novel. Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. New Yorker 21 Dec. 2009: 139. Print. Brief review that focuses on the function of the Glass Room in the Landauer House. Love, Barbara. Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. LJ Book Reviews 25 Dec. 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Touts Mawer’s novel as a worthy finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Shilling, Jane. Rev. of The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Daily Telegraph 14 Jan. 2009. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. A positive review that praises Mawer’s sense of place and skill with language. Vaughan, David. “Simon Mawer Talks about The Glass Room.” Radio Prague 7 May 2010. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. An interview in which Mawer discusses his inspirations for the novel as well as the book’s historical context. Gale Resources
“Simon Mawer.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Simon Mawer’s official Web site features excerpts from the author’s novels, samples of his nonfiction writing, and a brief biography. http://www .simonmawer.com The official Web site of the Man Booker Prize offers an interview with Simon Mawer in which he discusses The Glass Room. http://www.themanbookerprize. com/perspective/articles/1263 For Further Reading
Chacko, David. Like a Man. Cedarburg: Foremost, 2007. Print. Chacko’s action-adventure story highlights the Czech resistance during World War II. Held, Joseph, ed. The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. Print. This collection, published by Columbia University, includes a chronology of events in Eastern Europe from 1918 to 1990, as well as chapters on Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Eastern Europe. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Loos, Adolf. Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Riverside: Ariadne, 1998. Print. The celebrated architect whose theories of design, architecture, and education are lauded in The Glass Room are detailed in this collection of thirty-six essays. Mawer, Simon. The Bitter Cross. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print. Another of Mawer’s historical novels, The Bitter Cross takes place during the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The book
addresses the complex conflicts related to religion and war. Patterson, Charles. Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond. Lincoln: iUniverse.com, 2000. Print. Patterson provides an overview of Jewish history in the context of the development of antiSemitism.
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Gould’s Book of Fish By Richard Flanagan
W Introduction Starting with the title, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish proves to be no ordinary novel. The chapters are divided by twelve fish paintings, and each chapter is printed in a different color to correspond to the type of material the fictional Gould used in making ink. The paintings were actually done by the real William Gould, a forger and murderer who was sent to Sarah Island in 1825 and died in 1831 while trying to escape. His paintings are now housed in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, part of the State Library of Tasmania. Flanagan used Gould’s life as the basis for this novel, which explores the concepts of truth and reality in the making of history as well as issues surrounding British colonization, industrialization, and scientific inquiry that include the exploitation of natives and the poor. The book, first published in 2001 and awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2002, is an example of magical realism.
W Literary and Historical Context
Magical realism originated in the visual arts and developed among Latin America writers. The term magical realism was coined in 1925 by Franz Roh, a German art critic who was trying to describe a visual response to the inexplicable aspects of reality. In the 1940s, Latin American writers took up the form, and its concept was explained in a notable 1949 essay by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. Eventually, Gabriel García Márquez, the 1982 Nobel laureate from Colombia, popularized this type of literature through his internationally acclaimed works, especially One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Magical realism combines the rational with the supernatural, situating the fantastic in the normal world.
It presents the paradox of unresolved opposites, involving shifting borders and changes, that attempts to convey a truer reality than conventional realism. Tasmania, with Hobart as its capital, consists of a large island and some smaller nearby islands, all of which is about 150 miles south of Australia. It has been a state in the Australian Commonwealth since 1901. It was named in 1856 after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who saw it in 1642, although he called it Van Diemen’s Land after the governor of the Dutch East Indies. Aborigines had already populated the island for about 35,000 years. When the British colonized the island in 1803, there were an estimated ten thousand Aborigines divided into nine major ethnic groups. European diseases reduced this population to three hundred by 1833, and these individuals were removed to Flinders Island. The last full-blooded Aborigine died in 1876. The early settlers were mostly convict laborers and farmers, with harsh prisons established at Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour. In the early twentyfirst century, Tasmania had 500,000 inhabitants and kept large areas as unspoiled, natural environments.
W Themes A major theme of Gould’s Book of Fish concerns the nature of truth. Gould’s tales constitute a variant history that counters the falsified Sarah Island records that Jorgen Jorgensen created to hide the truth about conditions and events at the prison. However, Gould is a professional con artist, practiced in deception, so the question is can the reader trust anything that he says. In addition, the version of Gould’s book that is provided is drawn from the memory of Sid Hammett and may not be accurate. The major characters are all insane and therefore untrustworthy, and what they know is part reality and part hallucination. Flanagan is thus asking how much of what is considered history is actually purposely or otherwise altered. If history is suspect, then a further question concerns the history of Tasmania and Australia, whether it is the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CAPOIS DEATH ran a grog shop in Hobart until sentenced to Sarah Island where he builds a locomotive and a Mah-Jong Hall for the Commandant. THE COMMANDANT, insane, tyrannical, syphilitic, and a convict once himself, wears a gold mask, turns the prison into a trading post, and devises grandiose schemes. WILLIAM BUELOW GOULD, a forger and thief, is sent to a horrific Tasmanian prison where his artistic and storytelling talents result in The Book of Fish. SID HAMMETT, the narrator in the first chapter, finds Gould’s book, has it analyzed for authenticity, loses it while drunk, then resolves to rewrite it from memory. JORGEN JORGENSEN, the colony’s administrator, attempts to manipulate history by writing false reports about events on the island. TOBIAS ACHILLES LEMPRIERE, the colony’s rotund and ambitious surgeon, commissions Gould to paint the local fish and experiments with pickled aboriginal heads. POBJOY, the prison guard, likes to talk to Gould and viciously beat him. TUPENNY SAL, an Aborigine, is Gould’s lover and the Commandant’s mistress.
Gould’s Book of Fish: is set in a prison colony in Tasmania, Australia, in the 1830s. ª Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis
triumphant story of European civilization and progress or a horror story of oppression and genocide. Flanagan’s book reflects his concerns about aboriginal rights and those of families like his that came to Tasmania as convicts. Tied to these questions are reflections on freedom and the consequences of colonialism, commercial expansion, and unregulated scientific pursuit. The idea of progress was often used to justify the elimination of native populations and the use of cruel forced labor. In addition, Flanagan shows how beauty and horror can co-occur. His use of humor, even while describing torture and death, makes this point. Gould realizes that beauty and wonder are as limitless as ugliness and sin. His beautiful paintings are created in a prison. Thus, in the world of this novel, even in the worst of circumstances, Flanagan manages to counterbalance the negative with more positive outcomes and events.
W Style Each of the twelve fish that head the chapters has a metaphorical relationship to a character in the text so as
to strengthen the relationship between men and fish. The fish also represent Gould’s fears and dreams. By contrast, the men resemble each other more than the fish resemble each other in that all the characters are con men and incorrigible liars. The characters are not individualized. Gould is never all that realistic because his language is very literary, the story is in his head, and the history he provides is purposely intended to undercut the official version. Further, the novel does not contain much in the way of ordinary dialogue or plot. There is no linear chronology; rather, just as the book Hammett finds has the story written in a circular fashion with the text continuing on the back and in-between lines, so Gould’s story runs in circles and loops back on itself. The narrator never passes up a chance to digress, which may be an indicator of his madness or of the misty curtain that exists between fantasy and reality. Just as Gould painted pictures with watercolors, Flanagan paints pictures with words that evoke visual images and appeal to the senses. Flanagan is able to convey the torture and death on Sarah Island at the same time that his expressions are irreverent and humorous. The terror of the place is emphasized when Gould’s normally playful and enjoyable tone is removed.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR A descendant of Irish convicts taken to Tasmania between 1845 and 1852, Richard Flanagan was born there in 1961 and was raised in Rosebery, a mining town. Although he left school at sixteen to work, he graduated from the University of Tasmania with honors in 1982. A Rhodes scholar, he then earned a master’s of letters from Oxford University. He worked as a river guide and laborer and wrote four history books before his first novel, Death of a River Guide (1994), which won the National Fiction Award. In 1997, Flanagan published The Sound of One Hand Clapping (Australian Booksellers Book of the Year Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for fiction), which became a movie, directed by Flanagan, and won best film at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. Flanagan published The Unknown Terrorist in 2007 and Wanting in 2009. As of 2010, Flanagan, an avid canoeist, lived in Tasmania with his wife and children.
Otherwise, Gould’s humorous understatements serve to make the horror starker by contrast. All in all, Flanagan’s stylistic innovations regarding story line and language make for a unique reading experience.
W Critical Reception An oft-repeated adjective applied to Gould’s Book of Fish by critics is phantasmagoric, in reference to the procession of things seen or imagined and the constantly changing scenes in the story. Marc Kloszewski, in Library Journal, explained that “Flanagan’s darkly humourous tale is impressive in its ability to cross seamlessly the borders between the realistic and fantastic and carries a wonderful sense of drama and satisfying closure.” Nola Theiss commented in Kliatt that it is almost impossible to separate the “hallucinations, fantasies, and reality.” She also marveled that “Flanagan captures the time and place so well that the reader has no choice but to become submerged into the culture and swim, like one of Gould’s fish, with the current.” The language of the book has been one of its most noted features. Tom Vaughan, writing on Illiterarty.com remarked that the novel is “entertaining, stunningly wellimagined, and written in a prose that jigs effortlessly across the page about 90 percent of the time,” adding that Flanagan produces “perfect prose that can and will be deliciously colourful, revolting, joyous and cynical inside the same sentence.” D. J. Taylor remarked similarly in the Spectator about the “tremendous energy” of the
This photo shows Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania, the setting of the novel Gould’s Book of Fish. ª Julian Love/JAI/Corbis
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language with “every sentence throwing up its cargo of alliterative special effects.” Michiko Kakutani’s article in the New York Times called Gould’s Book of Fish a “wondrous, phantasmagorical meditation on art and history and nature” and described Flanagan’s achievement as giving readers “rhapsodic descriptions of the natural world in all its variety and ingenuity, startling tales of escape and redemption and detailed renderings of the baroque fantasies that crowd his characters’ minds.” John Dugdale’s review in New Statesman provided a summary of the novel’s elements: “a virtuoso exercise in period pastiche, a prison diary, a caustic critique of colonialism, a raunchy Georgian picaresque romp taking in three continents, a study of insanity, and a witty, self-conscious postmodern construct.” Wrapping many elements into one book, Flanagan has been considered too ambitious and confusing, but most critics have called the book a masterpiece of creativity. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Dugdale, John. “Lost on the Island of Forgetting.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. New Statesman 131.4590 (2002): 50. Print. Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish. Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001. Print. Kakutani, Michiko. “Books of the Times: A Reborn Criminal Distills Beauty from a Prison’s Abominable Depths.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. nytimes.com. New York Times 26 Mar. 2002. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Kloszewski, Marc. “Gould’s Book of Fish.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. Library Journal 127.5 (2002): 108. Print. Taylor, D. J. “Swimming in Magic Realism.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. Spectator 289.9072 (2002): 52. Print. Theiss, Nola. “Gould’s Book of Fish.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. Kliatt 38.5 (2004): 60. Print. Vaughan, Tom. “Book Review: Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.” Illiterarty.com. Book Reviews and Blogs by Bridget 9 May 2007. Web. 2 Aug. 2010.
Campbell, James. “Learning His Scales: Richard Flanagan’s Narrator Is a Nineteenth-century Convict Who Paints Fish.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. New York Times Book Review 107.15 (2002): 26. Print. Discusses Flanagan’s literary influences, motive, narrative energy, symbols, and digressions. Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. Publishers Weekly 249.12 (2002): 40. Print. Briefly summarizes the novel and its themes. O’Hara, Roberta. “Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. Bookreporter.com. Bookreporter.com, n.d. Web. 1 Aug 2010. Reviews the characters and background of the story then comments on its creativity and imagery. Routledge, Chris. “Recommended Reads: Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. chrisroutledge.co.uk. Chris Routledge 6 Oct. 2008. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Analyzes the characters, structure, style, and themes of the novel. Shipway, Jesse. “Wishing for Modernity: Temporality and Desire in Gould’s Book of Fish.” Australian Literary Studies 12.1 (2003): 43+. Print. Makes the case that the book is Flanagan’s call for social structure transformation in Tasmania. Gale Resources
“Richard Flanagan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 July 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/ servlet/GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&o=Data Type&n=10&l=d&c=1&locID=itsbtrial&secondary= false&u=CA&t=KW&s=2&NA=Richard+Flanagan Open Web Sources
At http://www.powells.com/bibio/17-978080213 9597-3, the Web site for Powell’s Books, a synopsis, a staff review, and excerpts from published reviews are provided as well as reader comments. The Complete Review, at http://www.complete-review .com, provides review excerpts, a staff review, links to full reviews, and information about various authors. This site has a page on Gould’s Book of Fish.
Criticism and Reviews
The Web site http://groveatlantc.com contains a list of discussion questions about Gould’s Book of Fish and suggestions for further reading.
Birne, Eleanor. “Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan.” Rev. of Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan. independent.co.uk. Independent 14 June 2002. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Analyzes influences, characters, plot, dialogue, and conclusion and provides a summary of the story.
Contemporary Writers has a page at http://www. contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p= auth03C19J465512635268 dedicated to Richard Flanagan, which includes a biography, a bibliography, and a critical perspective written by Garan Holcombe in 2005.
Additional Resources
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Gould’s Book of Fish For Further Reading
Borges, Jorge Luis. The Aleph and Other Stories. Ed. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. Print. A collection of stories filled with philosophical questions and extrasensory surprises by an exemplar of magical realism. Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Explains the genre of magical realism and provides definitions, a history of the movement, and key works in fiction, film, and art. Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Print. The fictional letters of legendary outlaw and folk hero Ned Kelly, describing the hard lives of the poor settlers who made Australia.
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García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. Print. A highly acclaimed magical realism novel about the dreams and struggles of a village, its founder, his descendants, and resident ghosts. Maxwell-Stewart, Harnish. Closing Hell’s Gates: The Life and Death of a Convict Station. Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2008. Print. A history of the brutal prison on Sarah Island, Tasmania, from 1822 to 1834. Melville, Herman. Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi. New York: Library of America, 1982. Print. From the author of Moby Dick, three once very popular South Sea romances, which include adventure and political allegory. Lois Kerschen
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Great Fire By Shirley Hazzard
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Shirley Hazzard’s novel The Great Fire (2003) presents the devastation of war as the landscape for a love story. Set in Japan during the Allied occupation following World War II, the narrative centers on Aldred Leith, a decorated, yet disillusioned war hero. Consumed by loneliness and numbed by the traumas of battle, Aldred travels through East Asia chronicling a culture transformed by the consequences of war. After arriving in Japan to record the effects of the Hiroshima bombing, Aldred meets Helen Driscoll and her dying brother, Benedict. Although Helen is just seventeen years old and under the guardianship of her dictatorial father, Aldred is drawn to Helen and her unwavering devotion to her brother. As Aldred writes about the physical annihilation of the city, he begins to recognize the emotional scars within himself and seeks solace in the company of Helen and Benedict. He is amazed by the Driscolls’ precociousness and their connection to the literature they read. Despite his reservations, Aldred falls deeply in love with Helen whose impassioned, yet naive feelings rival his own. Despite their imminent parting, Aldred feels reconnected with the world and himself through the possibility of love and positive human relationship. A subplot of the novel focuses on the friendship between Aldred and Peter Exley. Exley, a war veteran prosecuting crimes committed by the Japanese military, has become even more disconnected from the world than Aldred. Their friendship is tested, yet strengthened by each man’s struggle to reinvent himself in the wake of death and destruction. Ultimately, The Great Fire demonstrates the transformative power of love to help people rise from the ashes and counteract the desolation of war. Through the redemption of Aldred and Exley, the novel illustrates the inherent human need for love to render life meaningful.
Context
A post–World War II Japan provides the setting for The Great Fire. After Japan refused to accept the Potsdam Declaration offered by the Allied powers during World War II, President Harry S. Truman ordered the bombings on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later. These nuclear attacks resulted in more than 150,000 deaths within the first few seconds. On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to the Allies, signaling the end of World War II. From 1945 to 1951, Japan was occupied by Allied forces, fronted by U.S. and U.K. militaries. Aldred arrives during this occupation period and witnesses the devastation of the Hiroshima bombing. As part of Japan’s political reform, several military tribunals, including the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, were created to arrest and prosecute Japan’s military leaders who had committed crimes against humanity. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East is similar to the tribunal in Hong Kong where Peter works as a prosecutor of war crimes.
W Themes The Great Fire examines the physical effects of war and the psychological scars left in its wake. Aldred observes the “wartime shambles of a harbor with its capsized shipping” (7) and the “ancient darkness” (9) that blankets the landscape. He realizes that this scene could be anywhere in the world, emphasizing war’s universal nature. The psychological damage caused by war is also explored, primarily through Aldred and Peter. Aldred has become consumed by a sense of detachment and suffers the loss of his youth, his marriage, and connection to his father. He is a passive spectator to his life, “his body chugging submissively” (3) as he travels by train through Asia. Peter
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BENEDICT DRISCOLL, the son of Brigadier Barry Driscoll, suffers from a fatal degenerative disease, yet impresses Aldred with his intellect, wit, and unwavering optimism. HELEN DRISCOLL, Benedict’s precocious younger sister, is devoted to Benedict and shares his passion for reading literature. She falls in love with Aldred and wishes to marry him despite the objections of her parents. PETER EXLEY is an Australian war veteran whose life was saved by Aldred during battle. He prosecutes crimes committed by the Japanese military and struggles to reinvent his future in the aftermath of war. ALDRED LEITH is a thirty-two-year-old British war hero commissioned to chronicle the effects of the bombing on Hiroshima. Through his love for Helen, he rediscovers hope for himself and for a postwar world.
has also disengaged from himself, using his war trauma as an excuse to withdraw from others. Closely tied to the theme concerning the consequences of war is a rediscovery of the capacity to love in spite of these consequences—that love and hope are
General Douglas MacArthur meets Japanese Emperor Hirohito in September 1945. The Great Fire is set in Japan two years after the end of World War II. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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especially needed to leaven desolation and loss. Aldred concludes that “in the wake of so much death, the necessity to assemble life [is] urgent” (5). When he comforts Helen after the suicide of a Japanese soldier, he realizes that “the whole world needs comforting” (38). Through his bond with Helen, memories of war recede, his past is replaced with love, and he begins to fall asleep, “a saved man” (97). Even Exley opens himself up to the possibility of hope and the value of human connection when he attempts to save a sick child. As he rushes to the hospital with the girl in his arms, he feels “his existence stirring in its coma” (121). Overall, the universal message of The Great Fire is that people have the inherent desire and need to love and be loved. Hazzard demonstrates that human connection is necessary to give life meaning and that a lack of love can be devastating. As Aldred writes in his journal, “It is the incompleteness that haunts us” (43).
W Style Shirley Hazzard’s prose contains explicit literary allusions. These references to past literary figures enrich the characterization of Helen and Benedict and further the plot by engaging Aldred’s interest in the Driscolls, which then leads to his love for Helen. Aldred overhears Helen reading Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Benedict. He then learns of their fascination with Thomas Carlyle. This compels Aldred, a devotee of literature, to develop a relationship with them based on a shared admiration. When he later travels to Hong Kong, Aldred writes to Helen, telling her that “no one was reading Carlyle in the next room, or bringing [him] John Clare with tremulous hand” (95). Here, the allusions simultaneously signify his bond with her and his loneliness without her. Hazzard is also suggesting that through literature of the past, the characters have connected with one another and found solace in an uncertain present. Allusions to William Shakespeare as well as fairy-tale romance figures also figure prominently in the narrative. Aldred uses these allusions to portray his love affair with Helen as one not of sexual desire, but a pure, almost spiritual romance. As he observes Helen resting, he compares her to Sleeping Beauty. In conversations with Exley, he refers to Helen as the Changeling. He likens their love to that of Romeo and Juliet. This particular analogy emphasizes Aldred’s belief that their love is a passionate, yet impossible one—he is fifteen years older, her parents are vehemently opposed to the relationship, yet their love cannot be denied. The great fire of the novel’s title is a symbol and provides another distinction in Hazzard’s style. The title refers to the seventeenth-century blaze that engulfed London, and to the Blitz and the destruction of Hiroshima. The sensory imagery of flames, smoke, and TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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ashes symbolizes to Aldred “loss and disruption” (31), which not only permeates Japan but the entire world. Although the great fires represent this global and personal displacement, they come to represent hope, the desire for love, and redemption. Aldred’s account of the effects of war begins to lose its importance, replaced by the story of him and Helen. He remembers once thinking that he would “die from the great fires into which his times had pitched him,” but now he “had discovered a desire to live completely; by which he meant, with her” (167). Finally, Exley discovers that war cannot destroy truth, and he intends to bring it “out of the fire, intact but with appropriate scars” (198).
W Critical Reception Shirley Hazzard’s keenly anticipated work The Great Fire (2003) arrived over twenty years after the publication of
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shirley Hazzard was born on January 31, 1931, in Sydney, Australia. As a child, she traveled extensively because of her father’s diplomatic post. While living in Hong Kong, she was commissioned by British Intelligence in 1947 to chronicle the civil war in China. From 1952 to 1962, she worked for the United Nations (UN) Secretariat in New York. After a sojourn to Italy in 1962, she began to write fiction. After resigning from the UN, she published Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories (1963). Subsequent publications include The Evening of the Holiday (1966), The Bay of Noon (1970), and Transit of Venus (1980), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. After a twenty-year absence from fiction, she published The Great Fire in 2003 and was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction. As of 2010, Hazzard resided in New York.
The atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The Great Fire follows war hero Aldred Leith as he records the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. ª Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum/epa/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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her award-winning novel, The Transit of Venus (1980). Many reviewers, including Thomas Mallon, deemed Hazzard’s story a worthy follow-up to her last novel. Mallon, writing in the Atlantic, proclaimed, “Now Hazzard has at last, in the language of birth and publishing, delivered, and if The Great Fire lacks the astonishing densities of The Transit of Venus . . . , it still streaks through a reader’s ken in the manner of a comet.” Hazzard’s work was lauded for its vivid and accurate depiction of postwar Japan and East Asia. In her review in Quadrant, Jamie Grant wrote that readers “will be drawn in by the calm elegance of Hazzard’s prose, and by her convincing depiction of physical settings and social manners in several parts of the world.” Other reviewers noted how Hazzard’s richly drawn characters interact within an epic text, marked by the loss and disruption of war. In the Spectator, for example, Anita Brookner described the novel as “busy with an enormous sense of movement, as all alliances are haphazard, largely unsought, and above all temporary.” Brookner also commended Hazzard’s attention to the redemptive nature of love, pointing out that although the protagonists “are marked by an atmosphere of past and lost idealism,” the passion between Aldred and Helen characterize a “love story that surprises by its intensity.” However, some reviewers tempered their praise. Barbara Hoffert, in Library Journal, asserted that the novel was “magisterial” but ultimately “a dark book.” And, although Kirkus Reviews found fault with the narrative’s “slightly improbable ending,” it ultimately conceded that Hazzard’s novel was an “indescribably rich story,” which “moves from strength to strength,” and the Kirkus reviewer predicted, “no reader will be unmoved by its sorrowing, soaring eloquence.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brookner, Anita. “Travelling Far without Finding Home.” Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Spectator 293.9145 (2003): 60. Print. Grant, Jamie. “Unities and Proprieties.” Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Quadrant June 2004: 92. Print. Hazzard, Shirley. The Great Fire. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print. “Hazzard, Shirley. The Great Fire.” Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Kirkus Reviews 15 Aug. 2003: 1036+. Print. Hoffert, Barbara. “Hazzard, Shirley. The Great Fire.” Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2003: 98. Print. Mallon, Thomas. “Princess of Discrimination: Shirley Hazzard’s Masterly Descriptions and Expertly Drawn Characters Are in Full Evidence in This New Novel— Her First in More than Twenty Years.” Rev. of The
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Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Antipodes 18.1 (2004): 81. Print. Claims The Great Fire is an epic text, citing its range and the depth of its scenes and protagonists. Rev. of The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Booklist 1 Jan. 2004: 776. Print. Describes The Great Fire as a work fraught with emotion, commenting on the redemptive power of love as protagonists search for meaning in the aftermath of war. Olubas, Brigitta. “Anachronism, Ekphrasis and the ‘Shape of Time’ in The Great Fire.” Australian Literary Studies 23.3 (2008): 279+. Print. Examines references to works of art and literature within The Great Fire and their import to the protagonists. ———. “Visual Art and Bourgeois Forms in Shirley Hazard’s Fiction.” Southerly 68.1 (2008): 13+. Print. Explores Hazzard’s creation of bourgeois culture in modern societies within selected novels, including The Great Fire. Gale Resources
Olubas, Brigitta. “Shirley Hazzard.” Australian Writers, 1950-1975. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 289. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH 1200011548&v=2.1&u=&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w “Shirley Hazzard.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000043792& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w Open Web Sources
The National Book Foundation Web site, available at http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2003_shazzard. html, contains Hazzard’s National Book Award acceptance speech (2003), biographical information on the author, and excerpts from The Great Fire. For Further Reading
Cranna, Michael. The True Cost of Conflict: Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society. New York: New York Press, 1995. Print. Examines the lesser-known economic, social, and moral consequences of the Gulf War and other international conflicts and compares these effects to those of World War II. Giangreco, D. M. Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. Annapolis: Naval TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Institute P, 2009. Print. Analyzes the U.S. motivation for the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945. Hazzard, Shirley. Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories. New York: Knopf, 1963. Print. Collection of short stories that examines the relationship between men and women as they face issues of marriage, identity, and mortality. —-—. The Transit of Venus. New York: Penguin Books, 1980. Print. Tells the story of two orphaned sisters whose relationship is challenged as they choose different paths to obtain love and security.
Smith, Wendy. “Shirley Hazzard: In Life as in Art, It’s the Individual and the Truth that Matter Most to this Author.” Publishers Weekly 9 Mar. 1990: 48+. Print. Discusses Hazzard’s experience working for the United Nations Secretariat in New York and the subsequent publication of Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (1990) and explains that for Hazzard truth functions in the creation of nonfiction and fiction.
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The Great Man By Kate Christensen
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Kate Christensen’s novel The Great Man (2007) is less about the Great Man—fictional painter Oscar Feldman, already five years dead by the time the novel begins—and more about the unique, strong women in his life who survived him. Two very different biographers both decide to write Feldman’s life story, and in order to learn the great man’s secrets, they come calling on Claire (Teddy) St. Cloud, his longtime mistress; Abigail Feldman, his wife; and Maxine Feldman, his sister. Oscar Feldman was a hedonistic womanizer with charm to spare, who specialized, not surprisingly, in figurative painting of nude women. His sister Maxine, arguably the more talented of the two siblings, is less well known, laboring in the shadow of her flamboyant brother. Maxine, now in her eighties, is a cantankerous, caustic loner, who lives with her dog Frago and secretly lusts after her assistant Katerina. She despises Teddy, Oscar’s charismatic mistress of forty years, for trying to steal Oscar away from Abigail, his wife. In an effort to protect Oscar’s legacy, the women meet in order to ensure their stories are in agreement. Teddy, her best friend Lila, and Maxine all share a secret about Oscar and his work that they agree to keep from the biographers. Christensen portrays these women, all in their seventies and eighties, as highly intelligent, thoughtful, passionate, and erotic. Relating their stories about Oscar to the two biographers causes them to reassess their lives and make changes that move the plot forward. In the end, revelations about the great man are less important than these women and who they become over the course of the novel.
Context
Through the women’s interviews with the biographers, the reader learns Oscar Feldman’s opinion of his contemporaries. Though Feldman is fictional, the painters discussed (most of whom Feldman disdains) are not. Lucian Freud, mentioned by Teddy in one of the interviews, is an acclaimed German-born British painter (the grandson of Sigmund Freud) known for his nudes, just like the fictional Feldman. Though Teddy says Feldman dismissed Freud as talentless, the real-life Freud and the fictional Feldman have much in common. Freud, like Feldman, concentrated on realistic portraits of nudes when abstract expressionism was the style of many of his contemporaries. Also like Feldman, Freud has a reputation as a lothario, even in his eighties; with his many marriages and affairs, he is rumored to have fathered dozens of children. In 2008 Freud’s painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping fetched the highest price ever paid for a painting by a living artist; a private collector purchased the nude portrait for $33.6 million. In the novel, biographer Henry Burke flatters Maxine Feldman by comparing her work to that of real-life abstract expressionist Franz Kline, who, like Maxine, painted his most famous works entirely in black and white. Kline, born in Pennsylvania in 1910, began as a figurative painter, like Feldman, but then turned to abstract expressionism in the 1940s. He died of heart failure in 1962. All the women in the novel were in their thirties and forties during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s; the choices available to younger women in these decades were nonexistent when the fictional characters were making key decisions about their
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educations, careers and relationships. The options available during the 1950s, when Teddy and Lila were at Vassar, are reflected by their experiences: Teddy became a secretary, and Lila, who wanted to be a novelist, married an English professor and had three children. Thanks to organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966, and civil rights legislation prohibiting sexual discrimination in the job market, women have more options in the early 2000s. Some women, however, are finding that having it all is a goal too difficult to achieve. Teddy’s daughters Ruby and Samantha have taken sides: Samantha is a stay-at-home mother with a domineering husband, while Ruby is a dedicated career woman with no intention of having a family. Each believes the other has made the wrong choice.
W Themes Art and sex are intertwined throughout the novel as forms of self-expression. Oscar, a charismatic and fascinating man by all accounts, loved women, and in addition to his wife and his mistress, he had numerous casual affairs. His artwork was an extension of his obsession with women; he painted female nudes in an aggressive, blatantly sexual style, or as Maxine puts it crudely in an interview with Henry Burke, “He f—ed them with brushes.” Teddy tells biographer Ralph Washington that the only abstract expressionist Oscar ever admired was Cecily Brown, a real life artist whose works are overtly sexual in nature. Maxine Feldman’s paintings are on the opposite end of the artistic (and sexual) spectrum: austere, colorless, and completely abstract. Maxine is a loner who finds the company of others a burden and a chore. Her irascible personality pushes people away, but she secretly fears dying alone and regrets her failed relationship with her former lover, Jane Fleming. The relationship ended as a result of Maxine’s failure to express her feelings. Though her paintings are not sexual in nature, Maxine channels her frustrations into her work, continuing to paint prolifically even in her eighties. Another theme that runs through the novel, especially in the story of Teddy St. Cloud, is that of control and independence. Teddy’s need to maintain control in her life and relationships explains her choice of Oscar Feldman as a mate; because he is married, and unavailable much of the time, their relationship allows Teddy to be in control of her home, the raising of their children, and her career. She knows she will never need to sacrifice any of that control in her life with Oscar. The fear of relinquishing control postpones her eventual involvement with Lewis, her former boss; her objection to the relationship is not lack of interest, but fear that the relationship will be an intense and involving one, with a man who is completely available to her. Similarly,
MAJOR CHARACTERS HENRY BURKE is the mild-mannered, sexually frustrated white biographer who comes to interview the women for his book on Oscar. ABIGAIL FELDMAN, Oscar’s long-suffering wife, spends most of her time at home caring for their autistic son Ethan, who is now forty-seven years old. MAXINE FELDMAN, the lesbian sister of Oscar is a cantankerous, misanthropic but brilliant abstract expressionist painter who labored for years in her brother’s shadow. OSCAR FELDMAN is the figurative painter who played a major role in all the women’s lives. A hedonistic lover of women, he died about five years before the novel begins. LILA SCOFIELD, Teddy’s best friend since college, was in love with Oscar from afar and lived vicariously through Teddy for years. CLAIRE (TEDDY) ST. CLOUD, Oscar Feldman’s faithful mistress of forty years, is a sharp, charismatic, and somewhat intimidating woman of seventy-four. RALPH WASHINGTON, another biographer, is an ambitious gay black man with many intellectual theories about Oscar and his art.
though Lila is initially thrilled to be involved with a younger man, she later confesses that she does not like what she becomes in a relationship: submissive, silly, and coquettish. The fear of relinquishing control is not an irrational one. Teddy’s daughter Samantha is dominated by a possessive husband who monitors her whereabouts and keeps her submissive; Samantha rationalizes the situation, saying that this is how marriage works. Because her mother and father were not married and her father rarely visited, she assumes this is true. In an effort to be the opposite of her mother, she sacrifices all control of her own life.
W Style Christensen’s choice of the omniscient viewpoint in The Great Man is important for a number of reasons. First, it gives readers a fuller, more complete portrait of Oscar Feldman, as seen from the viewpoints of several different characters. Second, because some of the characters are either antagonistic toward or unacquainted with the other characters, readers would
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kate Christensen was born on August 22, 1962, in Berkeley, California. Her father was a radical Marxist lawyer who defended members of the Black Panthers, among others, and her mother studied at Juilliard to become a professional cellist. When her parents divorced in 1968, her mother took Christensen and her two younger sisters to Arizona, where Christensen received her PhD and became a clinical psychologist. After high school, Christensen attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in English; she also attended the acclaimed Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first novel, In the Drink, was published in 1999, followed by Jeremy Thrane in 2001, and The Epicure’s Lament in 2004. The Great Man, for which Christensen won the PEN/ Faulkner Prize in 2008, was published in 2007. She followed this with the novel Trouble (2009). As of 2010, Christensen lived in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband.
learn little about them if the story were told from a first- or third-person point of view. Told from the omniscient viewpoint, the story can explore Maxine’s
crusty exterior and her hidden lonely, vulnerable, and insecure core. Christensen’s use of humor gives the characters dimension and makes the novel more enjoyable. The nebbishy biographer Henry Burke and his uptight counterpart Ralph Washington are at the mercy of the sharp-witted Teddy and Maxine, who leave them flustered and unsure. Christensen infuses more humor in the story with the use of creative similes and metaphors; when Henry’s baby is falling asleep in the baby carrier Henry wears, Christensen compares the baby as lolling like a drunk in a doorway. By having the two biographers interview the women, Christensen can tell their histories and reveal the character of Oscar Feldman without resorting to flashbacks or long paragraphs of expository prose. In addition, the way the different women react to the biographers gives readers more information about their characters as well. Because Christensen gives the biographers their own foibles and problems—Henry Burke, for instance, is a new father having trouble in his marriage—they are more than just a storytelling device; instead, they become characters in their own right.
Following the death of fictional artist Oscar Feldman in The Great Man, two separate biographers interview the three most important women in Feldman’s life: his wife, sister, and mistress. Kenneth V. Pilon/Shutterstock.com
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W Critical Reception The Great Man was generally well received by critics, as evidenced by the PEN/Faulkner Award given to Christensen for the novel in 2008. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised the novel, calling it “as unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining.” Sue Corbett of People described Christensen’s characters as “exquisitely drawn,” an opinion echoed by Carol Memmott of USA Today, who wrote, “These characters are wonderfully developed.” Many reviewers were impressed by Christensen’s complex portrayal of aging women, women often relegated to the stereotypical roles of kindly grandmother or cranky old crone. Corbett wrote that Christensen “has raised the bar for writers who hope to realistically portray the aging American woman,” and a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a joyful art-world romp . . . that allows aging women to come across as sexy.” Not all reviewers were charmed by the story of these women, however. In a sarcastic negative review in Entertainment Weekly, Troy Patterson wrote that while the reader may find a few “droll bits” of humor in Christensen’s novel, these were not enough to compensate for her “overripe prose.” A few reviewers noted that the novel, while long on characterization, was short on plot. The reviewer from Kirkus Reviews described the plot as “flimsy,” and Corbett wrote, “Not much happens in the course of 300 pages.” Christine Perkins, in a mostly positive review for Library Journal, felt that the two biographers were “poorly developed,” calling them “bland and indistinguishable.” The novel opens with a fictional obituary of Feldman from the New York Times and ends with a book review of the two competing biographies. Some reviewers who otherwise praised the novel found these pieces to be less successful. Maslin called them “tone-deaf,” and a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, who described the rest of the novel as “eloquent,” wrote that the obituary and reviews were “less than convincing as artifacts.” Many critics, though, found The Great Man to be a finely crafted character study of four aging but lively women, made all the more enjoyable by Christensen’s dry wit. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Cecily Brown.” saatchi-gallery.co.uk. Saatchi Gallery. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Christensen, Kate. The Great Man. New York: AnchorRandom House, 2008. Print. Corbett, Sue. “Books.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. People 68.9 (2007), n.p. Print. “CWLU Chronology: A Timeline for Second Wave Feminism.” uic.edu. University of Illinois at Chicago. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
Edge, Simon. “Lucien Freud: The Lothario.” express.co. uk. Daily Express 16 May 2008. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. Kirkus Reviews 15 June 2007. Print. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. Publishers Weekly 21 May 2007: 31. Print. “Lucien Freud Painting Sells for Record £17m.” telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph 14 May 2008. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Maslin, Janet. “A Celebrated Artist Dies, Then His Life Gets Difficult.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. New York Times 6 Aug. 2007. Print. Memmott, Carol. “Women Cover the Canvas of The Great Man.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. USA Today 30 Aug. 2007: 4D. Print. Patterson, Troy. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. Entertainment Weekly 24 Aug. 2007: 139. Print. Perkins, Christine. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. Library Journal 1 Aug. 2007: 64. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Buchsbaum, Tony. “We Are What We Say.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. januarymagazine. com. January Magazine Aug. 2007. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Examines how the novel is not just about Oscar or the women in his life, but about the power of storytelling. Frey, Hillary. “An Art World Novel Lays It on Thick: Ex-Wives and Aging Mistresses.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. observer.com. New York Observer 14 Aug. 2007. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Asserts that the scope of Christensen’s novel is too broad and explains how this problem could have been fixed. Kleffel, Rick. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. bookotron.com 27 Sept. 2007. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Describes how Christensen’s unflinching portrayal of the aging women gives depth and reality to the novel. Koch, Elizabeth. Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. sfgate.com. San Francisco Chronicle 14 Aug. 2007. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Criticizes the characterization in Christensen’s novel and examines problems with the novel’s structure. Seaman, Donna. “A Complex Palette.” Rev. of The Great Man, by Kate Christensen. chicagotribune.com. Chicago Tribune 22 Sept. 2007. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Examines how Christensen uses pairs of opposites throughout the novel, especially black-and-white images.
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The Great Man Gale Resources
“Kate Christensen.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Random House Books maintains an author page on Kate Christensen, available at randomhouse.com/ features/katechristensen, which includes interviews with the novelist, descriptions of her books, and even recipes for the dishes Teddy, Abigail, and Maxine cook up in The Great Man. For Further Reading
Christensen, Kate. Trouble. New York: Anchor-Random House, 2010. Print. Follow-up to The Great Man, telling the story of a New York therapist who decides to leave her husband and join her troubled rock star friend on a jaunt to Mexico. Feaver, William. Lucian Freud. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. Print. Provides a biographical sketch of Freud, four interviews, and over four hundred reproductions of Freud’s work.
Classic by acclaimed food writer that Christensen reviewed for National Public Radio. Includes Fisher’s trademark poetic prose and a variety of oyster recipes. Gaugh, Harry F. Franz Kline. New York: Abbeville P, 1994. Print. Considered the definitive volume on Kline’s life and work. Includes biographical information Gaugh gleaned from interviews with Kline’s friends and critics and from Kline’s own correspondence. Also features 170 illustrations of the artist’s work. Hess, Barbara. Abstract Expressionism. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009. Print. Includes an introduction, a timeline of the Abstract Expressionist movement, which began in the 1940s, plus photos and analyses of the most important works and artists. Updike, John. Seek My Face. New York: Knopf, 2002. Print. Another novel featuring the art world, profiling a seventy-nine-year-old artist who was married to two famous painters, one based on Jackson Pollock. Laura Pryor
Fisher, M. F. K. Consider the Oyster. New York: North Point Press-Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. Print.
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Grotesque By Natsuo Kirino
W Introduction Gurotesuku was first published in Japan by Natsuo Kirino in 2003. The novel was translated into English by Rebecca Copeland and published in the United States in 2007 as Grotesque. The novel follows a trio of girls who attended the competitive Q High School for Young Women in Tokyo during the late 1970s. Two of the girls, the nymphomaniac Yuriko and attention-starved Kazue, become prostitutes and are murdered within months of each other in the late 1990s. The third girl is the book’s unnamed narrator—Yuriko’s unattractive, hate-filled older sister. Kirino has stated in interviews that part of the inspiration for the book came from a crime in Japan known as the Office Lady Murder, in which a Nepalese man killed an office worker who was moonlighting as a prostitute. The accused killer in Grotesque is a Chinese national, and Kirino traveled to China to research the lives of rural migrants in the country’s unique special economic zones. The Japanese version of Grotesque won the Izumi Kyoka Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
The cutthroat academic world of the Q High School for Girls accurately reflects the competitive nature of secondary education in Japan, where much of a student’s self-esteem is derived from being admitted to a highranking school. Students frequently attend “cram” schools to prepare for entrance exams to top high schools in hopes that doing well will secure them admission to a top university. In Japan, high school covers grades ten through twelve, and although it is not compulsory, nearly all youth attend the best schools their parents can afford (public schools are not free, but they cost significantly less than more elite private schools). Schools are headed by
male principals, and two-thirds of all teachers are male, facts that are reflected in Grotesque. Conformity is prized in the rigid school environment. Students with minor learning disabilities or slightly unusual mannerisms or physical traits will become the target of bullies. Someone who is “half” (i.e., having only one Japanese parent) such as Yuriko and her sister would easily be targets of bullying, as would any student who came from a lower socioeconomic background. In fact, bullying is so pervasive in Japanese secondary schools that it has resulted in the concept known as toko kyohi—refusal to go to school. Suicides among those who are bullied are not uncommon, yet the problem remains largely unaddressed by administrators. The skeletally thin Kazue in Grotesque is symptomatic of the pervasiveness of anorexia and bulimia among Japanese schoolgirls. The illusion of youth causes many young women to remain as slim as prepubescent girls. Anorexia requires discipline, and many young women pride themselves on maintaining a strict diet in order to fit into stylish clothes that are made in only very small sizes. A 2001 national nutrition study by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported a 100 percent increase from 1990 to 2000 in the number of women whose body mass index (BMI) met the definition of anorexia—10 percent of women in their twenties and 16 percent in their thirties. Japan is home to one of the world’s most thriving sex industries, called fuzoku, which encompasses a wide variety of practices that are enjoyed by a majority of the country’s male population. Prostitution has been technically illegal since 1956, but abundant loopholes allow nightclubs, “soapland” clubs that feature erotic baths, massage parlors, telephone clubs, traditional call-girl services, “health” shops, and “image” clubs, all of which are sexual in nature. Ubiquitous love hotels, theme parklike inns where rooms can be rented by the hour and discretion is assured, are common in many neighborhoods and no attempt is made to hide their purpose.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS TAKASHI KIJIMA is the son of a professor at Q High School. He is gay, rebuffs Kazue’s advances, and becomes Yuriko’s pimp. MITSURU is the best student at Q High School and aspires to attend Tokyo University and become a doctor. She wants to be friends with the narrator, who continually rebuffs her. Mitsuru eventually joins a cult, spends time in prison, and marries Professor Kijima. THE NARRATOR is Yuriko’s older sister, a homely, bitter woman who rejects love, sex, and human companionship based on her lifelong, all-consuming disgust for her sister. KAZUE SATO attends the Q High School for Girls with Yuriko and her sister. She longs for approval from teachers, boys, and classmates, which ultimately leads to her moonlighting position first as a call girl then as a low-class streetwalker, even though she has a good office job. She is murdered, and although her murderer is assumed to be Zheng, it is never definitively solved. YURIKO is a preternaturally beautiful girl for whom everything in life comes easily. She is unrepentantly obsessed with sex from the time she is an adolescent. Prostitution is her sole profession, but as she gets older and her beauty fades, she becomes a low-class streetwalker and is murdered. ZHENG ZHE-ZHONG grew up impoverished in rural China. He and his sister escape to the city only to become sexual slaves for the daughter of a high-ranking party official. He possibly kills his sister before making his way to Japan. He is put on trial for both Yuriko’s and Kazue’s murders, but confesses only to killing Yuriko.
Many young women participate in what is known as “compensated dating,” in which men pay for their services on an informal basis. Through fuzoku, married men pay for sexual services while their wives stay at home raising the children. Kirino features this time-honored double standard in many of her novels, including Grotesque, in which young women are fetishized and older women are considered expendable.
W Themes The most pervasive theme in Grotesque is beauty, both its presence and absence, and how it impacts the lives of women in contemporary Japan. Kirino implies that for a woman, beauty is a key that opens all doors. Yuriko is not smart, yet she sails into the prestigious Q High School for Girls solely based on how she looks while her sister studies dutifully for a difficult exam. Yuriko’s beauty enables her to seduce any man in order to obtain
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whatever she desires. All goes well for her until her beauty starts to fade. By the time Yuriko hits thirty she is no longer considered desirable. The high fees she commanded as a teenager slowly decline, until she is forced to wear a wig and walk the streets, becoming interchangeable with the much less beautiful Kazue. Kazue’s decline is just as precipitous; having never achieved as much approval from her office job as she feels she deserves, she seeks approval from men, especially Zheng, and as she ages she degrades herself to the point that even homeless men are repulsed by her. Both women are murdered while in their early to mid-thirties, an age, Kirino suggests, at which women become useless. Age is the enemy for Japanese women; it robs Yuriko and Kazue of their only assets. The other side of beauty is the grotesque, which in literature refers to characters who are both unattractive (physically and psychologically) and who inspire empathy. In the novel, the narrator is a grotesque figure; not only is she unattractive but she is so filled with hatred for nearly everyone that the reader cannot help but feel sorry for her. Kazue is grotesque in the way she so desperately wants people to like her that she prostitutes herself, mistaking lust for love. In the absence of physical beauty, she allows herself to be used by others as proof of her value as a human being.
W Style Grotesque contains elements of a mystery and a thriller, yet its lack of resolution defies both genres. Zheng confesses to killing Yuriko but denies killing Kazue. Why he would readily confess to one but not the other—when the evidence indicates he killed both—is never explained. The reader is pulled along by the suspense but left unfulfilled at the novel’s conclusion. This technique allows Kirino to keep the focus on her theme of beauty and the unfair stigmatization of aging women in Japan rather than on the whodunit aspects of the plot. Parts of Grotesque are written in a diary format, allowing readers to glimpse the minds of both Yuriko and Katsue from a first-person perspective. Along with the initial first-person narration of Yuriko’s nameless older sister and Zheng’s deposition, the novel comprises four first-person narrations, giving the reader insight into the minds of all four main characters. The unreliable narrator is a factor to consider in reading Grotesque. As Kirino told Margy Rochlin of LA Weekly, “There’s this constant issue of the narrator’s ambiguity and the question of whether or not she’s actually reliable.” Part of this ambiguity stems from her anonymity. “I wanted to leave her an anonymous, representative person, so I left the name out.” As a girl, the narrator screams in sheer terror at Yuriko’s monstrous nature—making the reader question her sanity. One also wonders about the reliability of Yuriko’s hypersexuality as voiced by the narrator, a middle-aged virgin with no TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Grotesque
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Natsuo Kirino is the pseudonym of Mariko Hashioka, a Tokyobased writer whose first books were romance novels. Kirino was born in 1951 and received a law degree from Seikei University; she did not begin writing novels until she was 30. She switched from romance to thrillers based on her interest in the psychological aspects of crime and the lack of a market for romance novels in Japan. The first of these, Kao ni Furikakaru Ame (The face on which rain falls) received the Edogawa Rampo Prize for crime fiction in 1993. Her crime novels struck a chord with readers, and her tales of ordinary women who become mixed up in unsavory circumstances became known as feminist noir. Her mystery novel Out received the Japan Mystery Writers’ Association Prize in 1998, and the English translation, published in the United States in 2003, met with critical acclaim and was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America—a rare event for a non-American author. The plot concerns two factory workers who help a third coworker murder her abusive husband and discard his dismembered body in various locations around Tokyo. All of Kirino’s novels explore the rigid gender imbalance in Japanese society, in which women are not expected to find personal and professional fulfillment and men are not expected to remain faithful to their wives. Kirino counts among her influences Yukio Mishima, Flannery O’Connor, and Patricia Highsmith.
Portrait of Natsuo Kirino, author of Grotesque. Amanda Edwards/ Getty Images
interest in men. This suspicion is reinforced by Yuriko’s journal, in which she writes of the narrator bombarding her with phone calls, despite the sister’s insistence that she had no contact with Yuriko during this time. She claims Yuriko is lying, but given the narrator’s allconsuming hatred and obsession with her sister, the reader is left to wonder.
W Critical Reception Critics admired Grotesque for its revealing look into the social hierarchy of Japan, in which women are ranked on looks and are always less powerful than men. In writing about Kirino’s approach to feminist noir in World Literature Today, J. Madison said that “in Kirino’s gritty portrayals of contemporary society, it is women specifically who are cornered and do unimaginable things. . . . Kirino’s novels stand out not just in their sensational elements but also in their convincing realism.” A reviewer for Washington Post Book World wrote, “Kirino’s women speak from beneath the lacquered surfaces of traditional
Japan,” and “[provide] a powerful indictment of that society.” Margy Rochlin, reviewing Grotesque in LA Weekly said that “in Japan, her brainy writing-style mashup is known as ‘Kirino Jynru,’ or a book that borrows freely from several genres but feels beholden to none of their rules.” Sophie Harrison, in a review for the New York Times Book Review, said that with Grotesque, Kirino “dismembers the detective novel . . . hacking off suspense, glamour, mystery and horror to leave a disconcerting stump of a book that fulfills no conventional expectations.” Some reviewers felt the narrator’s hatred overwhelmed the book. “She hates everything, inside of school and out, with an intensity that is at first brilliant but becomes exhausting,” wrote Harrison. Leigh Anne Vrabel, writing in Library Journal, gave the book a mixed review. While acknowledging the success of its intended grotesque effect, she noted that readers may find “the stream of ugliness” ultimately “wearying.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Harrison, Sophie. “Memoirs of a Geisha’s Sister.” New York Times Book Review 15 Apr. 2007: 15. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
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Hongo, Jun. “Law Bends over Backward to Allow ‘Fuzoku.’” Japan Times 27 May 2008. Print. General OneFile. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Jones, Dan. “Good Women and Bad Men.” Spectator 311.9450 (10 Oct. 2009): 39. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Madison, J. “Unimaginable Things: The Feminist Noir of Natsuo Kirino.” World Literature Today 84.1 (Jan./ Feb. 2010): 9. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Pike, Kathleen M., and Amy Borovoy. “The Rise of Eating Disorders in Japan: Issues of Culture and Limitations of the Model of ‘Westernization.’” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28 (2004): 493531. Print. Princeton.edu. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Rochlin, Margy. “Grotesque: Natsuo Kirino’s Dark World.” LA Weekly 5 July 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web 22 Sept. 2010. Tanikawa, Miki. “Free to Be.” New York Times 1 Jan. 2003. Print. NYTimes.com. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Vrabel, Leigh Anne. Review of Grotesque. Library Journal 132.4 (1 Mar. 2007): 74. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. “Working Women.” Washington Post Book World 27 May 2007: 6. Print. General OneFile. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Kirino, Natsuo. “Natsuo Kirino: International Noir.” Pen.org. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. In this transcription of a speech given at the 2005 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, Kirino discusses her background and talks about how she prefers not to be known as a certain type of genre writer, because she fears it will limit her audience. Seaman, Amanda C. Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Print. Seaman explores how five authors, including Kirino, incorporate the issues of consumerism, identity crises, sexual violence, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace in their female-centric crime novels. Gale Resources
“Natsuo Kirino.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors, vol. 283. Print.
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Open Web Sources
Natuso Kirino’s Web site is available in both Japanese and English, which provides a brief biography and synopses of her novels. http://www.kirino-natsuo. com For Further Reading
Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. New York: Knopf, 1997. Print. Golden based this tale of a famous geisha in Kyoto on his extensive interviews with a real-life retired geisha. It is a tale of sex, love, intrigue, and intense, hateful rivalry between two “sisters” for the attention of important men, without whom they will not survive. Kawakami, Sumie. Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman. Translated by Yuko Enomoto. Seattle: Chin Music Press, 2007. Print. Kawakami writes of the sex industry in contemporary Japan through interviews with a variety of women. In various forms, prostitution is pervasive and practiced openly in Japan, but always with a double standard at its core that forbids such pleasure to married women. Kirino, Natsuo. Out. Translated by Stephen Snyder. New York: Kodansha International, 2003. Print. Three women, each forced to work at a boxed-lunch box factory for different reasons, band together to dispose of the murdered body of one of the women’s husbands. Miyabe, Miyuke. All She Was Worth. New York: Kodansha International, 1996. Print. Miyabe is a well-respected writer of crime thrillers, several of which have been translated into English. This novel concerns identity theft, a missing woman, and the intense consumerism of Japanese society in the 1990s. Muller, Karin. Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa. New York: Rodale, 2006. Print. Muller is an American documentary filmmaker who wrote about a year in Japan, searching for harmony and exploring the culture, from judo to sumo wrestlers to samurai. Peace, David. Tokyo Year Zero. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print. Peace, an award-winning novelist who lived in Tokyo for 15 years, based this novel on a real-life serial killer who murdered young women in postWorld War II Tokyo and the drug-addicted, troubled inspector who tries to stop him. Kathleen Wilson
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Half of a Yellow Sun By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
W Introduction Half of a Yellow Sun is the second novel by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Highly acclaimed, this book won the prestigious Orange Broadband Prize for fiction. Stemming from the Adichie family experiences, the story is set in the 1960s during the early days of Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain and during the later civil war between the ruling Hausas of the north and the Igbos of the southeast. Using the point of view of three different people, Adichie focuses on the psychological and material effects of the war on her characters rather than concentrating on the war itself. In particular, the brutality and starvation imposed on the new country of Biafra are memorably described. Central to the plot are fraternal twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, raised in affluence; their lovers Odenigbo, an idealistic professor, and Richard, a British expatriate, respectively; and the professor’s houseboy, Ugwu. Their evolving relationships are marked by love, betrayal, loyalty, and forgiveness. Ugwu matures from an uneducated thirteen-year-old to a revolutionary soldier. Besides the complexities of love, important themes include class and cultural differences and disillusionment. These themes carry messages about moral responsibility, the destructiveness of prejudice, and the need to place love above petty issues. Critics have declared Half of a Yellow Sun a significant addition to the genre of historical fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
Nigeria gained independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960. Two years later, it adopted a constitution and joined the British Commonwealth. The country consisted of 250 ethnic groups religiously
divided between Muslims and Christians. Traditionally the most prominent tribes were the northern Muslim Hausas and Fulanis and the southeastern Christian Igbos. Traditionally the Igbos had republican communities instead of kingdoms, but the British, who favored the Hausas, had established a system of warrant chiefs among the typically ambitious Igbo traders. The Igbos also had an center of intellectual activism at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Here, revolutionary idealists created the motivation and philosophy for rebellion. In 1966 the Hausas massacred thousands of Igbo. As a result, the Igbos tried to secede from Nigeria and set up their own country of Biafra. However, the Biafran territory contained important oil reserves that Nigeria could not afford to let go. Militarily superior and well-financed, Nigeria brutalized Biafra and used blockades of foodstuffs to starve the people of Biafra into submission. The war lasted from July 1967 to January 1970, during which only a few other countries recognized Biafran independence and most showed indifference. The plight of the Biafran people was so extreme that demonstrations against the cruelty were staged in several major cities around the world. Unfortunately, relief funds only served to prolong the misery of the war. Over one million people died. The Red Cross reported at the time that Biafra presented the biggest crisis since World War II. For Africans, the Biafran conflict constituted a dark period in the continent’s history.
W Themes A major theme of Half of a Yellow Sun is love—the various types of love and the complications of love. There is the love between the twin sisters that sometimes gets set aside because of envy and betrayal. There is also the love between Olanna and Odenigbo and between Kainene and Richard. Both affairs are intense and sincere but compromised by infidelity and
511 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Half of a Yellow Sun
MAJOR CHARACTERS RICHARD CHURCHILL, a blond, blue-eyed British journalist, falls in love with ninth-century Igbo-Ukwu art and Kainene. Wanting to belong, he learns Igbo and considers himself Biafran. ODENIGBO is a university mathematics professor and revolutionary idealist whose personal weaknesses result in damaged relationships and unbearable disillusionment. KAINENE OZOBIA, not distracted by beauty, is more focused than her sister and runs part of her father’s business, She is confident, enigmatic, sardonic; she has to learn how to forgive. OLANNA OZOBIA, the beautiful fraternal twin of Kainene, is a sociology teacher who rejects her parents’ wealth and power to live with Odenigbo, yet maintains class standards until the war causes her to truly find herself. UGWU, bright, kind, and discerning, is thirteen when he becomes houseboy to Odenigbo and an observer of the family dynamics and the build up of a revolution. His growth and experiences reflect the moral messages within the story.
failure to commit. The war causes the sisters to learn what is important in their lives, and that is love. After the horrors they witness, family transgressions seem small in comparison. Another important theme concerns class prejudice and cultural assumptions. Adichie clearly shows the differences between the educated elite and village Igbos such as Ugwu’s family and Odenigbo’s mother. Susan exemplifies the superior, colonial attitude of the British. The twins’ parents show the grasping ambition and excess of the newly rich. Democratically sensitive but privileged Olanna is disgusted by the cockroaches in her cousin’s house and tries to keep Baby from playing with low-class children even though they are all in the same desperate situation. Further, Adichie makes the point that the story of the Biafran war is not for the ex-patriot Richard to tell, but belongs to a Biafran. Another theme is that of illusion and disillusionment, promise and devastating disappointment. The ideals of the university elite are severely tested, and the hope of an independent Biafra where the Igbos can be safe from ethnic rivalries is brutally dashed. Intertwined with this theme is a message about the multitude of wars that are incited by prejudice and outside interferences caused by a lust for power and oil.
This photo shows two British businessmen being held prisoner during the Nigerian Civil War, which serves as the backdrop for the novel Half of a Yellow Sun. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
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Half of a Yellow Sun
W Style Adichie breaks the flow of the traditional chronological order of her narrative in two ways. One is that she inserts in eight places in the novel excerpts from a book that one of her characters writes about the experiences of the war. These short excerpts are set off from the rest of the text by a different font, style, and tone; each is introduced by number and the bold heading “The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died.” The excerpts provide information on Nigerian history. Ultimately, Adichie also uses them to make a political point about who should be writing Africa’s stories. The second chronological disruption is the division of the book into four parts, moving back and forth from the early 1960s to the late 1960s with about a four-year break in between. The purpose of the break allows Adichie to concentrate the story on the time when Nigeria was newly independent at the beginning of the decade in contrast to the time of the Biafran war at the end of the decade. Also, by presenting events in the late
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Nigeria in 1977, eight years after both of her grandfathers died in the Biafran war, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in the university town of Nsukka. Her father was a statistics professor and university deputy vice chancellor, and her mother was a registrar. Adichie studied science there for two years, then went to Eastern Connecticut State University for her BA, graduating summa cum laude. She then studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins and African studies at Yale. She received the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, the 2003 O. Henry Prize, and the BBC Short Story Award. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2004), earned several prestigious award nominations and received the Best First Book Award from the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Adichie was granted the 2005-2006 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton and a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. As of 2010, she divided her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Igbo tribesmen prepare for battle. The civil war that started when the Igbo people attempted to form their own nation is the focus of the novel Half of a Yellow Sun. ª Bettmann/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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1960s, then returning to where she left off in the early 1960s, she is able to delay revealing the crisis in the relationship between Olanna and Odenigbo. Although this novel is about a war, Adichie’s emphasis is on characters involved in this situation rather than on politics or the conduct of the war. She uses three narrators with a limited point of view: Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard. The reader is thus given these separate perspectives on events, and Adichie is better able to engineer the presentation of the psychological and moral challenges that her characters face.
W Critical Reception The critical reaction to Half of a Yellow Sun has bordered on awe. John Harding in the Daily Mail stated: “The book paints a massive canvas through intimate detail. It is funny, heartbreaking, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic.” African Business magazine declared “this extraordinary novel” to be “immensely powerful and with a sweeping pace” because its wide scope covers moral responsibility, the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race, and “the way in which love can complicate all of these things.” Ebony magazine added that Adichie “has impressed critics with her vivid, accurate portrayal of some of the significant periods in Nigeria’s history.” Two particular aspects of Adichie’s writing that caught the critics’ attention are her use of language and her narrative strategies. Susan VanZanten Gallagher, in Books and Culture, referred to Adichie’s “Elegant prose sparingly spiced with metaphors and sensual detail.” A review in the Evening Standard declared that “Adichie writes the handsome, straightforward prose wielded only by those with a real story to tell.” In addition Bookstore. com called her language “direct, uncompromising, and shocking in its simplicity.” As for Adichie’s narrative strategies, VanZanten Gallagher called the use of excerpts from The World Was Silent When We Died “brilliant” because it “succinctly supplies the history that forms the background for the intellectual and emotional human drama.” The online review source, Bookmarks, noted that Adichie’s “manipulation of point of view and time adds depth and perspective.” Other critics question the value of the manipulation of chronological time because it may confuse the reader instead of building tension. Nonetheless, the general response from the literary world was that Adichie has a rare talent that may one day rank her among the greatest of novelists. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“From the Motherland: Eight Africans & Their Contributions to the World.” Ebony 63.6 (2008): 112+. Print.
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“Half of a Yellow Sun.” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. African Business Oct. 2006: 65. Print. “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Bookmarks Nov.-Dec. 2006: 37. Web. 19 June 2010. Harding, John. “New Fiction.” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Daily Mail, 18 Aug. 2006: 62. Print. VanZanten Gallagher, Susan. “Remember Biafra?” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Books and Culture 14.1 (2006): 29. Print. “Yellow Grabs the Orange as Gifted Adichie Wins for Novel about Biafra.” Evening Standard, 7 June 2007: n.p. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cheuse, Alan. Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. World Literature Today 81.1 (2007): 7. Print. Comments on the number of good Nigerian writers and the way Adichie adds a psychological element to historical fiction. Hawley, John C. “Biafra as Heritage and Symbol: Adichie, Mbachu, and Iweala.” Research in African Literature 39.2 (2008): 15. Print. Looks at three twenty-first-century treatments of the Biafran conflict: Dulue Mbachu’s War Games, Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beast of No Nation. Kearney, J. A. “The Representation of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Fiction.” Journal of Literary Studies 26.1 (2010): 67. Print. Examines at length the depiction of child soldiers in five novels, including Half of a Yellow Sun. Nixon, Rob. “A Biafran Story.” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. New York Times Book Review 1 Oct. 2006: 9(L). Print. Comments on Adichie’s themes of loyalty and betrayal and the universal elements of her war story. Novak, Amy. “Who Speaks? Who Listens? The Problem of Address in Two Nigerian Trauma Novels.” Studies in the Novel 40.1-2 (2008): 31. Print. Uses Freud to analyze trauma, neocolonialism, and two Nigerian novels, Graceland, by Christopher Abani, and Half of a Yellow Sun. White, E. Frances. “While the World Watched.” Rev. of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Women’s Review of Books 24.3 (2007): 10. Print. Discusses the book-within-a-book technique and the pairing of characters in Half of a Yellow Sun. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Half of a Yellow Sun Gale Resources
“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 June 2010. http://go.galegroup. com Open Web Sources
A Web site is dedicated to Half of a Yellow Sun at www. halfofayellowsun.com, which includes information about Adichie, a synopsis, an excerpt, a list of review quotations, and links to other sources. LitGuides provides a summary of the book, a short biography, several reviews, and excellent discussion questions; this source can be found at www.litlovers. com/guide_half_of_yellow_sun.html “A Blazing Sun—The Storyteller Returns,” by Ikhide R. Ikheloa, is an analytical salute to Half of a Yellow Sun, available at http://wordsbody.blogspot.com/2006/ 10/review-half-of-yellow-sun.html A summary of Half of a Yellow Sun and a list of book review comments is available at www.bookbrowse. com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=1860 A worthwhile review of Half of a Yellow Sun is provided at http://bookstore.com/drama/half-of-a-yellowsun-a-review
tribal life and the changes brought by colonialism and Christianity. Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus: A Novel. New York: Anchor, 2004. Print. Adichie’s first novel, about a wealthy Nigerian teenage girl whose respected family has terrible secrets. ———. The Thing around Your Neck. New York: Knopf, 2009. Short stories depicting the diversity of Nigerians and Nigerian Americans. Forsyth, Frederick. The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2007. By the author of Day of the Jackal, Odessa File, and Dogs of War, written from the author’s experiences as a war correspondent. Adaptations
“Lennon Childhood Film Gets Grant,” bbc.co.uk. BBC News, n.d. Web. 18 July 2008. In 2008 the BBC reported that Biyi Bandele, who wrote a stage play from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, would write the screenplay for a film adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun thanks to a lottery-funded development grant of £39,375 from the U.K. Film Council in partnership with BBC Films. Lois Kerschen
For Further Reading
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print. First published in 1958, depicts Igbo
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A Happy Marriage By Rafael Yglesias
W Introduction Rafael Yglesias’s A Happy Marriage is an autobiographical novel that describes the twenty-seven-year marriage of Enrique Sabas, a novelist and screenplay writer, and Margaret Cohen, a graphic artist turned stay-at-home mother of two. Though the title suggests a blissful union, this novel presents individuals who are nor always happy, nor always faithful, but who make their often uneasy way toward shaping lives defined by one another. Yglesias does here what he has done before: He seeks to understand his life by writing about it. The fictionalized portrait of his marriage to Margaret Joskow, including her untimely death, is both invocation and eulogy. The novelist describes how Enrique and Margaret court, marry, and settle into their professional lives in New York City, have their sons, and move through early difficult years of demanding work and child care, with its side effects of fatigue and diminished libido, toward increased appreciation of each other and mature love. Just entering their fifties and now wealthy with sons doing well in school, Enrique and Margaret face her terminal bladder cancer. This book forces readers to look to the end of life while evaluating and living in the present. Yglesias accomplishes here both a tribute and a warning. In conjuring his wife and their relationship he honors her memory; in the intimate details of her dying, he invites readers to appreciate the all-too-often overlooked opportunity of the present moment.
W Literary and Historical Context
The immediate setting for A Happy Marriage is New York City from the mid-1970s until the early 2000s;
however, references are made to the Bohemian days of the 1950s in Greenwich Village and to urban deterioration and increase in crime during the 1970s. The 1950s and 1960s marked a heyday for abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning, and the 1963 founding of the New York Studio School confirmed New York as the avant-garde art center in the West. Enrique drops out of high school in tenth grade and moves to Greenwich Village, drawn to its cultural mystique, and, like the author of this novel, Enrique publishes his first novel while still in his teens. The action of the novel spans two major national events, the Watergate scandal leading to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. During the intervening decades, the publishing industry became intensely competitive and, in some ways, was subverted by celebrity status and glitz. Literary hopefuls, like Enrique and his friend Bernard, flocked to New York to make it big, and, when producing their works did not pay, a fortunate few among them made their way into related professions, such as writing screenplays and magazine reviews. The novel focuses on a narrow group of rising sophisticates, individuals who make names for themselves and eventually can afford the expensive New York City lifestyle. Contextual factors connected to Margaret’s illness and death include the availability of speedy medical service and luxurious hospital accommodations for those with excellent insurance and cash for large out-of-pocket costs, home hospice services, and burial in an historic cemetery. Enrique’s contacts get Margaret to the front of the line for medical treatment, and her millionaire parents provide the couple with a hotel-like suite at a New York hospital. Such VIP luxury rooms may cost $1,500 per day or more. In the 1960s, choice of hospice services grew with increasing understanding of the dying process. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s psychological study On Death and Dying
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A Happy Marriage
MAJOR CHARACTERS DOROTHY COHEN, Margaret’s controlling mother, has had a difficult relationship with her daughter but is able to express appreciation of her in Margaret’s final days. LAWRENCE COHEN, Margaret’s wealthy father, faces his daughter’s death but cannot reconcile himself to her life being cut short. NATALIE KO is the hospice physician who attends Margaret at home. ENRIQUE SABAS, the protagonist, has a successful career as a novelist and screenwriter. Enrique is married twenty-seven years to Margaret, and he and his wife have two sons, Gregory and Max. GUILLERMO SABAS, Enrique’s father, is a successful author who dies the year before Margaret. MARGARET COHEN SABAS is a graphic designer who marries Enrique Sabas and bears him two sons. She develops bladder cancer and dies in her fifties. ROSE SABAS, Enrique’s mother, is a successful author who lives in a retirement facility after she is widowed.
Photograph of Rafael Yglesias, author of A Happy Marriage. Evan Agostini/Getty Images
(1968) brought end-stage issues to public attention, and increasingly thereafter medical specialists and others affirmed the benefits of hospice care for the dying patient and family members. Margaret chooses a Buddhist rabbi to officiate at her funeral and a grave site in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, which sold a few new plots in the early 2000s and was declared a National Historical Landmark in 2006.
W Themes The primary theme of A Happy Marriage is identified in the novel’s title. The book explores in hindsight one marriage of twenty-seven years. It looks back from a time following the wife’s death, intent on mapping the way this relationship began, developed, and ended. The book explains that because these two individuals remained in their marriage, they learned over years how that relationship defined them as people, what they received from one another, and how their partnership was the essence of their shared lives. Connected to the primary theme is one concerning the effects of a person’s terminal illness on that person’s
BERNARD WEINSTEIN introduces Enrique to Margaret. Early on, Bernard aspires to being a novelist, but over the years, he achieves fame and financial success as a reviewer and television personality. SALLY WINTHROP, one of Margaret’s best friends, has an affair with Enrique.
spouse, children, and extended family members. The book dramatizes the physical, familial, and social changes that occur as the wife declines. It depicts the various and complicated effects her illness has on her husband, their sons, and her parents. This intimate portrait nullifies the barriers, denial, and avoidance that often prevent healthy people from seeing the reality of terminal illness and its effects on both the patient and supportive others. Equally important, the book shows how relatives’ feelings and attitudes change and how much stress is generated by witnessing the dying process. A third theme has to do with how a writer comes to understand his life through writing. The protagonist, Enrique Sabas, is a writer of autobiographical novels. Rafael Yglesias fashioned a novel from his own experience, and that novel examines how writers may seek to find meaning through language and text. The young Enrique is inhibited, and he has trouble communicating his feelings and speaking his own truth. His reticence creates barriers between him and his friends, and it blocks his budding relationship with Margaret Cohen. Later in life, Enrique wonders if being a writer is actually an
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A Happy Marriage
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born May 12, 1954, in New York City, Rafael Yglesias knew early on he wanted to be a writer. The son of famous authors, Jose Yglesias and Helen Yglesias, Rafael dropped out of high school to pursue his writing career and published an autobiographical novel, Hide Fox, and All After, in 1972, when he was eighteen. Yglesias married the artist Margaret Joskow and with her had two sons, Matthew and Nicholas. Matthew Yglesias became an online blog writer. Margaret Yglesias died of cancer in 2004. A Happy Marriage, Yglesias’s his ninth novel, is dedicated to her. As of 2010, Yglesias lived in Greenwich Village.
avoidance strategy. As he faces his wife’s final days, he feels that language itself is useless. Enrique cannot find the moment or the words to convey what he feels. He cannot say thank you and good-bye in a way that makes sense to him. The irony here is that Yglesias successfully finds the words to describe how words fail.
W Style The structure of A Happy Marriage is one of its most interesting stylistic features. The novel has twenty-one titled and numbered chapters. The odd-numbered chapters describe early times in the marriage and the even-numbered ones the final days of Margaret’s life. The chapter titles link in often surprising ways, and details in the end of one chapter often connect in surprising ways with details in the beginning of the next. In chapter eight, Margaret’s parents say where they want their daughter buried, and Enrique has to convey Margaret’s different wishes and help his in-laws accept them. In this chapter, readers learn Margaret has twelve hours to live, and in fact, there are twelve chapters left in the novel. Gradually the distance narrows between the early periods and the final days; put another way, the plot of the past converges eventually with the plot of the present. The novel is written in third-person limited point of view, from the perspective of Enrique, and his perspective shifts through the novel as he ages. For example, in his early twenties Enrique obsesses about his clothes as he prepares for his first date with Margaret; seven years into their marriage, he is self-deluding and manipulative when he attempts to justify to himself his having an affair with Margaret’s best friend; when grief and exhaustion crash inside him in the final days, he is frayed, nervous, and overwhelmed. In part, the purpose is to project through his evolultion what Yglesias calls the “rampless bridge between birth and death” (330).
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W Critical Reception In her review of A Happy Marriage, Malena Watrous wrote that the novel is so “unabashedly autobiographical” as to be virtually “a memoir in the third person.” Indeed, many critics recognized that Yglesias drew on personal experience in characterizing protagonist Enrique Sabas and in describing the death of Enrique’s wife Margaret, and many thought the autobiographical elements strengthened the fictional work. Publishers Weekly described the book as a “devastatingly raw appraisal of a nearly 30-year marriage.” Joanna Burkhardt wrote that it is a “picture of how a successful marriage comes to be—and ends.” Jo-Ann Veillette-Stonehart added, “The book is a poignant story of what it means to share life and death with someone.” Several critics pointed out that the marital relationship comes into focus when the spouses confront terminal illness. A Publishers Weekly review stressed the “blunt, heart-wrenching detail” of the wife’s decline and the husband’s “selfish desire to postpone his loss.” Also praising the description, Watrous wrote, “This is real intimacy, the hard-earned kind between two people who have chosen to stick it out to the end.” The mystery of their marriage, according to Watrous, “propels the book forward.” Carolyn Kubisz described the book as “beautifully written,” an affirmation that “a marriage, and the people who form it, don’t have to be perfect to be happy.” About the characterization of Enrique, Scott Muskin found it deficient, pointing out that the self-absorbed protagonist “ego-tripped through courtship, kids, infidelity and therapy pretty much like a big, fat baby.” Kirkus Reviews agreed, finding Enrique “both unlikable and impossible to take seriously.” Muskin and the Kirkus Reviews writer also agreed that the back story is problematic: Muskin wrote that it “obscured” the present story about Margaret’s decline; the other stated that it “devolves into confessional.” Kirkus concluded negatively that “Yglesias knows how to pluck the heartstrings but flounders in the execution.” In the final judgment, Muskin disagreed: “In prose that flexes with unflinching confidence, Yglesias parts the hospital curtain to show not just death’s indignities . . . but also its tender comedy, small reprieves and surreal turns of fortune.” Despite these criticisms, the novel succeeded for many readers. Librarian Pam Locker listed the best novels of 2009 in alphabetical order, giving the H to A Happy Marriage. Indeed, many critics seemed to agree that this is a novel worth reading. But Veillette-Stonehart gave a warning about the novel’s emotional impact: “Be prepared . . . to appreciate through the author’s eyes what it is like to truly love another, in sickness and in health, until death.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Burkhardt, Joanna M. “Yglesias, Rafael. A Happy Marriage.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Library Journal 1 May 2009: 73. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“Yglesias, Rafael: A Happy Marriage.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Kirkus Reviews 1 June 2009. Print. “A Happy Marriage.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Publishers Weekly 23 Mar. 2009: 42. Print. Kubisz, Carolyn. “A Happy Marriage.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Booklist 1 May 2009: 63 +. Print. Locker, Pam. “The Very Best Novels from 2009, from A to Z.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Evansville Courier and Press 10 Jan. 2010. Print. Muskin, Scott. “Tough and Tender, This ‘Marriage’ Enlightens.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Minneapolis Star Tribune 19 July 2009. Print. Veilette-Stonehart, Jo-Ann. “Recommended Readings.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. Commonweal 4 Dec. 2009. Print. Watrous, Malena. “Terminal Bliss.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias. nytimes.com. New York Times July 16, 2009. Web. 29 July 2010. Yglesias, Rafael. A Happy Marriage. New York: Scribner’s, 2009. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Smith, Dinitia. “A Novel of the Author’s Affair with His Wife, until Cancer Did Them Part.” Rev. of A Happy Marriage, by Rafael yglesias. newyorktimes.com. New York Times, 26 July 2009. Web. 29 July 2010. Affirms the novelist has turned his life into a work of art. Gale Resources
“Rafael Yglesias.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GA LE%7CH1000108906&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w
Open Web Sources
Rafael Yglesias maintains a Web site at http://rafaelygle sias.com, which provides information about publica tions and events and links to radio interviews with Terry Gross and Leonard Lopate. For Further Reading
Cairns, Moira, et al. Transitions in Dying and Bereavement: A Psychosocial Guide for Hospice and Palliative Care. Baltimore: Health Professions Press, 2003. Print. Describes what terminally ill patients and their families experience while receiving hospice and palliative support. Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: A Literary Anthology. New York: Library of America, 2008. Print. Over one hundred short stories that together draw a portrait of New York and celebrate the onehundredth anniversary of the unification of its five boroughs. Metcalf, Peter, and Richard Huntington. Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. Explores various subjects related to death, ritual, and grief, including different cultures and practices in the United States. Rutherfurd, Edward. New York: A Novel. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Print. By the author of Sarum, a fictional history of generations of families that span the history of New York. Yglesias, Rafael. Fearless. New York: Grand Central, 1993. Print. Tells the aftermath for two passengers who survive a plane crash after taking off from New York City.
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Harbor By Lorraine Adams
W Introduction Lorraine Adams’s Harbor is a satiric thriller that explores the negative implications of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, established following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, and the dangers of racial profiling in the pre- and post-9/11 era. The protagonist, Aziz, is a 24-year-old immigrant to America who escapes horrors in his homeland of Algeria only to find himself at the center of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case. Although Aziz is innocent, the FBI believes he is part of a terrorist cell, in large part due to their own misinterpretation of events as well as their mistrust of his ethnicity. The bulk of the novel focuses on Aziz’s life in America, but the narrative contains flashbacks to his earlier life in Algeria, shedding light on the circumstances that led him to flee his homeland. The latter portion of the novel reveals the FBI's point of view, and is awash in dramatic irony as Adams reveals the prejudices that inform the FBI investigation and guide their assumptions about Aziz. Adams won the Fourth Annual Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) First Novel Award for Harbor in 2004, as well as the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from the Los Angeles Times. The novel was also nominated for an Orange Prize in the United Kingdom.
W Literary and Historical Context
The attacks of September 11, 2001, a seminal event in recent American history, serve as the basis for the plot in Harbor. In a violent and coordinated terrorist attack, members of a militant Islamic group known as al-Qaeda commandeered numerous U.S. commercial jets—all of which were full of passengers at the time—and flew them into important U.S. landmarks, the most prominent of
which were the two planes that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., while the fourth came down in rural Pennsylvania, thanks to passengers and flight crew who managed to thwart the hijackers, but not soon enough to save themselves. None of the flights had any survivors, and the death toll, including passengers and on-ground victims, totalled nearly 3,000. In the wake of these horrifying attacks, the entire Western world, and particularly the United States, went on the alert for other terrorist attacks. An unfortunate side effect of the effort to increase homeland security measures was the increase of racial profiling. Specifically, in the wake of September 2001, people of Arabic or Middle Eastern descent and/or practicing Muslims are often subjected to a greater level of scrutiny than people of other ethnicities or races. Harbor presents the story of an innocent man of Algerian origin who is reluctantly involved in petty criminal activity upon his arrival in America. These actions cause the FBI to misconstrue him as part of a terrorist cell. Aziz’s treatment by the U.S. government is eerily similar to the abuse he suffered under his own government.
W Themes Harbor explores how fear can cause those in power to make decisions that threaten the civil liberties of the very people they are sworn to protect. Harbor uses Aziz’s story to analyze the ambiguities of situations similar to those in America in the post-September 11 era. On the one hand, Homeland Security had good cause for their concern. The world was a very frightening place immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11. On the other hand, many people believe that the sense of insecurity following the September 11 terrorist attacks allowed the American government nearly free license to pursue methods of inquiry that were disturbing and racist. Harbor demonstrates how easy it is for an entire
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race/ethnicity or religion to be held suspect following the dreadful actions of a small, militant contingency. Adams demonstrates how, for some people, the United States can be just as oppressive an environment as the totalitarian regimes from which such people hoped to escape. While in his native land of Algeria, Aziz explains the abuses he wants to leave behind: “[T]here was nothing Antar [a warlord] did not believe was his right. There were those among Antar’s men who took to depravity the way birds take to air. They had imaginations bloated with ways to inflict suffering” (157). While the FBI agents are not willfully cruel, the novel demonstrates how their resulting actions are just as harmful.
MAJOR CHARACTERS AZIZ is an illegal American immigrant, who escapes Algeria only to find himself the center of a federal investigation in the wake of September 11. GHAZI is a charismatic young man, also an Algerian immigrant to the United States. He suffers from depression and is obsessed with Al Pacino films. HEATHER is Rafik’s plump, American girlfriend, whom the others view as pampered and whiny. MOURAD is Aziz’s brother, who has the good fortune to receive a green card.
W Style Harbor places the reader directly into action, limiting the reader’s viewpoint to that of Aziz and a few of his compatriots. According to Amy Driscoll, critic for Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, the novel has “no overview or omniscient narrator; the novel is largely internal and almost myopic, the scope of vision confined to what Aziz and his friends see.” This serves to make the paranoia within Aziz’s group about the FBI’s investigation
RAFIK, Aziz’s first contact upon arriving in America, is involved in all sorts of illegal activity, including fencing stolen merchandise, such as materials to make bombs.
seem more palpable. For a majority of the narrative, the reader is denied the larger picture, and is limited to the viewpoint of the main characters, as they struggle with the fear of being watched.
Cargo ships at Boston Harbor. In Harbor, Aziz sneaks into America by stowing away in a tanker ship traveling to Boston. Pierdelune/ Shutterstock.com
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lorraine Adams is the author of two novels, Harbor and The Room and the Chair, both of which are heavily informed by her former job as an investigative journalist. She worked for the Washington Post for eleven years and won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on civil rights violations by Texas police. In 2000 she was assigned to investigate a story on terrorism, during the course of which she came to know a group of young refugees from Algeria under surveillance by the FBI. She ended up resigning from her journalism job over philosophical disagreements with her employers regarding these young men, and wrote Harbor as a result. She wanted to tell the story that the Post had refused to publish.
The focus shifts quite deliberately at a few key points in the novel. The novel is interspersed with what Driscoll refers to as “increasingly vivid flashbacks.” Sometimes these take the form of flashbacks to Aziz’s life in Algeria, illustrating the compelling reasons that drove him to leave. At other times, the shifts in focus mirror some of the hardships he faces in the United States, ironically highlighting the fact that his escape to the United States did not result in the freedom he seeks. The latter portion of the book includes a few chapters from the perspective of the FBI agents. These sections mirror the myopic style of the chapters written from Aziz’s perspective. Focusing on the FBI’s point of view, these chapters allow the reader to see the reasons why the investigators come to misconstrue Aziz and his friends’ actions throughout the novel, making a pointed statement about the moral ambiguity and dilemma behind some of the actions taken by Homeland Security.
W Critical Reception Lorraine Adams’s Harbor was highly acclaimed when it was first released. It went on to win the Fourth Annual VCU First Novel Award in 2004 and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from the Los Angeles Times. It was additionally nominated for an Orange Prize in the United Kingdom, which celebrates excellent, original, and accessible women’s writing from around the world. Amy Driscoll of Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service called Harbor a “razor-sharp debut novel” that presents an “intimate exploration of the nature of terrorism and political sanctuary in modern-day America. It’s a vivid, fast-paced entry into an immigrant’s story that is part thriller, part social commentary and at times darkly funny.” She went on to praise the novel for managing to capably blend its satirical and thriller elements. Adams “has written a terrific book,” Driscoll wrote, “weaving
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suspense and dread in rhythms that grow even more rapid as the novel concludes. With its relevant references to terrorism and staggering hallucinatory intensity, Harbor leaves the reader reeling, wondering—as we do so often in life—how much is real and how much delusion.” Neil Gordon, in the New York Times Book Review found Adams’s accomplishment quite remarkable. He elaborated by saying that it is “easy to explain how Lorraine Adams knows so much about the illegal Algerian community in America, about credit card fraud, terrorism and F.B.I. investigations,” noting that the novel is based on Adams’s reporting for the Washington Post. “What’s harder to explain,” he continued, “is how Adams is able to draw us so convincingly into the reality of her cast: These characters are the product of a viruoso act of the imagination. . . . ” He found the novel a “remarkable act of artistic empathy . . . [that] dramatize[s] not just the awful nature of our strife-filled world but all the hopeless complexity of its ethical and cultural roots.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adams, Lorraine. Harbor. New York: Vintage, 2004. Print. Driscoll, Amy. “Fast-Paced Novel Harbor Explores Nature of Terrorism, Sanctuary.” Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service 2 Sept. 2004: K3813. Print. Gordon, Neil. “Under Surveillance.” New York Times Book Review 5 Sept. 2004: 7. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Publishers Weekly 251.24 (2004): 41. Print. This review provides an excellent recap of Harbor’s major plots and characters. Lewis, Debi. “Adams, Lorraine. Harbor.” Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Booklist July 2004: 1815. Print. This review praises Adams for revealing complex ambiguities, allowing her readers to draw their own conclusions. Ollerer, Coletta. “Harbor.” Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Reviewer’s Bookwatch Mar. 2005. Print. This review examines Harbor as a novel structured in three layers—Aziz’s backstory, his life in America, and the FBI’s perception of him. Reese, Jennifer. “Pearl of a Harbor: Lorraine Adams’s Extraordinary Debut Traces Muslim Immigrants in America.” Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Entertainment Weekly 20 Aug. 2004: 129. Print. This review analyzes the novel as a new twist on the immigrant experience genre. Rungren, Lawrence. “Adams, Lorraine. Harbor.” Rev. of Harbor, by Lorraine Adams. Library Journal 129.11 TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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(2004): 56. Print. This review defines the different meanings of the word harbor and how they relate to Adams’s novel. Open Web Sources
Lorraine Adams’s official Web site features articles and reviews about Adams’s work, a biography, information about events and appearances, excerpts of her upcoming work and more. http://lorraineadams.net/ For Further Reading
Adams, Lorraine. The Room and the Chair. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print. The Room and the Chair also deals with the war on terror. Eggers, Dave. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. New York: Vintage, 2007. Print. This novel by Dave Eggers examines the immigrant experience in America, and compares and contrasts the hardships experienced in the
protagonist’s own country with his experiences upon arriving in America. Goldsmith, Jack. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment inside the Bush Administration. New York: Norton, 2009. Print. This work examines the George W. Bush administration’s stance on civil liberties. Meyer, Jane. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. New York: Anchor, 2009. Print. This book examines what it perceives as abuses wrought by the American government in its attempt to subdue terrorism. Rehnquist, William H. All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print. This book explores the tradition, throughout American history, of dealing with the issue of civil liberties during wartime.
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The Harmony Silk Factory By Tash Aw
W Introduction Tash Aw’s debut novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, tells the story of Johnny Lim, a businessman from humble beginnings who rose to prominence in Malaysia in the 1930s and 1940s. Set against the backdrop of British colonialism, the underground swell of communism, and the threat of the eventual Japanese invasion, the story unfolds through the accounts of three separate narrators, who each reveal different, and often conflicting, versions of Johnny Lim’s life and personal character. The first section is narrated by his son Jasper, whose bitter account seeks to expose his father as a liar, a traitor, and a murderer. As Alfred Hickling writes, “You wouldn’t expect a character to come back from an assassination like that,” but the next two accounts—one in the diary of Lim’s wife, Snow, and the other from his best friend, the Brit Peter Wormwood, now living out the remainder of his life in a rest home near Malacca—paint a very different picture of Lim. According to Alice Jones, “Aw’s prose is beautifully wrought and thoughtful, switching with agility between comedy, suspense, romance, and lyrical description.” The novel is full of ambiguities, but while loose ends abound, in Lucy Clark's view, “answers may be elusive, satisfaction is not. It’s a lovely book.”
W Literary and Historical Context
When asked by Aviva Tuffield by Aviva Tuffield to describe his novel The Harmony Silk Factory, Tash Aw replies: “I can’t because the whole point of it was to make it indescribable. It was an attempt to refresh and change the whole genre of the Second World War novel. It’s a war story without the war, there is very little war action in it. It’s a love story and a ghost story and a psychological thriller and a road trip all squashed into a form that
purports to be a historical war novel.” The author wrote his novel as a deliberate response to stories such as those by Somerset Maugham, which also depict Malaysia in the 1930s and 1940s and which Aw describes as “incredibly bad.” Tired of reading accounts of Southeast Asia where “white men in smoking jackets sit around drinking gin,” Aw, as he told Sean Yoong, hoped “to tweak Malaysia’s historical image in literature” by penning a “novel that was very faithful to Malaysia, a levelheaded story that isn’t at all exotic or sentimental.” Because much of the storytelling in Malaysia is based on oral tradition, the country does not have an extensive literature, as Tuffield has observed. Aw hopes to help change this. He set The Harmony Silk Factory in the 1930s and 1940s, and his second novel, Map of the Invisible World, takes place in Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1960s. Aw tells Bron Sibree that this progression through time is part of his plan to “map the emotional landscape of Southeast Asia over the course of the past six or seven decades . . . to reclaim Southeast Asian history and force Southeast Asian literature into the limelight. I want to write about Southeast Asia in a way that no one has seen before. I’m just reclaiming it for myself.”
W Themes Tash Aw believes “it is not the novelist’s role to answer questions but to pose them” (qtd. in De Guzman). In The Harmony Silk Factory, the questions are, who is Johnny Lim, and whose version of events are to be believed? Jasper Lim sets out to tell “The True Story of the Infamous Chinaman Called Johnny” and calls his father “a liar, a cheat, a traitor and a skirt chaser. Of the very highest order.” As each narrator gives his or her personal account of events, Charmaine Chan notes, Johnny is revealed, in turn, to be a murderer, a hero, a traitor, a loyal friend, a “country bumpkin and sophisticate,” a communist leader, an informant for the Japanese, and a simple working-class Chinese man in awe of his
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beautiful wife. The novel’s overarching themes are the reinvention of personal histories and, in Carlene Ellwood's words, the “inherent flaws of memory.” Aw states that “each narrator tries to convince you that his/her version is really what happened . . . and the inconsistencies in their narrative show how difficult that is” (qtd. in Nayar). Peter I. Barta argues that the novel “carefully integrates assumptions, not only about the existence of a unified human subject, but, more importantly, about the very possibility of constructing any unified body of knowledge. The novel also deals heavily with the idea of the outsider or the disenfranchised. “It’s possible to be an outsider in your own country,” Aw states in the New Zealand Herald. “It’s possible to feel like you’re living in the margins of that society.” In The Harmony Silk Factory, Aw tells Emine Saner, “[e]very character is an outsider, even if they’ve never left their place of birth, they just don’t sit comfortably with the people around them.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS FREDERICK HONEY is a pompous British businessman and a friend of Snow’s father. MAMORU KUNICHIKA is the head of the Japanese secret police, who accompanies Johnny, Snow, Peter, and Honey on their voyage to the Islands of the Seven Maidens. JASPER LIM is Johnny Lim’s son, and the first narrator of the book. JOHNNY LIM is the elusive subject of the novel, a successful Chinese businessman whose story is told from three separate narrative viewpoints, none of them his own. SNOW SOONG is Johnny Lim’s beautiful young wife, whose diary narrates the second section of the book. TIGER TAN is the original owner of the the Harmony silk factory, who bequeaths it to Johnny.
W Style Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory is written from three separate narrative viewpoints, in three distinct styles. According to the author, the first narrator, Johnny Lim’s
PETER WORMWOOD, a British man living in Malaysia, is Johnny’s best friend and confidant.
In The Harmony Silk Factory, Johnny Lim is a descendant of Chinese laborers who worked in the mines. Lisa Wiltse/Bloomberg via Getty Images TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Harmony Silk Factory
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tash Aw, born in Taipei, Taiwan, was raised in Malaysia, and moved to England at the age of eighteen to study law at Cambridge University. Aw worked as a lawyer for four years, writing The Harmony Silk Factory when he could find the time. After he had saved enough money, he quit the law firm to enroll in the creative-writing program at the University of East Anglia, where he completed the novel. The book was published quickly after its completion, and won the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award) for Best First Novel, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Aw’s second book, Map of the Invisible World, has also received great critical acclaim. The author lives in London, but makes several yearly trips to rural Malaysia to visit his grandparents, and give workshops to young writers. He follows a selfimposed, strict work schedule, writing each day from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm. “The big danger,” Aw tells Paul Lloyd, “is that if you’re not disciplined you can just flush your whole day down the loo.” The author is grateful to be a working writer, he says to Bron Sibree, and confesses “I think I was made in some way to live with words.”
son Jasper, “speaks in the way an educated Malaysian would, which is grammatically correct but not very idiomatic” (qtd. in Barta). His second narrator, Snow Soong, Johnny’s wife, tells her version of events through diary entries. Snow’s section of the novel, which tells of a voyage to the group of islands known as The Seven Maidens, takes on a dreamlike quality that borders on magical realism, as Luke Beesley notes. Indeed, her diary begins, “Accept your fate . . . Mother’s words invade my dreams” (137). After a strong storm washes the small crew overboard, they camp on one of the islands, and Snow is haunted by strange cries in the night it seems only she can hear. Aw comments, “The big element in Malay rural tradition is the ghost story. In Snow’s section, the landscape is very threatening and heightened” (qtd. in Ghosh). The third section of the narrative is told by the British Peter Wormwood, and “most of the book’s intertextuality occurs in Peter’s section” Aw tells Barta. It is also the only section to include any British slang. According to Neel Mukherjee, writing for the Times, “Where Aw emerges as uncontested winner is in the subtle modulations of the three narratorial voices. From the clunky unreliability of Jasper, through the pellucid prose of Snow’s journal to the intelligent, slightly camp,
Johnny Lim’s ancestors in the novel The Harmony Silk Factory spent their lives doing backbreaking work mining precious metals, like those pictured here, for very little pay. Lisa Wiltse/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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aesthetic eloquence of Wormwood, Aw orchestrates a graceful ballet of dissonances and congruences, of echoes and discords.” The result is prose that, in Clark’s opinion, is “lucid, uncluttered, beautiful . . . and fluid, not unlike the beauty found in a length of silk.”
W Critical Reception The Harmony Silk Factory was well-received by critics, though one area where opinions differed was the structure of the novel, with its three shifting narrative perspectives. According to Carlo Wolff, writing in the Denver Post, the concept is good, but “thinks better than it reads.” Aw “writes with what seems like effortless fluidity,” Alfred Hickling maintains, “yet the dazzling haze of the construction seems ultimately designed to deflect attention from the fact that it frequently demands patient re-reading without really deserving it.” However, Publishers Weekly notes “the chief benefit of this structural trick is to make palpable the limitations of each character’s perspective, and that’s no mean feat.” These limitations paint a contradictory portrait of Johnny Lim, which bothered some reviewers. “Their interpretations are too diverse. There is no subtlety. . . . [For] the son and wife to see such enormous variations in character is too unbelievable,” Alyson Rudd asserts. Paramita Ghosh takes issue with each character’s reference to Lim as “inscrutable.” “The book’s stumbling block is its core. At its heart is the same old cliché of the inscrutable East that the writer seems to have peddled and criticized at the same time.” Most reviewers, however, find the “deliciously unreliable” narrators, in Tom Adair’s description, one of the book’s most appealing qualities. Ultimately, critics agree with Anita Sethi’s view that “it is these frayed seams, these broken ties—the constant clutching after, yet eluding of connection—that exert the most powerful emotional pull.” “Like a bolt of raw silk,” Alfred Hickling observes, “Tash Aw’s debut can be a little rough and transparent in places. But perhaps one ought to accept the inconsistencies as integral to the effect.” Neel Mukherjee was among the critics who did not love the narrative device, but “in a book as bewitchingly written and gracefully assured as this, it’s hardly worth quibbling about, particularly when the author makes such dazzling use of his strengths: a sense of unraveling mystery, a devastating revelation towards the end, a complexity that defies a neat tying of all the threads or pat answers.” As Adair comments, “In less gifted hands it would have all imploded. But Tash Aw sings it like a chorus, in perfect pitch, in a book to be prized.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adair, Tom. “The Harmony Silk Factory: A Trio of Truths.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash
Aw. Scotsman [Edinburgh] 26 Mar. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Aw, Tash. The Harmony Silk Factory. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Print. Barta, Peter I. “In Search of Knowledge: Voicing the Void in Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory.” Intertexts 9.2 (2005): 105+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Barta, Peter I. “The Post-colonial Novel: An Interview with Tash Aw.” Intertexts 22 Sept. 2005. Highbeam Research. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Beesley, Luke. “The Colour of Subtlety.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Courier Mail [Queensland, Australia] 28 May 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Chan, Charmaine. “The Harmony Silk Factory.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. South China Morning Post 10 July 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Clark, Lucy. “Layered Yarn Spun from Fine Silk.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Sunday Telegraph [Sydney] 12 June 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. De Guzman, Amanda. “A Book with No Message.” Business Times Singapore 5 June 2009. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Ellwood, Carlene. “A Story of Love, Regret, and Guilt.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Sunday Tasmanian [Australia] 19 June 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Ghosh, Paramita. “Singing in the Diaspora.” Hindustan Times [New Delhi] 8 Feb. 2009. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. “The Harmony Silk Factory.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Publishers Weekly 252.7 (14 Feb. 2005): 52. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Hickling, Alfred. “Saturday Review: Fiction: Bound in Tropes of Silk: Alfred Hickling Is Maddened and Charmed by a Malayan Adventure.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Guardian [London] 26 Mar. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Jones, Alice. “The Independent Book Group: A Protean Figure amid the Jungle.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Independent [London] 7 Oct. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. “Living in the Margins.” New Zealand Herald 14 May 2009. Print. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.
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Lloyd, Paul. “Meet the Author: Tash Aw; Wrapped in Aw.” Advertiser 30 July 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Mukherjee, Neel. “A Malayan Mystery; Fiction.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. The Times [London] 26 Feb. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Rudd, Alyson. “The Harmony Silk Factory; We Say. . . . ” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Times [London] 18 Feb. 2006. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Saner, Emine. “An Overnight Success? It’s Taken Me 12 Years to Win the Whitbread; He Was the Surprise Winner of This Week’s Novel Award, but as Author Tash Aw Reveals, He’s Always Been an Outsider.” Evening Standard [London] 6 Jan. 2006. Highbeam Research. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Sethi, Anita. “The Friday Book: Unravelling the Strands of Memory.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Independent [London] 11 Mar. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Sibree, Bron. “Veil Lifts on Hidden History.” Courier Mail [Australia] 16 May 2009. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Tuffield, Aviva. “Colonial Fantasies Laid to Rest.” EXTRA 28 Aug. 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Wolff, Carlo. “WWII in Malaysia, through a Lens Vaguely.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Denver Post 27 Mar. 2005. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Yoong, Sean. “Malaysian Author’s International Success Buoys Country’s Literary Hopes.” AP Worldstream 22 July 2005. Highbeam Research. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
language is adapted and remade both in the postcolonial novel, and the world at large. Gee, Maggie. “In a Jungle of Emotions; Fiction.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Sunday Times [London] 6 Mar. 2005: 53. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In her slightly mixed review of The Harmony Silk Factory, Gee feels the influence of Joseph Conrad is too heavily felt in Aw’s novel. “Hot off the Press.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Straits Times [Singapore] 4 Sept. 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. A mixed review of Aw’s novel that speaks specifically to the strength of the final third of the book. Jones, Alice. “The Independent Book Group: Smoothness in Triplicate; Alice Jones Reveals Your Views on The Harmony Silk Factory.” Rev. of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Independent [London] 7 Oct. 2005: 26. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. The Independent Book Group members share their views of Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory. McCarthy, Marian. “Silky Prose in a Debut to Be in Aw Of.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. Age [Melbourne] 18 June 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. In this very positive review, McCarthy cites the author’s refusal to give any concrete answers as one of the book’s biggest strengths. Nayar, Parvathi. “Writing with a Sense of Nostalgia; Parvathi Nayar Talks to Tash Aw, the Winner of the Whitbread First Novel, and Reviews His The Harmony Silk Factory.” Business Times Singapore 27 Jan. 2006. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Rabalais, Kevin. “No Place Like Home.” Weekend Australia 9 May 2009. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.
Cheuse, Alan. “A Poor Malaysian Boy Does Well, Then Falls Far.” Review of The Harmony Silk Factory, by Tash Aw. San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Apr. 2005. Print. SFGate. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. A very favorable review of Aw’s novel, calling it a “beautifully composed and memorable story.”
Gale Resources
Cuthbert, Denise. “Whose English Is It Anyhow? Denise Cuthbert Suggests How Traditional Tools of Western Dominance, Including the English Language, May Be Fruitfully Adapted and Redeployed by Former Colonial Nations.” Meanjin 66.2 (2007): 81+. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In her essay, Cuthbert demonstrates the relationship forged with the English language in formerly colonized nations, and the ways in which the English
The Web site for the Costa Book Awards, formerly called the Whitbread Prize, gives information about the award, lists of past winners, and submission information. There are also links to any current contests and promotions running on the site, such as the Six Book Challenge, which provides incentives and creative reading activities for adults wishing to improve their literary skills. http://www.costabookawards.com/ index.aspx
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“Tash Aw.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
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Tash Aw’s official Web site includes biographical information about the author and his novels and awards. http://www.tash-aw.com/Tash_Aw_ Author_Website/About.html For Further Reading
Aw, Tash. Map of the Invisible World. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010. Print. Tash Aw’s second novel takes place in 1960s Indonesia and Malaysia, as it narrates the parallel lives of separated siblings Adam, who searches for his adoptive father, Karl, after he is kidnapped, and Johan, who lives with a wealthy Malaysian family in Kuala Lumpur. Chee, Kee Hua. “The Man behind the Author.” Star Online 12 June 2005. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In this short interview with Tash Aw, he discusses his newfound fame as a novelist. Doreian, Robyn. “Tash Aw; The Books That Changed Me.” Sun Herald [Sydney] 16 Oct. 2005. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Aw discusses some of the books that have had an impact on his life and writing. Eng, Tan Twan. The Gift of Rain. New York: Weinstein Books, 2008. Print. Tan Twan Eng’s first novel tells the story of Philip Hutton—half-Chinese and the youngest son of a successful British trader in Penang, Malaysia— growing up just before and during World War II.
hard times, Tash Aw was inspired to use three separate narrative viewpoints for his novel. Faulkner’s work is told from the points of view of the three Compson brothers, Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, with an additional fourth section told in the third person, without a single first-person narrator. Koch, Christopher. The Year of Living Dangerously. London: Michael Joseph, 1978. Print. Christopher Koch’s novel follows a group of expatriate journalists in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1965, before and during the overthrow of President Sukarno. Mohan, Ambikaipaker. “As Malay Dying; AngloMalaysian Author Tash Aw Discusses His Faulkneresque Debut Novel.” Austin AmericanStatesman 11 Sept. 2005: K5. Print. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In this interview, Aw discusses the subject of British colonialism in Malaysia, and the ways in which it has been portrayed by British writers. Nagu, Suzieana Uda. “A Tale to Tell.” New Straits Times 29 April 2007. Highbeam Research. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Aw talks with Nagu about traveling to promote The Harmony Silk Factory, and discusses beginning work on his second novel. Bisanne Masoud
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929. Print. After reading Faulkner’s classic story of a Mississippi family fallen on
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The “Harry Potter” Series By J. K. Rowling
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
The “Harry Potter” series (1997-2007), is comprises of seven volumes and three supplemental books that have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide. The story of a boy wizard whose fate is to thwart the most powerful dark wizard in history, the series has received numerous awards, including the British Book Award, the Nestlé Smarties Gold Award, the Hugo Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for children’s literature. Available in more than 200 countries and translated into 64 languages, the Harry Potter saga is one of the most popular children’s series of all time, as well as a pop culture phenomenon. Written in third person, the books follow Harry Potter from his unassuming beginnings living in a cupboard under the stairs to his discovery that he is not only a wizard, but a famous one, since his survival of a killing curse from the evil Lord Voldemort temporarily defeated the dark lord. Over seven books, Harry grows from an eleven-year-old child to a competent seventeen-year-old wizard, who makes the adult decision to face down Voldemort once and for all. As much a series of mysteries or British school novels as they are fantasies, the books explore very real themes of growing up, struggling with loss, and doing the right thing. They embrace the classic tropes of good versus evil, follow the pattern of the mythic hero, and make great use of fairy-tale elements from tales around the world. J. K. Rowling’s alternate world of wizardly magic has introduced new vocabulary—“muggles” for nonmagical people, or “quidditch,” the most famous wizarding sport— into pop culture and created one of the most popular series of all time.
Context
By the end of the twentieth century, the fantasy genre already had ardent fans, and children’s fantasy novels were a well established medium. The publication of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937 and his subsequent Lord of the Rings trilogy helped to define many of the tropes that became standard in fantasy. But J. K. Rowling, who told Lev Grossman in 2005 that she had never finished The Lord of the Rings, used tropes while also working to turn the genre on its head, avoiding the escapism common in other fantasy novels. “I was trying to subvert the genre,” Rowling told Grossman in Time. “Harry goes off into this magical world, and is it any better than the world he’s left? Only because he meets nicer people. Magic does not make his world better significantly. The relationships make his world better. Magic in many ways complicates his life.” The fantasy content in the series drew crowds of antiwitchcraft protesters and censors. The books were often pulled from school library shelves and school book sales. A group of students in Zeeland, Michigan, formed one of the first anticensorship groups to defend the books, calling themselves Muggles for Harry Potter. Supported by the American Booksellers for Freedom of Expression, the group fought to be allowed to read the books without restriction, and in May 2000, the books were returned to shelves in school libraries. The series continued to face censorship throughout its publication, topping the American Library Association’s list of top one hundred banned books of the decade from 2000-2009.
W Themes Over the course of the Harry Potter series, the three primary characters grow up from eleven-year-old
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ALBUS DUMBLEDORE is the headmaster of Hogwarts, a boarding school for young witches and wizards. Though he begins the series as a mentor with a special interest in Harry, he grows as a character, with human foibles and flaws, until his childhood and teenage passions are revealed in the final book of the series. HERMIONE GRANGER, one of Harry’s two companions instrumental in helping Harry defeat Voldemort, is known for her quick thinking and book smarts. Early in the series, she is a stick-in-the-mud about breaking the rules, but as she is drawn further into Ron and Harry’s intrigues, she becomes adept at navigating the gray areas between the rules. DRACO MALFOY is Harry’s primary rival. A full-blooded wizarding aristocrat, Malfoy dedicates himself to the cause of Voldemort. But as he realizes the risks of angering his chosen master, he suffers, mirroring what may have happed to Harry if he had chosen the path of darkness himself.
J. K. Rowling, author of The “Harry Potter” Series, autographs copies of her book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Ric Francis, File
beginning students into accomplished magic-wielding adults, capable of making decisions that impact not only their lives but the larger world as well. The classic theme of coming of age is explored not only through Harry Potter, but through his companions Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. That their journey from childhood to adulthood happens over seven books, which were published over the course of ten years, meant that the reading audience who began at the age of the characters when the series started roughly paralleled their aging process. As horror writer and critic Stephen King wrote in Entertainment Weekly, “Jo Rowling’s kids grew up . . . and the audience grew up with them.” Like many epic tales, the Harry Potter series revolves around the struggle between the hero and the villain, between good and evil. But while some roles are clear— Harry is always the hero and Voldemort, always the villain—there are many shades of gray in between, making it difficult at times for the characters to know whom they can trust. That moral complexity deepens the stories, keeping them from offering easy answers. Though magic solves many problems, it creates them as well, and though it is often used by Rowling to move the plot
HARRY POTTER is the young hero of the series. Born to two talented wizards, Harry is targeted by Voldemort with a spell meant to kill the child. Instead, the spell rebounds against Voldemort, marking Harry forever as The Boy Who Lived. As Harry learns more about his family history, he grows in his own magical abilities until at last he confronts, and defeats, the evil wizard. SEVERUS SNAPE, the potions master at Hogwarts for the first five books, is the most ambiguous character in the novels. Once a follower of Voldemort, he has sworn his allegiance to Dumbledore. In order to serve as a spy against Voldemort’s people, he must pretend to be loyal to Voldemort, and his actions make this loyalty seem the truth. Snape hates Harry due to his previous rivalry with Harry’s father, but is pledged to protect the boy because of his feelings for Harry’s mother. LORD VOLDEMORT was once a Hogwarts student named Tom Riddle, but his lust for power drove him to become one of the most powerful dark wizards known to history. His attempt to kill Harry as a baby nearly defeated him, and it takes most of Harry’s young life for Voldemort to regain a body, and his former power. In the final book, Harry must confront the villain, resulting in Voldemort’s death. RON WEASLEY is Harry’s best friend and a stalwart companion, and, alongside Hermione, is instrumental in helping Harry defeat Voldemort. The youngest of several brothers, Ron serves as a kind of foil for the orphaned Harry. Though Ron often serves as comic relief, over the course of the series, he too grows and matures, proving himself a worthy friend, and worthy of the romantic interest of Hermione.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR J. K. Rowling is one of the best-known, best-selling writers in the world; the success of the “Harry Potter” series has given Rowling celebrity appeal. Before becoming a writer, she worked as an educator, teaching English as a foreign language in Portugal. After a divorce, she moved to Edinburgh with her young daughter, where she eventually finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She first got the idea for the boy wizard while traveling on a delayed train from Manchester to King’s Cross Station in London. Rowling had not anticipated the worldwide appeal the books came to enjoy, but she has used her fame to make contributions to charity organizations; several of her tie-ins to the Harry Potter novels have been sold with all of the proceeds going to charities, such as Comic Relief, the Children’s Voice, Children’s High Level Group, and Dyslexia Action. Having finished the Harry Potter series, Rowling has said she is working on a different type of book, and is unlikely to write another fantasy story.
along, it is never used to cheat the characters out of ethical dilemmas. In fact, magic has no power over death, a lesson in acceptance that begins in the very first novel and resolves poignantly as the series comes to a close.
W Style While the “Harry Potter” series is easily classified as fantasy, the books follow a pattern identified by critic Harold Bloom as traditional of novels about British boys’ schools, beginning with Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes, first published in 1857. Christopher Hitchens of the New York Times likewise compared the novels to the “Boys’ Weeklies” stories set in British boarding schools, published during the 1940s. The mundane part of Harry’s life—his classes and the sports team that often take priority over the larger good vs. evil battle for the first six books—is structured by the boarding school atmosphere at Hogwarts, despite the fact that the subject material for the students is exclusively magic. The seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is the first and only installment to diverge from the school story structure. Several of the novels in the series also make use of the traditional mystery format, offering a riddle to be solved by the heroes as they gain clues. For example, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the entire plot revolves around who has opened the chamber and let out a monster that is harming students; Harry, Ron, and Hermione piece together clues, discovering the secret just in time for Harry to confront the villain. The climax of the series serves as the final denouement and the mystery is solved.
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The world of the series is based on a contemporary setting, roughly paralleling the dates of the books’ publications; the alternate reality is populated with creatures from fairy tales, mythologies, and legends from all over the world. The characters are multicultural British students and adults, and the creatures they encounter range from entirely new creations (such as the terrifying dementors) to dragons with breed names and brownielike house elves that Hermione encourages to unionize. Many of the elements are based on folklore and fairy tales, but are changed to fit the modern sensibilities of the readers.
W Critical Reception Initially published in 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States, won several awards and some critical attention—as a children’s book. By the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the novels had become a phenomenon. Bookstores stayed open until midnight the day of the release, serving drinks named after beverages from the books and offering games and trivia based on the books. The novels spawned fan fiction, rock bands based on and named after the characters, and academic conferences to discuss the works. But while the books became a popular success early on, the critical world has been divided on how to treat the novels. In his now-famous opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, critic Harold Bloom dismisses the novels as simply children’s books, and not very good ones at that. He writes, “One can reasonably doubt that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is going to prove a classic of children’s literature. . . . [Rowling’s] prose style, heavy on cliché, makes no demands upon her readers.” Though many academics sided with Bloom in not considering children’s books worth critical reaction, prominent institutions such as the New York Times have reserved review space for each title, and noted writers, including Stephen King, have been the series’ staunchest defenders. Rowling “was and is an incredibly gifted novelist,” King writes in his Entertainment Weekly review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. “While some of the blogs and the mainstream media have mentioned that Rowling’s ambition kept pace with the skyrocketing popularity of her books, they have largely overlooked the fact that her talent also grew.” The academic sphere has also seen a growth of interest in the series. Dr. Gwen A. Tarbox of Western Michigan University suggests that there is a field of Harry Potter studies. “There’s such a large body of criticism now and the level of scholarship is really excellent,” she explains in the Observer. “‘We need to recognise that just because something’s popular doesn’t mean it’s bad. There’s a great deal we can learn about things that are TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The “Harry Potter” Series
popular. And it’s popular among such a diverse group of readers.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
series. He looks at the understanding of death as it appears in the series, and how this relates to Harry as a Christ-figure.
Works Cited
Gale Resources
Bloom, Harold. “Can 35 Million Americans Be Wrong? Yes.” Wall Street Journal 11 July 2000. Web. 12 July 2010.
“The Harry Potter Phenomenon.” Philip Nel. Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1999. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. 173-79. Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Web. 12 July 2010.
Cadwalladr, Carole. “Harry Potter and the Mystery of an Academic Obsession.” Observer 6 Aug. 2006. Web. 12 July 2010. Grossman, Lev. “J. K. Rowling: Hogwarts and All.” Time 17 July 2005. Web. 12 July 2010. Hitchens, Christopher. “The Boy Who Lived.” New York Times Book Review 12 Aug. 2007: Book Review Desk: p1(L). King, Stephen. “J. K. Rowling’s Ministry of Magic.” Entertainment Weekly 17 Aug. 2007. Web. 15 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Baggett, David, Shawn E. Klein, and William Irwin, eds. Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts. Chicago: Open Court, 2004. Print. Part of the “Pop Culture and Philosophy” series, this collection features seventeen essays by philosophy experts on topics including the ethics of magic, the relation of the brain to the mind, and feminism as shown through Hermione. Berman, Laura. “Dragons and Serpents in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series: Are They Evil?” Mythlore 27.1-2 (2008): 45. Print. Berman delves into the mythological differences used by Rowling to distinguish her snakes from her dragons, making comparisons in her text to the works of Tolkien, the Chronicles of Narnia, and The Little Prince.
“J. K. Rowling.” Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns.Vol.112.Detroit:CengageGale,2006. 118-216. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 July 2010. “J. K. Rowling.” Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Scot Peacock. Vol. 80. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 174-216. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 July 2010. “J. K. Rowling.” Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Jennifer Baise. Vol. 66. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 77-111. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 July 2010. “J. K. Rowling.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Web. “J. K. Rowling.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. JeffreyW.Hunter.Vol.217.Detroit:Cengage Gale, 2006. 172-354. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 July 2010. “J. K. Rowling.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 137. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 304-41. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 12 July 2010. “J. K. Rowling.” Something about the Author. Vol. 174. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 147-54. Something about the Author Online. Web. 12 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Croft, Janet Brennan. “Naming the Evil One: Onomastic Strategies in Tolkien and Rowling.” Mythlore 28.1-2 (2009): 149. Print. Tolkien scholar Croft discusses the consequences of naming evil in the “Harry Potter” series and in Tolkien’s Middle Earth materials.
J. K. Rowling’s Home Page offers inside information behind the “Harry Potter” series, a biography of Rowling, news about her books, and a place to debunk rumors collected online. The site also offers links to resources in publishing, Rowling’s charitable foundation, and the “Harry Potter” films. http:// www.jkrowling.com/
Kakutani, Michiko. “For Harry Potter, Good OldFashioned Closure.” New York Times. 18 July 2007. Web. 12 July 2010. In this review, Kakutani, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, offers an assessment of the “Harry Potter” series through the lens of its final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The fan site MuggleNet, which has been active since 1999, collects rumors, news, and discussions about the “Harry Potter” series, including news about the films and the actors. It is also a repository of fan fiction, fan art, and an interactive role playing game based on the novels. http://www.mugglenet.com/
McCarron, Bill. “Christianity in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Notes on Contemporary Literature. 2009. HighBeam Research 17 Feb. 2011. McCarron examines Christian themes in the “Harry Potter” series, specifically revealed in the final volume of the
Warner Bros., the producers of the Harry Potter films, hosts an interactive Web site for the movies. The site opens to the most recent film, offering trailers, a gallery of stills, and information about the plot. http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/
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The American publisher of the “Harry Potter” series, Scholastic, has polls, trivia challenges, pronunciation guides, and other resources for each book of the series. Illustrations from the American editions, by Mary Grandpré, are also featured on the site. http:// harrypotter.scholastic.com/ For Further Reading
Hughes, Thomas. Tom Brown’s Schooldays. London: Macmillan, 1857. Print. An example of a British school novel, the book follows the adventures of young Victorian boy Tom Brown at his rugby school. Tom’s rivalry with fellow student Flashman is similar to Harry Potter’s relationship with Draco Malfoy, though without the life-or-death stakes. A 1913 edition of the novel is available as a free e-book. Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief. New York: Hyperion, 2005. Print. Related in the coming-of-age and good versus evil themes to the Harry Potter series, The Lightning Thief and its sequels follow the tale of Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old who discovers he is the son of a Greek god. Alongside his friends, Percy defends a modern-day Olympus against the threat of a reborn Kronos.
Deathly Hallows, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of fairy tales that children from Rowling’s wizarding world grew up being told. The collection contains notations by Albus Dumbledore and was ostensibly compiled by Hermione Granger after the events of the final book. We Are Wizards. Dir. Josh Koury. Brooklyn Underground Films, 2008. Film. This documentary, written by director Josh Koury, explores the fan culture surrounding the Harry Potter novels. The film follows several of the wizard rock bands, including Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, and the Hungarian Horntails. Adaptations
The Harry Potter novels have been adapted as films by Warner Bros.: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 2001; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2009; and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in two parts, 2010 and 2011.
Rowling, J. K. The Tales of Beedle the Bard. London: Children’s High Level Group, 2008. Print. First referenced in the 2007 novel Harry Potter and the
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Alana Joli Abbott
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The Hiding Place By Trezza Azzopardi
W Introduction Trezza Azzopardi’s debut novel, The Hiding Place (2000), tells the story of a poor Maltese immigrant family living near the docks in Cardiff, Wales. Using both first and third person narration, Azzopardi tells this story mostly from the perspective of the youngest of the six daughters, Dolores (called Dol), who is born in 1960. The novel depicts what happens to a family when the father is a compulsive gambler, whose losses eat away at the household and who is willing to pay off his debts by giving away his daughters. Having immigrated to Tiger Bay in 1948, Frank Gauci is a self-confident risk taker and slow thinker, who jumps to conclusions and acts on them without considering how these actions affect others. The family gradually and inexorably disintegrates under the blows of his recklessness, rampant gambling, and physical abuse. His abandonment of the family hastens his wife’s mental breakdown and is the final blow to the family’s dissolution. The plot depicts a series of family disasters and betrayals, perhaps the most important of which, certainly for Dolores, is the kitchen fire that leaves her as a newborn infant scarred and without the fingers on her left hand. Her presence in the family from this point on is to confirm its bad luck or, worse, a curse upon the household. In all, the novel depicts how precarious life is for children born into extreme poverty to parents unable to meet their needs. It dramatizes the vulnerability of females, particularly in this kind of situation, whose sexual appeal or lack of it determines their value in the marketplace of matchmaking and marriage. Mary Gauci, the mother, is as much at risk as her daughters in this respect, and facing desperate financial conditions, she resorts to sexual bartering in the thin hope of maintaining the household. The novel focuses on the mid 1960s, when Dolores is five years old. The child’s perception of events is
augmented by the knowledge of the adult woman Dolores becomes who returns to the family house upon the death of her mother. The Hiding Place was distinguished by being short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and in the years immediately following its appearance, the novel was translated into over a dozen languages.
W Literary and Historical Context
One literary context for The Hiding Place is the bildungsroman, the autobiographical novel of maturation. In this genre are certain novels that depict the powerlessness of children in corrupt and abusive environments, such as Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850). The protagonists in novels of this sort typically look back as mature adults, both seeking to understand the world they inhabited as a child and seeing that world, at least in part, through the child that protagonist once was. The reader has a perspective on that world the child cannot share, but the awakening mature protagonist tries to piece together. The reader sees the child’s powerlessness, the cruelty and kindness of adults caring for the child, and the unfairness of the world at large in which this unsuspecting child has been born. So in a sense there is a distinction between the awareness of the first-person narrator and the reader’s interpretation of the text that narrator provides. Azzopardi’s departure from this genre lies in her use of third-person point of view to fill out or expand the story beyond the central narrator’s field of awareness and vision. Regarding the historical context of the novel, Leo Carey in his review of The Hiding Place pointed out that Azzopardi directs attention to the Maltese immigrant experience in Wales: “Though far less prominent in British society, let alone British fiction, than immigrants from former colonies, a Maltese and southern Italian
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MAJOR CHARACTERS EVA AMIL, Mary’s only friend, helps the family after the fire and during crises. She is especially fond of Dolores, whom she calls Petal. SALVATORE CAPANONE is Frankie’s best friend and co-owner initially of The Moonlight café. CELESTA GAUCI is the eldest Gauci daughter who marries a well-to-do widower and remains in Cardiff. DOLORES GAUCI, called Dol, is the narrator, the youngest of the Gauci daughters, born in Cardiff but as an adult works as a librarian in Nottingham. FRANCESCA GAUCI, called Fran, is always to blame and punished severely. She cuts her name into her forearm and eventually becomes a street person. FRANK GAUCI, called Frankie, is the husband of Mary and father of six daughters, a compulsive gambler and abusive man who abandons his family. LUCA GAUCI is the fifth daughter, impossible to control as a child, and intensely angry. She marries and lives in Vancouver as an adult and at the time of Mary’s funeral has developed cancer. MARY GAUCI is Frank’s wife and the mother of six daughters, who has a mental breakdown as she witnesses the disintegration of her family. ROSARIA GAUCI, called Rose, the third Gauci daughter, ultimately marries Terence, who is as abusive to her as her father was. JOE MEDORA, initially Frankie’s friend, is the local Cardiff mobster who takes Frankie’s daughter Marina in payment for Frankie’s debts. PIPPO SEGUNA, a drinks merchant and widow, marries Celesta Gauci, who is over twenty years his junior. Celesta and Pippo have two sons, Jumbo and Lewis.
diaspora flowed steadily to Welsh coastal towns through most of the 20th century.” Specifically, the novel depicts how “this closed society is clannish, Catholic and ruled by a local mafia.” The novel also focuses on the seductiveness of gambling and other criminal activity that promises something for nothing or for apparently nothing, but in which the reward of potential fast money comes with high though likely hidden risk. Much research indicates correlations between problem gambling and eroding family conditions. For example, the article “Gambling Addiction and Problem Gambling: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment” states that “gambling can strain . . . relationships, interfere with responsibilities at home and work,
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and lead to financial catastrophe.” The devastating impact of addictive gambling on a family is depicted graphically in The Hiding Place. In his review, Carey stated: “In [Frankie’s] hands, coins, cards, dice and horses are like so many weapons to inflict damage on his family.”
W Themes First and foremost, The Hiding Place explores the terrain of child abuse and neglect. It depicts the way children learn about the world through their familial experiences, variously internalizing abusive patterns, acting them out, and trying as they mature to escape this painful legacy of their childhood. Carol Anshaw explained in her review of the novel how parental abuse increases children’s already natural vulnerability: “Without the protection and guidance of parents, the way grows lonelier and more treacherous, with boogeymen lurking in the shadows. And when the parent himself is the boogeyman, childhood becomes the landscape of nightmare; the earth runs red, the sky turns black.” Equally important is the theme concerning memory, which comes via the author’s handling of point of view and time. The present time of the returning adult child who seeks to piece together the past and make a list of whatever and whoever is missing is the overarching perspective in which the perceptions and skewed memories of certain events are laid out, and the spaces between the found bits filled in with fiction or left gaping because of blank ignorance. The adult Dolores, now a librarian in Nottingham, states that she is good at lists, assumes in returning to her family’s home she will be able to find the necessary artifacts to outline the past she shared with her sisters. She wants what happened to tally, to make sense. In the reunion after Mary’s death, Celesta, the eldest daughter, protests that she does not “Do Memory Lane” (266). Perhaps she can afford to resist it; she marries into financial security, part of which requires her not to expose her husband’s criminal activities. But for Dolores this is the work at hand, literally and metaphorically. She is the archivist, the one who uncovers what other people may think is lost for good. She recalls: “I used to think my hand would grow back . . . I’d watch for signs. At night, I’d will the fingers to sprout, eating up the vacant space like a bloom captured on a time-lapse camera” (278). Dolores sees in her own body the legacy of loss, and for her, the work of maturation is discovering “what will and won’t grow back” (278). Memory work is central to her process of making peace with what is, however unjust and cruel.
W Style One striking feature of style in The Hiding Place is Azzopardi’s handling of point of view. Partly, the novel is TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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the first-person narrative of Dolores Gauci, and much of this narrative pertains to a time when Dolores is five years old. The novel opens with this five-year-old child keeping a lookout for her father in order to provide her mother with time to visit safely with Mary’s friend Eva Amil. Within two pages, this point of view expands, as Dol relates how as a newborn she slept in a chest, hidden from her father, and how her mother moved the baby in its bed dangerously near the kitchen fire. The first chapter ends with the narrator admitting, “That was a time before I was four. The house is still here, and now I am here, standing at the window of the bedroom we shared” (6). Thus, this first-person narrator is actually the adult woman who has returned and who in moving around the now-empty childhood house recalls memories of and stories about her childhood. The complication in this point of view comes as the narrator tells parts of the story in third person from the perspective of others, reporting what she has been told in many cases but in others not revealing how she came to know certain parts of the family history. Some of this history is challenged by the other sisters. At the same time that the point of view suggests much can be “unearthed” (277), the fact is that, like her baby fingers that melted in
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Trezza Azzopardi was born in Cardiff, Wales, one of six children born to a Maltese father and a Welsh mother. She graduated from University of East Anglia (UEA) with a BA in English and American studies and an MA in creative writing. She also obtained an MA in film and television studies at the University of Derby. Following The Hiding Place (2000), Azzopardi published three novels: Remember Me (2003), Winterton Blue (2007), and The Song House (2010). The Hiding Place was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. As of 2010, Azzopardi taught at UEA and lived in Norwich, England.
the fire, much is lost forever. In this sense, the novel’s style underscores one of its themes: memory is an often creative work of maturation, an inevitably imperfect and incomplete process. The challenge in reading this novel was explained by Anshaw in her review: “Memory and dream come into play as mechanisms for sorting out a life
The Hiding Place tells the story of a poor family of Maltese immigrants living by the docks of the city of Cardiff, Wales. ª Anne-Marie Palmer / Alamy
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that is chaotic, a house that is dark with secrets, its shadows filled with the unknowable. Time glides from present to past, and eventually into the future.”
W Critical Reception For a debut novel, The Hiding Place scored high among many reviewers, proof of which is its being short-listed for the Booker Prize, a rare distinction for a first work. Describing the novel’s accomplishment, Anshaw stated: “Azzopardi writes with authority, working in an elegant dialect of dreams; many of her scenes have a wavering quality to them, a tint that sets them apart from daylight reality. Incidents are smudged at their edges.” Carey also praised the novel, calling it “quieter and more intense, focusing entirely on the horrific sufferings within a single family.” Eleanor J. Bader called the novel “elegant and auspicious,” and Anshaw called it “impressive.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly agreed: The Hiding Place proved Azzopardi to be “a writer of remarkable sensibility and literary prowess.” But certain critics disagreed on the unusual handling of point of view. The PW reviewer praised the five-yearold’s narrative, finding it “the perfect voice to unearth the family’s confusing and shady secrets.” Carey took a different position because he put together that child’s story with other firsthand material in the novel: “Perhaps in more deliberate hands,” Carey theorized, “such conflation of perspectives might have yielded some new kind of insight. Here it suggests a simple inability to make up one’s mind about how to tell the story and saps some of the book’s power.” In all, though, many critical reviews applauded what Azzopardi accomplished in this novel. Anshaw, for example, praised the portrait of a family as it “begins cannibalizing itself to survive,” the daughters emerging “scarred, cauterized.” Anshaw concluded: “Aside from a sentimental turn at the end, this book makes none of the faltering steps common to first novels.” Marlene Chamberlain expressed affirmation like that of other critics, writing, “Given the family background, there may be some comparison to Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes (1996), but Azzopardi’s debut novel stands on its own as a testament to learning to survive childhood when parents are not up to the job and you’re among the down-and-out.” Bader predicted that even resistant readers will be affected by this story: “even the cynical and skeptical will find themselves moved by the Gauci family’s heartbreaking saga.”
Azzopardi, Trezza. The Hiding Place. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. Print. Bader, Eleanor J. “The Hiding Place.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2000: 100. Print. Carey, Leo. “Snake Eyes: A Novel follows the Dissolution of a Maltese Family in Wales.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. New York Times Book Review 14 Jan. 2001: 16. Print. Chamberlain, Marlene. “The Hiding Place.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. Booklist 1 Sept. 2000: 64. Print. “Gambling Addiction and Problem Gambling: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment.” http://helpguide.org/ mental/gambling_addiction Helpguide.org, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. “The Hiding Place.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. Publishers Weekly 6 Nov. 2000: 70. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Carey, Leo. “Snake Eyes: A Novel follows the Dissolution of a Maltese Family in Wales.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. New York Times Book Review 14 Jan. 2001: 16. Print. Evaluates The Hiding Place in light of its being short-listed for the Booker Prize and faults the author’s handling of point of view. Gale Resources
“Trezza Azzopardi.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Nov. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000171430&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Information about Trezza Azzopardi is available for the Web site maintained by the University of East Anglia, http://www.uea.ac.uk/lit/People/Academic/ Trezza+Azzopardi For Further Reading
Karr, Mary. The Liars’ Club. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Print. Autobiography of a childhood in East Texas with a mentally unstable, often-married mother and abusive father.
Works Cited
Lee, Bill. Born to Lose: Memoirs of a Compulsive Gambler. Center City: Hazelden, 2005. Print. Story of how a twelve-step program saved the life of a first generation Chinese American.
Anshaw, Carol. “In Terra Incognita.” Rev. of The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi. Women’s Review of Books 18.7 (April 2001): 11. Print.
McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir. New York: Touchstone, 1999. Print. Highly acclaimed autobiography about growing up in extreme poverty in
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Ireland, a work to which The Hiding Place is compared. Segal, Uma A., Doreen Elliott, and Nazneen S. Mayadas, eds. Immigration Worldwide: Policies, Practices, and Trends. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Examines immigrant patterns in the early twenty-first century, covering migration patterns and refugee status and conditions in twenty-five countries.
Wolff, Geoffrey. The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Print. Beautifully written autobiography focusing on the author’s father who was an inveterate liar. Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir. New York: Grove-Atlantic, 1989. Print. Painful 1950s story about the author’s troubled boyhood.
Smith, Andrea L. Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. A study of immigration patterns among Maltese but does not cover Wales.
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His Dark Materials By Philip Pullman
W Introduction His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels: The Golden Compass (1995; published in the United Kingdom as Northern Lights); The Subtle Knife (1997); and The Amber Spyglass (2000). The novels chronicle the coming of age of Lyra Belacqua, a brave young girl destined to break the tyrannical hold of the Church on the people of an alternative world to ours—one that seems similar, but is also reminiscent of late Victorian England. The Church, also aware of her destiny, is set to destroy her. Her journey takes her through the fabric of space into other worlds; leads her into alliances and battles with witches, armored bears, angels, and the dead; reveals her true parents, and unites and eventually divides her from her true love and fellow adventurer, Will Parry. The trilogy’s treatment of organized religion has led to many critics classifying His Dark Materials as an antireligious allegory. As reviewer Michael Dirda states, “Think of this trilogy as a counterblast to C. S. Lewis’s Christian science fiction and his celebrated chronicles of Narnia. [Philip] Pullman is of the Devil’s party, William Blake’s party, and he knows it. He has also written the best, deepest and most disturbing children’s fantasy of our time. By comparison, the agreeable and entertaining Harry Potter books look utterly innocuous.”
W Literary and Historical Context
With the publication of the antireligious allegory His Dark Materials, Pullman ignited a controversy that would get stronger with the appearance of each book. As Dirda states, the books were clearly against organized religion. “Even those who judge his theology objectionable will find Pullman’s sheer storytelling power sinfully irresistible,” he contends. “But make no mistake: This book views organized religion as repressive, life-smothering,
mendacious and just plain wrong, right from the beginning of time.” The religious right in the United States was particularly incensed by Pullman’s books as well as the publication of the Harry Potter series, which romanticized the use of magic and witchcraft. They perceived the books as threats to their worldview and potentially blasphemous. The trilogy has been denounced by both Focus on the Family and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Pullman’s trilogy was often viewed as a direct rebuttal of the overt Christianity of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. In fact, Pullman has described the Narnia books as religious propaganda. As Peter Hitchens notes, “[M]any who buy these books for children and grandchildren would be surprised, and even shocked, if they knew just how vehemently Pullman despises the Christian Church, and how much he loathes his dead rival, [C. S.] Lewis. He is, in fact, the AntiLewis.” His Dark Materials is also examined in terms of its complicated relationship to John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. When Pullman first envisioned the first book in the trilogy, The Golden Compass, he set out to write a Paradise Lost for kids. In fact, the title of the trilogy is taken from a phrase in Milton’s epic. Paradise Lost tells the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin and casting out from the Garden of Eden. In this telling, Satan—in the form of a snake—convinces Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which results in their loss of innocence and fall from God’s grace. In Pullman’s interpretation, Lyra’s striving for knowledge and experience is courageous, liberating, and ultimately an act of salvation for the universe.
W Themes In Pullman’s trilogy, innocence and experience are key thematic concerns. Because children are innocent and have yet to experience the tribulations of adulthood, they
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MAJOR CHARACTERS LORD ASRIEL is a well-respected explorer and researcher in experimental theology. The Church, however, stripped him of his money and power when it was discovered that he had had an affair with a married woman, Mrs. Coulter, and fathered a child, Lyra, with her. He is determined to find the secret behind the mysterious Dust. LYRA BELACQUA is the protagonist of His Dark Materials. As the trilogy opens, she is a twelve-year-old girl who does not remember her life before her uncle, Lord Asriel, brought her to live in Jordan College, a men's-only college at Oxford University in Lyra’s parallel universe. As the trilogy progresses, she must confront many dangerous and tragic situations. IOREK BYRNISON is a male armored bear who proves to be a loyal friend to Lyra. He is a skilled smith, and repairs the subtle knife in the second book of the trilogy. MRS. COULTER is Lyra’s mother and the head of the General Oblation Board (or Gobblers), a Church faction that secretly kidnaps children to experiment on them by cutting away their daemons. PANTALAIMON, or Pan, is Lyra’s daemon. He takes different forms according to his mood or state of mind, including an ermine when he is sleeping and a bird when he and Lyra need to search for something.
Photo of Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
do not attract the Dust, or dark matter, that seems to cling to adults. Dust is the physical manifestation of human consciousness—the knowledge, responsibility, and pain that adults must endure. Knowledge is another major theme in His Dark Materials, as the Church strives to keep people in ignorance through fear, superstition, and even violence. In Judeo-Christian theology, Adam and Eve eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge caused their exile from the Garden of Eden; in Pullman’s book, it is a joyous event that signals the acceptance of free will—even if being free to make your own decisions results in pain and loss. Adam and Eve’s decision to choose free will is reflected in the major struggle of the book: the Church strives to keep people ignorant and impose their beliefs on the populace, while Lord Asriel and his allies struggle to free them. In particular, the Church works relentlessly to discourage physical pleasure, knowing that it connects people to the natural world and leads them to become independent thinkers. As in the Adam and Eve story, sex and knowledge are irrevocably connected and leads to the loss of innocence—something the Church clearly understands and wants to control.
SERAFINA PEKKALA is the queen of a powerful witch clan who helps Lyra as she searches for the lost children. WILL PARRY is a young man who leaves his world in order to find his lost father, the explorer John Parry. In his adventures, he meets Lyra, who becomes his companion and lover. The two are forced apart at the end of trilogy, as Will must live in his world and Lyra must return to her parallel universe. ROGER PARSLOW is Lyra’s friend. It is his kidnapping by the Gobblers that prompts Lyra to travel north to find him. He is eventually killed by Lord Asriel at the end of The Golden Compass.
When Lyra and Will have their sexual encounter, it marks Lyra’s break with the Church and her turn toward experience and adulthood.
W Style In His Dark Materials, Pullman uses an omniscient, anonymous first-person narrator, but he provides the perspective of the major characters. It is a coming-of-age story of the protagonist, Lyra Belacqua, who is twelve years old as the first book opens. By the conclusion of the trilogy,
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England, in 1946. His father was in the Royal Air Force, so he spent much of his young life traveling with his family in England, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Australia, finally settling in North Wales after his father’s death and mother’s remarriage. As a young man, he attended Exeter College, Oxford, to study English literature. In 1971 he became a teacher, but in his free time he began to pursue in long-standing interest in writing. His first children’s book, Count Karlstein, was published in 1982. In 1986 he became an instructor at Westminster College, where he taught courses on the Victorian novel and on the folk tale. After eight years there, he decided to leave teaching and become a writer full time. He established his reputation as one of England’s best-known fantasy writers with the publication of his trilogy of novels—The Golden Compass (1995; published as Northern Lights in the United Kingdom), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000)—known as His Dark Materials. Acclaimed by critics, the trilogy received several prestigious prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Book Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for The Amber Spyglass. Pullman also was honored with the 2002 Eleanor Farjeon Award for children’s literature. In 2006 The Golden Compass received the Carnegie of Carnegies, chosen by readers to be the best of all the earlier winners of the award. He was also honored with the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005. He lives with his wife, Jude, in Oxford, England.
she is a young woman who has experienced the joy and pain of being separated from her true love. In between, she discovers much about herself, has her worldview completely turned upside down, has an epic battle with evil, and loses both her parents. Pullman’s descriptions are clear and simple without resorting to cliché. To build suspense or prepare a cliffhanger, he shifts between protagonists at crucial moments to provide the reader with the full scope of the danger they are facing. Cliffhangers are prominent: The Golden Compass concludes with Lyra finding a hole in the fabric of space and traveling to another world; The Subtle Knife ends with Lyra’s abduction. The trilogy is also rife with symbolism. One of the most important symbols is the use of daemons to represent the external expressions of people’s souls. Daemons take forms that reflect their humans’ character or mood; they can also take a specific form for a specific action. For example, Lyra’s daemon, Pan, can take the shape of a mouse to run away from danger or a bird to search for something. Witches’ daemons take the form of birds, which reflects their ability to fly. Separating from one’s daemon is very traumatic and can cause great pain. It represents an individual’s separation from one’s own
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soul and takes great strength and determination. Another key symbol is the aurora borealis, which symbolizes the separation between different worlds. Angels can pass between worlds using the aurora borealis. As the aurora borealis and constellations have throughout time, they also represent the human yearning for knowledge and connection. As early civilizations looked up to the sky and considered explanations for why there were patterns of lights, they incorporated such phenomena as the aurora borealis into their myths, legends, and creation stories. These stories were passed from generation to generation.
W Critical Reception His Dark Materials is one of the most discussed and controversial stories of the early twenty-first century. Controversy erupted over Pullman’s portrayal of organized religion in the trilogy, which is often seen as a scathing indictment of the Roman Catholic Church and its political, religious, and social control. Most reviewers found the book to be a biting anti-Christian allegory, with the church painted as dictatorial and cruel and the universe run as a police state. As critic Andrew Marr observes, “These books have disturbed and angered Christian theologians almost everywhere that they have been noticed. . . . But I want my children to read him for a reason that C. S. Lewis would have understood—because they will be better people afterwards.” However, other critics view the books to be a direct and serious threat to children. For example, Pete Vere describes the books as “Evil. This one word describes Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. All the more diabolical is the marketing of his books to children. And yet, as Catholics continue to debate Harry Potter, Britain’s second-most popular children’s author has snuck onto reading lists as award-winning literature.” Reviewers praise Pullman’s vivid imagination, rich descriptions, intricate plot, and masterful plotting. Dirda asserts that “His Dark Materials is a novel of electrifying power and splendor, deserving celebration, as violent as a fairy tale and as shocking as art must be.” Whatever negatives there were in the trilogy, Dirda claims, the overall effect was quite compelling. “Despite various flaws—too much overt moralizing, the unwarranted flipflop in the fundamental character of Mrs. Coulter, not enough Serafina Pekkala—His Dark Materials is an overwhelming reading experience, brought to a sublime and touching close by The Amber Spyglass,” he concludes. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Chabon, Michael. “Dust & Daemons.” New York Review of Books 25 March 2004. Web. 12 July 2010. Dirda, Michael. Rev. of The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman. Washington Post 29 October 2000. Web. 12 July 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Hitchens, Peter. “A Labour of Loathing.” Spectator 18 January 2003. Web. 12 July 2010.
2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Marr, Andrew. “Pullman Does for Atheism What C. S. Lewis Does for God.” Telegraph 24 January 2002. Web. 12 July 2010.
“Philip Pullman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 July 2010.
Vere, Pete. “His Dark Materials Trilogy.” Catholic Insight 15 (November 2007). Web. 12 July 2010.
“Philip Pullman.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 245. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Colbert, David. The Magical Worlds of Philip Pullman: A Treasury of Fascinating Facts. New York: Berkley Books, 2006. Print. Explores the inspiration behind His Dark Materials and discusses the controversial themes found in the trilogy. Freitas, Donna, and Jason King. Killing the Imposter God: Philip Pullman’s Spiritual Imagination in His Dark Materials. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007. Print. Investigates theological and philosophical dimensions of His Dark Materials, finding that Pullman’s trilogy does not present an atheist vision, but instead one imbued with Christian values and tradition. Lenz, Millicent, with Carole Scott. His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Philip Pullman’s Trilogy. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2005. Print. Collection of critical essays on Pullman’s trilogy. Rayment-Pickard, Hugh. The Devil’s Account: Philip Pullman and Christianity. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004. Print. Studies the religious and mythological themes found in His Dark Materials and identifies influence on Pullman’s writing. Vere, Pete, and Sandra Meisel. Pied Piper of Atheism: Philip Pullman and Children’s Fantasy. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007. Print. Derides Pullman’s antireligious message in His Dark Materials, describing it as atheistic and harmful to children. Watkins, Tony. Dark Matter: Shedding Light on Philip Pullman’s Trilogy His Dark Materials. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004. Print. Offers a laudatory assessment of Pullman’s trilogy and illuminates the major themes of and influences on His Dark Materials. Wheat, Leonard F. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials—A Multiple Allegory. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2007. Print. Contends that His Dark Materials is a complex triple allegory and describes the trilogy as one of the most profound and challenging works ever written. Gale Resources
Byrne, Sandie. “Philip Pullman.” British Writers: Supplement 13. Ed. Jay Parini. Detroit: Scribner’s
Hunt, Caroline C. “Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook Award for Distinguished Children’s Book Published in 2000.” Dictionary ofLiterary Biography Yearbook 2000. Ed. Matthew J. Broccoli. Detroit: Gale, 2000. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 11 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Philip Pullman’s official Web site at http://www.philip pullman.com provides information on his books, allows viewers to see his illustrations, and provides a forum for fans to discuss His Dark Materials. It also has interviews and a Q & A with the author. Random House’s Web site for His Dark Materials at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/ includes information on Pullman’s books, the author’s advice on writing, and an excerpt from his 1996 Carnegie Medal acceptance speech. New Line Cinema’s official Web site for the film adaptation of the first novel in the trilogy can be found at http://newline.com/properties/golden compassthe.html. Fans can view art and pictures related to the movie. For Further Reading
Beahm, George W. Discovering the Golden Compass: A Guide to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials. Charlottesville: Hampton Roads, 2007. Print. Written as a companion piece to the film adaptation of The Golden Compass, this book introduces Pullman’s intricate and imaginative world to beginners. Gribbin, Mary, and John Gribbin. The Science of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print. Investigates the science behind Pullman’s trilogy. Loewenstein, David. Milton—Paradise Lost. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print. Examines John Milton’s epic poem in its historical, literary, and theological contexts. Parkin, Lance, and Mark Jones. Dark Matters: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Philip Pullman’s Internationally Bestselling His Dark Materials Trilogy. London: Virgin, 2005. Print. Offers a dictionary of key words and explanation of key symbols in the trilogy; charts locations and provides a
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history of Lyra’s world; and provides essential information on the story. Pullman, Philip. Lyra’s Oxford. 2003. Print. A volume that continues Pullman’s story of His Dark Materials, including a short story, “Lyra and the Birds,” with the same characters as the trilogy, a map of Lyra’s Oxford, a postcard as one character to another, a ship’s itinerary, and a page from a guidebook. Simpson, Paul. The Rough Guide to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. New York: Rough Guides, 2007. Print. Considers the origins of Pullman’s story, examines influences on the books, and offers information on locations found in the trilogy. Squires, Claire. Philip Pullman, a Master Storyteller: A Guide to the Worlds of His Dark Materials. New York: Continuum, 2006. Print. Explores the contexts, sources, and influences that inform His Dark Materials, and scrutinizes the controversies and theological debates surrounding the trilogy.
Discusses autobiographical themes in Pullman’s work and identifies the other major influences on his life and fiction. Adaptations
His Dark Materials. Dir. Nicholas Hytner. Perf. Dominic Cooper, Anna Maxwell Martin, Patricia Hodge, Timothy Dalton. 2003. Stage. Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Pullman’s trilogy was staged at the Royal National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre in 2003. The play was performed in two parts on alternating nights because of its length. The Golden Compass. Dir. Chris Weitz. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Kathy Bates, Kristin Scott Thomas. 2007. Film. This cinematic adaptation of the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy received mixed reviews on its debut in 2007. Margaret Haerens
Tucker, Nicholas. Darkness Visible: Inside the World of Philip Pullman. London: Wizard Books, 2003. Print.
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Home By Marilynne Robinson
W Introduction Home is Marilynne Robinson’s highly acclaimed companion piece to her 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead. Home tells the same story of 1950s Iowa farm life, but this time the scene shifts from the household of John Ames, the dying Congregationalist minister of Gilead, to that of his closest friend and neighbor, the retired Presbyterian pastor, Robert Boughton. The novels present different perspectives on the theme of the prodigal son in the figure of Jack Boughton, Robert Boughton’s favorite son and the Reverend Ames’s namesake, a ne’er do well and an alcoholic whose return home to Gilead, Iowa, after an absence of twenty years forms the major dramatic incident in both books. The unexpected appearance of the newly repentant Jack in the later work occasions the penetrating moral and philosophical questioning for which Robinson has become famous, for at the heart of Home is the struggle of the elder Boughton to find a way to forgive his son for the disgrace he has brought upon the family. In calculated contrast to Gilead, an epistolary novel written in the form of homiletic letters addressed by Ames to his seven-year-old son, Home is narrated in the third person by Jack’s youngest sister, Glory Boughton, a thirty-eight-yearold childless schoolteacher only recently returned to Gilead herself after a failed marriage. Pious and dutiful but compassionate, Glory is the only person who manages to break through Jack’s silence, and through her the reader is supplied with a more sympathetic portrait of his misdeeds than the one that emerges from Ames’s epistles. Winner of Britain’s Orange Prize for women writers and a finalist for the National Book Award, Home received as much notice for its meditations upon Christian themes as for its precise, lyrical language. As Malcolm Jones writes, “Robinson’s greatest achievement is that she manages to introduce the notions of belief and religious mystery without
ever seeming vague. She never shies away from uncomfortable truths.”
W Literary and Historical Context
A Congregationalist deacon and longtime student of religious history, Robinson draws on her Calvinist reading of theology in all of her writings to express and defend her faith. For Robinson, the seventeenth-century French theologian John Calvin was a humanist far unlike his stereotypical image as an erratic thinker and persecutor of heretics. Robinson’s remarks on Calvin in the essay “Puritans and Prigs” are pertinent to the crisis of Jack Boughton’s return to Gilead: “The belief that we are all sinners gives us excellent grounds for forgiveness and selfforgiveness, and is kindlier than any expectation that we might be saints, even while it affirms the standards all of us fail to attain.” The spiritual preoccupations of Home are immediately apparent in Robinson’s setting; the name of the town, Gilead, is taken from the Book of Jeremiah, specifically the prophet’s lamentation for a “balm in Gilead” to heal sick souls. In an interview with Jennie Rothenberg, Robinson explained that “Gilead” is “used as a symbol of what can be restored, what can be hoped for.” Robinson’s consuming interest in spiritual matters is also manifest in the novel’s patterning after the parable of the prodigal son. Derived from the Gospel of St. Luke, the parable is the story of a favorite son who squanders his inheritance then returns home in poverty to be welcomed with open arms by his father.
W Themes Robinson’s reimagining of the parable of the prodigal son drives the novel’s spiritual themes of guilt, forgiveness, faith, and redemption as well as its controlling ideas of
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MAJOR CHARACTERS JOHN AMES is the Congregationalist pastor of Gilead, the Reverend John Boughton’s oldest and closest friend and Jack Boughton’s godfather. Like the Reverend Boughton, Ames is in his seventies and in failing health, but he married late and has a young son, Robby. Ames has long distrusted Jack Boughton, but he is willing to give him a second chance when he sees that Jack is making an effort to reform. GLORY BOUGHTON is the narrator of Home and Jack Boughton’s youngest sister. She is back in Gilead to escape a failed romance and to care for her ailing father, the Reverend John Boughton. Glory has more success reconnecting with Jack than does her father. JACK BOUGHTON is Glory Boughton’s brother, the black sheep of the family who returns home after a twenty-year absence seeking peace and forgiveness. But Jack feels undeserving and destined to failure and struggles to accept kindness. A final disappointment causes Jack to seek solace once again in alcohol, and he leaves Gilead not wanting to cause his father any more pain. ROBERT BOUGHTON is the patriarch of the family, the father of eight children, and the retired Presbyterian minister of Gilead. Boughton is as devoted to the church as he is to his wayward son, Jack, but he has never understood Jack and wonders if he himself is perhaps responsible for his bad behavior. He tries to be kind and gentle to Jack when he reappears in Gilead, but he cannot help himself from lashing out in anger at him.
home and family. Home, in the words of A. O. Scott, is “a book unsparing in its acknowledgment of sin and unstinting in its belief in the possibility of grace.” The Reverend John Boughton is unwavering in his love for his troubled son despite his notorious past—his thieving, his drinking, and his fathering of a child with an underage girl he abandoned—but the elder Boughton’s devotion is matched by his bitterness and by his fear that his failing health will not be able to withstand the heartbreak of his son’s almost certain second escape from Gilead: “I thanked God for him every day of his life, no matter how much grief, how much sorrow—and at the end of it all there is only more grief, more sorrow, and his life will go on that way, no help for it now.” By contrast, the Reverend Ames manages to overcome his persistent fears of Jack’s malignant influence on his young son and becomes persuaded that Jack is deserving of a second chance. According to James Wood, “What propels the book, and makes it ultimately so powerful, is the Reverend Boughton, precisely because he is not the soft-spoken sage that John Ames is in Gilead. He
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The country estate of Robert Boughton in Home is located in rural Iowa. George Burba/Shutterstock.com
is a fierce, stern vain old man, who wants to forgive his son and cannot.” For his part, Jack is desperately guilty about his misdeeds and desperately in need of family reconciliation, but he considers himself unworthy and finds Glory’s Christian forgiveness unbearable. Yet brother and sister bond while caring for their father, both feeling comforted and at the same time stifled by their childhood home, “this good and blessed and oppressive tabernacle of Boughton probity and kind intent.”
W Style Very little actually happens in Home. It consists mainly of family conversations, some of them relayed in flashback, that circle around similar ideas of loneliness, healing, judgment, mercy, guilt, loss, and forgiveness. The speech of Glory and Jack and their father is filled with the wisdom of the gospels and is laced with scriptural quotation, hymns, and prayers. There are frequent discussions of the Bible as Jack settles into his new domestic routine, working in the garden or in the barn, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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still haunted by his failure to live up to his father’s expectations. In the opinion of many reviewers, Gilead has an old-fashioned feeling that results from the application of Robinson’s singular prose—simple, elegant, restrained, poetic—to matters of quotidian existence and timeless themes of faith and responsibility. The full extent of Jack’s sordid past remains an enigma for much of the novel, as does the exact reason for his decision to make his way back to Gilead. These details are only slowly revealed by Robinson, mostly in the course of hesitant conversations between Jack and Glory, neither of whom are completely comfortable talking about their life’s failures and disappointments. The late revelation that Jack has a Black common-law wife and son in St. Louis comes when Jack’s letters to the woman, Della, are returned in the mail unopened. It had been Jack’s hope that he and Della could find acceptance in Gilead for their mixed-race family with the blessings of the Reverends Ames and Boughton. This dream is shattered by Della’s rejection of him, and Jack resorts to his drinking and other bad habits and resolves to leave Gilead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marilynne Robinson is the author of novels widely regarded as American classics. Housekeeping (1980), winner of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, established her reputation as a gifted writer of luminous prose with remarkable insights into the importance of history and place in defining the human sensibility. Robinson’s second and third novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead (2004) and National Book Award nominee Home (2008), are companion efforts taking up the theme of the prodigal son and focused on the families of Protestant ministers in rural Iowa. In between writing the novels, Robinson devoted herself to nonfiction with important essays on environmental themes and spiritual matters relating to her Congregationalist faith. Robinson currently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has recently published a new collection of essays, Absence of Mind (2010), which returns to one of her favorite topics, the tension between scientific reasoning and spirituality.
In the novel Home, Jack Boughton returns to his family's rural Iowa home to see to his dying father. IntraClique LLC/ Shutterstock.com
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Home
W Critical Reception Robinson has been much applauded for her unabashedly Christian subject matter in Home. Reviewers have commented at length on her religious and philosophical messages, including the apparent tension between the ideas of spiritual rebirth and Calvinist predestination, but they have also insisted that her themes transcend religious affiliation. Steve J. Van der Weele has commented, “To write a religiousbased novel such as this—doing justice to the requirement of the art of fiction while avoiding didactic heaviness—is a rare accomplishment.” Robinson’s critics often have expressed awe at the beauty of her language, the result of precision and economy, not affect, as Ruth Franklin has noted: “Her language is often elegant, but never elevated.” The slow unraveling of Jack’s history has been a subject of much discussion among critics. For some, he remains too much of a mystery, so that the novel comes up short in comparison with the fuller, more interiorized characterizations of Gilead. James T. Keane, for example, argued that “Ms. Robinson simply leaves the reader feeling that her characters are perversely choosing not to communicate, and as a result, her sad family drama feels less affecting than stage managed.” But Franklin issued an opposing opinion: “Glory will not learn Jack’s full story until the novel’s emotional last pages. Such withholding may at first seem coy, but it is intrinsic to the workings of Robinson’s fiction, in which restraint, both literary and psychological, seems to be a virtue equal to faith, hope, and charity.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Franklin, Ruth. “God Is in the House.” New Republic 239.6 (8 Oct. 2008): 34-38. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 276. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 15 July 2010. Gritz, Jennie Rothenberg. “Gilead’s Balm: Marilynne Robinson Talks about Her Long-Awaited Second Novel and the Holiness of the Everyday.” Atlantic Monthly 17 Nov. 2004. Web. 15 July 2010. Jones, Malcolm. “Wanted: More Balm in Gilead.” Newsweek 22 Sept. 2008: 73. Print. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Keane, James T. “Faith and Family.” America 119.14 (3 Nov. 2008): 29. Print. Student Resource Center— College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Robinson, Marilynne. Home. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print. ———. “Prigs and Puritans.” The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print.
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Scott, A. O. “Return of the Prodigal Son.” New York Times Book Review 21 Sept. 2008: 16(L). Print. Student Resource Centere—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. July 2010. Van Der Weele, Steve J. “Home.” Christianity and Literature 58.3 (Spring 2009): 546. Print. Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Wood, James. “The Homecoming.” New Yorker 8 Sept. 2008: 76. Print. Student Resource Center— College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
De Falbe, John. “Hope and Glory.” Spectator 1 Nov. 2008: 47. Print. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Praises the universality of the novel’s moral questioning, proclaiming, “I know of no comparable examination of the soul in contemporary literature.” Domestico, Anthony. “Acts of Apostles.” Commonweal 135.18 (24 Oct. 2008): 36. Print. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Describes Home as a novel primarily concerned with hospitality, where rituals of care and forgiveness bestowed on the exiled Jack Boughton take on an almost sacramental quality. Grossman, Lev. “Home Is Where the Hurt Is.” Time 22 Sept. 2008: 92. Print. Student Resource Center— College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Finds much to praise in Home but complains that Jack Boughton is too abstract a character to satisfy readers. Jones, L. Gregory. “Back Home in Gilead.” Christian Century 125.22 (4 Nov. 2008): 33. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 276. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 15 July 2010. Praises Robinson for revisiting the character of Jack Boughton in Home, asserting that the novel’s strength rests in teaching readers to consider multiple perspectives. Kakutani, Michiko. “Family Tries Reassembling the Shards of Its Past.” New York Times 9 Sept. 2008: E1 (L). Print. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Negative review of Home finding the family drama contrived and the subject matter—emotional relationships—unsuited to Robinson’s talent for precise language. LaMascus, R. Scott. “Toward a Dialogue on Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home.” Christianity and Literature 59.2 (Winter 2010): 197(5). Print. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Special journal TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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issue devoted to Robinson focused mainly on Home and Gilead. Robinson, Marilynne, and Sarah Fay. “The Paris Review Interview.” Paris Review. 186 (Fall 2008). The Art of Fiction, no. 198. Web. 17 July 2010. Frequently quoted interview in which Robinson speaks about her faith, her study of the relationship between science and religion, and her passion for history. Gale Resources
“Gilead.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 24. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 July 2010. “Marilynne Robinson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Print. Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale. Web. 10 July 2010. Marsh, Janet Z. “Marilynne Robinson.” Twenty-firstCentury American Novelists: Second Series. Ed. Wanda H. Giles and James R. Giles. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 350. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 July 2010. Maguire, James H. Twentieth-Century American Western Writers: First Series. Ed. Richard H. Cracroft. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 206. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Print. Open Web Sources
Robinson discussed her new collection of essays, Absence of Mind, and the contentious relationship between science and religion on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 8 July 2010. http://www.thedailyshow. com/full-episodes/thu-july-8-2010marilynne-robinson
Kecia Lynne spoke with Robinson for a four-part interview conducted on behalf of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, October, 2009. http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=6sPBBDWmOi4 Robinson spoke with National Public Radio about the “Iowa aesthetic” and her novels Gilead and Home on Weekend Edition Saturday, 20 Sept. 2008. http:// www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html? action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=94799720&m= 94850396 For Further Reading
Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print. The Gospel of St. Luke, 15:10-32, is Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son. Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print. The companion volume to Home, which presents a different perspective on the Boughton family black sheep, Jack Boughton. Gilead recalls four generations in the family of Reverend John Ames and is wider in scope than Home, using much of Iowa’s abolitionist history as background. Warren, Robert Penn. The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1965. Print. Contains Warren’s most frequently anthologized story, “Blackberry Winter,” about a middle-aged man’s recollections of his ninth summer, June 1910. Critics have suggested that the narrator symbolizes the prodigal son, returned home in his memories.
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Janet Mullane
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Hominids By Robert J. Sawyer
W Introduction Acclaimed science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer’s Hominids, the first novel in The Neanderthal Parallax series, presents an alternate universe in which Neanderthals have evolved into the dominant species. When the book begins, Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal scientist, is accidentally sent to our reality while performing a quantum experiment. Hominids is the story of what happens when Boddit, a man from a related but markedly different species learns about our world. It is also an anthropological and philosophical study of Neanderthal society, in contrast to the people and cultures of our Earth. Neanderthals were a primitive society, but Sawyer turns this knowledge upside down in Hominids, presenting them as a more advanced and enlightened group. This contrast is fleshed out early in the book, when Mary Vaughan, a human scientist, is raped. The sweet and potentially romantic relationship that develops between Ponter and Mary ironically highlights the idea that man may be more intrinsically violent than Neanderthals. Hominids won the prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction. Additionally, it was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Aurora Award, the Seiun Award, and the Spectrum Award. The San Francisco Chronicle and Borders Books also both named it on their year’s best lists.
W Literary and Historical Context
Neanderthals were not direct ancestors of modern-day man, but an entirely different species called Homo neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens, from whom modern-day man evolved, and Neanderthals coexisted approximately
forty thousand years ago. Both species were driven solely by instinct, with the same low level of comprehension about the world and their place in it. Eventually, consciousness began to emerge in Homo sapiens, bringing with it, in Sawyer’s words, “art and sophisticated language and science and religion and subtle emotions and planning for the future” (“Committing Trilogy”). Less than ten thousand years later, the Neanderthals had become extinct, as the Homo sapiens’ abilities outstripped them in almost every area, eventually making humans the planet’s dominant species. A major tenet of quantum theory is the idea that any time an event with multiple potential outcomes occurs, each of these outcomes, in fact, does occur, only in separate universes that split off from one another. If this is true, then it stands to reason that there is a reality in which Neanderthals, rather than Homo sapiens gained consciousness. This is the concept around which Sawyer crafted Hominids, imagining what modern day Earth would look like if Neanderthals evolved instead of humans. Based on factual information gleaned by scientists about Neanderthal culture and their biological makeup, Sawyer creates a Neanderthal society that is quite different from human society, taking into account the divergent physiology (larger brains, reduced vocal range due to head shape) and social patterns that may have potentially developed over the course of forty thousand years.
W Themes Evolution is the major theme of Hominids, and one of the primary concerns of the book is exploring the current state of mankind. Additionally, Sawyer dwells on the reasons our society evolved in the manner it did through the use of the Neanderthal universe conceit. Ponter’s reality stands as a contrast to modern-day Earth and provides a means through which Sawyer confronts his human characters and the reader with the idea that our
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MAJOR CHARACTERS LOUISE BENOIT is a beautiful, confident female postdoctoral student of physics, who initially rescues Ponter from drowning and then continues to help him over the course of the novel. PONTER BODNER is a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth who is accidentally sent to our universe while conducting one of his experiments, thus making the people of these two realities aware of each other for the first time. DAKLAR BOLBAY is Ponter’s female mate and Adikor’s primary accuser following Ponter’s disappearance. HAK is a sophisticated computer implant in Ponter’s wrist who communicates with him throughout, helping Ponter figure out the English language, as well as providing other crucial tools. ADIKOR HULD is Ponter’s male life-partner and scientific partner. When Ponter disappears, Adikor is the key suspect in the murder trial. JASMEL KET is Ponter’s eldest daughter, whom Adikor entreats to speak on his behalf. LURT is Adikor’s female mate. RUBEN MONTEGO is a physician who helps Ponter, along with Louise and Mary. Hominids is based on an alternate universe in which Neanderthals, such as the one depicted here, became the dominant species instead of homo sapiens. Marcio Jose Bastos Silva/Shutterstock.com
core philosophies and beliefs may actually be either subjective or influenced by our biological makeup. Sawyer frequently satirizes today’s world by demonstrating Ponter’s perplexed reactions to human behavior. Other times, Sawyer touches on more controversial concepts, such as the idea that every Neanderthal has both a female and a male mate, or the revelation that Neanderthals have no concept of religion. When Mary explains Heaven and Hell to Ponter, he responds, “In other words . . . people of your kind behave properly only because they are threatened if they do not” (265). In fact, the idea of retribution does not dissuade people from committing crime. One of the central ironies of the novel is that the most primitive action of the book, Mary’s rape, is committed by a human. In contrast, Neanderthals have eliminated most violent crimes. As a counterbalance to the otherwise enlightened paradise of the Neanderthal, their method of maintaining order has been to digitally record every citizen at all times. They respond to all crime by sterilizing the perpetrator and his/her immediate family in order to keep them from corrupting the genetic pool.
MARY VAUGHAN, a female genetics expert, who is attacked and raped at the start. As the book progresses, she forms a friendship with Ponter that eventually develops into potential romance.
W Style Hominids is a science fiction novel that belongs to a subgenre often referred to as “anthropological sci-fi.” As such it centers on an examination of a fictional culture that is meticulously crafted by the author, holding up to close scrutiny about the logic of the society it portrays. Beliefs, customs, hierarchy, and family structure are all outlined, and Sawyer describes the scientific aspects of the work in often minute detail. This gives Hominids an edge of “hard sci-fi,” a brand of science-fiction that emphasizes accuracy about the science behind the fiction, even as the bulk of the work is more concerned with “soft sci-fi” topics, such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The novel is related in the form of two parallel narratives, mirroring the two realities of the worlds that make up Hominids: one narrative focuses on the fish-outof-water tale of Ponter as he acclimates to the human world, while the other relates a thriller/courtroom drama about Ponter’s male mate, Adikor, as he attempts to clear himself of the charge that he is Ponter’s supposed
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Hominids
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Known as one of Canada’s premiere science fiction authors, Robert J. Sawyer has written novels including Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids (collectively known as The Neanderthal Parallax), Calculating God, and Flashforward. The latter was adapted into a television series, FlashForward, for ABC television network. Sawyer’s works have a number of major themes in common. Many of them focus on the idea of what would happen if modern-day people were confronted by the discovery of a new scientific truth. In many of Sawyer’s stories, the stimulus of encountering an extraordinary event shocks his characters to their core, causing them to reevaluate their philosophy and beliefs. The clash between science and theology is another major thematic thread in Sawyer’s fiction. Despite his critique and satirization of contemporary society, much of Sawyer’s writing is optimistic in its outlook about humankind’s potential and future. Sawyer has won numerous literary awards for his work, including the Hugo award and the Nebula award.
murderer. The chapters alternate between the Neanderthal world and the human world. Sawyer also makes liberal use of satire. A great deal of comedy emerges from the disconnect between how Ponter and his personal computer, Hak, interpret a situation versus the human interpretation. Ponter’s confusion over human cultural idioms is another source of humor in the novel. Satire also appears in the brief bold-faced paragraphs that open many of the chapters— this text includes pieces of fictional news stories reporting on Ponter’s appearance and even a David Lettermanesque “Top Ten” list. In addition to being humorous, these snippets of pop culture and media depictions of major news events further enhance the reality of the novel. The excerpts also provide an ironic commentary on the potential coverage that contemporary news outlets would grant such earth-shattering news, were such an event to actually occur.
W Critical Reception
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Johnson, Roberta. “Sawyer, Robert J. Hominids.” Booklist 98 (1 June 2002): 1698. Print. General OneFile. Web. 31 July 2010. Sawyer, Robert J. “Committing Trilogy: The Origins of ‘The Neanderthal Parallax.’” SFWriter.com. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Sawyer, Robert J. Hominids. New York: Tor, 2002. Print. Teehan, John. “Robert Sawyer’s Hominids: It’s Not Your Father’s Cavemen Story.” Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. Strange Horizons 22 July 2002. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Wagner, Thomas M. “Hominids.” Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. SFReviews.Net 2003. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources
Hominids was praised by critics for its convincing portrayal of the Neanderthal world and its intelligent and engaging presentation of philosophical discussions. The book went on to receive the prestigious Hugo, among a number of other high-profile awards. John Teehan, of the popular sci-fi site, Strange Horizons, applauded Sawyer for his “careful use of archaeology and sociology . . . to create a reasonably postulated world of modern Neanderthals not only to show us a world that might have been, but also to allow us to examine ourselves through the eyes of an alien
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culture.” While Teehan deemed much of the science in the novel of “dubious quality,” he acknowledged that this is true of most science fiction, whose primary purpose is to act as the conduit by which an author can explore his ideas. Roberta Johnson, in Booklist, was appreciative of Sawyer’s protagonist, calling Ponter “a most winning creation . . . thoughtful, brave, and charming. . . . The smaller-scale, peaceful, environmentally savvy world of Ponter’s people is equally well realized, though Sawyer loses a little steam trying to pin humanity’s woes on organized religion.” Primarily well received, Hominids was nonetheless faulted by some reviewers for its underdeveloped secondary characters. Some, such as Thomas M. Wagner, at SciFiReviews.net, dismissed the novel as a “work of pop-literary shock and awe,” calling Sawyer a writer of “eminently readable yet stylistically trashy page-turners.” Wagner went on to call Sawyer’s philosophical agenda “stale at best and condescending and offensive at worst, and some of its most dramatic moments border on unintentional comedy.” Most critics had a more balanced view of the book, however, overlooking its shortcomings for its fascinating exploration of sociology, anthropology, and theology.
Criticism and Reviews
DuMond, Lisa. “Hominids.” Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. SF Site 2002. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. This review analyzes how Sawyer uses a science fiction conceit to discuss deeper issues of culture and biology. Forde, Pat. “An Analysis of Hominids.” SFWriter.com 2003. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. An in-depth literary analysis of Hominids, arguing for the sophistication of Sawyer’s writing, from plotting, structural, and thematic perspectives. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. Globe and Mail [Toronto] 8 June 2002. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 31 July 2010. Both a review of Hominids and a discussion about Sawyer’s writing, on the whole, and why he has become such a popular author. Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. Publishers Weekly 249.24 (17 June 2002): 48. Print. This review of Hominids praises the novel for the sophistication of its anthropological and philosophical elements. Snider, John C. “Book Review: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer.” Rev. of Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer. SciFiDimensions 2002. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. A review that examines how Sawyer uses his Neanderthals as a conceit to examine human nature. Gale Resources
“Sawyer, Robert J(ames) 1960-.” Contemporary Authors. Ed. Scot Peacock. Vol. 212. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 371-91. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Robert J. Sawyer has a comprehensive author site, including in-depth analyses of each of his books, study guides, interview, comprehensive bibliographies for further reading on their subjects, and more at http:// www.sfwriter.com/ Robert J. Sawyer was interviewed by the Internet radio show, Hour 25, the full episode of which can be heard at Mike Hodel’s Hour 25 Web site. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. http://www.hour25online.com/Hour25_ Previous_Shows_2002-06.html#robert-sawyer _2002-06-21
For Further Reading
Boyd, Neil. The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent. Vancouver: Greystone Books (Douglas and McIntyre), 2000. Print. An evolutionary and psychological study of what makes men prone to violence. LeGuin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1969. Print. This acclaimed book is considered a classic of anthropological science fiction, focusing on a planet of people who have either no gender or both. It concerns a society that, like the Neanderthal one, defies normal gender stereotypes. Sawyer, Robert J. Calculating God. New York: Tor, 2009. Print. This controversial book explores many themes similar to those in The Neanderthal Parallax, specifically religion and man’s relationship with a potentially mythical God. ———. Humans. New York: Tor, 2003. Print. The second volume in The Neanderthal Parallax, and the first sequel to Hominids, this installment contains more social satire than the first, highlighting Mary’s trip to Ponter’s universe. ———. Hybrids. New York: Tor, 2003. Print. The conclusion to the trilogy, in which Mary and Potner’s love culminates in their decision to create the first Human-Neanderthal hybrid child. Shreeve, James. The Neanderthal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins. New York: William Morrow, 1995. Print. An exploration of Neanderthals and of what might have led modern man to develop in the manner currently espoused by scientists.
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Robert Berg
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The Human Stain By Philip Roth
W Introduction Set against the heightened political tensions that defined American public life during the late 1990s, The Human Stain (2000) by Philip Roth tells the story of a disgraced college professor who has harbored a deep personal secret through his fifty-year career. Although the narrative initially concerns a relatively small scandal involving an inopportune classroom remark, it eventually broadens in scope to address such themes as sexual politics, blackmail, and the problem of racial identity in the United States. The professor, Coleman Silk, is a charismatic but troubled classics scholar who has concealed his African American origins in order to live his life “not black, not even white—just on his own and free.” In its portrait of Coleman, the novel explores the ways in which society often shapes, sometimes brutally, the individual’s quest for self-realization. One of Philip Roth’s most acclaimed and controversial novels, The Human Stain received both the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2000 National Jewish Book Fiction Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Human Stain is the third novel in what Roth has described as his “American trilogy” (qtd. in McGrath), a series that began with American Pastoral (1997) followed by I Married a Communist (1998). Like its predecessors, The Human Stain chronicles life in the United States during a period of intense social, political, and cultural conflict. The novel makes repeated references to the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal involving U.S.president Bill Clinton, who was impeached for perjury after lying about his relationship with Lewinsky, a White House intern. The scandal revealed how deeply divided the country was on such issues as sexuality, privacy, and the moral lives of
public figures. The highly publicized political battles of the era create a fitting backdrop for Coleman Silk’s own personal drama, as a series of increasingly damaging revelations threatens to overshadow his years of dedicated service to Athena College. Within the context of academic life in the 1990s, Coleman’s predicament illustrates the extremely narrow path that many scholars had to follow in order to abide by the standards of political correctness. In this respect, Roth’s chronicle of the persecution of Coleman as a consequence of a ruthless academic code and a society that preys on the slightest indiscretions encapsulates the zeitgeist of the time in which the novel is set.
W Themes Themes of identity and race lie at the core of The Human Stain and serve as the point of departure for Roth’s explorations into Coleman Silk’s character. In depicting Coleman’s efforts to redefine himself, Roth exposes the inherent instability of human identity in a manner that echoes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s portrait of the quintessential self-made man in the novel The Great Gatsby (a fact noted by both Michiko Kakutani, and Lorrie Moore). Ironically, Coleman’s undoing is a direct result of his subterfuge. When Coleman refers to a pair of students who are perpetually absent from his class as “spooks,” he uses the term in a very specific sense, in which “spook” means “spy” or “secret agent.” One of his students, however, assumes that “spook” is intended as a derogatory term for an African American. Coleman’s unfortunate word choice takes on racial overtones precisely because people believe that he is white. The conflict between the individual and society is another of Roth’s central concerns in The Human Stain. Coleman’s decision to eschew his past in the pursuit of what Igor Webb calls “radical autonomy” represents a basic human resistance to being stereotyped or labeled. Although he has embraced this freedom throughout his adult life and shaped his character on his own terms, Coleman cannot escape the broader social
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The Human Stain
MAJOR CHARACTERS FAUNIA FARLEY is a younger woman who becomes Coleman Silk’s lover soon after the death of his wife, Iris. An illiterate, emotionally battered woman who works as a janitor at Athena College, Faunia serves as a symbol of Coleman’s fall from grace and of his fierce desire to achieve liberation from social norms. LESTER FARLEY, the husband of Faunia, is a troubled Vietnam veteran whose hostile, often threatening, behavior establishes the undercurrent of menace that drives the plot to its climax. After he orchestrates the fatal car crash that kills Coleman and Faunia, Lester becomes Zuckerman’s chief antagonist.
Picture of Philip Roth, author of The Human Stain.. David Montgomery/Getty Images
and cultural forces that play such powerful roles in defining who we are. In this sense, Coleman’s ruse, though emblematic of his audacious and imaginative personality, is also extremely fragile.
W Style Roth’s characteristic humor and his insightful rendering of the complexities of human psychology are on full display in The Human Stain. Broad in scope, the novel interweaves dialogue, flashbacks, and interior monologue with authorial meditations on contemporary society, in particular the various unsavory details surrounding the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Although Nathan Zuckerman is the narrator of the work, his point of view remains unobtrusive for long passages of the novel, allowing the story of Coleman’s decline to unfold as a straightforward narrative. This technique is typical of a traditional realistic novel in many respects, but The Human Stain also contains certain distinct postmodern elements, particularly in its portrayal of Zuckerman—the secluded novelist and Roth alter ego, who has been a character in a number of the author’s best-known works. Early in the novel, Coleman Silk approaches Zuckerman, who is his neighbor, to propose that he write Coleman’s life story for him. Although Coleman is driven by the wish to exonerate himself in the aftermath of the scandal, Zuckerman quickly asserts control over the narrative, transforming the material of Coleman’s life into a work of fiction. As Zuckerman struggles to create order in the wake of Coleman Silk’s
DELPHINE ROUX, a young faculty member in Athena’s English department, is Coleman’s conniving, ruthless nemesis. She blackmails Coleman Silk after she learns the secret truth about his past. A scholar of contemporary literary theory, Roux serves as a vehicle for much of the novel’s satire and is the target of many of Roth’s scathing depictions of hypocrisy and pretense within academic circles during the period. COLEMAN SILK, the novel’s main protagonist, is a retired classics scholar and former dean of Athena College, a small liberal arts institution in western Massachusetts. In his early seventies, Coleman struggles to rehabilitate his life and reputation after an innocuous, offhand remark is misinterpreted as racist by one of his students. As the plot unfolds, however, Roth reveals that Coleman is embattled with far larger personal issues over which he ultimately is powerless to assert control. NATHAN ZUCKERMAN, a famous novelist and Coleman’s neighbor, plays the role of both observer and chronicler of the novel’s central drama. Although Zuckerman’s character is largely in the background for much of the novel’s action, his perspective on Coleman’s tragic fate shapes the work’s style and plot.
personal destruction, Roth raises compelling questions about the nature of fictional representation and the thin line that separates authenticity and fabrication. In this way, Roth’s overarching narrative strategy mirrors his protagonist’s own efforts to live a “fictionalized” existence. Roth blurs the line between reality and fiction even further in the work’s closing pages, which describe Zuckerman’s final, uneasy encounter with the murderous Lester Farley. By making it clear that Farley has no intention of harming Zuckerman and that Farley has requested a copy of the “book” that Zuckerman has written, Roth as author crosses the boundary between the fiction he has his characters create and the reality of his book and its readers.
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The Human Stain BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Philip Roth was born on March 19, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey. He is among the most influential American novelists from the post-World War II era. Roth has dedicated his career to exploring diverse aspects of modern Jewish American identity. He first achieved acclaim in 1959, with the publication of his debut short story collection, Goodbye, Columbus. The work earned Roth the National Book Award for fiction, and immediately established him as one of the most promising young writers in the United States. In 1969 Roth became a literary celebrity, while sparking considerable controversy, with the publication of his best-selling, sexually charged comic novel Portnoy’s Complaint. A prolific talent, Roth has published a number of major works, among them Zuckerman Unbound (1981), Operation Shylock (1993), and American Pastoral (1997), for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize. Roth has continued to publish steadily into the twenty-first century. Later novels include The Plot against America (2004), Exit Ghost (2007), and Nemesis (2010).
Gates, David. “Truth and Consequences.” Rev. of The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. Newsweek 15 May 2000: 70. Print. Hynes, James. “Professor of Passion.” Rev. of The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. Washington Post 7 May 2000: 3. Print. Kakutani, Michiko. “Confronting the Failures of a Professor Who Passes.” Rev. of The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. New York Times 2 May 2000: 1. Print. McGrath, Charles. “Zuckerman’s Alter Brain.” New York Times 7 May 2000: 8. Print. Moore, Lorrie. “The Wrath of Athena.” Rev. of The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. New York Times 7 May 2000: 7. Print. Roth, Philip. The Human Stain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print. Webb, Igor. “Born Again.” Rev. of The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. Partisan Review 67.4 (2000): 648-52. Print. Additional Resources
W Critical Reception
Criticism and Reviews
The Human Stain received widespread praise upon its publication in 2000. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani calls the novel a “large and stirring book,” praising Roth for depicting the novel’s historical era with “uncommon insight and perception.” She describes Roth’s portrait of the conflicted Coleman Silk as “beautifully nuanced” and “by turns unnerving, hilarious and sad.” Reviewing the book for the New York Times, novelist Lorrie Moore calls The Human Stain “astonishing, uneven, and often very beautiful,” while David Gates in Newsweek hails the “ventriloquizing” talent with which Roth portrays his various characters, attributing his mastery of a wide range of different personalities to his “overflow of passion about realworld outrages.” At the same time, many of the book’s fiercest admirers have found fault with some of Roth’s character studies, notably his depiction of Lester Farley, whom Moore describes as constructed “from every available cliché of the Vietnam vet.” Although some commentators have criticized the novel’s prose style—James Hynes of the Washington Post, for instance, describes it as “graceless”—most acknowledge that Roth approaches his subject matter with a fierce, passionate intelligence. Hynes himself expresses a strong appreciation for Roth’s willingness to tackle ambitious themes in the novel and asserts that The Human Stain is far more memorable than other “more carefully crafted” contemporary novels.
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Works Cited
Abbott, Philip. “‘Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan’: Democratic Theory, Populism, and Philip Roth’s ‘American Trilogy.’” Canadian Review of American Studies 37.3 (2007): 431-52. Print. Analyzes how the notion of populism, both as a form of collective political expression and as a destabilizing social force, plays a central thematic role in Roth’s novel. Boddy, Kasia. “Philip Roth’s Great Books: A Reading of The Human Stain.” Cambridge Quarterly 39.1 (2010): 39-60. Print. Investigates the ways in which Roth borrows from classical literary forms, notably the epic and tragedy, in The Human Stain. Glaser, Jennifer. “The Jew in the Canon: Reading Race and Literary History in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 123.5 (2008): 1465+. Print. Explores the multifaceted ways in which Roth’s novel confronts, engages with, and ultimately participates in multicultural modes of literary discourse. Kaplan, Brett Ashley. “Reading Race and the Conundrums of Reconciliation in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” Turning Up the Flame: Philip Roth’s Later Novels. Ed. Jay L. Halio and Ben Siegel. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2005. 172-93. Print. Examines the fundamental tensions between individual and collective identity at play in the novel and interprets the work within the context of identity and racial politics in the United States in late 1990s. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Human Stain
Parrish, Timothy L. “Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” Contemporary Literature 45.3 (2004): 421-59. Print. Considers questions of identity and race in The Human Stain, comparing the work’s central themes to those elucidated by Ralph Ellison in his landmark novel Invisible Man (1952). Royal, Derek Parker. “Plotting the Frames of Subjectivity: Identity, Death, and Narrative in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” Contemporary Literature 47.1 (2006): 114-40. Print. Discusses the ways in which the personality of the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, insinuates itself into the novel’s portrayal of Coleman Silk. Gale Resources
Kremer, S. Lillian. “Philip Roth.” American Novelists since World War II, Fifth Series. Ed. James R. Giles and Wanda H. Giles. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 173. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. “Philip Roth.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010 Web. 5 Oct. 2010. “Philip Roth.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 201. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Pinsker, Sanford. “Philip (Milton) Roth.” TwentiethCentury American-Jewish Fiction Writers. Ed. Daniel Walden. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 28 Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Facebook page for The Human Stain provides an online forum where fans of the book can discuss some of the work’s central themes, the circumstances under which Roth wrote the novel, and other issues related to the work. http://www.facebook.com/pages/ The-Human-Stain/105564032810064 The Human Stain Reading Group Guide on the Knopf Doubleday Web site provides a detailed synopsis of the book and provides a series of thought-provoking discussion questions concerning the novel. http:// reading-group-center.knopfdoubleday.com/2010/ 01/08/the-human-stain-guide/
and provides access to a range of scholarly discussions and resources related to the author’s career. http:// rothsociety.org/ For Further Reading
Broyard, Bliss. One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets. New York: Little Brown, 2007. Print. This personal memoir reveals the story of Anatole Broyard, a famed literary critic and author who concealed his African American origins from the public until his death in 1990. Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Viking, 1999. Print. A searing portrait of a failed academic who engages in a vindictive love affair with one of his students. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1925. Print. Landmark American novel tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a man born into humble origins who reinvents himself in order to earn money, prestige, and the love of a married woman. Mamet, David. Oleanna. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Print. A play that explores themes of sexual, professional, and political power in contemporary American academia. Roth, Philip. American Pastoral. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print. The first novel in Roth’s American trilogy, American Pastoral examines the tensions between family and political commitment in the turbulent 1960s. ———. I Married a Communist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print. The second installment in Roth’s American trilogy, I Married a Communist reflects on political and ethnic persecution within Newark’s Jewish community during the McCarthy era. Adaptations
The Human Stain. Dir. Robert Benton. Perf. Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise. Miramax Films, 2003. Film. This 2003 adaptation received mixed reviews, with many critics praising the powerful performances of Hopkins and Kidman while asserting that the actors were miscast in their roles. Stephen Meyer
The Philip Roth Society engages in literary panels and forums dedicated to examining Roth’s body of work
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The Hummingbird’s Daughter By Luis Alberto Urrea
W Introduction The Hummingbird’s Daughter tells the story of Teresita Urrea, a mixed-blood Mexican woman whose rise to fame as a medicine woman and miracle worker becomes intertwined with a civil war in late nineteenth-century Mexico. The child of a rich, white ranch owner and a peasant washerwoman, Teresita grows up in Sinaloa and Sonora, in northwest Mexico. She is raised by her abusive aunt until a kindly medicine woman, Huila, takes her under her wing and teaches her the art of healing. Living in an impoverished world made worse by the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, Teresita dreams of a better life, and eventually her healing powers enable such dreams to come to fruition. After a miraculous return from death, she earns the status of a saint, and her miracles, as well as her denunciation of government tyranny, inspire an uprising. Luis Alberto Urrea’s tale combines historical investigation with a lyricism inspired by Mexican folk legend to explore the harsh realities of poverty, war, and prejudice.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Hummingbird’s Daughter is based loosely on accounts of the real Teresa (or “Teresita”) Urrea, the daughter of a fourteen-year-old peasant mother and Don Tomás Urrea, a prosperous rancher. Initially inspired by the discovery that Teresita was a distant relation of his, Luis Alberto Urrea focused his investigation on the woman’s legendary status as a saint in 1880s Mexico, during the beginning of Porfirio Díaz’s regime. According to folklore, the sixteen-year-old Teresita was raped and pronounced dead, only to revive during her wake. Thousands of pilgrims heard rumors about this apparent miracle and traveled to Sonora to see Teresita, while the Catholic Church officially declared her a heretic.
Although this historical background seems to defy reality, Urrea consciously exploits the legendary potential of Teresita’s life to redefine reality through a literary technique known as “magical realism.” Often associated with films that deliberately manipulate the perception of images through camera tricks, magical realism, as Jeffrey Wechsler explains, provides a way of reordering reality to make it strange. It is a technique in which the ordinary events of life, such as birth and death, are invested with poetic imagery and often presented almost as fairy tales or legends. Events described are perhaps exaggerated but remain possible within the scope of human knowledge. In Urrea’s novel, Teresita somehow has the ability to make her hands become hot in order to administer healing to her patients. When questioned about it, she shrugs and says matter-of-factly, “My hands are always hot.” Here and throughout the novel, a supernatural oddity is accepted as the norm. By incorporating elements of legend and lore and infiltrating the mundane with the magical, Urrea magnifies the importance of miracles in hopeless times.
W Themes Although much of the action in the novel relates to the conflict between the rich and the poor, author Urrea also explores the ways in which human sympathy can transcend economic boundaries. The traditional class conflict of rich versus poor is underscored by the “haciendas,” the estates owned by rich, white investors and operated through the employment of the indigenous population. Tomás Urrea is the “patrón” of the estate featured in The Hummingbird’s Daughter, and early in the novel we are invited to consider the great contrast between his living conditions and those of Teresita. Whereas Teresita’s aunt’s house has a dirt floor, Tomás’s great house has shiny wood floors, as well as clean, white, gauzy curtains. Despite this apparent divide, Tomás’s sympathy for those who work on his estates, and for the daughter who is mistreated by her aunt, allows class
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The Hummingbird’s Daughter
MAJOR CHARACTERS CAYETANA CHAVEZ is Teresita’s mother, a peasant washerwoman known by most in the village as “the hummingbird” for her slight figure. Cayetana is only fourteen when she gives birth to her daughter. To avoid the inevitable hardship of raising the child, she leaves Teresita with her sister and escapes Mexico. HUILA is the village’s midwife and visionary. She helps deliver Teresita and later teaches her medicinal skills. The survivor of a previous massacre, Huila combines her great knowledge of healing with a defiant resistance to both “Yoris” (white masters) such as Tomás and the government police who terrorize the people.
The Hummingbird’s Daughter follows the life of Teresita Urrea, a Mexican medicine woman who performs miracles during a civil war in her country. Elena Ray/Shutterstock.com
boundaries to be crossed. This crossover is most apparent when the young Teresita sneaks into the main house and, instead of being banished, is welcomed and given refreshment by Tomás. Another conventional notion that Urrea reevaluates is sainthood. Living in the impoverished conditions of her aunt’s abode, Teresita is malnourished, filthy, and liceridden—hardly the picture of the typical saint. Yet thousands flock to her village and seek her out, ignoring the Catholic Church’s charge of heresy. As critic Stacey D’Erasmo argues, Teresita “is a saint as envisioned not in the marble reaches of the Vatican but in the populist pueblos of liberation theology.” Teresita’s practical acceptance of her gifts, combined with her sympathy toward people, places her in stark contrast to the Christian religious authorities who condemn this earthy saint and express little sympathy for the plight of the oppressed.
W Style Urrea’s investment in magical realism, which enables a reappraisal of miracles and sainthood, produces a writing style in which everyday objects and events are elevated by lyrical description. A task as habitual as preparing and drinking coffee in the morning is rendered so poetically that the ritual becomes somehow larger, as though “a tidal wave of coffee [has] rushed west across the land, rising and falling from kitchen to fire ring to cave to ramada.” In this instance, the communal nature of a ritual is reinforced through the use of metaphor. Coffee, as well as tamarind, cheese, tobacco, and rum, are described in
TÍA is the sister of Cayetana. She is forced to look after Teresita. Unmarried, with two children of her own, Tía is resentful of her responsibilities and takes out her frustrations on Teresita, viciously abusing her and depriving her of proper nourishment. TERESITA URREA is the daughter of Cayetana and Tomás. She is compelled to live with her abusive aunt until she is befriended by Huila. Intrigued with the world around her, Teresita soon discovers that she is different from other children, possessing the blond hair of her white father and special gifts that enable her to heal and, according to others, perform miracles. TOMÁS URREA is a white rancher, known by the Sinaloans as a “Yori,” or white master, and is also identified as the “patrón.” The son of a wealthy patrón himself, Tomás nevertheless learns when he is young to respect the peasantry and be wary of the Mexican government and its bullying police force.
ways that reinforce their importance to a community unused to such luxuries. Urrea’s poetic style is most apparent when it is used to describe the mundane tasks of cleaning and cooking or violent events such as the slaughter of Mexican peasants. The dreary tasks that tie men and women to the earth are given a special significance, and the very atmosphere is heightened with anticipation of food preparation and consumption. Urrea also employs his lyrical prose to articulate the horrors that have been downplayed by official history. In other cases, straight narration is often interrupted by observations inspired by folk wisdom or legends, reaffirming the importance of the imagination in the creation of truth. Throughout the narrative, Urrea’s lyricism is punctuated by his economical use of dialogue. Using short, rapid exchanges, he establishes the temperaments of his characters and demonstrates his humorous insight into the motives that drive humans.
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The Hummingbird’s Daughter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Luis Alberto Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico, to an American mother and a Mexican father. He was educated at the University of California, San Diego, and did graduate work at the University of Colorado, Boulder, before turning to writing. Urrea has won awards for his fiction, poetry, and essays. The Devil’s Highway (2004) won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. In much of his work, Urrea uses his mixed heritage as the impetus for explorations of American and Mexican relations and the larger themes of love, war, and redemption. Urrea is also skilled at weaving together historical and fictional elements, and his use of magical realism allows him to offer poetic insights into everyday human experience.
W Critical Reception Critics commenting on The Hummingbird’s Daughter have been most impressed by the author’s blend of fact and fantasy and his lyrical response to a violent period of Mexican history. The product of some twenty years of research, the novel affirmed Urrea’s prominence as a magical realist writer and an important commentator on Mexican politics and culture. Recognizing the author’s skillful blend of narrative craft and political commentary, a Publishers Weekly reviewer declares that “Urrea effortlessly links Teresita’s supernatural calling to the turmoil of the times, concealing substantial intellectual content behind effervescent storytelling and considerable humor.” Other critics have noted the author’s attention to both the large and the seemingly insignificant details of life, as well as his attunement to both the physical and the metaphysical realms of human experience. A few commentators have been critical of Urrea’s blend of history and fiction. Library Journal’s Lawrence Olszewski contends that Urrea’s tale is more a “novelized biography than a work of fiction” and that “more research seems to have crept in than creativity.” Further, Olszewski charges that the depiction of the rebellion and miracles lack conviction. Taking almost the opposite view, Stacey D’Erasmo in the New York Times Book Review describes the novel as having “the woodcut feeling of a bedtime story, or of family legends that have been told so many times they’ve gone smooth, like the lettering on old gravestones.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
D’Erasmo, Stacey. “A Saint with Grit.” New York Times Book Review 3 July 2005: 9(L) Print.
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Rev. of The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Publishers Weekly 18 Apr. 2005: 44. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Olszewski, Lawrence. Rev. of The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Library Journal 15 May 2005: 109. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Hummingbird’s Daughter. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print. Wechsler, Jeffrey. “Magic Realism: Defining the Indefinite.” Art Journal 45.4 (1985): 293-98. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cheuse, Alan. Rev. of The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. World Literature Today July-Aug. 2006: 35. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. In his review, Cheuse considers the theme of border crossing in Urrea’s novel and praises the color, depth, and breadth of the work. Hiltbrand, David. “Mystical Mexican Epic Tells Story of Miracle-Working Girl.” Philadelphia Inquirer 1 June 2005: n. pag. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. In his positive review, Hiltbrand praises Urrea’s lyrical prose, noting that it gives vibrancy to both the spirit world and the animal world. Rev. of The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Kirkus Reviews 15 Apr. 2005: 450. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. In this review, an anonymous critic offers an informative summary of Urrea’s novel. Martinez, Elizabeth Coonrod. “Remembering the Borderlands’ Forgotten.” Americas Sept.-Oct. 2006: 60. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Martinez considers how the frequent descriptions of the food consumed by the characters in Urrea’s novel serve to reinforce class differences. Nava, Alex. “Teresa Urrea: Mexican Mystic, Healer, and Apocalyptic Revolutionary.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73.2 (2005): 497519. Print. Nava explores the apocalyptic and mystical elements of the Teresita Urrea character, underscoring the ways in which her spiritual ministry challenged and condemned Porfirio Díaz’s oppressive dictatorship. Gale Resources
González-T., César A. “Luis Alberto Urrea (20 August 1955-).” Chicano Writers, Third Series. Ed. Francisco A. Lomeli and Carl R. Shirley. Detroit: Gale, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 209. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Hummingbird’s Daughter Open Web Sources
The Web site of Powell’s Books features an interview with Urrea by Jill Owens. The discussion focuses on The Hummingbird’s Daughter as well as his more recent work, Into the Beautiful North (2009). http://www. powells.com/authors/luisalbertourrea.html For Further Reading
1580-1750. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000. Print. Sampson and Tudela use extensive archival material, as well as maps, portraits, and religious art, to explore the writings and ministry of female religious figures up to the mid-eighteenth century. This study provides a valuable context for the later religious and political tensions dramatized in Urrea’s novel.
Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. Print. Focusing largely on letters and true accounts, Franco explores the position of women in Mexico. Her goal is to promote a feminist understanding of Mexican culture.
Urrea, Luis Alberto. Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border. New York: Anchor, 1993. Print. In this earlier nonfiction work, Urrea offers a captivating examination of life in Mexico. His portrait is a sympathetic but honest account of the abject poverty that dominates so many living on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kaup, Monika. Rewriting North American Borders in Chicano and Chicana Narrative. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Print. Kaup’s book considers the thematic use of the border in Chicano and Chicana literature. It is especially relevant to Urrea’s writings, which focus on the tensions surrounding the MexicoU.S. border.
Vanderwood, Paul. “Response to Revolt: The CounterGuerrilla Strategy of Porfirio Díaz.” Hispanic American Historical Review 56.4 (1976): 551-79. Print. Vanderwood’s article on the Díaz regime covers the twentieth-century Mexican Revolution, which had its antecedents in the economic unrest and revolutionary responses depicted in Urrea’s novel.
Sampson, Elisa, and Vera Tudela. Colonial Angels: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality in Mexico
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Adam Lawrence
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Hunger By Mohamed al-Bisatie
W Introduction Originally published in Arabic as Ju’ in 2007, Hunger (2008) is a short novel by Mohamed al–Bisatie that chronicles a rural Egyptian family’s daily struggles to obtain enough food to survive. The need for food drives the novel, but the story also depicts a father’s stifled dreams of education, a mother’s patience and her curiosity about her more affluent neighbors, and an eldest son’s resourcefulness. As a writer al-Bisatie is known for bringing wit and humor to even the direst of situations, and Hunger displays his characteristic style. Although the novel ultimately offers a stark portrait of the characters’ circumstances and a bleak outlook for their future, this dark tone is mediated by the family’s oftencheerful banter, the parents’ continued sexual desire, and the mother’s intense love for her children. The novel won alBisatie praise for his facility in humanizing serious topics such as poverty, hunger, and social inequality.
W Literary and Historical Context
Hunger is set in modern-day rural Egypt, a sector of the country that is home to a disproportionate number of the nation’s poorest residents. Although Egypt’s urban areas have modernized, rural areas have significantly lagged behind in infrastructure, sanitation, technology, and other advancements. In the novel Zaghloul and his family live in a one-room home made of brick and mud. They lack access to conveniences such as indoor plumbing and must constantly contend with fleas and lice. al-Bisatie belongs to the Generation of the Sixties, a group of progressive Egyptian writers named after the decade in which they first rose to prominence. Collectively, these writers were inspired by a desire for social justice and freedom. Most were mentored by Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel Prize-winning author who helped
bring about a renaissance of Arabic literature. In an article for Al-Ahram Weekly Online, al–Bisatie reflects on Mahfouz’s influence on his development as a writer, describing him as “incredibly supportive” and a “subtle mentor.” al–Bisatie is also known as a member of influential Egyptian writers associated with the literary magazine Galiri 68 (Gallery 68), which focuses on the publication of works with a modernist aesthetic and a progressive political agenda. al-Bisatie’s interest in politics is reflected in Hunger, particularly in the scenes in which Zaghloul listens as a group of university students question the direction of their country. “Why,” they ask, “has our country, unlike other countries of the world, known long years of colonization—and the worst sorts of colonization: Turkish, French, English?” They discuss the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, in which military forces overthrew the king and established a republic. These reflections prompt one student to comment, “Just tell me a single country that has been ruled by the military for nearly sixty years.”
W Themes As its title suggests, hunger is the governing theme of alBisatie’s novel. On a literal level the plot is shaped by the characters’ various responses to their physical need for food. Zaghloul prefers not to work, and the family often lacks even bread to eat. Zaghloul’s wife, Sakeena, must often borrow bread from her neighbors—a burden that fills her with great shame, though she is always careful to pay them back. Even with borrowed bread, the family is almost always hungry. Their nights are miserable because “colic brought on by hunger keeps sleep away.” The few occasions when the family has more than bread to eat are treated with much fanfare. For example, when Sakeena is employed by a wealthy neighbor, her children are amazed at the meals she is able to provide for them, asking, “Will we be eating like this every day?” After Sakeena’s
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MAJOR CHARACTERS HAGG HASHEM is a wealthy widower who has a big home near Zaghloul and his family. Sakeena is extraordinarily interested in the goings-on at his house, and her curiosity leads her indirectly to a job as a servant there. During her employment all of the members of her family are well fed. After Hashem dies, however, Sakeena’s family returns to dire poverty and hunger. RAGAB is the nine-year-old son of Sakeena and Zaghloul. HAGG ABDUL RAHEEM is a wealthy, overweight man who pays Zaghloul to help him get on and off his mule and get around. While Zaghloul is employed, he is able to provide his family with good meals, but when Raheem dies, the family’s struggles for survival begin anew. SAKEENA is the wife of Zaghloul and the mother of their two sons. As a woman, she has very little power in the family and must watch her family suffer for lack of food. ZAGHLOUL is Sakeena’s husband. Although he routinely volunteers to help in the clearing of chairs after condolence gatherings, he does not like to keep a regular job, and his unemployment is a driving factor in his family’s perpetual hunger. Originally published in Arabic, the novel Hunger depicts an Egyptian family’s ordeals of not having enough food to eat. Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock.com
employer dies and the family is plunged back into poverty, the family’s industrious elder son, Zahir, arranges a deal with a local baker, bringing home scraps of ruined bread until the kindly baker leaves town. Zahir also receives food from his friend Abdullah. This act of generosity ends, however, when Abdullah’s father, believing Zahir an unsuitable playmate for his educated son, threatens to break Zahir’s neck if he catches him near their home again. In addition to the physical hunger for food, the novel takes as its themes sexual hunger and the desire for knowledge and education. Zaghloul and Sakeena often engage in banter about the frequency and duration of their own lovemaking, and Zaghloul enjoys listening to a group of university students boast about their sexual exploits. Zaghloul’s attraction to the students also underscores his longing for knowledge and education, both of which are denied to him because of his poverty. In listening to the students, he finds that “what he did understand exercised his mind for a long time, and even what he did not understand he found himself attracted to.” When he attempts to question a visiting Muslim leader about religion, however, he is badly beaten and called an “infidel” and a “good-for-nothing.”
ZAHIR is the elder of Sakeena and Zaghloul’s sons. At just twelve years of age, he is forced to provide food for himself and his family by any means he can. He receives food from his more affluent friend and develops a friendship with a local baker who gives him the scraps of ruined bread.
W Style Reviewing one of al-Bisatie’s other novels for World Literature Today, Marcia Lynx Qualey characterizes the author as “a novelist associated with powerful, poetic prose and an obsession with village life in Egypt.” Denys Johnson-Davies, who would later translate Hunger, notes in Al-Ahram Weekly Online that al-Bisatie’s style is “characterised by a brevity and directness often lacking in other Arab writers” and that he makes “no attempt to either dramatise or romanticise the situations.” Likening the author’s style to that of a journalist, Johnson-Davies suggests that it stands out for its attention to “the richness of the spoken language” that “has become more refined with the years.” Hunger displays this characteristic style, alternating between descriptive passages and dialogue. Some of the most detailed passages in the novel describe food. In one such scene Sakeena and Zaghloul watch with interest as their wealthy neighbor loads his trucks with all manner of foods—such as pigeons, honey, quail, ducks, chickens, cheese, and cooking oil—to be delivered to his son and
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mohamed al-Bisatie was born on November 19, 1937, in ElGamalia in Egypt’s Shaqiya Province. al-Bisatie’s father was a teacher, and the young man was well educated, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cairo in 1960. After completing his degree al-Bisatie took a job in the government auditor’s office in Cairo. He began to pursue his love of writing in his spare time, and his first short story, “Al-Kibar-wa-’lSighur” (“The Old and the Young”), was published in 1967. He continued to write stories and longer works of fiction and became associated with a group of young, progressive writers known as the Generation of the Sixties. His first novel, Al-Tajir wa-l-Naqqash (The Merchant and the Painter), was published in 1976. al-Bisatie remained at the government auditor’s office throughout his career, retiring from the agency in 1997. Several of his works have been translated into English by Denys Johnson-Davies. His texts have also been translated into Spanish, Italian, and French.
daughter in faraway cities. These descriptions underscore the privation experienced by Zaghloul and his family, who on many days consider themselves fortunate to have even bread to eat. This particular scene is interrupted by a sexually charged dialogue between Zaghloul and his wife, in which he explains that quails “do wonders for a man,” such that “they say that the man doesn’t get up off her the whole night.” Sakeena responds, “So? What about you, man, without any quail?” As it does throughout the novel, such humor helps to lighten the tone of the family’s depressing circumstances.
W Critical Reception Ju’ was met with widespread critical acclaim, which led to the translation of the work into English just a year later. In 2009 the original Arabic version of the novel was short-listed for the prestigious Emirates Foundation International Prize for Arabic Fiction. This prize, sometimes known as the Arab Booker Award, honors the best works of Arabic fiction each year and promotes Arab literature around the globe. Although Hunger has not been widely reviewed in English, published commentary on the novel has been overwhelmingly positive and has helped increase the author’s visibility among English-speaking readers. Describing al-Bisatie’s work in Al-Ahram Weekly Online, David Tresilian notes that he writes with a “spare, understated prose” and comments that his fiction frequently depicts “lives lived out within small, usually well-regulated communities with a view to suggesting the inter-relation of public and private events.” Many
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commentators have noted that Hunger returns to common themes from al-Bisatie’s earlier writing, including his emphasis on rural village life and his advocacy for the downtrodden members of society, who are excluded from most of the benefits of progress and modernization. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
al-Bisatie, Mohamed. Hunger. Trans. Denys JohnsonDavies. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 2008. Print. Johnson-Davies, Denys. “Village Life from Within.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13-19 May 1999. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. “Mahfouz’s Progeny: The Generation of the Sixties.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13-19 Dec. 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Qualey, Marcia Lynx. “Mohamed al-Bisatie. Drumbeat.” World Literature Today 84.4 (2010): 60. General OneFile. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Tresilian, David. “Summer Reading, à la Française.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8-14 June 2000. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Dawood, Ibrahim. Rev. of A Last Glass of Tea and Other Stories, by Mohamed al-Bisatie. World Literature Today 73.2 (1999): 383. Dawood’s review of one of al-Bisatie’s short story collections provides useful context for the author’s other works. El-Wardani, Mahmoud. “Through the Mask of Yasmine.” Rev. of Layali Okhra [Other Nights], by Mohamed al-Bisatie. Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10-16 Feb. 2000. Web. 6 Sept. 2000. This review of alBisatie’s 2000 novel Layali Okhra (Other Nights) provides an overview of pervasive themes in the author’s body of work and surveys his novels in the context of his association with the Generation of the Sixties. Although the analysis predates Hunger, it provides insight into the novel’s relationship with al-Bisatie’s earlier works. Rev. of Hunger, by Mohamed al-Bisatie. National [Abu Dhabi] 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. This review of Hunger discusses its nomination for the Emirates Foundation International Prize for Arabic Fiction. “Lean and Crisp Writing Makes for Biting Read.” Rev. of Hunger, by Mohamed al-Bisatie. Arab News [Jeddah] 29 June 2008. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. This favorable review of the novel includes a plot overview and situates the work in the context of the author’s life. Tresilian, David. “The Way It Is: An Interview with Mohamed al-Bisatie.” Cairo Today Sept. 1991: 61-3. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Print. This interview places al-Bisatie’s work in the context of his Egyptian contemporaries and characterizes its political consciousness. Gale Resources
“Mohamed Al-Bisatie.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. “Overview: ‘A Conversation from the Third Floor.’” Short Stories for Students. Ed. David A. Galens. Vol. 17. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Print. Open Web Sources
This article in Egypt Today examines the life and career of Denys Johnson-Davies, the renowned Arabic-English translator of Hunger. http://www.egypttoday.com/ article.aspx?ArticleID=6463 An excerpt from Hunger can be found on International Literary Quarterly’s Web site. http://www.interlitq. org/issue2/mohamed_el_bisatie/job.php The American University in Cairo Press, one of the world’s foremost publishers of Arabic-English translations, provides an overview of Hunger as well as brief biographies of its author and translator. http:// www.aucpress.com/p-2699-hunger.aspx For Further Reading
Print. al-Bisatie’s novella explores scandal, struggle, and community politics in a small Egyptian village. Hopkins, Nicholas S., and Kirsten Westergaard, eds. Directions of Change in Rural Egypt. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 1998. Print. This volume of essays explores the changing face of rural Egypt. Its examinations of rural life, poverty, and progress provide context for al-Bisatie’s novel. Jacquemond, Richard, and David Tresilian. Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 2008. Print. This nonfiction study of progressive Egyptian authors representing a number of genres includes a discussion of al-Bisatie’s work. Johnson-Davies, Denys. Memories in Translation: A Life between the Lines of Arabic Literature. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 2006. Print. This memoir by Johnson-Davies, the translator of Hunger, reflects on his career as one of the world’s foremost ArabicEnglish translators. Tresilian, David. A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature. London: Saqi, 2008. Print. Tresilian’s book provides an overview of contemporary Arabic authors and their texts and includes a discussion of al-Bisatie’s work.
al-Bisatie, Mohamed. Houses behind the Trees. Trans. Denys Johnson-Davies. Austin: U of Texas P, 1998.
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Greta Gard
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If I Die in Juarez By Stella Pope Duarte
W Introduction Stella Pope Duarte’s If I Die in Juarez is a dark, meditative novel that dramatizes the tragic fate of an alarming number of young Mexican women who were abducted and murdered during the 1990s while on the way to or from work in factories owned by American companies. This fictionalization focuses on three young women—13-yearold Evita, 19-year-old Petra, and 12-year-old Mayela—all of whom are forced to grow up much faster than normal due to the poverty and brutality that exists in their lives. Evita lives in the red light district and works as a prostitute; Petra, her cousin, moves to the gritty city of Juarez in order to earn money to help her sick father; Mayela, Petra’s artistic friend, lives in an orphanage. The story of the three girls is framed within the context of several murders that remain unsolved; the novel ends triumphantly, with justice restored. If I Die in Juarez received the 2009 American Book Award, the 2008 Southwest Book of the Year Award, and the 2008 Arizona Book Award for Best in Popular Fiction, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
If I Die in Juarez was inspired by tragic, real-life events that occurred in the mid-1990s. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted during this time, and was intended to ease the trade problems between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As a result, many American-owned factories were established in Mexico, and numerous young Mexican women were hired to work in them. The women worked in factories known as maquiladoras, and were paid only a tiny fraction of what people in American factories earned. Between 1993 and 2008, over five hundred women between the ages of eleven and
twenty-two were murdered in the Juarez area, either on their way to or home from work. Hundreds of the bodies demonstrated signs of sexual abuse and sickening torture, and many were mutilated beyond recognition. To this day, thousands of women who worked in maquiladoras remain missing. The most famous of these murder cases involved three friends, Vileta Mabel Alvidrez, 18, Juana Sandoval Reyna, 17, and Esmerelda Juarez Alarcon, 16. Currently, these murders remain unsolved. Speculation about the perpetrators has included drug traffickers, cartels, serial killers, satanic cults, and even the idea that the women were abducted by members of the porn industry making “snuff films.” Duarte traveled to Mexico to conduct her research for this novel, and interviewed several women who lived and worked in the area, and were friends of the victims. She also scoured through newspapers and other documentation. Although the real-life murders on which Duarte based her novel were never resolved, Duarte wraps up her story more neatly, sparing the three female protagonists, who manage to vanquish their attackers.
W Themes The major themes of If I Die in Juarez revolve around the loss of innocence. Petra, Mayela, and Evita are three young women forced to grow up far too abruptly due to the poverty in which they live and the social injustices they must endure on a daily basis. Evita lives in the red light district, surrounded by prostitutes; Petra is forced to make an arduous journey to Juarez in order to earn money for her starving family; and Mayela finds herself in a filthy, poverty-stricken village on the outskirts of the city. Before long, Evita begins prostituting herself in order to make a living. The other two girls compromise themselves in other ways in order to survive. Duarte describes the degradation in which these young women live on a constant basis in great detail, paralleling it with the very real danger they face at the hands of the unknown forces stalking and preying upon women
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of their age and circumstances. Duarte further exposes the misogyny that lies at the heart of these attacks, as well as the society that has failed to bring these killers to justice.
W Style If I Die in Juarez is historical fiction, albeit based on events in the recent past. Duarte’s research for her novel was conducted in a manner similar to writing history. Her characters are fictional, however, allowing her to fashion a more uplifting ending than the fate of the actual women on whom the novel is based. Durate writes with a vivid attention to detail, with the aim of placing her readers in her characters’ footsteps in order to experience the the squalor and heartbreak of their lives. Duarte is particularly focused on painting a richly detailed picture of her characters’ inner lives. Despite their squalid circumstances, the girls retain a sense of hope and optimism. They dream of escaping to the United States in order to have improve their lot in life. Their goals are symbolically expressed through Mayela, who is an artist. Her twin brother died at birth, and yet Mayela continues to imagine seeing him. Instead of causing her despair, this “ghost” inspires her. Duarte
MAJOR CHARACTERS EVITA is a thirteen-year-old girl who has to leave home to escape her abusive, alcoholic mother, only to end up living a life of prostitution. MAYELA, an acquaintance of Evita’s cousin, Petra, is a twelveyear-old Tarahumara Indian orphan with immense artistic talent. PETRA, Evita’s nineteen-year-old cousin, moves from the country to Juarez in order to work in a factory.
describes how he “came to her in her dreams. He was . . . beautiful . . . always smiling with her. He sat on her shoulder . . . , a tiny baby with paper-thin wings like an angel’s. . . . [He] told her . . . he would protect her. . . . Over and over again she painted . . . a blue baby flying, with pink wings and shiny yellow toenails.” Her deceased twin comes to represent dreams of escape, as well as beauty amid sadness and strife.
This photo shows a poster of a missing girl. The novel If I Die in Juarez focuses on the staggering number of young Mexican women who are abducted and murdered. ª TOMAS BRAVO/Reuters/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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If I Die in Juarez
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born and raised in a barrio in Phoenix, Arizona, Stella Pope Duarte did not begin to pursue her literary career until 1995, when a dream about her deceased father inspired her to begin writing. The Arizona Commission on the Arts awarded her a creative writing fellowship for her first short story collection, Fragile Night, which additionally led to her nomination for the PEN West Fiction Award. She won a second fellowship for her novel, Let Their Spirits Dance, in 2001. Themes that run throughout her work include the Mexican experience, both as immigrants in the United States and in Mexico, and the ghosts of the past. A human rights activist, Duarte is also an inspirational speaker who tours giving speeches on literacy, leadership, diversity, women’s rights, Chicano history, and more.
the novel’s happy ending, but conceded that “it’s comforting to believe in the strength of community and family as depicted by Duarte and to trust that the real-life citizens of Juarez will continue their protests against the corruption that suffocates their city.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Duarte, Stella Pope. If I Die in Juarez. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2008. Print. Rev. of If I Die in Juarez, by Stella Pope Duarte. Publishers Weekly 255.4 (2008): 43. Serros, Michele. “Butterflies Are Free.” Rev. of If I Die in Juarez, by Stella Pope Duarte. Ms. Summer 2008. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Open Web Sources
Stella Pope Duarte’s official website includes a comprehensive biography, bibliography, news, and events. http://www.stellapopeduarte.com
W Critical Reception Upon its release, If I Die in Juarez received numerous awards, including the American Book Award, the Arizona Book Award, and the Southwest Book of the Year Award; the novel was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Overall, reviews were very positive. Critics were particularly impressed with the vivid picture Duarte depicts concerning the lives of the poor people of Juarez. Publishers Weekly found the novel an extremely powerful read. “Over the course of the novel,” noted the reviewer, “the girls are stripped of their childhoods and face grotesque realities that stalk the streets, even under the guise of protection.” The critic lauded Duarte’s prose, which was found to be “laced with anguish and desperation . . . [bringing] to life the grime and sleaze of Juarez.” Michele Serros of Ms. magazine declared that so “vividly does . . . [Duarte] detail survival within the grimy confines of la Zona del Canal that readers may be prompted to take a long, hot bath.” Serros did observe a few flaws in the book, however, and found Duarte’s use of symbolism heavy-handed. She cites the fact that “her villain, a Juarez factory owner and drug lord with a thirst for blood and conquest, maintains direct lineage to none other than 16th century conquistador Hernan Cortes, and the resurrection of a barely breathing rape victim commences on Easter Sunday” as particular examples of this overworked symbolism. The critic also questioned
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For Further Reading
Bowden, Charles. Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields. New York: Nation, 2010. Print. A book that exposes how global greed has led to conditions that allowed the Juarez murders to occur and remain unpunished. De Alba, Alicia Gaspar. Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2007. Print. Another novel based on the grisly Juarez murders. Duarte, Stella Pope. Women Who Live in Coffee Shops and Other Stories. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2010. Print. This short story collection by Duarte explores the seedy underbelly of an urban environment in a manner reminiscent of If I Die in Juarez. Rodriguez, Teresa, Diane Montane, and Lisa Pulitzer. The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border. New York: Atria, 2007. Print. This nonfiction book provides a true account of the Juarez murders. Valdez, Diana Washington. The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women. Los Angeles: Peace at the Border, 2006. Print. Another history of the hundreds of women who have been abducted and murdered in Mexico. Powder Thompson
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Ilustrado By Miguel Syjuco
W Introduction Ilustrado (2010), the debut novel of Filipino writer Miguel Syjuco, tells a multifaceted story that centers on a young man’s search for his identity. The novel opens with the discovery of a dead body, a presumed suicide, floating in New York’s Hudson River. The body is that of Crispin Salvador, a once-great Filipino writer who had lived in exile for years, teaching at Columbia University while working on his magnum opus. One of Crispin’s students, a young Filipino expatriate named Miguel Syjuco, becomes obsessed with unearthing the true circumstances of his mentor’s death and his missing manuscript. Miguel’s inquiries lead him back to the Philippines, where his search for the truth about Crispin raises questions about his own relationship to their troubled homeland and leads to a surprising denouement. While still in manuscript, Ilustrado won the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Award for best novel in 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the novel Crispin Salvador’s body is discovered floating in the Hudson River in mid-February 2002, five months after the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. With the world’s attention focused elsewhere, the largely unnoticed death of the Philippines’ “literary lion” echoes the historical fate of his homeland, once the “gateway to Asia” but now a postcolonial backwater. Through Crispin’s writings and the story of Miguel’s return to the Philippines, Syjuco provides snapshots of the country at various points in history. He lays bare the links between the subjugation of the islands’ peoples under centuries of colonialism and the current social and political malaise that has stymied
reform since the fall of the Ferdinand Marcos regime in 1986. Each generation has hoped that among its offspring is a new group of Ilustrados (enlightened ones) to bring reform and renewal to the country. The original Ilustrados were educated Filipino men of the late nineteenth century who laid the groundwork for independence from Spain by encouraging Filipino nationalism. Like Crispin before him, Miguel dreams of becoming a new Ilustrado, though he wants to do so through his writing, not by becoming the politician his grandparents have dreamed of. Syjuco’s use of the techniques of postmodern literature to relate passages of the history of the Philippines, as well as the stories of Miguel’s and Crispin’s families, has prompted some reviewers to compare his novel to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz. The latter work relates the struggles of a Dominican American family to historical events in the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
W Themes Ilustrado explores themes that are significant to both artists and émigrés. Miguel, an ambitious writing student, looks to Crispin, his mentor, for inspiration in finding his artistic purpose. Miguel feels pressured by his family to give something back to his homeland, but he is uncomfortable with his Filipino identity and with the expectations laid upon him as a Filipino writer. Although Crispin claims to have chosen exile because it makes him “an honest writer,” Miguel observes that his mentor has not published in years and seems frustratingly indifferent to ongoing political strife in the Philippines. When Miguel eventually begins to write Crispin’s biography, he hopes that the process will illuminate answers to his own problems: “the idea that his life could help me with mine . . . somehow kept me sane.” Syjuco weaves the themes of cultural identity and artistic purpose into a novel that itself embodies the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CRISPIN SALVADOR is a Filipino writer living in exile in New York and teaching creative writing at Columbia University. As the subject of his student Miguel Syjuco’s ongoing research in the Philippines, Crispin figures prominently throughout the narrative. In the end, however, the reader learns that Miguel has died and that Crispin has been imagining and telling Miguel’s story from the beginning of the novel. MIGUEL SYJUCO is a young man from the Philippines who is studying creative writing at Columbia University. Obsessed with learning about the life of his mentor, Crispin Salvador, whose death is reported at the beginning of the novel, he begins to write Crispin’s biography. His research takes him back to his homeland, where his investigations into another man’s life teach him to live his own.
imaginative search a story represents. In the epilogue, as Crispin ponders the death of a student who drowned in the Philippines, he echoes Miguel’s thoughts: “To make sense of what was happening to me, I obsessed on what had happened to him.” The fixation leads Crispin to destroy his unfinished masterpiece and to begin anew, with a memorial to his student. In the final paragraphs it becomes apparent that the drowned student is Miguel and that, from the novel’s very beginning, the reader has been reading a memorial to Miguel—Crispin’s attempt to “imagine the mystery of his life.”
W Style In Ilustrado Syjuco employs many of the techniques associated with postmodern literature. Characters in this genre sometimes share names or biographical details with their creators. By making the character Miguel Syjuco like himself in significant ways, Syjuco encourages the reader to question the boundary between fact and fiction in Ilustrado. Another of the novel’s postmodern features is pastiche, the combination of different styles and genres within a composition. Miguel’s first-person narration carries the main story line yet is frequently supplanted by other “sources” of information, including fictional news reports, e-mails, blogs, and even spam. In this type of structure, often described as a bricolage, no one source of narration can claim complete authority. Miguel’s narrative is called into question throughout the story by the other voices Syjuco has created for that very purpose. Ilustrado also provides many instances of intertextuality, such as the reference to The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim in the novel’s final chapter. The book is the work of Mir Bahadur Ali, a fictional character within a fictional work of the same title by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. The reference clearly marks Ilustrado as fiction, and it indicates the chapter it appears in as a story within a story. Syjuco also liberally applies the techniques of metafiction, or fiction that draws attention to its fictionality. By repeatedly highlighting the novel’s artificiality, he creates tension with the mass of quotidian detail about his characters that gives the work the “realistic” cast of a traditional novel. The result is a kind of knot that is not released until the book’s final pages, in which Crispin writes, “When I finished writing, spent, after four seasons at the typewriter, I had knotted his being forever with mine. And with this fiction of possibilities, entwined with the possibilities of fiction, I’ve woven in my own unlived life.” By revealing the knot that he has created, Crispin untangles the one at the heart of Syjuco’s novel.
W Critical Reception Photo of Miguel Syjuco, author of the novel Ilustrado. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
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Even before its publication, Ilustrado was hailed as an extraordinary debut novel. Almost universally, reviewers TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Ilustrado
have described the work as “ambitious” and extolled Syjuco’s talent and ingenuity. Charles Foran, writing in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, describes Ilustrado as being “at once flashy and substantial, brightly charming and quietly resistant to its own wattage.” As noted in Kirkus Reviews, the novel’s “framing is simple, though nothing is clear, and everything encompassed remains open to question.” According to many critics, the novel’s serious thematic concerns form a core that is buoyed by comedy. For instance, a New Yorker reviewer finds in Ilustrado a “sociopolitical polemic” leavened with “lighter fare, such as a memorable thread of bawdy jokes.” Noting that the work is “bristling with comic verve” and “metafictional playfulness,” Robert Collins of the Sunday Times praises Ilustrado’s “vibrant mix of Borgesian literary labyrinth and acerbic émigré comedy.” While most critics have delighted in the postmodern architecture of Syjuco’s novel, a few objections have been raised. Foran praises the writer’s effort, declaring that he has the potential to be “a literary bridge-builder between the formally innovative and the reader-friendly.” Similarly, a reviewer in Publishers Weekly observes that Syjuco “shows considerable ingenuity in binding [the novel’s] divergent threads into a satisfying, meaningful story.” Michael Dirda of the Washington Post, however, finds that “the book seems to be going in several directions at once” in its final pages and concludes that Ilustrado is “more a novel of wonderful parts than a completely successful whole.” Alex Good of the Toronto Star concurs, noting that while “disjunction and indeterminacy are Syjuco’s aim,” a “loss of focus” in the final chapters “makes it hard to keep straight what Ilustrado is finally supposed to be about.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Collins, Robert. “Home and Away.” Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Sunday Times [London] 13 June 2010: 40. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Dirda, Michael. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Washington Post. Washington Post Co. 6 May 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Foran, Charles. “New Filipino Fiction Is Fabulous, Flashy, Funny.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 8 May 2010: F13. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly). Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Good, Alex. “A Death in the Afternoon: A Famous Novelist Is Dead in the Hudson River; Let the Precocious Games Begin.” Toronto Star 11 July 2010: IN6. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly). Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Kirkus Reviews 1 Mar. 2010: n. pag. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Miguel Syjuco was born on November 17, 1976, in Manila, Philippines. He holds a BA in English literature from Ateneo de Manila University, an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, and a PhD in English literature from the University of Adelaide in Australia. Both of Syjuco’s parents are active in government in the Philippines. Like the character Miguel Syjuco in Ilustrado, Syjuco was encouraged by his family to pursue a career in law and politics, but he chose to continue with his literature studies and writing. Syjuco’s dedication to writing led to a succession of peculiar and minimally supportive jobs, including stints as a bookie’s assistant and as a handbag salesman on eBay. His aim in entering Ilustrado into the competition for the Man Asian Literary Prize was to make the long list and perhaps gain the attention of a literary agent.
Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. New Yorker 24 May 2010: 71. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Publishers Weekly 1 Feb. 2010: 31. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Syjuco, Miguel. Ilustrado. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2010. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bonner, Raymond. “Manila Vice.” Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. New York Times Book Review 13 June 2010: 8(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Focuses favorably on the narrative and stylistic complexities of the novel. Finnell, Joshua. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Library Journal 15 Feb. 2010: 91. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Praises Syjuco’s craft in interweaving a historical portrait of the Philippines with his narrative. Gurria-Quintana, Angel. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Financial Times. Financial Times Ltd. 5 June 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Highlights the satiric brio of Syjuco’s treatment of the Filipino upper class. Leber, Michele. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Booklist 1 Apr. 2010: 24. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Critiques and praises Syjuco’s novel as a “literary landmark.” Mars-Jones, Adam. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Ltd. 29 May 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Downplays the effectiveness of Syjuco’s metafictional artifices but commends his evocation of contemporary Manila.
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O’Connor, Joseph. Rev. of Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Ltd., 29 May 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Focuses on and applauds Syjuco’s exploration of the possibilities of fiction. Gale Resources
As part of its collection of country studies, the Library of Congress offers an overview of the Philippines, including information on the islands’ history and culture. http://countrystudies.us/philippines/ The Web site Tagalog Lang provides an introduction to Filipino culture, with collections of articles on literature, music, religion, and language. http:// tagaloglang.com/Filipino-Culture/ For Further Reading
Barber, John. “The Shooting Star of Filipino Fiction.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 1 May 2010: F8. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly). Web. 30 Sept. 2010. In a profile of the author, Syjuco describes his struggle to succeed as a writer, how that
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struggle is reflected in Ilustrado, and the challenges facing Filipino writers. Lau, Joyce Hor-Chung. “An Expatriate Filipino Writes of a Parallel Life.” New York Times 9 May 2010: A12. Print. Syjuco talks about his background as a member of a wealthy Filipino family that lived abroad during the years of Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship, the trajectory of his writing career, and the current state of politics in the Philippines. Syjuco, Miguel. “And if This Leader Should Happen to Fall . . . ” Editorial. International Herald Tribune. New York Times 19 May 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. In this op-ed piece Syjuco discusses the vicissitudes of the Philippines’ recent political history. ———. Interview. Times [London]. Times Newspapers Ltd. 13 June 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. In this e-mail interview, Syjuco discusses his method and intent in writing Ilustrado, his travels and studies abroad, and the writers he wants to tackle his biography. Janet Moredocke
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The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant By Sahar Khalifeh
W Introduction Originally published in Arabic in 2002 and translated into English in 2008, The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant by Sahar Khalifeh tells the story of Ibrahim, a former schoolteacher who is attempting to make peace with his past as he enters old age. Divided into three sections, the novel traces Ibrahim’s ill-fated love for a young Catholic woman named Mariam, whom he abandoned while she was pregnant with his child. Although he eventually found wealth and traveled the world, Ibrahim was unable to establish a lasting relationship or produce an heir. Returning to his homeland after many years and two failed marriages, he must confront the realities of life in a much-changed Jerusalem as he searches for the woman and child he abandoned in his youth. The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant has won praise for its treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as for its insight into the often-uneasy relationship between Muslims and Christians in Palestine. The work is the first by Khalifeh, a noted feminist, to feature a male narrator/ protagonist. The novel’s depictions of gender inequality in Palestinian society, however, are no less striking than in the author’s earlier texts.
W Literary and Historical Context
The contested past of Jerusalem is an important aspect of The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant. With history dating back to the fourth millennium BCE, Jerusalem is a city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is home to a number of important religious sites, including the Temple Mount (believed to be the site of Solomon’s First Temple), the Western (or Wailing) Wall (identified by Jews as part of the ancient First Temple), the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre (built on what tradition holds is the site of Christ’s crucifixion), and the Al-Aqsa Mosque (a holy site believed to have been visited by Muhammad during the Night Journey recorded in the Qur’an). In the novel Ibrahim visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with Mariam, and he is near the Al-Aqsa Mosque when violence breaks out there in 2000. In modern times Jerusalem has been at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Following World War II, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan called for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states in Palestine, with the city of Jerusalem, sacred to both sides, being ruled by coalition. Most of Palestine’s Jewish residents embraced the plan, but the majority of the Arab population did not. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Arab forces launched an invasion, beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After the conflict Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. Violence flared again in 1967 with the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. As a result of the fighting, Jerusalem was reunified under Israeli control. Hostilities continued to rise over the next three decades, and in 2000 a period of prolonged violence known as the Second (or Al-Aqsa) Intifada erupted. Although the conflict ended by 2005 (the exact date is disputed), the fate of Jerusalem and Palestine remains contested. The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant dramatizes the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian tensions, beginning just before the Six-Day War and ending during the Second Intifada.
W Themes Thematically central to Khalifeh’s novel is the clash between cultures, which is initially represented in Ibrahim and Mariam’s relationship. Mariam, a Christian, was born in the Middle East and raised in Brazil. At one point in the narrative Ibrahim bemoans the vast differences between them: “She was Christian and I was Muslim,
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MAJOR CHARACTERS IBRAHIM is the narrator of the novel. As a young man he falls in love with Mariam. When she becomes pregnant, her brothers attempt to kill Ibrahim, and he makes the decision to leave Mariam behind and go to work for an American oil company that takes him around the world. He builds great wealth but experiences two failed marriages and never has any more children. In an attempt to atone for his sins, he starts a charity to support Palestinian widows and orphans. He later returns to Jerusalem seeking Mariam and his son, Michael. He is disappointed when first Michael and then Mariam reject him. At the end of the novel, unsure of Michael’s fate as the Second Intifada breaks out, he embraces a friendship with the dispossessed Jamileh. JAMILEH is an elderly Palestinian woman whom Ibrahim meets when he is searching for Mariam. Cast out of her home by two young American Jewish men who have managed to assert a legal claim to it despite her proof of ownership, Jamileh is living in Mariam’s former home. She and her husband had taken in a pregnant Mariam, and when Michael was born, Jamileh, a nurse, arranged for a birth certificate listing her and her husband as his parents in order to spare Mariam from being formally shamed as an unwed mother. Jamileh helps Ibrahim understand Mariam’s life as a young, single mother. MARIAM is the woman who haunts Ibrahim’s memories. Before she met Ibrahim, she had lived briefly in Brazil, where she fell in love with a priest who considered leaving the church to be with her. After Ibrahim abandons her during her pregnancy, she lives briefly with Jamileh, who helps her care for the infant she eventually gives up. Ibrahim goes to great lengths to find her, but when he does, the two argue and she is unwilling to forgive him or to acknowledge their former relationship in the way that he had hoped. MICHAEL is the son of Ibrahim and Mariam, who develops a reputation as a gifted seer and faith healer. Raised as an orphan in a Catholic monastery, he refuses to accept Ibrahim as his father. At the end of the novel, Ibrahim loses sight of Michael during the outbreak of the Second Intifada and fears for his safety. His whereabouts remain unknown as the novel ends.
she was rich and I was poor, she knew the world and had traveled the world.” It is ultimately the worldly Mariam who suffers most over their relationship: “People cursed and ostracized her—the Christians because she loved a Muslim, and the Muslims because she was a sinner who deserved to be stoned.” After Mariam becomes pregnant, her brothers, to whom “Islam was simply a joke, a deviation in history, a camel,” attempt to kill Ibrahim to defend her honor.
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Later, Ibrahim comes to see his failed relationship with Mariam as tied to the fate of Jerusalem: “Mariam and her memory were lost; so was I, and so was Jerusalem. We had become two individuals on separate shores divided by a river and an occupation army.” When Ibrahim returns to his homeland in 2000, he finds it changed, and conflicts between opposing factions become more central to the narrative. After he finds his son, Michael, now thirty-five, Ibrahim asks him how he became a faith healer. Michael, who eschews affiliation with any one faith, responds, “I saw people around me swimming in pools of blood, Arabs and Jews, Armenians, Circassians, various ethnic groups, and different peoples with similar stories. I saw massacres and carnage everywhere undertaken in the name of religion and nationalism.” Although Khalifeh depicts the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, she, like Michael, is careful about pinning responsibility for the conflict solely on the Israelis. She also suggests that the Palestinians will never be free until they overcome the gender inequality that leaves daughters undervalued and women at the mercy of men—subject to domestic violence and honor killings.
W Style Narrated in the first person by an elderly Ibrahim, the novel is divided into three distinct sections—The Image, The Icon, and The Covenant—that collectively give the book its title. As the section titles suggest, the narrative focuses on Ibrahim’s pursuit of sura, which translates as “photograph,” “picture,” or “image,” among other meanings. As Aida Bamia explains in the “Translator’s Note” of the novel, its definition “depends greatly on context and lends itself easily to both concrete and abstract meanings.” When Ibrahim returns to the West Bank, he seeks a photograph of Mariam as he remembers her from her youth. After finding a photo in her former home, he tucks it in his wallet, carrying it with him as he searches for the woman herself. Upon finding Mariam, however, he realizes he was pursuing a romanticized version of her and a love that never existed. Publishers Weekly suggests that “the title’s complexities mirror those of this fugue-like novel, which finds Ibrahim cycling among versions of himself and of Mariam. As Ibrahim’s realizations pile up, their irreconcilability becomes a delicate and powerful allegory for Middle Eastern conflict.” The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant is a realist novel, one that works to establish a sense of verisimilitude about the events it conveys. To this end, Khalifeh works to develop a detailed and realistic portrait of her characters, their thoughts, and their surroundings. Although Mariam is represented primarily through Ibrahim’s memories of her, her voice is briefly heard when he returns to her family home, now occupied by an TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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elderly woman named Jamileh. She has preserved Mariam’s former belongings, including journals in which she described her struggles as a new, single mother. In allowing Mariam to speak for herself through her journal entries, Khalifeh adds a new layer of insight into the relationship between Mariam and Ibrahim.
W Critical Reception Khalifeh had already established herself as a top contemporary Arab writer when the Arabic version of the novel was published in 2002. The work drew praise for its depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and intrigued readers as the first of Khalifeh’s works to feature a male narrator. In 2006 the novel won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, a prize that recognizes a top work of contemporary Arab fiction worthy of translation. The prize led to the novel’s translation and publication in English in 2008. The English version has not been widely assessed, however, and existing critiques have been mixed. In reviewing The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant for the Journal of Palestine Studies, Hala Halim commends the “abiding power of Khalifeh’s
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus, Palestine, in 1941. She was the fifth girl born to a family desperately seeking a male heir, and her parents’ disappointment with her gender shaped her outlook on life. As an adult Khalifeh left an arranged marriage after more than a decade of misery, returning to Palestine from the home she had shared with her former husband in Libya. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Birzeit University and launched her writing career. Published in 1972, the novel Lam na’ud jawari lakum (We are not your slave girls anymore) established Khalifeh as an important voice in Palestinian feminism and literature. She followed the success of this initial work with Al-Subbar (1976; Wild Thorns, 1985), which would become her best-known work internationally, and led to a sequel in 1980 titled ‘Abbad al-shams (The sunflower). While enjoying these successes, Khalifeh earned a PhD in women’s studies from the University of Iowa in 1988. Her other notable works include Al-Mirath (1997; The Inheritance, 2005) and Rabi’har: Rihlat al-sabr wa al-subbar (2004; The End of Spring, 2008).
A village in Jordan. The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant takes place in the Middle East, specifically in Jerusalem and Palestine. OPIS/Shutterstock.com
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narrative,” while Publishers Weekly lauds Khalifeh for tackling a sensitive subject, describing the novel as offering “a challenging take on vexing territory.” Kirkus Reviews, however, criticizes the text for its lack of strong and well-defined characters, asserting, “A novel about character and identity needs sharper, stronger protagonists than the blurry Ibrahim and Mariam.” Halim is somewhat critical of Bamia’s English translation, suggesting that it is too literal in its translation and that Bamia misinterprets what it means to be faithful to an original text, as “‘fidelity’ appears to have been construed as closeness to the denotative signification of the words.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bamia, Aida. Translator’s Note. The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant. By Sahar Khalifeh. Northampton: Interlink, 2008: 261-62. Print. Halim, Hala. Rev. of The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant, by Sahar Khalifeh. Journal of Palestine Studies 37.4 (2008): 85. Print. Rev. of The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant, by Sahar Khalifeh. Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2007: n. pag. Print. Rev. of The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant, by Sahar Khalifeh. Publishers Weekly 5 Nov. 2007: 45. Print. Khalifeh, Sahar. The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant. Trans. Aida Bamia. Northampton: Interlink, 2008. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bamia, Aida A. “Sahar Khalifeh: Novelist and Feminist.” Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 1516.26 (2002-2003): 26. Print. A brief article that mentions The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant and offers an overview of Khalifeh’s life and its impact on her writing. Harlow, Barbara. “Partitions and Precedents: Sahar Khalifeh and Palestinian Political Geography.” Intersections: Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels. Ed. Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese Saliba. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2002: 113-31. Print. Examines the representation of Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Khalifeh’s work. Nazareth, Peter. “An Interview with Sahar Khalifeh.” Iowa Review 11.1 (1980): 67-86. Print. An interview with Khalifeh in which she discusses her life and early career. Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “Found in Translation: The Contemporary Arabic Novel.” New Yorker 18 Jan. 2010: 74. Print. Discusses Khalifeh’s work among those by other prominent Arabic novelists.
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Sabbagh, Suha. “An Interview with Sahar Khalifeh, Feminist Novelist.” Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank. Ed. Suha Sabbagh. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998: 136-44. Print. An interview emphasizing Khalifeh’s feminist stance. “Saher Khalifa: An Interview.” Star [Amman]. Jordan Press and Publishing Co. 26 Nov. 1998. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. An interview in which Khalifeh discusses her life and work. Gale Resources
Al-Mallah, Ahmad. “Sahar Khalifa.” Twentieth-Century Arabic Writers. Ed. Majd Yaser Al-Mallah and Coeli Fitzpatrick. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 346. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Print. “Sahar Khalifeh.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Web site for Arab World Books provides an author page about Khalifeh that includes biographical and bibliographical information, as well as a list of awards won. http://www.arabworldbooks.com/authors/ sahar_khalifa.html Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre’s Web site offers an overview of art and culture in Palestine and includes a page dedicated to Sahar Khalifeh. http://www .sakakini.org/literature/sahar.htm Palestine Facts presents an online overview of the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Arabs that is useful context for Khalifeh’s novel. http://www.palestinefacts.org/ The University of Minnesota’s Web site VG/Voices from the Gap includes a page on Khalifeh that features an author biography, bibliography, and a collection of links related to Khalifeh and her work. http://voices. cla.umn.edu/artistpages/khaifehsahar.php For Further Reading
Armstrong, Karen. Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. New York: Knopf, 1996. Print. This work of nonfiction explores the history of Jerusalem and its centrality to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, offering helpful context for Khalifeh’s novel. Glanville, Jo, ed. Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women. London: Telegram, 2006. Print. This volume collects short works of fiction by Palestinian women. Harms, Gregory, and Todd M. Ferry. The Palestine-Israel Conflict. A Basic Introduction. Ann Arbor: Pluto, 2005. Print. This volume provides an overview of the conflict between Palestine and Israel that frames Khalifeh’s novel. Khalifeh, Sahar. The Inheritance. Trans. Aida Bamia. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 2005. Print. The TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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second of Sahar’s novels to be translated into English, The Inheritance tells the story of an American-born woman of Palestinian descent working to rediscover her family and her identity in the Middle East.
of Catholicism and the history of the Roman Catholic Church offers background to the faith of fictional Mariam.
O’Collins, Gerald. Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. This overview
Greta Gard
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In the Country of Men By Hisham Matar
W Introduction Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men tells the story of a young boy named Suleiman growing up in the oppressive environment of Libya in 1979, with the country under the control of the despotic ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Over the course of the novel, Suleiman discovers that a number of his friends and family, including his father, are antigovernment revolutionaries working against the Guardian, as Gaddafi calls himself. Matar’s harsh tale is one of childhood cut short, in which a nine-year-old learns brutal truths about the workings of his world, learning that his government is not beneficent, and that morality is often determined by whoever happens to be in power. In England In the Country of Men was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, as well as the Guardian First Book Award in 2006, and went on to win the 2007 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award for Europe and South Asia. It won the Premio Vallombrosa Gregor von Rezzori and Premio Internazionale Flaiano in Italy, the first Arab American Book Award, and was nominated for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States. It has been translated into twenty-two languages.
W Literary and Historical Context
Since 1969 Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi has been the ruler of Libya, making him the fourth-longest-serving national leader alive today. He originally came into power as the result of a bloodless coup d’état against then leader King Idris while the latter was away, seeking medical treatment. Gaddafi’s revolution deposed the king’s nephew and abolished the entire monarchy, proclaiming the country the Libyan Arab Republic. He sought to
fashion the country into a safe haven for anti-Western radicals and promised to provide weapons and money to any group formed to fight imperialism. He formed a Revolutionary Command Council in order to rule Libya, and instated himself as its chairman, calling his form of government, “Islamic socialism.” He claimed to be doing all this for the people. His programs emphasized liberation, welfare, and education, all of which were laid out in a number of books he wrote to reinforce his political philosophy. Like many dictators, Gaddafi poses himself as a loving, beneficent ruler and yet underneath the surface, he is a dangerous and violent man. Beyond providing weapons to terrorists, Gaddafi turned Libya into a police state, executing any suspected dissidents and encouraging people to turn on their loved ones in an attempt to find these enemies. In 1980 he sent hit squads abroad to kill dissidents living outside of the country and ordered any remaining dissidents to return to Libya, to be tried by his government. Gaddafi has executed hundreds of political dissenters. Political groups opposed to him include the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, the Committee for Libyan National Action in Europe, and the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition. In the Country of Men paints a bleak picture of the poor people who come to suffer under Gaddafi’s regime of supposed socialism and openness.
W Themes The two major themes of In the Country of Men are arguably the cruelty of the powerful and corrupt, and how the young can misinterpret circumstances as a result of not being mature enough to decipher the adult complexities in the world surrounding them. The protagonist, Suleiman, although he is only nine years old, ends up betraying a number of friends and family members to the government because he is not initially old enough to understand that his country’s ruler is not the
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kind leader he purports to be. As reviewer Mary Ann Harlan explains, “What is most disturbing is that he must play the game of adults, but without knowing the rules. There is no heroism here, only fear, betrayal, and mistrust.” In one scene, Suleiman finds himself performing an act of cruelty, throwing a rock at a friend. In another, he tries to save a beggar from death by drowning and then kicks the man in the face. These scenes illustrate Suleiman’s anger and confusion at all the mixed signals he is receiving, both from his family and the oppressive world in which he lives, and also demonstrate how easy it is for an otherwise “good” person to become violent for seemingly little reason. These moments stand as a parallel to the brutal, public interrogation and execution of a political insurgent, Ustath Rashid, at the hands of the government.
W Style Hisham Matar writes In the Country of Men from his nine-year-old narrator’s perspective. Describing these circumstances through the eyes of a child serves the
MAJOR CHARACTERS FARAJ EL DEWANI or “Baba,” is Suleiman’s father, who is secretly working against the despotic government of Gaddafi. NAJWA EL DEWANI, or “Mama,” is Suleiman’s alcoholic mother with whom he shares a relationship by turns sweet and tempestuous. SULEIMAN EL DEWANI is the narrator and protagonist of the novel, now an adult, recalling the dark events that occurred in his country and in his family when he was nine years old. MOOSA is Baba’s best friend, with whom Suleiman is sent to live in Egypt at the end of the novel. KAREEM RASHID is Suleiman’s best friend and the son of Ustath Rashid, who conspired against the government with Baba. USTATH RASHID, a co-conspirator with Baba against Gaddafi’s government, he is arrested before the novel begins and publicly executed in one of its most shocking moments.
This photo shows Libyan President Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. Several of the main characters in In the Country of Men work against Gaddafi’s regime. ª Wally McNamee/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents and lived there for the first three years of his life, while his father worked for the United Nations’ Libyan delegation. Afterward, they moved back to Libya until 1979, when they were forced to flee the country to Egypt due to his father being accused of attempting to sabotage the Libyan government. Much later, in 1990, his father was kidnapped in Cairo, with evidence suggesting that he was kidnapped by Egypt’s secret police and delivered back to Libya, where he might still be to this day, if he is still alive. These experiences and the emotions they provoked in Matar largely inspired him in writing In the Country of Men, which remains his only novel to date. He has, however, had a number of essays published in the New York Times, the Times, the Guardian, the Independent, and Asharq Alawsat.
purpose of further enhancing the horror of what Gaddafi did to the people of his country. Suleiman’s confusion at these chaotic events represents the fear and disarray being
felt by everyone, but it is taken to an even deeper level because of his youth and immaturity. Because Suleiman does not always grasp the nuances that an adult would, Matar makes it the job of the adult reader to make connections that Suleiman cannot, which causes dramatic irony as well as sadness. For example, Suleiman’s mother is an alcoholic, but she tells him that the alcohol is her medicine, so he does not understand why she would take “medicine” that makes her ill. Neither does he understand why she burns his father’s books, nor why she becomes so enraged when he tells the names of some of his father’s friends to a seemingly nice man in a car. The adult reader realizes, among other things, that the books must contain seditious material and that the man was coaxing the boy into informing on his friends and family, dooming them to an awful fate. The innocent point-of-view of a child also manages to make some of the novel’s moments of violence all the more disturbing. When he watches a public execution on television, Suleiman notes how the victim stops at every rung of the ladder he is forced to climb, to beg for mercy. He describes the scene further: “his trousers were wet. . . . A couple of men hugged and dangled from his ankles. . . . They looked like children satisfied with a swing they had
In this photo, citizens show their support for Libyan leader Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi in the 1970s. In the novel In the Country of Men, the main character discovers that his family members are working against Gaddafi’s oppressive administration. ª Geneviève Chauvel/Sygma/Corbis
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just made” (188). This sweet, childish image stands in stark contrast to the degrading torment through which the man is suffering.
“Paperback of the Week: In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar, Penguin, £7.99.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Observer [London] 25 Feb. 2007: 25. Print.
W Critical Reception
“Paperbacks; Fiction.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Times [London] 17 Mar. 2007: 14. Print.
In the Country of Men received nearly universal acclaim upon its release and went on to win the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize, among others. Publishers Weekly raved that the novel’s “brutality resonates beyond the bloody events themselves to a brutalizing of heart and mind for all concerned. Matar renders it brilliantly . . . Matar wrests beauty from searing dread and loss.” The London Observer reviewer called it “stunning,” and was particularly impressed with Matar’s restraint in telling his story. Rather than continuously plunging the reader into the “grisly details” of Gaddafi’s rule (though that certainly happens at times), he instead focuses on “a claustrophobically domestic setting,” thus making Matar’s “portrayal of oppression deeper and more resonant, intensifying the themes of collusion, treachery, mutual dependency, and thwarted freedom by giving them both private and public dimensions.” Reviewers were equally taken with the narrative voice, calling Suleiman “utterly convincing.” Entertainment Weekly’s Jennifer Reese spoke further about what made Suleiman such an effective narrator: “In limpid prose, Matar captures an ordinary, sometimes craven boy caught up in a political nightmare, and the poignant grown-up nostalgia for the certainties and security of a childhood cut abruptly short.” In other words, the poignancy of the adult Suleiman (and one can imagine Matar as well), looking back at a time before he lost his innocence, adds to the novel’s emotional verisimilitude and strength. The London Times reviewer agreed, saying, “In a text glowing with emotional truth, Matar constructs his young narrator’s perspective to evoke both the nameless and overwhelming feelings of childhood and an adult understanding of events. . . . In Hisham Matar’s extraordinary novel it becomes again what it was in David Copperfield and Jane Eyre—the universal cry of the innocent victim of institutional sadism.”
Reese, Jennifer. “In the Country of Men.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Entertainment Weekly 2 Feb. 2007: 129. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Adams, Lorraine. “A Lyrical Portrait of Evil Infantilized; In the Country of Men, Books & Ideas.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. International Herald Tribune 3 Mar. 2007: 10. Print. This review analyzes Suleiman’s perceptions and how they complement and contrast with the world around him. “A Child’s-Eye View of Terror; Novel.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Times [London] 15 July 2006: 15. Print. This review compares Suleiman to the child narrators of Charles Dickens and other famous coming-of-age novels. el-Youssef, Samir. “The Curse of Topicality.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. New Statesman 31 July 2006: 58. Print. This review criticizes the novel for what it sees as a sketchy and underdeveloped indictment of Gaddafi, accusing Matar of falling victim to Western stereotypes of Libyans. Keates, Jonathan. “Love in the Land of Gaddafi.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Spectator 9 Sept. 2006. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. This review/analysis places In the Country of Men in the context of the coming-of-age genre. Gale Resources
“Matar, Hisham 1970-.” Contemporary Authors. Vol. 259. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 257-58. Print. “Matar, Hisham (1970-).” Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Web. 16 February 2011.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Open Web Sources
Works Cited
Harlan, Mary Ann. “Matar, Hisham. In the Country of Men.” Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. School Library Journal 53.6 (2007): 180. Print. Rev. of In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Publishers Weekly, 253.43 (2006): 34+. Print. Matar, Hisham. In the Country of Men. New York: Dial Press, 2007. Print. 188.
There is a comprehensive interview with Hisham Matar available at http://www.bookreporter.com/ authors/au-matar-hisham.asp For Further Reading
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in NightTime. New York: Vintage, 2003. Print. This novel is another first-person narrative told from the perspective of a young boy whose misunderstanding of
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In the Country of Men
certain events due to his age influences his actions and reactions throughout the novel. Hyland, M. J. Carry Me Down. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Print. This novel, narrated by a young boy speaking about his troubling childhood, is reminiscent of the limited perspective of the young Suleiman in In the Country of Men. McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Anchor, 2001. Print. This coming-of-age novel about a young girl whose misinterpretation of an event due to her lack of maturity leads to tragedy shares a number of themes with In the Country of Men.
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Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown, 1951. Print. This seminal coming-of-age classic focuses on a troubled young male protagonist struggling to understand the intricacies of the adult world around him, much like In the Country of Men. Vandewalle, Dirk. A History of Modern Libya. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print. An in-depth history of Libya, both before and after Gaddafi’s revolution. Robert Berg
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Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand By Gioconda Belli
W Introduction Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand (2009), by Nicaraguan poet and novelist Gioconda Belli, retells the story of Adam and Eve, from their creation to the murder of their son Abel by his brother Cain. The novel was originally published in Spanish as El infinito en la palma de la mano (2008) and was translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden. In Belli’s account Adam and Eve are not together long before Eve’s curiosity leads them to seek out “the Other” (Elokim, their creator), a mysterious being whose gaze follows them everywhere in the Garden. The search for Elokim ultimately leads to Eve’s decision to consume fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the subsequent expulsion of the pair from the Garden for having disobeyed Elokim’s command not to eat the fruit. With their Paradise lost, Adam and Eve must confront the problems that have shaped all of human history—hunger, thirst, ignorance, death—and qualified all of human happiness. In 2008 Belli’s novel won the Biblioteca Breve Prize and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award for a work in Spanish by a woman.
W Literary and Historical Context
In her author’s note Belli describes finding The Secret Books, a volume that contains an ancient account of the first couple after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Like the other “secret books” of the title, The Life of Adam and Eve was excluded by the church fathers as they canonized the books of the Bible in the centuries immediately following the emergence of Christianity. Its authenticity in doubt, The Life of Adam and Eve was relegated to a group of writings known as pseudepigrapha, or falsely attributed writings. Another of these ancient
stories, The Second Book of Adam and Eve, relates that Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s sons, each had a twin sister. These sisters, Luluwa and Aklia, do not appear in the book of Genesis, but Belli assigns them significant roles in her first-family drama. The story of Adam and Eve is thought to have Jewish origins and may have stemmed from oral traditions thousands of years old. Written versions began to appear a few hundred years before Christ. During the Middle Ages scholars considered The Life of Adam and Eve and similar apocryphal accounts important sources of information about the time of Creation, despite their noncanonical status. Literature abounds with allusions to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. In the seventeenth century English poet John Milton retold the Creation story in his epic poem Paradise Lost. In the early twentieth century the humorist Mark Twain wrote a series of short comic pieces about the first couple that included “excerpts” from their diaries. More recent retellings are the novels Havah: The Story of Eve (2008), by Christian fiction writer Tosca Lee, and Eve (2009), by American author Elissa Elliott.
W Themes With Eve’s very first words—“What are we doing here?”—Belli introduces the themes that pulse through her novel: freedom and the quest for knowledge. Eve learns from the Serpent in the Garden that she and Adam are unique in creation because Elokim has made them free—and therefore capable of disobeying him. However, the price of disobeying Elokim’s commands is expulsion from the Garden and death. This transforms the eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (i.e., the acquisition of knowledge) into the ultimate act of freedom. With knowledge of good and evil, of course, comes loss of innocence and, thus, Paradise. Nevertheless, Eve reasons that, having made her free, Elokim must
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Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand
MAJOR CHARACTERS ABEL is Adam and Eve’s second son. The handsome Abel follows in Adam’s footsteps as a provider. Abel’s attraction to Luluwa, Cain’s twin sister, leads to his being killed by a jealous Cain. ADAM is the first man and Eve’s husband. He is distraught at having been cast out of the Garden and blames Eve for their plight. Outside the Garden Adam cannot imagine life without Eve and is constantly preoccupied with providing for her and their children. AKLIA is Abel’s twin sister. The shock of Abel’s death causes Aklia to lose her reason and speech. Despite Eve’s entreaties, she decides to live out her life with a band of monkeys. CAIN is Adam and Eve’s first son. He resents Abel’s attraction to Luluwa. The festering conflict between the two brothers finally erupts, and Cain kills Abel. ELOKIM, the creator of all there is, made Adam and Eve free but forbade them, on pain of expulsion from the Garden, to exercise their freedom. Capricious and uncommunicative, Elokim is an absentee God whose motives and aims are unknown. EVE is the first woman and Adam’s wife. Driven by curiosity, she is the first to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Cast out of the Garden for disobeying Elokim, Eve continues to be curious and to try to understand her reason for being. LULUWA is Cain’s twin sister. Her beauty causes conflict among the men of the family. After Cain kills Abel, Luluwa joins him in exile.
El infinito en la palma de la mano, or Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, retells the story of Adam and Eve. ª Images.com/Corbis
THE SERPENT acts as Adam and Eve’s main conduit of information about Elokim and his creation. Her account of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil makes it impossible for Eve to resist doing what Elokim has expressly forbade: eating the forbidden fruit.
W Style
intend for her to eat the fruit in order to set in motion “History,” the “gigantic spiral of ephemeral and transparent men and women” that is revealed to her in a vision. The alternative is to remain in the Garden, “tranquil and passive, like the cat and the dog,” for eternity. After their expulsion from the Garden, Adam and Eve experience for the first time such gnawing needs as pain, hunger, and thirst. Knowledge is not what they expected (its accumulation is slow and unpredictable), and yet it is their sole equipment for forging a new life in the wilderness. It also brings them one invaluable gift, as Eve tells her daughters late in the novel: “We call it love.”
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Belli tells her story in prose that is direct and economical. Writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Chauncey Mabe praises the novel’s “lyrical yet precise language.” The third-person narration smoothly bears the grandeur of the Creation story, and the voices of Adam and Eve are convincingly ingenuous in articulating its profound themes. The newly created Eve, for example, asks the fundamental questions (“What are we doing here?” “Who can explain to us where we come from?”) that set the stage for all that is to come. Belli relates the details of Adam and Eve’s unique life, conveying the splendor of every “first”—self-awareness, orgasm, birth—with “deftness and clarity,” according to National Public Radio (NPR) reviewer Alan Cheuse. He uses the term biblical science fiction to identify the freshness of experience that Belli captures in passages like the one in which she describes the taking of Eve from Adam’s rib: “Later he would remember his body opening, the split that divided his being to release the intimate creature that until then TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gioconda Belli was born on December 9, 1948, in Managua, Nicaragua. She aspired to work in the medical field, but her father rejected the idea. In the mid-1960s she embarked on a career in advertising. Through work she became friends with members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and by the early 1970s she was deeply involved with the rebel group. Around the same time she began to write poetry, publishing her first volume of poems, Sobre la grama (On the grass), in 1972. Her second book of poetry, Linea de fuego (1978; Firing line) won the Casa de las Américas Prize. After the Sandinistas gained control of Nicaragua in 1979, Belli worked in the government for several years. In 1988 she published her first novel, La mujer habitada (The Inhabited Woman, 1994), which became an international best seller. In subsequent novels she continued to explore the erotic and feminist themes that also figure prominently in her poetry. In 2000 she published a memoir, El país bajo mi piel: Memorias de amor y guerra (The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War, 2002). Her novel El país de las mujeres (2010; The women’s country) won the 2010 La Otra Orilla prize for Latin American literature.
Photo of Gioconda Belli, author of the novel Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand. ª imagebroker/Alamy
had dwelled within him. He could scarcely move. His body in its incarnation as chrysalis acted on its own; he could do nothing but wait in his state of semiconsciousness for whatever was to happen.” The economy and precision of the language in Belli’s novel is not surprising, given her long and successful career as a poet. Precise language is language chosen unselfishly, as Susan Salter Reynolds suggests in her review for the Los Angeles Times: “[The Creation story] is an act of calligraphy—too much ego and the mirror that is the story cracks, the pool ripples. . . . Told with pure intent, imagination and clarity, the story is generous, capacious. The story becomes The Story.” Belli works within the ancient narrative, respecting its structural integrity while seeing in those first lives the dream, as well as the reality, of what it is to be human.
W Critical Reception Critics have responded favorably to Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand. Kirkus Reviews characterizes the novel as “a realistic portrayal of the children of a laissez-faire God,” in
which Belli delivers a “somber, meditative treatment of the First Family.” Other reviews have demonstrated a similar appreciation for the seriousness of Belli’s endeavor. Booklist reviewer Margaret Flanagan observes that, in Belli’s hands, “Adam and Eve are complex, humanistic creatures whose temptation and subsequent fall perhaps signal the intellectual, social, and artistic fruition of mankind.” In Eve’s ruminations on the forbidden fruit, Mary Margaret Benson, writing for Library Journal, sees Belli asking “whether eating the . . . fruit was sin or perhaps intellectual curiosity and the quest for knowledge of good and evil.” In the novel Eve asks the Serpent, “Which would you choose? Knowledge or eternity?” Belli describes the book in her author’s note as “a deep exploration of . . . the myths that shape us and the way we cling to them, despite the truths science sets before us.” Although her Creation story makes a concession to evolutionary science’s account of human origins, it is poignantly enfolded in the story of Adam and Eve’s own offspring. “Without abandoning the timeless biblical story,” notes Publishers Weekly, “Belli manages to introduce a modern Darwinian element that’s both stark and eloquent.” Traumatized by the murder of her twin (Abel) at the hands of Cain, Aklia loses “reason and conscience” as well as the ability to speak. Having “returned to innocence,” Aklia leaves to join a band of monkeys. Her departure, explains the Serpent, marks the beginning of “a long, slow time” in history—a time in which Aklia’s descendants will develop the knowledge and freedom that will permit their return to Paradise.
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Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Belli, Gioconda. Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Harper, 2009. Print. Benson, Mary Margaret. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Library Journal 134.1 (2009): 76. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Cheuse, Alan. “Two Novels about Creation.” Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. All Things Considered. National Public Radio 6 Mar. 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Flanagan, Margaret. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Booklist 105.12 (2009): 30. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Kirkus Reviews 1 Feb. 2009: n. pag. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Publishers Weekly 255.51 (2008): 28. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Mabe, Chauncey. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Sun-Sentinel [South Florida]. Sun Sentinel 15 Mar. 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Reynolds, Susan Salter. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times 15 Mar. 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barbas-Rhoden, Laura. “Anatomy of a Woman: Pleasure, Power, and Politics in Gioconda Belli’s Writing.” Unveiling the Body in Hispanic Women’s Literature: From Nineteenth-Century Spain to Twenty-first-Century United States. Ed. Renee Scott, Arleen Chiclana y Gonzalez, and Marjorie Agosin. Lewiston: Mellen, 2006: 187-202. Print. Barbas-Rhoden’s chapter situates Belli’s writing in the wider context of representations of women and women’s bodies in the works of Hispanic women writers. Belli, Gioconda. Interview by Kenia Halleck. Bomb. Bomb Magazine, Winter 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. This interview with Belli on Bomb magazine’s Web site addresses numerous topics, including the forces that define identity, the cultural effects of globalization, historical memory, the origins of the author’s 2010 novel El país de las mujeres, and how she chooses the subjects of her novels. ———. Interview by Jacki Lyden. All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 29 Nov. 2002. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. NPR’s interview with Belli focuses on the
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author’s involvement with the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua and her view of her role as a writer and as a woman in the revolutionary movement. Detwiler, Louise A. “Looking at My Sex: Gender Judgments in La mujer habitada.” Ixquic: Revista Hispanica Internacional de Analisis y Creacion 4 (2003): 1-15. Print. Discusses Belli’s novel La mujer habitada as an exploration of the risks faced by women who overstep traditional gender boundaries. Dunlap, Susanne. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. Historical Novels Review. Historical Novel Society Feb. 2010. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. Considers the importance of language in Belli’s retelling of the Creation story. Schulenburg, Elizabeth. Rev. of Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, by Gioconda Belli. BookLoons, n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2010. This review, though generally favorable, notes some of the ways in which Belli’s novel differs from the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Gale Resources
“Gioconda Belli.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Preble-Niemi, Oralia. “Gioconda Belli.” Modern Spanish American Poets: Second Series. Ed. Maria Antonia Salgado. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 290. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Gioconda Belli’s official Web site includes information about her poetry, novels, political writings, and children’s books, as well as a biography, reviews, and information about her public appearances. http:// www.giocondabelli.org/ The online version of the New York Daily News features a brief interview in which Belli discusses Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, her feminist views, and her involvement with the Sandinistas. http://www. nydailynews.com/latino/2009/04/15/2009-0415_gioconda_belli_life_after_paradise.html In this Apr. 2006 episode of the PBS television talk show Charlie Rose, available on the show’s Web site, Belli discusses the writing process with novelist Salman Rushdie and Israeli author David Grossman. http:// www.charlierose.com/view/interview/436 For Further Reading
Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: Norton, 1997. Print. This translation of the book of Genesis renders the original Hebrew of the Genesis story into contemporary English and offers a commentary emphasizing the themes and characters that unify the story’s narrative. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand
Elliott, Elissa. Eve: A Novel. New York: Bantam, 2009. Print. Elliott’s novel, which covers some of the same territory as does Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand in fleshing out Eve’s story, presents a style and thematic and philosophical preoccupations that differ from Belli’s work. Kahn, Paul W. Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Good and Evil. 2006. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010. Print. This philosophical inquiry begins when Eve eats the forbidden fruit and argues that the root of evil lies in the human condition itself. Kvam, Kristen E., Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, eds. Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. Print. This anthology documents the history of interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve in the major monotheistic religions. Lee, Tosca. Havah: The Story of Eve. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2008. Print. In this fictional first-person account by Eve, she describes her constant struggles to regain Paradise.
Lumpkin, Joseph B. The First and Second Books of Adam and Eve: The Conflict with Satan. Blountsville: Fifth Estate, 2009. Print. This nonfiction work features two apocryphal accounts (in contemporary English) of the lives of the first family, including The Second Book of Adam and Eve, which numbers Luluwa and Aklia among Adam and Eve’s children. Pagels, Elaine. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print. Pagels presents an analysis of the evolution of early Christian thought with regard to human nature, morality, and sexuality. Twain, Mark. The Diaries of Adam and Eve. Ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. This collection features “excerpts” from the diaries of the first couple, as originally “translated” by the humorist Twain at the beginning of the twentieth century.
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Janet Moredock
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The Informers By Juan Gabriel Vásquez
W Introduction Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s Los Informantes (2004), translated into English by Anne McLean as The Informers (2008), is a first-person novel narrated by Gabriel Santoro, “el junior.” A journalist by vocation, Santoro decides to write a book about Sara Guterman, a German Jew and friend whose family fled Nazi Germany and joined an enclave of fellow immigrants in Bogotá, Colombia. Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with flashbacks to the late 1930s and early 1940s, Gabriel Santoro’s narrative describes how Sara’s parents operated the Nueva Europa Hotel, which was really an internment facility for Germans suspected of being Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. A Life in Exile, Sara’s story, recounts the witch hunt produced by Colombia’s political commitment to the United States. The witch hunt made getting informers and identifying suspects more powerful than discovering the truth. Santoro learns of the infamous blacklists, which identified auswanderer (German immigrants) as targets of suspicion, regardless of proof, many of whom lost their businesses, freedom of mobility, and, in some cases, their lives. But Gabriel is unaware of the consequences his book will have for his father, Gabriel Santoro “el senior” and others. When Gabriel’s book is published, his father, a celebrated lawyer, rhetoric professor, and civic leader, writes an unflattering review and provokes a rift with his son. Three years later, Gabriel receives an unexpected call from his father inviting him to visit. What he anticipates might be an opportunity for reconciliation turns out to be news that the elder Santoro must undergo bypass surgery. Dr. Santoro’s second chance at life, further inspired by his love affair with Angelina, compels Gabriel to dig deeper into the past, especially when his father dies in a car accident after a visit to Medellín and an interview with Angelina, impugning the otherwise honorable reputation of Dr. Santoro,
is televised. Gabriel’s pursuit of the truth discloses that Dr. Santoro falsely accused Konrad Deresser, a family friend, of collusion with the Nazis, an accusation that resulted in Deresser’s suicide and the destruction of his family.
W Literary and Historical Context
South American compliance with U.S. blacklisting of German émigrés provides the political context for Vásquez’s novel about the unscrupulous methods employed against former German citizens. Vásquez uses Colombia as the backdrop for his novel. In Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against the Germans of Latin America in World War II, Max Paul Friedmann writes that Colombia expelled 20 percent of its German expatriates, while many others were interned in so-called hotels, forced to forfeit their businesses and property, shunned socially, and ruined to the point of being driven to suicide, as the case of Konrad Deresser illustrates. The novel also refers to the blacklisting of Colombians who did business with the Nazis or were accused of doing business with them. Under an edict from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, called the Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals, and with the compliance of the Colombian government, police clamped down on suspected commercial activities that were believed to be contrary to the aims of U.S. military action in Europe. Eduardo Santos, who was president of Colombia in 1941, agreed with a series of U.S. demands, including fortifying the Caribbean coast and guarding against infiltration of Axis funds into Latin America, all designed to frustrate potential Third Reich efforts to expand into that area. Colombian citizens who were accused of sympathizing with the Third Reich had their assets frozen, and some people were falsely accused by selfinterested informers.
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The Informers
MAJOR CHARACTERS HANS BETHKE, a dinner guest at the Deressers’ home, expresses pro-Nazi sentiments and provokes a heated argument with Enrique Deresser and leads Dr. Santoro to betray Konrad Deresser to the authorities. JULIA BETHKE is Hans Bethke’s tolerant wife. ENRIQUE DERESSER, Konrad’s angry son, is also Gabriel’s friend, whose whereabouts and fate are conjectured in Gabriel’s second novel. KONRAD DERESSER is a German émigré who is betrayed by his friend and blacklisted by the Colombian government. He commits suicide. MARGARITA DERESSER, Konrad’s supportive wife, writes impassioned letters in his defense, when Konrad is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. Her pleas denied, she eventually leaves her family. ANGELINA FRANCO is Dr. Gabriel Santoro’s physiotherapist. She becomes his lover, and after his death, his detractor. PETER GUTERMAN is the German Jew who owns the Nueva Europa Hotel. He is an intimate family friend of the Santoros. SARA GUTERMAN is Peter’s daughter and the subject of Gabriel Santoro’s biography. REBECA LÁZARO is Enrique Deresser’s wife. Bogotá, Colombia, is the setting for The Informers, which follows the life of a German Jew whose family fled from Germany to Bogotá. gary yim/Shutterstock.com
The novel demonstrates the power of false accusation and slander. Informers had the ability to ruin strangers and friends alike, simply by conveying the right amount of suspicion. In such cases, by accepting slander as fact, the public record may result in the wrong verdict.
SERGIO ANDRES FELIPE LÁZARO is the son of Rebeca and Enrique (Deresser) Lázaro. JOSEPHINA SANTAMARIA is Konrad’s black mistress. She is one of the last people to see him before he takes his life. DR. GABRIEL SANTORO is a celebrated legal scholar, professor of rhetoric, and civic leader. His son and namesake is Gabriel Santoro, the journalist. GABRIEL SANTORO is a journalist who writes A Life in Exile, a biography of Sara Guterman, which provokes his father’s scathing review. HANS AND LILI UNGAR are bookstore proprietors who pass a letter from Enrique Deresser to Gabriel Santoro, inviting him to visit.
W Themes The central theme of the novel is betrayal. In his youth, Dr. Santoro betrays his friend, Konrad Deresser, who is promptly blacklisted as a Nazi sympathizer. Dr. Santoro’s sharp criticism of his son’s book betrays his guilt and fear of being exposed for implicating an innocent man. Shortly after Gabriel and his father have reconciled, however, Dr. Santoro is killed in an automobile accident, and his lover, Angelina, betrays him by publicly accusing him of being an impostor and lying about past treachery and deceit. Intrigued by her claims, Gabriel investigates his father’s past and learns that he, too, has contributed to betraying his father and Deresser’s son, Enrique.
Dr. Santoro’s rebuke of his son’s book identifies another theme: how words can shape events. Gabriel’s good intentions in writing about Sara Guterman blind him to the damage he will cause. Dr. Santoro overreacts to Gabriel’s book out of remorse and tries to atone by visiting Enrique, who disappeared after his father’s suicide, reinforcing the theme that words matter, both spoken and suppressed.
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The Informers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1973 and left in 1996 to pursue studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Citing James Joyce’s Ulysses as his inspiration for becoming a writer, Vásquez has published two books. The first, Los Informantes (The Informers), which appeared in Spanish in 2004 and in English in 2009, was the result of a conversation he had with a German Jewish woman. His second novel, Historia secreta de Costaguana, was published in 2007, the same year he was nominated as one of the best young writers of South America, the Bogotá 39. As of 2010, he taught Spanish literature to American students in Barcelona, Spain, where he lived with his wife and children.
A third theme addresses the role of the media in making private matters public. Despite Dr. Santoro’s desire to put things right, his good intentions have disastrous consequences when Angelina presumes she has been abandoned and goes public with what she knows about Santoro. Gabriel, the journalist, quickly appreciates the irony of publishing the truth; however, he questions the final cost.
The Informers was Vásquez’s first book to be published in English, but by that time, in 2009, he was already a successful teacher, writer, and translator. Many critics agreed that he is among the more talented Latin American writers emerging in the early 2000s. Writing in the Independent, Tom Gaisford noted “echoes of Hamlet” in Vásquez’s narrator, Gabriel, and the Sunday Independent called Vásquez a mature John le Carré in the midst of a labyrinthine narrative by Borges, producing a “misty and enigmatic mood of doubt, shadow and secrecy.” In the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley praised Vásquez’s translator, Anne McLean, for preserving the novel’s “lean yet textured prose in lucid English that manages to echo its Spanish roots.” Other critics modified their praise. Louis Boyan, writing for Riverhead Books, found some of Vásquez’s dialogue “longwinded,” although he finally agreed that the Colombian writer is a “fresh and exciting voice.” In his review in the Guardian, Nick Caisor complimented Vásquez’s decision to break with Latin American tradition, in turning “to history rather than the myth of his country.” So, in all, the novel was praised by many but with reservation by some. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
W Style Vásquez’s novel is a stark departure from the literary conventions long followed by other South American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. Structured as a book within a book, Vásquez uses a straightforward journalistic prose style, complete with question-and-answer format, not unlike a formal interview. The narrator, Gabriel Santoro, is not the central character. It is the secret past of his father, Dr. Gabriel Santoro, that drives the plot. Vásquez narrates the story behind A Life in Exile in neutral language. But then Gabriel writes a fictional account of what his first book failed to address. The journalistic prose shifts to a less formal and less lean narrative voice. As Gabriel speculates about gaps in Sara’s account of the mistreatment of Germans in Colombia, characters such as Konrad and his wife and the mysterious Enrique begin to develop. Gabriel’s hypothetical musings arouse more questions that require a more expansive prose style. Overall, the text sustains the tone of investigative reportage, quite different from the magical realism so typical of many South American authors. Despite the clear and economical journalistic style, the technique of writing a book within another book allows the narrator to share the role of protagonist after Dr. Santoro dies. The first-person narrative voice becomes more self-indulgent, as speculative questions carry the plot to its equally speculative conclusion.
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W Critical Reception
Boyan, Louis. “Revealing a Colombian Past.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. pastemagazine. com. Paste Magazine 18 Aug. 2009. Web. 27 July 2010. Caisor, Nick. “History’s Shadows.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 24 May 2008. Web. 27 July 2010. Friedmann, Max Paul. Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against the Germans of Latin America in World War II. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print. Gaisford, Tom. “When Knowledge Destroys.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. independent. uk.co. Independent 26 Oct. 2008. Web. 29 July 2010. Vásquez, Juan Gabriel. The Informers. Trans. Anne McLean. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Print. Yardley, Jonathan. “Wartime Betrayals.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. washingtonpost. com. Washington Post 2 Aug. 2009. Web. 27 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Flood, Allison. “Colombia Dominates Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.” guardian.co.uk. Guardian 1 Apr. 2009. Web. 30 July 2010. Equally TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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acknowledges both translator and author in prize competition. Gurría-Quintana, Angel. Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. ft.com. Financial Times 19 May 2008. Web. 30 July 2010. Identifies how treachery and betrayal extend beyond the novel, suggesting everyone is capable of compromising personal ethics under the right circumstances. Long, Karen. “In Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s Intricate The Informers, the Past Isn’t Past at All.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. cleveland.com. Cleveland Plain Dealer 5 Oct. 2009. Web. 27 July 2010. Explains that the amputation of Santoro’s hand is a symbol for a Colombia with a buried history of violence and betrayal. Newton, Maud. “In Bogota, an Intricate Web of Secrets, Betrayal.” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. npr.org. National Public Radio 5 Oct. 2009. Web. 30 July 2010. Situates the novel’s force in the protagonist’s curious protest of Santoro’s biography of a family friend and questions the merits of reportage. Rohter, Larry. “In 1940s Colombia, Blacklists and ‘Enemy Aliens.’” Rev. of The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. newyorktimes.com. New York Times 2 Aug. 2009. Web. 30 July 2010. Cites U.S. policy in the blacklisting of German nationals as an overlooked topic of World War II. Vásquez, Juan Gabriel. “Beyond Bogotá.” Interview by Richard Lea. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 23 Sept. 2008. Web. 30 July 2010. Features the author’s need to leave Colombia in order to write about it.
For Further Reading
Evans, M. Stanton. Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009. Print. Reevaluates the validity of Joseph McCarthy’s lists of suspected communists in the United States. McCarthy’s Senate investigations led to fear and suspicion of communists in the U.S. similar to the anxiety about Nazis in the Colombia of Vásquez’s novel. Mack, Michael. German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. Print. Addresses philosophy and anti-Semitism in the tradition of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel and explores the nature of dual identities of German Jews. Moore, Michaela Hoenicke. Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. Explores the long-term political and international effects of the U.S. tendency to distinguish Germans from Nazis. Persico, Anthony. Infamy on Trial. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print. Recounts the story of the trial of Nazi war criminals, and challenges the notion that Nuremburg was a kangaroo court. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Print. Acclaimed account of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his defeat in World War II.
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The Inheritance of Loss By Kiran Desai
W Introduction Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006) is sprawling novel set in the mid-1980s in a crumbling old house in Palimpong, India, in the Himalyas and the restaurant kitchens and temporary living quarters of undocumented workers in New York City. The novel chronicles the story of an orphaned teenage girl, Sai, living with her aloof grandfather, a retired judge, and her growing engagement with the larger world after a failed romance with a budding Nepalese insurgent. Juxtaposed with Sai’s story is that of Biju, the son of the judge’s cook, as he struggles to keep his head above water in Manhattan as an undocumented worker, feeling invisible, homesick and alienated from the privilege and opportunity that surround him every day. Exploring themes of class and ethnic conflict, discrimination, fundamentalism, alienation, and the effects of globalization on commerce and culture, Desai interweaves the stories of Indian and Nepalese characters connected by their frustrating and sometimes humiliating encounters with the West. As Pankaj Mishra states, “Although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai’s extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Inheritance of Loss is set at the onset of the 1986 Gurkha uprising in the West Bengal hill town of Palimpong, in the majestic Himalayan mountains. Most of the town’s residents are Indians of Nepalese descent, and more than 615,000 live in the northern regions of
West Bengal. Considered a separate ethnic group, the Gurkas are Nepalese in origin and renowned for their fearlessness, superior fighting skills, and warrior mindset. There are approximately 1.4 million Gurkhas living in India. During the colonial period in India, the British military recruited Gurkha fighters for its prestigious Gurkha regiments, which survive today in the British and Indian armies. In 1980, after decades of corruption, neglect, and discrimination in the region, Gurkhas began to demand more power. They formed the Gurkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), a political party aiming to establish a separate Gurkha state in the Nepalese areas of West Bengal. In 1986 a guerrilla war broke out, and three hundred people were killed in the conflict over the next few years. In 1988 the GNLF signed the Darjeeling Hill Accord, a peace treaty that created the Darjeeling Hill Council, an autonomous government body responsible for governing the district of Darjeeling, in exchange for giving up their demands for an independent and separate state. In 2000, however, the GNLF renewed their demands for independence. The experiences of Biju, the undocumented Indian working tirelessly in the restaurant kitchens of New York City and renting filthy, overcrowded living quarters, portrays the unstable and peripatetic existence of illegal immigrants working in the West and the effects of globalization on the world economy. As many immigrants are drawn to the opportunities they might find in America, they are also trapped by poverty, discrimination, and law enforcement to live in the shadows of great wealth and privilege. This stratification between the haves and have-nots is a key theme of The Inheritance of Loss.
W Themes Immigration and globalization are key themes in Desai’s novel. Biju travels to the other side of the world—the kinetic, multicultural chaos of New York City—to pursue economic opportunity but finds only loneliness,
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impotence, poverty, and humiliation. Finally, he decides to go home to visit his father, eventually realizing that the ties of family, tradition, and culture are more important to him than those of economic opportunity. Jemu, like Biju, has been beaten down by his experience with the West. During his years at Cambridge, Jemu was profoundly affected by the racism he felt every day as an Indian in Britain. However, when he returned to India, he perceived his native land as backward and inferior to England. A confirmed Anglophile, he rejected his wife and child and instead longed to return to a civilized past informed by English culture and tradition. As reviewer Ann Harleman observed, “Desai builds her transcontinental romp about the pursuit of a ‘better life’ and the price it almost always exacts to a climax that is much darker than the rollicking tone it’s written in.” Jemu’s preoccupation with British manners and culture obscures his view of the real world, in which outside forces are rising up in the form of Nepali insurgents—a guerrilla force that will invade his crumbling old house to ransack it for guns and food and disturb his sense of order and consideration. Motivated by frustration and anger, these young men are looking to reassert their independence from India and to address what they view as discrimination, corruption, and poor policy foisted upon the Nepali people of West Bengal. In The Inheritance of Loss, class, ethnic, and gender differences figure prominently. Some, like Gyan, struggle to address and reform them through violence; others, like Jemu, look to defend them as tradition and order.
W Style As critic Ann Harleman maintains, The Inheritance of Loss “offers all of the pleasures of traditional narrative in a form and a voice that are utterly fresh.” Employing an omniscient point of view, the novel alternates between Kalimpong and Biju’s life in New York City through the skillful use of meaningful and natural transitions. The narrative also shifts in time—from Jemu’s experiences in England to Sai’s life at her grandfather’s crumbling house in the Himalayan Mountains in the mid-1980s. This double juxtaposition of time and place allows Desai to find parallels between Jemu and Biju’s immigrant experiences as well as reflecting on changing ideas of country, custom, ethnicity, and colonialism as perceived by Jemu as a young man and his granddaughter years later. Although the novel is composed of a number of connected threads, at the conclusion of The Inheritance of Loss Desai is able to deftly bring the various stories together. The Inheritance of Loss can be considered an example of migrant literature. In this genre, fiction explores the challenges of the migrant experience. As Biju works tirelessly in one New York restaurant after another for low wages, hoping to tap into the American dream, he finds
MAJOR CHARACTERS BIJU is the son of Jemubhai’s cook. Looking for opportunity, he makes it to New York City where he toils at a number of subsistence jobs as an undocumented worker. His life is very difficult, marked by frequent job changes, homesickness, hiding from immigration authorities, and frustration at trying to exist in an alien culture. He returns to India to visit, and is captured by the Nepalese insurgents. Luckily, he escapes and is reunited with his father. THE COOK works for Jemubhai and is Biju’s father. When Biju is in America, the two write letters. He adores Sai, and becomes a surrogate father for her. GYAN is descended from a Nepalese Gurkha mercenary. He is hired to tutor Sai in mathematics, and the two youngsters become romantically involved. He eventually rejects her life of privilege, however, and falls in with a group of Nepalese insurgents who are sick of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country. His gang breaks into Jemubhai’s home in search of weapons, and in the process terrorizes the family. When Sai confronts him, he realizes that he has moved on with his life. JEMUBHAI (JEMU) PATEL is an irascible retired judge who lives with his orphaned granddaughter in his once-grand home in Kalimpong, India, in the Himalayan Mountains near Nepal. He was educated at Cambridge University, England, and his years abroad have imbued him with an Anglophile perspective on his native Indian culture. Although his years in England were characterized by racism and postcolonial discrimination, upon his return to India he viewed aspects of his native land as backward and provincial. SAI is an orphaned teenage girl living with her grandfather, a retired judge, in Kalimpong. She has fallen in love with her tutor, a young man from the area named Gyan, who eventually rejects her and her sheltered life. After her house is raided by Nepalese insurgents, she searches out Gyan— only to realize that he has inexorably changed.
that the opportunities he hoped for are too few and far between for a poor, homesick Indian immigrant. Instead of the riches he hoped for, he finds loneliness, poverty, and exhaustion. As a book written by an Indian author—albeit with a strong British and American experience, The Inheritance of Loss is often discussed within the context of other recent Indian works written in English. Many of these works explores the lingering effects of British colonialism and postcolonialism conflict. In Desai’s novel, she also focuses on the Nepali-Indian ethnic conflict exploding in the 1980s in West Bengal, with the Gurkhas seeking their independence from India.
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The Inheritance of Loss tells the story of Biju, the son of a judge’s cook, as he struggles to survive as an illegal immigrant living and working in New York City. ª David Turnley/Corbis
W Critical Reception Published in 2006, The Inheritance of Loss garnered laudatory reviews from critics and quickly became a bestselling novel. It received both the prestigious Man Booker Prize for best novel in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction award in 2007. Critics praise Desai’s rich characters and descriptions, and her deft handling of time and place. Most commentary focuses on the weighty themes in the novel. Pankaj Mishra states that “although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai’s extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. Despite being set in the mid1980’s, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel.” Some reviewers also noted the cynical and depressing tone of the narrative. Mishra found that “though relieved by much humor, The Inheritance of Loss may strike many readers as offering an unrelentingly bitter view,” but concludes that much of the Western world is not aware of the powerlessness and impotence much of the world feels.
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In that sense, Desai dares to tell the truth and does not imbue her novel with magical realism or unrealistic happy endings. Reviewer Sarah Hughes also touches on Desai’s bold and masterful treatment of political and socioeconomic themes. “The Inheritance of Loss dissects the dream of empire, old and new, and lays bare the idea of colonial modernity. It shows, without judgment, what happens to those who leave for a new life and yet find themselves outcasts both at home and abroad. It is a novel that manages to be both warm-hearted about human nature and clear-sighted about humanity’s flaws.” Desai’s treatment of such themes often inspires comparisons between Desai and the renowned author V. S. Naipaul. As Hughes observes, “The comparisons with Naipaul may be inevitable, but this [novel] proves Desai has a mature, compassionate voice of her own.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Harleman, Ann. “Luminous Family Saga Bridges Eras, Cultures.” Boston Globe 4 Jan. 2006. Web. 8 Jan. 2010.
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Hughes, Sarah. “Uncle Potty and Other Guides to the Truth.” Observer 3 Sept. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. Mishra, Pankaj. Rev. of The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai. New York Times Book Review 9 Feb. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. Roy, Sandip. “Empires, Families in Flux.” San Francisco Chronicle 26 Feb. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. Walter, Natasha. “Mutt and the Maths Tutor.” Guardian [London] 26 Aug. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barton, Laura. “A Passage from India.” Guardian [London] 12 Oct. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. A profile of Desai written right after The Inheritance of Loss was awarded the Booker Prize. Desai reveals her mixed feelings upon receiving the award. Ghosh, Tapan K., ed. The Fiction of Kiran Desai: Focus on The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2009. Print. Full-length study of Desai’s novels, paying particular attention to The Inheritance of Loss.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kiran Desai was born on September 3, 1971, in New Delhi, India. Her mother was the noted Indian novelist Anita Desai, and Kiran spent her early years living with her family outside of New Delhi and in Kalimpong, in the Himalayas—a setting she would use later in her novel The Inheritance of Loss. She went to school at St. Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong, but at the age of fifteen she was sent to England to continue her education. After a year, she moved to the United States to finish high school in Massachusetts. After graduation, she enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont, and then studied at the creative writing program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. It was there she began writing her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998). She had gotten inspiration for the book from a newspaper article on a hermit in India who lived for many years in a tree. Desai eventually transferred to the writing program at Columbia University, where she received her MFA degree. Her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, was published to critical acclaim, receiving both the prestigious Man Booker Award for best novel in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction award in 2007. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
In The Inheritance of Loss, a teenage girl named Sai lives with her grandfather, a retired judge whose experiences in the Western world have led him to view his native India as “too messy for justice.” ª Brian A. Vikander/Corbis
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Kirchner, Bharti. “The Inheritance of Loss: A Moving Tale of Honesty and Horror.” Seattle Times 20 Jan. 2006. Web. 8 July 2010. Laudatory review of The Inheritance of Loss that commends the novel’s humor, honesty, and humanity. Nimsarkar, P. D., ed. Kiran Desai, the Novelist: An Anthology of Critical Essays. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2008. Print. A volume of critical essays focusing on Desai’s two novels: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss. Ramesh, Randeep. “Book-Burning Threat over Town’s Portrayal in Booker-Winning Novel.” Guardian [London] (2 Nov. 2006). Web. 8 July 2010. Discusses the reaction to Desai’s portrayal of Nepalese people in Kalimpong, India, where the novel was set. Vijh, Surekha. “Kiran Desai: Icon of the New Breed of Writers.” World and I 23.4 (Apr. 2008). Academic OneFile. Web. 7 July 2010. Identifies Desai as representative of an emerging breed of authors who are multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial. Gale Resources
Alessio, Carolyn. “Kiran Desai.” British Writers: Supplement 15. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Scribner’s, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. “Kiran Desai.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Gurkhas.com is an informational resource for Gurkhas serving in the British military. The site has a picture and video gallery, history, and forums for Gurkhas or those interested in the history of the Gurkha community in England. http://www.ghurkhas.com Information on the Indian Himalayas can be found at Indiasite.com. The site discusses geographical attractions and offers pictures of the majestic mountain range. http://www.indiasite.com/land/ himalayas.html
interactive tour of Ellis Island, publish your own story online, and explore the immigration history of different ethnic groups in the United States. http:// www.teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration For Further Reading
Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. New York: Free Press, 2008. Print. Chronicles the story of an Indian driver and his tortured relationship with his privileged boss, set against an India beset by class differences and economic stratification. Desai, Kiran. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998. Print. Desai’s first novel follows the adventures of an Indian mystic who lives in a tree. Farwell, Byron. The Gurkhas. New York: Norton 1984. Print. An entertaining and romantic study of the Gurkhas, focusing on their skills as warriors, history, and major conflicts. Guha, Ramachandra. India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. New York: Ecco, 2007. Print. A history of the political, cultural, and social history of India after the death of Mahatma Gandhi and offers biographical sketches on major political figures of the era. Naipaul, V. S. A Bend in the River. New York: Knopf, 1979. Print. Mentioned prominently in The Inheritance of Loss, Naipaul’s novel chronicles the encounter of traditional Africa with the modern West. Orner, Peter, ed. Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2008. Print. A collection of oral histories from undocumented workers struggling to survive in America, offering a first-person look at the immigrant experience. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. New York: Knopf, 1981. Print. A profound influence on Desai’s work, Rushdie chronicles the story of two infants switched at birth in India at the stroke of India’s independence day.
First-person stories of the immigrant experience can be found on the Scholastic Teachers website. Get an
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Margaret Haerens
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Inkheart Trilogy By Cornelia Funke
W Introduction Inkheart is the first novel in a metafictional fantasy trilogy written by German writer Cornelia Funke. Inkheart was originally published in Germany as Tintenherz, in 2003. Meggie’s father, Mo, owns a terrible secret: when he reads books aloud, the characters come to life—but real people are physically drawn into the books. An evil villain, Capricorn, hopes to exploit in Mo’s talents. To escape, Mo takes a book, Inkheart, and flees to visit Elinor, the aunt of his wife, Teresa, who has been missing for years. While Elinor secretly borrows Mo’s book, Mo is captured by Capricorn, setting Meggie on a quest to get her father back—and possibly save her mother. As the story progresses, Meggie discovers her father’s talent, and realizes that while Capricorn belongs in Inkworld, the world of Inkheart, her mother, who belongs with her, has been drawn into the novel in Mo's place. Meggie and her father seek out the help of Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart, to destroy the evil Capricorn once and for all. When the story continues in Inkspell, Dustfinger, a character from Fenoglio’s novel Inkheart, is still searching for a way back to Inkworld. When he finally finds someone who can help him, his apprentice and foster son, Farid, is left in Meggie’s world. Farid believes that Meggie possesses the power to get him home, and when the two of them go to Inkworld, Meggie’s parents follow. When they arrive in Inkworld, they find that Fenoglio, who settled in Inkworld at the end of Inkheart, has lost control over his creation. As Fenoglio attempts to rewrite reality, having Meggie, who has inherited her father’s gift, read his revisions aloud, more and more complications arise, and the world changes beyond Fengolio’s imagining. In the meantime, competing scribe Orpheus makes inroads in his attempts to take over Inkworld, and by the
beginning of the last novel in the trilogy, Inkdeath, he has succeeded. Mo has fallen into the role of Bluejay, a vigilante that Fenoglio based on him, risking the ire of the world’s villains, including Adderhead. The world has become darker and more violent, and Meggie has become both more mature and involved in a potential romance, as two swains compete for her affections. As the trilogy progresses, the themes and content both become more mature. The final book is aimed more toward teens than the children who were originally the target audience of Inkheart. With the publication of Inkdeath in English translation in 2008, the story drew to a final conclusion.
W Literary and Historical Context
Following the success of the Harry Potter series by British author J. K. Rowling, the first book of which was published in 1997, Inkheart and its sequels were introduced to an audience of older children and young teens already comfortable with reading enormous tomes, according to reviewer Peter Sieruta. Other large-scale fantasy trilogies and series appeared on the market at roughly the same time, such as the Bartimeaus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, and the Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer. Inkheart and its sequels also draw connections with a wide scope of previously written, similar works by quoting them at the beginning of each chapter. Children’s writers mentioned in the books include Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, J. K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, and Kate DiCamillo. Writers of adult works, from William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood to Pablo Neruda, are also quoted or mentioned within the pages.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ADDERHEAD is one of the major villains in Inkworld—an immortal tyrant who Mo, as the Bluejay, is determined to destroy. THE BLUEJAY is Mo’s alter ego in Inkworld. Based on Mo, Fenoglio writes the Bluejay as a vigilante who fights against the oppression of Adderhead. When Mo comes to Inkworld, he is mistaken for the Bluejay, and eventually ends up taking on the persona himself. CAPRICORN is the primary villain in Inkheart, both in the real novel and the fictional one written by Fenoglio. Summoned accidentally into the real world by Mo, Capricorn is determined to use Mo to help him rule both the real world and Inkworld. DUSTFINGER, a fire-eater, was accidentally summoned into the real world by Mo, and he longs to return to Inkworld. ELINOR is Meggie’s book-collector aunt, who sets Meggie’s quest into motion by “borrowing” Mo’s copy of Inkheart without Mo’s permission. FARID, Dustfinger’s apprentice and adopted son, is left behind when Dustfinger returns to Inkworld. FENOGLIO is the original author of Inkheart, who goes to live in Inkworld when Capricorn is defeated. MEGGIE, the heroine of the novels, begins the series as a twelve-year-old girl. When her father is kidnapped by Capricorn, she discovers that he has the ability to pull characters and objects out of books when he reads them aloud. As Meggie grows up, she realizes that she has a similar power to shape reality through reading aloud. MO, Meggie’s father, is a bookbinder with the ability to summon objects and characters out of books when he reads aloud. He sets the action of the series in motion, first by sending his wife inadvertently into Inkworld, and then by summoning Capricorn into existence. When Mo and Teresa go to rescue Meggie in Inkworld, he is mistaken for the Bluejay, a vigilante. TERESA is Mo’s wife and Meggie’s mother. She is stuck in Inkworld after her husband accidentally sent her there by reading aloud.
W Themes The power of words and the battle between good and evil are the two most dominant themes in the Inkheart Trilogy. Mo’s and Meggie’s ability to read characters “out” of their books, and Fenoglio and Orpheus’s competing to rewrite Inkworld in their own image, are examples of how the impact of words is emphasized. As the series progresses, it
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In this photo, author Cornelia Funke accepts an award for her contributions to German literature, which includes her Inheart Trilogy. ª UWE ZUCCHI/epa/Corbis
also becomes clear that “wordcraft can create unintended circumstances,” according to reviewer Jean Boreen. Fenoglio tries to fix bits of the story as it spirals out of his control, but each change he introduces results in unintended consequences. According to Carolyn Phelan of Booklist, once Meggie journeys to Inkworld, “she realizes the consequences of her choice and the seeming impossibility of putting things right in either place.” Words and meaning, Funke seems to imply, can change. The battle between good and evil also becomes more complicated and nuanced as the series progresses. In Inkheart, Meggie and Mo clearly represent good, while Capricorn is evil. This does not mean that the heroes always make the right choices: Mo has lied to Meggie for nine years, both about his talent and about her mother, putting them both in danger. The tone of the books becomes darker as Inkworld itself becomes a more violent place. Similarly, ethical decisions that the characters must make are less clear, such as Mo’s choice to take on the role of the freedom fighter, the Bluejay. As decisions become harder to make, the characters look at the world TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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in a more complicated way. Their decisions are less a matter of choosing good over evil, and evolve into questions about how to shape their own destinies.
W Style While Funke makes good use of traditional fantasy and adventure tropes in her cycle, it is the metafictional references that draw the most attention. The characters continually play with words, and with the nature of their story, twisting and turning the narrative as it builds, “sometimes at cross-purposes," as Francine Levitov observes. Each chapter opens with a quote that offers insight into the action of that chapter. Funke draws on a wealth of literary inspirations, and gives Meggie a love of reading that allows the author to play with stories inside of other stories in a fuller way. The novels follow a trilogy format. Funke brings her first novel to an almost self-contained conclusion, allowing only a few loose threads. The second novel ends with a cliffhanger. At the end of Inkspell, Boreen notes, Funke has “resolve[ed] a few loose ends while setting the stage for the conflicts that must be resolved concerning the fates of the main characters.” All those threads are tied together at the end of Inkdeath. The novels become more mature as the series continues, straddling the border between children’s literature and books for young adults or adult readers. Occasionally, critics, such as the reviewer for Publishers Weekly, bemoan the slow pace, saying that Funke “sputters for a hundred pages filling in backstory” in Inkdeath. Others, such as the critic for Kirkus Reviews, found that while she “takes her time with her tale,” the slower pace serves to heighten the sense of menace created by the villains.
W Critical Reception The Inkheart Trilogy garnered positive reviews at the time of its publication, and the first two novels won awards in both Germany and the United States. Inkheart was so popular that it was optioned for a movie, starring Brendan Fraser and award-winning actress Helen Mirren. Eileen Wright, in Library Media Connection, writes of Inkheart, “There is adventure, suspense, anxiety, hope, love, and strong family bonds that all strengthen this adventure about the love of reading books.” Abby McGanney Nolan, reviewing for the New York Times Book Review, calls Meggie a “spirited heroine whose perilous circumstances and love of stories have her pondering and quoting” from a wide variety of literary pieces, and considers the story “sprinkled with some magical fairy dust of its own.” In a starred review, a contributor to Kirkus Reviews also praises Meggie as “a stalwart heroine who never loses her childish nature,” and attributes partial credit for the “vivid images and heartstopping language” to translator Anthea Bell.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cornelia Funke was trained and educated as a social worker. She worked in that profession for three years while she was enrolled in a book illustration program. Once she finished her course, Funke became a full-time illustrator, working primarily on board games and book art. Although she had no plans to write professionally, Funke was frustrated by what she felt was a lack of imagination in the books she was illustrating. This prompted her to pen her own tales. Her first novel, Monstergeschichten, was published in 1993, and several novels for young readers followed. It was not until 2002, however, that Funke’s work made its English-language debut. A young German fan wrote a letter to Chicken House Books in England, complaining that she could only read her favorite books in German, not in English. The editors at Chicken House were intrigued, and Funke’s first translated title, The Thief Lord, became a best seller. Since then, many of Funke’s other novels have been translated into English and have proven equally commercially popular, including the Inkheart Trilogy, Dragon Rider, Igraine the Brave, and Reckless. Funke continues to write and illustrate, and has self-illustrated many of her titles.
Inkspell is considered “equally engaging” in Jean Boreen’s review for the Journal of Adolsecent and Adult Literacy, and the book was selected for Booklist’s top ten fantasy books for youth in 2006. Carolyn Phelan in Booklist calls Inkspell a “stronger book than its predecessor.” A Kirkus contributor states that “Funke delivers more than enough action, romance, tragedy, villainy and emotion to keep readers turning the pages” in her second installment. Inkdeath, however, had many threads to wrap up, and a cast of 114 characters that required an eight-page appendix to help readers follow their stories. Critics complained of the slower pacing and overly complicated plot, while noting that the conclusion “should provide ardent fans of the series with both comfort and closure” (Hunt). A Kirkus Reviews critic finds the “storytelling is as compelling as ever,” but bemoans a shift in audience; Inkdeath, the critic feels, is for teens and adults, not for children. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Boreen, Jean. Rev. of Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47.5 (2004): 433+. Print. Hunt, Jonathan. Rev. of Inkdeath, by Cornelia Funke. Horn Book Magazine 85.1 (Jan.-Feb. 2009): 91. Print. ———. Rev. of Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 50.1 (2006): 79+. Print. Rev. of Inkdeath, by Cornelia Funke. Kirkus Reviews 1 Sept. 2008. Print.
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Rev. of Inkdeath, by Cornelia Funke. Publishers Weekly 22 Sept. 2008: 59. Print. Levitov, Francine. Rev. of Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke. Kliatt May 2006: 44. Print. Mattson, Jennifer. “Top 10 Fantasy Books for Youth.” Booklist 15 May 2006: 57. Print. Nolan, Abby McGanney. “Children’s Books.” New York Times Book Review 21 Dec. 2003: 17. Print. Phelan, Carolyn. Rev. of Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke. Booklist 1 Oct. 2005: 52. Print. Sieruta, Peter D. Review of Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. Horn Book Magazine 80.1 (Jan.-Feb. 2004): 81-82. Print. Rpt. Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 145. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Wright, Eileen. Review of Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. Library Media Connection 22.4 (Jan. 2004): 64-5. Print. Rpt. in Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 145. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Boreen, Jean. “‘Blurring’ the Borders between Reality and Fantasy: Considering the Work of Cornelia Funke.” ALAN Review 32.1 (Fall 2004): 26-31. Print. Rpt. Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 145. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Along with an interview with Funke, Boreen’s essay includes a discussion of the way that fantasy literature allows readers to examine the real world, using Funke’s novels as examples. She concludes that the personal growth of the characters in Funke’s books is the strongest part of the novels. Zvirin, Stephanie. “Inkspell.” Booklist 1 Dec. 2005: 73. Print. Zvirin reviews the audiobook version of Inkspell, narrated by Brendan Fraser. She discusses the story, as well as what Fraser’s vocal choices and accents add to the telling. Gale Resources
“Cornelia Funke.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
Though Funke has no personal home page, the Cornelia Funke Fans website, available in both English and German, is run by her sister to keep fans up to date on the latest news. The site is not only a place for information about Funke’s works, but is a community where fans can interact with each other and converse about the worlds in Funke’s novels. http://www .corneliafunkefans.com/ American publisher Scholastic has an author profile page for Funke, offering information about Funke’s biography as well as her worlds. Pages exist for the
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Inkworld books, Funke’s Ghosthunters series, and other novels that have been published in English translation. http://www.scholastic.com/cornelia funke/bio.htm For book groups, Scholastic has also created a discussion guide page, helping bring up interesting questions and topics related to the three novels. Sections on characters, themes, and setting open conversations, and exercises for helping teachers use the books in class are given as well. http://www2.scholastic.com/ browse/collateral.jsp?id=36165 Information about the film adaptation of Inkheart is available on the Inkheart Movie website. There is a gallery of images from the film, as well as profiles of the cast and filmmakers, and several wallpapers, icons, and other extras are available for download. http:// www.inkheartmovie.com/ For Further Reading
Funke, Cornelia. Dragon Rider. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: Chicken House, 2004. Print. Another of Funke’s fantasy novels in translation, Dragon Rider tells the story of Firedrake, a young dragon who lives in the Scottish Highlands, the last remaining home of dragons on Earth. When that home is threatened, Firedrake and his brownie friend Sorrel travel to the legendary home of the silver dragons, where Firedrake and the other dragons might be safe from humans. Lin, Grace. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print. Minli believes desperately that a journey to visit the Old Man of the Moon can save her family from poverty. Following clues provided by talking goldfish, she sets out on her quest, much to the dismay of her parents. Several folktales from Minli’s world are interspersed with her journey, layering stories upon stories—many of which, it turns out, are true after all. The novel was a Newbery Honor book and the winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in Children’s Literature in 2010. Mantchev, Lisa. Eyes Like Stars. New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2009. Print. Orphan Beatrice “Bertie” Shakespeare Smith has lived in the Theater Illuminata for as long as she can remember. But when she is questioned about what she contributes to a world where the characters from different plays are summoned into the world by the stage manager, and the set changes are magically instantaneous, she decides to take on the role of director in order to stay in the only home she has ever known. McCaughrean, Geraldine, trans. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Print. King Shahryar does not trust women, and so he marries a new wife every day, killing her the next morning. This process continues until TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Shaharazad becomes his wife, and tells him such fascinating tales that he cannot bear to kill her. A classic collection of stories within stories that emphasizes the transformative power of tales, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, as translated by McCaughrean, has been in print since its original hardcover publication. A paperback edition was released in 2000. Adaptations
Inkheart. Dir. Iain Softley. Perf. Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirren, and Jim Broadbent. New Line Cinema, 2008. Film. The first book of the trilogy premiered in
2008, spurring on several movie tie-in titles that further adapt the novel for younger readers. Tintenblut. Produced in Hannover, Germany, 2006. Play. Inkspell, titled Tintenblut in its original German form, was adapted as a play in Germany the year after it was released as a novel. Tintenherz. Produced in Bonn, Germany, 2006. Play. The original German version of Inkheart was adapted as a musical play and performed in Funke’s native Germany.
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The Invention of Hugo Cabret By Brian Selznick
W Introduction The Invention of Hugo Cabret tells the story of a twelve-yearold orphan living in a train station in Paris in 1931. Hugo is trying to fix a badly damaged automaton, hoping it will give him a message from his dead father. In the process of fixing the automaton, Hugo becomes entangled with Georges Méliès, a former filmmaker who lost his dreams when his studio closed ten years before. Hugo and Méliès, reluctant at first, help each other discover and recover their dreams and, therefore, shape their futures. The fictional Méliès is based on a real person who was a pioneer filmmaker in the early days of motion pictures. When it was published in 2007, Brian Selznick’s novel introduced a new format for storytelling. Aimed at an audience of nine to twelve years old, The Invention of Hugo Cabret has 158 illustrations and movie stills (316 pages) in a 533-page book. Not quite a graphic novel or a picture book, this cinematic format and the story it tells captured the attention of readers and critics. Selznick’s novel won the Caldecott Honor in 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is set in Paris during the year 1931 and tells a fantastical tale concerning the historical pioneer filmmaker, Georges Méliès. Motion pictures were invented by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, who debuted their first movie on December 28, 1895, to an audience of thirty-three people. Méliès was famous in his day for making movies with wildly fantastic images and plots, a strong contrast to the documentaries produced by the Lumières. Méliès was a performing magician and used
his theater to show his films; he was called a cinemagician, or a magician of the cinema. He made over five hundred movies, including A Trip to the Moon (1902), his most famous piece and the first science fiction film. As the film industry grew, larger companies squeezed Méliès out of business. An impoverished Méliès sold toys at Montparnasse Station, but his creative work was rediscovered during the 1920s due to the growing surrealist art movement. He was awarded a Legion of Honor in 1931, the highest civilian award bestowed by the French government. Inspired many years after seeing A Trip to the Moon, Selznick wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabret as a way to tell Georges Méliès’s story, notes critic Lewis Jacobs.
W Themes The Invention of Hugo Cabret is about the importance of dreams. Dreams are not merely the provenance of childhood or of fantasy. Inspiration is drawn from dreams, and this inspiration propels individuals toward the creation of new technology, works of art and literature, and theories. In his novel, Selznick emphasizes that mechanical capability (Hugo) is not enough to survive; magic is also needed. Hugo’s salvation lies not with the automaton through which he desperately hopes to get a message. Rather it comes through its creator, Georges Méliès, once a magician and filmmaker—a dream maker. In the process of drawing Méliès back to his creative life, Hugo is reborn as a magician also: Professor Alcofrisbas. In this novel, dreams provide inspiration and motivation. Méliès, the first person to make films for entertainment, is the ultimate dreamer and fantasist, but his failure to succeed in business has crushed all that he once loved. He and Hugo complement each other, save each other, and thus achieve their dreams.
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W Style Selznick uses a framing device in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. A framing device is a structural device that occurs at the beginning and end of a story, giving the reader a sense of closure when the story ends and the element is repeated. In Selznick’s novel, this element is Professor Alcofrisbas, who provides an introduction and is the voice of the final chapter. In addition to framing the story, Professor Alcofrisbas gives the reader a surprising insight at the end of the novel, heightening the sense of drama and closure. Symbolism, or the use of objects or images to represent abstract ideas, is also present in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Clocks represent time, which in Hugo’s case, is running out. When he stops winding the clocks in the train station, the drama of the story increases as the audience anticipates what might happen to Hugo once the clocks begin to break down. Another symbol in this novel is light, which represents invention. The light of the movie projector is mentioned repeatedly; it summons those who want to see new and marvelous sights. In the painting of Prometheus at the film academy, the figure is blasting white light from his finger instead of fire, drawing an association between humankind’s consciousness and creativity and the growing movie industry. Méliès rediscovers his work while sitting amid the flickering light of a projector showing one of his films.
W Critical Reception Sue Corbett, in an author profile for Publishers Weekly, described how Selznick’s ideas for The Invention of Hugo Cabret increased from a 150-page chapter book with a single illustration per chapter to a 533-page novel with over 300 pages of illustrations. Neither a graphic novel nor a picture book, Hugo Cabret was lauded by reviewers for excellent storytelling, engaging illustrations, and especially for the unusual text-and-picture combination that heralded a new literary form. “The book, an homage to early filmmakers as dreammakers, is elegantly designed to resemble the flickering experience of silent film melodramas,” wrote a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews. John Schwartz, in an article for the New York Times Book Review, agreed, describing Selznick’s novel as “much more than a graphic novel: it is more like a silent film on paper.” Roger Sutton summed it up in the Horn Book Magazine: “The interplay between the illustrations . . . and the text is complete genius.” The Invention of Hugo Cabret was awarded the Caldecott Medal, the top award for illustration, in 2008. A movie adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese was filmed in 2010 and scheduled for release in 2011.
MAJOR CHARACTERS PROFESSOR H. ALCOFRISBAS is a magician and Hugo’s alter ego. CLAUDE CABRET is an alcoholic timekeeper who works at the train station in Paris. HUGO CABRET, the main character of this novel, is an imaginative twelve-year-old boy who is good with clocks and other mechanical objects. ISABELLE, the ward of Georges’s Méliès, is Hugo’s friend. GEORGES MÉLIÈS, a toymaker with a booth at the train station, has a mysterious past. JEANNE MÉLIÈS is Georges’s wife and wants to keep him safe from his past. ETIENNE PRUCHON is a film student who befriends Isabelle and Hugo. STATION INSPECTOR keeps the train station running smoothly. RENE TABARD is Etienne’s professor at film school.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Biography for Georges Méliès.” IMDB.com. Internet Movie Database Web. 30 July 2010. Corbett, Sue. “Drawn to Cinema.” Rev. of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. Publishers Weekly 19 Feb. 2007: 64-5. Print. Jacobs, Lewis. “Honor Where It Is Due: A Belated Tribute to Méliès, Who Made the First ‘Story’ Films.” New York Times 3 Apr. 1938: 158. Print. Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier. “Georges Méliès and the Adventure of the Film 32-Studio.” French Cinema. New York: Continuum International, 2005: 32-6. Print. Mack, Tracy. “The Amazing Brian Selznick: A Profile in Three Acts.” Horn Book Magazine 84.4 (2008): 407-11. Print. “Martin Scorsese’s London Film Hugo Cabret Recruits an All-Star Cast.” NME.com. NME 1 July 2010. Web. 29 July 2010. Riding, Alan. “The Birthplace Celebrates Film’s Big 1-0-0.” New York Times 28 Feb. 1995. Print. Schwartz, John. “Children’s Books.” Rev. of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. New York Times Book Review 11 Mar. 2007: 16. Print.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brian Selznick was born on July 14, 1966, in East Brunswick, New Jersey. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988 and began his career in children’s books working for the specialty store Eeyore’s Books for Children in New York City. Selznick wrote and illustrated his first book, Houdini’s Box (1991), and went on to illustrate over twenty other books. He won the 2001 Caldecott Honor for his illustrations in Barbara Kerley’s book The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins and the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Besides writing and illustrating, Selznick enjoyed performing and put on several productions as a puppeteer. As of 2010, Selznick divided his time between Brooklyn, New York, and San Diego, California.
“Selznick, Brian: The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” Rev. of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. Kirkus Reviews 15 Jan. 2007: 81. Print. Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic, 2007. Print. Sutton, Roger. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” Rev. of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. Horn Book Magazine 83.2 (2007): 173-75. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Caldecott Stunner.” School Library Journal 54.2 (Feb. 2008): 13. Print. Reports reactions from members of the American Library Association upon hearing the news that Selznick’s unusual novel won the Caldecott Medal.
In this photo, a man works on an automaton, much like the one Hugo tries to repair in the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. ª Bettmann/ Corbis
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Hayn, Judith A. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” Rev. of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 51.2 (2007): 189. Print. Praises Selznick’s creative blend of text and illustration to create a new kind of graphic novel. Mattson, Jennifer. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” Booklist 1 Jan. 2007: 97. Print. Highlights the cinematic influences in Selznick’s novel, from the illustrations and movie stills to the character of Méliès. McGillis, Roderick. “Fantasy as Epanalepsis: ‘An Anticipation of Retrospection.’” Papers 18.2 (2008): 7-14. Print. Discusses fantasy and retrospection in the context of Selznick’s novel, including how Hugo uses the past to reinvent his future. Shea, Peter. “Thinking in Stories.” Thinking 19.2/3 (2009): 1. Print. Emphasizes the viewpoint of young readers and how they will interpret fantasy and reality in Selznick’s novel. Ward, Elizabeth. “A Dazzling New Book Is Less than Meets the Eye.” WashingtonPost.com. Washington Post 25 Mar. 2007. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Criticizes the novel as flat and uninspired, relying on its gimmick of illustrations to impress readers. Gale Resources
“Selznick, Brian 1966–.” Something about the Author. Ed. Lisa Kumar. Vol. 171. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 17075. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Invention of Hugo Cabret has its own Web site at http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com/index. htm with information about the novel, its author, historical background of the story, and news. It includes links to video interviews and a slideshow of the novel’s opening sequence. A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la luna), by Georges Méliès, is the first science fiction film ever made. Filmed in 1902, it is approximately twelve minutes long and tells the story of a group of astronomers who travel to the moon in a rocket, discover unfriendly natives, and return home just in the nick of time. A narrated, digitized video of this silent film is available from the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/ details/Levoyagedanslalune
The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia is home to a working automaton that inspired the one in Selznick’s novel. Created around 1800 by Henri Maillardet, a Swiss man who worked on clocks and other machines, this automaton was damaged in a fire and, after being repaired, created four different pictures and three poems. Video of the automaton in action can be seen on the institute’s Web site, http://www.fi.edu/ learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts= instrumentation For Further Reading
Clee, Paul. Before Hollywood: From Shadow Play to the Silver Screen. New York: Clarion Books, 2005. Print. Examines the artistic and scientific techniques and inventions that predated the invention of motion pictures. Includes a chapter about Méliès. Ezra, Elizabeth. Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. Print. Closely studies Méliès’s innovative films and seeks to disprove some myths about his career as a filmmaker. Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Print. About a young boy who is adopted by ghosts and grows up in a graveyard while trying to solve the mystery of who murdered his parents and sister. Won the 2009 Newbery Medal and Hugo Award. Priest, Christopher. The Prestige. New York: Tor, 2006. Print. About two rival magicians in Victorian-era London competing to be the best in their field. Won the 1996 World Fantasy Award and was made into a feature film in 2006. Selznick, Brian. “Caldecott Medal Acceptance.” Horn Book Magazine 84.4 (2008): 393-406. Print. Shares his inspiration and motivation to write Hugo’s story. ———. Interview by Michele Norris. All Things Considered. National Public Radio. 9 Feb. 2007. Web. 19 January 2011. Explores the author’s childhood, experience with magic, and desire to Hugo’s story. Wood, Gaby. Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print. Talks about Méliès’s lost automata collection.
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The Janissary Tree By Jason Goodwin
W Introduction In The Janissary Tree, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire is planning to modernize his realm, introducing greater innovations and replacing the traditional military with a more Western-style force. When several soldiers of the new army disappear, Yashim Togalu, a eunuch, is asked to investigate. He is able to link the disappearances with two other crimes: the murder of a girl from the Sultan’s harem, and the robbery of jewels belonging to the Sultan’s mother. As a eunuch, Yashim can go where normal men cannot, including the Sultan’s harem. As an unassuming, plain-looking individual, Yashim blends in and walks unnoticed, allowing him to gather the clues needed to solve the mystery. Along with his own investigative skills, he relies on help from Preen, a köçek dancer who was castrated in his youth and dresses as a woman, and Palieski, the Polish ambassador to the sultanate. With their help, he unravels a plot of the janissaries—elite traditional guardians of the Sultan who had supposedly been disbanded ten years before—to stage a coup against the Emperor. The Janissary Tree received an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Ottoman Empire lasted for nearly six hundred years, beginning in the fourteenth century. When the Christian Byzantine Empire collapsed, the Turks expanded their territory, which had stretched across the Anatolian peninsula, through southeastern Europe and into northern Africa. Though the majority of the Ottomans were Muslims, the strongest force within the military of the empire was a standing army of Christians called the janissaries (Sansal). The force was originally formed in the 1300s from captives taken during the Crusades; the
soldiers were forced to provide military service as tribute. This same group was transformed into an elite group that followed the sultan exclusively. Due to their training and excellent performance, many janissaries were granted land or administrative positions within the government. Though the Ottoman Empire was a strong government, it did not keep up with the technology developed in Europe’s industrial revolution, and thus as Europe expanded its influence, the Ottoman Empire struggled to adapt and keep up. The Janissary Tree takes place as the influence of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed in 1922 (Hooker), is waning, struggling to balance tradition with new, modern ways of doing things that made other nations gain in power. The Janissary Tree was published in 2007, shortly after Turkish author Orhan Pamuk received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2005, Pamuk made statements about the mass killings of Armenians and Kurds during the rule of the Ottoman Empire—Pamuk’s statements resulted in his being charged as a criminal for insulting Turkey (Contemporary Authors). The charges were dropped in 2006, the same year Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize. Many of Pamuk’s novels are set in Turkey, including My Name Is Red, published in English in 2001, which features a murder that takes place during the Ottoman Empire.
W Themes The Janissary Tree is set during a time when traditional values collide with attempts at bringing the Ottoman Empire into the modern world. The progressive Sultan has many enemies among his more traditional subjects. Thus, the story focuses closely on the clash between those who believe the past has greater value and those who see the necessity of changing for the future. The story begins with Yashim being asked by the Sultan’s commander-inchief, the seraskier, to investigate the disappearances of four young officers from the new, French-trained army.
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The seraskier gives Yashim only ten days to solve the crime because the Sultan will soon make a controversial decree to modernize the empire (Smith). The disappearances could cause complications in a situation that is already fraught with political turmoil. Jason Goodwin also explores themes of gender and sexuality through the very nature of his main character. Yashim is a eunuch, a status that causes him emotional distress (Smith), even while providing him with advantages over other investigators. In the novel, he is described: “he lacked balls. Not in the vulgar sense: Yashim was reasonably brave. But he was that creature rare even in 19th-century Istanbul. Yashim was a eunuch” (Goodwin, 5). This condition does not stop Yashim from having an affair with the wife of the Russian ambassador, but it does cause him to be isolated in his own culture. The themes of gender and sexuality are also explored through Preen, a köçek dancer who, like others of his profession, was castrated at puberty. The male dancers dress like women. The novel focuses on the friendship between these two outcasts, both of whom are men denied key aspects of the traditional male role.
MAJOR CHARACTERS PALIESKI is the ambassador for Poland, a country that has been divided between the Russians, the Prussians, and the Austrians. Like Yashim, Palieski is an outcast, an ambassador without a country to represent. Palieski aids Yashim’s investigation. PREEN, like Yashim, was castrated during his puberty. He is not a eunuch, however; he is a köçek dancer, who dresses like a woman. Along with being one of Yashim’s oldest friends, he is one of the people who helps Yashim in his investigation. YASHIM TOGALU, a eunuch, is an investigator for the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Though his status as a eunuch marks him as an outsider, it also enables him to cross into areas prohibited to other men, including the Sultan’s harem. Yashim is intelligent and charismatic, but is also able to blend into the background, giving him an advantage when watching people for information pertaining to the case.
W Style There are several subgenres in crime fiction, and the “history-mystery” is a popular category, explains Natasha Cooper of the London Times. According to her, the secret to success in this genre is “balancing the demands of narrative with the need for accurate research.” Cooper states that many writers have trouble with the style because their grasp on how to achieve that balance is
Janissaries, such as those depicted in this portrait, would be the soldiers of the new army created by the sultan in The Janissary Tree. ª INTERFOTO/Alamy
tenuous. But in the case of The Janissary Tree, she writes, “Jason Goodwin’s first novel is a refreshing example of best practice.” The novel follows the traditional rules of crime fiction, featuring many of the staples in the genre: chases, escapes, and a clear resolution to the mystery. There are attempts on Yashim’s life, glamorous sexual encounters, and scenes of violence. The detective himself is troubled— perhaps flawed—but intelligent and charismatic. According to Margaret Cannon of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Goodwin “delivers a good old-fashioned whodunit with a fine twist ending.” Goodwin’s historical research is evident in his use of Istanbul in a way that makes the setting nearly equal to a character in importance. Piero Bohoslawec writes in the Financial Times that, aside from Yashim, “The other central figure is Istanbul itself, beautifully evoked.” Aspects of life in 1836 Istanbul are worked in throughout the novel, not only showing Goodwin’s study of history, but also capturing the flavor of the locale, accomplished in part through Yashim’s cooking, which highlights Turkish cuisine. A contributor to the Indian periodical the Statesman notes Goodwin’s ability to portray Istanbul vividly: “He excels at bringing this exotic and mysterious city to life. It’s the city to beat all cities, overcrowded and greedy with mosques, labyrinthine streets, princes, beggars and Russian spies.” Cooper describes the city as “a place—and a set of ideas—full of twisty byways, colourful jewelled corners, spiced air, violence and rotting detritus; at once alluring and repulsive.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Edgar-award winner Jason Goodwin began his career as a travel writer, contributing to periodicals including Condé Nast Traveler and the New York Times. He studied the Byzantine Empire at Cambridge University and became fascinated with Istanbul. In his first book, The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, Goodwin recounts his travels in India and China, uncovering the history of tea. The result reads like a cross between a travelogue and a history book. The success of that book enabled Goodwin to make a six-month pilgrimage through Eastern Europe to Istanbul with two traveling companions. The trip became the subject of On Foot to the Golden Horn: A Walk to Istanbul. He followed that travelogue with a history book, the well received Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. Though he published two nonfiction books on American themes, he returned to Istanbul as the setting for his mystery series, which begins with The Janissary Tree. Goodwin makes his home in Sussex, England, with his wife Kate and their four children.
Boyd, Steve. Rev. of The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Sunday Times [London] 17 June 2007: 48. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Cannon, Margaret. “Crime Books.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 24 June 2006: D11. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 23 July 2010. Goodwin, Jason. The Janissary Tree. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Print. Hooker, Richard. “The Ottomans.” World Cultures Web site. Washington State University 2006. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Publishers Weekly 253.6 (6 Feb. 2006): 46. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Sansal, Burak. “The Ottoman Empire.” All about Turkey Web site. All about Turkey, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Smith, Joan. “A Turkish Delight; Fiction Special.” Sunday Times [London] 6 Aug. 2006: 47. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. “Spotlight: Death in Historic Istanbul.” Statesman [India] 18 Sept. 2006. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010.
W Critical Reception In addition to receiving the Edgar Allan Poe Award, The Janissary Tree met with predominantly positive critical reviews. In the London Times, where the book was listed for two weeks in the column “You Really Must Read,” reviewer Steve Boyd concludes that the novel is an “unconventional and gripping thriller.” A Publishers Weekly critic considered the book “a welcome shift to fiction” for Goodwin, and called The Janissary Tree and “impressive first of a new mystery series.” Goodwin “makes a bold new statement in the detective genre by breaking new ground,” according to a reviewer for India’s Statesman. The critic noted that while other mysteries have been set in Istanbul, none has heroes like Yashim. Marilyn Stasio, writing for the New York Times Book Review, also points to Yashim as “the only eunuch detective in the genre.” The novel “is a wonderful trip into a long-lost world, the history of which is now touching our own,” writes Cannon, noting that she eagerly anticipates further books in the series. Cooper concludes, “Intelligent, elliptical and beguilingly written, The Janissary Tree is a rare pleasure.” Since its original publication, the novel has been translated into thirtyeight languages.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Kirkus Reviews 74.5 (1 Mar. 2006): 210. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Notes many elements of Goodwin’s novel while offering an assessment of why some elements did not work. Smart, Harriet. “Making It Up.” Solander: The Magazine of the Historical Novel Society 10.2 (2006): 2-4. Historical novelist Harriet Smart interviews Goodwin about his transition from nonfiction writing into penning mystery novels. Gale Resources
“Jason Goodwin.” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010. Web. 23 July 2010. “Orhan Pamuk.” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010. Web. 23 July 2010. Open Web Sources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bohoslawec, Piero. Rev. of The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Financial Times 30 June 2007: 57. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010.
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Though he updates infrequently, Goodwin keeps a blog, at www.thebellinicard.wordpress.com, that provides additional insights into his work and his characters. He has written entries about how his characters might celebrate holidays, updates fans about new TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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titles in the series, and provides links to some of his recipe sources. Jason Goodwin’s Home Page, at www.jasongoodwin.net, offers insights into his novels, particularly the series featuring Yashim. The world of The Janissary Tree is further explored through period images of Istanbul and a description of food typical of Turkish cuisine during Yashim’s era. Goodwin was interviewed by Barbara Peters of the Poisoned Pen Press and Bookstore. The interview, filmed in six segments, is available online at www .poinsonedpen.com. For Further Reading
Goodwin, Jason. Lords of the Horizon. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998. Print. Goodwin’s research for this history of the Ottoman Empire paved the way for his later mystery novels set during that era. Lords of the Horizon combines aspects of history and travel writing to make the Ottoman Empire feel immediate.
———. The Snake Stone. London: Faber & Faber, 2007. Print. The second in Goodwin’s “Yashim the Eunuch” series, The Snake Stone follows an investigation gone wrong: Yashim is asked to discover more about French archaeologist Lefere, but when the man is murdered outside the French embassy, Yashim is the only suspect. Marillier, Juliet. Cybele’s Secret. New York: Knopf, 2008. Print. Marillier combines mystery and fantasy elements in her young adult novel, also set in Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire. Teen Paula is working as her merchant father’s secretary on a trade mission that leads her to become embroiled in the dealings of a pagan cult. Pamuk, Orhan. Istanbul: Memories of a City. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print. Originally published in Turkish in 2003, Istanbul is a memoir intertwined with a series of literary essays by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pamuk that describes the city in the modern era. Alana Abbott
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Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth By Chris Ware
W Introduction Chris Ware’s graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth concerns the cheerless life of a 36-year-old man who works in a dreary office mail room. The work won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, marking the first time a graphic novel was awarded this prestigious U.K. prize. The story’s protagonist is a lonely, bored, and frustrated bachelor who struggles with the lack of human contact in his life. Jimmy fills his emotional void with frequent fantasies about an ideal family life, even imagining that his father is a superhero. Out of the blue Jimmy receives a note from his long estranged father, and a meeting is arranged. While the reunion is anything but ideal, Jimmy’s father is able to provide some family history, including an extended narrative about Jimmy’s grandfather, whose lonely existence in the previous century was remarkably similar to his grandson’s. Using the historical backdrop of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Chicago, Ware explores the lives of three generations of Corrigan men while touching upon themes of rejection, isolation, and depression.
W Literary and Historical Context
Jimmy Corrigan is an American graphic novel, a genre derived from an older tradition of comic books popularized in the late 1930s that featured romanticized—and often Herculean protagonists, such as Superman. In the 1950s comic artists began to explore darker themes and create more flawed characters, perhaps in response to the uncertainty of the post-World War II period, when the threat of nuclear war shattered the illusion that an individual hero could solve the world’s problems. By the 1980s comics had further evolved, with artists such as Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar repositioning the genre for
a more adult audience. These comics featured ordinary and unattractive protagonists whose lives were anything but heroic. Innovation in the graphic novel continued into the twenty-first century, as North American artists increasingly saw the form as a vehicle for social commentary. While the superhero comics of the past were frequently set in cities, they rarely explored the effects of America’s urbanization or the alienating experience of being immersed within a densely populated metropolis. Critics James Sullivan (Book) and Candida Rifkind (Canadian Review of American Studies) agree that an achievement of the work is Ware’s evocative depiction of how monotonous urban planning has a crushing effect on the human spirit. Especially impressive is Ware’s recreation of the World’s Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair). Held in 1893, the event foreshadowed the rapid modernization of America that would take place in the early twentieth century. A review of Jimmy Corrigan in Publishers Weekly notes that Ware’s portrayal of Chicago’s urban sprawl symbolizes the familial disconnection in three generations of Corrigans.
W Themes Rejection, isolation, and depression, the central themes of Jimmy Corrigan, are apparent from the very start of the novel. The first sequence shows Jimmy’s world as a small, insignificant corner of the globe. It begins with a panel depicting a large expanse of black sky with a sprinkling of stars, followed by seven smaller panels in which the perspective gradually enlarges from a small globe to the nondescript apartment building where young Jimmy and his mother live. In the next sequence, an elderly man posing as “Super-Man” befriends Jimmy in order to sleep with his mother. This is the first of many betrayals in the novel and causes Jimmy to fantasize about other “supermen” who might serve as surrogate fathers. Later, when the
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narrative flashes back to the 1890s, it is revealed that Jimmy’s grandfather—like Jimmy—was abandoned by his father and spent many hours fantasizing about a more ideal family life. In the twentieth century, the grown-up Jimmy is frequently depicted sitting alone in his sparsely furnished apartment or uncomfortably enclosed in his office cubicle, wishing he had the nerve to talk to his female coworkers. In flashbacks to the nineteenth century, Jimmy’s grandfather is also often left alone in his room, spinning wild fantasies about rescuing women from dangerous thieves. Even when he is in the company of his father, a grim silence looms. This level of rejection and isolation leads to depression, which then causes both Jimmy and his grandfather to fantasize about being able to fly, killing their fathers, or simply leading different lives.
W Style Ware’s technique in Jimmy Corrigan is distinguished by the meticulously drawn architectural landscapes in which he places his hapless characters. A contrast exists between the majestic, awe-inspiring buildings, such as those featured at the Chicago World’s Fair, and puny, pathetic figures like Jimmy’s grandfather who are dwarfed by the towering modern structures. The Publishers Weekly review notes a particular sequence in which Ware’s skillful designs capture the misery of an unwanted and despised child: Jimmy’s great-grandfather surprises his son with an outing to the fair but then abruptly abandons the boy. The scenario stands in marked contrast to the perfect domestic life presented in pre-World War II comic strips such as Blondie. Additionally, Ware’s pale and rotund protagonist is a far cry from the hyper-masculine figures of superhero comics. Jimmy’s sad and sagging face and lack of a fine physique give the impression that he is literally being pulled down by the force of gravity. Despite the often overwhelming bleakness of its imagery, Jimmy Corrigan is enlivened by a wide variety of cartoon drawings and panel structuring styles. Ware includes many pages that feature cutouts of buildings, toys, and even people related to the narrative, including a version of young Jimmy himself, that invite the reader to participate in the imaginary worlds of the novel. In his Booklist review of The Acme Novelty Date Book: 1986–1995, which contains raw sketches of Ware’s cartoons, Gordon Flagg notes that, instead of using single panels organized in an obvious linear sequence, the artist experiments with multiple panels arranged in such a way that readers are invited to interpret the sequence themselves and participate in the narration. To express an abrupt shift from the past to the present, Ware slightly alters the shade of the sky and the shape of the buildings in a sequence of panels. In such instances the reader is able to travel between Jimmy’s and his grandfather’s worlds and gain insight on the intergenerational link. According to Rifkind, this flashback technique represents
MAJOR CHARACTERS JIMMY’S ESTRANGED FATHER, who lives in Michigan, attempts to make up for years of neglect by inviting his son for a visit. However, the arranged reunion is made painfully awkward by the father’s social indelicacies and his somewhat disingenuous attempts at fatherly tenderness. JIMMY’S GRANDFATHER is presented as a highly imaginative but ultimately lonely child living in late-nineteenth-century Chicago. Fearful of his father’s temper, the boy spends most of his days in solitude, up in his room or outside, where he creates imaginary adventures. JIMMY’S GREAT-GRANDFATHER is a brutish, intolerant man whose wife died during childbirth. He blames his son for the tragedy and ultimately abandons him during the Chicago World’s Fair. ANTONIO is a classmate of Jimmy’s grandfather. Antonio befriends the boy and even invites him to his house to meet his father, who makes toy horses. AMY CORRIGAN is Jimmy’s African American half-sister, adopted by his father some years after he had abandoned Jimmy and his mother. Jimmy meets Amy when they receive news that their father has been in a car accident. She is a kind, energetic, and sociable person. JIMMY CORRIGAN is the eponymous protagonist, who spends most of his days contemplating the indifferent world around him in contemporary Chicago. Jimmy fantasizes about being talented, dashing, and more sociable, but he fails in every category. MRS. CORRIGAN is Jimmy’s self-absorbed, overbearing mother. She is consumed with checking up on her son. MISS MCGINTY is a friend of Jimmy’s grandfather from school. She eventually spurns him when she discovers that he is motherless.
Ware’s rejection of traditional notions of linearity and exploits the ability of characters in a graphic novel to “re-inhabit” the past.
W Critical Reception Critical response to Jimmy Corrigan has been consistently positive, as many reviewers enthusiastically welcomed a new talent in the field of graphic fiction. Reviewers have lauded Ware’s ability to combine old and new traditions and to exploit the potential of this art form to examine the damaged lives of everyday people. Critics have also observed his attempt to build upon the work of previous graphic novelists, and some have compared his artistic virtuosity to that of Spiegelman.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chris Ware was born in 1967 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. As a child he was fascinated by the work of a local cartoonist who worked for the Omaha World-Herald, where his grandfather was an editor. Still, his true start as a graphic storyteller came years later when, as a student at the University of Texas in Austin, he illustrated a regular comic strip for the Daily Texan. It was during his college years that Ware first conjured up some of his most famous graphic novel personages, including Jimmy Corrigan and Quimby the Mouse. When his work appeared in Spiegelman’s graphic fiction magazine RAW in the mid-1980s, Ware became known to a larger readership for his distinctive design and drawing techniques. His skills were on full display in The Acme Novelty Library, the comic book series in which Jimmy Corrigan was serialized from 1995 to 2000. With his publication of the complete novel in 2000, Ware gained recognition in the wider field of contemporary fiction. Ware is best known for his sparse landscapes and his attention to geometrical form. While he is also skilled in the art of narration, he excels at rendering emotion through the silences of his characters and the subtle changes in body language that signal discomfort or agony.
A number of reviewers also have touted Ware’s skill with manipulating his panels. In his review of Jimmy Corrigan for Booklist, Flagg argues that “Ware effectively uses tiny, repetitive panels to convey Jimmy’s limited existence, then suddenly bursts a page open with expansive, breathtaking vistas.” The author’s talent for architectural design was praised by other critics, including Sullivan, whose commentary in Book emphasizes the skill with which Ware re-creates the Chicago World’s Fair. Other critics have drawn attention to Ware’s ability to combine a variety of drawing styles, cartoons, and text in his novel. As Laura J. Kloberg observes in her review in National Forum, “the graphic style is clean and crisp, stylized, yet it has great detail; it is crowded with images but not cluttered. All parts of the book lend to the rich visual mix.” Rifkind expands on this notion of artistic fusion, commending Ware’s “experiments with page layout, frame sizes, vivid colours, and intricate architectural detail to combine dizzying visual spectacle.”
Rev. of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware. Publishers Weekly 4 Sept. 2000: 87. Web. 29 July 2010. Kloberg, Laura J. Rev. of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware. National Forum 81.3 (2001): 44-45. Web. 29 July 2010. Rifkind, Candida. “Drawn from Memory: Comics Artists and Intergenerational Auto/Biography.” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Américaines 38.3 (2008): 399-427. Web. 29 July 2010. Sullivan, James. Rev. of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware. Book Jan. 2001: 66. Web. 29 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bennett, Juda, and Cassandra Jackson. “Graphic Whiteness and the Lessons of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan.” ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comic Studies 5.1 (2010). Web. 29 July 2010. This collaborative article analyzes Ware’s technique of manipulating the comic book form in order to challenge notions of whiteness. Bennett and Jackson argue that while Jimmy never comprehends his own racial status, readers are made aware of his rather complicated family history. Bredehoft, Thomas A. “Comics Architecture, Multidimensionality, and Time: Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth.” Modern Fiction Studies 52.4 (2006): 869-90. Print. Draws attention to the architectural design featured in Jimmy Corrigan, noting that Ware’s technique of multiple panels challenges notions of linear time and narrative. Drucker, Johanna. “What Is Graphic about Graphic Novels?” English Language Notes 46.2 (2008): 39-55. Print. Compares graphic novels to a variety of other forms, including comics, livres d’artistes, and illustrated books. Drucker discusses a number of interpretive strategies for analyzing the graphic novel form.
Flagg, Gordon. Rev. of The Acme Novelty Date Book: 1986-1995, by Chris Ware. Booklist 1 Oct. 2003: 309. Web. 29 July 2010.
Kannenberg, Gene, Jr. “The Comics of Chris Ware: Text, Image, and Visual Narrative Strategies.” The Language of Comics: Word and Image. Eds. Robin Varnum and Christina T. Gibbons. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2001. 174-97. Print. Argues that Ware’s manipulation of the text and images in his comics reflect his familiarity with book publishing practices and trends, commenting that a work such as Jimmy Corrigan is referencing not just the comic tradition but the wider field of textuality.
———. Rev. of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware. Booklist 15 Nov. 2000: 598. Web. 29 July 2010.
Weiner, Stephen. Rev. of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware. Library Journal 15 Nov. 2000: 64. Web. 29 July 2010. A review of
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
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Jimmy Corrigan that considers Ware’s presentation of human relationships in the novel. Gale Resources
“Chris Ware (1967-).” Something about the Author. Ed. Alan Hedblad. Vol. 140. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Something about the Author Online. Web. 30 July 2010. Open Web Sources
The official Carl Hammer Gallery Web site features samples from its exhibition of Chris Ware’s artwork, including specific panels from his comic strips and graphic novels. http://www.hammergallery.com/ Artists/Ware/ware_chris.htm The Guardian Web site offers a candid interview with Ware and presents some of his views on graphic novel art and his early inspiration for working in the genre. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/07/ guardianfirstbookaward2001.gurardianfirstbookaward For Further Reading
Baetens, Jan. The Graphic Novel. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven UP, 2001. Print. The Graphic Novel explores the ways in which the genre uses images and text to articulate violence and traumas. While there are no substantial instances of physical violence in Jimmy Corrigan, Baetens’s book demonstrates Ware’s exploration of the traumatic impact of parental abuse and alienation.
Literacy. Worthington: Linworth Publishing, 2004. Print. A Novel Approach considers how graphic novels can serve the purpose of fostering literacy, especially for second-language learners who might benefit from its visual orientation. Pekar, Harvey. American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar. New York: Doubleday, 1986. Print. Pekar’s well-known autobiographical graphic novel presents the author’s own misanthropic views on everything from politics to social relationships. Weiner, Stephen, and Chris Couch. Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 2003. Print. One of the most comprehensive histories of the graphic novel, this book explores the ways in which post-World War II comics helped prepare the groundwork for the darker, more adult themes explored in the sorts of works produced later by Spiegelman and Ware. Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2007. Print. Reading Comics considers the history and theories of graphic novels and offers a critical survey of recent examples of the genre. One chapter is specifically devoted to Ware and the recurrence of emotionally tormented characters in his graphic novels. Adam Lawrence
Crawford, Philip. A Novel Approach: Using Graphic Novels to Attract Reluctant Readers and Promote
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell By Susanna Clarke
W Introduction Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, was published in 2004, preceded by a major marketing campaign from publisher Bloomsbury, who predicted the novel to be a best seller during a time when fantasy fiction and movies were at a height of popularity. (There is no period after “Mr” in the title, in line with English usage.) The novel tells the story of two very dissimilar Englishmen in the early nineteenth century, Norrell and Strange, who become England’s first practical magicians since the Raven King of the eleventh century. Magic, which stems directly from the Faerie realm, turns out to be a much more perilous endeavor than they first realize. Clarke’s novel uses elements of alternate history, fantasy, gothic literature, and realism and was celebrated by critics and audiences upon its release. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell won the 2005 Hugo Award and was long-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. It was named Book of the Year for Time magazine and Book Sense and was on the New York Times best-seller list for ten weeks, reaching number three. Clarke’s second book was short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in 2006.
W Literary and Historical Context
The characters of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are concerned with strife between the English and French that played out during the Napoleonic Wars. At the conclusion of the French Revolution in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup and took control of the government. In 1804, he declared France an empire and crowned himself emperor. For the next
eleven years, Napoleon conscripted soldiers and waged war against other European countries, taking control of the Austrian Empire, Spain, Italy, Naples, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (modern Poland), Switzerland, and many Germanic states, including Westphalia, Bavaria, and Saxony. The disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 weakened Napoleon’s control over the French Empire and significantly diminished the size of his army. Napoleon abdicated in 1814 and was exiled, but he returned the following year in an attempt to raise a new army and retake control of the French Empire. Defeated in June 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo by British, Danish, and Prussian forces, Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena where he died six years later. The Napoleonic Wars devastated Europe because of the high casualties (made even higher by the large number of conscripted soldiers) and long duration.
W Themes Insanity is a central theme in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Insanity was and is a stigma in Western societies because insane people can be unsettling to be around and yet often require care to keep themselves and others safe; for example, Lady Pole is sent to Yorkshire after she tries to kill Mr. Norrell, where she is looked after by Mr. Segundus who has recently taken up the profession of madhouse keeper. Clarke explains away insanity in her novel as experiences with the Faerie realm. Those who experience Faery are not driven mad by it so much as they have increasing difficulty living in both worlds and communicating with those in the mortal realm. In keeping with Clarke’s realism, the characters who are thought to be insane or to have had bouts of madness, such as Lady Pole, Jonathan Strange, and Childermass, are in fact experiencing a melding of realities and draining of
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mortal energy. The reader has the omniscient perspective to see these unstable behaviors as a reasonable effect of unusual circumstances.
MAJOR CHARACTERS STEPHEN BLACK, a black man, is butler of the Pole household and under enchantment by the gentleman with the thistledown hair, who declares Stephen will be a king.
W Style The style, language, and tone of Clarke’s novel is reminiscent of nineteenth-century writers such as Charles Dickens (known for his realism, humor, and for making working-class characters central figures in his stories) and Jane Austen (known for her humor and social commentary with a focus on female characters). This imitative technique is known as pastiche. Clarke’s pastiche of nineteenth-century writers lends authenticity to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell while it pays homage to these writers. Clarke’s novel is also characterized by elements of romantic and, specifically gothic, literature. Her focus on magic, the supernatural, languishing heroines, madness, and death are all typical features of gothic literature. She does not go as far as writing a true romantic novel in the style of Mary Shelley; Clarke pulls back from the emotive expression common to all romantic literature and instead turns to the realism of Dickens, Austen, and Sir Walter Scott. This combined approach is the basis for the alternate history of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Clarke is able to evoke the past without alienating modern readers.
W Critical Reception Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was marketed by its publisher, Bloomsbury, as Harry Potter for adults, highlighting its mesh of magic and the every day world. Many reviewers duly noted this marketing line but went on to exclaim that the novel is so much more. Brad Hooper of Booklist declared, “it’s an exceptionally compelling, brilliantly creative, and historically finetuned piece of work.” Some commented negatively on the book’s length and the author’s intent in writing in a style reminiscent of a comedy of manners. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that it “may seem a bit stiff and mannered at first, but immersion in the mesmerizing story reveals its intimacy, humor and insight.” Amanda Craig of the New Statesman found fault: “As fantasy, it is deplorable, given that it fails to embrace the essentially anarchic nature of such tales.” Craig, who is at odds with most other reviewers, went on to say, “it is neither an addition to the canon of great fantasy literature nor worthy of its place on the Booker Prize longlist.” By contrast, a Kirkus Reviews critic lauded it as “An instant classic, one of the finest fantasies ever written.” Gregory Maguire, an author who specializes
JOHN CHILDERMASS, Mr. Norrell’s steward, travels around London and England to conduct Mr. Norrell’s business. He is interested in performing small magics and fortune-telling. THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE THISTLE-DOWN HAIR, a Fairy summoned by Mr. Norrell to bring Lady Pole back to life, is elusive and dangerous. FLORA GREYSTEEL is a woman to whom Jonathan Strange forms an attachment in Venice after his wife dies. Flora must flee Venice to avoid enchantment by the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. GILBERT NORRELL is a secretive, studious man who is destined to bring real magic back to England. LADY EMMA POLE, wife to Sir Walter Pole, is brought back to life through the magic of Mr. Norrell but suffers under the enchantment of the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. SIR WALTER POLE is a government minister and one of Mr. Norrell’s first sponsors. He is very devoted to his wife, Lady Pole. JOHN SEGUNDUS, a country gentleman from Yorkshire, is an untutored magician of some power and becomes Lady Pole’s warder when she is declared insane by her husband. ARABELLA STRANGE, wife of Jonathan Strange, is an amiable woman who befriends Lady Pole and Flora Greysteel JONATHAN STRANGE is a friendly, energetic man who is Mr. Norrell’s pupil—and, later, partner—in magic. JOHN USKGLASS, also known as the Raven King, is reputed to have brought magic from the Faerie realm to the mortal realm seven hundred years earlier. VINCULUS is a ragged street magician who has actual magical talent despite his reputation as a con man.
in revisionist novels not unlike Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, reviewed Clarke’s novel for the New York Times Book Review. Maguire gave the novel high marks, asserting, “In this fantasy, the master that magic serves is reverence for writing.” Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was long-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Film rights were purchased by New Line Cinema shortly after publication, and Christopher Hampton was hired to write the screenplay but, as of 2010, no film had been produced.
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham, England, in 1959. Her father was a minister, and Clarke spent much of her childhood traveling around northern England and Scotland. She attended St. Hilda’s College at Oxford University and, after graduating, worked as a nonfiction book editor in London. Stressed by her work, she left for a few years to teach English abroad in Italy and Spain. While in Spain, she got the idea for her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Clarke returned to publishing in 1993, working for Simon & Schuster’s cookbook line in Cambridge, England, until 2003. She began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1995, ten years before it was published. As of 2010, Clarke and her husband, novelist Colin Greenland, live in Cambridge, England.
Works Cited
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. New York: Bloomsbury. 2004. Print. Craig, Amanda. “With the Fairies.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. New Statesman 27 Sept. 2004: 82-83. Print. Fleming, Michael. “Scribe Inks a ‘Strange’ Deal.” www.variety.com. Variety, 2 Mar. 2005. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. Haywood, John. Atlas of World History. New York: Barnes & Noble. 1997: 78. Print. Hooper, Brad. “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Booklist July 2004: 1797. Print.
The events of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell take place during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Kirkus Reviews 1 July 2004: 590-91. Print. Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Publishers Weekly 12 July 2004: 41. Print. Maguire, Gregory. “Hogwarts for Grown-Ups.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. New York Times Book Review 5 Sept. 2004: 11. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Faber, Michael. “It’s a Kind of Magick.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Guardian 2 Oct. 2004: 26. Print. Points out the flaws of Clarke’s novel, including the lack of emotion and the universal wickedness of magic. Grossman, Lev. “Of Magic and Men.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Time 16 Aug. 2004: 74. Print. Celebrates Clarke’s wit and deft treatment of evil. Hand, Elizabeth. “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Jan. 2005: 36-39. Print. Assures this is a good novel but not a groundbreaking one. Johnson, Cynthia. “Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Library Journal Aug. 2004: 64. Print. A positive review that finds fault only with the “lackluster” title. Reese, Jennifer. “Big Book of Magic.” Rev. of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Entertainment Weekly 3 Sept. 2004: 78. Print. Finds fault only with the novel’s slow pace but deems it enjoyable overall.
Gale Resources
“Susanna Clarke.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/ i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000156301&v= 2.1&u=aadl&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
The official Web site for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell contains biographical information about Susanna Clarke, an interview with Clarke, reviews of the novel, a free short story by Clarke, and purchase information about Clarke’s works. The Web site is available at http://www.jonathanstrange.com For Further Reading
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print. From 1817, satirizes youthful obsession with Gothic novels. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. From 1853, a complex dark narrative that criticizes the English legal system. McNab, Chris. Armies of the Napoleonic Wars: An Illustrated History. New York: Osprey. 2009. Print. Details the major armies of the wars and how they changed during the twenty years of fighting. Mirrlees, Hope. Lud-in-the-Mist. New York: Cold Spring Press, 2005. Print. From 1926, a father must save his son after the boy eats forbidden faery fruit. Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass. New York: Yearling, 2001. Print. Fantastical and philosophical adventure concerning the nature of the universe.
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Journey to the Stone Country By Alex Miller
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Alex Miller’s novel Journey to the Stone Country (2002) tells the story of Annabelle Beck, who on learning about her husband’s infidelity retreats from her life as a history professor at the University of Melbourne to her deceased parents’ home in Townsville. From this remote northern city, Annabelle sets off on an archaeological survey with her friend, Susan Bassett, and from there takes up her journey with the mixed-race Bo Rennie. Initially, the trip is to scout for artifacts so that the impact of coal mining and a potential dam can be estimated. Second, the journey takes Annabelle into the region of her childhood home where she learns about the people among whom she was born and what their experiences meant for subsequent generations. Culturally the journey is from modern Melbourne, Victoria, in the south, to remote nineteenth-century pioneer outposts and homesteads several days drive from Townsville, Queensland, in the north. Psychologically, the journey is from academic intellectualism to intuitive ways of knowing, from conscious understanding toward buried memories. This trip across the uninhabited landscape of the Australian northeast uncovers the history of settlers who came, tried to establish homesteads (called stations), and ultimately moved away or died out. Beyond the traceable record of their lives is the subtle record of indigenous people who moved across the land, leaving stone relics and burial grounds to mark their presence. The conflict between these ancient people and modern interlopers is suggested, and the novel raises questions about how the record of the past ought to be regarded and whether its physical remnants, either indigenous or European, ought to be preserved.
Context
At least thirty thousand years ago, aboriginal people migrated from Asia to Australia. Over the millennia that followed, these peoples developed into several hundred tribes and lived as hunter gatherers, developing religions and social ways that connected them to the land. Like North American Indians, the Australian aborigines were contaminated and oppressed by white European pioneers and settlers who began arriving in the late seventeenth century. Europeans brought smallpox and measles, decimating local populations. They also brought a sense of property ownership quite foreign to indigenous populations. Europeans introduced technology, developed major cities, primarily in the south and along the coastline, and were eager to profit from natural resources. These newcomers dominated the native peoples as much as possible, taking their lands, erasing their ways, suppressing their languages, and kidnapping their children to be raised as Christians in missionary schools. The conflict between European white people and the native peoples continued through the centuries. But biracial unions and marriages occurred, too, the offspring of which inherited from both cultures. Miller’s novel explores ongoing racial conflict and the opposition between multinational companies and efforts to preserve cultural artifacts and respect both indigenous and white pioneer claims to the land. The survey that Susan Bassett conducts with the help of Bo Rennie is the result of Queensland legislation that required indigenous people to describe the cultural remains in their areas so that the government might estimate the potential impact of the proposed projects on historical sites and human artifacts. Passed into law in 1987, the Cultural Record (Landscapes Queensland and
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Queensland Estate) Act required the evaluation of anthropological, cultural, historic, prehistoric, or societal remains of human construction and the effect on them of proposed industrial development. The journey described in Miller’s novel has this official purpose. Specifically, the novel directs attention to the Burranbah coal mine and the proposal to dam the Urannah Creek and flood a landscape rich in natural and cultural heritage. As of 2002, the dam proposal had been set aside but remained a possible threat.
W Themes In many ways, Journey to the Stone Country is about moving from the present to the past and discovering what just a trip can teach a person. On a literal level, the main character, Annabelle Beck, leaves her modern home and profession to join a friend on an archaeological survey of indigenous artifacts. Thus, the movement is from the current urban setting in the south to the ancient record preserved in the uninhabited northeast. On a psychological or emotional level, the main character moves from her marriage back to a single state, to her deceased parents’ home, taking comfort in sleeping in their bed like a child. This regression leads away from intellectual or academic analysis toward nonverbal awareness and intuition. Examining remnants of the past, both in terms of artifacts and oral history, is a process of coming to understand one’s essential identity and roots. The novel also explores issues associated with the historical record, what it contains and who writes it, what artifacts are worth preserving, and how preservation alters what it seeks to preserve. People leave traces of themselves, in stone tools such as the cylcon (message stone) Annabelle finds; in the books on the shelf of the abandoned Bigges homestead; and in abandoned ripple iron sheeting, the last remnant of homesteads that failed. These traces indicate former human activity, but their meaning and significance is a matter of conjecture and interpretation. The push of modern industry prompts questions about what lies in its path and what merits preservation and what is valueless and can be erased without constituting a cultural loss. A third theme concerns how communication is culture bound. Modern people communicate with words; academics engage in theoretical discourse. Indigenous people communicate through gesture, by moving their hands gently or stretching their arms out to indicate scope. They get their bearings in more than one sense from topography. Their language is of signs and silence, while white people are bound to and by vocabulary and text.
W Style The novel is told in limited third-person point of view from the perspective of Annabelle Beck. The narrative concerns her passage from ignorance about herself into
MAJOR CHARACTERS SUSAN BASSETT, a fifty-year-old former history professor and friend of Annabelle, runs a cultural survey service in Queensland. ANNABELLE BECK, the protagonist, is a forty-two-year-old history professor who takes the journey back to stone country with Bo Rennie. ARNER GNAPUN, the son of Dougald Gnapun, is the beautiful, large, and passive teenager, inscrutable inheritor of the old people. DOUGALD GNAPUN, father of Arner and Trace, is the aboriginal ringer who worked as a young man with Bo Rennie. TRACE GNAPUN, Arner’s sister, accompanies her brother on the survey and becomes attached romantically to Matthew Hearn, son of the white settlers at Zigzag station. GRANDMA, Bo Rennie’s aboriginal grandmother, was taken at the age of eight to work on the Rennie station. Iain Ban Rennie, Bo’s grandfather, fell in love with her and married her. Widowed at twenty-eight, she inherited the station and ran it for years, but then in her old age in a miscarriage of justice, the station was taken away from her. STEVEN KEN, an associate professor of English at the University of Melbourne, is Annabelle’s unfaithful husband. LES MARRA, brother-in-law of John Hearn, represents the dam builders and is dismissive of archaeological remains and sees the flooding of the valley as a positive change. BO RENNIE, a mixed race ringer (itinerant stock man of scrub cattle), represents the Jangga people and assists Susan Bassett on her survey. ELIZABETH TEMPLEMAN, Annabelle’s sister and now widowed, has had a rowdy growing up and justifies her brother-in-law’s infidelity as the male need to have a little fun.
better understanding and acceptance. The catalyst for the lesson is her husband’s letter in which he admits to leaving her for a brief affair with a student. This marital infidelity leaves Annabelle suddenly free “to decide things” (97) for herself. In a sense, the story follows this emerging decision-making process. Miller sustains multiple, distinct styles of communication. White middle-class urban characters speak in cultivated Australian English. Annabelle’s academic husband justifies himself in a typed letter packed with “haughty reasoning,” which reads like “a conference
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in London, England, in 1936, award-winning novelist Alex Miller immigrated to Australia as a teenager. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1965. Miller cofounded the Anthill Theatre and was a founding member of the Melbourne Writers’ Theatre, which supports the development of playwrights. Miller won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for his third novel, The Ancestor Game (1993), and in 2002, for Journey to the Stone Country. Miller’s seventh novel, Prochownik’s Dream, appeared in 2005, followed in 2008 by Landscape of Farewell and in 2009 by Lovesong. As of 2010, Miller lived in Victoria, Australia, with his wife and children.
paper on post-rational ethics” (242). By contrast, Bo Rennie speaks in the ungrammatical regional vernacular of the northeast Outback. This broken, corrupted language derives both from his indigenous forebears
and his European ones. He uses such expressions as “slipping along” (leaving), “fellers” (people), “old feller” (father), and “mob” (group or community of relatives). The narrative voice has its own patterns. Miller links certain objects by using the same modifier to describe them or repeats modifiers for emphasis, rather like a color might be reused in a painting for organizational purposes. For example, he describes Trace’s “golden skin, her honeyed, her café au lait skin, her skin like a young fawn” (29), and later he describes “the evening light, the golden, the honeyed, halflight of evening” (69). In another of many examples, he repeats the modifier but changes the structure slightly: “cockatoo screeching . . . freight trains hooting” (105) and “cockatoo screeched . . . trains hooted” (106). He also uses series of fragments that serve as elaborate descriptors of particular scenes and moments. Stones are metaphors. The country to which the characters travel is stony, rough and hard, and unable to be tilled. Smooth stones are like the skulls of the old people. Stones are mysterious, like the cylcon that Annabelle picks up and takes with her and Susan identifies
Much of Journey to the Stone Country is set in Queensland, Australia, the home of Barron Gorge National Park, pictured here. Tim Graham/ Getty Images
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as an artifact of unknown purpose, a word from a dead language.
W Critical Reception Journey to the Stone Country received the 2003 Miles Franklin award, a testimony to its positive reception and a credit to Allen & Unwin, its independent book publisher (Mutter). Alan Gould praised the novel for the “quietness of its telling” and for its “luminous beauty.” Others agreed, such as Andrea Stretton who stressed that the work is meticulously and skillfully written. Several critics pointed to the novel as an Australian quest, explaining that such inland treks inevitably depict “the dissolution of once-flourishing lives” (Gould) and confront the “painful history” (Stretton) of both aborigines and struggling pioneers. Interpreting the literal journey psychologically and finding in it universal application, Sally Murphy explained that the setting is “an inner landscape which we all must travel and explore.” Murphy agreed, stating that the novel is for “every Australian” because it describes both racial differences and the search for common ground. Gould agreed that the plot follows “an inward journey . . . away from intellectualism and towards an intelligence that is more ample, more subtle, more tactful.” Stretton summed up the purpose of the novel in the question that it probes: “How to move forward together, with love, respect and hope, in acknowledgement if not full understanding of a painful history— that is the question at the heart of Journey to the Stone Country.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Gould, Alan. “Nerve and Trust.” Rev. of Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller. Quadrant Nov. 2004: 89+. Print. Miller, Alex. Journey to the Stone Country. Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Print. Murphy, Sally. “A Compelling and Intimate Story.” Rev. of Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller. aussiereviews.com. Aussie Reviews, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Mutter, John. “The Wizards of Oz: Australian Publishing Rises to World-Class Levels.” Publishers Weekly 1 Sept. 2003: 47+. Print. Stretton, Andrea. “Journey to the Stone Country.” Rev. of Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller. smh.com. au. Sidney Morning Herald, 16 Nov. 2002. Web. 13 Aug. 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Brayshaw, Helen. “Journey to the Stone Country.” AACAI Newsletter 93 Aug. 2003. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. http://members.westnet.com.au/ibsut/ REVIEW.html. Confirms Miller’s knowledge of the Outback setting for the novel written by the Sydney Heritage consultant. Genoni, Paul. Rev. of Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller. Australian Public Intellectual Network Web Site. Australian Public Intellectual Network, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. http://www.api-network. com/main/index.php. Points out that a story about the Outback cannot avoid dealing with aboriginal disinheritance and faults the novel for clumsy dialogue and weak characters. Rev. of Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller. Readings.com.au. Readings, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. http://www.readings.com.au/product/ 9781741141467/journey-to-the-stone-country. Describes how the novel explores racial conflict and shared history. Gale Resources
“Alex Miller.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000134267&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
At the Web site of Alex Miller’s publisher, Allen & Unwin, at http://www.allenandunwin.com, one can find an author profile and a sound recording of Miller telling a story he heard as a child from his father. Ramona Koval interviewed Alex Miller on 14 Mar. 2004. This interview is available from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Web site, at http://www. abc.net.au Corey Hague interviewed Alex Miller on 22 Apr. 2010 about winning the Miles Franklin award. This interview, entitled “Alex Miller on the Miles Franklin Award, Leadership and the Power of Words,” is available at http://www.abc.net.au/local/videos/ 2010/04/22/2880384.htm For Further Reading
Arden, Harvey. Dreamkeepers: A Spirit-Journey into Aboriginal Australia. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Print. Former National Geographic staff writer describes the aboriginal culture of the Australian northwest.
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Flood, Josephine. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2006. Print. Relates Australian aboriginal history from the earliest times to the present. Miller, Alex. The Ancestor Game. Crow’s Nest: Allen and Unwin, 1993. Print. Winner of the Miles Franklin award and situated in China.
Explores the feelings of belonging among nonaboriginal Australians for places the aborigines loved and lost. ———. Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print. Examines lost towns, suburbs, and homes, and why people return and grieve for these losses. Melodie Monahan
Read, Peter. Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
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Kafka on the Shore By Haruki Murakami
W Introduction Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami, is a novel about destiny, the nature of love, and the meaning of human existence. Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura has run away from home to escape his tyrannical father, a man who has placed an Oedipal curse on his son, a gentle young man who loves to read. Paralleling this narrative is Nakata’s story. Nakata is a slow-witted man in his fifties who can talk to cats and is inexplicably drawn to the same little library in southern Japan where Kafka has found sanctuary. Bizarre events and strange characters propel both characters toward a resolution that is less about completion than embarking on a new path. Following publication of the English translation of Kafka on the Shore, Murakami won the Franz Kafka Prize and the World Fantasy Award, both in 2006. The book was also named a top-ten read for 2005 by the New York Times.
W Literary and Historical Context
Pradyumna Karan, in his book Japan in the 21st Century, discussed the outward-gazing youth of Japan, who are required to study world history, whereas Japanese history is an elective. Murakami, a writer whose books are filled with references to Western pop culture, is part of— perhaps even a leader of—the social movement to embrace elements of Western culture. For all of his popularity, the literati of Japan reviled Murakami. Jay Rubin, professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University, told Mick Brown of the Telegraph that truth and autobiography are important in Japanese high literature, making Murakami’s surrealism especially difficult to accept. Disgusted with the materialism rampant in Japan’s boom economy, Murakami and his wife left in 1986 to
travel throughout Europe and live in the United States off and on for nine years. Murakami returned permanently to Japan in the mid-1990s, done with traveling. Twenty-five years after the publication of Murakami’s first novel, Karan points out that few young Japanese of the twenty-first century are familiar with their national history and ancient traditions. “We have to reconstruct as a society, reconstruct our mentality and everything, so this is a good chance for our country,” Murakami told Brown in August 2003 following a devastating earthquake in Japan, coupled with economic decline. At home with the tension of opposing forces, Murakami is both a major player in the changing face of Japanese culture and also a voice for maintaining a Japanese cultural identity.
W Themes Fate versus free will is the theme of Kafka’s escape from his tyrannical, loveless father, a man who cursed his son when Kafka was very young with the Oedipal curse: to murder his father and have sexual intercourse with his mother (and, in this novel, his sister as well). To be a subject of fate means that one cannot choose one’s future because it has been predetermined. By contrast, exercising free will means that one decides one’s future through deliberate personal choices. The former ascribes control and responsibility to higher powers; the latter, to the individual. Kafka is self-possessed, quietly leaving home to avoid fulfilling his father’s prophecy. Murakami’s layered story does not clearly reveal whether Kafka succeeds in escaping the fate his father outlined. The author, in fact, seems to have found a middle ground where both fate and free will can coexist, albeit in tension.
W Style Kafka on the Shore is a well-paced novel, densely packed with allusions to American culture, classical music,
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MAJOR CHARACTERS HOSHINO is a young truck driver who befriends Nakata and helps him on his ill-defined quest. SATORU NAKATA is a simpleton in his sixties who can talk to cats. Nakata is inexplicably drawn to the Komura Memorial Library. OSHIMA works at the Komura Memorial Library and helps Kafka with his personal journey. MISS SAEKI, who runs the Komura Memorial Library, is an elegant and beautiful woman in her fifties who becomes involved with Kafka. SAKURA, a young cosmetician, is Kafka’s sister in spirit. COLONEL SANDERS is a concept—a being that is neither a god, nor a Buddha, nor a demon—that intervenes to help Nakata and Hoshino. KAFKA TAMURA, the protagonist, is a fifteen-year-old runaway trying to escape an Oedipal curse. JOHNNIE WALKER is a cat killer who is using the souls of the cats he kills to make a flute. He may also be Kafka’s father, Koichi Tamura.
Japanese high literature, history, and philosophy. An allusion is a brief reference to something external to the work that gives the present context a certain added meaning. For example, Kafka Tamura chooses the name Kafka for himself when he runs away from home. This is an allusion to the Czech writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Franz Kafka is known for his themes of alienation and existentialism as well as subtle humor. The Greek story of Oedipus (known best from a trilogy of plays written by Sophocles in the fifth century BCE) is another allusion played out at length in the novel, which enriches the reader’s sense of the forces at play in Kafka’s flight from home. Murakami also introduces elements of absurdism and surrealism, especially as part of the parallel narrative concerning Nakata. Absurdism is a philosophical approach within art and literature that finds no meaning in human existence; it is related to existentialism. Surrealism, also a philosophical approach within art and literature, embraces the illogical and is concerned with tapping into the unconscious mind. Through these related but not entirely compatible philosophies, Murakami again creates a tension that makes the reader think more deeply about the narrative, in search of understanding about the human condition. Has Nakata tapped into heretofore unknown depths of the psyche or is his pursuit largely absurd and meaningless?
A Buddhist temple in southern Japan. Southern Japan is the setting of author Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. ª john lander / Alamy
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Kafka on the Shore
W Critical Reception Murakami was an established, popular author when Kafka on the Shore was published in Japanese in 2002. Western critics praised Murakami’s novel when it was translated to English in 2005. Reviewing the novel for the Atlantic, Jon Zobenica described it as “absurdly fun and highly sentimental” but “never mawkish.” In a similar vein, Philip Hensher of Spectator magazine, wrote, “Murakami’s utter gravity, like Lewis Carroll’s, produces something not only serious but constantly interesting; the bizarre events of the book satisfyingly grounded by a classical, Dickensian technique.” Laura Miller, writing for the New York Times Book Review, celebrated Murakami’s style, claiming, “while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves.” In a rare negative review, New Statesman critic William Skidelsky found Kafka on the Shore to be “a
serious let-down,” denouncing the novel for its slow pace and teenage approach to everything from philosophy to sex. Kafka on the Shore won the 2006 World Fantasy Award. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brown, Mick. “Tales of the Unexpected.” Telegraph.co. uk. Telegraph 15 Aug. 2003. Web. 20 Aug. 2010. Hensher, Philip. “Curiouser and Curiouser.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Spectator 1 Jan. 2005: 23-24. Print. Karan, Pradyumna P. Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2005. 69-70. Print. Miller, Laura. “Crossing Over.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. New York Times Book Review 6 Feb. 2005: 1. Print.
A young Japanese boy boards a bus in Tokyo, Japan. In Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, a young Japanese man named Kafka travels around his country trying to escape a curse. Kiriko Shirobayashi TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He married Yoko Takahashi in 1971 and graduated from Waseda University in 1975. In 1974, before graduating, he and his wife opened the jazz bar Peter Cat in Tokyo. Murakami had a revelatory moment in 1978 when he suddenly felt the calling to write novels. Growing up, Murakami enjoyed reading American novels by writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury, which influenced his later prose style. His first book, Kaze no uta o kike (Hear the wind sing) was published in 1979 after winning the prestigious Gunzo Literature Prize, awarded for best unpublished manuscript. Murakami turned to full-time writing in 1981, just before publication of his third novel. His breakout work was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987. Kafka on the Shore, Murakami’s eleventh novel, was published in Japanese in 2002 and in English translation in 2005. As of 2010, Murakami lived in Japan with his wife.
Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore. Trans. Philip Gabriel. New York: Vintage, 2005. Print. Skidelsky, William. “Teenage Kicks.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. New Statesman 134.4723 (24 Jan. 2005): 52-53. Print. Zobenica, Jon. “Kafka on the Shore.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Atlantic May 2005: 124. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Auestad, Reiko Abe. “Implications of Globalization for the Reception of Modern Japanese Literature.” Global Literary Field. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. 22-40. Print. Explores the hybrid nature of Murakami’s Japanese- and American-influenced writing with particular focus on Kafka on the Shore. Chozick, Matthew Richard. “De-Exoticizing Haruki Murakami’s Reception.” Comparative Literature Studies 45.1 (2008): 62-73. Print. Compares the conflicting American and Japanese receptions of Murakami’s prose. Lai, Amy Ty. “Memory, Hybridity, and Creative Alliance in Haruki Murakami’s Fiction.” Mosaic 40.1 (Mar. 2007): 163-79. Print. Discusses Murakami’s animal symbolism in Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and other works. Myers, David. “The Crow in the Black Hole.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Quadrant June 2005: 91-92. Print. Finds the novel an unconvincing narrative and less successful than Murakami’s other works.
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Schama, Chloë. “The Escape Artist.” New Republic 235.17 (23 Oct. 2006): 34-37. Print. Examines Murakami’s role within Japanese culture as an author of protest literature. Updike, John. “Subconscious Tunnels.” Rev. of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. www.newyorker. com. New Yorker 24 Jan. 2005. Web. 20 Aug. 2010. Acknowledges that this novel is not Murakami’s most successful but a gripping story nonetheless. Gale Resources
“Haruki Murakami.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1000043107&v=2.1&u=aadl&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w “Kafka on the Shore.” Literary Newsmakers for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 142-63. Web. 20 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CCX347970 0019&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w Rubin, Jay. “Murakami Haruki (12 January 1949-).” Japanese Fiction Writers since World War II. Ed. Van C. Gessel. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 182. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. 135-42. Web. 20 Aug. 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLA/ itsbtrial/BK1499485016 Open Web Sources
Exorcising Ghosts is a fan Web site about Haruki Murakami and his works. The Web site includes a bibliography, links to articles and interviews, information on adaptations, and a page dedicated to each of his books. The individual book pages include a synopsis, cover different editions, and provide links to reviews. Exorcising Ghosts is available at http://www. exorcising-ghosts.co.uk/index.html For Further Reading
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Touchstone. 2000. Print. Collects forty-one of Kafka’s stories, which focus on the meaning of human existence. Murakami, Haruki. Norwegian Wood. New York: Vintage. 2000. Print. Tells the coming-of-age story about Toru Watanabe against the backdrop of student political protests of the late 1960s in Japan. ———. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. New York: Vintage. 1998. Print. A mystery about a man’s search for his wife and cat that stirs up strange characters and old horrors. Sophocles. Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Trans. David Greene. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Written in the fifth century TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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BCE, the tragedy of Oedipus stems from his inherent goodness. Soseki, Natsume. The Miner. Trans. Jay Rubin. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. Print. Written in 1908, an absurdist novel about a student who flees Tokyo and works in a mine as he examines the meaning of his existence.
Adaptations
Kafka on the Shore. By Frank Galati. Dir. Frank Galati. Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, Chicago. 28 Sept. 2008. Performance. Remains faithful to Murakami’s text in an adaptation that is visually spare but full of strong performances.
Varley, H. Paul. Japanese Culture. 4th ed. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 2000. Print. A thorough examination of Japanese history and culture, including everything from manga to Zen Buddhism.
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The Keep By Jennifer Egan
W Introduction The Keep is Jennifer Egan’s third novel, her follow-up to the successful Look at Me (2001). The narrative comprises a story within a story; it is both the tale of two cousins with a tragic childhood secret who come together after many years to restore a dilapidated castle in Eastern Europe, and the story of Ray, a convicted murderer, who is writing the castle story for a creative writing class in prison in hopes of attracting the attention of the teacher. The novel received positive reviews for its gothic conventions, many-layered narrative, and its exploration of the ideas of imprisonment and isolation, both literally and figuratively, in the modern age of technology.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Keep is a fictional example of prison literature. Prison literature is just what it sounds like—writing produced by incarcerated convicts. In the last couple of decades, prison writing programs such as the one taught by Holly and attended by Ray have become popular. The PEN American Center, a nonprofit organization for writing professionals, founded its prison writing program in 1971 and two years later initiated an annual prison writing contest that continues to the present. The heyday of prison literature in the 1960s and 1970s produced several notable works. One of the most famous is The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was the first published memoir of an incarcerated African American and considered by many to be one of the most influential nonfiction works of the twentieth century. It was coauthored by Alex Haley and published in 1965, the same year Malcolm X was assassinated. In subsequent years, prison memoirs became so common that in 1977 the “Son of Sam” law was passed to prohibit prisoners
from profiting from their writings, because it was felt to be unfair to victims and their families. Another renowned memoir is In the Belly of the Beast, published in 1981 by Jack Henry Abbott, which took the form of letters he wrote during his imprisonment to the author Norman Mailer, who was writing The Executioner’s Song, a book based on murderer and death-row inmate Gary Gilmore. In the letters, Abbott outlined his troubled childhood and early descent into criminal misdeeds. The book was published to good reviews and several high-profile writers lobbied successfully for Abbott’s parole, despite the fact that he had stabbed a fellow inmate to death. Within weeks of his release from prison, Abbott murdered again.
W Themes As evident from the title, the major theme of The Keep is imprisonment. Just as the baroness is trapped in her tower, unable to leave without forfeiting ownership of her ancestral home, and Ray is incarcerated in a jail cell, so too are the other characters imprisoned by their circumstances. As a boy, Howard was trapped in a cave for three days, barely surviving—an event that is replicated when he, Danny, and the others descend to the dungeon chambers beneath the castle and find their exit blocked by the baroness. Mick, Howard’s number two man, is being held at the castle against his will for reasons that are never explained, and Danny, who tries to escape, finds his way blocked by the region’s insidious geography and lack of connection to the outside world. Most of all, Danny is trapped by the guilt he feels for what he did to Howard when they were children. Holly, Ray’s writing instructor, is trapped by her own story—her baby died because of her drug addiction and she is trapped with a man who has yet to conquer his addiction. Holly tells her imprisoned students that to escape they must find the “door in their heads,” advice that Ray takes to heart. The door, for Danny and Howard, becomes literal when they finally move the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BARONESS VON AUSBLINKER is the old woman who has locked herself in the castle’s keep and refuses to leave. From a distance, she first looks to Danny like a young girl; as he moves closer to her she ages drastically. She locks the tunnel doors, trapping everyone inside in an effort to regain control over her ancestral home. RAYMOND MICHAEL DOBBS is the convict who is writing the story about Danny and Howard while imprisoned. He has a crush on Holly and is later shanked by an inmate and nearly dies. He escapes from prison and sends his final manuscript to Holly, implicating himself as Danny’s murderer. HOLLY T. FARRELL is Ray’s writing instructor. She falls in love with him, although their relationship is strictly platonic. She is a former meth addict with two surviving children and ultimately travels to the castle Ray described. DANNY KING is Howard’s androgynous, technology-obsessed cousin, who pushed Howard into an underground lake and left him for dead when they were children. His appearance at the castle, at Howard’s invitation, gives him a convenient place to escape trouble in New York, but quickly leads to tragedy. The Keep is centered on the story of an old Eastern European castle, much like the one pictured in this photograph. ª nagelestock.com/ Alamy
stone covering that blocks the staircase from the castle’s subterranean lair, thereby saving their own lives. Ray escapes prison by digging a tunnel and disappearing; Holly breaks free from her washed-up husband and escapes to Ray’s not-so-fictional castle. As Madison Smartt Bell summarized in the New York Times Book Review, “all the characters are imprisoned in one way or another, if not in a physical jail or labyrinth or keep . . . then in various mental squirrel cages.”
W Style The Keep is structured as a story within a story, a literary device sometimes called a mise en abyme, a French term meaning “placing into the abyss.” The tale of Danny and Howard is a story told by Ray, a prisoner, whose own story unfolds within the narrative. This first story seems as real to the reader as Ray’s story of life inside the prison. Part of the suspense comes from the reader wanting to know what happens in both stories, which appear to have two very different plots. In fact, the stories converge with Holly’s narrative, as she picks up the thread of both the castle story and Ray’s story and brings the novel to its conclusion. The Keep is also a work of gothic fiction. Gothic fiction dates back to Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The
HOWARD KING is a former nerd who has become rich and retired early. He is renovating the castle to turn it into a technology-free oasis in which people will have transformative life experiences. His intention for inviting Danny to the castle is unclear, as is whether or not he knows Danny is the one who pushed him into the lake when they were children. MICK is Howard’s number two guy—his best friend and handyman, who has a checkered past with the law. He is in love with Ann, Howard’s wife, with whom he once had an affair. Mick insinuates to Danny that neither of them is free to leave the castle, and shoots Danny in the head.
Castle of Otranto, the first in a popular genre that combined elements of the supernatural, ancient curses, family secrets, and madness, usually in a setting comprising a dilapidated castle or manor house and strange goings-on, all conveyed in a way to maximize an atmosphere of dread and terror. The keep of Howard’s castle, the locked abode of the ancient baroness who first appears to Danny as a fair maiden, along with her stories of dungeons and torture and her claim to the land fits the conventions of the gothic genre perfectly. Danny’s confusion about why people are not allowed to leave the castle increases his feeling of dread and heightens the suspense when Mick finds him in a nearby village, thereby thwarting his escape. As Danny is isolated from all his familiar gadgets—his cell phone, his satellite television—he becomes unhinged, separated from reality
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago in 1962, raised in San Francisco, and is a novelist and journalist living in Brooklyn. Her short stories have appeared in major publications and received numerous awards and have earned her fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first novel, The Invisible Circus (1995), is about a teenager who travels from San Francisco to Europe in her dead sister’s footsteps to re-create the intensity of her sister’s life in hopes of gaining insight into why she killed herself. Her second novel, Look at Me (2001), was nominated for the National Book Award and concerns a fashion model who returns to her hometown in Illinois to recuperate from surgery to reconstruct her face after a terrible car accident. Detectives are searching for a former boyfriend, who is hatching a terrorist plan to attack New York. Egan received much publicity for the book, as it was published just prior to September 11, 2001, and auspiciously foretold of terrorists melding unseen into the general population. Both novels established Egan as a writer of labyrinthine stories, a trend she continued with The Keep and her 2010 novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which takes the idea to its postmodern, Internet-era extreme. As a journalist Egan has published long investigative reports in the New York Times Magazine on homeless children in Brooklyn, children who suffer from bipolar disorder, and online dating, among other topics.
and increasingly ill at ease, guilty about the past, and paranoid about Howard’s intentions. He becomes the “tourist of his imagination,” just as Howard intends, but he does not like what he finds. This adds to his feeling of desperation and the reader’s feeling of suspense, all par for the course in a gothic novel. The Keep is also a work of metafiction, which means that it is a story about stories and the act of writing. When Ray identifies himself as the author of the castle story, the plot opens up to include the act of his writing it in the first place. Why is he writing it, and how is he going to tell the story? Much of the action in the prison concerns Ray’s questions to himself on how he should tell the story. Moreover, other inmates want to know which character he is and cannot believe he could invent such a tale. Ray at first does not admit that the story is real, and he tells it in such a way to conceal his identity in the story—he is neither Danny nor Howard. His brilliance in rendering the events of the castle story become evident only toward the end, when he reveals that he is the one who shot Danny. Danny becomes the one who haunts Ray, who tells him, “I hope you like to write.” With those words it becomes evident that Ray’s writing is a welldisguised act of confession.
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W Critical Reception Like Egan’s previous novels, The Keep received good reviews. Critics admired its gothic tone and layered narrative, with more than one critic comparing it to a set of Russian nesting dolls. Joseph O’Neill, in a review for the Atlantic, praised The Keep as a “compelling meditation on the relationship between the imagination and the captivities (psychological, metaphysical, and even physical) of modern life.” In a review for Booklist, Kristine Huntley called it “mesmerizing,” and a writer for Kirkus Reviews admired Egan’s strong characterizations and plotting, although a reviewer for Publishers Weekly considered the story-within-the-story a “transparent gimmick.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Madison Smartt Bell compared Egan’s approach to metafiction similar to that of William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace and was impressed with her ability to sustain “an awareness that the text is being manipulated by its author, while at the same time delivering character and story with perfect and passionate conviction.” Sharon Steel, writing in the Boston Phoenix, appreciated both the novel’s complexity and its central “love story [that] has so much pull, its bruises can be found on almost every page.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bell, Madison Smartt. “Into the Labyrinth.” New York Times Book Review 30 July 2006. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Huntley, Kristine. Rev. of The Keep, by Jennifer Egan. Booklist 102.17 (1 May 2006): 5. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Keep, by Jennifer Egan. Kirkus Reviews 74.8 (15 Apr. 2006): 367. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Keep, by Jennifer Egan. Publishers Weekly 253.14 (3 Apr. 2006): 34. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. O’Neill, Joseph. Rev. of The Keep, by Jennifer Egan. Atlantic 298.13 (Oct. 2006): 119. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Steel, Sharon. “Cave Dwelling: Jennifer Egan’s Goth/ Po-Mo Gamble.” Boston Phoenix 26 Sept. 2006. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Egan, Jennifer, and Donna Seaman. Interview in Bookslut. Dec. 2006. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Egan talks about Rockford, Illinois, where her grandparents lived and where much of Look at Me takes place, and her initial idea for The Keep, which was to write a story that was gothic but also humorous. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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In the novel The Keep, Howard recalls becoming trapped in a cave for three days. andreiuc88/Shutterstock.com
Egan, Jennifer, and Vendela Vida. Interview in Believer. Aug. 2006. Print. This lengthy interview was conducted in conjunction with the publication of The Keep and allows Egan to comment extensively on her writing process and the genesis of her ideas. Firger, Jessica George. “Powers of Perception: A Profile of Jennifer Egan.” Poets and Writers Sept./Oct. 2006. Print. A cover story on Egan in which she discusses her approach to the gothic novel as she wrote The Keep. Gale Resources
“Jennifer Egan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors, Vol. 283. Print. Open Web Resources
Jennifer Egan’s website contains biographical information, her pieces from the New York Times Magazine, and numerous interviews with the author. http:// jenniferegan.com For Further Reading
Chevigny, Bell Gale, ed. Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing. New York: Arcade, 2000. Print. Sister Helen
Prejean, noted for her work with convicts, wrote the foreword to this anthology of works from PEN’s prison writing program. Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print. Like her other novels, this one hopscotches through time and place, recounting the story of kleptomaniac Sasha and her boss, the music producer Bennie Salazar, a former punk rocker from San Francisco, to portray how youthful rebellion eventually fades away as the years slide by. Fowles, John. The Magus. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. Print. Fowles’s philosophical novel concerns an English schoolteacher in Greece who is ensnared against his will in a plan to enact a “godgame” by a wealthy landowner, the goal of which is to demonstrate that freedom requires self-knowledge. James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York: Macmillan, 1898. Print. This novella is a classic gothic ghost story in which an imaginative and inexperienced young woman becomes a governess for a boy and a girl under mysterious circumstances. The tale is recounted as a story-within-a-story by an acquaintance of the now-dead woman.
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King, Stephen. The Shining. New York: Doubleday, 1977. Print. An aspiring novelist takes a job as the caretaker for an isolated mountain lodge and moves into the hotel with his wife and young son. He suffers a mental breakdown brought on by the difficulty of writing and the strange happenings in the inn, which may be real or illusory.
recounted to the narrator by Vida Winter, a famous author, about her troubled, isolated childhood at Angelfield, a dilapidated English mansion, where she was imprisoned with her twin sister. The narrator attempts to determine the truth of Vida’s story by traveling to the house’s ruins and soon realizes she is wrapped up in a ghost story.
Setterfield, Diane. The Thirteenth Tale. New York: Atria, 2010. Print. This gothic story-within-a-story is
Kathleen Wilson
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The Keepers of Truth By Michael Collins
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Set in an unnamed, deteriorating town in the midwest Rust Belt, The Keepers of Truth (2000) chronicles the experiences of Bill, a college dropout haunted by the suicide of his father. Bill is hired as a journalist for the Daily Truth, a newspaper started by his late grandfather. He dreams about publishing a requiem for his hometown, a harangue decrying the decay of industrialism and exposing the lies of the American dream. Instead, he covers charity bake sales and edits obituaries. Living alone in his grandfather’s cavernous mansion, Bill spirals into depression. However, Bill’s life receives an unexpected jolt when he is assigned to investigate a crime. Ronnie Lawton, the reputed bad boy of the town, reports his father missing. When a severed finger is found, allegedly belonging to Ronnie’s father, Ronnie becomes the prime suspect in his father’s murder. Despite the well-known animosity between Ronnie and his father, the police cannot prove that Ronnie is guilty. Meanwhile, Ronnie becomes a small-time celebrity in the town, attracting national media attention. Bill becomes fixated on the hardships in Ronnie’s life and concludes that he is not the murderer. While conducting his own investigation to prove Ronnie’s innocence, Bill discovers a severed head, develops a precarious bond with Ronnie, falls in love with Ronnie’s ex-wife, and becomes a suspect in the case. Beaten down by the pressure, Ronnie holds his ex-wife, their son, and Bill hostage. In a standoff with the FBI, Ronnie kills himself after letting the others escape. They flee to Bill’s father’s cabin, hidden deep in the northern woods and begin to plan a new life together. The Keepers of Truth is a bone-chilling mystery, a love story, and social commentary of the failure of the American dream. Posed against the backdrop of a rundown town hypnotized by a crime, Bill discovers a renewed sense of purpose and a genuine connection to others.
Context
The Keepers of Truth refers to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939), which exposed the desperation and exploitation of migrant workers and farmers during the Great Depression. Steinbeck, who was labeled a propagandist and socialist by critics, serves as an apt reference in Bill’s drunken speech in front of a community college. Commissioned to speak on enlightenment in the age of journalism and technology, Bill rants instead about the death of language and the consequences of postindustrialism. After reading a section from Grapes of Wrath to the audience, Bill asks, “Can’t you feel that epic sense of loss that Steinbeck felt, the collective solidarity of what we once were as a nation?” (248). The small town that provides the setting for The Keepers of Truth is similar to the towns in the Rust Belt, an industrial region located near the Great Lakes and that spans most of the Midwest. This region was renowned for productivity particularly in the steel and coal industries. However, in the 1980s, the transition from industrial (production of goods) to postindustrial (production of services) and the emergence of outsourcing as a costcutting measure caused these towns to deteriorate. Plants closed, unemployment rose, and population dropped. This urban progression is reflected in the novel’s landscape of empty factories and “prehistoric looking machines dragged out into yards” (3).
W Themes Michael Collins’s portrait of a ruined, small town illustrates the theme of social decay and the disintegration of the American dream in the postindustrial United States. The use of an unnamed town suggests that this community is representative of thousands of dilapidated towns across the United States. The townspeople, once the “keepers of industrialism” (2) are beaten down, yet
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BILL is a cynical, self-deprecating, and depressed journalist who discovers a newfound sense of purpose while investigating a murder in his small town. DARLENE, Ed’s wife, runs the local beauty parlor, Curl Up and Dye. Bill suspects that she is somehow involved in the murder. ED, the Pepto-Bismol-drinking photographer for the Daily Truth, helps Ronnie with his investigation; he is dominated by Darlene and suffers from anxiety and chronic indigestion. PETE, Bill’s childhood friend, is the police officer in charge of the murder case. His friendship with Bill is strained as a result of Bill’s unorthodox investigation methods. RONNIE is a weightlifter on steroids, a short-order cook at Denny’s, and the town’s bad boy. Although Ronnie is accused of murdering his father, Bill develops an unexpected friendship with him and believes he is innocent. SAM is the editor of the Daily Truth who longs for that one big story that will bring him and his paper notoriety. TERI, Ronnie’s ex-wife, believes that others see her as trailer park trash. Despite her apparent motivation to befriend Bill for his money, he falls in love with her and grows attached to her baby son.
still strive to hold on to a piece of the American dream, which promised them prosperity and success, despite social status. Sam, the editor of the Daily Truth, collects pamphlets of condos in Florida and plans to retire once his paper achieves recognition. Teri dreams of living in a house rather than in a trailer. Bill believes that the realization of the American dream is not possible without a return to the truth—a truth that does not contain circumstantial evidence and celebrity murder suspects. Although Bill is prone to criticize the United States, ultimately he envisions a world where consumerism and sensationalism give way to trust, honesty, and caring relationships. The novel also demonstrates the effects of loss and the power of the spirit to confront and overcome loss. Although the murder case is an integral part of the plot, the narrative is more about Bill and his transformation from grieving, alienated journalist to a man who rediscovers his need for human contact. As Bill delves deeper into the murder of Ronnie’s father, he begins to confront his grief over his father’s suicide. As each piece of evidence is accumulated to help clear Ronnie’s name, Bill comes to understand his father’s despair and, therefore, is able to forgive him. As he begins to interact more with others, he regains his confidence and openness to intimacy. Bill reflects, “It was maybe that human
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dimension I was starved for . . . what I desperately wanted . . . just human contact” (196).
W Style The Keepers of Truth uses satire to makes its point. In satire, the vices and follies of people are exposed through the use of wit, irony, and sarcasm. Bill recognizes the irony of a newspaper titled the Daily Truth that mostly publishes cooking recipes and bake offs and prints manipulated photos of suspects, in favor of sensationalism rather than truth. Upon the discovery of the dismembered finger, Bill concocts the cynical headline “Father Fingers Son from Beyond the Grave” (21). Satire is used as a vehicle for social criticism. For example, Bill is disheartened when the townspeople place bets on where other body parts might be found, observing that the search for Ronnie’s father had become “a church social with ice cream” (59). The haunting imagery of a small town in the Midwest provides a stark setting for the novel. Collins’s description of an unnamed, ruined urban center serves to emphasize the emptiness and desperation felt by the narrator and the townspeople as they struggle to survive the downturn in industry. Sensory imagery is used to describe the town prior to the shift to postindustrialism. The narrator reflects that in the past “we had hands throbbing to make things” in factories likened to cathedrals. Once the town pulsed with productivity, purpose, and the “buffeted sound of hammers” (1). However, now the factories are boarded up “prehistoric museums” (33), and the sounds of productivity are silenced. Machines are now “cannibalized of anything of worth, carcasses of industrialism” (3). These barren factories and rusty, idle machines are the outward signs of the resignation and discouragement felt by the townspeople. This eerie landscape underscores the narrator’s unease as he is drawn into the mystery surrounding the alleged murder. Natural imagery, specifically of the weather, is also a dominant feature, heightening conflict and mirroring the narrator’s emotions. For example, when Bill is told the gory details of the crime—blood found at the crime scene, along with a dismembered finger, he hears an ominous, “low rumble of thunder” (10). As he finds himself feeling strangely alive at the prospect of writing about the investigation, he opens a window, letting the “downward rush of cool air” (10) wash over him. As Bill’s obsession with the murder investigation intensifies, so does the heat of an “orange-red, apocalyptic” sun (179), followed by drought and dust. The imagery eventually evolves to one of calm and peace when Bill escapes the town to begin a new life. He flees to a cabin in the quiet, isolated northern woods. Heat is now replaced by the “open coldness . . . the still blue of the lake” (288). TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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W Critical Reception The Keepers of Truth (2000), short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the Kerry Ingredients Irish Book of the Year, solidified Michael Collins’s reputation as an exciting voice of fiction. The author’s fifth book continued his exploration of the struggles of marginalized, often-dispossessed people. Many reviewers discussed the complex nature of the novel’s protagonist and offered mixed, yet ultimately positive reviews. Writing for the New York Times, Maggie Galehouse initially found Bill’s character to be “shrill” making the novel “not very easy to warm to.” However, Galehouse conceded that “Bill isn’t a poser, he’s a loser on the verge of reform—and so we gradually come to like him.” She concluded that “Collins’s writing gets stronger as the book’s action picks up.” Agreeing with Galehouse was Robert Potts, a reviewer for the Atlantic, who wrote that although Bill’s narration was “slightly annoying at first,” it “becomes both comical and unsettling as we learn more about him.” Overall, Potts praised the novel as “intelligent, witty, humane, and utterly haunting.” Other critics, such as John Doyle, viewed Collins’s novel as a biting, yet humorous social commentary. In a review for the Globe and Mail, Doyle asserted that the author “examine[s] an entire country’s mood and mania with an adult sensibility.” Doyle noted that Collins’s use of satire to mock the United States rendered the work a “brutally honest book” that ultimately “celebrates the strength and energy of the people . . . finding the truth among them.” However, some reviews were not complimentary. Countering Doyle’s praise for Collins’s satirical strengths, David Sexton, of the Evening Standard, bluntly asserted that the novel “is not a very good American novel, being an implausible melodrama” whose plot “doesn’t really connect in any useful way with the big themes about industrial decline and social decay.” Overall, The Keepers of Truth was warmly received. In her review for the Irish Times, which illustrates the general positive reception, Eve Patten commended that Collins’s approach to plot is a strong “balance between story and social diagnosis.” Patten concluded that the novel is “an impressive performance from a rich and unpredictable talent.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Collins, Michael. The Keepers of Truth. London: Phoenix House, 2000. Print. Doyle, John. “America the Sour.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by Michael Collins. Globe and Mail [Toronto] 11 Mar. 2000: D19. Print. Galehouse, Maggie. “Rust Belt Blues: Stuck in His Dying Hometown, a Man Investigates a Mysterious Disappearance.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Collins was born on June 4, 1964, in Limerick, Ireland. Although he had an early desire to write, he also aspired to being a computer scientist. However, his youth was characterized by run-ins with the law, and, when he was eighteen, he immigrated with his family to the United States, where the young Collins enrolled at the University of Notre Dame. In the early 1980s, Collins rediscovered his passion for writing as he traveled across the country and witnessed the nation’s deteriorating postindustrial towns. He then enrolled in a creative writing program and submitted his first collection of stories, The Meat Eaters, later published in 1992. In 1997 he received a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and accepted a job at Microsoft. He continued to publish numerous novels and short story collections to critical acclaim. The Keepers of Truth (2000) was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Resurrectionists (2002) won the Novel of the Year Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. As of 2010, Collins resided in Seattle.
Michael Collins. New York Times 3 Feb. 2002: 15. Print. Patten, Eve. “The Keepers of Truth.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by Michael Collins. Irish Times 26 Feb. 2000: 67. Print. Potts, Robert. “Books & Critics.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by Michael Collins. Atlantic 288.4 (2001). Print. Sexton, David. “Tragic Tangles and The Keepers of Truth.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by Michael Collins. Evening Standard 16 Oct. 2000: 57. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
MacFarlane, Robert, et al. “The Bookies’ Booker.” Rev. of The Keepers of Truth, by Michael Collins. Observer 5 Nov. 2000: 11. Print. MacFarlane and other critics for the Observer offer their reviews of The Keeper of Truth and how it measures up to other Booker Prize nominees. Sibree, Bron. “Literary Crimes.” Courier Mail 18 Aug. 2007. Print. Discusses Collins’s views on the deterioration of U.S. society and his desire to be considered a political writer rather than a crime novelist. Gale Resources
“Michael Collins.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1000147238&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRG&sw=w
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The events of The Keepers of Truth take place in a small Rust Belt town like the one featured in this photograph. ª Scott Houston/Corbis
Zhang, Aiping. “Michael Collins.” Twenty-firstCentury British and Irish Novelists. Ed. Michael R. Molino. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 267. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7 CH1200010971&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it =r&p=LitRG&sw=w Open Web Sources
Michael Collins’s official homepage, available at www .michaelcollinsauthor.net, contains biographical information, author updates, and a list of novels and future projects. For Further Reading
Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books, 1976. Print. Predicts future economic, cultural, and political changes as a result of the Information Age,
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science, and a shift from production of goods to services. Collins, Michael. The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters. New York: Random House, 1993. Print. Collection of nine short stories depicting modern life in Ireland, in which protagonists struggle for survival as they face alcoholism, violence, and uncertain relationships with family and lovers. ———. The Resurrectionists. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print. Tells the story of Frank Cassidy, a man who struggles with depression as a result of his past as an orphaned child. Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print. Traces the evolution of the American dream and its shifting definitions through an examination of the ideals and accomplishments of nativeborn Americans and immigrants. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Delahunty, Kevin L. “Once upon a Time in America.” Times [London] 4 Nov. 2000: 92. Print. Collins discussing how his Irish background and his experience as a self-proclaimed immigrant in the United States influenced the plot of The Keepers of Truth.
Adaptations
The film rights to The Keepers of Truth are owned by Gorgeous Productions. As of 2010, a forthcoming adaptation, to be directed by Chris Palmer, was in production.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1939. Print. Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set during the Great Depression that chronicles the travails of the Joad family who lose their midwest farm, migrate to California for a better life, only to be disillusioned by the hollow promises of the American dream.
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Killing Time with Strangers By William S. Penn
W Introduction Killing Time with Strangers is the story of young Palimony Blue Larue’s search for himself, a quest that brings him to a greater understanding of his Native American culture and ultimately to the discovery of true love. The narrator is a weyekin, a spirit guide believed by members of the Nez Perce tribe to convey wisdom and power on the one who seeks the spirit. Pal, as he is called, does not summon the weyekin; his mother, Mary, literally dreams the spirit into existence. The weyekin helps lead Pal to Amanda, the love of his life, an encounter that brings to an end a series of unsatisfying love affairs. Author William S. Penn is himself a member of the Nez Perce tribe. He has devoted much of his career as a writer and academician to the study of the Nez Perce and Native Americans in general. His fictional work shows a penchant for quirky, good-natured humor and an appreciation for the oldfashioned art of storytelling, all wrapped within a magic-realist approach that combines the mundane with the supernatural. Killing Time with Strangers, Penn’s second novel, received the American Book Award for Literary Merit in 2000.
W Literary and Historical Context
Though Killing Time with Strangers is set in the present day, its narrative is shadowed by the past history of the Nez Perce, the Native American tribe to which Pal’s mother belongs. The author’s father was also a Nez Perce. The tribe’s homeland is in the Pacific Northwest, where it originally occupied a large area of what is now Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. Though their people numbered in the tens of thousands at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Nez Perce had dwindled to fewer than two thousand members one
hundred years later. Today some eighteen thousand Nez Perce live on a reservation in northern Idaho. The Nez Perce refer to themselves as Nimiipuu, or “The People.” The name by which they are known to the rest of the world is a misnomer. When explorer William Clark first made contact with them on September 20, 1805, his interpreter referred to the people as nez percé, (“pierced nose,” in French). In actuality the Nez Perce did not practice nose piercing; the interpreter had confused them with the Chinook, who dwelled in the region of the Columbia River. Like the Nez Perce, the Chinook lived primarily by fishing for salmon, and the two tribes shared many fishing and trading sites, which may explain the interpreter’s misidentification. The subsequent history of the Nez Perce paralleled that of other native peoples in North America as they endured forced relocation, broken treaties, armed conflict, and, ultimately, defeat by whites. In the last major engagement between government troops and a Native American nation, Nez Perce forces led by Chief Joseph fought with great cunning and bravery before surrendering to the U.S. Cavalry on October 5, 1877.
W Themes Rather than focus on past injustices suffered by Indians, Penn’s novel celebrates their culture. By building the plot around a young man’s search for identity, the author implicitly stresses the need for Native Americans to discover themselves within the framework of their Indian heritage. Of particular importance to this theme is the weyekin. Though many native belief systems include spirit guides, the weyekin (pronounced “WEE-ya-kin,” and sometimes rendered as wyakin) is unique to the Nez Perce. In order to find and receive their weyekin, Nez Perce boys and girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen traditionally undertook a vision quest, a solitary journey into the mountains on which they carried little water and no food or weapons. Eventually they encountered a spirit in the
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form of an animal who granted them a power akin to the animal’s own—a deer’s swiftness or a bear’s strength, for example. Once a person had received a weyekin, it remained with him or her for life. Symbolic of Pal’s detachment from his own culture at the outset of the story is the fact that he does not initiate the search for his weyekin; rather, the spirit guide comes to him unbidden. Though Pal embarks on a “vision quest” of sorts, his search is quite different. He begins his journey after he receives his weyekin, for example, and he experiences no physical hardship. On his decidedly modern journey Pal bounces from one relationship to another, seeking neither power nor wisdom but, rather, true love.
W Style When Pal was born, his mother named him Palomino, after a particularly handsome breed of horse. The white nurse, however, rendered his name as “Palimony,” a term that refers to the disposition of assets by an unmarried couple splitting up after a long relationship. This mistake is significant because it not only recalls the misnaming of the Nez Perce but also prefigures Mary’s separation from Pal’s father. As a reviewer notes in Publishers Weekly, the error “turned out to be emblematic of Pal’s misbegotten future relationships with women.” In telling Pal’s story Penn employs magic realism, a literary style in which extraordinary or impossible events are interwoven with the mundane. The most important magical element here is the weyekin. The fact that the narrator is a supernatural being might signify a solemn tone, but in Penn’s hands quite the reverse is true. The spirit guide speaks with world-weary amusement, and sometimes bemusement, of his charge: “Life may be a record of failures. Take Palomino Blue, for instance, or his father La Vent. Their failures, which have been mostly failures of the heart, might not rock the western world on its foundations, but they sure do keep me busy.” In an interview with Contemporary Authors, Penn spoke of his wide-ranging literary influences and his fascination with storytelling: “I remember beginning to tell stories almost as soon as I could construct sentences— oftentimes poor stories that I meant to make humorous to amuse my sisters and their friends—and to write them down as soon as I was able. Telling them and writing them down was my way of keeping out the hurt and anger, and keeping in the humor.” According to Marcia Detwiler Scupin in the Tucson Weekly, the author has compared storytelling to the act of stringing beads: “matching and creating patterns, establishing connections.”
W Critical Reception Killing Time with Strangers received a generally favorable response from critics, who lauded its humor and its
MAJOR CHARACTERS AMANDA is Pal’s soul-mate, whom he finds, with a great deal of help from the weyekin, by the end of the novel. BRANDY is one of Pal’s lovers and a waitress who hopes to become a professional flautist. TARA DUNNAHOWE is Pal’s lover at the beginning of the story. Spoiled and unfaithful, she is clearly not Pal’s true love, and he leaves her before the end of the first chapter. LA VENT LARUE is Pal’s father. Of mixed heritage—part Osage Indian, part white—he initially charms Mary with his great ambition and his plans for the future, but she eventually becomes disenchanted with him and leaves him. MARY BLUE LARUE, is Pal’s mother. A member of the Nez Perce tribe, she calls up the spirit guide, or weyekin, who assists her son in his journey of personal discovery PALIMONY BLUE LARUE, son of Mary and La Vent, is the novel’s protagonist. A young man of primarily Native American heritage (his father had a mixed heritage), Pal endures a series of unhappy romantic relationships before finding his true love, Amanda, with the help of the weyekin. SALLY PEDON, one of Pal’s lovers, is a zealous Christian who nevertheless displays a voracious sexual appetite. THE WEYEKIN, a spirit guide variously called Chingaro, Parker, and Hinmot, is the book’s narrator. Conjured by Pal’s mother Mary, he helps guide the protagonist to true love and a greater understanding of himself.
readable style. A critique of Killing Time with Strangers in Publishers Weekly begins with a reference to Penn’s employment of magic realism in the novel. “Magical realism,” notes the reviewer, “is an excellent way to tell love stories in this disenchanted age.” Candace Smith of Booklist praises the tale as one told “with the captivating rhythm of an oral storyteller,” and describes Pal as “especially endearing.” Despite the magic-realist framework, Smith maintains that “the story remains grounded in the full-bodied reality of all the characters.” Mary A. Stout in Library Journal sounds a slight critical note when she observes that “some of [Penn’s] images are a bit obvious and heavy-handed, but this drawback is overshadowed by his sly humor and the clear picture that emerges of how anoutsider’ can drown in his own lack of confidence or die from wanting to be liked too much.” Marcia Detwiler Scupin predicts that the novel’s “supernatural inventiveness and witty irreverence will disarm you, while its characters so weave you into the warp of their story-dreams, that you may close the book, close your eyes and begin to wonder how you, too, can
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR William S. Penn is a writer and academician of mixed-race Nez Perce Indian heritage. His father was a Native American; his mother, a Caucasian. Penn himself was born in Los Angeles, far from the Nez Perce homeland in the central and Pacific Northwest. He has devoted much of his career, nevertheless, to the exploration of Nez Perce and Native American issues, both as a professor at Michigan State University and as an author and editor. Among his published works are the novels The Absence of Angels (1994) and Killing Time with Strangers (2000), as well as the essay collection All My Sins Are Relatives (1995) and As We Are Now: Mixblood Essays on Race and Identity (2000), which Penn edited. He and his wife, Jennifer Siani, a domestic coordinator, have two children.
learn to dream.” Noting that the author does not dwell on the hurts of the past, she opines that “if the term ‘Native American fiction’ conjures up ‘You took our land, you took our people,’ white guilt, a tear draining down a leathery Indian chieftain’s cheek—[you should] recreate your vision and dream again.” Scupin goes on to observe that “Penn’s second novel doesn’t chide white culture, nor does it solemnly proclaim the shame of yesteryear’s Indian wars. . . . That message, however, is tightly woven into its cloth.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Rev. of Killing Time with Strangers, by William S. Penn. Publishers Weekly 18 Sept. 2000: 89. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Penn, William S. Killing Time with Strangers. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2000. Print. Scupin, Marcia Detwiler. “Dream Weaver.” Rev. of Killing Time with Strangers, by William S. Penn. Tucson Weekly. Tucson Weekly 23 Nov. 2000. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Smith, Candace. Rev. of Killing Time with Strangers, by William S. Penn. Booklist 15 Sept. 2000: 252. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Stout, Mary A. Rev. of Killing Time with Strangers, by William S. Penn. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2000: 252. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hodes, Martha. Rev. of As We Are Now: Mixblood Essays on Race and Identity, ed. William S. Penn. Journal of American Ethnic History 19.2 (2000): 128. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. A review of
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the essay collection edited by Penn, in which he comments on various Native American issues that are also touched on in Killing Time with Strangers. Kloppenburg, Michelle R. Rev. of All My Sins Are Relatives, by William S. Penn. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20.3 (1996): 181-85. Print. A review of Penn’s first novel, which prefigures many of the themes and issues addressed in Killing Time with Strangers. Kratzert, Mona, and Deborah Richey. “Native American Literature: Expanding the Canon.” Collection Building 17.1 (1998): 4-15. Print. Discusses Penn’s work, from the perspective of librarians building collections, in the context of writings by other Native Americans. Penn, William S. “Fidjey: Or How to Spell ‘Community.’” Studies in American Indian Literatures 19.4 (2007): 127-42. Print. A lighthearted essay by the author in which he discusses his approach to family, career, work, and the demands of the larger community. ———. “The Tale as Genre in Short Fiction.” The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles E. May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994: 44-45. Print. Discussion of fiction techniques by the author. Wahpeconiah, Tammy. “Ceremony and Power: The Significance of the Mother in Killing Time with Strangers.” The Literary Mother: Essays on Representations of Maternity and Child Care. Ed. Susan C. Staub. Jefferson: McFarland, 2007: 245-59. Print. An in-depth discussion of Mary Blue Larue’s role in her son’s life and the novel at large. Gale Resources
“William S. Penn.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author maintains a Facebook page for fans of his work. http://www.facebook.com/pages/WilliamS-Penn/108338065856677?v=desc The Internet Public Library has a page devoted to Penn, with links to online articles and information about his published works. http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/ bin/browse.pl/A249 For Further Reading
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print. In this novel Alexie, a leading Native American writer, tells a humorous tale from the perspective of a teenager living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Bial, Raymond. The Nez Perce. New York: Benchmark Books, 2002. Print. Bial’s book is a history of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Native American nation of which Penn (along with many of his characters) is a member. Foster, Steven, and Meredith Little. The Book of the Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness. Covelo: Island Press, 1980. Print. Foster and Little explore the vision quest as a personal, social, and spiritual ritual. Josephy, Alvin M. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. Boston: Mariner Books, 1997. Print. Josephy, a leading scholar of the American West, chronicles the history of the Nez Perce.
Killing Time with Strangers, employs magic realism, a personified encounter with the supernatural (“Death” is a character), and the story of a search for meaning by a young man of mixed racial heritage. ———. All My Sins Are Relatives. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995. Print. In this collection of essays Penn addresses the subjects of cultural identity and family relations, two themes that reappear in Killing Time with Strangers. Judson Knight
Penn, William S. The Absence of Angels. Sag Harbor: Permanent Press, 1994. Print. Penn’s first novel, like
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The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini
W Introduction An international publishing phenomenon, The Kite Runner is a story of love, betrayal, and redemption inspired by the author’s own experience of modern-day Afghanistan. The Kite Runner spans four decades in Afghanistan’s turbulent political history as it movingly evokes the friendship of two childhood friends in pre-Soviet Kabul: Amir, a wealthy Pashtun of the merchant class, and his illiterate servant Hassan, a member of the beleaguered Hazara minority. The novel is narrated by Amir, like Khaled Hosseini forced out of Afghanistan by the Soviet coup in 1979. Now an expatriate writer living in California, Amir embarks on a quest to redeem himself for his complicity in the tragic rape of Hassan by a local Kabul bully, Assef, after a kite-fighting tournament. The term kite-fighting refers to a popular pastime in which Afghan boys compete to bring down each other’s kites using strings glued over with pieces of glass; the boys who spot and chase the fallen kites, Hassan among them, are known as “kite-runners.” Amir’s search for atonement leads him back to Afghanistan, where he rescues Hassan’s son, Sohrab, made an orphan by the Taliban. The journey unleashes a flood of memories for Amir—of calmer days with Hassan during the monarchy; of his struggle to gain the approval of his emotionally distant father, Baba; and of his and Baba’s exile, first in Pakistan and then in the United States. The Kite Runner explores such universal themes as friendship, family, identity, guilt, and redemption while providing Americans with a cultural touchstone for a complex Middle Eastern country that is now a major focal point for the United States.
W Literary and Historical Context
The plot of The Kite Runner sketches in broad outline the events that have traumatized Afghanistan and its
people over the last forty years. Even in the relatively peaceful days of the monarchy—the backdrop of Amir and Hassan’s friendship—ethnic and religious turmoil divided the country. This accounts for Assef’s torture of Hassan, and for his bullying of Amir, who in Assef’s judgment is guilty of socializing with a boy of inferior race. Assef grows up to be a Taliban warlord, responsible not only for the executions of Hassan and his wife but also for the violent physical and sexual abuse of Sohrab. Amir’s portrait of prerevolutionary Kabul—a bustling cosmopolitan city of ancient charms and modern convenience, albeit torn by racial and ethnic tension— contrasts sharply with the Kabul he finds on his visit there in 2001, ravaged by the suffering inflicted by the Taliban. Hosseini’s novel draws on memories of his own childhood in Kabul and of their Hazara family servant, who accompanied them when his father was sent on diplomatic missions by the Afghan Foreign Ministry. In 1973 Afghan king Zahir Shaw was overthrown in a bloodless coup. Subsequent political upheaval directed the course of Hosseini’s life and was transformed by him into key elements of the plot of his novel. A 1978 revolution in Afghanistan implemented a socialist agenda, which was redirected by the Soviets after their military assault beginning late in 1979. Living in Paris at the time of the Soviet occupation, Hosseini and his family, like many of the Afghan privileged class, were driven into exile. Granted political asylum in the United States, the Hosseinis settled in San Jose, California, which provides a model for the diasporic enclave in Fremont, California, that serves as Amir’s home base. Heavy resistance from the Afghan mujahideen (guerrilla fighters) caused the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in the late 1980s. A lengthy civil war then ensued, with Taliban fundamentalists eventually seizing control of the government from 1996 until 2001. Hosseini did not himself return to Afghanistan until after the publication of The Kite Runner. Shocked by the human rights abuses he witnessed there, he has since called attention to the
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plight of the Afghan people through his work with the United Nations Refugee Agency, his establishment of the Kahled Hosseini Foundation for disempowered Afghans, and his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), which exposes the brutalization of Afghan women at the hands of the Taliban.
W Themes Father-son relationships are central to developing the theme of redemption in this novel in which the central characters, Amir and Hassan, both grow up motherless. As a young boy, Amir is motivated by his desire to gain the approval of Baba, who divides his limited affections equally between Amir and Hassan, although he expresses disappointment with Amir’s spinelessness: “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up for anything.” Amir remains loyal to Hassan until the day of the kite tournament, when he remains silent about the horror he witnesses rather than dispel his father’s praise for his glorious victory. For years afterward, Amir is consumed by guilt for his failure to come to the aid of his friend and for his subsequent decision to engineer the banishment of Hassan and his father, Ali, from the household. When, in 2001, Amir receives a phone call from Baba’s friend Rahim Khan informing him of the fates of Hassan and Sohrab, Amir is given the opportunity to resolve his anguish, made heavier by the news of his father’s long-kept secret: Hassan was actually his half-brother, the son of Baba and Ali’s wife. In a culmination of the father-son theme, Amir determines to adopt Sohrab. Throughout Amir’s journey to self-discovery, he is constantly haunted by his past. The opening of his narrative, dated December 2001, begins thus: “I became what I am today at the age of twelve. . . . It’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.” When Rahim Khan phones him, his immediate response is, “It wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins.” Thus, the intersection of the past and the present is as pervasive a theme in Kite Runner as the intertwining of political events with private lives.
W Style The language of The Kite Runner is simple and straightforward, predominantly relayed in flashbacks that vividly recall the cultural and political life of Afghanistan. The use of time as a narrative device reinforces the novel’s theme of the past as a burden that long controls Amir’s sense of identity. His journey from remorse to recovery is elaborated through the technique of the interior monologue, which Hosseini employs to reveal Amir’s inner thoughts and emotions. Amir’s narrative is peppered with
MAJOR CHARACTERS ALI is a Hazara and lifelong servant of Baba’s family. He was abandoned by his wife after she gave birth to Hassan, with whom Ali lives in a mud hut at the back of Baba’s garden. AMIR is the narrator of the novel, an expatriate Pashtun from war-torn Afghanistan forced into exile in the United States. Memories of his childhood haunt Amir when he journeys back to Afghanistan to rescue the son of Hassan, the cherished friend and servant he once betrayed. ASSEF is a racist who claims Adolf Hitler as a role model and becomes a Taliban warlord. He rapes both Hassan and his son, Sohrab. BABA is a wealthy Pashtun merchant and the father of both Amir and Hassan. Ashamed of his sexual relationship with Ali’s Hazara wife, Sanaubar, Baba keeps secret Hassan’s true parentage, even after he and Amir have relocated in the United States. FARZANA is Hassan’s wife and Sohrab’s mother. Along with Hassan, she is executed by the Taliban for her Hazara heritage. HASSAN is Amir’s best friend and half-brother and the father of Sohrab. A poor Hazara, Hassan is a victim of racism throughout the novel, and his ethnicity figures in Amir’s betrayal of him. KAMUL is one of Assef’s companions and participates in the rape of Hassan. He is later raped himself and dies trying to escape into Pakistan. SANAUBAR is Hassan’s mother and has a reputation for promiscuity. After abandoning Hassan and Ali, Sanaubar reforms and eventually becomes a loving grandmother to Sohrab. SOHRAB is the son of Hassan and Farzana. He is adopted by Amir and his wife, Soraya, after being kidnapped and violently abused by Assef. SORAYA is Amir’s wife and another exile from Afghanistan in California. GENERAL IQBAL TAHERI is Soraya’s father, a once-prominent military official in Afghanistan. He is a friend to Baba and others in the California Afghan community. KHANUM TAHERI (JAMILA) is General Taheri’s wife and the mother of Soraya. She is subservient to the general, who subscribes to traditional Afghan ways.
the Pashtu and Dari dialects, followed by brief translations, which enhance the local flavor. Scholars have often cited Hosseini’s medical training in seeking to account for his tone of detachment, an aspect of the novel that inspired critic James O’Brien to remark, “Given the
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR An expatriate Afghan now living in California, Khaled Hosseini is the author of the runaway best-seller The Kite Runner (2003). A story of childhood friends in Kabul, Afghanistan, divided by class and ethnicity, The Kite Runner draws on Hosseini’s own experience of Afghanistan as it documents the successive political regimes that have ravaged the country since the overthrow of the monarchy in the early 1970s. Hosseini’s follow-up to The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)—also a New York Times best seller—focuses on two women whose lives are torn apart by Taliban atrocities. Trained as a doctor after seeking political asylum in the United States, Hosseini has for the time being given up his medical practice to concentrate on writing and humanitarian relief work in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
ravages visited on Afghanistan since the young Kahled Hosseini and his family sought political asylum in the United States in 1980, the foremost of many triumphs in this startling first novel must be that its consideration of
cultural, religious and deeply personal upheavals remains cool and considered throughout.” Critics frequently comment upon Hosseini’s reliance upon irony. Importantly, Amir gains his father’s respect by not intervening on behalf of Hassan, the very moment that marks him as the type of coward Baba most detests. In another significant irony, Assef is both the source of Amir’s perfidy and the vehicle for his redemption.
W Critical Reception The combination of the personal and the topical is said to account for the enormous appeal of The Kite Runner. Over a year on the New York Times best-seller list, The Kite Runner was made into a popular 2007 movie and has now sold more than ten million copies, buoyed by its canonical status in classroom and community reading programs and by its translation into over forty languages. By humanizing the plight of the Afghan people, The Kite Runner has enhanced news coverage of events there and has had some measure of success reversing stereotypical images—post September 11, 2001—of Afghans as terrorists. Although some critics have complained that The Kite Runner is overly dependent upon coincidence, it has
Several young boys fly kites in Afghanistan, the location of a kite-fighting contest in The Kite Runner. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
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generally been praised for its unmediated realism and dispassionate rendering of potentially inflammatory subject matter. According to Jim Bartley, “There is no display in Hosseini’s writing, only expression.” The effect of the simple prose and journalistic detail is, by most accounts, a novel that is as heartwarming for its saga of lasting friendship as it is heart wrenching for its account of the human toll exacted by the atrocities of unstable political regimes in Afghanistan. Despite the cultural specificity, readers have been moved by the universality of the novel’s themes, as well as what appears to be its final message of hope. Maria Elena Caballero-Robb writes, “Amir not only atones for past personal failings but also embraces a hopeful ideal of citizenship capable of upholding principles of liberty and human rights even in the face of repressive, fascist systems.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bartley, Jim. “Kite Catches and Flies High.” Globe and Mail [Toronoto] 28 June 2003: D3. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 254. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Caballero-Robb, Maria Elena. “Criticism.” Rpt. in Literary Newsmakers for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Hosseini, Kahled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Books, 2003. Print. O’Brien, James. “The Sins of the Father.” Times Literary Supplement 5245 (10 Oct. 2003): 25. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bloom, Harold, ed. Bloom’s Guides: Kahled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner.” New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2009. Print. Student study guide featuring summary and analysis, an introduction by Harold Bloom, and ten other critical essays on the novel. Grossman, Lev. “The Kite Runner Author Returns Home.” Time 17 Mar. 2007. Overview of Hosseini’s life and career that describes his return to Afghanistan and his progress as a writer, evidenced by his second novel. Hosseini, Kahled, and James Cowan. “The Nation We Don’t Know.” National Post 5.211 (5 July 2003): PT6. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 254. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Partial transcript of an interview that includes explanatory commentary placing Hosseini’s remarks in historical and biographical context. In the main, Hosseini talks about the genesis of The Kite Runner and his life in the United States compared to Afghanistan. Hower, Edward. “The Servant.” New York Times Book Review 108 (3 Aug. 2003): 4. Admiring review
appreciative of the novel’s private and public themes and of the long suffering of the Afghan people. Mechanic, Michael. “Kabul’s Splendid Son: Novelist Kahled Hosseini.” Mother Jones May-June 2009: 74+. Conversation in which Hosseini expresses sadness over the destruction of Kabul over the last thirty years. Hosseini also comments on his role as a goodwill envoy for the United Nations, the position of women in Afghanistan, and the Afghan diaspora. Noor, Ronny. Rev. of The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. World Literature Today 78.3-4 (Sept.-Dec. 2004): 148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 254. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Praises the novel as a story of sin and redemption but considers simplistic its vision of contemporary events in Afghanistan. O’Rourke, Meghan. “The Kite Runner: Do I Really Have to Read It?” Slate 25 July 2005. Web. 7 July 2010. http://www.slate.com/id/2123280. Seeks to explain why Americans have so embraced The Kite Runner and not any one of a number of other recent books about Afghanistan. O’Rourke finds the answer in the novel’s familiar theme of sin and redemption, but she argues that this personal drama undermines Hosseini’s other purpose in the book, to provide a sweeping and realistic picture of modern-day Afghanistan. Gale Resources
“Kahled Hosseini.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. “Kahled Hosseini.” Newsmakers, Issue 3. Detroit: Gale, 2008. “Kahled Hosseini.” Something about the Author. Vol. 156. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
Kahled Hosseini’s official website, http://www.khaled hosseini.com, provides biography, an introduction to his works, and discussion videos conducted by the author. The home page also includes guest reviews, Hosseini’s speaking engagement schedule, a podcast with excerpts from his novels and author commen tary, and information on the Kahled Hosseini Foundation. Audio versions of interviews with Hosseini conducted by National Public Radio are available at http://www. npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=1358775 (Weekend Edition Sunday Online, July 27, 2003), http://www.npr.org/templates/ story/story.php?storyId=4795618 (Fresh Air, 11 Aug. 2005), and http://www.npr.org/tem plates/story/story.php?storyId=14495734 (18 Sept. 2007).
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The Kite Runner For Further Reading
Ahmedi, Farah. The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2005. Print. Best-selling memoir by a young Afghan girl who stepped on a landmine during the war between the Soviets and the mujahideen. Rescued by a humanitarian organization and transported to Germany, Ahmedi returned to Afghanistan two years later to see most of her family killed by rocket fire. She made her way to the United States at the age of fourteen. “Backgrounder: Afghanistan’s Struggles Have Long History.” CNNfyi.com. Web. 8 July 2010. http:// archives.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/10/23/afghani stan/index.html A concise history of Afghanistan and the reasons for American involvement there. Halbfinger, David M. “Studio Delays Release of The Kite Runner to Protect Its Child Stars.” New York Times 157.54087 (4 Oct. 2007): E1(L). Recounts the controversy over the release of the film version of The Kite Runner, which pitted studio executives against the parents of the child actors, who had to be evacuated from Kabul for fear that pirated DVDs of the movie would further incite long-standing animosity between the Hazara and the Pashtun. Of particular concern was the scene in the film where Assef, a Pashtun, rapes Hassan, a Hazara. Semple, Kirk. “With Color and Panache, Afghans Fight a Different Kind of War.” New York Times 157.54159 (15 Dec. 2007): A6(L). Documents the renewed popularity of kite-fighting, banned during the Taliban’s rule. Semple explains the history and
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strategy of the game and speaks with the local artisan hired to make the kites and train the actors for the movie version of the novel. Sherman, Sue. Cambridge Wizard Student Guide: “The Kite Runner.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Chapter-by-chapter guide to the novel written by a teacher, with background notes on the author and Afghanistan. Slayden, Judi. In Search of the Kite Runner. Atlanta: Chalice Press, 2007. Print. An introduction to Islamic thought as it bears on the themes and ethnic conflicts in the novel. Adaptations
The Kite Runner. Dir. Marc Forster. Perf. Khalid Abdalla, Shaun Toub, Homayoun Ershadi, Elham Ehsas, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, and Atossa Leoni. Dreamworks, 2007. Film. Banned by the Afghan government because of the rape scene and the ethnic tensions disclosed, the movie won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and was ranked by film critic Roger Ebert as the fifth best picture of 2007. The Kite Runner. Dir. David Ira Goldstein. Perf. Lowell Abellon, Barzin Akhaven, Rinabeth Apostol, Thomas Fiscella, Gregor Paslawsky, and Adam Yazbeck. San Jose Repertory Theater, San Jose, California. 28 Mar. 2009. Performance. World premiere of the play adapted from the novel by Matthew Spangler. Considered true to its source, the dramatic version has been popular and is currently touring the country. Janet Mullane
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The Known World By Edward P. Jones
W Introduction Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, The Known World is a fictional history of plantation life in Manchester County, Virginia, in the days before the start of the Civil War. The novel is a unique contribution to American literature for its examination of a little-known but especially painful aspect of antebellum life: the practice of freed blacks who themselves became slave owners. In the words of critic Mark Harris, “This is slavery as it has never been written about or imagined before, and it is essential reading.” At the core of The Known World is the life story of Henry Townsend, a former slave who at his untimely death at the age of thirty-one leaves more than fifty acres of land and thirty-three slaves to his young black wife, Caldonia. The narrative moves forward and backward in time from Henry’s boyhood to the chaotic days after his funeral, unraveling on a broad canvas featuring dozens of characters an entire social history of Manchester County, circa 1830-1860. The novel also projects into the future to reveal the legacies of the characters and the fate of the county as a whole. By subverting reader’s expectations with an anomalous angle on African American history, Edward P. Jones addresses many of the ironies of slavery as an institution, thereby inviting a reassessment of received history and current race relations in the United States.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Known World is realistically detailed, representing years of research on Jones’s part. The author adds to the aura of historical authenticity with frequent references to
fake, albeit historically founded, academic accounts and statistical data. According to Jonathan Yardley, Jones’s Manchester County is “first cousin to [William] Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County,” with its own elaborate mythology: “the largest county in Virginia, a place of 2,191 slaves, 142 free Negroes, 939 whites, and 136 Indians, most of them Cherokee but with a sprinkling of Choctaw.” The premise of The Known World is surprising, even unthinkable, to some readers, especially those familiar with authentic slave narratives and their recent revivals in the works of such authors as Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Ishmael Reed. But actual census figures show that a small proportion of free blacks owned slaves in the antebellum South. Some of the free blacks listed as owning slaves had in fact purchased family members from other slave owners—like Henry’s father, Augustus Townsend—but others—like Henry himself—owned slaves who were unrelated by birth and used them as workers. It was also possible that freed blacks could be sold back into slavery, a practice that became more common after the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which decreed that law enforcement officials capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners. In Jones’s novel, Augustus is accosted by three slave patrollers hired to capture escaped slaves. When Augustus produces his “free papers,” one of the bounty hunters swallows them. Augustus is later sold to a slave speculator for fifty dollars. The Manchester Counter sheriff, John Skiffington, makes every effort to dispense justice equally between blacks and whites, but, as Augustus’s predicament indicates, his white deputies took advantage of their superior social status to intimidate blacks, even free ones, into submission.
W Themes The panoramic scope of The Known World, combined with its focus on a slave-owning freed black, precludes
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ALICE is Henry’s slave, canny for pretending to be feebleminded. She leads Moses’s wife and son to freedom in Washington, D.C. DARCY is a corrupt speculator who buys the free Augustus from patroller Harvey Travis. Darcy eventually sells Augustus in Georgia. JEBEDIAH DICKINSON is a black man whose owner, the Reverend Mann, contests his freedom. Jebediah shows up at Fern Elston’s house demanding payment on a gambling debt from Fern’s husband, Ramsey Elston. FERN ELSTON is an educated black, the teacher of Manchester County’s free blacks. She can pass for white and owns slaves. She learns of the unfaithfulness of her husband, Ramsey Elston, and falls in love with Jebediah Dickinson but he does not return the feelings. MINERVA is the slave child given by Counsel and Belle Skiffington to cousin John Skiffington on his wedding day. Minerva is treated like a daughter by John Skiffington and his wife, Winifred. MOSES is the first slave owned by Henry Townsend, bought from William Robbins. Moses is a demanding overseer and uses his position to woo Caldonia after Henry’s death. He arranges for his wife and son to run away so he can marry Caldonia but she never sees him as anything more than a slave and a diversion. WILLIAM ROBBINS is the wealthiest plantation owner in Manchester County. He grows to respect his slave Henry Townsend as a son and is responsible for establishing Henry as a plantation owner. He is married to a white woman, Ethel, but is in love with his black slave Philomena. JOHN SKIFFINGTON is the sheriff of Manchester County. He is a religious man who tries to be fair and to uphold the laws without prejudice. CALDONIA TOWNSEND is Henry’s wife. She determines against freeing the slaves after Henry’s death and has a brief romantic entanglement with Moses. HENRY TOWNSEND is the black slave owner whose life and legacy propel the events of the story. He is the son of Augustus and Mildred. He is mentored by his owner, William Robbins, even before Augustus secures his freedom.
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In the novel The Known World, African American slaves work on a plantation in Virginia. ª North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy
any simple answers to the moral questions posed by slavery, the central subject of the novel. The many contradictory aspects of slavery and its effects on family and community are inherent in the subverted relationship of master and slave represented by Henry Townsend and his field hands. Despite Henry’s aspirations “to be a better master than any white man he had ever known,” the alternative world of Henry’s estate perversely mirrors the archetypal image of the cruel white master and the noble slave longing for freedom. Thematically, Jones is intensely interested in showing how slavery distorts judgment, warping the minds of both the oppressor and the oppressed, so that ideas of humanity, justice, and family become
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corrupted. Jones’s message transcends racial lines or the distinctions of social class, for almost anyone who participates in slavery is morally compromised. Henry and his immediate family illustrate the point. Henry’s decision to purchase slaves horrifies Augustus, who has labored for years as a woodcarver to buy back his wife and son from William Robbins, the wealthiest white planter in the county. Robbins becomes Henry’s mentor and benefactor, usurping Augustus’s role as father. Robbins has two other families as well, a white wife and daughter, long replaced in his affections by his black mistress, Philomena, and their two children, Louis and Dora. After Henry’s death, his widow, Caldonia, a free-born black, struggles with the guilt of owning slaves but is more reluctant to sacrifice her wealth. Caldonia is courted by the plantation overseer, Moses, “the first slave Henry Townsend had bought. . . . It took Moses more than two weeks to come to understand that someone wasn’t fiddling with him and that indeed a black man, two shades darker than himself, owned him and any shadow he made.” Moses dreams of marrying Caldonia so that he can take over Henry’s role as master. To that end, he arranges for his wife and son to run away.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Edward P. Jones is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Known World (2003). A fictional history valued for its attention to a neglected aspect of antebellum life, The Known World focuses on the life of a freed black slave owner. Jones is also the author of two highly acclaimed collections of short stories about black neighborhoods in his hometown of Washington, D.C., Lost in the City (1992) and All Hagar’s Children (2006). Throughout his work, Jones has been concerned thematically to reveal the interaction of the past and the present. The attitudes and values exposed in The Known World are considered insightful context for Jones’s short stories, many of which concern transplanted Southerners coping with urban realities.
W Style Yardley described The Known World as “fiction on a grand scale, a Victorian novel transplanted to Ol’ Dixie. Victorian, that is, because it is populous and
An African American slave, much like the slaves owned by Henry Townsend in the story, is bound by chains. Anthony Boccaccio TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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sprawls over many years and looks out into the larger society rather than inward toward the self.” Henry Townsend’s death sets in motion events that reverberate throughout Manchester County, opening up his life to inspection as the world he created descends into chaos. By most critical accounts, Jones is remarkably dispassionate in his role as omniscient narrator given the horror of some of his subject matter. In an interview with Donna Seaman, Jones explained his understated tone: “I didn’t want to inject any more emotion into the situation. The events are particularly horrendous, so I wanted simply to report. The reader will bring his or her own feelings to it.” Jones’s narrative technique is nonlinear and marked by frequent digressions, so that the novel does not progress in chronological sequence. Jones weaves together stories of slaves and free persons, slave owners white and black, Native Americans, law enforcement officials, and people apart from slavery but nevertheless caught up in its tragedy. He writes from each of their points of view, switching between colloquial diction and standard English, creating fully individualized characters who give voice to the competing interests in a community brutally divided over issues of freedom, property, human dignity, and family. The interplay of the shifting perspectives affords a comprehensive look at slavery as a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Jones’s frequent allusions to the twentieth-century descendants of the novel’s characters and his fabricated references to twentieth-century scholarship suggest that Jones is also interested in how slavery bears on contemporary life.
enter, but that structure eventually accounts for much of the novel’s evocative power. Jones has a kind of biblical style that suggests whole lives in a few stark details from a perspective that’s alternately microscopic and telescopic.” Jones’s focus on a neglected aspect of American slavery has led critics to look at the ways in which The Known World critiques the very idea of historical documentation. As Katherine Clay Bassard points out, “Jones regularly disrupts an historical epistemology based on written documents. . . . [The] ‘known world’ Jones dismantles is as much our present as our past, inasmuch as our present notions of power stem from our received notions about race, gender, and the institution of slavery.”
W Critical Reception
Jones, Edward P., and Donna Seaman. “The Booklist Interview: Edward P. Jones.” Booklist 12 (15 Feb. 2004): 1027. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 223. Detroit, Gale: 2006. Print.
The Known World was published to nearly universal acclaim. Critics have praised the patchwork narrative for getting at the heart of the issues associated with slavery, including fundamental questions of human ownership and power over others. In addition, critics have admired the multiple perspectives and the historical documentation for providing a variety of contexts within which to consider modern-day race and class consciousness. Yardley enthused, “Jones has woven nothing less than a tapestry of slavery, an artifact as vast and complex as anything to be found in the Louvre. Every thread is perfectly in place.” Still, some critics have complained that the novel is too dense, made dauntingly complex by the sheer number of its characters and incidents. But in the same breath these reviewers have often sided with the majority of critics in marveling at Jones’s ability to flesh out so many different characters. Ron Charles’s remarks are representative: “The scrambled collection of events and characters makes this a difficult story to
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bassard, Katherine Clay. “Imagining Other Worlds: Race, Gender, and the ‘Power Line’ in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.” African American Review 42: 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2008): 407. Print. Charles, Ron. “America’s Peculiar Institution.” Christian Science Monitor 14 Aug. 2003. Web. 27 June 2010. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/ known_world/ Harris, Mark. Rev. of The Known World by Edward P. Jones. E.W.com Entertainment Weekly 22 Aug. 2003. Web. 27 June 2010. http://www.ew.com/ew/ article/0,,476474,00.html Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Amistad, HarperCollins, 2003. Print.
Yardley, Jonathan. Rev. of The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. Washington Post 24 Aug. 2003. Web. 28 June 2010. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/ known_world/ Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Deusner, Stephen M. Rev. of The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. PopMatters. Web. 27 June 2010. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/known_world/ Praises the multiple points of view in the novel as a summation of slavery’s lasting legacy and as a way of accessing the past through the present and vice versa. Donaldson, Susan V. “Telling Forgotten Stories of Slavery in the Postmodern South.” Southern Literary TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Journal 40.2 (2008): 267+. Print. Compares The Known World and Valerie Martin’s Property as “post- or anti-plantation tradition” novels, primarily on the basis of their shared interest in examining ideas of power and domination as they relate not only to slavery but to master narratives of history as well. Jones, Edward P., and Robert Birnbuam. “Author of The Known World Converses with Robert Birnbaum.” identitytheory.com 21 Jan. 2004. Web. 28 June 2010. http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birn baum138.php. Conversation in which Jones talks about the genesis of the Known World, his general understanding of history, and the forward direction of his career. Meadows, Susannah. “Shadowlands of Slavery: A New Novel Blurs the Line between Bond and Free.” Newsweek 142 (8 Sept. 2003): 57. Print. Praises Jones’s evocation of the moral ambiguities of slavery but expresses disappointment that Jones never fully explains Henry Townsend’s motivation for becoming a slave owner. Pinckney, Darryl. “Gone with the Wind.” New York Review of Books. 51.16 (21 Oct. 2004): 14+. Print. Thoughtful review emphasizing the singular perspective of The Known World and its importance as a commentary on the practice of writing history. Pinckney, however, is most struck by the pervasive sense of loss in the book. Vernon, John. “People Who Owned People.” New York Times Book Review 31 Aug. 2003: 9. Print. Argues that the power of The Known World lies in the incongruity of Henry Townsend’s role as slave-turned-master and in Jones’s crafting of a novel of epic scope that reads like a fairy tale. Gale Resources
“American Slave Narratives.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Janet Mullane and Robert Thomas Wilson. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. Print. “Edward P. Jones.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Ed. Amy Elisabeth Fuller. Vol. 190.
Edward_P_Jones/index.aspx, provides an interview with the author devoted to Known World and a reading guide to the book with discussion ques tions. The site also allows access to Jones’s official website. Professor Amy Hungerford of Yale University offers a two-session lecture on The Known World as part of Academic Earth’s online video courses. http://academicearth.org/lectures/edward-pjones-the-known-world-1 For Further Reading
Butler, Octavia. Kindred. New York: Doubleday, 1979. Print. Novel in which the protagonist is haunted by her enslaved ancestors and travels back and forth in time between California, circa 1976, and antebellum Maryland. Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage. New York: Scribner, 1990. Print. Novel about a freed black who inadvertently boards a slave ship bound for Africa and struggles with his conflicting feelings for his white American crewmates and the suffering Allmuseri tribesman. Koger, Larry. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1985. Print. Historical study based on the federal census and other collected data, such as wills, bills of sale, and tax returns. Koger unveils the complexity of black slave ownership and its rationales, with attention to the black caste system. Martin, Valerie. Property. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Print. Fictional slave narrative told from the point of view of a remorseless female slave owner in Louisiana. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print. Highly celebrated novel based on the true story of a slave woman who killed her daughter rather than allow her to be sold.
Open Web Sources
Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Print. Novel first published in 1976 that combines satire, allegory, and farce to lampoon the slave narrative and, particularly, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The novel’s protagonist escapes from his master’s plantation, flees to Canada, and then returns to the plantation to liberate his fellow slaves.
The website of Jones’s publisher, http://www. harpercollins.com/authors/5002/
Smith, Valerie. “Neo-slave Narratives.” The Cambridge Companion to the African American
“The Known World: A Novel.” Literary Newsmakers for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Print.
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Slave Narrative, ed. by Audrey Fisch 168-85. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. Examines the diverse set of texts that have come to be classified as “neo-slave narratives,” using such works as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, David Bradley’s
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The Chaneysville Incident, and Jones’s The Known World to show how the genre has transformed itself over the years. Janet Mullane
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The Lacuna By Barbara Kingsolver
W Introduction Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna (2009) is a novel about history and truth set in Mexico and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. The word lacuna refers to a gap or something that is missing. Frida Kahlo points out to Harrison Shepherd, the central character of the novel, “The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know” (218). The novel presents Shepherd himself as a lacuna who quietly lived alongside some of the greatest names in revolutionary art and politics of the early to midtwentieth century. In this novel Kingsolver continues her tradition of writing and celebrating the literature of social justice. The Lacuna takes on communism and the Red Scare, homophobia, the lack of ethics in reporting, and revisionist history. The Lacuna was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, a prestigious literary award from the United Kingdom that acknowledges great literature written by women.
W Literary and Historical Context
The first half the twentieth century was a time of worldwide political and cultural upheaval. During the first two decades, revolutions occurred in Russia and Mexico. By the late 1940s, the globe had been rocked by two world wars, devastating conflicts that left millions dead and destroyed the landscape and major cities in scores of countries. Communism, a political movement that emphasizes a classless society and communal ownership, was on the rise in nations such as Russia and China. In the early twenty-first century, communism is generally thought to have failed to provide for workers as promised due to government mismanagement, which
led to despotism. For example, Vladimir Lenin was a capable, intelligent leader who brought the Russian people out from czarist rule and into communism, but his successor, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), was egomaniacal, cruel, and oppressive. Stalin’s gulags may have resulted in as many as twenty million deaths and his collectivization of agriculture caused widespread famine. In the United States, conflict with Stalin following the end of World War II in 1945 led to ardent anticommunism that peaked during the 1950s. Known now as the Red Scare, U.S. anticommunism took the form of finger-pointing, permanent job loss, baseless accusations, extreme patriotism, and constant fear and suspicion. One center of the Red Scare was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate committees led by Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957). These committees investigated claims that certain individuals were communists or communist sympathizers. People who came before McCarthy and were falsely accused were frequently ruined professionally by the accusations and suspicion.
W Themes The concept of truth is a significant theme within The Lacuna. Kingsolver takes great pains to show that truth is not a simple matter of black and white but is full of gray areas. One tool the author uses to illustrate the complexity of truth is to show how the news media twist facts and invent reality. Shepherd is frustrated by the fact that people are more likely to be led by what they read in newspapers than the reality that is right in front of them. As he grows older, Shepherd learns to ignore the inaccuracies of the press, believing that “God speaks for the man who keeps quiet” (349). Truth is also relevant to an historical novel which tells a fictional story based on actual events. The Lacuna includes Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Lev Trotsky, all historical figures, and major events in the novel are based
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The Lacuna
MAJOR CHARACTERS VIOLET BROWN, a demure widow in her forties, is hired by Harrison to be his secretary when he is living in North Carolina. FRIDA KAHLO, the famous surrealist painter and Diego’s wife, befriends Harrison and encourages his writing. DIEGO RIVERA, the acclaimed modern painter and Frida’s husband, hires Harrison first as a plaster-mixer for his murals and later as a cook in his household. HARRISON SHEPHERD, born of a Mexican mother and American father and the main character of this book, is a quiet, thoughtful man who makes a career as a novelist. SALOME SHEPHERD, Harrison’s mother, is a restless woman who chases after men with money. LEV DAVIDOVICH TROTSKY, a noted revolutionary, lives in Mexico in hiding from Stalin’s assassins. Harrison works as a secretary for Trotsky, who encourages him in his writing.
on historical events. A talented researcher and author, Kingsolver weaves together truth and fiction to create a story that invites the reader into the past to experience, not only life as it once was, but also the unchanging qualities of humankind.
W Style The Lacuna is an epistolary novel, which means the story is told through a series of documents, including diaries, newspaper clippings, and letters. This literary technique lends veracity to the story and provides a sense of intimacy and immediacy to characters and action. In The Lacuna, Kingsolver blurs the line between the historical record and her fictitious hermitlike writer, Harrison Shepherd, blending the two into a narrative that brings to life various significant historical figures from the 1930s and 1940s.
W Critical Reception Kingsolver’s first novel in nine years, The Lacuna received mixed reviews. Critics were impressed with her lyrical language and use of historical material, but
A Mexican museum dedicated to artists Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo. The Lacuna tells the story of Harrison Shepherd, a man who lived quietly with Rivera, Kahlo, and Soviet deportee Lev Trotsky. ª Diana Bier Frida Kahlo Paint/Alamy
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some objected to Harrison Shepherd’s quiet, observant character. Margaret Randall gave it a positive review in the Women’s Review of Books: “Kingsolver’s prose is so beautiful it often rises to the level of poetry, while the book is so expertly researched that the reader isn’t absolutely sure whether this character or that is real or invented.” In an audio review on National Public Radio’s program Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan argued that Kingsolver failed to extrapolate anything new from history for contemporary readers: “Kingsolver falls short of that ambition and, instead, ends on an old-fashioned sentimental note, inviting readers to feel affection for the Zelig-like Harrison and a life not quite lived.” Washington Post Book World fiction editor Ron Charles declared this novel to be “the most mature and ambitious one [Kingsolver has] written during her celebrated 20-year career, but it’s also her most demanding.” Charles considered it a qualified success; like Corrigan, he did not believe it would change anyone’s opinion on the past but, he wrote, “this rich novel is certainly bigger than its politics.” New York Times Book Review critic Liesl Schillinger called this book “breathtaking”: “The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver’s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Charles, Ron. “Tender Strides against an Epic Backdrop.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. www.washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 4 Nov. 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Corrigan, Maureen. “The Lacuna, Kingsolver’s Disappointing Return.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Fresh Air. National Public Radio. WUOM, Ann Arbor, 3 Nov. 2009. Print. Kingsolver, Barbara. The Lacuna. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print. Randall, Margaret. “The Personal and the Political.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Women’s Review of Books May-June 2010: 25-27. Print. Schillinger, Liesl. “Artists and Idols.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. New York Times Book Review 8 Nov. 2009: 9(L). Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barbara Kingsolver was born April 8, 1955, in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in rural Kentucky where her father worked as a country doctor. She began writing when she was in second grade but did not consider herself to be a writer until much later in life. Kingsolver graduated from DePauw University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in biology; she earned her master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona in 1981. She began publishing short stories and poetry in the early 1980s, giving herself the confidence to pursue writing as a career. Her first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988. In 1999 Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to recognize literature that promotes social change. The Lacuna, her sixth novel, won the Orange Prize in 2009. As of 2010, Kingsolver lived on a farm in Virginia with her husband and daughters.
Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kirkus Reviews 1 Sept. 2009. Print. Celebrates the color and drama of the first half of the novel but considers the second half to be dull and unoriginal. Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. New Yorker 23 Nov. 2009: 113. Print. Presents a mixed review that favors the first half of the book over the second. Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Publishers Weekly 17 Aug. 2009: 1. Print. Offers a positive review, naming Kingsolver a “true literary artist.” Lakhani, Nina. “The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. www. independent.co.uk. Independent 1 Nov. 2009. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Praises the novel as a “compelling” story but criticizes it for slow pacing. Maristed, Kai. “The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. latimes.com. Los Angeles Times 2 Nov. 2009. Web. 8 Sept. 2010. Disparages Kingsolver’s tidy storyline and ending while celebrating her gift with language and skill at research. Wilkinson, Joanne. “The Lacuna.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Booklist 15 Sept. 2009: 5. Print. Gives a positive review, especially of the ending. Gale Resources
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bissell, Sally. “Kingsolver, Barbara. The Lacuna.” Rev. of The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2009: 67. Print. Declares this novel to be Kingsolver’s best and most ambitious to date.
“Barbara Kingsolver.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1000054305&v=2.1&u=aadl&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w
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“Barbara Kingsolver.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 269. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1103900000&v=2.1&u= aadl&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w “Barbara Kingsolver.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Document URL http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1115830000&v=2.1&u=aadl&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Barbara Kingsolver: The Authorized Site, the author’s official Web site, contains information about Kingsolver’s books (both fiction and nonfiction), awards won, her biography, and news about the author and her works. The site also maintains a page about the Bellwether Prize, which Kingsolver established to support the writing of literature about social justice. A form for contacting the author is available on the Web site at http://www.kingsolver.com/ index.html HarperCollins maintains a Web site about Kingsolver and her books. The HarperCollins site includes a short biography, links to Web sites maintained by the author, links to interviews, purchasing information about her books, digital browsing and searching of Kingsolver’s books, and news pertaining to the author and her works. Kingsolver’s HarperCollins Web site is available at http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/ 5311/Barbara_Kingsolver/index.aspx
manuscript by a new author and guarantees publication of the chosen work. Called the Bellwether Prize, its focus is to promote the literature of social justice. The Web site of the Bellwether Prize is http://www. bellwetherprize.org For Further Reading
Cortes, Hernando. Five Letters of Cortes to the Emperor: 1519-1526. Trans. J. Bayard Morris. New York: Norton, 1991. Print. Translates Cortes’s letters home describing his invasion of Mexico. Esquival, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Print. A novel of forbidden love and irresistible food in turn-of-the-century Mexico. Kahlo, Frida. The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate SelfPortrait. New York: Abrams, 2005. Print. Chronicles the last ten years of Kahlo’s life, presented in her original handwriting, with her sketches. Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Print. Shows life in the Congo in the 1950s and how the family of an overbearing missionary minister survives both his selfrighteousness and the dangerous political climate. Leon-Portillo, Miguel. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Trans. Lysander Kemp. Boston: Beacon, 2006. Print. From 1962, collects Aztec narratives about Cortes in Mexico. Trotsky, Leon. My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. Mineola: Dover, 2007. Print. Chronicles the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 from firsthand experience. Carol Ullmann
In 1999 Kingsolver established a literary prize that awards $25,000 in even-numbered years to an unpublished
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Landscape of Farewell By Alex Miller
W Introduction Alex Miller’s novel Landscape of Farewell (2007) tells the story of Max Otto, a German academic whose unlikely friendship with a young Australian scholar offers him a second chance at life. Reeling from the death of his wife, the recently retired Max plans to commit suicide after delivering his farewell address at the university in Hamburg. Instead, his lecture on historical massacres is interrupted by an antagonistic young professor named Vita McLelland, who lambasts Max for ignoring her people, the Indigenous Australians. When the presentation ends, Max apologizes to Vita for presenting a lecture that was not his best work. Vita is caught off guard by the apology and invites Max out for a drink, not realizing that she is preventing his planned suicide. As the friendship between the pair develops, Vita invites Max to Australia. There, Max meets her uncle, Dougald Gnapun, and helps him pen the story of his ancestor. As he contemplates Dougald’s great-grandfather’s role in a horrific massacre, Max is forced to come to terms with his own guilt over his country’s history and the horrors of the Holocaust. The novel has won praise for its treatment of historical and sociological issues of racial violence and national trauma, as well as for its examination of more personal issues such as shame, guilt, and regret.
W Literary and Historical Context
Landscape of Farewell draws on the historically strained relationship between Indigenous Australians (also known as Aborigines) and Australia’s white majority. When European colonists arrived in Australia during the late eighteenth century, they brought with them diseases that decimated the continent’s indigenous population, which dwindled from more than 300,000 before contact to
fewer than 100,000 by 1900. In the past century, Australia’s indigenous people have struggled against bigotry. Although Indigenous Australians won suffrage in 1962, followed by limited land rights in 1972, they remain underrepresented politically, and many live in dire poverty on Aboriginal settlements. In the novel, Dougald Gnapun is descended from a well-respected indigenous family who traditionally played the role of tribal peacemakers and, when necessary, protectors. When white colonists first arrived on their land, a group of indigenous people appealed to Dougald’s great-grandfather, Gnapun, for help, and he led a massacre of the colonists. Dougald asks Max to write the story of this massacre for him. The tale is based on the real-life October 17, 1861, massacre of nineteen colonists at Cullin-la-Ringo, which, Miller explains in his acknowledgments, “is said to have been the largest-ever massacre of white settlers by Indigenous Australians.” Miller also touches on the massacre of Gypsies during the Holocaust. It is believed that at least 250,000 Gypsies were killed by the Nazis, more than any other ethnic group apart from the Jews. In the novel, Max still is struggling with the memory of a childhood encounter with a young Gypsy girl whose family had been killed in front of her. She asked the young Max for some bread, but he did not help her. Decades later, he feels guilt and shame over his failure to act. He still can picture her face, and he wonders whether she survived the war.
W Themes Taking as its central character an elderly historian, Miller’s novel explores the relationship of the individual to his or her personal and cultural past. Early in the narrative, Vita innocently asks Max what his father did during World War II. He explains to her that no one dares to ask that question in Germany; when the war ended, he says, “[W]e held our breath in case anyone dared ask such a question as the one you asked
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Landscape of Farewell
MAJOR CHARACTERS DOUGALD GNAPUN is Vita’s uncle who befriends Max. He also appeared in Miller’s Journey to the Stone Country (2003). Like Max, Dougald is a widower who is struggling with the past. He is having difficulty finding a way to preserve the story of his great-grandfather, of which he is the last living conduit. After he tells the story to Max, he takes Max to the area where his great-grandfather once lived and where the man’s remains are buried in a cave. Soon after, he has a stroke and dies. GNAPUN is the great-grandfather of Dougald Gnapun. Many years earlier, he led an infamous massacre of white settlers. Dougald is the last person alive who knows Gnapun’s story, and he wants to preserve it before he dies. Max uses his talents as a writer to create a short fictionalized account of the massacre. VITA MCLELLAND is a young professor of Indigenous Australian descent. She is visiting Hamburg at the time of Max’s farewell speech and heckles him for it. After he apologizes for its poor quality, the two develop a friendship, and she invites him to Australia. MAX OTTO is a retired history professor who is struggling to come to terms with the recent death of his wife. His plan to commit suicide is derailed by Vita McLelland, who encourages him to explore his own history and his father’s role in World War II, a topic that he has avoided out of shame and fear. While visiting Vita in Australia, he bonds with her uncle Dougald and writes the story of the man’s great-grandfather. At the end of the novel, he has returned to Germany and is looking forward to a visit from Vita, as well as to finally delving into his father’s wartime service.
me. . . . We just wanted to be viewed as human beings again. To be ordinary people. To be part of life and not have to apologise for being the children of our fathers.” Vita encourages Max to investigate his father’s role in the war so that he can come to terms with his own feelings of guilt and shame. Vita encourages Max to develop a relationship with her uncle Dougald, who also is struggling with his family’s role in past violence. For Dougald, however, the issue is not one of inherited guilt. Indeed, he sees his great-grandfather, Gnapun, as a hero, even though he was responsible for the deaths of many white settlers, among them women and children. Dougald’s problem is that he is unable to find a way to preserve the story of the massacre, which has been passed down through his family but will die with him if he cannot find a way to convey it. In the end, Max is able to write Gnapun’s story, embellishing the details that Dougald tells him with his own imaginings to create a compelling account of the massacre. Max later shares the story with Vita, ensuring its longevity. Dougald, in turn, inspires Max with the courage to face his own demons and to investigate his father’s actions during World War II. At the end of the novel, Max is poised to begin this undertaking.
W Style Landscape of Farewell is a work of historical fiction in which real events, such as the massacre at Cullin-laRingo, are re-created using a combination of fact and fictional embellishment. In the novel’s acknowledgments, Miller explains that after hearing the story in his youth, he wondered how such a massacre was orchestrated, and decided that it must have required “an Aboriginal leader of great character and ruthless strategic intelligence.” This reflection inspired his creation of the fictional
A friendship with a young Australian woman gives a retired German academic a new lease on life in Landscape of Farewell. The friendship leads the academic to Australia, where he is forced to examine feelings of guilt and regret. Oskar/Shutterstock.com
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Aboriginal leader Gnapun. The novel’s story within a story, Max’s fictional adaptation of the tale of Dougald’s great-grandfather, mirrors the processes that shape Miller’s novel as a whole. Max explains that in writing the story, he drew on his own historical interest in massacres, as well as his experiences as a child during World War II: “[T]he spirit of Dougald’s story and the spirit of my own story merged in my imagination and became one—until I was Gnapun the warrior and he was me.” Landscape of Farewell is a realist novel, one in which the author strives to invest fictional events with verisimilitude, or a sense of reality. Miller’s investment in realism is apparent in the detailed descriptions of the daily experiences of his central character. The result, Lisa Gorton suggests in the Age, is a work that combines “to an unusual degree realism and inwardness.” Gorton goes on to suggest that “Max’s narrative style is the novel’s main achievement. With its stilted elegance, it suggests how far the story has taken Max from his ordinary habits.” Angela Benning’s Sydney Morning Herald review of the novel praises Miller’s skill in creating compelling characters, proclaiming that “Miller’s great strengths here are his often startling, sometimes mesmerising facility to twist the language into new patterns and images, his ability to carve idiosyncratic characters out of the crooked and gnarled off-cuts of humanity, rather [than] fashion them from smoother timbers.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex Miller was born on December 27, 1936, in London, England, and immigrated to Australia when he was sixteen. There, he heard stories about the massacre at Cullin-la-Ringo that later would inspire Landscape of Farewell. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with degrees in English and history in 1965. After working in a number of professions, including teaching and ranching, Miller published his first novel, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain, in 1988. His third novel, The Ancestor Game (1993), proved to be his breakthrough text, garnering two prestigious literary awards: the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Miller’s subsequent novels, including The Sitters (1995), Conditions of Faith (2000), Journey to the Stone Country (2002), Prochownik’s Dream (2005), and Landscape of Farewell, confirmed his reputation as one of his country’s top novelists.
that “Many of his ruminations and speculations, whether psychological or quasi-philosophical, I found ordinary, and they impeded the forward canter of the narrative.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
W Critical Reception Upon its publication, Landscape of Farewell was embraced by readers and critics alike. The novel won the 2008 Manning Clark House National Culture Award, which recognizes a work of art that makes a significant contribution to the Australian community. It also was short-listed for several prestigious Australian literary awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, and the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal. Although Landscape of Farewell has not been widely reviewed outside Australia, critical assessments of the novel have been overwhelmingly positive. Reviewing the novel for the Advertiser, for example, Katharine England writes that “Miller’s cast of finely drawn, reflective characters enact a powerful and engaging central story.” Numerous critics have focused their attention on the book’s depiction of sensitive issues such as race relations and national trauma. Writing in Australia’s Courier Mail, Sue Bond notes that Miller is “eminently skilled in giving fictional space to the complex issues of trauma, guilt, massacre and reconciliation.” The novel occasionally has been criticized, particularly by commentators who find Max’s character and perspective unsympathetic. In his review of the novel for Weekend Australian, for example, Jack Hibberd confesses
Benning, Angela. “The Dirt That Lies within Our Blood.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Sydney Morning Herald 17 Nov. 2007: 32. Print. Bond, Sue. “Grief, Guilt and the Landscape of Truth.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Courier Mail [Brisbane] 10 Nov. 2007: M35. Print. England, Katharine. “Lessons from the Past.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Advertiser [Adelaide] 3 Nov. 2007: W12. Print. Gorton, Lisa. “In the Company of Ghosts.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Age [Melbourne] 10 Nov. 2007: 23. Print. Hibberd, Jack. “Journey into the Past, via Killing Fields.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Weekend Australian 24 Nov. 2007: 10. Print. Miller, Alex. Landscape of Farewell. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2007. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Carbonell, Rachel. “Path to Redemption.” Rev. of Landscape of Farewell, by Alex Miller. Herald Sun [Melbourne] 23 Feb. 2008: 26. Print. A positive review that praises the novel’s portrait of the friendship between Max and Dougald.
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McPhee, Hilary. “Shadows that Cross Our Souls.” Australian [Sydney] 7 Nov. 2007: 5. Print. Explores Miller’s work, including Landscape of Farewell, through the lens of his biography. Moran, Jennifer. “And Then There Were Five: In Search of a Timeless Novel.” Canberra Times 18 Apr. 2008: A3. Print. Considers Landscape of Farewell alongside other finalists for Australia’s Miles Franklin Literary Award. Noonan, Kathleen. “Crafting a Powerful Read.” Courier Mail [Brisbane] 10 Nov. 2007: M35. Print. An interview in which Miller discusses his life, his approach to writing, and the attention he has received for Landscape of Farewell. Perkin, Corrie. “Journey into the Heart of a Massacre.” Weekend Australian 16 Feb. 2008: 14. Print. Focuses on the character of Dougald Gnapun and the novel’s depiction of Indigenous Australians and their history. Gale Resources
“Alex Miller.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Web site provides audio and a transcript of Alex Miller’s appearance on ABC National Radio’s The Book Show, in which he discusses Landscape of Farewell. http:// www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2007/ 2086393.htm The Web site of Allen and Unwin offers an overview of the novel, as well as a list of awards, a reading group
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guide, and a brief biography of Miller. http:// www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page= 94&book=9781741753752 For Further Reading
Flood, Josephine. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Print. This nonfiction work offers a historical and cultural overview of Indigenous Australians. Jaspers, Karl. The Question of German Guilt. New York: Capricorn Books, 1961. Print. This nonfiction volume collects the popular post-World War II lectures of German philosopher Karl Jaspers on the subject of the culpability of the German people in the rise of Nazism and in World War II. Karl, Roland F., et al. Australia: Continent of Contrasts. Munich: C.J. Bucher, 2007. Print. This volume offers a textual and photographic introduction to Australia. Miller, Alex. Journey to the Stone Country. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Print. Miller’s 2002 novel about a woman starting over after she is betrayed by her husband first introduced the character of Dougald Gnapun. Perrin, Les. Cullin-la-Ringo: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tommy Wills. McDowall: Les Perrin, 1998. Print. Miller relied on this account of the massacre at Cullin-la-Ringo when writing Landscape of Farewell. Greta Gard
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Let the Great World Spin By Colum McCann
W Introduction Colum McCann uses several narrators to tell interlocking stories that revolve around Philippe Petit’s walk on a high wire strung between the World Trade Center Towers in New York on August 7, 1974. The novel begins with a reference to Petit’s high-wire performance and then moves to Ireland to introduce brothers John and Ciaran Corrigan. John Corrigan is an Irish monk, sent by his order to the Bronx in New York. Ciaran comes to find Corrigan to talk him into returning to Ireland, but Corrigan will not go back because he has established a connection with the neighborhood prostitutes, especially the mother-daughter prostitute team of Tillie and Jazzlyn. Corrigan has also forged a romantic relationship with Adelita, a South American-born nurse with two children, who works at the rest home where Corrigan volunteers. The narrative then shifts to Claire, the wife of Judge Solomon Soderberg. After losing her son in the Vietnam War, Claire joins a support group, where she meets Gloria, who lost three sons in the war. Gloria lives in the same project complex as Tillie and Jazzlyn. Both Tillie and Jazzlyn are arrested, but Tillie takes full responsibility so Jazzlyn is free to can care for her two children. However, Corrigan and Jazzlyn die in a car crash after being cut off by a man named Blaine. Blaine leaves the scene, but a few days after the accident, guilt consumes his wife Lara and she seeks out Corrigan’s family. After meeting at Corrigan’s apartment, Lara and Ciaran’s instant attraction for each other results in Lara leaving Blaine. Fictionalized flashbacks to Philippe Petit’s childhood and his plans for his high wire act introduce the next chapter. This section also focuses on Fernando Yunqué Marcano, whom McCann credits for taking a picture of a plane that passes between the towers during Petit’s walk.
The narrative shifts to Tillie, who appears before Judge Soderberg for harsher sentencing for fighting in prison on the same day as Petit’s arraignment for walking the wire. Lara, who met Tillie at Jazzlyn’s funeral, promises to bring Tillie’s grandchildren to visit. Claire brings Gloria home after a late-night visit at her house. Gloria prevents Child Protective Services from taking Jazzlyn’s children and agrees to provide foster care for them. The last chapter jumps ahead twenty years to focus on Jaslyn, Jazzyln’s daughter, and Gloria’s adopted daughter. This section details Jaslyn visiting Ciaran and Lara in Ireland; her sister, Janice, who joined the army; and lastly, Claire on her deathbed at her New York penthouse.
W Literary and Historical Context
McCann uses the setting of New York in the 1970s for his novel Let the Great World Spin. Following the 1960s, which was a decade of strong political and social division in the United States, the 1970s presented more challenges to the country. In the 1972 presidential election, Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat George McGovern. As promised, President Nixon escalated the conflict in Vietnam with the hope of ending the Vietnam War. He successfully negotiated a cease-fire in 1973, and troops came home, but many people continued to publicly denounce the U.S. role in the conflict. Nixon, however, had his own problems. Public outcry over Nixon intensified as reporters uncovered his role in the breakin of the Democratic National Party headquarters during the campaign of 1972, and its cover-up. To make matters worse, as a result of unrelated scandals in Maryland, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973. Facing economic difficulties and the threat of impeachment after
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Let the Great World Spin
MAJOR CHARACTERS ADELITA is from South America, has two children, and works as a nurse in the Bronx. She meets Corrigan at the nursing home and becomes romantically involved with him. COMPTON, a teenage computer hacker, works in Los Angeles hacking into computers across the country. On the day of Petit’s walk, Compton reaches a caller who gives him an account of Petit’s walk. CIARAN CORRIGAN is Corrigan’s brother who comes to New York to talk Corrigan into returning to Ireland to help those who want to be helped. After Corrigan’s funeral, Ciaran becomes involved with Lara, whom he eventually marries. JOHN A. CORRIGAN is a young Irish monk who is sent to the Bronx to help a group of prostitutes. GLORIA is a college-educated African American who lives in the same complex in the Bronx as Jazzlyn and Tillie. She adopts Jazzlyn’s children. JASLYN HENDERSON, the eldest of Jazzlyn’s two girls, becomes an accountant in New Orleans. She maintains a relationship with Claire long after Solomon and Gloria die. JAZZLYN HENDERSON, daughter of Tillie, is a prostitute who conducts business outside Corrigan’s apartment. TILLIE HENDERSON, the thirty-eight-year-old mother of Jazzlyn, is a prostitute who works outside the projects where Corrigan lives. LARA, an artist and former drug addict, is in the car with Blaine when he hits Corrigan’s car. Blaine drives away from the scene, but Lara feels incredible guilt, so she tracks down Ciaran. PHILIPPE PETIT walked across a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center Towers on August 7, 1974. His historical performance provides background for the narratives in the novel. CLAIRE SODERBERG, wife of Judge Solomon Soderberg, joins a group of mothers who are mourning the loss of their sons who died during the Vietnam War. On the day of Petit’s walk, Claire is hosting a meeting for the mothers at her Park Avenue penthouse. SOLOMON SODERBERG, husband of Claire, is the judge who arraigns Petit after he is arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace.
the Watergate scandal, President Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, and Vice President Gerald Ford assumed the role of president. McCann refers to the Vietnam War and Nixon’s plight in the novel, but he focuses primarily on a specific event to connect the narratives he includes in the text. On
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Let the Great World Spin revolves around Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Here, Petit walks a wire between the north and south wings of the Museum of the City of New York. ª Bettmann/Corbis
August 7, 1974, at 8:15 a.m., French-born Philippe Petit made eight crossings for forty-five minutes on two wires he and his crew strung between the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan. Originally a street performer, Petit took up high-wire walking in the 1960s, and in 1968, he began to plan how he could accomplish the great feat of engineering and then walking on a wire strung between the towers.
W Themes One of the themes in Let the Great World Spin concerns the relativity of human relationships and events that draw people together. McCann explores the reasoning behind why some events occur and the connections between people when they do happen. No matter the context, however, the events trigger connections that are everlasting with subtle and overt implications between characters of different ages and backgrounds. Using Petit’s walk as TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Let the Great World Spin
the event that allows the characters to collide with each other, McCann moves readers from character to character to emphasize the unforeseen connections people have to each other and the impact these collisions can have on their lives. Another theme McCann pursues is the need for survival in order to overcome the hurdles that life presents. Just as Petit walked across a wire strung between the two World Trade Towers and survived, McCann’s characters walk their own metaphorical tight rope with hope of surviving. Gloria, Claire, Ciaran, and Lara all manage to survive, but other characters, such as Corrigan, Jazzlyn, and Tillie, meet their demise by the novel’s end. With McCann’s use of several characters from different walks of life, each character represents an everyday person trying to survive. The third theme McCann weaves into his text concerns the power to heal. With his reference to a plane between the two towers and his choice of a New York setting, his novel has been called a book of healing for New Yorkers after terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The story serves as an example of hope for New Yorkers and others who may encounter tragedy.
W Style In the manner of James Joyce’s Ulysses, McCann makes New York City in the 1970s a focal point in Let the Great World Spin. Weaving in references to political figures, the Vietnam War, and life on the streets McCann successfully manipulates New York City to serve as a backdrop for his novel much as Joyce used Dublin, Ireland, as the setting for his Ulysses. To offset the collective hustle and bustle of the city, McCann develops several distinct voices that replicate various people with different backgrounds, ages, and experiences. To make each voice unique, McCann employs a different literary strategy to accent each story. Tillie talks in short, fragmented outbursts; Compton’s chapter is mostly dialogue with his coworkers and the woman he talks to on the phone; and Claire speaks with “refined elegance” (Macdonald). The changes in voice serve to accentuate the different points of view of the characters as well as to highlight different aspects of the city.
W Critical Reception McCann received high praise from several critics for Let the Great World Spin, winner of the 2009 National Book Award. Some critics noted that McCann’s use of different narrators, carefully constructed phrasing, and his plot connection to Petit’s actual walk contribute to the book’s success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Deansgrange, a southern suburb of Dublin, on February 28, 1965, Colum McCann attended the School of Journalism at Rathmine’s College from 1982 to 1984. In 1983, he went to New York City to work for the Universal Press Syndicate for six months and then returned to Dublin in 1984 to work for the Evening Press. With encouragement from his father, who is the author of twenty-eight books, McCann started writing fiction and returned to New York. He eventually earned his BA from the University of Texas. As of 2010, McCann had written five novels and two short story collections and lived in New York, where he taught creative writing at Hunter College. In 2009 McCann won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel Let the Great World Spin. In May 2009 McCann received one of Ireland’s highest literary honors: induction into Aosdána, the Irish Academy.
McCann relies on a number of narrators to relate the interlocking stories that reveal the random and purposeful connections between characters. Tim Adams of the Observer stated that McCann is “at home with all the lives he explores.” Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times agreed, noting that McCann crafts distinctive voices to alter the tone and style; however, Mahler argued that some of the narrative voices “work better than others.” Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal claimed that McCann would have improved his novel by using “a single, authorial voice.” McCann uses streams of short sentences and uniquely phrased descriptions throughout his novel. Mike Peed of the Washington Post indicated that McCann can “craft penetrating phrasing.” However, Smith pinpointed weaknesses in McCann’s narrative and found his style of prose “stifling.” Some critics found that McCann’s use of Petit’s high-wire walk as the focal point of the story worked well to enhance the plot. Adams explained that even though the story has a “messy scope,” McCann “backs himself to step out into the spaces his novel opens up.” Smith, however, contended that the plot is weak and that the intersections between the characters are unbelievable. In contrast, Mahler expressed that the plot connection to Petit’s walk works well because the novel “is so concerned with the twin themes of love and loss.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adams, Tim. “Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.” Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Guardian.co.uk. Observer 30 Aug. 2009 Web. 26 Aug. 2010.
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Macdonald, Moira. “Let the Great World Spin: Mesmerized by a Man on a Tightrope.” Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Seattletimes.com. Seattle Times 12 July 2009 Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Mahler, Jonathan. “The Soul of a City.” Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. New York Times.com. New York Times 2 Aug. 2009 Web. 30 July 2010. McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin. New York: Random House, 2009. Print. Peed, Mike. “Walking the Tightrope of Big City Life.” Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 15 July 2009. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Smith, Kyle. “Danger Above and Below.” Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. OnlineWSJ.com. Wall Street Journal 3 July 2009 Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Duin, Steve. Rev. of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. oregonlive.com. Oregonian 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Explores McCann’s use of the city as a backdrop for his novel. Junod, Tom. “Let the Great World Spin: The First Great 9/11 Novel.” esquire.com. Esquire 8 July 2009. Web. 25 Aug. 2010. Discusses the connection of McCann’s novel to the events of September 11, 2001. Minzesheimer, Bob. “The Great World: Setting, History, and Characters in Fine Balance.” usatoday.com. USA Today 2 July 2009. Web 25 Aug. 2010. Praises the descriptions of the tightrope walking stunt, which Minzesheimer compares to McCann’s fine weaving of a mosaic of elements in the novel. Gale Resources
“Colum McCann.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Document URL http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1000121054&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it= r&p=LitRC&sw=w Lennon, Joseph. “Colum McCann.” Twenty-firstCentury British and Irish Novelists. Ed. Michael R. Molino. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 267. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Document URL http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200010986&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it= r&p=LitRC&sw=w
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“McCann, Colum 1965–.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Ed. Tracey L. Matthews. Vol. 149. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 286-288. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 July 2010. Document URL http:// go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CCX3482900117&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= GVRL&sw=w Open Web Sources
The Colum McCann Web site, available at http:// www.colummccann.com, includes photos, reviews, interviews, and media video clips. “Colum McCann,” an interview aired 10 Sep. 2009, on National Public Radio affiliate KCRW, is available at http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/ bw090910colum_mccann “Novels on New York in the 70s,” which includes a review of McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, was aired 7 Aug. 2009, on National Public Radio, the text and audio of which is available at http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=111672586 “WTC Provides Back Story for Colum McCann’s ‘Spin’” was aired 27 Nov. 2009, on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, the text and audio of which is available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=120846170, describes McCann’s experiences in New York and influences on his writing. For Further Reading
Barron, James, ed. The New York Times’ Book of New York: Stories of the People, the Streets, and the Life of the City Past and Present. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2009. Print. Includes a collection of photos, newspaper clippings, and people’s accounts that reveal the history and culture of New York City. Brewer, Paul. Ireland: History, People, and Culture. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002. Print. Describes Ireland and its rich history, people, and cultures. McDonald, Kathy. “Walking on Air: ‘Man on Wire’ Presents Petit’s Terrific Tale.” documentary.org. International Documentary Association, n.d. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Reviews Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit’s wire walking. Tannenbaum, Allan. New York in the 70s. New York: Overlook, 2009. Print. Includes photos and text that document the streets, lives, personalities, culture, and neighborhoods of New York City in the 1970s. Rachel V. Smydra
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Liberation By Joanna Scott
W Introduction Liberation (2005) chronicles the tender friendship between a ten-year-old girl, Adriana, and a seventeen-year-old Senegalese soldier that unfolds during the violent liberation of the Italian island of Elba by Allied forces in June 1944. The relationship between the two kindred souls is viewed through the eyes of seventy-one-year-old Adriana, now a grandmother, who suffers a massive heart attack on a train traveling to New York City. As she hovers between life and death, she reflects on her special connection to the kindly boy who saved her life. The novel also examines the absurdity of war and the collateral violence that affects soldiers and innocent civilians. In her Los Angeles Times review of the novel, Susan Straight describes it as “a prismatic and quietly powerful look at war, not in the traditional sense of detailing battle scenes and the horrors, but at the glancing yet devastating blows dealt to ordinary people on a small island during World War II.” Joanna Scott’s novel garnered generally favorable reviews, receiving an Ambassador’s Book Award for Fiction. Critics praise her rich and detailed descriptions and discuss her use of multiple narrators, stream-of-consciousness narration, and flashbacks. They also note Scott’s imagination and narrative control. Straight points out that “Scott wrote of Elba and Adriana Nardi before, in her 2002 novel, Tourmaline, about an American’s search for gems that endangers the girl. Praising Scott’s narrative abilities and creativity, Straight continues: Liberation is about the forces of war on the same island, in the dappled light of vineyards and the brilliant flash of bombs. Scott is in full control of folly and tragedy in a world she has painstakingly researched and brilliantly imagined.”
W Literary and Historical Context Much of Liberation is set on the Italian island of Elba, which is located off the Tuscan coast. It is best known as
the place where French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to after his forced abdication in 1814. Napoleon remained on Elba for three-hundred days until he was allowed to return to France on February 26, 1815. During World War II, Elba was liberated by the French in June 1944, the event around which the events of Scott’s novel unfold. Today, Elba is popular as a tourist resort and is recognized for its fine wine. Amdu, one of the main characters in Liberation, is a member of the Senegalese Tirailleurs, a corps of colonial infantry in the French army. Formed in 1857, the Tirailleurs were made up of troops from Senegal and French West Africa and in the early years included prisoners of war and slaves. The corps not only enforced French colonial control in French West Africa, but also fought side by side with the French army in a number of conflicts and wars. During World War I, the Tirailleurs contributed an estimated 200,000 troops, of which 30,000 were killed. They were also heavily involved in World War II, serving with distinction during the Battle of France, in Italy and Corsica in 1944, and in the liberation of southern France. As portrayed in Liberation, they were also instrumental in the liberation of Elba. The Tirailleur corps remained active until around 1958, when the French colonies of West and Central Africa claimed independence from colonial powers and formed their own national militaries. Thousands of experienced soldiers transferred from the Tirailleurs to their country’s nascent armed forces. The soldiers who elected to remain in the Tirailleur corps were subsumed in the larger French army. The last Senegalese unit finally disbanded in 1964.
W Themes One of the key thematic concerns in Liberation is the horror of war and the consequences for those not only fighting, but for innocent bystanders. “The spoils of war, its wantonness and randomness, become vivid here,”
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MAJOR CHARACTERS AMDU DIOP is the seventeen-year-old Senegalese soldier who takes refuge at Adriana’s family estate, La Chiatta, after being injured by a sniper’s bullet. Amdu’s situation is complicated by the fact he has witnessed some African soldiers raping and murdering a local girl. He believes himself to be a modern-day saint. GIULIA is Adriana’s independent and enlightened mother, who risks her family’s safety in order to help Amdu. MARIO is Adriana’s uncle. He is determined to protect his niece and family from the marauding African forces and blames Amdu for the spate of violence against local families perpetrated by the African soldiers. ADRIANA NARDI is a ten-year-old girl living in Elba in 1944 as the Allies liberate the island from German occupation. When her family gives refuge to the wounded Amdu, she develops a crush on the Senegalese soldier. The novel also presents a picture of her years later, as she suffers a major heart attack on a train into New York City. While she hovers between life and death, her mind flashes back to her life-changing friendship with Amdu.
Susan Straight observes in her review of the novel. “A pig is slaughtered, a girl is killed, triggering events on the island that will alter everything. Scott wants us to feel the collateral damage, not the effects of today’s smart bombs or suicide bombers, but the damage done in every way, every day, through folly, indecision and unnecessary displays of strength.” Another reviewer, Lynn Freed, also focuses on the collateral damage of war as well as the meaninglessness of the violence. “From the start, it is clear that Scott intends the word ‘liberation’ to be fraught with irony,” insists Freed. “The rape by the Moroccans, who are also Allied soldiers, provides a focus for this theme, its horrible details accumulating throughout the book. As she takes on the absurdity of war, Scott makes it increasingly obvious that for most of the local population being liberated is often not much better than being occupied.” Beth Kephart views the book as a meditation on lost opportunity and the lingering nature of regret. “Perhaps nothing haunts us more than the unrealized opportunity,” she contends. “The thing we thought but never said. The letter we wrote but never sent. The friendship we yearned for but didn’t finally pursue. The unconsummated love affair. Regret is sweet, and it is bitter. It’s the song that keeps playing, always, somewhere in our minds.”
Liberation explores the special relationship between a young girl and a soldier while the soldier is fighting for the liberation of Elba, Italy. Luciano Mortula/Shutterstock.com
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W Style Assessments of Scott’s narrative style focus on her use of multiple narrators and dramatic flashbacks. “In her novels, Scott often uses multiple points of view; in Liberation, she pulls off kaleidoscopic shifts of observation with a depth of vision possessed by great writers,” Straight states in her review. “The novel’s three main threads are Adriana’s childhood on Elba, her adult reflections decades later as she rides a commuter train in America, and Amdu’s experience on the island off Tuscany. But part of the story also is told by Adriana’s mother, Signora Giulia Nardi; by Adriana’s uncle; and by an omniscient narrator on that train ride from New Jersey to New York City.” Straight provides a favorable assessment of the author’s narrative achievement. “Scott weaves these layers of voice and landscape, the acts of kindness and savagery, taking the reader on a journey along edges of war and death,” she concludes. Reviewer Cherie Thiessen also finds Scott’s use of flashback compelling. “There’s a reason flashbacks are used so often in both narrative and film,” Thiessen argues. “They enable a dramatic tension, which can resonate between time, points of view, or space, frequently achieving the effective irony that can be created when the reader/viewer knows what the protagonist does not. Because Nardia’s memories are of an almost-11-year old, we are able to understand them as adults, thus knowing more than she can. Also, because Scott is writing about a history we know, it’s compelling. Flashbacks in less than skilled hands, however, can backfire, as both present and past must be equally riveting. Otherwise, the reader will simply skip to the half that interests her/him most, or lose interest in the work altogether. Both Mrs. Rundel’s precarious hold on life in the present, and her past childhood experience in Elba are balanced perfectly so that the reader slips contentedly from one to the other.” Some reviewers, however, were not so effusive about Scott’s narrative style. Beth Kephart maintains that Scott’s “decision to narrate this tale by piecing together the thoughts of her primary characters creates an overall stasis.” In his review, Steve Hermanos finds the flashback technique as ultimately unsuccessful. “However, this being a postmodern novel, the author’s methods often drain the excitement from her story,” he states. “While the 70-year-old Adriana is feeling the air choked out of her, thousands upon thousands of words are employed to evoke the surface details of her fellow commuters and their mundane thoughts. Once the train reaches its destination, and Adriana is off to the hospital, these characters disperse into their routines, the trajectory of their day barely brushed by the incident with the elderly woman on the train. The commuter part of the story is shuffled in with, and thereby consistently undercuts, the more imaginative and deeper Elba story.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joanna Scott was born on June 22, 1960, in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Darien, Connecticut. She started writing stories at a young age, and became involved in the literary magazine at her school, Darien High School. She attended Trinity College in Connecticut, receiving her BA in 1983. She went on to graduate school at Brown University. After earning her master’s degree in 1985, she worked as an instructor in creative writing at Brown until 1987. Scott also worked at the University of Maryland and the University of Rochester, where she is currently a professor. In 1987 her first novel, Fading, My Parmachene Belle, was published. She was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1988 and was a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Scott’s 1990 novel, Arrogance, garnered her a nomination for the prestigious PEN/ Faulkner Award. She received a second nomination for a collection of short fiction titled Various Antidotes, which was published in 1994. Her 2005 novel, Liberation, was awarded an Ambassador Book Award for Fiction. Scott has been a guest lecturer and reader at various universities, bookstores, libraries, theaters, writers’ workshops, and conferences.
W Critical Reception Liberation garnered mostly favorable critical reviews and was awarded an Ambassador Book Award for Fiction. Critics lauded Scott’s talent for description and storytelling. As Steve Hermanos observes in his San Francisco Chronicle review, “this author possesses nearly unlimited descriptive talent. Intricate battles, the context of the liberation of Elba within the overall Allied strategy of World War II, how the lungs take in air and circulate blood to the brain, the sounds of birds and explosions, Adriana and her husband’s first kiss—all are conjured in clear, beautiful, often-stunning prose. The author seems to be in full control of her material and its construction, meaning that the book’s lack of intensity is intentional. Fans of well-written postmodern novels rife with symbolism will have a lot to chew on. Others will not.” Beth Kephart also focuses on Scott’s use of language and description. “With Liberation, Scott has gathered all the elements of a potentially transcendent tale: the stirrings of first love, the mechanisms of war, the gorgeous landscape of Elba, the hand of time,” she maintains. “Beyond all that, this MacArthur Fellowship winner is capable of weaving lush, detail-rich passages, noting ‘a stout woman who tied the laces of her apron in a bow beneath her bosom,’ or a moon whose light is ‘tinged brown from the smoke of burning forests.’ And certainly Scott’s understanding of a complex battleground and a lush, historic island is deep and admirable.”
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Kephart concludes by criticizing the lack of connection between the characters. “Joanna Scott has a breathtaking way of capturing the taste of an orange and the color of the sea, of enabling a reader to fully inhabit a breeze. I wish, with Liberation, that she had found a way to break her characters free of their own thoughts for a while, so that they might reach across the page, toward each other.” Lynn Freed praises Scott’s descriptive ability, but ultimately does not find Liberation to be a compelling novel. “The depiction of that time, that war, may be the most successful aspect of Scott’s novel. As a story, however, Liberation fails to take hold. With the exception of some notable scenes, the action and the characters seem housed behind protective glass.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Freed, Lynn. “Liberation.” New York Times Book Review 13 Dec. 2005. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Hermanos, Steve. “First Love Remembered.” San Francisco Chronicle 15 Jan. 2006: M5. Print. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Kephart, Beth. “In Liberation, Joanna Scott Leaves Her Characters Free to Connect.” Chicago Tribune 18 Dec. 2005. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Straight, Susan. “Collateral Damage.” Los Angeles Times 27 Nov. 2006. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Thiessen, Cherie. “Elba Revisited.” January Magazine Oct. 2006. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Greer, W. R. “Freedom Fighters.” ReviewsofBooks.com, 2005. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. Contends that “what begins as a scattered mix of events and emotions becomes a touching novel about the liberation of all of us from our own foibles.” Recommends that Liberation should have a much wider readership. Rev. of Liberation, by Joanna Scott. Publishers Weekly 252.30 (1 Aug. 2005): 39. Print. Offers a mixed review of Liberation. Smith, Starr E. Rev. of Liberation, by Joanna Scott. Library Journal 130.12 (1 July 2005): 70-71. Print. Deems Liberation a rich and rewarding story.
series, Vol. 168. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 367-372. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
Joanna Scott’s University of Rochester website discusses her research and writing interests, publications, and recent courses she has taught at the university. http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/faculty/ joanna_scott.html Learn all about the rich history of Elba on its official Web site. Tourist information, weather forecasts, and upcoming events are also covered. Another useful Web site about Elba is the Info Elba site. http:// www.island-elba.eu/ http://www.infoelba.com/ The contribution of the Senegalese Tirailleurs to the Allied cause during World War II is chronicled at Chemins de memoire Web site. Their uniforms can be viewed at http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/ page/affichecitoyennete.php?idLang=en& idCitoyen=22 http://www.warflag.com/shadow/ uniforms/senguniform.htm For Further Reading
Baker, Jill. Elba Journal. New Harmony: Winchester Cottage Print, 2008. Print. Baker documents her adventures in Elba with her family and friends. She investigates Napoleon’s exile on the island and enjoys Elba’s residents and natural beauty. Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991. Print. Historical study of a large and diverse group of West Africans who served in Senegalese regiments of the French colonial army. Mackenzie, Norman. Escape from Elba: The Fall and Flight of Napoleon, 1814-1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Print. Chronicles Napoleon’s exile on Elba and his eventual triumphant return to power in 1815. Porch, Douglas. The Conquest of the Sahara. New York: Knopf, 1984. Print. Traces France’s struggle to conquer the Saharan Desert at the turn of the twentieth century. Scott, Joanna. Tourmaline. Boston: Little, Brown, 2002. Print. Introduces the character of Adriana, the protagonist of her later novel, Liberation. This novel follows Adriana’s life in the 1960s on Elba Island.
Gale Resources
“Scott, Joanna Catherine 1943-.” Contemporary Authors. Vol. 228. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 364-66. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors, New Revision
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Margaret Haerens
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Life of Pi By Yann Martel
W Introduction Life of Pi (2001) is, on the surface, a novel of fantasy and adventure. The work also serves as a complex exploration of religion and the nature of faith. In the novel, Pi, whose full name is Piscine Molitor Patel, is a sixteen-year-old boy, who, along with his zoo-keeping family and a collection of their animals, embarks on a journey from Pondicherry, India, to Winnipeg, Canada. Following the shipwreck of their Japanese vessel, Pi is stranded in lifeboat with several animals, including a Bengal tiger. During the course of the 227 days on the lifeboat, Pi witnesses the brutality of the hungry animals devouring one another. Before long, only Pi and the tiger, who is by a strange set of circumstances named Richard Parker, remain. They eventually wash ashore in Mexico, where Richard Parker escapes into the jungle. Pi is questioned by Japanese authorities who refuse to believe his story, until he revises his experiences and recasts the animals as humans, one of whom (the ship’s cook) has cannibalized Pi’s mother and a wounded sailor. The novel is written as a frame narrative in which an adult Pi recounts to a journalist his tale of shipwreck. Throughout the time at sea, Pi examines the three religions—Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity—that have influenced him as he ponders the nature of faith and doubt.
W Literary and Historical Context
In Yann Martel’s novel, Pi and his family decide to leave post-colonial India due to the political unrest of the 1970s. Having won its independence from Great Britain in 1947, India was plagued with political conflicts within its borders and with neighboring countries, and troubled
by internal religious and ethnic fighting. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the country defeated Pakistan in 1971. In the mid-1970s, India was beset with economic troubles, drought, and inflation, and in response Gandhi suspended elections and declared the country in a state of emergency. Claiming that her actions were executed in the interests of stabilizing the country, Gandhi was nevertheless accused of corruption. When elections were reinstated in 1977, Gandhi lost to a rival party, the Janata Party, headed by Morarji R. Desai. Gandhi faced legal action and imprisonment when Desai pursued the corruption charges against her. Desai’s government, and the next, headed by Charan Singh, both failed to resolve India’s economic crisis, and in the 1980 elections, Indira Gandhi returned to power. Set in the 1970s, Martel wrote and published his novel in the twenty-first century. His fantastical work has been associated with the genre of magical realism. The type of fiction writing that incorporates elements of the absurd, fantastic, or magical into an otherwise decidedly realistic novel has been in existence long before the term “magical realism” was coined in 1949. Since the midtwentieth century, works employing magical realism abound, notably in Latin American literature, but in works from around the globe as well.
W Themes A deeply complex work, Life of Pi contains numerous themes, all of which have been regarded as the work’s most significant. Religion, faith, survival, man’s relationship with animals, and the nature of storytelling are all explored to some degree by Martel in his novel. The relationship between religion and faith is treated through Pi’s fascination with three major religions (Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity) and his gleaning from all three his own notions about faith and the nature of God. Despite the importance of faith to Pi, his relationship with the tiger, Richard Parker, is also pivotal to his own survival.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS THE AUTHOR functions as a character in the novel. By not naming the author of the “Author Introduction” specifically, Martel lets the reader suppose that this author is indeed himself, adding a sense of realism to an unimaginable story. FRANCIS ADIRUBASAMY is a close family friend of the Patels. He tells the author about Pi and his story and serves as the catalyst for the interview between Pi and the author, an interview that generates the main story of the novel. MR. ATSURO CHIBA is a representative from the Japanese Ministry of Transportation, the subordinate of Mr. Okamoto. His interactions with Okamoto are often bumbling, but he follows the lead of his superior in the interrogation. THE FRENCH COOK is a character described by Pi in the second version of the story. He serves the same function as the hyena, killing and eating two other members of the stranded party. THE HYENA is one of the animal castaways stranded with Pi. The hyena kills the wounded zebra, and then the orangutan, before being killed by the tiger. In Pi’s second version of the story, the hyena is the French cook. MR. TOMOHIRO OKAMOTO is another representative from the Japanese Ministry of Transportation who questions Pi regarding the shipwreck of the Japanese vessel and the fate of Pi, his family, and the live cargo of the ship. ORANGE JUICE is the name of the orangutan in Pi’s first version of the story. The orangutan is eaten by the hyena. In the second version of the story the role of the orangutan is fulfilled by Pi’s mother. RICHARD PARKER is a Bengal tiger. The animal is stranded with Pi on the lifeboat and comes to rely upon the boy for food. While the two drift in the ocean, the tiger is both a threat to Pi, as well as a companion and an inspiration to remain alive. PISCINE MOLITOR PATEL (PI) is the novel’s protagonist. In his forties, he relates the story of his teenage adventure to the author. Pi is Indian, and the son of a zookeeper. He considers himself a Christian, Muslim, and Hindu, and he relies on various aspects of these faiths to sustain him when he becomes shipwrecked. He survives being stranded on a lifeboat for more than two-hundred days with a tiger. THE SAILOR is the first person to be killed and eaten by the cook in Pi’s second version of his story. He takes the place of the zebra in Pi’s revison. THE ZEBRA is the first animal to be eaten by the hyena in Pi’s original story. In the second version, the zebra becomes the sailor.
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Using knowledge gained as the zookeeper’s son, Pi is able to maintain some authority over the animal, for example, through his use of a whistle, and by feeding the tiger the fish he catches. Whether it is due to Pi’s sense of purpose in knowing that he must feed the animal so he himself does not become its prey, or to the odd kind of companionship he feels in sharing the boat with the tiger, Pi credits Richard Parker with helping him survive. The relationship between Pi and the tiger also touches on the delicate balance humans attempt to maintain with the other animals they share the planet with. A duty to preserve species is inspired to some degree by respect for animal life, but at the same time to carry out what is perceived as a duty, humans feel the need to exert their dominance. Pi’s precarious dominion over Richard Parker may be viewed as reflective of the arrogance of humanity or as indicative of his personal survival instincts. Martel’s unique manner of storytelling and the discussion between Pi and is interrogators at the end of the novel concerning which tale—the one with or without the animals—was the “better story” also signal to the reader that storytelling itself is a primary theme of the novel. Pi concludes that just as one can know which story is better even though neither can be proven, it is the same with understanding God. Through Pi’s observations, Martel intimates that an instinctual yearning is present in humans, a gravitation toward the notion of a world in which God exists. Martel further implies that such a world is better than one in which God does not exist, despite the inability to factually prove God’s existence.
W Style Life of Pi is constructed as a frame narrative and the bulk of the novel is related in the first person from Pi’s point of view. The novel is prefaced by an author’s note, which establishes itself as the framing device an interview between the author and the adult Pi. In the author’s note, the author asserts that the story was told to him in an Indian coffeehouse. The author, who is not explicitly identified as Martel, states that he was told of a Mr. Patel and his incredible story by a man named Francis Adirubasamy, a close friend of the Patels. This interview becomes the story’s frame, and within it, Pi Patel tells his own tale. As a first-person narrator, Pi is somewhat unreliable. Not only does his story contain elements that border on the impossible, but aspects of his tale seem more like hallucinations, as when he relates the events that occur in the algae field. Additionally, when Pi is questioned by the Japanese authorities regarding the veracity of his tale, he eventually recants his account and claims that instead of being stranded with animals, he was in fact shipwrecked with people. The cook (the hyena in Pi’s earlier version of the story) kills and eats Pi’s mother (the orangutan) and the wounded sailor (the zebra). Given that Pi changes his story, and offers no assertion at the end of the novel TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Life of Pi
which story is the true story, only a confirmation of what he believes to be the better story, his reliability as a narrator must be called into question. Such a style suits Martel’s ambiguous approach to his themes, and leaves the reader room to contemplate a variety of viewpoints regarding such topics as the nature of reality, faith, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world, as well as the value of storytelling.
W Critical Reception The winner of the 2002 Man Booker Award, Martel’s Life of Pi quickly achieved popular and critical acclaim soon after its 2001 publication. While the novel won a number of other awards, Martel’s literary accomplishment was called into question following the Man Booker announcement, when charges of plagiarism were leveled against the novelist by Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar. Scliar’s 1981 novel Max and the Cats featured a shipwrecked man stranded in a lifeboat with a panther. After some discussion, the writers mended their
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Salamanca, Spain, on June 25, 1963, Yann Martel lived in a number of countries throughout his childhood. His French Canadian parents were both civil servants, and after living in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and India, among other locations, they eventually settled their family in Montreal, Quebec. Martel was exposed to poetry and literature at an early age, as his father was also an acclaimed poet. After graduating with a degree in philosophy from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, in 1985, Martel worked in a variety of occupations before pursuing writing full time. He published his first book, a collection of short stories titled The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios in 1993, and his first novel, Self, in 1996. Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 for Life of Pi; the film rights have been optioned by Fox, and director Ang Lee is tentatively attached to the project. Martel’s recent publications include the 2004 short story collection We Ate the Children Last and the 2010 novel Beatrice and Virgil, a novel focusing on the Holocaust.
In Life of Pi, young Pi becomes stranded on a lifeboat with a number of wild animals, including a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Mi.Ti./Shutterstock.com
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Picture of Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi. David Levenson/Getty Images
differences, Scliar’s legal threats were dropped, and the controversy died down. Since then, the work has been examined for its philosophical and religious insights, as well as praised for its unique narrative style. In brief reviews, such as that of Francis King in the Spectator, Martel’s novel is often commended for its originality and its thematic richness, or, as in Tim Adams’s review for the Observer, for its experimentations in the realm of magical realism. While Adams suggests that Martel’s explorations of the boundaries of storytelling sometimes grow “tiresome,” the critic nevertheless asserts that the literary performance is admirable. Pankaj Mishra, in his New York Review of Books review, studies the effectiveness of Martel’s storytelling techniques, observing that Martel supports his “illusion of reality” through the use of “multiple narrators and frames and the mixing of fact with fiction.” Mishra goes on to explore Martel’s treatment of faith and religion, but finds Martel’s arguments for a belief in God to be unconvincing. Like Mishra, Pamela Cooper, in a Dictionary of Literary Biography assessment of Life of Pi, plumbs the depths of the novel’s religious implications, and delineates Martel’s depiction of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Through Pi, Cooper argues, Martel bestows in love and faith the ultimate power to overcome life’s tragedies. Other critics have taken a different approach to the work, situating it
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within a post-September 11 worldview. Rebecca Duncan, in an article for Mosaic, regards the novel as an examination of “postmodern identity as it shapes and is shaped by a narrative of trauma.” Duncan explores the ways in which Martel reconstructs the notion of the survival narrative, arguing that in Martel’s novel, the survivor must not just survive the crisis of the shipwreck, but must also be able accept all of the consequences and implications of what it means to have survived. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adams, Tim. “A Fishy Tale.” Review Section, Observer 26 May 2002: 15. Print. Ayres, Neil. “Magic Realism Defies Genres.” Man Booker Prizes. Web. 5 July 2010. Charlton, Linda. “Assassination in India: A Leader of Will and Force; Indira Gandhi, Born to Politics, Left Her Own Imprint on India.” New York Times 1 Nov. 1984. Web. 5 July 2010. Cooper, Pamela. “Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.” Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Web. 5 July 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Duncan, Rebecca. “Life of Pi as Postmodern Survivor Narrative.” Mosaic [Winnipeg] 41.2 (June 2008): 167. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July. 2010.
Martel’s fine prose, humor, and dedication to dissecting the complexities of love and faith. Gale Resources
King, Francis. “A Ghastly Crew.” Spectator 288.9067 (18 May 2002): 43. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010.
“Life of Pi.” Literary Newsmakers for Students. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 188-207. Print.
Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2001.
Lynes, Jeanette. “Yann Martel.” Twenty-first-Century Canadian Writers. Ed. Christian Riegel. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 334. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010.
Mishra, Pankaj. “The Man, or the Tiger?” New York Review of Books 50.5. (27 Mar. 2003): 17-18. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. “Yann Martel.” Trent University Profiles. Web. 5 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Atwood, Margaret. “Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.” Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 19832005. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004. 224-26. Print. Offers a brief overiew of the plot and themes of Life of Pi and praises the use Martel makes of his unreliable narrator, Pi. Gunning, Margaret. “Famously Adrift.” January Magazine. Web. 5 July 2010. Favorable review of Life of Pi in which the critic lauds Martel’s originality and notes the way the novel remains engaging despite its occasional lapses into didacticism and its extensive passages devoid of dialogue. Houser, Gordon. Review of Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. Christian Century 120.3 (8 Feb. 2003): 34-35. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 192. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. Positive evaluation of Martel’s Life of Pi in which Houser praises the author’s style and storytelling technique. Jordan, Justine. “Animal Magnatism.” Guardian 25 May 2002. Web. 5 July 2010. Contends that despite its allegorical tone, Martel’s novel reads as a captivating shipwreck adventure. Jordan further compliments Martel’s skillful balancing of the perspectives of faith and science in Life of Pi. Martel, Yann, and John Ydstie. “Yann Martel Discusses His New Book, Life of Pi.” Weekend Edition Saturday, 14 Dec. 2002. Broadcast transcript. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. Interview in which Martel discusses the importance of religion and faith in his novel. Palmberg, Elizabeth. “Man Overboard.” Soujourners 32. 2 (Mar.-Apr. 2003): 55-56. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 192. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. Explores the religious elements of Life of Pi and commends
“Life of Pi.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 129-155. Print. “Yann Martel.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Timeline: India offers a chronological survey of the history of modern India, enabling the student of Life of Pi to understand the political conflicts that Pi and his family were attempting to escape at the beginning of the novel. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_ asia/1155813.stm Yann Martel: New Face of Fiction 1996 contains Martel’s publisher’s biographical and bibliographic information about the author. The most recent information regarding Martel and his work may be found here. http://www.randomhouse.ca/newface/martel.php Martel’s interview with the online journal Outlook: India offers insights into Martel’s choice of an Indian protagonist. In the interview, he discusses his interest in the region. http://www.outlookindia.com/article. aspx?217833 For Further Reading
Guha, Ramachandra. India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. New York: Ecco, 2007. Guha provides a detailed investigation of modern Indian political, social, and cultural history. The examination includes the role of Indira Gandhi in transforming India. Martel, Yann. Beatrice and Virgil. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010. Martel’s novel focuses on the Holocaust, and like Life of Pi, the work features animal characters and improbable elements. Scliar, Moacyr. Max and the Cats. New York: Plume, 2003. Scliar’s novel was originally published in Brazil in 1981. Martel claims to have read a review of the novel and later became inspired by it to write Life of Pi. Scliar accused Martel of plagiarism, but eventually dropped the charges. In Scliar’s novel, a man escaping Nazi Germany is shipwrecked with a jaguar.
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Thapar, Valmik. The Last Tiger: Struggling for Survival. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. Thapar explores the history of the conservation efforts designed to protect the Bengal tiger from extinction, observing that one of the few positive moments in the history of the Bengal tiger conservation was the 1973 Project Tiger act.
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Vaz, Katherine. Saudade. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Vaz’s debut novel, Saudade, like Life of Pi, incorporates elements of magical realism in a novel that is set in the recent past and that explores such themes as human relationships, faith, and religion. Catherine Dominic
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The Line of Beauty By Alan Hollinghurst
W Introduction Set in Britain during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister, The Line of Beauty (2004) chronicles three years (1983, 1986, and 1987) in the life of a young Henry James scholar named Nick Guest. Over the course of the novel, Nick is transformed from a young aesthete seeking his first homosexual encounter, to a regular abuser of cocaine with a taste for luxury, and finally to a man devastated by loss. The novel won the 2004 Man Booker Prize. The Line of Beauty has been praised for its graceful prose, the careful psychological development of its characters, and its powerful, pointed indictment of the greed and hypocrisy of the Thatcher years. The book is, in many ways, a follow-up to Alan Hollinghurst’s critically acclaimed first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988). Like that work, The Line of Beauty illuminates the devastating effects of homophobia. It also offers an account of the transformative impact of AIDS on the gay community.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Line of Beauty is set in Great Britain during the 1980s, a time known for the conservative politics of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s financial policies, which are often compared to those of her American counterpart, President Ronald Reagan, promoted a free-market economy, tax cuts, and constraints on trade unions. While these practices helped keep inflation in check, they have been blamed for consolidating wealth among the privileged and for fueling a greedy and irresponsible lifestyle. The novel depicts the drive for status among society’s elite, who are lost in what the protagonist, Nick Guest, describes as a “wonderland of luxury.”
Despite the conservative moral stance of Thatcher herself, the time when she was in office was also marked by the prevalence of cocaine use, particularly among the wealthy. The book’s title thus carries a double meaning: the “line of beauty” refers both to an aesthetic concept popularized by the eighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth and to a line of cocaine. The rampant abuse of this drug is reflected in the novel as Nick is lured into a fast-paced, drug-fueled lifestyle by the wealthy Wani Ouradi. The novel also chronicles an important turning point in the history of sexuality. Its earliest scenes depict promiscuous sex that apparently has few consequences, but by the end of the novel, the threat of AIDS looms large over the characters. The deadly disease was just beginning to come to the forefront of public attention during the Thatcher years, and The Line of Beauty depicts the heavy toll that it took on the homosexual community, first with the revelation that Nick’s former lover, Leo, has died from AIDS, and later with Wani’s deterioration from the disease. The refusal of Wani’s parents to acknowledge their son’s homosexuality, even when faced with his impending death, illustrates not only the widespread homophobia of the day, but also the ways in which misinformation about the disease was proliferated. Their steadfast insistence that their son acquired the disease from using a public toilet is indicative of the panic, denial, and lack of knowledge about AIDS in the 1980s.
W Themes As its title suggests, beauty is a central theme in Hollinghurst’s novel. The idea of the line of beauty is borrowed from the writings of the artist William Hogarth, who posited that the S-shaped curve was central to beauty and aesthetic pleasure. Nick, who fancies himself an expert on art and beauty, frequently notes where he sees this line, whether it is in the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CATHERINE FEDDEN is the daughter of Gerald and Rachel Fedden and the sister of Tobias. Catherine, who suffers from bipolar disorder, develops a strong bond with Nick Guest while he is living in her home. Unlike her family, Catherine is unimpressed by the trappings of wealth, and in this sense she provides the novel’s moral center. GERALD FEDDEN is a conservative member of Parliament who actively (and often humorously) attempts to win the attention and approval of Margaret Thatcher. Despite his conservative stance on issues of finances and morality, Fedden is revealed to be a hypocrite who is cheating on his wife and has been involved in stock fraud. RACHEL FEDDEN is the wife of Gerald and the mother of Tobias. Nick is immediately impressed by her aristocratic manner. TOBIAS “TOBY” FEDDEN is Nick’s friend from Oxford and the son of Gerald Fedden. Nick, we are told by the narrator, had a crush on Toby at school. NICK GUEST, the book’s narrator, is a Henry James scholar from a middle-class family who finds himself driven by greed after he takes up residence with the affluent Fedden family. At the novel’s end, Nick is evicted from the Fedden household after tabloids reveal that the Feddens are housing the boyfriend of the AIDS-stricken Wani Ouradi. At the end of the novel, Nick leaves his keys in the mailbox and goes off to face yet another HIV test.
architecture of a luxurious home or the lines of his lover’s body. When Wani, knowing Nick’s penchant for aesthetics, invites him to be his partner and aesthetic consultant on the new magazine he is developing, the two name the publication Ogee after the ogee curve or arch, a common motif in architecture that exhibits the S-shaped curve. That the magazine’s one and only issue, full of beautiful and opulent goods, is not released until after the once-beautiful Wani is wasting away from AIDS is one of the book’s great ironies. The decay of beauty is related to another of the novel’s central themes: the discrepancy between appearance and reality. This theme can be traced throughout the novel from the broadest of contexts (the widespread greed and degeneracy concealed by the outward appearance of prosperity during the Thatcher years) to more specific instances (such as the political corruption and moral deceit that lurk behind the façade of the conservative politics of Gerald Fedden, the member of Parliament in whose home Nick is living as a guest; the scourge of AIDS that threatens sexual pleasure; and the sham sense of kinship between Nick and the Feddens that erodes as soon as it threatens their respectability).
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LORD KESSLER is Rachel Fedden’s brother. He takes an interest in Nick, who shares his love of literature. Nick is fascinated by the older man, particularly because his family had once hosted Henry James as a guest in their home. There is some indication that Lord Kessler is gay. LEO is a young black council worker and Nick’s first lover. Near the end of the novel, Nick learns that he has died from AIDS. MARTINE is a young woman who is paid by Wani Ouradi’s parents to pose as his fiancée. ANTOINE “WANI” OURADI is the son of a wealthy Lebanese entrepreneur. Wani had been friends with Toby and Nick at Oxford. He and Nick eventually enter into a sexual relationship, and he introduces Nick to cocaine. Wani also becomes Nick’s partner in the production of a luxury magazine, Ogee. Wani’s family remains in denial about their son’s homosexuality. By the end of the novel, Wani is suffering from AIDS. BERTRAND OURADI, the father of Wani, is a wealthy entrepreneur and a donor to conservative political causes. He refuses to acknowledge that his son is gay. MONIQUE OURADI is Wani’s mother. She pays Martine to pose as his fiancée. MARGARET THATCHER is the first female prime minister of Great Britain. A powerful presence throughout Hollinghurst’s fictional account of her rule, she appears at a party given by the Feddens.
Homosexuality and the rampant homophobia of Thatcher’s England are important themes in the novel as well, but the book is less overt about sexuality than many of Hollinghurst’s earlier texts. It does, however, expose the hypocrisy of Thatcherites who attack homosexuality as immoral and vulgar while themselves behaving so decadently. Speaking with the Bookseller in 2004 (“Inside the Tory Stronghold”), Hollinghurst reflected on the pleasure he took in critiquing the Tory culture of that era and in characterizing “that particular mixture of fastidiousness and thoughtlessness you get from the rich people of this book.” As the reviewer further observed, although Nick initially profits from his associations with these people, the “precariousness of Nick’s situation as a gay man in the ’80s Tory stronghold must catch up with him; in the background of the novel, meanwhile, AIDS casts a long shadow.”
W Style With a Henry James scholar as its central character, The Line of Beauty is a work that is heavily invested in TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Line of Beauty
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alan Hollinghurst was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1954. He grew up with a love of classical music, which would later inform his careful attention to the sound and rhythm of words in his writing. After receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oxford University, Hollinghurst taught briefly at the university before taking a position at the Times Literary Supplement, serving first as a writer and then as deputy editor. His 1988 novel The Swimming-Pool Library, which won the Somerset Maugham Award, helped to establish his reputation as an up-and-coming writer. Its frank depictions of male homosexuality added to its visibility. Hollinghurst’s reputation continued to grow with successive novels, such as The Folding Star (1994), which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Although his 1998 novel The Spell was less favorably reviewed, The Line of Beauty’s Booker Prize win confirmed his reputation as one of England’s most talented contemporary novelists.
A Victorian house in south London might be the home of a wealthy man like Nick Guest from The Line of Beauty. ª Kirsty McLaren/Alamy
literature as a craft. Indeed, James, a nineteenth-century writer known for his erudite prose and emphasis on the psychology of his characters (a mode often referred to as “psychological realism”), is a constant presence in the text. He is explicitly mentioned in the intellectual banter of characters such as Nick and Lord Kessler. James is also, however, invoked by the style of the novel itself, which works to create realistic portrayals of its characters’ inner lives. Michael Moon, in the New England Quarterly, traces the influence of James on Hollinghurst’s text, suggesting that it is most deeply felt in the novel’s patterns of revelation and concealment. “[T]he true Jamesian ‘lines of beauty,’” Moon writes, “emerge in the novel not so much from the beauty of language as such— although that is certainly a pleasure the book reliably affords—but at the level of epistemology (who knows what when, what one thinks one ‘knows’ about oneself or someone else, and what difference it makes).” Hollinghurst’s gift for language derives in part from his interest in classical music, which inflects the sounds of his sentences. His lyrical prose frequently employs alliteration, and he demonstrates a talent for inventive
similes (“She played the beginning of Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 like a courier starting a motorbike.”) and unexpected phrasings (“their sticky exudations had already stippled the windscreen”). Juxtaposed with the narrator’s carefully crafted prose, however, is the often vulgar speech of the characters themselves, which includes slang and bawdy sexual references. James Wood discusses some of the novel’s coarse sexual language in his New Republic review.
W Critical Reception The Line of Beauty has been popular with readers and critics alike. It has also been widely praised for its style and its depiction of life in Thatcherite Britain. Publishers Weekly, for example, heralded the book as an “almost perfectly written novel.” Writing in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Andrew Holleran lauds Hollinghurst’s facility with language: “No one writes novels better than Hollinghurst; he puts together books that are like pieces of furniture made without nails.” The Line of Beauty was the first Booker Prize winner to take homosexuality as a central theme, and commentators have been interested in the book’s frank depictions of gay sex and the scourge of AIDS. Holleran praises Hollinghurst’s handling of the crisis, writing, “what rings truest, and what Hollinghurst presents with marvelous restraint, is the thing that made the 80’s truly horrible: AIDS.” Literary scholars have also been interested in the role of Henry James in Hollinghurst’s novel, particularly given that its greatest rival for the Booker Prize, Colm
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Tóibín’s The Master, is a fictional biography of the famed writer. Critics who had bemoaned the lack of meaningful female characters in Hollinghurst’s earlier novels have praised his rendering of women in The Line of Beauty. Anthony Quinn, for example, writes in the New York Times Book Review that “the novel marks a change from Hollinghurst’s predominantly homocentric fiction,” and suggests that the novel’s female characters are “among the liveliest here.” This includes the aristocratic Rachel Fedden and her daughter Catherine, as well as Margaret Thatcher herself, whom Quinn likens to the charismatic but corrupt Kurtz of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “a presence felt throughout the book but . . . invisible until near the end.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Holleran, Andrew. “The Essentials of Heaven.” Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide 11.6 (2004): 35+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 June 2010.
explores the centrality of Henry James in three contemporary novels, including The Line of Beauty. Meinig, Sigrun. “Out of Line: Illness and Aesthetics in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty and Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove.” Interfaces: Image Texte Language 26 (2006-2007): 47-58. Print. Examines parallels between novels by James and Hollinghurst in their exploration of the intersections of disease and aesthetics. Rivkin, Julie. “Writing the Gay ’80s with Henry James: David Leavitt’s A Place I’ve Never Been and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty.” Henry James Review 26.3 (2005): 282-92. Print. Traces the diverging trajectory of Henry James’s influence in Leavitt’s and Hollinghurst’s novels treating homosexuality in the 1980s. Swaab, Peter. “The Line of Beauty.” Film Quarterly 60.3 (2007): 10-15. Print. Reviews the BBC adaptation of Hollinghurst’s novel and compares it to the original. Gale Resources
Hollinghurst, Alan. The Line of Beauty. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. Print.
“Alan Hollinghurst.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005.
“Inside the Tory Stronghold: Alan Hollinghurst’s Latest Novel Explores the Thatcher Years from the Perspective of Those Who Prospered.” Bookseller 13 Feb. 2004: 30. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010.
Hopes, David. “Alan Hollinghurst.” British Novelists since 1960, Third Series. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 207. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 25 June 2010.
“The Line of Beauty.” Rev. of The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst. Publishers Weekly 20 Sept. 2004: 46. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 June 2010.
Moseley, Merritt. “The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst.” Booker Prize Novels: 1969-2005. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 June 2010.
Moon, Michael. “Burn Me at the Stake Always.” New England Quarterly 78.4 (Dec. 2005): 631-42. Print. Quinn, Anthony. “The Last Good Summer.” Rev. of The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst. New York Times Book Review 31 Oct. 2004: 19. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 June 2010. Wood, James. “The Ogee Curve.” New Republic 13 Dec. 2004: 47-49. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Eastham, Andrew. “The Aesthetic Afterlives of Mr. W.P.: Reanimating Pater in Twenty-first Century Fiction.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 20.1-2 (2009): 158-72. Print. Essay in which Eastham reads The Line of Beauty in the context of the aesthetic theories of the Victorian writer Walter Pater. Hannah, Daniel K. “The Private Life, the Public Stage: Henry James in Recent Fiction.” Journal of Modern Literature 30.3 (2007): 70-94. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 285. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Article in which Hannah
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Open Web Sources
An interview of Hollinghurst by Stephen Moss is available on the Web site of the Guardian, a British newspaper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/oct/21/ bookerprize2004.bookerprize The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Web site offers an overview of the three-episode BBC adaptation of The Line of Beauty, including information about the cast and characters. http://www.bbc.co. uk/drama/lineofbeauty/ The official Web site of the British Prime Minister’s Office offers an overview of Margaret Thatcher’s political career, including a video interview, biography, and facts about “The Iron Lady.” http:// www.number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/primeministers-in-history/margaret-thatcher The Web site of the International AIDS charity AVERT provides a timeline and overview of HIV and AIDS in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1995. http:// www.avert.org/uk-aids-history.htm TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Line of Beauty For Further Reading
Cowley, Jason. The Last Game: Love, Death and Football. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Print. Cowley’s memoir provides a personal account of life in England during the 1980s that reflects on society, sports, and family relationships. Engel, Jonathan. The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS. New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2006. Print. Engel’s book chronicles the history of AIDS as a global health crisis, exploring the disease in the contexts of sexuality, religion, poverty, and politics. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1925. Print. The Line of Beauty has often been described as having a plot similar to that of Fitzgerald’s famed novel of life in the prosperous 1920s. In addition, parallels have been drawn between the characters of Nick Guest and Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Nick Carraway. Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming-Pool Library. New York: Random House, 1988. Print. Hollinghurst’s first novel tells the story of a wealthy young gay man named William Beckwith, who, after a chance encounter, is asked to write the biography of the elderly Lord Charles Nantwich. In so doing, William is forced to come to terms with his own family’s homophobic past.
Trollope, Anthony. The Way We Live Now. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Print. Trollope’s critique of the conventions of Victorian life is discussed by Nick and Lord Kessler early in The Line of Beauty. Critics have suggested that Hollinghurst’s novel is to England in the 1980s what Trollope’s was to Victorian England. Vinen, Richard. Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Print. Vinen’s book offers a nonpartisan account of the Thatcher years and attempts to debunk certain myths about Britain’s first female prime minister and her legacy. Adaptations
The Line of Beauty. Dir. Saul Dibb. Perf. Dan Stevens, Tim McInnerny, Haley Atwell, Alice Krige, Carmen du Sautoy. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2006. Television. A three-episode television miniseries adaptation of the novel, this BBC production received predominantly positive reviews, although some critics faulted it for softening Nick Guest’s character in order to make him appear more sympathetic to viewers.
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Greta Gard
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Liquidation By Imre Kertész
W Introduction Originally published in Hungarian as Felszámolásin, 2003, Liquidation (trans. Tim Wilkinson, 2004) is a work by Nobel laureate Imre Kertész. Set in Budapest, Hungary, during the democratic reforms of the 1990s, the short novel is narrated primarily by an editor named Kingbitter. It focuses on a group of colleagues reacting to the suicide of a member of their circle, who is known simply as Bee or B. He was a writer and Auschwitz survivor whose traumatic Holocaust experiences left him with a severely pessimistic outlook on both life and art, leading eventually to the demise of his marriage and, later, to his suicide. The novel traces Kingbitter’s search for the manuscript he believes Bee left behind and chronicles his revelations about Bee’s life and outlook. Literature is an important theme in Liquidation, and the novel blends features of a number of literary genres, weaving elements of poetry and drama into its narrative. The work has been praised for its formal innovations, as well as for its statement about life and art in a post-Auschwitz world. It also explores the complicated nature of relationships between men and women and the difficulties of forging lasting bonds in an unstable world.
W Literary and Historical Context
Although Kertész’s novel is set in Budapest in the early 1990s, it is haunted by the events that took place at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz during World War II. Located in Poland, Auschwitz served as both a forced labor camp and an extermination facility. It is believed that as many as three million people, primarily European Jews, perished at Auschwitz, whether in the gas chambers, from disease and malnutrition, or as the victims of “scientific” experiments. The camp was liberated by Soviet
troops on January 27, 1945. Today the site is a museum and memorial. In the novel, Bee was born in Auschwitz and derives his name from the identification number that was tattooed on his leg there. Bee’s former wife, Judit, also lives with the legacy of the concentration camps: “My mother died of some disease she had brought back from Auschwitz,” she explains, “my father was a survivor, a mute, lonely, unapproachable man.” Soon after Bee’s death, Judit attends a dermatology conference in Cracow. She takes advantage of its proximity to Auschwitz to visit the camp, an experience she finds surreal and unfulfilling. Liquidation is, in many ways, a follow-up to Kertész’s earlier novels about the Holocaust. Most notable is its relationship to Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990; trans. as Kaddish for an Unborn Child, 2004), which first introduced the character of Bee. In the earlier novel, which Bee narrates, he outlines the failure of his marriage, which he attributes in large part to his refusal to bring a child into a world haunted by the memories of Auschwitz. In Liquidation, Bee has written a final novel, which Judit destroys at his request, about a man and woman whose relationship falls apart because the wife wants a child and the husband believes that desire is unforgivable because after Auschwitz, “it is not permissible to want anything.” Some critics have speculated that Kertész intended for readers familiar with his work to draw parallels between Bee’s final masterpiece and Kaddish for an Unborn Child.
W Themes The impossibility of life after Auschwitz is one of the central themes of Kertész’s novel. After Bee’s death, Judit reflects on their failed marriage and his seemingly inevitable suicide, concluding that the Holocaust never ended for him, because he “lived Auschwitz here, in Budapest, not of course an Auschwitz comparable to Auschwitz itself, but a voluntarily accepted, domestic
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Liquidation
The novel Liquidation is set during the democratic reforms that occurred in Budapest, Hungary, during the 1990s. Botond Horvath/Shutterstock.com
Auschwitz.” The Auschwitz identification tattooed on Bee’s leg defines him both literally—providing the name that he adopts—and symbolically, marking him as a permanent inhabitant of the concentration camp. In his suicide letter he explains to his lover, Sarah, that “I was already dead when I was living.” After Bee’s death, Judit confesses that their relationship was always doomed to failure because “Auschwitz was my bridegroom.” The union finally ends when Judit, infuriating her husband by “acting as if the world was not a world of murderers” in proposing a trip to Italy, takes off for Florence without him. There she meets Adam, who eventually becomes her second husband. When she returns to Budapest, she ends her marriage, explaining that she wants to live a different sort of life than is possible for Bee. While Judit finds happiness in her marriage to Adam, the book’s conclusion reveals the instability of even this relationship. Kingbitter, desperate to retrieve Bee’s final novel, visits Adam and reveals details of Judit’s life that lead her husband to believe he has never really known her. Such pessimism about relationships is evident as well in Bee’s final letter to Sarah, in which he reveals that even her
love and best efforts to save him could never have been enough to prevent his suicide.
W Style Liquidation is a work of metafiction, a type of literature that uses literature itself as its subject matter, demonstrating an awareness of itself as a work of fiction and often exposing the conventions through which it is constructed. In eschewing the customs of realism, metafictional texts refuse to allow readers to forget that what they are reading is fiction. Well-known works of metafiction include James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Kurt Vonnegut’s SlaughterhouseFive (1969), and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990). Liquidation begins with the introduction of Kingbitter: “We imagine a man, and a name to go with him. Or conversely, let us imagine the name, and the man to go with it. Though this may all be avoided anyway, since our man, the hero of this story, really is called Kingbitter.” In drawing attention to the creation of
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ADAM is Judit’s second husband, who finally helps her find happiness and with whom she has two children. At the end of the novel, he struggles to understand why and how Judit became involved in Bee’s suicide and the destruction of his final masterpiece. BEE (OR B.) is a writer, editor, and translator who was born in Auschwitz. His name comes from the identification number tattooed on his thigh at the camp. Haunted by the Holocaust, he attempts to exorcise his demons through writing but ultimately commits suicide, leaving behind letters for his former wife, Judit, and his lover, Sarah, in which he explains his inability to continue living. JUDIT is the former wife of Bee. She is a dermatologist with whom Kingbitter once had an affair. Although she is also haunted by the Holocaust, she has trouble relating to Bee’s pessimistic outlook, and their marriage finally dissolves, in part over his refusal to have children. She remarries and finds that she is finally happy. She remains in contact with Bee, however, and, believing she is helping him overcome an addiction, unwittingly helps him procure and stockpile a fatal dose of morphine. Before he commits suicide, Bee entrusts her with the manuscript of his final novel and asks her to destroy it, which she does. She narrates part of Liquidation’s conclusion, explaining her actions to her stunned husband. KINGBITTER is the narrator of most of the novel. He is an editor who worked with and was inspired by Bee and who was once arrested by the communist regime for publishing antistate propaganda. After Bee’s death, he becomes convinced that the man left behind a novel, and he attempts to track it down. Although he finally deduces that Bee entrusted it to Judit, by the time he confronts her she has already burned it. KÜRTI is Sarah’s husband and a colleague of Bee and Kingbitter. OBLÁTH is another employee of the publishing company where Kingbitter and Bee work. He is a character in Bee’s drama. SARAH is Kürti’s wife and has been having an affair with Bee. She discovers Bee’s body and calls Kingbitter to help her cope. She and Kingbitter keep the truth of the affair a secret from Kürti.
Kingbitter’s character, this opening, in a fashion typical of metafiction, immediately calls into question the truth that it proclaims. It also lays the groundwork for the instability of what will follow. The novel is composed of sections narrated primarily by Kingbitter but mediated by excerpts from Bee’s writings, including his suicide note. Most notably, the novel includes scenes from Bee’s final drama (also titled Liquidation). Kingbitter rescues this script
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Portrait of Imre Kertész, author of Liquidation. ª Micheline Pelletier/ Corbis
from Bee’s home after his suicide and discovers that it imagines his friends’ lives after his death. One of the drama’s early scenes depicts the liquidation of the company for which the characters work. Blurring the distinctions between fiction and reality, Kingbitter explains that the scene actually occurred, but that “by the time that scene was played out in reality, almost word for word, the person who had written the play, and that scene in it, was no longer alive.” Later segments from Bee’s script include his experimentation in representing the events he describes in verse form, as well as two alternate endings that imagine the final confrontation between him and Judit.
W Critical Reception Liquidation is the first work that Kertész published after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002. It has therefore been subject to increased interest from readers and heightened scrutiny from literary critics and book reviewers. Reaction to the novel has been overwhelmingly positive, with commentators noting the importance TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Liquidation
and gravity of the issues that Kertész raises. Reviewing Liquidation for the Hudson Review, Tom Wilhelmus describes it as “timeless in its analysis of the oppressive hand of history on individual human lives.” Many critics have suggested that the novel is best read in conjunction with the author’s earlier works treating the Holocaust, particularly Kaddish for an Unborn Child and Fateless. Such is the case with Amos Friedland’s review for the Globe and Mail, which asserts that “Liquidation’s real literary value lies in its relation to its prequels, the way in which it subtly, even perversely, plays with the themes of these earlier novels.” Another segment of reviewers have been attentive to Kertész’s innovations with form. Reviewing Liquidation in World Literature Today, George Gomori describes the work as demonstrating “the skillful application of various genres within the novel: verse, drama, letters, laconic prose.” Gomori also praises Wilkinson’s English translation, noting that it “is ingenious and very readable; he serves Imre Kertész better than any of his previous English translators.” Even commentators who have found fault with aspects of the novel have tended to praise it, in spite of its perceived defects. Reviewing the book for the Guardian, for example, Michael Faber writes that “[o]n the level of plot, characterisation and narrative craft, Liquidation is an ill-made thing indeed,” but also suggests that “it is a powerful book, despite its flaws.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Faber, Michael. Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Guardian [London] 23 Sept. 2006: 17. Print. Friedland, Amos. “Surviving a Malady that Has No Cure.” Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Globe and Mail [Toronto] 27 Nov. 2004: D43. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Imre Kertész was born in Budapest, Hungary, on November 9, 1929. As an adolescent, he was sent to the concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. These experiences would later shape his adult writings, many of which reflect on the Holocaust and its aftereffects. Kertész’s first novel, Sorstalanság (trans. as Fateless, 1992), was published in 1975. He followed up with a number of other works, some of which, including } (1977; trans. as The Pathseeker, 2008), A nyomkereso Detektívtörténet (1977; trans. as Detective Story, 2008), Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990; trans. as Kaddish for an Unborn Child, 2004), and Az angol lobogó (1991; trans. as The Union Jack, 2010), have been translated into English. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has also translated German texts into his native Hungarian.
Franklin, Ruth. “The Inhuman Condition.” Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. New York Times Book Review 19 Dec. 2004: 24. A review that uses the author’s biography and body of work to contextualize the novel. Hoffert, Barbara. Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Library Journal 1 May 2004: 86. A brief review that offers the work as evidence of why Kertész won the Nobel Prize. Olson, Ray. Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Booklist 15 Oct. 2004: 389+. Suggests that the novel’s focus may be alienating for non-European readers. Gale Resources
Gomori, George. Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. World Literature Today 81.1 (2007): 69+.
Forgács, Éva. “Imre Kertesz.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 2. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 330.
Kertész, Imre. Liquidation: A Novel. Trans. Tim Wilkinson. New York: Knopf, 2004. Print.
“Imre Kertesz.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
Wilhelmus, Tom. “Politics.” Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Hudson Review 58.1 (2005): 167-74. Print.
Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály. “Imre Kertesz.” Twenty-firstCentury Central and Eastern European Writers. Ed. Steven Serafin and Vasa D. Mihailovich. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 353.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Adelman, Gary. “Getting Started with Imre Kertész.” New England Review 25.1/2 (2004): 261-78. Print. A critical essay that offers an introduction to Kertész’s work. Cherry, Kelly. Rev. of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. Hollins Critic 42.2 (2005): 15. Compares Liquidation to Kertész’s earlier novel Kaddish for an Unborn Child.
Open Web Sources
The Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: “Forget You Not” contains an interview with Kertész by Stefan Theil in which the author discusses surviving the Holocaust and its influence on his work. http://isurvived.org/KerteszINTERVIEW.html The Nobel Prize Web site offers video of Kertész’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Transcripts of the speech are
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also available in a number of languages, including English. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-lecture.html For Further Reading
Kertész, Imre. Detective Story. Trans. Tim Wilkinson. New York: Knopf, 2008. Print. This English translation of Kertész’s 1977 novel is the story of a Latin American policeman awaiting execution for murders in which he participated as part of a toppled regime. Lester, David. Suicide and the Holocaust. New York: Nova Science, 2005. Print. This nonfiction volume explores the large number of Holocaust survivors who, like the fictional Bee, have committed suicide. Molnár, Miklós. A Concise History of Hungary. Trans. Anna Magyar. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. This volume of nonfiction traces the history of Hungary through 1988.
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Rees, Laurence. Auschwitz: A New History. New York: Public Affairs, 2005. Print. This work of nonfiction draws on interviews with survivors to examine the Polish concentration camp that figures prominently in Kertész’s novel. Vasvari, Louise O., and Steven Totosy de Zepetnek. Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2005. Print. This collection of essays explores the role of the Holocaust in Kertész’s writing. It also includes a bibliography of his work and scholarship about it. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill, 1960. Print. Nobel laureate Wiesel’s memoir is the story of a teenager’s experiences during the Holocaust and the survivor’s guilt he feels for living through it when so many, including his family members, did not. Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Little Stranger By Sarah Waters
W Introduction The Little Stranger (2009) is a gothic novel set in England following World War II (1939-1945). The story unfolds when the narrator, Dr. Faraday, is called to Hundreds Hall, the crumbling mansion of the Ayres family. While the doctor tends to a member of the estate’s dwindling staff, he takes an interest in Roderick Ayres, a young man whose war injuries have left him in great pain. Faraday eventually becomes a friend to the family as well as its physician. As the Ayres family struggles to maintain control of Hundreds Hall, it soon becomes apparent that Roderick’s mental health is as precarious as the family’s finances. Faraday at first believes his friend’s state is caused by stress and memories of the war, but Roderick insists that the house is haunted by an evil presence. After an unexplained nighttime fire in Roderick’s room, the family has him committed to a mental institution. Roderick’s health fails to improve, and the other members of the family find themselves dealing with frightening and unexplained events in the mansion. Focused on the postwar decline of the British aristocracy as much as on the supernatural, Sarah Waters’s book was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
Set in the years following World War II, The Little Stranger depicts the political changes in Great Britain that took place as the country struggled to transition away from a wartime economy. The novel describes the rationing that continued after the war and the scarcity of goods such as alcohol and clothing. As British citizens lost confidence in Winston Churchill’s government, the Labour Party gained popularity, culminating in the election of party leader Clement Attlee as prime minister.
The party soon brought about sweeping reforms, nationalizing a number of industries and creating the National Health Service. In the novel Faraday worries that the latter will destroy his small medical practice, although at the end of the story, two years removed from the central action, he reveals that it did not. The Little Stranger also highlights the changing role of women during the 1940s. World War II presented new opportunities for women, many of whom left the home to work for the war effort. In the novel Caroline Ayres serves in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the “Wrens”) and hopes “to stay on at the end of the war, go out to Italy or Singapore.” Like many other British women, however, Caroline finds that the postwar world is not as accepting of working women. She is expected to return home to care for her injured brother and must put her dreams of travel and service on hold. She remains, nonetheless, a new kind of woman. Plain and sensible, she often fails to shave her legs and, unlike her ethereal mother, shows little interest in clothing or appearances. Although Roderick is determined to shut Caroline out of the family’s troubled finances, she proves herself to be an adept businesswoman, underscoring the wasted potential of the many women who were displaced from their jobs when men returned from war.
W Themes The instability of the British class system is the central theme of The Little Stranger and, quite literally, the horror that haunts it. Early in the novel, when Caroline and Roderick joke about the many servants who have come and gone from their home, Faraday observes that “Hundreds Hall had been made and maintained . . . by the very people they were laughing at now. After two hundred years, those people had begun to withdraw their labour, their belief in the house, and the house was collapsing like a pyramid of cards.” Without money or staff, the house quickly falls into disrepair: rooms are
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CAROLINE AYRES is the plain and sensible daughter of Mrs. Ayres. Caroline’s fulfilling wartime service with the Wrens was cut short when she returned home to care for her wounded brother. She and Faraday become friends and are eventually engaged to marry. Caroline calls off the wedding and, on the night of the nuptials that were not to be, plunges to her death from the staircase of Hundreds Hall. The horrified recognition in her final word, “You,” is left for the reader to interpret. MRS. AYRES is the matriarch of Hundreds Hall. She is haunted by the death of her first daughter, Susan, and feels she has loved her other two children inadequately. Mrs. Ayres becomes obsessed with the idea that the seemingly supernatural events in her home may be attributed to her lost child. Believing this child is summoning her, she commits suicide near the end of the novel. RODERICK AYRES is the youngest of the Ayres children. He returns home from war with serious injuries. Stepping into the role of head of household, he is forced to deal with the family’s dwindling income and the need to sell off much of their land. After Roderick claims that an evil spirit is attempting to destroy the family, he is sent to a mental institution but does not recover. BETTY is an adolescent girl who works as a maid in the Ayres’s home. When Faraday first meets her, she is clearly frightened by Hundreds Hall.
In The Little Stranger, a doctor is called in to treat a staff member at an old mansion and finds the place inhabited by strange residents and, possibly, even stranger apparitions. 1000 Words/Shutterstock.com
DR. FARADAY, the narrator of the novel, comes from very humble origins. His mother was a maid to the Ayres family before marrying his father. Faraday feels guilt over his expensive education, the financial strain of which he believes may have led to the premature deaths of his parents.
even imagines he can hear his mother’s ghostly voice in the mansion’s speaking tube. At the same time Faraday’s romanticized vision of Hundreds Hall circumvents his own happiness, preventing him from considering the family’s belief that the home is haunted. Caroline cites his obsession with being master of Hundreds Hall as one of her reasons for calling off their impending wedding.
closed off, carpets worn, ceilings and furniture damaged by water and rot. While Waters seems sympathetic to the struggles of the Ayers family, she is also quick to point out the advantages they have enjoyed at the expense of the laboring classes. There is thus irony in the fact that the family’s declining fortunes lead to the creation of affordable housing on the land it must sell in order to survive. Many of the colleagues with whom Faraday consults about the strange goings-on at Hundreds Hall believe the events are manifestations of the family’s inability to accept its changing role in the world. Faraday is also haunted by class concerns. The child of working-class parents, he is both embarrassed by his humble origins and ashamed that his education put undue strain on his parents, whose “grim economies,” he fears, may have led to their early deaths. At one point he
W Style
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The Little Stranger is narrated in the first person by Faraday. One effect of this point of view is that many of the novel’s central events are relayed secondhand. For instance, the narrator is present at the dinner party at which the Ayres’s docile dog attacks and wounds a little girl, but he is absent when Roderick’s room catches on fire during the night and when Mrs. Ayres, investigating the noises coming from a speaking tube located in the house’s sealed nursery, is mysteriously locked in the room. While some critics have faulted the narration for this, others have stated that it helps feed the novel’s ambiguity. Faraday never witnesses anything he cannot personally rationalize away, leaving the reader to decide whether Hundreds Hall is truly haunted or whether its inhabitants are simply driving themselves insane. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Little Stranger
Many critics have compared Waters’s novel to Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw (1898), which uses psychological suspense, rather than obvious acts of violence, to develop its sense of horror. Although each of the haunting events of The Little Stranger—including unexplained scuff marks on the wall, the ringing of the servants’ bell when no one is there to ring it, a fire, and the whistling of an old speaking tube—has a plausible explanation, Waters undermines rationality by investing these incidents with supernatural potential. As John Preston notes in his review of the novel for the Sunday Telegraph, “the richness of Waters’s writing ensures that the air of thickening dread is very thick indeed.” Similarly, in his Washington Post review, Ron Charles praises the author’s ability, “like [Henry] James’s, to excite our imagination through subtle suggestion alone. The supernatural creaks and groans that reverberate through this tale are accompanied by malignant strains of class envy and sexual repression that infect every perfectly reasonable explanation we hear. The result is a ghost story as intelligent as it is stylish.”
W Critical Reception Waters’s fifth novel, The Little Stranger generated considerable interest even prior to its 2009 publication. Upon release the book was embraced by readers and overwhelmingly well received by critics. While some commentators were surprised by the absence of the homosexuality element that had been so prevalent in Waters’s earlier works, the novel was recognized as demonstrating the author’s typical attention to historical detail and insightful social commentary. In a review for the Globe and Mail, Emma Donoghue lauds the novel’s social insights, commenting that “this is a good example of the way the timeless elements in Waters’s novels—the desire, the horror—are always rooted in the specific, even the political. If she will disappoint some of her readers on this occasion by refusing to rip away the veil and reveal the heart of darkness, it is perhaps because darkness, the ‘little stranger,’ can creep in anywhere.” Even commentators who found fault with aspects of the novel balanced their criticism with praise. A review of the work in Kirkus Reviews suggests that the novel is marred by its dialogue and first-person narration, noting that “crucial dramatic moments are muffled by fervent conversations among the four major characters. Furthermore, too many crucial pieces of information are relayed secondhand, as Faraday summarizes accounts of other people’s experiences.” The reviewer, however, praises Waters for “working in traditions established by Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan le Fanu and Wilkie Collins, expertly teasing us with suggestive allusions to the classics of supernatural fiction.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sarah Waters was born on July 21, 1966, in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales. She received a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of Kent before earning a master’s degree from Lancaster University and a PhD from the University of London’s Queen Mary and Westfield College. She became interested in novel writing while composing her doctoral dissertation. Her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, was published in 1998 and received the 2000 Lambda Literary Award for fiction. She followed up on this success with Affinity (2000), Fingersmith (2002), and The Night Watch (2006). With these novels Waters became known for her interest in history and her attention to detail. She also made a name for herself as a lesbian author treating gay and lesbian themes. The Little Stranger was the first of her books not to include gay or lesbian characters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Charles, Ron. “This Old House: Sarah Waters Restores a Classic Ghost Story to Its Original Condition.” Washington Post 20 May 2009: C04. Print. Donoghue, Emma. “Just Who’s to Blame for All This Horror?” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 16 May 2009: F10. Print. Rev. of The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. Kirkus Reviews 1 May 2009: n. pag. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Preston, John. “Sarah Waters’s Old-Style Ghost Story Makes the Hairs on the Back of John Preston’s Neck Stand Up.” Sunday Telegraph [London] 17 May 2009: 29. Print. Waters, Sarah. The Little Stranger. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Coyne, Kate. “Entering Chillier Waters: Previously Shortlisted for Both the Man Booker and the Orange Prize, Sarah Waters’ New Novel, Billed as a Chilling Ghost Story, Is Eagerly Awaited by the Trade and Readers Alike.” Bookseller 3 Apr. 2009: 22. A review of The Little Stranger that provides context from the author. “Haunted House.” Publishers Weekly 30 Mar. 2009: 1. A favorable review that compares the novel to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). Hensher, Philip. “Straitened Circumstances.” Spectator 30 May 2009: 26+. Explores Waters’s departure from gay and lesbian characters and themes, and probes the effectiveness of The Little Stranger’s ghost story.
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Huntley, Kristine. Rev. of The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. Booklist 1 May 2009: 64. Lauds Waters’s blending of ghost story and social commentary in the novel. Jones, Bethan. “The MGA Publicist Finds a Ghost Story that Gives Her Chills in the Summer Sun.” Bookseller 24 July 2009: 20. A review that praises the ambiguity with which Waters depicts seemingly supernatural events in The Little Stranger. Thomas, Devon. Rev. of The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. Library Journal 15 May 2009: 72. Likens the novel to works by Edgar Allan Poe and Evelyn Waugh. Thomas, Scarlett. “House Calls.” New York Times Book Review 31 May 2009: 20(L). Offers an overview of the book’s plot that questions the believability of Faraday’s motivations. Gale Resources
“Sarah Waters.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site gives an overview of Waters’s books and awards and provides a short biography and calendar of events. It also notably includes the author’s thoughts on her favorite ghost stories. http://sarahwaters.com/ The British Council’s Contemporary Writers Web site offers an extensive biography of Waters, including a list of awards and a critical overview of her works. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p= auth03A23O034012634831
surge in popularity following World War II. http:// www2.labour.org.uk/history_of_the_labour_party For Further Reading
Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990. Print. Cannadine traces the declining fortunes of the British aristocracy from the height of its wealth and power in the 1870s to the end of the twentieth century. Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Viking Press, 1959. Print. Jackson’s classic ghost story has been a point of comparison for many reviewers of The Little Stranger. Price, Harry. “The Most Haunted House in England”: Ten Years’ Investigation of Borley Rectory. London: Longmans, Green, 1940. Print. Written just prior to the period during which The Little Stranger is set, Price’s work of nonfiction examines a famously haunted British rectory. Shaw, Eric. The Labour Party since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Print. Shaw’s book provides an overview of the history of the British Labour Party after World War II. Waters, Sarah. The Night Watch. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006. Print. Like The Little Stranger, The Night Watch is set in Great Britain during the 1940s. The novel traces the effects of the war on a diverse cast of characters, including a recently separated lesbian couple. Greta Gard
The Web site of Great Britain’s Labour Party includes a historical summary of the party that chronicles its
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Local By Brian Wood
W Introduction Local (2008) is a graphic novel with text by Brian Wood and illustrations by Ryan Kelly. It collects the first twelve issues of the comic series by the same name published serially during 2006 and 2007 by Oni Press. Taken together, the twelve chapters consist of interconnected short stories about Megan McKeenan, who between the ages of seventeen and thirty relocates around North America, holding various kinds of jobs and growing up the hard way. A runaway, Megan is just short of homeless as she takes rooms and hourly jobs. She is traumatized by being held hostage and witnessing a murder/suicide of brothers, she is brutalized by sexual exploitation in the workplace and low-life casual sex, and she experiences psychological problems as a result. Ultimately, she comes to face her inheritance, both literally by taking ownership of property she inherits from her mother and by owning the responsibility of finding answers and a place within herself where she can settle in and be at peace.
W Literary and Historical Context
The literary context for Local is the bildungsroman, the coming-of-age story. Stories in this genre mark the trajectory from youthful inexperience through worldly experiences that move the protagonist toward adulthood. Often times, these stories begin with the protagonist in the family of origin setting. From this location, the main character sets out, perhaps on the road, perhaps into the big city, and through trial and error in an often episodic fashion the central character matures, finds himself, and settles into a role and place for the adult years to come. Sometimes the conclusion of such stories brings the character back home, but often times both the character
and the home are now different. All of these features apply in various ways to Local. The historical context for Local stretches from 1994 to 2007 in North America. A prevalent issue during this period and in the years following revolves around the misuse of prescription drugs. In an article in the Columbus Dispatch, journalist Holly Zachariah described how commonly OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin are abused. In the first chapter of Local, Megan considers using a falsified prescription in order to procure a narcotic for her drug-addicted boyfriend.
W Themes The main theme of Local is explicitly laid out in the final chapter, in a dream sequence in which Megan talks with her now deceased mother. The haunting question is why her mother did not check Megan’s penchant for running away, why she actually seemed to facilitate it by buying her a car. Megan realizes in this sequence that her mother only wanted Megan to have the chance to see the world, an opportunity her mother regretted never having. Megan considers what compelled her to be a runaway and what she found in her restless move from one place to another. Home is a psychological place as much as a geographical location, Wood seems to be suggesting.
W Style Local is a graphic novel, consisting of black-and-white illustrations and text. Thoughts and spoken words appear in typical balloonlike circles, and off-image words, such as those spoken by a person at the other end of the phone conversation or text from postcards, appear within square boxes, often called captions. Over the chapters, images of Megan depict her aging from a scruffy seventeen-year-old to a mature woman of thirty. Each setting is a specific,
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Local
MAJOR CHARACTERS DAD is passive-aggressive toward his wife and subverts his son’s development by encouraging Matt to drink at home. Dad dies suddenly while both Megan and Matt are away from home. LEN is one of the love interests in Megan’s past, who shows up in her imagination in the last chapter to ask her why she left him without an explanation. MATT MCKEENAN, Megan’s younger brother, is undermined by their father’s urging him to drink beer at home, which initiates Matt’s substance abuse problems through his teens. MEGAN MCKEENAN, a runaway at seventeen, is full of wanderlust that leads her into trauma and exploitation but lands her finally at home at thirty and at peace with the answers to questions that made her leave home in the first place. MOM is a disillusioned woman who looks back with regret to a dearth of opportunities and struggles with Matt’s anger, depression, and misbehavior after she is widowed. She dies while Megan and Matt are away from home.
researched locale or midsize town, designed carefully to convey its flavor, architectural character, and urban and geographical landmarks. The effect is to provide immediate connection to real locations and to add verisimilitude in the backdrop to underscore the realism in each story. Many readers find the different locations stylistically pleasing. Irony plays a part in the way text departs from illustration, the discrepancy pointing to the essence of the action. One example occurs when lead singer Frank Locke is interviewed over the phone. The questions elicit idealistic responses, the public-relations-savvy statements about the band’s harmonious breakup and Frank’s anticipation of doing a solo record. The illustrations show the reality that the now defensive Frank has nothing to do and is living in an uncomfortable apartment, out of touch with fans who once admired him. Another example occurs in Chapter Ten, in which Megan’s brother, Matt, is depicted at odds with his family and getting into serious trouble in school and among drug dealers, the images in glaring contrast to the newsy, upbeat text of postcards he receives from Megan. The double irony here is that the postcard statements do not match Megan’s actual experience any more than her depictions of Matt match his.
The skyline of Austin, Texas. In Local, Megan McKeenan documents her life in twelve different North American cities, one of which is Austin. Brandon Seidel/Shutterstock.com
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Local
W Critical Reception Critical reception for Local in mainstream journals was restricted to one acknowledgment from Booklist. In that review, Francisca Goldsmith termed the graphic novel as “well-worked” and “cohesive.” She also noted its literary heritage and anticipated its readership: “Combining road saga, bildungsroman, and existentialism, Local has something to suit the tastes of readers who already like Capote, or Kerouac, or Albertine Sarrazin, and has the potential for leading others to explore such more traditional, equally nuanced storytellers.” In addition to the Booklist review, readers weighed in with their evaluations on two blogs, Shelfari and Hebdomeros. In the former, a reader wrote that “the weakest issues are the ones having the least to do with Megan, namely ‘Hazardous Youth’ and ‘Bar Crawl.’” This reader also found the strongest parts show “life on the road, life with more risks and more mistakes.” The conclusion this reader reached is that Local “rewards with every additional read.” The reader calling himself Hebdomeros praised the depiction of local areas and
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born January 29, 1972, in Essex Junction, Vermont, writer and illustrator Brian Wood moved to New York City in 1991 and graduated from the Parsons School of Design in 1997 with a BA in illustration. His work in comics began with the miniseries Channel Zero (1997). After a brief stint in Internet design, he joined Marvel Comics as a writer for Generation X. He produced several graphic novels and miniseries in the early 2000s, including Couscous Express, The Couriers, and Jennie One, for AIT; Pounded for Oni Press; and Fight for Tomorrow for DC Comics. Between 2003 and 2006, Wood produced the comic series Demo, and in 2006, he teamed up with artist Ryan Kelly to produce Local. Starting in 2007, he worked on the series Northlander. Between 2004 and 2008, Wood was nominated five times for an Eisner Award, and in 2007, his “Emmy,” a short story in Demos, won the Grand Jury Best Short Story. As of 2010, Wood lived in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.
Halifax is one of the places main character Megan McKeenan visits while she is living life as a runaway in the graphic novel Local. s duffett/Shutterstock.com
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the research that went into their creation and was especially intrigued by Chapter Three, “Theories and Defenses,” about the band that breaks up and whose members return to their hometown and take their disparate paths having arrived there. Hebdomeros also praised the artwork: “Kelly’s artwork is a great match for Wood’s story; the black and white indie look equates with the vagabond spirit of the story.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Goldsmith, Francisca. “Local.” Rev. of Local, by Brian Wood. Booklist 15 Nov. 2008: 26. Print. Hebdomeros. “Review: Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly.” Rev. of Local, by Brian Wood. http:// hebdomeros.blogspot.com Hebdomeros: Writing, Art, and Life in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. “Local.” Rev. of Local, by Brian Wood. http://www. shelfari.com/books Shelfari 4 June 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. Wood, Brian. Local. Illus. Ryan Kelly. Portland: Oni Press, 2008. Print. Zachariah, Holly. “Illegal Prescription-Drug Trade Now Epidemic.” http://www.dispatch.com Dispatch [Columbus] 7 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Arrant, Chris. “Brian Wood Talks DMZ, Northlanders, the Return of Jennie 2.5 and More.” http://robot6. comicbookresources.com Comic Book Resources 1 Sept. 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. Interview with Wood covering works listed in title and the author’s interest in music, with photo of Wood’s office.
Open Web Sources
Absolute Astronomy maintains a page on Brian Wood, available at http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ topics/Brian_Wood, which provides a biography, a description of his career, a list of his publications and awards, and links to his Web page, his blog, and an interview with him. The Brian Wood Web page, containing information about appearances and work, is available at http:// www.brianwood.com For Further Reading
Marvit, Lawrence. Sparks: An Urban Fairytale. San Jose: SLG, 2002. Print. Graphic novel about a young woman who is better at repairing cars than she is at stereotypical female hobbies. Watson, Andi. Slow News Day. San Jose: SLG, 2007. Print. Graphic novel about young California journalist who lands a summer internship in England with the financially strapped Wheatstone Mercury. Wood, Brian. DMZ. New York: DC Comics-Vertigo, 2006-2010. Print. A series of ten graphic novels set in the near future during a second civil war in the United States, featuring a lone journalist in the no man’s land of New York City. ———. The New York Four. New York: Minx, 2008. Print. A graphic novel with a sequel, The New York Five, featuring young women who are college freshmen. ———. Northlander. New York: DC Comics-Vertigo, 2006-2010. Print. Available as of 2010 in four volumes with a fifth in progress, a graphic novel series set in the Viking Age. Melodie Monahan
Gale Resources
“Brian Wood.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Oct. 2010.
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A Long Long Way By Sebastian Barry
W Introduction Acclaimed Irish poet, playwright, and novelist Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way is an elegiac novel written in evocative, poetic prose detailing the tragic, short life of a young Irishman, Willie Dunne, who enlists as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in World War I. While Willie is caught up in the more epic war being fought in foreign countries, he also has to contend with the smaller yet similarly violent one that is brewing in his own country—between the Irish and the British, culminating in the infamous Easter Rising. Like many war classics, A Long Long Way is actually an antiwar novel that demonstrates the senseless, needless death, chaos, and destruction that occurs as its inevitable result. It also makes a bold statement about how all wars are very much the same, with the two conflicts bleeding into one another to such an extent that the protagonist has difficulty distinguishing one from the other. A Long Long Way was nominated for a number of awards, including being short-listed for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2005 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2007. It won the 2006 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
A Long Long Way’s protagonist, Willie Dunne, is a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, one of the British army’s eight Irish Infantry Regiments, created in 1881 and disbanded in 1922. During World War I, the regiment served in the Middle East, Gallipoli, Salonika, and the Western front. Over the course of the war, 4,700 of its soldiers were killed and thousands more wounded. The regiment was honored with three Victoria Crosses, the British army’s most prestigious award for bravery.
Even as the Irish were fighting for the British in World War I, they were embroiled in a conflict with Britain stretching back to 1801, when Britain was first united with Ireland, and Ireland’s parliament was abolished in the process. Ever since then, a large number of Irish nationalists opposed what they regarded as exploitation of their homeland, with numerous vocal and violent protests occurring over the years. In 1916 a large insurrection, known as the Easter Rising, was mounted. Irish republicans staged this violent uprising in hope of forcing the British to relinquish their control of Ireland. They seized major Dublin locations, declaring themselves independent of Britain. After seven days, the British managed to suppress the rebellion and subdue its leaders. In so doing, they actually used the Royal Dublin Fusiliers for their cause, thus forcing such Irish soldiers as Willie Dunne to fire on their own countrymen. Willie is given so little information from his superiors that at first he believes the Germans have invaded. A Long Long Way is part of a series of novels and plays Sebastian Barry has written about the fictional Dunne family, based largely on his own. Willie first appeared as a minor character in his play The Steward of Christendom, while an earlier novel of Barry’s, Annie Dunne, details the later life of Willie’s sister.
W Themes A Long Long Way revolves around the major theme of the horrors of war, and how unnecessary conflict continues to lead to countless, senseless deaths on a regular basis. Although set in the specific time and place of Europe during World War I, the novel seems to be commenting on the majority of wars that occur up to this day, by depicting the trauma and tragedy that his young protagonist, Willie, undergoes as a result of fighting for a cause that he does not fully understand, all in the name of pleasing his stern, implacable father.
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A Long Long Way
MAJOR CHARACTERS THOMAS DUNNE, Dublin’s police superintendant is a strict man who always wanted his son, Willie, to follow in his footsteps, but the boy was too short to qualify for the job. WILLIE DUNNE, the protagonist, is a gentle young Irishman who joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in World War I, in order to impress his stern policeman father, and ends up dying senselessly in battle. JESSE KIRWAN, a fellow soldier and compatriot of Willie’s, is court-martialed when he refuses to follow the British army’s orders. GRETTA LAWLOR is a beautiful young woman with whom Willie falls in love. They are never able to make their relationship work before his life is tragically cut short. CHRISTY MORAN, a sergeant-major and friend of Willie’s, has a unique outlook on life and, in fact, survives the war, while so many of his compatriots die around him.
The innocent Willie, who has an angelic singing voice, enlists at the age of eighteen, because he is too short to be a policeman like his father, finding himself thrust into terrifying battles filled with carnage and despair—experiences that psychologically shatter him. Then, upon returning home, he finds himself forced to fight a war in his own country against his compatriots. In the end, Willie becomes another casualty of war, not as a
hero but as another sad statistic, an all too familiar fate for a vast number of soldiers in all wars.
W Style Drawing on Barry’s experience as a poet, A Long Long Way is written in richly detailed prose that reads like poetry. An example of this lyrical writing style is the following quote from the start of the novel, describing Willie’s birth: “The new babies screeched inside the thick grey walls of the Rotunda Hospital. Blood gathered on the nurses’ white laps like the aprons of butchers. . . . When he broke from his mother he made a mewling sound like a wounded cat, over and over” (3). Not only is the text rife with strong visual imagery, but it is filled with images that foreshadow later events and recur throughout the work. Here the blood that heralds his birth is a forerunner to that which will surround him in battle and in death, while his cries both speak to the misery he will endure, and act as a dark counterpart to the beautiful singing voice he will have in his youth. Throughout the novel, Barry paints harsh depictions of combat that place readers directly in the action and so further underline the trauma of war. His method blends the grim, stark reality of the battlefield with evocative, dreamlike metaphor that manages to make the situation all the more disturbing and bleak. In one scene, he describes a trench of corpses as “a reeking culvert with a foul carpet of crushed dead. Willie could feel the pulverized flesh still in the destroyed uniforms sucking at his boots. . . . What lives and names and loves he was walking on he could not know. These flattened forms did
British soldiers march Irish rebels out of Dublin following the Easter Rising of 1916. In A Long Long Way, Willie is forced to fight against his own compatriots during the rebellion. ª Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy
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not leak the whistle tunes and meanings of humanity any more” (174-75). By the end of the novel, Willie will be one of these countless corpses as well, beyond loves, names, and life.
W Critical Reception Upon its release, A Long Long Way received nearly universal praise for its unflinching depiction of the hell of wartime and went on to win the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, along with being short-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, among others. Olivia Glazebook in the Spectator called the novel “an outstanding education, and beyond this a tragic and terrible tale.” She described it thusly: “Through all . . . [the] necessary gore the book maintains the tone of an elegy, and the pace of an epic poem—although there are no immortal heroes in this war. Barry’s lyrical style . . . seems to float the reader through the horrors.” Andrew M. Greeley raved that “Barry writes with poetic power about ugliness and evil and about the tenacity of the human spirit. This is an antiwar book that ought to disturb anyone who supports foolish wars based on lies.” In Booklist, Marta Segal Block wrote that people who are not knowledgeable of the history of the conflict between Britain and Ireland might have difficulty following the events, but that other than that, the novel is a “compellingly sad, if difficult, read.” Meanwhile, the London Observer marveled at Barry’s prose, declaring that the “poetic quality of Barry’s writing . . . may initially seem to add a layer of inappropriate luxury and beauty to the bleak subject matter, but it serves a deeper purpose here, reflecting Willie’s faltering understanding of the war.” It went on to declare that the novel’s greatest achievement is the “restraint with which Barry allows the awful complexity of Willie’s situation to dawn on him,” and finished by saying that with “disarming lyricism, Barry’s novel leads the reader into a hellish no man’s land, where the true madness of war can only be felt and understood rather than said.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barry, Sebastian. A Long Long Way. London: Viking Penguin, 2005. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR An Irish poet, playwright, and novelist, Sebastian Barry is known for writing that blends devastatingly stark reality with gorgeously poetic imagery. His work often focuses on recent Irish history, largely inspired by the family history his mother imparted to him at a young age. Among Barry’s most famous writings are the tales and dramas he wrote about the fictional Dunne family (based on his own), with the protagonist of A Long Long Way first appearing as a ghost in a play about the character’s father, The Steward of Christendom, and his sister appearing in the eponymously titled novel, Annie Dunne. On two separate occasions, Barry was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He also won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year.
“Review: Books: Great War Fiction: Hear the Bleak Ballad of Willie Dunne.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. Observer [London] 3 Apr. 2005: 17. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Hell and Sebastian; Interview; Sebastian Barry’s New Novel Captures the True Horror of War Like Few Others . . . and Its Tragedy Took the Author on His Own Emotional Journey.” Sunday Herald [Glasgow] 3 July 2005: 31. An in-depth interview with Barry, in which A Long Long Way is placed into the context of the war novel genre and the history of the period explored. “Horror on the Front Lines, Chaos at Home.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. Virginian Pilot 17 Apr. 2005: E3. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. This review examines the story of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and how Barry captures the authentic voices of the soldiers. Mahony, Christina Hunt. “Stuck in Other Days.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. Irish Literary Supplement, 25.2 (2006): 20. Explores how Barry uses the innocent character of Willie to expose the horror and chaos of war
Glazebrook, Olivia. “From Tipperary to Hell and Back.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. Spectator 16 Apr. 2005: 43.
“Saturday Review: A Live in Writing: Sebastian Barry: ‘By the Accident of Being Born in Ireland, Everywhere I Looked I Found People Mired in History,’” Guardian [London] 11 Oct. 2008: 12. Both a review of A Long Long Way and an interview with Barry, in which he discusses how Irish history and his family history inspire his work.
Greeley, Andrew M. “Willie at War.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. America 4 Apr. 2005: 33.
“Saturday Review: Fiction: The Former People: Fintan O’Toole Admires a Contrasting Pair of Dublin Novelists: A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Block, Marta Segal. “Barry, Sebastian. A Long Long Way.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. Booklist 1 Jan. 2005: 811.
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294pp, Faber, pounds 12.99; The Family on Paradise Pier by Dermot Bolger 550pp, Fourth Estate, pounds 17.99.” Rev. of A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry, and The Family on Paradise Pier, by Dermot Bolger. Guardian [London] 7 May 2005: 26. This review compares and contrasts Barry’s writing with that of another Irish writer, Dermot Bolger, examining the melancholy and ingenuity for which this country’s authors are known. Gale Resources
“Sebastian Barry.” British and Irish Dramatists since World War II: Third Series. Ed. John Bull. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 245. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. “Sebastian Barry.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. “Sebastian Barry.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 282. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2010.
For Further Reading
Barry, Sebastian. Annie Dunne. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print. Although published before A Long Long Way, this novel, which tells the story of Willie Dunne’s sister, is set many years later. Denman, Terrence. Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992. Print. A comprehensive history of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Dungan, Myles. Irish Voices from the Great War. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995. Print. This oral history compiles the stories of actual Irish soldiers who served in World War I. Jeffery, Keith. Ireland and the Great War. Cambridge U.P.: Cambridge, 2000. Print. A comprehensive history of Ireland’s involvement in World War I. Johnstone, Tom. Orange, Green, and Khaki. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992. Print. Another history of Irish involvement in the Great War. Robert Berg
Open Web Sources
An in-depth biography, bibliography, and list of awards for Sebastian Barry is available at http:// www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p= auth02B11P375512626533
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The Lost Dog By Michelle de Kretser
W Introduction At its most basic level, The Lost Dog (2007) by Michelle de Kretser is about exactly what its title suggests: the protagonist Tom Loxley’s eight-day search for his missing pet. The search is only the point of departure, however, and in reality the book’s narrative is concerned with much more. As the tale begins, Tom is at work on a study of the novelist Henry James’s ghost stories, and he sets out on his quest with the aim of applying to it the systematic methodology of literary analysis. His investigation leads him to explore not so much physical space but rather personal and cultural space. Tom and most of the other characters in The Lost Dog, much like the author herself, bear the influence both of Asian and Western experiences. De Kretser’s third novel, The Lost Dog won the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and other prizes and in 2008 was one of thirteen books long listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Lost Dog is set in early twenty-first-century Australia. Like many former European colonies, Australia is a land of many ethnic groups. Tom and others in the book are descendants of Asians who, while having fully adopted Western values, nevertheless feel the pull of the cultures that shaped their parents and, to a lesser extent, themselves. The Indian subcontinent weighs heavily in the consciousness of the protagonist. Tom is the son of an English father and an Indian mother of Eurasian heritage. The family moved to Australia when Tom was a child. “He could still call up a repertoire of scenes rehearsed to perfection. They were not nostalgic, not a revisiting of childish haunts, but sustained visions of an Indian existence.”
Looking back, Tom can still feel his youthful amazement at the riches of the West as contrasted with the hardships of life in the third world: “so much was both unnecessary and irresistible. . . . Among the novelties on offer in the land of plenty was food designed to give pleasure to children.” Not all of Tom’s cross-cultural impressions are so happy and uncomplicated, however. Another memory brings back the horror he experienced when he first saw a Hindu temple, whose imagery he considered barbaric compared to that of his own parents’ Catholic church—until he brought an Indian friend to church with him, and she recoiled at the image of a man dying on a cross.
W Themes The simple plot of The Lost Dog encompasses an array of themes, as identified by Jane Shilling in the New Statesman: “ideas of exile, loss, disappointment, mortality; the nature of happiness and also of evil; the relation between humanity and beastliness; the significance of objects, both present and remembered; the means by which we conjure and protect identity . . . and much more.” Given the book’s abundance of thematic content, it is perhaps fitting that the protagonist is a literary scholar. It is no coincidence that Tom’s scholarship focuses on Henry James, an American novelist famous for his ambivalence toward his own nation’s culture. Whereas James looked back to European forms as a model, Tom and others in The Lost Dog struggle to define themselves in the gap between their Asian and Western identities; often they come up short. Thus Tom, in de Kretser’s words, “lived in a country where he had no continuity with the dead, and being childless, no connection to the future. . . . He drew the airless, perfect circle of autobiography.” Emblematic of this pervasive displacement is the character of Nelly Zhang, an artist whose work places a heavy emphasis on shock value. “Modern can never keep
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The Lost Dog
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE DOG is Tom’s pet. Never named in the book, the creature is nevertheless the title “character,” and the search for it provides the starting point for the novel’s plot. ARTHUR LOXLEY is Tom’s father. An Englishman from Coventry, he found himself in India during World War II and chose to remain there after the war’s end. It was then that he met and married Iris and fathered Tom before moving the family to Australia, where he died soon afterward. IRIS DE SOUZA LOXLEY is Tom’s mother. A native of India, she is of mixed Eurasian ancestry, and in her youth she was a great beauty. By the time the story begins, however, she is eighty-two and in poor health, requiring constant attention from her only child. TOM LOXLEY, the story’s protagonist and point-of-view character, is the son of Arthur Loxley and Iris de Souza Loxley. Born in India, he moved to Australia at a young age with his parents, and his mixed ethnic and cultural identity is a major aspect of his character. He works as a literary scholar, studying the ghost stories of Henry James. Although Tom’s age is not identified, the facts of his life— his long years of study, his previous marriage, and the age of his mother—suggest a character in his forties. AUDREY DE SOUZA is Tom’s aunt. She takes in her sister, Iris, and her nephew after the death of Arthur Loxley. Audrey gives her hospitality grudgingly and seems to live with displaced emotions, for instance, showing more tenderness toward the porcelain figurines she collects than toward the ailing Iris. NELLY ZHANG is an artist with whom Tom is in love. Her artwork makes use of the discarded and the obsolete, and one of her favorite techniques is to paint a picture, to photograph it, and then to destroy the painting and keep the photo as the finished work of art.
up with itself,” she tells Tom. “Nothing dates quicker than now.” The fact that Tom admires her, not only as an object of erotic attraction but also as a bearer of wisdom, says much about his inability to find a solid intellectual and spiritual foundation for himself.
W Style The abundance of vivid detail in The Lost Dog serves as a counterpoint to Tom’s detachment from his own existence. Whereas he seeks to immerse himself in the airless world of literary scholarship, a plethora of sensory experiences (some less than pleasant) bring him continually back to a confrontation with physical reality.
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Remembering his childhood in India, for instance, he recalls “the aromatic streets . . . where faeces, animal and human, lingered on display. The past waited too: odorous, unhygienic, surplus, refusing to be disposed of with decent haste.” In a story framed around the quest for a lost pet— what Shilling calls “this most haunting of everyday tragedies”—one might expect a strong whiff of sentimentality to permeate de Kretser’s narrative, but the reality is quite the opposite. “Tom suffers a great deal when his dog goes missing,” notes Ursula K. Le Guin in the Guardian, “but we must realize his suffering almost without being told about it; he himself is quite unable to talk about it.” Told in a third-person voice but from Tom’s point of view, the plot of The Lost Dog involves three story lines: the one implied in the title, the deterioration of Tom’s ailing mother, and Tom’s quest to uncover the secret of Nelly’s past, particularly the facts behind her former husband Felix’s mysterious disappearance sometime earlier. Summing up the plot, Alison McCulloch, writing in the New York Times, observes that “the actual search [for the dog] occupies very little space, serving rather as the frame across which de Kretser stretches the canvas of Tom’s life and thoughts—mother, father, childhood, the move to Australia, a failed marriage, the wooing of Nelly.”
W Critical Reception Two major writers—Le Guin and A. S. Byatt—have reviewed The Lost Dog, but their impressions of the work are different, with Le Guin identifying flaws in the novel and Byatt lauding the author’s style. Le Guin expresses a desire “to praise Michelle de Kretser for being good and beautiful, while scolding her for being afraid to show her goodness and beauty.” She faults the author for mimicking Tom’s own detachment in her writing. For instance, Le Guin observes, “the dog evidently has a name, because Tom calls it, but what he calls it we are not allowed to hear,” a technique Le Guin cites as “selfconscious doling and withholding of information, these mincing power-games of author against reader.” Similarly, McCulloch notes an overfondness for aphorisms in the novel, such as “The past is not what is over but what we wish to have done with,” adding a proverb of her own: “aphorisms enlighten—except when they don’t.” McCulloch nevertheless also declares that de Kretser’s writing is “as boldly beautiful as ever,” and Le Guin concedes that the “displaced and subtle characters are genuinely interesting, and [that de Kretser’s] writing is emotionally accurate when it isn’t holding trendy poses.” Shilling, commenting in the New Statesman on the breadth of de Kretser’s thematic material, admires the author’s “minutely observed detail and emotional nuance” that make the novel “as fiercely compelling as any TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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whodunit.” In the character of Tom, concludes Laura Albritton in the Harvard Review, “de Kretser has fashioned her own kind of twenty-first-century hero” at the center of “an unusual immigrant’s tale, and an original one.” Perhaps the most enthusiastic praise comes from Byatt, who pronounces The Lost Dog “the best novel I have read for a long time. The writing is elegant and subtle, and Michelle de Kretser knows how to construct a gripping story.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Albritton, Laura. Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Harvard Review Dec. 2008: 200-3. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Byatt, A. S. “Off the Leash.” Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Financial Times 21 June 2008: 19. General OneFile. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. de Kretser, Michelle. The Lost Dog. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. Print. Le Guin, Ursula K. “One Man and His Dog.” Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Guardian 14 June 2008: 10. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 9 Oct. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Of Sri Lankan descent, Michelle de Kretser immigrated to Australia with her family when she was fourteen years old. She studied French at Melbourne University before moving to France, where she taught at Montpellier for a year. In 1982 she earned an MA in Paris. As editor for Lonely Planet, she directed the travel publisher’s French series before going on to work as a book reviewer and later as founding editor of Australian Book Reviews from 1989 to 1992. She published her first book, the nonfiction Brief Encounters, in 1998, followed by the novels The Rose Grower (1999), The Hamilton Case (2004), and The Lost Dog (2007). De Kretser lives in Melbourne with partner, Chris Andrews, a poet and a translator.
McCulloch, Alison. “Stray Thoughts.” Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. New York Times 4 May 2008. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Shilling, Jane. “Mourning and Loss.” Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. New Statesman 9 June 2008. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010.
The Lost Dog explores the life of scholar Tom Loxley as he searches the Australian bush for his lost dog. ª Hannah Mason/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Lost Dog Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Block, Allison. Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Booklist 15 Mar. 2008: 28. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Unfavorable review that describes the protagonist as “a self-absorbed bore.” Despite the author’s demonstrated abilities with language, concludes Block, The Lost Dog “sags under the weight of Tom’s tedious ways.” Duguid, Lindsay. “Hounded by the Past.” Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Sunday Times 25 May 2008: 47. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Favorable review that compares The Lost Dog with de Kretser’s previous novel, The Hamilton Case. Kempf, Andrea. Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2008: 73. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Positive review that declares the novel “multicultural, intelligent, challenging, and, ultimately, rewarding.” de Kretser, Michelle. Interview by Barry Scott. “The Beauty and the Menace.” Meanjin 63.2 (2004): 97. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Interview with de Kretser regarding her personal and literary influences. Rev. of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. Publishers Weekly 21 Jan. 2008: 148. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Review that praises the author’s “unadorned, direct sentences” and asserts that de Kretser “does an admirable job of illuminating how life and art overlap in the 21st century.” “Wizards of Oz Surf into Fiction’s Front Rank.” Independent [London] 28 Nov. 2008: 4. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Overview of recent fiction that places The Lost Dog within the context of contemporary Australian literature, as well as that of the larger English-speaking world. Gale Resources
“Michelle de Kretser.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 191. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Student Resource Center—College Edition Expanded. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
A podcast featuring Richard Lea’s interview with de Kretser is available on the Web site of the British newspaper the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co. uk/books/audio/2008/jun/17/ booktrustteenageprize OzArts, a Web site that highlights Australian artists, includes a brief profile and pictures of de Kretser, along with links to information on similar writers. http:// www.ozarts.com.au/artists/michelle_de_kretser
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A videotaped interview with de Kretser, conducted by Gail Jones at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, appears on the Web site of the Australian magazine the Monthly. http://www.themonthly.com.au/michelle-de-kretser-conversation-gail-jones-sydney-writersfestival-1039 The text of a short interview with de Kretser is reproduced on the Web site of the Man Booker Prize. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/perspective/ articles/1120 For Further Reading
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Offshore. London: Collins, 1979. Print. Fitzgerald, to whose work A. S. Byatt compares that of de Kretser, won the 1979 Booker Prize for this novel. Though set in England rather than Australia, Offshore, like The Last Dog, focuses on displaced persons, in this case boat dwellers living on the River Thames. Hollinghurst, Alan. The Line of Beauty. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. Print. Set in England during the 1980s, The Line of Beauty also concerns a Henry James scholar. As in The Lost Dog, the protagonist’s fascination with the intricacies of literary scholarship permeates the narrative and his approach to events within it. James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Introduction by Kenneth B. Murdock. London: Dent, 1990. Print. Meddlesome Ghosts, the James study that Tom is writing at the time of his dog’s disappearance, concerns James’s ghost stories, of which The Turn of the Screw is the most famous. de Kretser, Michelle. The Hamilton Case. New York: Little, Brown, 2004. Print. De Kretser’s second novel employs the format of a legal thriller to explore many of the cultural and personal issues visited in The Lost Dog. Set during the twilight of British colonial rule in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), The Hamilton Case is the story of a Ceylonese prosecutor who agrees, at great risk, to investigate the murder of an Englishman. Lurie, Alison. Foreign Affairs. Franklin Center: Franklin Library, 1984. Print. Another novel “about” a dog, Foreign Affairs involves an invisible canine named Fido to whom the protagonist, Virginia Miner, turns for comfort in times of loneliness. White, Patrick. A Fringe of Leaves. London: Cape, 1976. Print. A. S. Byatt compares de Kretser’s writing to that of her fellow Australian, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature. A Fringe of Leaves takes place in the 1830s, when an Englishwoman visiting Australia is suddenly widowed and marooned among Aborigines. Judson Knight
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Love By Toni Morrison
W Introduction Love (2003), the eighth novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, focuses on a decades-old feud between two women, Heed and Christine. The two women meet as children on the beach near the African American resort run by Christine’s grandfather, patriarch Bill Cosey. Their close friendship gives way to distrust and animosity, however, when Bill takes eleven-year-old Heed as his bride. Over the years, as the young, illiterate Heed struggles to find her way as Bill’s wife, Christine is afforded an opportunity to see the world, but poor choices in love lead to her financial ruin and force her to return home, where she works as the maid of the arthritic and bitter Heed. The stories of the women’s friendship and falling out, Bill’s suspicious death, and the women’s bitter feud over the remains of the Cosey fortune are told through a combination of dialogue, third-person narration, and the memories of “L,” a cook who once worked at the hotel. Although the work is less experimental than several of Morrison’s bestknown novels, it demonstrates the author’s facility with poetic language and her interest in history, memory, and injustice.
W Literary and Historical Context
Love traces the lives of its fictional characters through several major periods of American history. The legacies of segregation and integration are an especially important part of the novel. Under so-called Jim Crow laws in the United States from the mid-1870s to the mid-1960s, African Americans and whites were segregated by law in certain areas of the country. They were forbidden to attend the same schools, visit the same restaurants or public places, or use the same
restrooms and drinking fountains. The federal government brought an end to this codified racism with a series of laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In Morrison’s novel, Bill Cosey makes his fortune as the owner of the Cosey Hotel and Resort, which caters to an upscale “colored” clientele. Considered unsuitable for white tourists because of the constant stench from a nearby cannery, the resort becomes a popular tourist attraction for upwardly mobile African Americans, who, despite their success, are not permitted to visit the upscale resorts reserved for white patrons. Ironically, integration is partially to blame for the decline of Cosey’s business. As L explains, “Fact is, folks who bragged about Cosey vacations in the forties boasted in the sixties about Hyatts, Hiltons, cruises to the Bahamas and Ocho Rios.” Although the author faults Christine’s mother, May, for “blaming Martin Luther King every day for her troubles,” Morrison makes clear that history has forgotten some of the unintended consequences of integration on the black community and its businesses.
W Themes As the novel’s title suggests, love in its myriad forms is the central theme of Morrison’s novel. Morrison explores the complexities of romantic love, friendship, bonds between women, and relationships between people of different social classes. She also explores gender inequalities and violence against women. The central relationship of the novel is that between Heed and Christine. Morrison demonstrates the ways in which the innocent bond between the two girls is destroyed by social forces in the guise of love. The rift begins with Bill’s pedophilic love for Heed and is exacerbated by the protective but misguided love of Christine’s mother, who works to separate the
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Love
MAJOR CHARACTERS CELESTIAL is a woman whom Bill Cosey loved and to whom he left everything in his will, dispossessing his wife and children. BILL COSEY is the grandfather of Christine and the husband of Heed. The owner of Cosey’s Hotel and Resort, he falls under the power of the beautiful Celestial and rewrites his will to make her his beneficiary. He is poisoned by L, setting off a chain of events that haunt the family for decades. CHRISTINE COSEY is the granddaughter of Bill Cosey and the daughter of May. She befriends the poverty-stricken Heed as a girl but becomes bitter when her grandfather takes her friend for his bride. After Christine is sent away to school, she sets off on a downward spiral of failed relationships and resentment of Heed. Although she swallows her pride to work as Heed’s servant, she continues her quest to gain control of the Cosey fortune. HEED THE NIGHT “HEED” JOHNSON COSEY is a young woman who rises from poverty to upper-middle-class status through her marriage to a man more than forty years her senior, Bill Cosey. Never fully at home in the role of Bill’s wife, she becomes increasing bitter as she ages. After she is incapacitated by arthritis, she surprises the community by allowing the impoverished Christine to live with her. MAY COSEY is Bill’s daughter-in-law and the mother of Christine. She becomes unstable and prone to paranoia after Bill’s marriage to Heed. She dies shortly after Christine returns home. L, a former cook at the Cosey Hotel and Resort who died many years earlier, is one of the novel’s narrators. L reveals that she was responsible for Bill’s death and for forging a new will, which left his property to the “sweet Cosey child.” ROMEN is Junior Viviane’s lover and the grandson of one of Bill Cosey’s former employees. When he is first introduced, Romen suffers from shame after refusing to participate in a gang rape, an act that he comes to see as emasculating. His relationship with Junior, who encourages him to treat her violently, leaves him feeling empowered and manly. JUNIOR “JUNE” VIVIANE is a young woman who, abandoned and abused as a child, grows up in a reform school. Heed hires Junior after she learns that Christine has retained a lawyer in order to contest Bill’s will. Heed plans to have the young woman forge a new will. Although Junior enters into a relationship with Romen, she comes to see the dead Bill as a father figure.
girls. Later, Bill’s love for the gorgeous Celestial leads him to rewrite his will to disown his family. Out of love for the family, L (which, it later becomes clear, is short for “Love”) sets the plot in motion by poisoning Bill and forging his will so that his wealth will pass to
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Christine and Heed. However, the ambiguity of the fake will, which leaves everything to the “sweet Cosey child,” only furthers the rift between Christine and Heed. When Junior “June” Viviane shows up to work for Heed, she becomes fixated on Bill, whose image stares out from portraits on the wall. The events of the past, which have long haunted the Cosey family, are forced to the surface. The relationship between Christine and Heed finally is healed when Christine follows Heed and Junior to the old hotel, where they seek an old menu on which to forge a will that will clarify Heed as Bill’s intended beneficiary. After Heed falls through a floorboard and Junior flees the hotel, Christine and Heed are forced to confront one another. They find that the words that come out are those of long-lost friends, not the enemies they have become. They discuss the events that tore them apart and come to the wistful conclusion that “We could have been living our lives hand in hand.” The next day Romen, Junior’s lover, finds Christine embracing her friend’s body.
W Style Love incorporates a mix of genres, including mystery and literary fiction. It also contains elements of the Southern gothic. In that tradition, elements of an earlier, European gothic, such as supernatural occurrences, are brought to bear on Southern history, including slavery and, in this novel, segregation. Structurally, the book is divided into nine main sections. Each defines a role that Bill Cosey played in relation to one or more of the novel’s characters: “Portrait,” “Friend,” “Stranger,” “Benefactor,” “Lover,” “Husband,” “Guardian,” “Father,” and “Phantom.” Like many of Morrison’s novels, Love makes use of innovative narrative techniques. Although much of the book is narrated in the third person, other sections, including the book’s opening, are told in the first person by a mysterious character known as “L.” L’s narration is set in italics, differentiating it from the rest of the text and emphasizing its mystery. L—who, it is revealed at the end of the book, is dead—provides insights into characters, motivations, and past events that the third-person narrator cannot. Much of the book, particularly those sections narrated by L, is written in the highly poetic language for which Morrison is known: “Pale mornings fade into white noons, then by three o’clock the colors are savage enough to scare you. Jade and sapphire waves fight each other, kicking up enough foam to wash sheets in.” Candace Smith notes this poetic tendency in her review of the novel for Booklist, writing, “Sounding more like poetry than prose, the narrative strings together imagery and metaphors as it shifts in focus and time to explore each character’s role.” TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Love
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, and raised in a tight-knit African American community in Lorain, Ohio. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Howard University in 1953 and a master’s degree in English from Cornell University in 1955. Morrison did not begin to write until she was thirty. A short story that she wrote as part of a writers’ group eventually developed into her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970). As her reputation as an important figure in contemporary literature began to grow, Morrison published a number of critically acclaimed novels, including Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tarbaby (1981), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998), Love, and A Mercy (2008). She is also the author of a work of literary criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). In 1993 Morrison became the first black woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Portrait of author Toni Morrison. ª Tony Kurdzuk/Star Ledger/Corbis
W Critical Reception Published in 2003, Love was Morrison’s first novel in four years, and it drew intense scrutiny from readers, reviewers, and scholars. Conditioned to expect lengthy, experimental works from the author, many were surprised by the novel’s brevity and plot, which is relatively straightforward in comparison to the author’s previous works. Many commentators reacted negatively to the work. Reviewing the book in the Washington Post, for example, Jonathan Yardley suggests that Morrison’s “storytelling powers, which as millions of readers know are formidable, have deserted her here,” and that “when a novelist who is a born storyteller forgets to tell a story, the result is something cluttered with ideas but devoid of life.” Elsewhere, Cheryl Gudz’s review in Herizons articulates a common complaint about the book—that “Morrison expects readers to keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other without providing adequate aids.” Some critics felt the need to defend Morrison from the onslaught of negative appraisals. In a review of the novel in the European Journal of American Culture, for example, Tessa Roynon suggests that
critics were too quick to dismiss Love and argues that the novel “is not a book that either journalists or scholars were looking for. But this does not mean it is a bad one.” Other reviewers, however, were quick to praise the novel. Writing in the Washington Times, for example, Merle Rubin proclaims that “Ms. Morrison’s supple, inviting, endlessly inventive prose is not just for show, but for telling the startling and poignant stories of her characters, whose strengths and weaknesses, depravities and virtues she chronicles with a fierce integrity exceeded only by her compassion.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Gudz, Cheryl. Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Herizons 18.4 (2005): 34. Print. Morrison, Toni. Love. New York: Knopf, 2003. Print. Roynon, Tessa. Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. European Journal of American Culture 23.3 (2004): 236-38. Print. Rubin, Merle. “Toni Morrison’s Story of Love, Its Many Forms.” Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Washington Times 2 Nov. 2003: B08. Print. Smith, Candace. Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Booklist 15 Feb. 2004: 1081. Yardley, Jonathan. “Tangled Relations at an Oceanside Resort.” Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Washington Post 26 Oct. 2003: T02. Print.
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“Toni Morrison.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Asim, Jabari. “Toni Morrison Composes a Love Supreme.” Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Crisis 110.6 (2003): 44. Print. A favorable review that emphasizes the mysteries raised by the novel. Bouson, J. Brooks. “Uncovering ‘the Beloved’ in the Warring and Lawless Women in Toni Morrison’s ‘Love.’” Midwest Quarterly 49.4 (2008): 358-73. Print. A scholarly essay that examines Morrison’s depiction of troubled female relationships and their resolution. Grossman, Lev. “Love and the Laureate.” Time 3 Nov. 2003: 75. Print. A discussion of the novel that praises its energy, but faults it for a narrative that is at times difficult to follow. Lododziec, Agnieszka. “Theological Models of Black Middle-Class Performance in Toni Morrison’s Novels.” Black Theology: An International Journal 8.1 (2010): 32-52. Print. An analysis of the intersections of race and class in Morrison’s novels, including Love. Smith, Starr E. Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Library Journal 15 Oct. 2003: 99. Print. A positive review that recommends the book to Morrison’s fans, as well as to those seeking an introduction to her work. Theiss, Nola. Rev. of Love, by Toni Morrison. Kliatt Mar. 2005: 21. A favorable review that praises the novel for its unique characters and understanding of the South and its culture. Wardi, Anissa Janine. “A Laying on of Hands: Toni Morrison and the Materiality of Love.” MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) Journal 30.3 (2005): 201-18. Print. A critical essay that examines the connections between Love and Morrison’s earlier works, such as Beloved and Sula. Gale Resources
Blake, Susan L. “Toni Morrison.” Afro-American Fiction Writers after 1955. Ed. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris-Lopez. Detroit: Gale, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 33. Heinze, Denise, and Sandra Adell. “Toni Morrison.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 331. Lubiano, Wahneema. “Toni Morrison.” African American Writers. Ed. Valerie Smith, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Scribner’s, 1991.
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“Toni Morrison.” LitFinder Contemporary Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Open Web Sources
The online journal January Magazine features a favorable review of Morrison’s novel. http://januarymagazine. com/fiction/lovemorrison.html The National Park Services Web site provides examples of Jim Crow laws that were on the books in the United States during the period in which part of the novel is set. http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/ jim-crow-laws.htm The Web site of National Public Radio offers an audio clip of an interview with Morrison on The Tavis Smiley Show in which she discusses the novel and its reception. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=1484643 The Web site of the Nobel Prize offers a brief biography of Morrison, as well the award ceremony speech and Morrison’s Nobel lecture. http://nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison. html For Further Reading
Denard, Carolyn C., ed. Toni Morrison: Conversations. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2008. Print. This collection of interviews with Morrison includes her reflections on Love. Lewis, Catherine M., and J. Richard Lewis. Jim Crow America: A Documentary History. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2009. Print. This volume offers an overview of segregation in the American South that provides useful context for Morrison’s novel. Lister, Rachel. Reading Toni Morrison. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2009. Print. Lister’s book is a useful companion to Morrison’s novels, including Love, and includes a chapter outlining helpful Web resources devoted to the author. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print. Love has drawn frequent comparison to this 1987 novel by Morrison. Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Print. This collection of essays explores Morrison’s fiction through a number of critical lenses. Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Man Gone Down By Michael Thomas
W Introduction Named as one of the Ten Best Books of 2007 by the New York Times and the winner of the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Man Gone Down is a brooding meditation on race and class that has been compared with Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed thirty-five-year-old black man, an unemployed but talented Harvard dropout and struggling writer disillusioned by his failure to fulfill the promise of his youth. Described by the IMPAC Dublin jury as a novel showing “the way the future can close mercilessly on those marginalized by race and social circumstance,” Man Gone Down finds its narrator burdened by racial prejudice and estranged from his Boston Brahmin wife and their three children because he cannot hold down a steady job. With only four days to collect the $12,000 that will pay his oldest son’s private school tuition and cover the down payment on a new apartment, the narrator travels around Brooklyn, increasingly desperate for the money and increasingly obsessed with the circumstances that have brought him down on his luck. His trek takes the form of a long interior monologue as he reflects on his confused identity and on the way his African American heritage has directed the course of his life—for both good and bad.
W Literary and Historical Context
In interviews Michael Thomas has said that his own life served as the basis for his novel. Like his narrator, Thomas was a precocious child from one of Boston’s poorer neighborhoods, switched by his parents from public to private school when the busing controversy erupted into
violence. After his parents’ divorce, Thomas moved to the affluent, mostly white suburb of Newton with his mother, where he reentered public school. Teachers there were skeptical of his intelligence even after repeated testing validated his high aptitude; one teacher insisted on placing him in a remedial reading class while another suggested he try vocational school. Thomas’s tenure at Connecticut College was, like his narrator’s stay at Harvard, cut short by his decision to marry a fellow student, Claire, a white woman with whom he now has three children, two boys and a girl. Thomas, too, bounced back and forth between jobs—construction worker, restaurant employee, bar musician—before finally deciding to pursue his interest in writing. But unlike his protagonist, Thomas has enjoyed an uninterrupted career as an academic; his narrator loses his English teaching job after a bout of drinking, setting the stage for additional personal and financial crises. Literary allusions in the novel clearly ally the narrator with Ralph Ellison’s famous Invisible Man, a black man given to philosophizing about a patronizing white society that locks in his identity and fails to see him for who he truly is. Thomas told an interviewer for the National Post that he wanted his readers to get a sense of “what it’s like to walk around this country and this world as someone else” (qtd. in Granger). Man Gone Down also plays on the literary theme of the American Dream. Lucy Daniel writes that the novel “harks back to a rich tradition of American stories of rise and fall, success and failure, of ‘making it.’” That the narrator will not “make it,” or will at least be long frustrated in his pursuit of the American dream of wealth and success, is assured by the novel’s title, which suggests decline. Speaking with Larry Rohter for the New York Times, Thomas explained that the title derives from a passage in the novel where the narrator likens his troubles to Beowulf’s struggle with the monsters who threatened to pull him down into the sea.
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Man Gone Down
MAJOR CHARACTERS MARCO ANDOLINI is the friend who lets the narrator stay at his house after he is evicted from his apartment. BRIAN is the narrator’s friend from high school. He is killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. CECIL is the narrator’s oldest son. CLAIRE is the narrator’s upper-crust white wife and the mother of his three children. EDITH is Claire’s mother. EDY is the narrator’s daughter and youngest child. GAVIN is the narrator’s friend from high school, a poet and an alcoholic. JOHNNY LITTLE NANCYBOY gives the narrator a construction job. LAURA is Marco’s wife. LILA is the narrator’s mother.
has fueled self-destructive behaviors. Although he is plagued by memories of his abusive childhood and by a drinking habit he acquired as a teenager, he blames most of his problems on a racist society. He is obsessed with his wife’s whiteness and by the ambiguous ethnicity of his children, whom he calls the “wreckage of miscegenation.” He is convinced that blacks are predestined for failure and believes he can predict the futures of his children based on how the world will react to their color. He is remorseless in his selfevaluation but even more critical of the manner in which he is judged by others, bitterly noting the condescending attitudes of his in-laws and of the businessmen who hurry past him on city streets. He mourns the passing of the old guard who resisted oppression—Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois. The Twin Towers are attacked in the course of his manic four-day quest, taking the life of one of his closest friends and suggesting there is no end to racial and ethnic violence. By the conclusion of the novel, the narrator is engaged in a high-stakes golf game at an exclusive club.
MARSHALL is the narrator’s father. MARTA is the narrator’s former landlady. When he goes back to collect his security deposit, she refuses to give it to him. MICHAEL is the narrator’s younger son. NARRATOR is the troubled black man who tells the story. Poor and isolated, he desperately needs money to hold onto his family, so he embarks on a frantic quest looking to collect old debts and find work. His trek occasions the flood of thoughts that are the substance of the novel. SALLY is the narrator’s high school girlfriend. SHAKY is the narrator’s friend from high school, a Jamaican writer diagnosed as schizophrenic.
W Themes According to Kaiama L. Glover, “One of the bigger questions posed by the novel is how to pursue the American and other dreams when the realities of race stand so mightily in the way.” The narrator’s interior monologue reveals a tormented psyche wounded by racial injustice. As a younger man, he had been convinced that his intellectual gifts would assure him a better place in life than his parents had achieved. But repeated racial slights and the weight of a social system that made of him a “social experiment” have left him damaged and paranoid, despairing of ever being able to finish his dissertation, hold a steady job, or create a stable environment for his family. Mounting insecurity
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In Man Gone Down, an unemployed African American writer struggles with finding a job and dealing with the loss of his family. Jason Stitt/Shutterstock.com
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Man Gone Down
At the very end of the match, when the other players are not looking, he cheats in order to win the last hole and all of the prize money. He intends to see his wife and children one last time to deliver the money, but he is overcome with emotion at the sight of Claire, leaving open the possibility that he will try to rejoin his family.
W Style Man Gone Down consists largely of the narrator’s ruminations as he walks, or sprints, through the city streets, trying to expel his demons. The story is told in the first person, with Thomas using a stream-of-consciousness technique to reveal to the reader exactly what the narrator is thinking and feeling. The narrator’s soliloquy is replete with references and allusions to literary works: the poetry of T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories on the American Dream, and the writings of Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin. Man Gone Down is realistic in setting and detail. The narrator’s urban trek, like his every emotion, is relayed with pinpoint accuracy, Thomas is careful to name streets, subway lines, and neighborhoods, and even the coffee shops that fuel the narrator’s sleepless journey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Thomas’s debut novel, Man Gone Down, transformed the author from obscure English professor to literary star, aided by an influential front-page review in the Sunday book section of the New York Times, followed by its inclusion on the Times’s list of Ten Best Books of 2007. The merits of the novel were reconfirmed by Thomas’s selection as the winner of the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for 2009. A probing examination of four desperate days in the life of an impoverished black man endowed with a remarkably perceptive racial consciousness and given to tortuous selfexamination, Man Gone Down has been widely praised as a hard-luck story that stands as a gripping metaphor for the current state of race relations in the United States.
W Critical Reception Thomas is only the third writer to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with a debut novel. Man Gone Down was greeted on its appearance with a host of
Man Gone Down tells the story of an interracial Bostonian couple suffering from marital difficulties. ª Michele Constantini/PhotoAlto/Corbis
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Man Gone Down
flattering evaluations such as “stunning,” “ambitious,” and “virtuoso.” Much of this praise registered affirmation of the novel’s grimly realistic profile of race relations, where the ordinary black man is confronted by more than his share of life’s obstacles. The most enthusiastic responses, such as Kaiama L. Glover’s high-profile lead article in the New York Times Book Review, found the novel’s pessimism relieved by the hopefulness implied by its frequent references to T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and by the narrator’s crusade to not go down without a fight. But there have been negative critical reactions as well, most frequently the complaint that the narrator’s grievances are at times undermined by his self-pity and the chip he wears on his shoulder. For his part, Thomas has expressed the fear that the success of the novel has merely reaffirmed its message, life imitating art. He told Larry Rohter, “My role now is some noble savage, some person who has risen to grace from some sort of strange beginnings. . . . If you don’t have a physical deformity and are of above average intelligence and are black or from any marginalized minority, you become a poster boy for uplift.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Daniel, Lucy. Rev. of Man Gone Down, by Michael Thomas. Telegraph.co.uk 28 July 2010. Web. 18 July 2010. Glover, Kaiama L. “American Dream Deferred.” New York Times Book Review 4 Feb. 2007: 1(L). Granger, Lia, and Michael Thomas. “Q&A with Michael Thomas, Man Gone Down.” Afterword: Postings from the Literary World. National Post 30 June 2009. Web. 19 July 2010. “Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas, Wins the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.” International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Web. 18 July 2010. Rohter, Larry. “Books: Prize Gives an Author Some Time to Exhale.” New York Times 22 June 2009. Web. 18 July 2010. Thomas, Michael. Man Gone Down. New York: Black Cat, 2007. Print. Additional Resources
Center-College Edition Expanded. Web. 18 July 2010. Largely negative review asserting that the narrator is not a particularly sympathetic character, given that he appears to be self-indulgent and exaggerates the severity of his plight. “Man Gone Down.” Publishers Weekly 253.40 (9 Oct. 2006): 34. Student Resource Center-College Edition Expanded. Web. 18 July 2010. Finds that the narrator’s introspection and self-pity are made palatable by his underlying optimism. Mehegan, David. “First Time’s the Charm.” Boston.com Arts & Entertainment. Boston Globe 3 Mar. 2007. Web. July 18, 2010. Identifies the autobiographical aspects of the novel and describes the circumstances of its publication. Seaman, Donna. “Thomas, Michael. Man Gone Down.” Booklist 103.6 (15 Nov. 2006): 30. Student Resource Center-College Edition Expanded. Web. 18 July 2010. Enthuses that “Thomas has written a rhapsodic and piercing post-9/11 lament over aggression, greed, and racism, and a ravishing blues for the soul’s unending loneliness.” Simon, Denise. “Man Gone Down.” Black Issues Book Review 9.3 (May-June 2007): 40. Student Resource Center-College Edition Expanded. Web. 18 July 2010. Mixed review praising Thomas’s characterization and use of language, but finding the novel at times disjointed and off point. Gale Resources
Kugler, R. Anthony. “Thomas, Michael.” Contemporary Black Biography. Ed. Paula Kepos and Derek Jacques. Vol. 69. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 July 2010. “Thomas, Michael 1967-.” Contemporary Authors. Ed. Amy Elisabeth Fuller. Vol. 256. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Michael Thomas discusses Black Man Down and reads from the text on National Public Radio’s OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 18 July 2010. http://www.onpointradio.org/2007/03/ michael-thomas
Criticism and Reviews
Ansa, Tina McElroy. “A Desperate To-Do List.” Washington Post 25 Apr. 2007. Web. 18 July 2010. Concludes that the novel is “rather like its main character: a brilliant and frustrating social experiment that is still quite worthy of our attention.” Bersohn, Leora. “Man Gone Down.” Library Journal 131.17 (15 Oct. 2006): 56. Student Resource
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For Further Reading
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print. Classic novel about an unnamed black man's travels in search of an authentic identity. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1995. Print. Novel that chronicles a Jazz Age millionaire’s doomed pursuit of the American Dream. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Man Gone Down
Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print. Includes Hughes’s famous poem about putting off one’s goals, “Harlem,” which begins, “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” The volume also includes poems originally published in the collections Fine Clothes to a Jew (1927) and Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951),
both of which concern urban blacks in Harlem who, in pursuit of the American Dream, have left the oppressive atmosphere of the Deep South only to find their dreams denied or set aside indefinitely in the North.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Janet Mullane
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The Manual of Detection By Jedediah Berry
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Set in an unnamed city and time, Jedediah Berry’s novel The Manual of Detection begins abruptly with Charles Unwin’s sudden promotion to detective after years of clerking for the Agency’s most celebrated investigator, Travis Sivart. Unwin’s response to the absurd circumstances of his new role amounts to solving the disappearance of his superior, so that he can resume his regular job duties. Armed with a copy of The Manual of Detection, minus the eighteenth chapter, and assisted by Emily Doppel, a narcoleptic aide, he sets out in a dreamscape filled with odd characters and uses clues that begin with incorrectly solved cases by Sivart to figure out the mystery. Riding his bicycle, while wearing his trademark fedora and carrying his trusty umbrella, Unwin visits the corpse of The Case of the Oldest Murdered Man, meets Edwin Moore, and declares the corpse is a fake. Unwin soon realizes that the archenemy, Enoch Hoffman, himself a biloquist (capable of speaking in distinct voices), has returned along with the Rook brothers, formerly conjoined twins, who have not slept since they were separated seventeen years earlier, as accomplices. A mysterious client named Cleopatra Greenwood has hired Unwin in place of Sivart to rescue her from a dream world over which she has no control. When he follows her as she dreams, he discovers the city’s residents are also trapped in a dream with little hope of escape, because Hoffman and his group, under the cover of the Caligari’s Traveling Carnival, are collecting all the alarm clocks. The missing chapter of the manual, which Unwin calls Chapter Elephant, and three primary cases, including The Man Who Stole November Twelfth, hold the key to solving the mystery of Travis Sivart’s vanishing.
The Manual of Detection follows such masters of detective fiction as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, and Edgar Allan Poe. Berry writes in the tradition of noir fiction. In his book, Detective Fiction, Charles J. Rzepka explains the ingredients of a proper detective story, which includes a relationship between the nature of the puzzle and investigative methods of historical sciences. The Manual of Detection uses a criminal event to compel the reluctant Unwin to assume the duties of his missing boss, whose disappearance he must unravel, but the novel introduces elements of science; early technology of the 1930s noir setting, such as phonographs and typewriters; and psychology to twist the plot before it can be resolved. For example, the corpse of the Oldest Murdered Man case has modern dental work, because it is really the corpse of Caligari, the slain ringmaster of the carnival, now called Travels-No-More. After a visit to the Agency’s archives, Unwin understands he must carry out surveillance by entering the dreams of other people in order to find Sivart, and bring Hoffman to justice. The further he ventures into these altered states, however, the sharper his own consciousness and powers of deduction become. A traveling carnival that hovers on the outskirts of a town, a mortuary called the Forty Winks, and a gin-joint named Cat and Tonic are historically consistent with detective fiction popular at the turn of the twentieth century. Berry’s protagonist echoes archetypes such as Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe; however, the similarities begin to blend and stretch to surreal proportions. Unwin is complacent as a twenty-year veteran clerk who pedals to work on his bicycle, sporting a trilby hat and umbrella. He relies on the mediocrity of his routine until the Agency promotes him to detective. But no sooner does he begin pursuing leads, than he finds himself dogged by a femme fatale, threatened by the Rook brothers, and framed for murder. The whereabouts
Context
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The Manual of Detection
of Travis Sivart lie somewhere between the monolithic Agency with its cryptic archives and the dilapidated circus. The influence of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation pioneered by Sigmund Freud ran parallel to the development of detective fiction and, soon after, surrealism. In This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries, Thomas Ogden suggests that the capacity to dream is critical to understanding psychopathology. Berry’s novel builds on the relevance of the dream state as a bridge to consciousness and reality. The missing eighteenth chapter of the eponymous Manual of Detection, Chapter Elephant in dream-speak, gave instructions for dream surveillance as revealed by its original oneiric sleuth, Caligari, the same method he taught Cleopatra Greenwood’s daughter, Penelope. Unwin eventually discovers that Penelope’s father is Hoffman, who betrayed Caligari so that he could use the carnival for his evil plans to subvert the city through people’s dreams. He also finds out that Penelope is the mysterious woman in the plaid skirt who waits for a train every morning at the same time.
W Themes The main theme of the novel is the relationship between the real world and the surreal world as represented in dreams. Charles Unwin, the unlikely hero of The Manual of Detection is, by self-admission, a “meticulous dreamer” (9), and so endowed, he is able to discern things that elude him in his waking life. As a clerk, he is equally attentive to detail as he writes his reports for the illustrious Travis Sivart; however, it is not until the whole sleep-walking city becomes trapped in a maze of dreams as part of Hoffman’s diabolical plan, that he realizes that truth is frequently hiding in plain view, abstracted by ciphers that seem inconsequential. Equally important is the theme of detection as an art and as a means of discovering truth. The novel begins each chapter with a quote from the Manual of Detection as it refers to the larger subject of each section. “On Shadowing,” instructs the consummate detective to appear as if he should be there, and “On Evidence” suggests that objects have memory, too. Berry conjures many absurd scenarios to contrast the difference between details and clues, two things, he claims, whose distinction from one another is more important than “knowing your left shoe from your right” (36). Several higher themes are hidden in Berry’s psychological setting, such as the relevance of good and evil forces as a necessary system of balance. The Agency, which is dedicated to solving crime, is compromised by Arthur, the custodian, who strikes a deal with Hoffman, who in turn betrays Caligari, which leads to Sivart’s being trapped in Hoffman’s dream. The nature of consciousness as both deceptive and revealing is an idea that Berry
MAJOR CHARACTERS ARTHUR, the Agency’s custodian, is involved in the disappearance of Detective Travis T. Sivart. He plays the accordion. CALIGARI is the ringmaster of the traveling carnival, who teaches Penelope how to invade people’s dreams and plant liminal seeds. EMILY DOPPEL, Unwin’s narcoleptic assistant, carries a lunch box with miniature figurines representing detectives and has always aspired to become a detective. CLEOPATRA GREENWOOD, the femme fatale who first gives her name as Vera Truesdale, is a former fortuneteller with Caligari’s carnival. She is the mother of Penelope Greenwood, by Enoch Hoffman. ENOCH HOFFMAN, a biloquist, is the evil mastermind who stole November twelfth and returns to control people by keeping them asleep. EDWARD LAMECH is Unwin’s watcher. After he is murdered, Unwin must enter his dreams to discover vital clues about Sivart’s disappearance. EDWIN MOORE is the attendant at the museum where the fake corpse of the Oldest Murdered Man is displayed. DETECTIVE PITH works for the Agency and gives Unwin a copy of The Manual of Detection. JOSIAH AND JASPER ROOK are formerly conjoined twins, now lame, and part of Hoffman’s gang. Since the experimental surgery that separated them seventeen years before, they have not slept. TRAVIS T. SIVART, the Agency’s top detective, has gone missing. CHARLES UNWIN, the protagonist, clerks for Sivart, who vanishes, and is inexplicably promoted to detective. He rides a bicycle and carries an umbrella because it is always raining. EDGAR ZLATARI is the caretaker of the Forty Winks cemetery and its only gravedigger.
nests in the surreal dimensions of his plot, which questions the conflict between criminals and detectives, truth and illusion. In addition, the idea of identity and self drifts in and out in subtle and sometimes subliminal ways.
W Style The Manual of Detection is a third-person work of noir detective fiction that blends surreal elements with a dispassionate tone. Typical of the genre, the dialogue is variously coy, satirical, and understated. The prose is
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jedediah Berry was born April 28, 1977, in Randolph, Vermont, but grew up in the Hudson Valley region of Upstate New York. He received the Crawford Fantasy Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize for his debut novel, The Manual of Detection, and his short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. As of 2010, he lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, and worked as an editor at Small Beer Press.
quasi fantastic in its description of eccentric characters, such as Colonel Baker, who died three times (and then a final time on the fourth occasion), and the eight-foot-tall pyrotechnic who defected from the carnival to the archives of the Agency, but it also shifts to spare syntax. Berry embeds his clues in odd turns of phrases and deadpan rhetoric that defines the hard-boiled attitude familiar to detective fiction.
The novel also uses the kind of layering readers of Jorge Luis Borges will recognize immediately. Berry builds paradoxes into the plot as if mere coincidence when, in reality, or as an alternate form of reality, the narrative loops back on itself. One sleepwalker reflects the style by commenting, “You’ve heard the story of the old man who dreamed he was a butterfly. . . . And how, when he woke, he wasn’t sure if he really was an old man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or if he was a butterfly dreaming it was an old man” (151). In addition to the mixture of noir detective fiction and surrealism, Berry, using the dreamscape as the motive for crime and the means for solving for it, deconstructs the plot as part of the narrative. The overall effect works to suspend belief to Kafkaesque dimensions that yield the answers to the various riddles.
W Critical Reception Winner of the Crawford Fantasy Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize, Jedediah Berry’s debut novel, The Manual of Detection, was well received by many critics, both in and out of the mainstream. In his article appearing in the Guardian, Peter Guttridge saluted Berry’s first novel by referring to acclaimed writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka, calling The Manual of Detection “imaginative, fantastical, sometimes inexplicable, labyrinthine and ingenious.” In his review in the Living Scotsman, Stuart Kelly agreed that the novel shares affinities with other celebrated writers, such as Italo Calvino and Thomas Pynchon, but he added, “What it lacks in depth, it makes up for in elegant convolution and cerebral dazzle.” In her review appearing on a popular weekly Web site for speculative fiction, Strange Horizons, Karen Meisner warned that the novel takes some getting used to; however, she generously agreed with many critics who praised the novel’s original, if surreal attributes. Similarly, in his review in the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Berry noted the nod to Borges and Calvino and applauded Jedediah Berry’s own skill: “Berry sets up a neat literary game and plays it through to the end with a great deal of wit and aplomb.” In the Las Vegas Weekly, however, Brian Slattery qualified his praise, writing that Berry pulled creative punches and that “at times the story seems a bit too small for Berry’s imagination.” Marilyn Stasio’s review in the New York Times summed it up by referring to the main character, Charles Unwin, whose “uncanny adventures make for a memorable trip.” Berry’s novel won the 2009 Strand Award for best first novel. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The novel The Manual of Detection begins with the unexpected promotion of Charles Unwin to the rank of detective. Bruce Rolff/ Shutterstock.com
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Works Cited
Berry, Jedediah. The Manual of Detection. New York: Penguin Group, 2009. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Berry, Michael. “Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. sfgate.com. San Francisco Chronicle 22 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Guttridge, Peter. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. guardian.co. uk. Guardian 5 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Kelly, Stuart. “Book Review: Solo/The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. living.scotsman.com Living Scotsman 22 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Meisner, Karen. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. strangehorizons.com. Strange Horizons 11 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Ogden, Thomas H. This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Malden: Polity Press, 2005. Print. Slattery, Brian. “Bust Out, Mr. Berry.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. lasvegasweekly.com. Las Vegas Weekly 19 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Stasio, Marilyn. “Crime: My Home, My Prison.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. nytimes. com. New York Times 5 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Ephron, Hallie. “The Warp and Woof of Murder.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. bostonglobe.com. Boston Globe 22 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Cites the name of the missing detective as a palindrome as indicating the novelist’s penchant for puzzles and games. Handlen, Zack. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. theonion. com. Onion 5 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Finds the novel dwarfed by the influences of Kafka and Borges. Kelly, Stuart. “Our Writer’s Week.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. scotlandonsunday. scotsman.com. Scotsman 21 Dec. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Singles out Berry’s novel as a smashing mixture of gumshoe crime and Borgesian nuances. Lo Dico, Joy. “A Most Reluctant Hero.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. independent. co.uk. Independent 20 June, 2010. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Comments on the complexity of the battle between chaos and order in a combination detective, fantasy, and psychological drama.
Merrihew, Kirstin. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. mostlyfiction.com. Mostly Fiction 19 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Takes an existential approach to Berry’s dreamscape as the setting of the novel in noting oneiric detectives, dream crimes, and dream dreams. Sullivan, John. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. winnipegfreepress.com. Winnipeg Free Press 10 Apr. 2010. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Discusses the novel’s style in terms of satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and fantasy reminiscent of Kafka. Toal, Drew. “The Manual of Detection.” Rev. of The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. newyork. timeout.com. Time Out New York 5-11 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Identifies the usual elements of detective fiction against the novel’s surreal setting. Open Web Sources
The Jedediah Berry homepage at http://www.third archive.net, includes a blog and profile of the author, along with access to interviews. For Further Reading
Crisp, Tony. Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind. New York: Dell, 2002. Print. Complete guide to meanings of dreams according to symbols and situations. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text. Trans. James Strachev. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Print. Seminal work of Freud’s application of dream interpretation in psychoanalysis. Hartman, Keith. The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse. Seattle: Create Space Publishers, 2009. Print. A gay private investigator must solve a crime. LaSalle, Peter. Tell Borges if You See Him: Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism. Athens: Georgia UP, 2007. Print. Collection of short stories in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges that explores the collision and implosion of time. Renoff, Gregory J. The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia, 1820-1930. Athens: Georgia UP, 2008. Print. Uses the social context of the circus to explore issues of race, class, religion, and consumerism. Spencer, Rowina. Conjoined Twins: Developmental Malformations and Clinical Implications. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003. Print. Explores eight different types of conjoined twins and various degrees of malformations, with speculations on why they occur.
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March By Geraldine Brooks
W Introduction March (2005) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Geraldine Brooks that reimagines Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women from the perspective of the March girls’ absent father. The primary action of Brooks’s novel takes place in 1861 amid the chaos of the American Civil War. It chronicles the struggles of Mr. March, a naive idealist and Union army chaplain. Over the course of the novel, March’s harrowing experiences shake the foundations of his belief system and sink him into physical and mental anguish from which he never quite recovers. Brooks has been praised for carefully attending to historical context and for skillfully and believably revisiting Alcott’s beloved characters. The novel alternates between the letters March writes to his wife and daughters at home and his more candid commentary on the horrors he witnesses, first in battle and then at a Union-controlled plantation where he teaches former slaves. Interspersed are flashbacks chronicling his early exposure to the evils of slavery as a peddler, his courtship of his wife, and their subsequent marriage and family life. In addition to exploring racial bigotry, the novel dramatizes the psychological devastation of trauma, the limited opportunities available to nineteenth-century women, and the slippery nature of truth.
W Literary and Historical Context
March offers an alternate view of the story and family first presented in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, which was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Prior to the publication of March, Brooks, a fan of Little Women, had written about the history of the Alcott
family—in particular the patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott—in her New Yorker essay “Orpheus at the Plough.” Little Women is the semiautobiographical story of the four March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. The novel raises a number of social issues, such as the limited educational and vocational opportunities available to women, the importance of charity, and the effects of war on people’s lives. Brooks expands on these themes, providing the girls’ mother, Marmee, with a history as an outspoken abolitionist and proponent of women’s rights. In Brooks’s novel, the March home is depicted as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Unlike Little Women, which focuses on the domestic struggles of a family affected by, yet removed from, war, March describes the gruesome details of battle and its aftermath, from the bodies left behind to rot in the Potomac River to amputees’ severed limbs littering makeshift hospital floors. The novel is set during 1861, the first year of the Civil War, during which the Union army, hoping for an early and decisive victory, suffered a number of notable defeats. These include the First Battle of Bull Run in July and the October Battle of Ball’s Bluff, with which the novel opens.
W Themes March dramatizes the horrors of slavery and racial bigotry. March witnesses the brutality of slavery firsthand as a guest on the Clements’ plantation. He is forced to watch the severe lashing of Grace Clement, a slave with whom he is clearly infatuated, after she confesses that she arranged for him to teach one of the plantation’s slaves to read. Brooks is careful to point out, however, that bigotry was not confined to slaveholders. In a pivotal scene, March attends a church service during which wellmeaning parishioners make plans to send Bibles to Africa, all the while impervious to the slave auction going on in the background.
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The novel also illustrates how the devastating psychological effects of slavery and war often foster deceit. In his letters home, March is unable to give voice to the horrors he witnesses. Instead he misleads his family, speaking only in generalities or of the beauty of nature. Marmee is devastated upon discovering the truth, but she comes to understand her husband’s actions when, visiting his sickbed, she finds it impossible to compose a truthful account of his condition for their daughters. Questions of truth pervade the novel in other ways as well. For the abolitionist John Brown, revolutionary zeal justifies taking liberties with the truth, and his dishonesty about his investments ruins the March family financially. When they harbor fugitive slaves in their home, the Marches themselves struggle with the conflict between truth and justice. Young Beth tells a constable who arrives in pursuit of a slave that she has never seen one in the family home, a lie she justifies on the grounds that “there are no slaves in God’s eyes.”
W Style March is written in a hybrid style that combines elements of fictional biography and historical fiction. The title character narrates the majority of the novel, though his wife, Marmee, narrates several chapters toward the end. Much of the tale is told in flashbacks, and the sometimes jarring transitions between past and present help to re-create the troubled narrator’s delicate frame of mind. In keeping with its first-person narration, the novel replicates writing conventions of the period during which it is set. To this end Brooks employs an ornate style of writing, typified by sentences such as “it is hard to fathom how a people kept so long in the darkest ignorance can have such a keen desire for mastery of the written word.” This style has been praised for its authenticity, but it has also been cited by some as an impediment to contemporary readers’ enjoyment of the text. The novel also includes March’s attempts to render the dialect of the many former slaves he encounters, from their pronunciation of “master” as “marse” to more colorful phrasings, such as an old nursemaid’s exclamation, “what the good Lord go make switches for, if it ain’t for lickin’ boy chillums?” In her afterword to the novel, Brooks explains how she re-created some of the novel’s prose: “In deciding how a man like March would render African American speech, I have followed the conventions in the writing of [Thomas W.] Knox, [Laura M.] Towne, and other Northerners who went South in that period.”
W Critical Reception Although it was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, one of literature’s highest honors, March has
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOHN BROWN is a historical figure, an abolitionist best known for his failed 1859 raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry. The raid, in which Brown attempted to arm the local slaves, helped ignite the Civil War. In the novel a fictionalized Brown captivates Marmee with his zeal, and a jealous March, hoping to win his wife’s praise, loses the family’s fortune bankrolling Brown’s failed business venture. ETHAN CANNING is a young attorney from Illinois who seeks to make his fortune in the South. He takes over the lease and management of the plantation where March is assigned to teach former slaves. AUGUSTUS CLEMENT is a plantation owner and book lover who invites a young March, then traveling the South as a peddler, to stay in his home. Despite his love of literature, Clement is strict in preventing his slaves from becoming literate. He is later revealed to be the father of the slave Grace Clement, his wife’s companion. GRACE CLEMENT is a beautiful and educated African American woman. When March first encounters her, she is a slave on the Clement plantation in Virginia. After the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, he encounters her again, nursing her former master in the ruins of his home. AMY MARCH is the youngest March daughter, known for her beautiful golden curls. BETH “MOUSE” MARCH is the third March daughter. Suffering from poor health, she remains at home while her sisters attend school or work outside the home. JO MARCH is the second of the March daughters, known for her tomboyishness, flair for the dramatic, and love of books. To help support the family, she hires herself out as a companion to her disagreeable Aunt March. MARGARET MAY “MARMEE” MARCH is the wife of the title character and the mother of Amy, Beth, Jo, and Meg. An outspoken abolitionist, she is known for her inability to control her temper. She narrates several of the novel’s final chapters. MEG MARCH is the oldest of the March daughters. She works as a governess to help support the family. MR. MARCH is the novel’s title character. He is a New England intellectual serving the Union army as a chaplain. March is shown to live by a strict moral code that includes eschewing meat and abhorring slavery. Despite his moral strength, he struggles with lust and guilt when Grace Clement reenters his life after a long absence. ZANNAH is a young mother who is among March’s students. Her tongue was cut out during a sexual assault, leaving her mute.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Geraldine Brooks was born in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia, in 1955. Educated at Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney, she began her career as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1982 a scholarship took her to Columbia University in New York, where she earned a master’s degree in journalism. Brooks worked as the Wall Street Journal’s Middle Eastern correspondent from 1988 to 1994 before devoting herself full time to her own writing. Year of Wonders, her first novel, became an international best seller in 2001. Her reputation as a novelist and journalist continued to grow with the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning March in 2005 and the best-selling People of the Book in 2008. Brooks’s historical fiction benefits from the careful research practices she learned as a journalist. In addition to fiction, Brooks is the author of the nonfiction book Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (1995). Brooks makes her home in Virginia, near the Ball’s Bluff battleground. The discovery of a Union soldier’s belt buckle on her property provided the initial inspiration for March.
received mixed critical reviews. Critics have widely praised its brutal frankness, attention to historical accuracy, and careful treatment of Alcott’s original characters. Commentators have been drawn in particular to the novel’s portrait of March’s psychology, especially the guilt and doubt that threaten the foundations of his idealism. In commending the novel for its insight into the devastating aftereffects of war, critics point to scenes such as the one with which the novel closes, in which a “simulacrum of family joy” hides March’s traumatic memories of “terrible wounds, the buzz of the flies, the stink.” At the same time, however, the character of March has also been the primary focus of the novel’s detractors. Indeed, one of the most frequent criticisms of the novel is that it is difficult to relate to the protagonist, a staunch vegetarian, abolitionist, and moralist. Marta Segal Block’s Booklist review typifies this reaction, describing March as “a man whose convictions tread a thin line between admirable and aggravating. He is pure to the point of being ineffectual, and noble to the point of stupidity.” Brooks is clearly aware of the extent of her character’s naïveté. There is thus both truth and humor in a young soldier’s exclamation, “Chaplain, you sure is an innocent man!”
Portrait of Geraldine Brooks, author of March. Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
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Alcott provided much of the inspiration for the title character of March. http://www.alcott.net
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Block, Marta Segal. Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. Booklist 1 Feb. 2005: 938. Print. Brooks, Geraldine. March. New York: Viking, 2005. Print. ———. “Orpheus at the Plough.” New Yorker 10 Jan. 2005: 58. Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. Kirkus Reviews 1 Jan. 2005: 5. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Albert, Judith Strong. Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. Women’s Studies 35.4 (2006): 413-18. Print. A favorable review that praises March for its realistic portrayal of historical events and for its provocative reimagining of history. Burkhardt, Joanna M. Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. Library Journal 15 Sept. 2005: 99. Provides a review of the audiobook version of Brooks’s novel. Mallon, Thomas. “Pictures from a Peculiar Institution.” Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. New York Times Book Review 27 Mar. 2005: 11. A review of March that praises Brooks for the strength of her writing and the depth of her research but faults her for taking liberties with the timeline of Little Women and for indulging too greatly in sentimentalism. “Our Father.” Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. Economist 26 Mar. 2005: 84. Print. Lauds the ease with which Brooks adapts Alcott’s Little Women but questions the excessive goodness of Mr. March. Schwarz, Christina. “New Fiction: Finds and Flops.” Atlantic Monthly 1 Apr. 2005: 115. Print. Offers an overview of the plot of March and compares it favorably to Brooks’s earlier historical novel, Year of Wonders (2001). Shealy, Daniel. Rev. of March, by Geraldine Brooks. New England Quarterly 26.3 (1955): 123-26. Print. A positive review that explores the intersections of Brooks’s novel with Alcott’s Little Women and the real-life experiences of the Alcott family. Gale Resources
“Geraldine Brooks.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. “March.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Milne. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 137-152. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12 July 2010. Open Web Sources
A Web site devoted to Bronson Alcott presents an overview of the life and philosophy of the father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Bronson
Geraldine Brooks’s official Web site includes biographical information, book reviews, a current schedule of her readings and presentations, and several audio interviews. Of particular interest are a reader’s guide to March and Brooks’s essay “Orpheus at the Plough,” about Bronson Alcott. http://geraldinebrooks.com The National Park Service provides information online about the Ball’s Bluff Battlefield and National Cemetery, the Civil War battleground at which Brooks’s fictional Mr. March witnesses the stunning defeat of Union troops. http://www.nps.gov/nr/ travel/journey/bnc.htm The National Public Radio (NPR) Web site offers an introduction to and a preview of the first chapter of March as well as audio of an interview with Brooks about the book from the station’s program All Things Considered (9 Mar. 2005). http://www.npr.org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=4527755 For Further Reading
Alcott, Amos Bronson. The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott. Ed. Richard L. Hernstadt. Ames: Iowa State UP, 1969. Print. In creating the character of Mr. March, Brooks relied in part on the letters of Louisa May Alcott’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott. Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868-1869. Print. March is adapted from Alcott’s novel, which tells the story of Mr. March’s wife and four daughters during the years of his service. Bearss, Edwin C., and James McPherson. Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006. Print. Fields of Honor provides insight into key Civil War battles and their impacts. Brinsfield, John W., et al. Faith in the Fight: Civil War Chaplains. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. Print. Faith in the Fight explores the lives and work of real-life chaplains who, like the fictional Mr. March, ministered to soldiers during the American Civil War. Brooks, Geraldine. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. New York: Viking, 2001. Print. Brooks’s first historical novel tells the story of the mountain town of Eyam, Derbyshire, England, and its yearlong battle with the plague in 1666. Carton, Evan. Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America. New York: Free Press, 2006. Print. Carton’s biography of John Brown provides an overview of the life and times of the famed abolitionist, who is a central character in Brooks’s novel.
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The March By E. L. Doctorow
W Introduction The March (2005) is E. L. Doctorow’s fictionalized account of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march across the South during the American Civil War. The novel chronicles the campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas, ending just after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The narrative describes the experiences of a diverse group of characters, including Pearl, a freed slave; Emily Thompson, the displaced daughter of a Georgia Supreme Court justice; Wrede Sartorius, an army surgeon; and Sherman himself. Switching his focus quickly between characters, Doctorow explores the changing face of the United States and its people, depicting the chaos and confusion surrounding the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation’s freeing of slaves in the states that seceded from the Union and the shifting, often uneasy relationships between whites and freed slaves and between displaced Southerners and the Union soldiers with whom they are traveling. The author also details the literal and emotional devastation of Sherman’s “total war” on the South and its people, illustrating the pillaging of homes, the burning of cities, and the brutal and widespread loss of life. The novel garnered a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2005) and the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award (2006).
W Literary and Historical Context
In writing The March, Doctorow drew on several characters he had introduced in earlier works of fiction. Chief among these is Wrede Sartorius, a Union army surgeon. Sartorius features prominently in Doctorow’s 1994 novel The Waterworks, in which he is a villainous medical researcher carrying out unscrupulous research on orphaned children to benefit wealthy older men.
The March depicts a younger Sartorius, providing the background of his evolution from doctor to cold and heartless researcher. The former slave and talented musician Coalhouse Walker, who gives himself the title Coalhouse Walker Sr. in The March, is implied to be the father of Coalhouse Walker Jr., one of the central characters of Ragtime (1975). Tom Wilhelmus traces the literary lineage of these characters in the Hudson Review. The March begins with Sherman’s Savannah Campaign, often known as “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” The 285-mile march began in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 15, 1864, and ended with the fall of Savannah a month later, on December 21. Using a strategy known as “total war,” Sherman’s sixty thousand troops destroyed everything in their path that might be of value to the Confederate cause, from railroads and factories to farms and plantations. Sherman’s forces passed through Milledgeville, then the capital of the state, where the opening action of Doctorow’s novel takes place. From there they took Savannah before moving on through South Carolina and North Carolina. Doctorow’s fictionalized account of the campaign remains close to the historical facts, although it includes some anachronisms and some events created for impact, such as a fictional assassination attempt against Sherman.
W Themes Central to The March is the uncertain and problematic future of the South’s freed slaves. While clearly aware of the Emancipation Proclamation, Doctorow’s African American characters are unsure of their roles in a postslavery society. Some, like Wilma Jones, have to be reminded repeatedly that they are free. For Pearl, whose light skin will allow her to pass as white, the choices are even more complicated. Still negotiating the world as a free woman, she must choose whether to live her life as a white woman or to reject the privilege such a life would
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afford her and live openly as the daughter of an African American mother. She eventually chooses the former path, noting that it will make her “free everywhere ‘cept in my heart.” Despite the freedom that it celebrates for such characters as Pearl, the novel is equally careful to depict the illusory nature of this alleged freedom. Early in the novel, a group of slaves freed on the march are left to fend for themselves against rebel forces when Sherman’s men pull up a bridge before they can cross. Later Emily Thompson watches in horror as Wrede Sartorius treats the badly wounded victim of a sexual assault by white soldiers. Doctorow attempts to deromanticize other aspects of the war as well, often by providing gruesome evidence of the horrors of war. In Milledgeville, livestock, slaughtered before the Union soldiers can take the animals, litter the ground. Inside her home, which is occupied by Union troops, Thompson stumbles into the makeshift hospital and is shocked to realize that “she was looking at a slimed heap of human arms and legs.” Such graphic descriptions continue throughout the novel, as the troops move through Georgia and on through the Carolinas. Even as the book ends on a hopeful note— with the once illiterate Pearl embracing a future with Stephen Walsh that will include attending medical school—the landscape remains haunted by war, as evidenced by its concluding lines: “A boot lay in the pine needles, and shreds of a discolored uniform. Behind a fallen log, a small pile of cartridge shells. There was still a scent of gunfire in the trees, and they were glad to come out into the sun again.”
W Style A historical novel, The March seeks to bring to life historical events by creating fictional characters and situations that are invested with verisimilitude, or a sense of reality. Such realism is cultivated in the novel through the addition of historical details, such as the lyrics of a song sung by Union soldiers or the graphic description of the intricate brain surgery that the army surgeon Wrede Sartorius carries out on Pearl’s former master. The novel is narrated in the third person, allowing for insight into multiple experiences and perspectives. No single character is central, although some, such as Pearl and Wrede Sartorius, play larger roles than others. Referencing Geoffrey Chaucer’s eclectic text from the fourteenth century, Henry L. Carrigan Jr. in Library Journal describes the novel as “a sort of Canterbury Tales of the Civil War” in which “characters . . . amble onto the scene and tell their stories.” The narration moves quickly between characters and scenes, leading some commentators to describe the author’s style as “impressionistic.” The effect of this narration is heightened by the language itself. Doctorow eschews
MAJOR CHARACTERS MATTIE JAMESON is the displaced mistress of a Southern plantation. After the death of her husband, she suffers a nervous breakdown and is nursed back to health and sanity by her former slave Pearl. PEARL WILKINS JAMESON is the fair-skinned daughter of her master. She joins the troops disguised as a drummer boy and eventually becomes a nurse. At the end of the novel, she plans to make a new life with Stephen Walsh. WILMA JONES is a freed slave who falls in love with Coalhouse Walker. KIL KILPATRICK is a brash Union soldier known for taking whatever he wants wherever he goes, whether it is goods or women. WILL KIRKLAND is a somewhat naive Confederate soldier. Taken under the wing of Arly Wilcox, he disguises himself as a Union soldier and travels with Sherman’s troops. He eventually dies in battle. HUGH PRYCE is a British journalist who is horrified by the brutality of the war. COLONEL WREDE SARTORIUS is a German-born Union army surgeon. Single-mindedly focused on research, he grows increasingly callous over the course of the novel. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN is the Union army general in command of the march. Doctorow’s Sherman is very human, admitting to fear and suffering from loss. EMILY THOMPSON is the daughter of a Georgia Supreme Court judge. She serves as Sartorius’s nurse and lover but, worried that Sartorius is becoming inhuman, leaves the march to care for orphans. COALHOUSE WALKER is a freed slave who rescues and falls in love with Wilma Jones. He dreams of settling down to make a living for himself from the land. STEPHEN WALSH is a Union soldier and one of the few white characters to harbor sympathy toward the freed slaves. ARLY WILCOX is a Confederate deserter and an opportunist who constantly reinvents himself. After assuming the identity of a photographer, he attempts to assassinate Sherman by hiding a gun in his camera. He is executed.
quotation marks for dialogue and writes in long sentences that often stretch to the length of a paragraph. For example, the novel’s opening sentence, which describes Mattie Johnson’s awakening to frantic pounding and making panicked preparations for flight, runs to fifteen lines. The result of this technique is that the narrative takes on the rushed and chaotic character of the events it describes.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR E. L. Doctorow was born on January 6, 1931, in the Bronx, New York. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1952 and spent a year in graduate studies at Columbia University. While supporting himself as a writer and an editor, he wrote his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times, which was published in 1960. The book was well received by both readers and critics. Doctorow’s follow-up novels, The Book of Daniel (1971) and Ragtime (1975), established him as a major novelist. These books evidence the creative flair for bringing historical characters and events to life for which Doctorow has subsequently become famous. Based on the strength of such works, Doctorow was honored with a National Humanities Medal in 1998. The March follows in the tradition of Doctorow’s other successful historical novels and was one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2005.
W Critical Reception At the time of its much-anticipated release in 2005, The March was embraced by readers and critics. The book was nominated for a National Book Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In a review of the work in the New Yorker, John Updike praises the novel for combining “the author’s saturnine strengths with an elegiac compassion and prose of a glittering, swiftmoving economy.” In his New Criterion review, however, Max Watman is far less generous, finding fault with the novel’s fleeting attention to its many characters. “Doctorow’s characters are as flat as photographs,” he writes, “and a book made of snapshots is nothing. War is not just a scrapbook of atrocities and bad luck. It is not a series of alarming photographs. War is hell because it happens to people, and unfortunately there are no people in Doctorow’s book.” Like Updike and Watman, many reviewers have concentrated on style and characterization in Doctorow’s work. Others, however, have been drawn to the novel for its statement about a number of social issues, including race and class bigotry in the Civil War years, and its depiction of historical figures, such as Sherman and Abraham Lincoln. Literary scholars have been particularly interested in Doctorow’s philosophy of history, which he has written about outside of his fiction. While some commentators have seen the author’s deviations from historical fact as mere plot devices, others have pointed to them as evidence of a comprehensive philosophic stance. Examining the role of photography in the novel,
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The March is a fictional account of General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous march through the South during the Civil War. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Eric Seymour and Laura Barrett argue, for example, that “Like photography, the novel suggests that history is dependent upon the imposition of perspective, the active selection and weighing of events that constitute the historical record.” The March, given such a view, should be taken as one perspective on history, which is no more or less true than war photographs or historical documents, all of which are created from a specific, contextualized perspective that cannot always be known. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. Rev. of The March, by E. L. Doctorow. Library Journal 1 Aug. 2005: 67. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Doctorow, E. L. The March. New York: Random House, 2005. Print. Seymour, Eric, and Laura Barrett. “Reconstruction: Photography and History in E. L. Doctorow’s The March.” Literature and History 18.2 (2009): 49-69. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The March
Updike, John. “A Cloud of Dust.” Rev. of The March, by E. L. Doctorow. New Yorker 12 Sept. 2005: 98. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Watman, Max. “Too Much of Nothing.” Rev. of The March, by E. L. Doctorow. New Criterion 24.3 (2005): 56+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Wilhelmus, Tom. “Ah, England.” Rev. of The March, by E. L. Doctorow. Hudson Review 59.2 (2006): 345-51. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allen, Bruce. “Adapt This . . . ” Kirkus Reviews 15 Dec. 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. A review of The March that praises Doctorow’s development of his characters. Hales, Scott. “Marching through Memory: Revising Memory in E. L. Doctorow’s The March.” War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 21.1-2 (2009): 146-61. Print. A critical essay that examines the blurring of fact and fiction in The March. “Interview: E. L. Doctorow Discusses Sherman and The March.” All Things Considered. National Public Radio 18 Oct. 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. An All Things Considered interview in which Doctorow discusses The March. Johnson, Tara. “The March.” Modern Language Studies 35.2 (2005): 98-102. Print. A favorable review of The March that analyzes Doctorow’s depictions of freed slaves, women, and children. Kirn, Walter. “Making War Hell.” New York Times Book Review 25 Sept. 2005: 1(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. A review of The March that focuses on Doctorow’s depiction of General Sherman. Leonard, John. “New Books.” Harper’s Magazine Sept. 2005: 79+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. An overview of The March that compares the novel to works by other notable American writers, such as Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Fowler, Douglas. “E(dgar) L(aurence) Doctorow.” American Novelists since World War II: Fifth Series. Ed. James R. Giles and Wanda H. Giles. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 173. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Herbert, John. “E. L. Doctorow: Overview.” Contemporary Novelists. Ed. Susan Windisch Brown. 6th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Little, Michael R. “E. L. Doctorow: Overview.” Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site offers biographical information, overviews of major works, and a number of audio interviews. http://www. eldoctorow.com The History Channel Web site includes an overview of Sherman’s march, including a timeline and an interactive map. http://www.history.com/topics/ shermans-march The National Archive and Records Administration online provides an overview of the Emancipation Proclamation and its limitations. http://www.archives.gov/ exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_ proclamation For Further Reading
Brooks, Geraldine. March. New York: Viking, 2005. Print. Published in the same year as The March, Brooks’s novel draws on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to tell the story of the absent father, who serves as a Union army chaplain during the Civil War. Burke, Davis. Sherman’s March: The First Full-Length Narrative of General William T. Sherman’s Devastating March through Georgia and the Carolinas. New York: Random House, 1980. Print. Burke’s account of Sherman’s march relies on the eyewitness testimony of those who participated in or observed the event.
Gale Resources
Doctorow, E. L. The Waterworks. New York: Random House, 1994. Print. Doctorow’s fictional account of life in New York in the decade following the Civil War depicts The March’s Wrede Sartorius as an unethical medical researcher experimenting on orphans in an attempt to extend the lives of elderly millionaires.
“E. L. Doctorow.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 July 2010.
Dyer, J. Franklin. The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon. Ed. Michael B. Chesson. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003. Print. Composed from letters written by the
Seaman, Donna. Rev. of The March, by E. L. Doctorow. Booklist Aug. 2005: 1952. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 July 2010. A review that lauds Doctorow’s insight into history and his creative development of his characters.
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Civil War surgeon Dyer to his wife during his three years of service, this volume provides insight into the real-life experiences of medical personnel who, like Doctorow’s fictional Wrede Sartorius, served during the war.
Sherman, William Tecumseh. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. New York: Appleton, 1875. Print. Doctorow relied heavily on this volume of Sherman’s memoirs when composing The March. Greta Gard
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The Master By Colm Tóibín
W Introduction The Master (2004) is a fictional biography of Henry James (1843-1916), an American-born novelist known for complex psychological descriptions of his characters and for his bachelor life, which commentators have traditionally attributed to either an inability to establish meaningful relationships or repressed homosexual desire. The novel traces James’s life from the failed opening of his play Guy Domville in January 1895 through a visit from one of his brothers, the psychologist William James, in October 1899. Peppered throughout the novel are flashbacks that reveal formative events in James’s youth and early adulthood. The book is heavily invested in the literary climate of the period, making frequent references to the works of James’s contemporaries, including Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In researching The Master, Colm Tóibín availed himself of existing biographies of James, as well as James’s published and unpublished writings and the writings of his family members. The resulting novel delves into James’s life, foregrounding his process of literary creation, his complicated relationship with his family members, and what Tóibín interprets as his repressed sexual desires. The novel was short-listed for a Man Booker Prize in 2004 and garnered the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006.
W Literary and Historical Context
The majority of The Master is set during the final decade of the nineteenth century. By that point in his career, Henry James had given up life in the United States in
favor of residency in London. One of the major scandals of the period was the 1895 sodomy trial of Irish writer Oscar Wilde, which features prominently in The Master. The scandal started with an affair between the married Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. Enraged by the affair, the marquess publicly accused Wilde of sodomy, which was then a crime. Wilde responded by suing Queensberry for libel. During the libel trial, mounting evidence revealed the intimate details of Wilde’s numerous homosexual encounters. The trial brought to light a group of young male prostitutes who were prepared to testify about their sexual liaisons with Wilde and other prominent figures. There was widespread speculation about other people who might be implicated. In The Master a veiled discussion between James and his friend Edmund Gosse betrays a fear that James himself might have been among the men involved, a claim that James immediately dismisses. Although Wilde dropped the libel suit before more evidence could be revealed, the visibility of the case left him vulnerable, and he was arrested and charged with sodomy and indecency. He was eventually convicted and imprisoned. While 1890s England provides the backdrop for most of the novel, many of its flashbacks focus on life in the United States during the Civil War (1861-1865). Estimated to have claimed the lives of more than 600,000 soldiers, the war had a tremendous impact on American life. James was himself profoundly affected by the war, in which one of his cousins died and his brother Wilky was severely wounded. James was also shamed by his own escape from service due to an alleged back injury, which a renowned doctor who examined him concluded he was faking.
W Themes In The Master homosexuality is an ever-present undercurrent. The first indication of James’s repressed desire
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The Master
MAJOR CHARACTERS HENDRIK C. ANDERSEN is a young sculptor with whom James is infatuated. CORPORAL TOM HAMMOND is assigned as a manservant to James while the writer is a guest in the home of Lady Wolseley. The two develop an instant camaraderie with romantic undertones. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. is a friend from James’s youth, during which the two spend a tense night sharing a bed. Holmes later accuses James of having indirectly caused the death of their mutual friend Minnie by refusing to take her to Rome with him.
Tóibín’s critique of cultural constraints on homosexuality extends as well to sex roles more generally. The expected role of the late Victorian woman is outlined in some detail in an argument between James’s father and James’s cousin Minnie. The elder James tells Minnie that a woman’s job is “to be submissive. To see to her needlework and her cooking and her preparation to become the sleepless guardian of her husband’s children.” Such a role is, however, stifling to the witty and precocious young woman, who counts George Eliot as her favorite writer because Eliot understands the potential of women. James’s sister, Alice, is also seen to struggle with the expectations assigned to her sex, and there is some indication that her perpetual illness stems, in part, from her inability to meet these expectations.
ALICE JAMES is James’s younger sister, a sharp-witted misfit and an invalid who dies of cancer in her early forties.
W Style
HENRY JAMES is the novel’s central character. In Tóibín’s hands, the noted novelist is a sensitive man who is steadfast in his desire to produce work that he is proud of, even though it may not be popular. Generally more comfortable with women than with men, he struggles with his repressed homosexuality and his inability to relate meaningfully to the people in his life.
The Master is a work of fictional biography, a complex genre that reimagines both historical and emotional events in the life of the biographical subject. In recreating James, Tóibín’s novel concentrates on creating a fictional “record” of the inner life of its protagonist. In his afterword to the novel, Tóibín explains his research methods, including his careful reading of existing biographies of James as well as the author’s letters and journals. The novel is narrated from a third-person limited point of view, in which the narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings of a single character, James. Commentators have been divided over how well Tóibín succeeds in channeling James. In reviewing the novel in the Sewanee Review, Norman Kelvin asserts that Tóibín’s style “is, to say the least, non-Jamesian. That applies both to the narrating persona who evokes both past and present, and to the thoughts and speech of the fictive Henry.” While Tóibín eschews the syntactically complex style for which James is famous, his emphasis on the interiority of the character is arguably Jamesian, insofar as James is known as a master of psychological realism, a literary mode marked by the realistic portrayal of the inner life of its characters.
WILLIAM JAMES, a noted psychologist, is James’s brother and the subject of his intense admiration. Despite their similar drive toward intellectual pursuits, the brothers do not have the same kind of bond that James shares with their sister, Alice. MINNIE TEMPLE is a precocious cousin of Henry James who dies an early death from tuberculosis. OSCAR WILDE is a noted playwright and novelist. His sodomy trial is a common topic of gossip among James and his friends. LADY WOLSELEY is a society woman and a close friend of James. CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON is an American novelist who is in love with James. It is implied that her suicide results from unrequited love.
comes early in the novel with a fleeting mention of Paul Joukowsky. Joukowsky, it is implied, had once made an offer to James that the young man could not find the courage to accept, and James seems to have long regretted the lost opportunity. Later, flashbacks reveal youthful attractions to several male friends. As an adult, James struggles with his feelings for Corporal Tom Hammond and his clear longing for the young sculptor Hendrik Andersen. The dangers of homosexual desire, however, are driven home by the extended discussion of Wilde’s trials and their reminder that, during James’s lifetime, homophobia was legally sanctioned.
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W Critical Reception The recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2005), among other accolades, The Master has received widespread critical acclaim. In his Christian Science Monitor review, Ron Charles characterizes the work as “a beautiful, haunting portrayal that measures the amplitude of silence and the trajectory of a glance in the life of one of the world’s most astute social observers.” A number of commentators have sought to compare Tóibín’s novel to other contemporary fictional treatments TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Master
of the life and works of James. In an article in the Yearbook of English Studies, for example, John Harvey examines The Master alongside David Lodge’s Author, Author, suggesting that the prevalence of fiction about James evidences “the latest turn in a preoccupation that the ‘literary’ novel has had for many decades: the desire to figure within itself its own literariness, to discuss writing books within the act of writing them.” Some critics, however, have worried that the accessibility of Tóibín’s text may lead to its replacing James’s more challenging writings as a source of information about the author’s work. Scholars have been interested in Tóibín’s debt to his source material, particularly his reliance on James’s correspondence and on works of biography by Lyndall Gordon and Leon Edel. Some commentators have worried that The Master depends too heavily on this material, to detrimental effect. Miranda Seymour is one such critic. “Full-blooded Jamesians,” she writes in her New Statesman review, “may feel a sneaking dissatisfaction with Tóibín’s novel. Ingenious and thoughtful though it is, the technique of transforming James’s correspondence into articulated thoughts produces a certain stiffness in the dialogue.” Despite this criticism, however, Seymour praises Tóibín’s creative renderings of
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Colm Tóibín was born in 1955 in the Irish village of Enniscorthy. Tóibín’s pride in his hometown, famous for its 1798 rebellion against British forces, resonates throughout his work. He received bachelor’s degrees in English and history from University College Dublin in 1975. After teaching English for three years in Spain, he returned to Ireland. Inspired by the American writer Tom Wolfe, Tóibín launched a career as a journalist. As an editor for the Irish news magazine Magill, Tóibín became known for his intelligent responses to political strife and cultural change. Over the course of his career, he has written for such publications as Dublin Sunday Independent, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, and the New York Times Book Review. Tóibín’s journalism reflects his interest in the intersections of history and politics, a theme that also pervades much of his fiction. Although he had published a number of novels since the 1980s, it was not until the publication of The Master (2004) that Tóibín’s international reputation as a novelist was secured.
The Master is a fictional account of the life of American author Henry James. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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James’s experience, asserting that the author “is superb when he steps outside the chaining circle of recorded material and allows his powers of invention to enrich our understanding.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Charles, Ron. “Portrait of a Portrait Artist.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. Christian Science Monitor 25 May 2004: 15. Print. Harvey, John. “Lessons of the Master: The Henry James Novel.” Yearbook of English Studies 37.1 (2007): 75+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Walker, Pierre A. “Henry James: Seeing a Life through Biography, Letters, and Fiction.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. Chronicle of Higher Education 51.12 (2004). Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Offers a review of The Master in the context of James’s biography and in comparison to David Lodge’s Author, Author. Gale Resources
“Colm Tóibín.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 285. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Kelvin, Norman. “The Sacred Geometry of Jamesian Relations.” Sewanee Review 112.3 (2004): lxxxvii-xc. Print.
Middleton, Tim. “Colm Tóibín.” British and Irish Novelists since 1960. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 271. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Seymour, Miranda. “Portrait of an Artist.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. New Statesman 8 Mar. 2004: 54+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Perkins, George. “Henry James: Overview.” Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010.
Tóibín, Colm. The Master. New York: Scribner’s, 2004.
Open Web Sources
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Delaney, Eamon. “Colm Tóibín: Mr. James’s Chronicler.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. Publishers Weekly 251.27 (2004): 33. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Favorable review of The Master that praises Tóibín’s creative flair and facility with creating atmosphere. Hannah, Daniel. “The Private Life, the Public Stage: Henry James in Recent Fiction.” Journal of Modern Literature 30.3 (2007): 70-94. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Scholarly essay that examines three fictional treatments of Henry James, including The Master, in the context of queer theory. Perkin, J. Russell. “Imagining Henry: Henry James as a Fictional Character in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author.” Journal of Modern Literature 33.2 (2010): 114+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. Critical discussion of Tóibín’s fictional representation of Henry James in comparison to another fictional account of James’s life published by David Lodge in the same year. Smee, Sebastian. “The Portrait of a Gentleman.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. Spectator 13 Mar. 2004: 39. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 July 2010. A review of the novel that praises Tóibín’s psychological insight and his prose. Van der Ziel, Stanley. “Colm Tóibín, The Master.” Rev. of The Master, by Colm Tóibín. Irish University Review 34.2 (2004): 424-31. Print. A favorable review of Tóibín’s novel that offers a close reading of the author’s development of his central character.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio Web site offers a transcript of an interview with Colm Tóibín after he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Master. http://www.abc.net. au/rn/bookshow/stories/2006/1670025.htm The Harvard University Web site includes an overview of The Master and an audio file of Christopher Lydon’s interview with Tóibín. http://blogs.law.harvard. edu/lydondev/2004/06/08/the-master Project Gutenberg offers a full-text version of James’s short story “The Beast in the Jungle.” James composed the tale during the period of his life that is depicted in The Master, and many have suggested that it offers important insights into the author’s sexuality. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1093 The Henry James Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites is maintained by Richard D. Hathaway, an English professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz. It provides a comprehensive listing of electronic resources devoted to James’s life and work, including links to online versions of many of his works. http:// www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway For Further Reading
Delaney, Paul, ed. Reading Colm Tóibín. Dublin: Liffey, 2008. Print. A collection of essays focused on Tóibín’s writing. Gordon, Lyndall. A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art. New York: Norton, 1999. Print. Tóibín has credited Gordon’s biography with inspiring in him a new and productive outlook on James’s life and work. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Master
Lodge, David. Author, Author. New York: Viking, 2004. Print. Published in the same year as The Master, Lodge’s novel is another fictional account of the life of Henry James. Stevens, Hugh. Henry James and Sexuality. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print. Stevens’s book explores the sexuality of Henry James, a topic foundational to The Master.
Tóibín, Colm. Love in a Dark Time. London: Picador, 2001. Print. Tóibín’s collection of essays includes a reading of James’s short story “A Beast in the Jungle” that provides insight into Tóibín’s understanding of James’s sexuality.
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Greta Gard
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The Maytrees By Annie Dillard
W Introduction Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees (2007) traces the lives of three Bohemians who live out their lives in and around Provincetown, Cape Cod. Poet Toby Maytree and his wife Lou, an erstwhile painter, move through the early years of marriage in a somewhat unconventional style, eschewing acquiring goods and coming up in the world for increased free time and much reading. Their son Peter completes what appears to others to be a happy family life, which continues fourteen years. Suddenly Toby leaves with mutual friend Deary Hightoe and makes a new life with her in Maine. For two decades, Toby and Deary succeed in the construction business before difficulties occur, and they return to Lou, Deary for her final days and Toby for his last five years. In an interview with Scott Simon and elsewhere, Dillard has remarked that an early draft of the novel stretched to twelve hundred pages and heavy cuts and the “killing off of characters” resulted in the slim novel of just over two hundred pages. That extensive cutting produced a novel that reads as though it is abbreviated. What remains is the salient bits, the images, the moments and glances, the savored remarks of a multifaceted relationship between three people across four decades.
W Literary and Historical Context
By the 1940s, when Toby Maytree meets and marries Lou Bigelow, Provincetown, Cape Cod, was already a well-established artist colony. In fact, painters rented studio space there as early as the 1890s, enjoying the ocean views and incomparable light. By the early 1900s, two art schools had been established, and in 1916, the Boston Globe touted Provincetown as the
world’s largest art colony. In 1929 poet Stanley Kunitz visited the area for the first time and saw Charles W. Hawthorne, the American impressionist, giving an open-air class in painting. Kunitz made the Cape his summer home for decades thereafter, enjoying the company of modernist painters such as Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock, who were friends of the poet’s third wife, painter Elise Asher. From the 1940s through the 1960s, art galleries became increasingly numerous on the Cape, and Kunitz established and developed the Fine Arts Work Center, which supported the Cape’s literary community. Deary Hightoe refuses medical treatment for her heart condition, maintaining that all of her friends who were treated in the hospital had painful deaths. At the time of Deary’s death in the 1980s, heart disease was a leading cause of death among Americans. Moreover, certain statistics help justify her refusal to be admitted to a hospital. Indeed, an article in JAMA (2000) explains the risks in receiving hospital care, estimating that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die annually as a result of hospital-based medical error or infection. In the early 2000s, however, U.S. rates in treating heart disease were encouraging. As reported in Science Daily, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that between 1999 and 2008 coronary heart disease death rates in the United States dropped by over 20 percent.
W Themes The Maytrees has as its central subject the nature of love. In an interview with Scott Simon, Dillard herself said she devoted “the entire book to the question of what love is.” The version of love this novel presents is unconventional, a love that survives abandonment and extends beyond simmering anger and resentment to a state of generosity and goodwill. Maytree asks himself how love can recur. This book addresses that question and a larger one about how it survives despite disappointment.
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The Maytrees
The novel is about seeking forgiveness and resolution, about moving through betrayal and abandonment to an emotional wholeness that allows a person to make a new life and be generous in helping others, even those who have done the abandoning. After Toby leaves Lou and moves to Maine to live with Deary, Lou practices daily moving into a place beyond neutrality, one of fond feeling for her absent husband. She takes these psychological steps through grief by making daily trips to Pilgrim Monument, where ‘’for one minute by her watch, she imagined liking Maytree impartially’’ (91). The novel does not dwell on this process. Rather, it outlines it quickly, noting that Lou took years to learn how to deflect resentment before it “dug in” (93). Another central idea in the novel concerns hindsight and how over the decades one’s view of past events reshapes itself. The novel is written in this backwardglancing way, with the seasoned perspective of a mature narrator. At one point when her son is a teen and heads out with friends, Lou suddenly thinks about all the moments in his past and all the Peties she wishes she could revisit. Then comes the question: “What mother would not want to see her kids again?” (109). This is the hindsight question of a mother who recognizes her child is grown up and moving away from her. Another example of this mature perspective occurs after Toby returns to the Cape and Deary has died. He realizes that it no longer matters whether his poetry lasts, but what really matters in the present moment is how long his grandson will play at his feet.
W Style One stylistic feature of this novel is the way it jumps ahead, allowing gaps of time to stand between moments without transition or bridgelike summaries to take the reader from one time to the next. The chapters are brief and separated by blank pages as if to underscore this quality of compression followed by ellipsis. For example, a scene in which Toby approaches Lou for the first time ends one chapter and then the next chapter begins with who gave the couple their engagement party. A subsequent chapter begins, “Two months after their wedding” (39) and six pages later a chapter begins, “Two years later they were dancing” (45). The pace at which the novel moves through time gives readers a sense of getting an overview of two people’s lives, a kind of outline or a photo assembly of caught moments that actually occurred scattered across years. Characterization is also conveyed by delineating a significant physical detail, manner, or custom of dressing. Lou is described first with her bike pressed against one leg. Over the years, she compensates for her natural reticence by wearing red in all seasons. As in caricature, the suggestive detail rather that the fully articulated portrait is meant to convey the whole person.
MAJOR CHARACTERS CORNELIUS BLUE is initially Toby’s friend and after his departure remains a friend of of Lou Maytree. Cornelius has a love affair with Jane Cairo. DEARY HIGHTOE, with a degree in architecture from MIT, is a hoyden (rather loose or unconventional young woman) and drummer on Cape Cod and later becomes the longtime companion of Toby Maytree. LOU BIGELOW MAYTREE, Toby’s wife, is a beautiful, reticent painter who shuns attention. She heals emotionally after Toby leaves her and is an invaluable help to him and Deary when they return to the Cape. PETER MAYTREE, called Petie, is the sole offspring of Toby and Lou Maytree. Peter becomes a fisherman, marries Marie Koday, and has a son, Manny. TOBY MAYTREE, a poet, house mover, and later prosperous builder, is the husband of Lou Maytree. He leaves his wife to live in Maine with Deary Hightoe only to return twenty years later when he needs Lou’s help. REVADARE WEAVER is the flamboyant often-married friend of the Maytrees, who throws their engagement party.
Dillard is perhaps best known for her descriptions of the natural world, and this skill is apparent in The Maytrees but does not dominate. For example, in describing the Maytrees’ Cape home and habit of reading, Dillard writes: “Twice a day behind their house the tide boarded the sand. Four times a year the seasons flopped over. Clams live like this, but without so much reading as the Maytrees” (2). Much later in the novel, she describes the Cape overcast with “skies like cows in [Marc] Chagall” (125). The novel provides many fresh ways of describing the natural scene, but natural elements are never more than backdrop to the Maytrees’ lives.
W Critical Reception The Maytrees received somewhat mixed reviews, criticized for its distanced narrative stance and sometimes opaque language and praised for its descriptions of Cape Cod and its depiction of love that endures. John de Falbe found early descriptions of the Maytrees’ intimacy “startling” and attributed that effect to Dillard’s “using language that might irritate some readers as mannered.” However, he concluded that her language works, and as a result, her images are “taut and precise.” A review in the Atlantic agreed that the descriptions are precise, but it pointed out that fiction is not Dillard’s main genre: “the author is more essayist and poet than novelist; she assesses
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Annie Dillard has enjoyed three decades of success as an author in various genres, including nonfiction (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1975, Pulitzer Prize) and autobiography (An American Childhood, 1987). She received her BA and MA from Hollins College, in Roanoke, Virginia, and has taught at various universities. In 1998 she received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of the early 2000s, she was professor emeritus at Wesleyan University.
emotion, rather than creating it, and so holds the reader at a distance.” In a generally positive analysis, Julia Reed took time to fault what she called “the dictionary-driven vocabulary”: “There are no mere ragamuffins in Dillard,”
Reed wrote, “only a ‘’tatterdemalion’’; the tone of a man’s calf muscle is, here, the ‘tonus.’’’ These bookish parts of the prose left Reed “bewildered and slightly irritated,” but overall she found that the novel “has good old straight narrative and prose that is often, yes, breathtakingly illuminative.” Starr E. Smith praised the novel for its plot line, stating that a “tragedy propels them [the Maytrees] to achieve reunion and redemption based on selfless love.” An evaluation in Kirkus Reviews reached a similar, if more nuanced, verdict: “Dillard renders her characters as flawed humans trying to make sense of the lives they are living but cannot understand.” Calling the story “mythic and transfixing,” Donna Seaman gave it an almost Odyssean interpretation: “Lou is an anchorite, free of clock time and clutter, devoted to the story of the land. Maytree is a voyager who, in old age, returns home.” Ultimately, for Seaman, the novel “exalts in life’s metamorphoses, and celebrates goodness.” The Maytrees can be viewed as a novel that dramatizes how
Toby and Lou Maytree reside in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in The Maytrees. Fritz Goro/Getty Images
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The Maytrees
The Maytrees follows the lives of three Bohemian artists living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Evans/Three Lions/Getty Images
time heals; it may also be seen as telling a story that illustrates how individuals can move past separation and toward reunion. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Ahrens, Nyla. Provincetown History: The Art Colony, A Brief History. Provincetown: Provincetown Art Assoc. and Museum, 1997. Print. De Falbe, John. “Shifting Hearts, Shifting Sands.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Spectator 13 Oct. 2007: 61. Print.
Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. “Dillard, Annie: The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Kirkus Reviews 1 Mar. 2007: 186. Print. “Heart and Stroke Death Rates Steadily Decline; Risks Still Too High.” sciencedaily.com ScienceDaily 24 Jan. 2008. Web. 19 July 2010. Interview with Annie Dillard. Narr. Scott Simon. Weekend Edition Saturday. National Public Radio 28 July 2007. Web. 19 July 2010.
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“The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Atlantic Sept. 2007, 130. Print. McQuaid, Cate. “Marking Its Centennial: An Art Colony Is Painting the Town.” boston.com/globe. Boston Globe 14 July 1999. Web. 19 July 2010. Reed, Julia. “A Natural History of Love.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. New York Times Book Review 29 July 2007: 12(L). Print. Seaman, Donna. “The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Booklist 1 Feb. 2007: 4. Print. Smith, Starr E. “Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Library Journal 15 Mar. 2007: 56. Print.
Washington Post 24 June 2007. Print. Praises the novel as celestial event and, with a small criticism of diction, overall applauds the novel. Gale Resources
“Annie Dillard.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id= GALE%7CH1000025609&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Starfield, Barbara. “Is U.S. Health Really the Best in the World?” jama.ama-assn.org JAMA 284:483 (2000): 483-85. Print.
During the Weekend Edition Saturday National Public Radio program, Scott Simon interviewed Annie Dillard about The Maytrees on July 28, 2007. The interview is available online at http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA166897936& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Additional Resources
For Further Reading
Criticism and Reviews
Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: One Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. New York: Holt, 2003. Print. First published in 1928, a must-read for anyone interested in nature and the seasons on Cape Cod in the late 1920s.
Camp, Jennie. “The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Rocky Mountain News 29 June 2007. Print. Urges a slow read to appreciate Dillard’s style. Clinton, Kate. “Rudimentary (The Maytrees).” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Women’s Review of Books 1 Nov. 2007. Print. Describes Provincetown as it used to be from the point of view of all-year residents and applauds Dillard’s novel. “The Maytrees.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Bookmarks 1 Sept. 2007. Print. Explains that Lou draws on inner strength to move ahead in her life and includes quotations from other reviews. Nelson, Sara. “Sara Nelson Talks with Annie Dillard: A Lesson in Killing Characters.” Publishers Weekly 9 Apr. 2007: 28. Print. In this interview about her compression skills, and an authorial argument that The Maytrees contains “nothing negative, nothing cynical.” Rae, Al. “Annie Dillard Novels Lack Depth of Essays.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard. Winnipeg Free Press 19 Aug. 2007. Print. Compares Dillard to Marilynne Robinson, finding Dillard better as personal essayist than as a novelist. Robinson, Marilynne. “The Nature of Love: Annie Dillard on Family, Cape Cod and a 20-Year Love Affair.” Rev. of The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard.
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Colt, George Howe. The Big House: A Century in the Life of a Summer Home. New York: Scribner’s, 2003. Print. Describes the Colt family summer place on Cape Cod. Dillard, Annie. The Living: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 1992. Print. Historical novel covering the last decades of the nineteenth century and the settlement of the American Northwest. ———. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: HarperPerennial, 1974. Print. Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction work that illustrates Dillard’s penchant for nature writing. Nicolson, Nigel. Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1973. Print. Son and literary executor of Sackville-West describing here the journal his mother kept about her marriage to Harold Nicolson, along with Nigel’s own memories of his parents’ unconventional marriage that lasted through infidelity and abandonment. Melodie Monahan
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores By Gabriel García Márquez
W Introduction Gabriel García Márquez’s short novel, Memoria de mis putas tristes, translated into English by Edith Grossman as Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2005), is a first-person novella narrated by an unnamed character. It begins in the narrator’s ninetieth year with his decision to treat himself to a night of lovemaking with an adolescent virgin. To his surprise, he ends up merely observing her as she sleeps. The madam of the brothel, Rosa Cabarcas, explains that the girl is a poor, slavedriven worker at a factory where she sews on two hundred buttons a day by hand. She also cares for her mother and siblings and is malnourished. Subsequent encounters unfold in the same nonsexual way and soon the old man falls in love for the first time in his life. The narrator gives a self-effacing account of his life as a cable editor for the local newspaper and a bachelor who stood up his fiancée on their wedding day. Sometimes called Don Scholar because of his love of books, paintings, and classical music, he compensates for a loveless existence by having sexual relations with hundreds of women, all of whom he pays. However, the more enamored he is with the sleeping virginal girl, who is barely fifteen, the more reflective he becomes regarding his previous sexual encounters. Slowly he cultivates his first meaningful relationship with a girl whose name he does not know— or want to know—and finds he is not the man he used to be. Gabriel García Márquez’s spare novella revisits some of his favorite subjects, such as prostitution, old age, and writing. The hero is rescued from nearly eight decades of prowling red-light districts and writing a lackluster newspaper column to a renewed sense of life and purpose of fidelity. As he indulges his sleeping beauty with gifts and trinkets, he begins writing love letters in the paper, which
are popular with his readers. When he thinks he may have lost her forever, he realizes the girl is the love of his life. Not even her loss of virginity at the hands of another will keep them apart.
W Literary and Historical Context
Poverty and prostitution are frequent hallmarks of colonial possession that persist into the twentieth century in countries such as Colombia, the setting for Memories of My Melancholy Whores. García Márquez’s narrator describes the brothels in barrio chino and Black Eufemia as nostalgic, historic locations known for a clientele as diverse as the “birds,” whose services are a time-honored and culturally accepted tradition. With the exception of the corpse of a murdered prominent banker in Rosa’s establishment, García Márquez’s account of the red-light districts is a casual understatement of the effects of slavery, miscegenation (reproduction of mixed races), gender inequality, and mythos of male virility in former Spanish colonies. His passive heroine, whom the narrator calls Delgadina from a song lyric, embodies the plight of indigent children who are exploited by labor, prostitution, and drugs. In fact, it is a bromide and valerian cocktail that first accounts for Delgadina’s sedated participation in her nights with Don Scholar. Other characters in the novella, such as the narrator’s faithful housekeeper, Damiana, describe the choiceless lives and inequality of women as a legacy of colonialism. At one point, she confides that she cried out of unrequited love for her master, the horse-faced journalist, for twenty years. His jilted fiancée, Ximena Ortiz, had fled Colombia on her wedding night out of shame and did not return for two decades, by which time she was married with seven children. By contrast, ironic features of lower-class men who eke out livings while nurturing an
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ROSA CABARCAS, madam of the brothel, is the longtime friend of the narrator, whom she refers to as her best client. FLORINO DE DIOS CARGAMANTOS is the narrator’s doting mother, recalled with reverence. DAMIANA is the faithful housekeeper who was once in love with the narrator. DELGADINA, the unnamed adolescent virgin, is the narrator’s first true love. THE NARRATOR, sometimes called Don Scholar, is a philanderer and mediocre journalist who wants an adolescent virgin for a night of lovemaking in honor of his ninetieth birthday. DON JERÓNIMO ORTEGA, also known as the Abominable NoMan, is the official censor at the El Diario de la Paz where the narrator writes his weekly column. XIMIA ORTIZ is the narrator’s former fiancée, whom he deserts on their wedding day.
life on sexual pleasure. As he watches her sleep from the effects of fatigue and sedation, he confronts the physical object before him as a pure ideal of love and has a revelation. He experiences at long last what it means to feel with his heart, rather than his masculine physicality. Another theme explores perceptions of aging, both personally and socially. García Márquez suggests that the physical realities of aging do not necessarily correspond with what a person feels internally. For example, when the narrator buys a bicycle for Delgadina, he indulges himself and rides it as he sings a song, eliciting cheers from spectators. Don Scholar comes to understand that life is not a thing that passes by like Heraclitus’s river of change but “a unique opportunity to turn over on the grill” and finish broiling for “another ninety years.” Despite the contrast in age, Delgadina also falls madly in love with her “ugly papa.” For García Márquez, therefore, age falls under the same taboo as sex, but neither is always accurately understood. The subjective nature of writing is also an important theme. The narrator uses his writing as a means of negotiating memory and human experience. As he contemplates his birthday, he thinks about writing “a
MARCO TULIO is the editor of the newspaper. He is only twenty-nine, speaks four languages, and holds three international master’s degrees.
appetite for classical literature and music reflect a cultural heritage of Spanish occupiers. García Márquez’s colorful cast echoes the social attitudes forged by the former Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada through the narrator’s memoirs of sex as a consolation for love. García Márquez’s protagonist is an unremarkable but dedicated journalist who endures the newspaper’s official censor, known as the Abominable No-Man. Leon Ginsberg suggests that Colombia has had a constant reliance on the press throughout its complex history. For his part, García Márquez points out that reporters “tried to relieve tensions in the public order with serialized stories of passion,” so that Don Scholar’s eventual love letters in his column are closer to reality than the author’s usual magical realism might suggest.
W Themes The central theme of the novella is sexual compulsion as a substitute for emptiness. The old man is violated by a prostitute as an adolescent and embarks on a lifelong pursuit of paying women for love. After five hundred partners by age fifty, he loses count. Although he prides himself on compensating women for their services, it is not until he refrains from consummating his affair with the virgin Delgadina that he realizes the utter waste of his
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Portrait of Gabriel García Márquez, author of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. ª peter jordan / Alamy TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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narration of the miseries of his misguided life” and invokes the title of his novella. The mediocrity of his writing explodes with passion only years later when he finds the love of his life. In this way, García Márquez links memorable writing with meaningful life experience.
W Style A master in the style of magical realism and a giant in contemporary literature, García Márquez broke with his reputation for mystical metaphors in favor of a more journalistic prose style in Memories of My Melancholy Whores. He maintains a wistful air of nostalgic comedy as the narrator recollects his past, but with less ceremonial lyricism. Instead of highly figurative language, the novella is more anecdotal, with minimal description of sensory detail for which García Márquez is well known. Although his sexually energetic star is similar to the character of Florentino Ariza, the promiscuous titan in Love in the Time of Cholera, who also keeps a log of over six hundred women, García Márquez refrains from itemized accounts of Don Scholar’s exploits in brothels and names only one of the hundreds of women he has known sexually. Readers will immediately recognize García Márquez’s blend of hyperbole and reportage, such as when the narrator explains his annotated log of the 514 women with whom he has relations at least once and confesses his “exemplary ugliness” that made him popular with caricaturists. Even his narrative of the injured young girl he worried might be his “niña” remains anticlimatic when he sees her bandaged on a hospital bed and realizes they are not Delgadina’s “large, silent-stepping feet with toes as long and sensitive as fingers.” If García Márquez’s artful style of magical realism is nearly absent in this novella, he compensates in other ways. His even-handed syntax sets off the wry tone of dialogue with lines, for example, in “you’re no good to me anymore even as a consolation” and “love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.” Given the uncomfortable premise of the plot, García Márquez’s rhetorical style keeps the narrative at a swift pace to its conclusion. The quixotic hero is prepared to die of love after a sober summary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gabriel García Márquez was born March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, Colombia. He began his career in journalism working for Colombian newspapers, while taking university studies in 1947. By 1955 he was a freelance reporter in France, England, and Venezuela. Following his time as correspondent for Prensa Latina news agency, which he helped launch, he became a fiction writer in 1961. García Márquez’s works established him as a colossus among Latin American writers, and in 1982 he won the Nobel Prize for One Hundred Years of Solitude. As of 2010, he lived in Mexico City.
suggested that García Márquez’s lyrically lurid tale is a “mischievous variation on ‘Sleeping Beauty,’” although he added it would be a good last book with which to end the novelist’s repertoire. J. M. Coetzee echoed this disappointment in his New York Review of Books piece, hedging that García Márquez’s latest novella had reprised the artistically and morally unsatisfactory story of Florentino (a man over seventy) and América (a young teen), in Love in the Time of Cholera. Others, however, were more ambiguously generous. Marie Arana’s review in the Washington Post cited García Márquez’s “pruned” and “pared” text so “skeletal” and “horned” as to appear worthy of biblical contemplation. To her, the novella’s lack worked to reveal a certain grace, its perverse premise notwithstanding. Similarly, John Updike qualified his criticism of the novella, granting that it is a “velvety pleasure to read” but finding it reminiscent of “the necrophiliac tendencies of the precocious short stories” García Márquez wrote as a young man. One critic, Brandon Stosuy, broke from the pack in the Village Voice and declared García Márquez’s novella “an easy read as he [García Márquez], celebrates the joys of love.” However, he prefaced his opinion with recognition for the Colombian master as “probably the best-selling author in the world.” So in all, the novella earned reserved praise by many, but few gave it unconditionally. BIBLIOGRAPHY
W Critical Reception Memories of My Melancholy Whores garnered mixed reviews, fueled in part by ten years of anticipation since García Márquez’s last novel. Writing in the Canadian Review of Books, Jeff Bursey reassured readers that despite a lesser García Márquezian presence, the novella was a “fine case study of self-regard.” Kirkus Reviews called it a “modestly scaled offering,” while Lawrence Olszewski in Library Journal referred to its “low-key style” as a remove from the mythic sweep of Macondo (the magical setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude). Michael Upchurch
Works Cited
Arana, Marie. “The Love of His Life.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 6 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Bursey, Jeff. “The Same Márquezian Patterns.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. Canadian Review of Books 34.6 (2004): 7-8. Print. Coetzee, J. M. “Sleeping Beauty.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez.
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nybooks.com. New York Review of Books 23 Feb. 2006. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Ginsberg, Leon. “Colombia Press.” pressreference.com. Press Reference, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. García Márquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Vintage Books, 2007. Print. ———. Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: Vintage International, 2006. Print. ———. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: HarperPerennial, 2006. Print. “Memories of My Melancholy Whores.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. Kirkus Reviews 1 June 2005: S8. Print. Olszewski, Lawrence. “García Márquez, Gabriel. Memories of My Melancholy Whores.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. Library Journal 1 Sept. 2005: 130. Print. Stosuy, Brandon. “Grandmaster Flesh.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. villagevoice.com. Village Voice 1 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Upchurch, Michael. “Memories of My Melancholy Whores: A Tale of Old Age and Sleeping Beauty.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. seattletimes.nwsource.com. Seattle Times 4 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Updike, John. “Dying for Love.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. newyorker.com. New Yorker 7 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010.
Hood, Edward Waters. “Gabriel García Márquez. Memoria de mis putas tristes.” World Literature Today 79.3-4 (2005): 105. Print. Cites the problematic premise of the text and its similarities to García Márquez’s previous work, particularly his sympathy for prostitutes. Hoover, Bob. “Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez Age-Old Saga: Can’t Buy Him Love.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. post-gazette.com. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 6 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Derides García Márquez as resting on his laurels for this inferior novella and takes issue with the author’s insensitivity regarding the sexual exploitation of children. Manguel, Alberto. “A Sad Affair.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 12 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Finds the novella conventional and lacking and points out similarities to Yasunari Kawabata’s House of Sleeping Beauties and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Rafferty, Terrence. “Client of the Year.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. New York Times Book Review 6 Nov. 2005: 14(L). Print. Applauds García Márquez’s ability to produce another interestingly perverse fable and observes similarities to previous characters obsessed with lust in old age and the obvious reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Gale Resources
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cuda, Amanda. Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. curledup.com. Curled Up with a Good Book, n.d. Oct. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Admits to the uncomfortable subject of the book but suggests its theme of love over sex is redeeming. Hellman, David. “Sleeping Beauty: García Márquez’s Lusty Old Journalist Finds Truth and Love with a 14-Year-Old.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez. sfgate.com. San Francisco Chronicle 27 Nov. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Compares the simplicity of the story to Albert Camus, but cautions the tale is disturbing and promotes the way the media makes sexual objects of young girls. Holgate, Andrew. “Love’s Redemptive Powers.” Rev. of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García
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Márquez. entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. Times 23 Oct. 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Calls the novella unsteady for its conventional use of aphorisms and argues the prose seems fatigued.
“Gabriel García Márquez.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000035213&v= 2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Modern Word, at http://www.themodernword.com/ gabo, is a Web resource on García Márquez. Paris Review, at http://www.parisreview.com, includes Silvana Paternostro’s “Solitude and Company: An Oral Biography of Gabriel García Márquez.” For Further Reading
Bartram, Thomas. Bartram’s Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine: The Definitive Guide to the Herbal Treatments of Diseases. Cambridge: De Capo Press, 2007. Compendium of herbal alternatives to traditional medicine.
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Bullough, Vern, and Bonnie Bullough. Women and Prostitution: A Social History (New Concepts in Human Sexuality). Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1987. Argues that the role of women in society must be understood before understanding prostitution and explores the issue across different cultures and over many centuries, including anthropological perspectives. Cameron, Sarah J. Out of War: True Stories from the Front Lines of the Children’s Movement for Peace in Colombia. Intimate portrait of violence from the perspective of children in Colombia.
Kenny, Mary Lorena. Hidden Heads of Households: Child Labor in Urban Northeast Brazil. Toronto: U of Toronto P Higher Education, 2007. A study of the labor exploitation of children based on fifteen years of interviews and photographic evidence. Simons, Geoffrey Leslie. Colombia: A Brutal History. London: Saqi, 2004. Traces the violent events that influenced the development of Colombia from its historical roots, through civil wars, labor struggles, and the drug trade. Doris Plantus-Runey
Goulding, Phil D. Classical Music. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995. Accessible guide for music lovers without formal background.
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Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides
W Introduction Middlesex (2002) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning second novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Published nine years after The Virgin Suicides, the author’s haunting debut, Middlesex was anxiously awaited by critics and fans. The lengthy novel, in which an intersexed character tells the complex story of his Greek American family, drew mixed reviews upon its publication, and its unusual subject matter did not immediately attract a wide readership. Middlesex gained mainstream attention in 2007, however, when it became an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel explores the theme of hybridity on multiple levels, through its structure, style, and subject matter. The narrative is not only about the hermaphrodite protagonist, Cal, and his family background but also about the immigrant experience in America, the changes in American culture during the later twentieth century, and the many ways in which a person’s experiences and inheritances combine to create identity.
W Literary and Historical Context
Spanning three generations and several countries, Middlesex is in one sense a family saga, tracing the lives and legacy of three relatives from a small Greek village. Although the narrator writes from the vantage point of late-twentieth-century America, much of the story is occupied with the events that bring his grandparents and their cousin to the United States in the 1920s and the secrets these characters carry with them. The main settings are Bithynios, a small Greek village where Cal’s grandparents grow up during
the early twentieth century; Detroit, where Cal’s grandparents join the Greek American community and work in a variety of jobs; and Grosse Pointe, an affluent suburb of Detroit where Cal is born and raised as Calliope. Middlesex is frequently characterized as a postmodern novel because of its multilayered narrative, incorporation of fantastic elements, and exploration of cultural themes. In this novel the “fantastic” is real, in the sense that Calliope’s hermaphroditism is caused by a real though very rare genetic condition, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. However, her hybrid physiology, which combines both male and female sexual characteristics, is so far outside the normal range that it has a fantastic quality. Middlesex is also postmodern in its use of a nonlinear chronology and a fragmented narrative style that shifts voices and viewpoints. At the same time, the novel retains some qualities of traditional fiction, especially in its treatment of family dynamics and social structures.
W Themes Middlesex combines a very unusual coming-of-age story with an equally unusual coming-to-America story to create a complex fable of identity. Calliope’s passage from childhood to adolescence is marked by the development of male secondary sexual characteristics, such as facial hair and a deepening voice, even though her anatomy is (somewhat ambiguously) female. This leads to the discovery that she has a rare condition that prevents a male fetus from developing male genitalia. Though the exact causes of the condition are not clear, it seems to be more prevalent in a few isolated areas where the gene pool is limited due to intermarriage among close relatives. As it turns out Calliope’s grandparents were siblings—so the story of how and why they married becomes the source of a storyline that leads up to Calliope’s adolescent discovery.
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The grandparents’ story also unfolds into a narrative of the shifting American Dream, in which the Stephanides family fails and succeeds in business while the city of Detroit grows, declines, and decays. At the heart of the novel is a consideration of how people and places become what they are and a recognition that there are no simple versions of reality. Calliope is the sum of a certain history and physiology, but Cal is the identity that emerges from these varied aspects of inheritance.
W Style Middlesex tells two closely related stories that are roughly divided into two halves of the novel. The Stephanides family saga occupies most of the first half, while Calliope’s transformation into Cal dominates the second. Strands of the two stories are continually interwoven, however, and the whole is unified by a single narrative voice. The adult Cal serves as the narrator and uses a variety of devices to tell the stories of all the characters. The family characters are recreated through a combination of factual information, interpretation, and imagination; Calliope, the youthful self of the narrator, is often viewed as a separate character. Throughout the novel Eugenides avoids sensationalism by giving the narrator a whimsical, occasionally sardonic personality. In addition, the author provides a context of larger events (such as the burning of the ancient city of Smyrna and the Detroit riots) that keeps the Stephanides’ story from seeming like a private peculiarity. Eugenides also employs mythic allusions (Calliope, for example, was the Greek muse of poetry) to give the story a timeless quality. Although Middlesex explores a wide variety of ideas and incorporates many small stories within the larger whole, the novel maintains unity through recurring motifs and interconnecting plot elements. The use of humor and the intercutting of various times and places give Middlesex some qualities of the picaresque novel as well.
W Critical Reception Middlesex was generally well received, but most reviews included some reservations, and a few were firmly negative. The novel was named an Editor’s Pick by the New York Times, which describes the work as “colossally curious, shaggy and exuberant.” Jeff Turrentine, writing in the Los Angeles Times, calls Middlesex “a towering achievement” that establishes Eugenides as a “great American writer.” In the San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen declares Middlesex an “unprecedented, astounding new novel,” adding that Eugenides has an “ability to craft scenes whose freshness of incident matches their freshness
MAJOR CHARACTERS PETER LUCE is an expert on hermaphroditism who believes that Calliope’s gender identity is already established. He proposes medical treatment to eliminate “her” masculine characteristics. THE OBJECT is a girl with whom the young Calliope falls in love. The character’s nickname is a reference to the 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire, directed by Luis Buñuel. CALLIOPE/CAL STEPHANIDES is a hermaphrodite who was born apparently female but, due to an unusual genetic condition, takes on male characteristics during puberty. When Calliope learns of her gender ambiguity, she chooses to live as a male and shortens her name to Cal. A middleage Cal narrates both his family’s history and his own story of personal discovery. ELEUTHERIOS (“LEFTY”) AND DESDEMONA STEPHANIDES are Calliope’s Greek grandparents, who immigrated to America in the 1920s. They are also brother and sister, so their son Milt (Calliope’s father) is the product of an incestuous union. SOURMELINA (“LINA”) ZIZMO is Lefty and Desdemona’s cousin. She sponsors their application for immigration to America and keeps their incest a secret. They in turn keep the secret of her past lesbian association. Lina’s daughter is Calliope’s mother, Tessie.
of description.” At the other end of the spectrum, a short review in the Economist labels the prose “oppressively perky” and the historical material “stale and secondhand.” Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, Stewart O’Nan complains that “the narration is baldly self-conscious in its cleverness” and concludes that the novel is “off proportionally,” its two halves “at odds.” Most reviews, however, were somewhere in the middle, citing both virtues and flaws. John Homans’s review in New York sees the novel as “eventful, unpredictable, eager to entertain, but missing the tension a more disciplined approach would have provided.” Sebastian Smee notes in Spectator that “although the writing is good, it is not uniformly so,” calling the novel a “charming, witty, but ultimately disappointing example of the dangers of putting it all in, relating everything, smothering whole lives in blizzards of words.” Despite mixed reactions from critics, Middlesex received the Pulitzer Prize and was also short-listed for two other prestigious honors: the National Book Critics Circle Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeffrey Eugenides was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan, where he grew up with his Greek American family in the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe. His childhood and adolescence have many similarities with the life of Middlesex protagonist Calliope/Cal, but the novel is autobiographical only in the very general sense of borrowing from the author’s experiences and Greek heritage. Eugenides graduated with honors from Brown University; earned an MA in English and creative writing from Stanford University in 1986; and published his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, in 1993. Both an unresolved mystery story and an eccentric coming-of-age tale, The Virgin Suicides enjoyed critical and popular success in the United States and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Sofia Coppola’s film based on the novel was released in 2000 to general praise. Eugenides has received a variety of awards and grants, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. The author, who is married and has a daughter, lived in Berlin for several years with his family and now teaches creative writing at the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts in Princeton, New Jersey.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Homans, John. “Helen of Boy.” Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. New York 9 Sept. 2002: 131. Print. Kipen, David. “My Big Fat Greek Hermaphrodite Novel.” Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. San Francisco Chronicle 22 Sept. 2002: RV-1. Print. Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. New York Times Book Review 8 Dec. 2002: 10+. Print. O’Nan, Stewart. Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. Atlantic Sept. 2002: 157. Print. Smee, Sebastian. “Putting It All In.” Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. Spectator 5 Oct. 2002: 43+. Print. Turrentine, Jeff. Rev. of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. Los Angeles Times 9 Jan. 2002: 3. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Banner, Olivia. “‘Sing Now, O Muse, of the Recessive Mutation’: Interrogating the Genetic Discourse of Sex Variation with Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35.4 (2010): 843+. Print. This substantive article considers
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how various audiences (popular, critical, and medical) have responded to the portrayal of intersexuality in Middlesex. Cohen, Samuel. “The Novel in a Time of Terror: Middlesex, History, and Contemporary American Fiction.” Twentieth Century Literature 53.3 (2007): 371+. Print. Arguing that Middlesex fails by oversimplifying the complexities of both history and gender, Cohen examines the novel in the context of a post-9/11 shift in American sensibilities. Collado-Rodriguez, Francisco. “Of Self and Country: U.S. Politics, Cultural Hybridity, and Ambivalent Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex.” International Fiction Review 33.1-2 (2006): 71+. Print. This essay considers Middlesex in the context of postmodern literature, arguing that it presents hybridity as an alternative to rigidly categorical ideologies. Mendelsohn, Daniel. “Mighty Hermaphrodite.” New York Review of Books 7 Nov. 2002. Web. Mendelsohn is dissatisfied with Middlesex but provides an analysis of Greek elements in the novel along with a consideration of hermaphroditism. Miller, Laura. “My Big Fat Greek Gender Identity Crisis: In Jeffrey Eugenides’s Novel, a Hermaphrodite of Greek Descent Learns the Power of Heredity.” New York Times Book Review 15 Sept. 2002: 9. Print. This long review considers the diverse themes woven together in the narrative structure of Middlesex. Shostak, Debra. “‘Theory Uncompromised by Practicality’: Hybridity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex.” Contemporary Literature 49.3: 383-412. Print. Examines the concept of the “hybrid” and analyzes varied aspects of hybridity in the form and content of Middlesex. Gale Resources
“Jeffrey Eugenides.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. “Jeffrey Eugenides.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. “Overview: Middlesex.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 24. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
An All Things Considered profile of Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex (aired on NPR on 17 Oct. 2002) is available online. The story also discusses the condition that causes the protagonist’s hermaphroditism. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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A transgender symbol. The main character of Middlesex is a transgendered Greek American. Matthias Pahl/Shutterstock.com
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=1151828 An online guide to Middlesex created for Oprah’s Book Club offers not only an excerpt from the book, a quiz, and suggested discussion questions but also a video of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the author and links to other online resources. http://www.oprah.com/ oprahsbookclub/Your-Guide-to-Middlesex-byJeffrey-Eugenides In a Fresh Air interview with Jeffrey Eugenides (aired on NPR on 24 Sept. 2002), the author discusses the
creative inspirations for Middlesex as well as his own writing process. http://www.npr.org/templates/ story/story.php?storyId=12485470 For Further Reading
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007. Print. In this interdisciplinary memoir, Chicana poet Anzaldúa explores the liminal aspects of race and gender. Although written from a different viewpoint, Anzaldúa’s book is complementary to Middlesex.
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Parts of Middlesex are set in Detroit, Michigan. Fox Photos
Callahan, Gerald N. Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes. Chicago: Chicago Review, 2009. Print. This overview explores both scientific and social aspects of gender complexity. Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. Print. Eugenides’s first novel, which dramatizes the mysterious lives and deaths of five sisters, is also set in Grosse Pointe. Although the book is presented in a style very different from that of Middlesex, both works explore aspects of adolescence and suburban life in the later twentieth century.
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Scourby, Alice. The Greek Americans. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Print. Scourby offers an informative portrait of the Greek immigrant experience in America. Womack, Kenneth, and Amy Mallory-Kani. “‘Why Don’t You Just Leave It Up to Nature?’: An Adaptationist Reading of the Novels of Jeffrey Eugenides.” Mosaic 40:3 (2007): 157-73. Print. This article considers the continuities between The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, viewing both in relation to aspects of evolutionary theory. Cynthia Giles
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The Millennium Trilogy By Stieg Larsson
W Introduction Stieg Larsson’s Swedish crime thrillers, collectively known as the Millennium Trilogy, have topped best-seller lists around the world and have turned the deceased author into a cultural phenomenon. The series features the fierce, pierced, tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a young bisexual computer hacker with a photographic memory, few social skills, and a knack for becoming embroiled in dangerous situations. Her comrade-in-arms is Mikael Blomkvist, a high-principled journalist with the independent political newspaper Millennium, which exposes corporate corruption in Sweden. Blomkvist resembles Larsson himself, who founded the leftist journal Expo in 1995 and was a lifelong advocate for social justice before his sudden death at age fifty in 2004, shortly before his first novel reached bookshelves. The books, titled in English The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010), were an instant hit in Sweden and gained momentum worldwide as critics and readers alike soaked up the books’ twisting plots, in which corrupt industrialists, Nazi killers, sex traffickers, and other assorted low-life flotsam are brought to justice by Salander’s vindictive streak and Blomkvist’s crusading detective work. A Swedish-language film version of the trilogy, starring Noomi Rapace as Salander, received excellent reviews, and a Hollywood version of the first book starring Daniel Craig as Blomkvist was scheduled for release in 2011.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Millennium Trilogy is set in modern-day Sweden, a country long respected for its approach to liberal democracy, gender equality, and capitalist moderation.
Yet just beneath that serene surface, Larsson suggests, is a culture as unjust and misogynist as any other. Blomkvist’s investigations ferret out Nazis, criminal-minded ex-Soviet spies, and sadists who abuse their power to inflict pain on women. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a member of the secretive Vanger family reveals that he was a member of the Hitler Youth and imparts the violent Nazi philosophy to his son. The white power movement, the latter-day incarnation of Nazism, has remained a durable influence on Sweden’s youth over the past several decades. Larsson founded Expo in part because of a series of murders committed by white power activists in the 1990s. Maria Blomquist, Larsson’s sometimes collaborator, and Lisa Bjurwald published Good dag kampsyster (Good day, sister in arms) in 2008, a book that traces the involvement of 111 women in the Swedish National Socialist Front over a period of ten years. The Millennium Trilogy is firmly ensconced in the crime thriller genre, whose other Swedish practitioners include Henning Mankell and Jan Guillou. Like Larsson, Mankell has long been active in left-wing politics, protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and lived in Africa for a time. Mankell’s well-regarded crime novels feature Inspector Kurt Wallander, who solves grisly crimes in picturesque Ystad, Sweden, that hint at the more unsavory aspects of Swedish culture. Jan Guillou is another contemporary thriller writer and journalist in Sweden with a Communist background. In addition to having written an exposé of a secret spy operation (resembling the one Larsson invents in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest); he has also been accused of being a Soviet spy himself. His fictional creation, the Swedish military spy Carl Hamilton is also a U.S. Navy SEAL and is the main character in the Coq Rouge series.
W Themes Larsson put misogyny front and center in the Millennium Trilogy, beginning with the Swedish title of the first
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MAJOR CHARACTERS ERIKA BERGER is Blomkvist’s sometimes lover, although she is married to someone else. She is the editor-in-chief of Millennium and later becomes the target of sexist practices as an editor for a major daily newspaper. MIKAEL BLOMKVIST is a middle-aged journalist for Millennium, a magazine that exposes corruption. He pursues the truth doggedly, even when his life is in danger. LISBETH SALANDER is a twenty-four-year-old computer hacker who has been a ward of the state since she was thirteen. She is waifish yet striking in appearance and often retaliates violently against those who have hurt her. She is solitary, bisexual, intelligent, yet sympathetic toward those she believes have been falsely convicted. ALEXANDER ZALACHENKO is a former Soviet KGB spy who defected to Sweden years earlier to work with Sweden’s security police. He is also Lisbeth’s father, a murderer, and the head of an international sex trafficking ring.
book, Men Who Hate Women. Lisbeth Salander is a victim of sexual abuse, first by her father and then by her legal guardian. Harriet Vanger, the victim in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, had been repeatedly raped by her father and her brother. In The Girl Who Played with Fire, Blomkvist’s investigation into a sexual trafficking ring uncovers numerous women who have been enslaved and tormented by men. In Larsson’s world, such heinous treatment of women leads to cruel punishment, often inflicted by Lisbeth herself. She avenges her rape by tattooing “I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist” across the chest of her guardian, for example. She allows another man who has tortured multiple women to burn to death in a car accident. As for her father, she sinks an ax into his head. Larsson’s creation of Salander as a perpetrator of vigilante justice was seen by many as emblematic of his belief in feminism. Not everyone agreed, however. Missy Schwartz, writing in Entertainment Weekly, appreciated Lisbeth’s strength, but felt that her insecurities over her skinny physique and desire for breast implants did much to negate her feminist power. “Instead of allowing her to accept her imperfections,” Schwartz complained, “Larsson betrays her by having her succumb to an arbitrary standard of female beauty.” But Wilda Williams, writing in Library Journal, called violence against women the “dark heart” of Sweden that Larsson “brilliantly exposes,” and Dan Jones, writing in Spectator, approved of the fact that throughout the series, “the men who have abused their power to hurt women all get their comeuppance.”
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As both a journalist and a novelist, Larsson was also concerned with intolerance, and his alter ego Mikael Blomkvist has the same interest. At the beginning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Blomkvist’s reward for exposing corporate malfeasance is wrongful conviction and a prison sentence. His acceptance of his sentence suggests that he finds incarceration preferable to suffering injustice silently. Later, the story’s serial killer is hunted down via a series of Bible verses that point to his intolerance for Jews and women. In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Larsson shows how the Swedish government is complicit in intolerance through its association with ex-Soviet spy Alexander Zalachenko and its plan to silence Lisbeth by declaring her mentally incompetent and sending her to an institution. Thus, Larsson suggests that the state itself is intolerant of people like Lisbeth—social misfits who think and act differently than the mainstream.
W Style The Millennium Trilogy embodies elements of the thriller and mystery genres. The central mystery of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is who killed Harriet Vanger. Blomkvist’s investigation brings the decades-old mystery to life when he uncovers a trail of coded Bible verses, mistaken identity, and a faked death. Family intrigue, an isolated location, a deadly car chase, iconoclastic investigators, and a victim whose body was never found are just some of the conventions that peg the series as a crime thriller. Several critics compared The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to an Agatha Christie novel in that the murderer is thought to be one of a few individuals in the “locked room” of the tiny island of Hedeby. The book “is both a traditional locked-room mystery about the seemingly inexplicable disappearance of Harriet Vanger as a teenage girl, and her uncle’s search to find her, and a modern thriller about corporate crime and a series of female murders,” wrote Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm in the journal Scandinavian Studies. In fact, they argue, it is precisely these conventions of the thriller, the “formulaic narrative strategies of plot, character construction, and setting [that] allow for readers’ recognition and satisfaction” and account for the cross-cultural success of the series.
W Critical Reception The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo scored big with critics when it was published in the United States. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called it “a strikingly original thriller,” and many critics immediately fell in love with Lisbeth Salander. “All three novels trudge along until she appears,” wrote Malcolm Jones in Newsweek, “and then an almost magical transformation occurs. . . . If Larsson TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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had genius, it lay in knowing how to embed this near superhero—a goth-girl Sherlock Holmes with piercings—into the more normal workings of a policeprocedural crime story.” Bill Ott, writing in Booklist, hailed Salander as “a complete original, larger than life yet firmly grounded in realistic detail, utterly independent yet at her core a wounded and frightened child.” The Girl Who Played with Fire met with similar praise. Salander, hiding out in the Caribbean and solving math problems for fun, emerges to defend herself against charges that she has murdered a reporter who has exposed a sex trafficking ring in Sweden. Marilyn Stasio, reviewing the book for the New York Times, admired Salander’s ferocity and wrote that the heroine “stands for the female life force, the enraged and implacable avenger of victims” of “a dominant male culture under threat.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly complimented its “powerful prose and intriguing characters,” and Wilda Williams, writing in Library Journal, called the book “compelling storytelling at its best.”
Lisbeth Salander, the main character of the Millennium Trilogy, is a young, tattooed computer hacker. Barnaby Hall
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stieg Larsson was born August 15, 1954, in the small town of Västerbotten, in the north of Sweden. For his first eight years he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents while his parents established themselves in Stockholm. As a teenager, he gravitated toward Socialist politics and hitchhiked to Algeria and Ethiopia in an effort to live out his beliefs and see the world. He met his life partner, Eva Gabrielsson, when they were both eighteen, and although she became an architect, they shared the same passion for politics and science fiction. For most of his career, he was a graphic designer for the news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, and he was politically active in the Communist Workers’ League and edited several political and science fiction fanzines in his spare time. He had a lifelong interest in combating racism and right-wing extremism—especially neo-Nazis—which was the mission of his Expo foundation, formed in 1995 to expose hate groups that operated in Sweden. The organization published the journal Expo, which continues to be a well-respected outpost of independent journalism in Sweden. The Millennium Trilogy represents the first three of Larsson’s planned ten-novel series that he began writing in 2001 as a way to secure a leisurely retirement for himself and Gabrielsson. Larsson never witnessed the success of his novels; he died suddenly from a heart attack on November 9, 2004. His brother and father claimed ownership of his estate because Larsson died without a will; they offered Gabrielsson a small portion of what many felt she deserved. This contention over Larsson’s legacy and posthumous fortune has become part of the story behind the worldwide publishing phenomenon.
David Kamp, writing in the New York Times Book Review, praised Larsson as “a cerebral, high-minded activist and self-proclaimed feminist who happened to have a God-given gift for pulse-racing narrative.” He called Larsson’s depiction of the Vanger family in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as “one of Larsson’s better inventions: their alliances and schisms are perfectly observed; the psychic damage wrought by their privileged life is all too authentic.” However, Dan Jones of Spectator was disappointed by “the flatness and predictability of the characters. . . . Most men are baddies who stay bad. And all the women are goodies who stay good,” but appreciated the books as “page-turners.” The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest picks up with Lisbeth and Zalachenko recuperating from their wounds. Despite the fact that Lisbeth spends most of the book in the hospital, she continues to dominate the narrative. It is an “exhilarating conclusion” wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, and Kamp wrote that the book contains “plenty of the Larssonian hallmarks [readers] have come to love: the rough justice meted out by
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Salander to her enemies; the strong, successful female characters . . . and the characters’ acutely Swedish, acutely relaxed attitude toward sex and sexuality.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Berenson, Alex. “Vanished.” New York Times Book Review 14 Sept. 2008: 27. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Jones, Dan. “Good Women and Bad Men.” Spectator 311.9450 (10 Oct. 2009): 39. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Jones, Malcolm. “The Secrets of Stieg Larsson.” Newsweek, newsweek.com 155.22 (31 May 31): 60. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Kamp, David. “The Hacker and the Hack.” New York Times, nytimes.com 20 May 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Ott, Bill. Rev. of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Booklist 105.18 (15 May 2009): 5. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Schwartz, Missy. “Did Larsson Have a Problem with Women?” Entertainment Weekly 1108 (25 June 2010): 42. General One File. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Stasio, Marilyn. “Tattooed Girl Returns.” New York Times 16 Aug. 2009. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Stenport, Anna Westerstahl, and Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm. “Corporations, Crime, and Gender Construction in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Exploring Twenty-first Century Neoliberalism in Swedish Culture.” Scandinavian Studies 81.2 (Summer 2009): 157. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Williams, Wilda. Rev. of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Library Journal. 134.11 (15 June 2009): 62. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. ———. Rev. of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Library Journal. 133.13 (1 Aug. 2008): 69. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
illusions about itself that Larsson sought to expose through his novels, namely its greed and the myth of government morality. Grossman, Lev. “The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo.” Time 24 May 2010: 53. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Grossman writes of the relationship between Larsson and Gabrielsson, and says that the couple would have married were it not for Larsson’s work exposing fascism, which would have put a spouse in danger. McGrath, Charles. “The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson.” New York Times Magazine 23 May 2010: 24. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In this lengthy profile, McGrath travels to Sweden to talk with Larsson’s father and brother and Eva Gabrielsson in an effort to understand the divisive quarrel between the parties with regard to Larsson’s estate. Ott, Bill. “Stieg Larsson.” Library Journal 106.14 (15 Mar. 2010): 72. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. An effusive review of all three books focusing on the indelible character of Lisbeth Salander and lamenting the end of the series. Gale Resources
“Stieg Larsson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors, Vol. 283. Print. Open Web Sources
The Stieg Larsson Web site is an English-language repository of articles and information regarding Larsson, his novels, and the movies. Includes a map of Stockholm marked with places mentioned in the book. http://www.stieglarsson.com The Expo Web site includes information in English about the journal and its founding in 1995 in response to a series of murders connected to the white-power movement. http://expo.se/aboutexpo.html For Further Reading
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Baksi, Kurdo. Stieg Larsson, My Friend. Trans. by Laurie Thompson. London: MacLehose Press, 2010. Print. Controversial book in which Baksi, whose parents were Kurdish refugees from Turkey, maintains that Larsson’s father and brother deserve the late author’s fortune, and that his relationship with Gabrielsson was damaged through his infidelity. Fraser, Nick. “Understanding Swedish Society through Stieg Larsson’s Popular Fiction.” Independent 1 Oct. 2009. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Fraser interviews Larsson’s successor at Expo and discusses Sweden’s
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Forshaw, Barry. The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Biography of Stieg Larsson. London: John Blake, 2010. Print. Although critics feel this book does not capture the essence of the workaholic activist and journalist, it does contain extended explications of all three Millennium novels. Høeg, Peter. Smilla’s Sense of Snow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1993. Print. Smilla is a halfDanish, half-Greenlander who investigates the death of a young boy in this thriller by Danish author Høeg that takes place in Copenhagen and Greenland. Her investigation uncovers numerous cover-ups and conspiracies regarding the boy’s disappearance. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Läckberg, Camilla. The Preacher. New York: Harper, 2010. Print. Läckberg is a best-selling Scandinavian crime writer whose tale of a twenty-year-old murder in the Swedish fishing village of Fjallbacka concerns a secretive family and its code of silence. Mankell, Henning. The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases. Trans. Ebba Segerberg and Laurie Thompson. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print. These five stories take place during Kurt Wallander’s early days as a police officer and received stellar critical reviews for their insights into what Mankell calls “Swedish anxiety.” Adaptations
Flickan som lekte med elden. Dir. Daniel Alfredson. Perf. Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. Nordisk Film, 2009. Film. This Swedish version of The Girl Who Played with Fire was written by Jonas Frykberg and recounts the story of Mikael Blomkvist exposing a Swedish sex-trafficking ring, which involves Salander’s estranged father and leads to a brutal showdown.
2011, and will feature former James Bond actor Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and newcomer Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Luftslottet som sprängdes. Dir. Daniel Alfredson. Perf. Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. Nordisk Film, 2009. Film. Swedish version of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, written by Jonas Frykberg and Ulf Ryberg. As Salander recuperates from her bullet wound in the hospital, she must clear her name before she stands trial for murder. Characteristically, she also seeks revenge. Män som hatar kvinnor. Dir. Niels Arden Oplev. Perf. Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Peter Haber, and Sven-Bertil Taube. Nordisk Film, 2009. Film. Wellreceived Swedish-language version of the Millennium Trilogy’s first novel, released in the United States as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The movie was praised for Noomi Rapace’s gritty portrayal of Lisbeth Salander and the violence she both endures and inflicts on her perpetrators.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Stellan Skarsgard, and Robin Wright. Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2011. Film. The much-anticipated Hollywood adaptation of Larsson’s first novel will be released in Dec.,
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Minaret By Leila Aboulela
W Introduction Minaret (2005), a semiautobiographical novel by Leila Aboulela, traces the deterioration of the life of Najwa, a young woman born into an affluent family in Sudan. Her father is a top official in the cabinet of the Sudanese president. She attends an American school, wears Western clothes, and enjoys Western pop music. As a university student she falls in love with a socialist, though the young man is an outspoken opponent of her father. When a coup ousts the president’s regime, Najwa’s father is imprisoned and eventually hanged, and she leaves the country for London with her mother and her twin brother, Omar. The family’s circumstances continue to worsen with the death of Najwa’s mother from cancer and Omar’s arrest and imprisonment. Left to fend for herself, Najwa takes a job as a domestic servant and accustoms herself to living in meager conditions. As she struggles to come to terms with the trajectory of her life, she finds renewed strength in Islam. Minaret was well received by reviewers, who commended its honest portrayal of Islam and its sensitive insights into class divisions. It was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, an international award that recognizes significant literary achievement in women’s writing.
W Literary and Historical Context
Aboulela’s novel takes its name from an architectural element common in the Islamic world. A tall, usually narrow tower attached to a mosque, a minaret typically has at least one balcony, from which the faithful are called to prayer. Notable for its appearance, the minaret has developed symbolic significance in Muslim culture, representing the unity and strength of Islam.
After arriving in London, Najwa makes a momentous decision to wear the hijab, the traditional headscarf that ensures the modesty of Muslim women. It has a contested history, even within Islamic culture. Saudi Arabia and Iran currently require that women wear the garment in public, a mandate that has drawn the criticism of feminists around the globe. Female proponents of the hijab, however, argue that it offers privacy and a liberating anonymity. In the novel Najwa, who had delighted in Western dress while in Sudan, finds solace in the hijab as an expression of her faith. The setting of Minaret shifts between contemporary London and 1980s Sudan, drawing on Sudan’s political upheavals of the late twentieth century. Even prior to the 1980s, Sudan had long struggled to find a stable form of government. Factions clashed over political ideology and the role that Islam should play in official policy. On April 6, 1985, President Gaafar Nimeiry, who advocated for the institution of Islamic law, was ousted in a coup that brought Sadiq al Mahdi to power. The new government was unable to unify opposing factions, however, and it was overthrown in 1989, provoking a state of turmoil that persists today. In the novel an unnamed president is deposed in a 1985 coup. The takeover leads to Najwa’s father’s arrest and forces Najwa, Omar, and their mother to flee. The president also escapes the country, but Najwa’s father is tried for corruption and hanged. The 1989 coup leads Najwa’s former boyfriend, the radical Anwar, to leave home for London, where he and Najwa briefly rekindle their romance.
W Themes Tracing Najwa’s descent from a life of privilege to one of domestic servitude, Minaret emphasizes issues of social class. The story begins in London, where, Najwa explains, “I’ve come down in the world. I’ve slid into a place where the ceiling is low and there isn’t much room to move.” Later, flashbacks to her student days in Sudan depict the
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life of expensive cars, marble floors, and extravagant vacations her family once enjoyed. When Anwar questions her, she is forced to admit that the family of four has six servants. Despite her sympathy for the working classes in Khartoum, she is ill-prepared to join their ranks. Even after holding several jobs as a servant in London, she is surprised by her own reaction to seeing her employer, Lamya, a young doctoral student with a toddler, lead the kind of life she had once had. When Lamya comes home full of energy and happiness, Najwa wonders, “Is this how a young affluent woman feels, fulfilled in her work, coming home to a young child?” She must remind herself, “I owe myself an absence of envy; I owe myself a heart free of grudges.” The difference in status becomes an issue when Najwa falls in love with her employer’s younger brother, Tamer, and his family is appalled that he wants to marry a maid. Minaret also focuses on religious faith. Najwa’s eventual ability to accept her diminished circumstances owes much to her immersion in Islam. Raised in “a house where only the servants prayed,” she never wore the hijab in Sudan and rarely visited a mosque. As her life unravels in London, however, faith becomes a stable core that offers Najwa strength. She enjoys attending classes at the mosque so that she can learn “to read the Qur’an in a beautiful way,” and it is through the Muslim community that she meets friends and finds work. When Tamer’s mother offers Najwa money to break off the relationship, she agrees on the condition that Tamer be allowed to follow his dream of earning a degree in Islamic studies rather than business. The story concludes with Najwa looking forward to a pilgrimage to Mecca that will help heal the pain of her separation from Tamer. Commentators have pointed out that Aboulela offers a candid depiction of Islam. Reviewing the novel for the Guardian, Jane Housham suggests that it “shuns ‘cultural tourism’: it’s written not to ‘explain’ Islam but to explore it from deep within.”
W Style Minaret blends the subgenres of historical fiction and realism with autobiography. Aboulela draws on her own experiences in Khartoum and London and on the political turmoil that Sudan experienced during the 1980s. Many commentators also note that the book has the feel of a parable or moral tale. A reviewer for Kirkus Reviews, for example, describes it as a “simple near-parable of a story” that “successfully combines a tale of inexperience and cultural confusion with an insider’s view of the conflicts and complexities within the immigrant and Muslim communities.” Writing in the Guardian, Mike Phillips suggests that Minaret is part of “a new genre of contemporary English
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANWAR is Najwa’s fellow student at the University of Khartoum. Despite his outspoken opposition to her father, Najwa falls in love with him. They are separated when Najwa’s family leaves Sudan but are reunited later, during his exile in London. After financing his education with her dwindling inheritance and realizing he has no intention of marrying her, she leaves him. BABA (an Arabic term of endearment meaning “father”) is the father of Najwa and Omar. As an ambitious young man, he raised his social status through hard work and marriage to the children’s aristocratic mother. After becoming a member of the president’s cabinet, he achieves even greater power. He gains a reputation for corruption and is nicknamed “Mr. Ten Per Cent” because he is believed to be embezzling money. After the coup he is arrested, tried for corruption, and hanged. LAMYA, Najwa’s London employer, is a wealthy young Sudanese woman who was raised in Oman and Cairo. She resents Najwa’s relationship with her brother Tamer. NAJWA is the daughter of a powerful political figure in Sudan. She absorbs Western culture and attends the University of Khartoum. After a coup leads to her father’s execution and her family’s exile to London, she faces increasingly difficult circumstances and takes a position as a domestic servant. She gains strength through her faith in Islam and her love for her employer’s younger brother, Tamer. At the end of the novel, she plans to use the bribe money from Tamer’s mother to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. OMAR is Najwa’s twin brother. Accustomed to a life of luxury and Western values, Omar ignores his father’s repeated lectures about the importance of determination and hard work. After stabbing a policeman in London during a drug arrest, he receives a lengthy prison sentence, leaving Najwa to fend for herself. TAMER is the nineteen-year-old brother of Lamya. Unlike his sister, Tamer is a devout Muslim. He and Najwa bond through their faith, and he desperately wants to marry her. At the end of the novel, though he is elated to be allowed to pursue his studies of the Middle East, he is devastated that he must give up his relationship with Najwa and return to Cairo with his mother.
fiction . . . a series of novels by Muslim writers that explore the fault lines between various Islamic cultures and the way of life flourishing in the US and western Europe.” Phillips lauds Aboulela as “one of the most distinguished [writers] of this new wave.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1964. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan. Like the protagonist of Minaret, she attended the University of Khartoum, earning a BA in economics in 1985. After completing her degree, Aboulela traveled to London, where she studied at the London School of Economics. In addition to pursuing her academic interests, Aboulela launched a career as a writer. Her short story “The Museum” won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. The story describes the experience of straddling Eastern and Western cultures, a theme that would dominate her subsequent works. Aboulela’s first novel, The Translator, was published in 1999 and garnered nominations for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She followed these successes with a volume of short stories, Coloured Lights, in 2001. Minaret, the first of Aboulela’s works to be published in the United States, brought her to the attention of a wider audience.
Works Cited
Aboulela, Leila. Minaret. London: Bloomsbury, 2005. Print. Gray, Louise, et al. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. New Internationalist Aug. 2005: 30. General OneFile. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Housham, Jane. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Guardian [London] 5 Aug. 2006: 17. Print. Kumari, Tania. “Call of the Mosque.” Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Sunday Telegraph [London] 5 June 2005: 19. Print. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Kirkus Reviews 1 July 2005: 697. Phillips, Mike. “Faith Healing: Mike Phillips on an Insider’s Tale of a Muslim Woman in London.” Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Guardian [London] 11 June 2005: 26. Print. Smith, Starr E. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Library Journal 1 July 2005: 63. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
W Critical Reception When it was published in 2005, Minaret was praised by literary critics on several grounds. Admiring the work in Library Journal, Starr E. Smith observes, “clear and precise writing, sympathetic characters, and positive portrayals of Muslim religious practices lend this elegantly crafted novel broad appeal.” Many commentators were drawn in by Minaret’s treatment of such sensitive issues as social class and ethnicity. In her review of the novel for the New Internationalist, Louise Gray comments, “Quietly and without didacticism, it speaks of the pressures class and race exert, especially on those acutely unsure of their present place and future direction in a world increasingly intolerant of anyone outside the ever-narrowing mainstream.” Even most reviews that found fault with aspects of the work asserted that its strengths ultimately outweighed its weaknesses. Assessing the novel for London’s Sunday Telegraph, Tania Kumari states that its “spare tone sometimes shades into naivety and oversimplification” but concludes, “Aboulela’s fidelity to her narrator’s voice, as she struggles to find a foothold in an unstable world, makes for a disconcerting representation of how rapidly the ground beneath one’s feet can slip away.” Similarly, though Phillips remarks that the story “unfolds with the deliberate inevitability of a morality tale,” he hails it as “a beautiful, daring, challenging novel.”
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Birch, Carol. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Independent [London] 30 June 2005: 40. Print. A positive review that praises Minaret’s stylistic strengths and thought-provoking message. Dare, Kim. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. School Library Journal 52.2 (2006): 157. General OneFile. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Dare lauds the novel’s carefully crafted and compelling characters, its illustration of class divisions, and its insights into the Muslim faith. Donovan, Deborah. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Booklist 1 Sept. 2005: 57. This brief review notes the protagonist’s bravery and the work’s honest rendering of Islam. Reale, Michelle. “An Upper-Class Sudanese Woman’s Painful Journey.” Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Philadelphia Inquirer 17 Nov. 2005: D5. Print. Reale focuses on the disparity between Najwa’s privileged life in Khartoum and her struggles in London. See, Carolyn. “When the Shell Cracks.” Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Washington Post 2 Sept. 2005: C05. Print. See’s appraisal examines religious and class issues in the novel. Sethi, Anita. “Keep the Faith: Award-Winning Novelist Leila Aboulela Tells Anita Sethi Why a Personal Religious Identity Is More Important than a National One.” Observer [London] 5 June 2005: 17. Print. This interview, in which Aboulela describes her faith and her writing, provides context for the novel.
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Minaret
Minaret follows the life of a young Sudanese woman as she goes from being the daughter of a wealthy family to a humble domestic servant. Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock.com
Williams, Tom. Rev. of Minaret, by Leila Aboulela. Observer [London] 6 Aug. 2006: 26. Print. A brief review that focuses on the protagonist’s search for identity.
Open Web Sources
Gale Resources
The Bloomsbury Publishing Web site furnishes a short biography of Aboulela, a summary of Minaret, an excerpt from the book, and links to other online sources that feature the author’s work. http://www. bloomsbury.com/Authors/details.aspx?tpid=2502
“Leila Aboulela.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. “Portrayals of Islam in Modern Literature.” TwentiethCentury Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 166. Detroit: Gale, 2005.
The program Woman’s Hour, available on the BBC Radio 4 Web site, presents an audio interview of Aboulela in which she discusses Minaret. http:// www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/ 2005_28_tue_04.shtml
The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook provides an overview of Sudan’s history, geography,
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Enclave,” and “The Way Home.” http://www. intangible.org/LeilaWeb/Ostrich/ostrichhome.html The Web site MuslimHeritage.com explores the minaret and its significance in architecture and Islamic thought. The site also includes a number of photographs of minarets from around the world. http:// www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm? articleID=647 For Further Reading
Aboulela, Leila. The Translator. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1999. Print. Aboulela’s first novel tells the story of a Sudanese woman who falls in love with a Scottish scholar. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Print. This nonfiction volume evaluates the complex relationship between women and Islam. Collins, Robert O. A History of Modern Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print. Collins traces several centuries of Sudanese history, offering insight into the country and its politics. Ibrahim, I. A. A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. Houston: Darussalam, 1997. Print. A basic outline of Islam that also addresses common misperceptions about the religion.
Photograph of Leila Aboulela, author of Minaret. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
Shirazi, Faegheh. The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2001. Print. Shirazi considers the historical and metaphorical role of the hijab in Islamic culture and in outside perceptions of Islam. Adaptations
people, and government that serves as useful background for the novel. https://www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world-factbook/geos/su.html The Web site of the nonprofit Web publisher Intangible Publications offers the full text of several of Aboulela’s short stories, including “The Ostrich,” “Glass
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Minaret. By Leila Aboulela. Adapt. Sally Marmion. 10 episodes. Book at Bedtime. BBC Radio 4, England, 4-15 July 2005. Radio. This radio adaptation of the novel is read by British actress Adjoa Andoh. Greta Gard
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Mister Pip By Lloyd Jones
W Introduction Mister Pip (2006) is a coming-of-age tale about a young girl whose village on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea becomes caught in the middle of a bloody conflict between government soldiers and native rebels. The novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2007 and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize the same year. In the novel Mr. Watts, who is the only white person left on the island after an imposed blockade, assumes the role of schoolteacher. With the threat of violence hovering near, he reads daily installments of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations to the island’s children, hoping to show them a vision of a better world. Thirteen-year-old Matilda Laimo, the first-person narrator, becomes inspired by the novel’s orphan hero, Pip, who rises above his circumstances. Some of the parents view Mr. Watts’s gesture as an imposition of white cultural values. The children, however, are encouraged to reimagine the novel in their own way, effectively turning this classic of English literature into a “pidgin” tale of the Pacific. Through this narrative Lloyd Jones demonstrates art’s ability to shape new realities, to enable different cultures to empathize with one another, and potentially to ameliorate the traumatic effects of war and violence.
W Literary and Historical Context
The conflict that forms the backdrop of Jones’s novel first came to a head in the late 1980s when rebels from Bougainville attacked the Australian mining company Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL). BCL’s development of the island’s Panguna copper mine had resulted in the forceful acquisition of land and destruction of the environment. Papua New Guinea (PNG), which depended on the company for nearly 20 percent of its
national budget, responded by sending its Defence Force (PNGDF), a largely undisciplined security force whose random rape and murder of Bougainville residents earned them the nickname “redskins” (Regan). Jones’s tale begins in the early 1990s, when the PNG government had already imposed its blockade of the island to root out and punish the rebels who had declared war on the copper-mining company. Given that an Australian company had inspired the hatred of many Bougainvilleans, it follows that Mr. Watts, the lone Australian man remaining on the island, would inspire distrust among the residents. When he volunteers to teach the schoolchildren a novel by a white British author, he seems to be reiterating an entrenched European colonial belief that educating nonwhite races in the English language and culture would help to “civilize” them. In the area of language arts, the colonial curriculum relied entirely on the “Western canon” of literature. This accepted compendium of “great” works by European authors gave little or no credence to storytelling traditions of the native culture. Since the rise of postcolonial studies at the end of the twentieth century, the teaching of canonical works such as Great Expectations in a colonial setting has come to be viewed negatively, as an act of cultural imperialism—that is, a method by which one culture imposes itself onto another, devaluing and even effectively erasing it. Jones adds a compelling twist to this dynamic, however. Mr. Watts encourages the children to “read” the English novel in their own way, reiterating and repeating English phrases with their own foreign inflection and pronunciation. By also allowing the Bougainville mothers to tell their own stories, Watts validates non-English voices, thereby destabilizing the privileged position of the canon.
W Themes In Mister Pip, Jones is centrally concerned with the unique power of storytelling to foster empathy between
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MAJOR CHARACTERS DANIEL is a slow-witted but well-meaning classmate of Matilda’s. His lack of sophistication leads to his brutal death. DOLORES LAIMO is Matilda’s overprotective mother, who objects to her daughter’s interest in the Dickens novel Great Expectations and especially its protagonist, Pip. There is an aura of defiant righteousness about Mrs. Laimo, as she tries to counter Mr. Watts’s “heathen” beliefs with her own staunchly Christian values. MATILDA LAIMO is the narrator of the novel. Although she is now an adult, her narrative of the tragic events in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, attempts to present the experience of a thirteen-year-old girl’s encounter with ethnic violence and daily poverty. MR. LAIMO, Matilda’s father, lives in Australia, having left Bougainville before the blockade was imposed. GRACE WATTS is Mr. Watts’s wife. Considered mad by most of the island’s residents, Grace was once a local beauty who traveled to Australia to pursue a degree in dentistry. While there, she met and fell in love with Mr. Watts. After their child died very young, she returned to Bougainville with Mr. Watts and fell into a deep depression. MR. WATTS is the eccentric and kind Australian man who takes it upon himself to teach the children of Bougainville. Possessing no substantial teaching experience, Watts uses his intimate familiarity with Dickens’s Great Expectations to appeal to the children with whom he has otherwise nothing in common.
cultures and generations. The orphan Pip in Great Expectations provides the first link between Mr. Watts and the children, as they immediately identify with this fictional character’s poor circumstances and with the threat of violence represented by the convict Magwitch. Additionally the children come to realize that Watts himself may have been something of an orphan or at least suffered hard times in his youth. Watts, in turn, sympathizes with these victims of political and ethnic violence whose suffering is far greater than anything he has experienced. Jones also explores the theme of cultural hybridity— the intermingling of cultures, particularly between colonizer and colonized—demonstrating how stories enable readers to, as the character Matilda puts it, “slip inside the skin of another.” By having the children fill in the gaps of the novel after it has been stolen and then accidentally burned in a fire, Watts is attempting to bring about a “kind of hybrid cultural creolization” (Fox). This hybridization of cultural identity is also evident when
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Watts invites the children’s mothers to share their knowledge with the class. Mrs. Laimo is initially reluctant to accept Watts. She belatedly discovers, however, that in his lessons to the children, he has tried to combine both the teachings of this white man, Dickens, with those of the Bougainville residents, who frequently offer useful advice on hygiene, social manners, and religious faith. Despite her long-standing animosity against the man, Mrs. Laimo is ultimately remorseful for her behavior, finally understanding his benevolent intention to bridge a cultural divide.
W Style Jones’s novel is characterized by the precocious and sympathetic voice of its thirteen-year-old protagonist. We discover that Matilda is recounting the events on Bougainville island many years later, when she is an adult graduate student living in Australia. Matilda takes great pains to render the vivid educational experience of her younger self. Hampered by a lack of information about Mr. Watts, the young Matilda attaches great importance to “Pop Eye,” the descriptive nickname foisted onto him by the island’s residents. While many of the children are merely amused by the man’s large, bulging eyes, Matilda is perceptive enough to observe that his prominent eyes reveal “great suffering.” The English novel that Mr. Watts introduces to the schoolchildren enables Matilda to further understand this eccentric white man. The alliterative link between “Pop Eye” and “Pip” seems deliberate on Jones’s part, and it is especially reinforced when Watts reads out the first line of Great Expectations: “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” While Matilda cannot easily identify all the words she reads, she finds solace in identifying with a friendly voice—that of Pip. At first, the actual reading process makes the English language strange, as the children puzzle over such words as marshes, wittles, and leg irons, which appear in the opening chapter of Great Expectations. A phrase such as rimy morning, which comes in the third chapter of Dickens’s book, is bewildering even after Watts explains that rimy refers to frost: on this tropical island of Bougainville, they find it difficult to fathom such cold. Over time, however, Matilda more easily imagines the foreign world of Dickens’s novel: “We could escape to another place. It didn’t matter that it was Victorian England. We found we could easily get there. It was just the blimmin’ dogs and the blimmin’ roosters that tried to keep us here.” Through the differently inflected rhythms of the Bougainville dialect, which introduces the colorful curse word blimmin’, Matilda manages to establish a dialogue with English culture. Her technique of cultural translation reinforces Jones’s themes of cultural hybridity TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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and empathy and justifies the value of pidgin, the simplified speech that combines the diction and grammar of multiple languages.
W Critical Reception Mister Pip has been received with enthusiastic praise by most critics, who enjoy the novel’s allegorical approach to a historical event. A brief, anonymous review in the New Yorker, for example, observes that the “fablelike simplicity of Matilda’s telling belies the complexity of the novel.” A few commentators, however, feel that the novel falters in its final twenty pages. Writing for World Literature Today, Carolyn Bliss is unconvinced by Matilda’s transformation into a graduate student. A review in Publishers Weekly argues that “the extreme violence toward the end of the novel doesn’t quite work,” while conceding that “Jones’s prose is faultless” and that “the story is innovative enough to overcome the misplayed tragedy.” Finding no fault in the novel’s denouement, New Statesman reviewer Anthony Byrt praises Jones’s emphasis on the power of reading, commending his ability to avoid sentimentality in his depiction of tragedy. Critics seem most impressed with Jones’s treatment of postcolonial themes. In an article from Victorian
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, Lloyd Jones was educated at Victoria University, Wellington, and later worked as a journalist and consultant. Aside from brief periods living in the United States and Europe, Jones spent most of his career in the Lower Hutt and Wellington regions. His first novel, Gilmore’s Dairy (1985), concerns a young man coming of age in a small New Zealand community, and his follow-up, Splinter (1988), focuses on his birthplace, Lower Hutt. In his novels and short stories, many of which are set in New Zealand, Jones tackles a variety of issues by combining social realism and magic realism, historical events and pure fantasy. Some of these issues include sexual abuse (Choo Woo), sport and national identity (Into the Field of Play: New Zealand Writers on the Theme of Sport), and political and ethnic violence (Mister Pip). In his best-known works, Jones explores the crucial role of the imagination in countering the bleakness of everyday life.
Studies, Beverly Taylor focuses on Jones’s strategy of “mucking around” in classical literature in order to make canonical texts speak to new, nonwhite readers, a technique that is encouraged by Mr. Watts. In his illuminating article (in Journal of Postcolonial Writing) on themes in New Zealand fiction, Alistair Fox argues that Mister Pip reflects Jones’s thoughts on his own country’s specific postcolonial condition. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Angier, Carole. “Pied Piper of Bougainville.” Spectator.co. uk. Spectator 28 July 2007. Web. 12 July 2010. Bliss, Carolyn. Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. World Literature Today 82.4 (2008): 65. Print. Byrt, Anthony. “Hard Times.” Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. New Statesman 4 June 2007: 59. Web. 12 July 2010. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. 1861. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print. Fox, Alistair. “Inwardness, Insularity, and the Man Alone: Postcolonial Anxiety in the New Zealand Novel.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.3 (2009): 263-73. Print. Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. New Yorker 22 Oct. 2007: 175. Print. Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. Publishers Weekly 28 May 2007: 37. Print.
Picture of Lloyd Jones, author of Mister Pip. ª Andy Rain/epa/Corbis
Regan, Anthony J. “Causes and Course of the Bougainville Conflict.” Journal of Pacific History 33.3 (1998): 269-85. Print.
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Taylor, Beverly. “Discovering New Pasts: Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pip.” Victorian Studies 52.1 (2009): 95105. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. Atlantic Jan.-Feb. 2008: 133. Print. In this review the critic observes that Jones’s novel celebrates the “universality of archetypes.” Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. Booklist 1 Jan. 2008: 6. Print. This critic considers Jones’s novel an articulate celebration of the power of storytelling. “Mister Pip Brings Dickens Tale to the South Pacific.” All Things Considered. National Public Radio 27 Dec. 2007. Web. 12 July 2010. Reviewing the novel, Alan Cheuse considers its conflict between art and practical wisdom. Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. Booklist 1 June 2007: 37. Print. In her review Wilkinson praises Jones’s artistic treatment of the devastating effects of imperialism. Gale Resources
“Lloyd Jones.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Biography Resource Center. Web. 15 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Random House offers an official Mister Pip Web site, containing an interactive screen that allows access to excerpts from Jones’s novel, a comprehensive list of the novel’s international awards, and excerpts from Dickens’s Great Expectations. http://www.random house.com/bantamdell/misterpip
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The New Zealand Book Council Web site features a profile of Jones and includes a brief bibliographical sketch of the author. http://www.bookcouncil.org. nz/writers/joneslloyd.html The Bookgroup Info Web site presents an interview with Jones. http://www.bookgroup.info/041205/ interview.php?id=35 For Further Reading
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in PostColonial Literatures. New York: Routledge,1989. Print. In this landmark study, the authors analyze the phenomenon of postcolonial literature, the literary response to the experience of colonial rule. The book devotes significant space to postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand. Carey, Peter. Jack Maggs. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997. Print. In this homage to Great Expectations, Carey reinvents Dickens’s character Magwitch as Jack Maggs, an orphan who is trained as a thief but is betrayed and shipped to a penal colony in Australia. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. 1861. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print. This original Victorian masterpiece, which Mr. Watts reads to the children in Mister Pip, concerns the adventures of Pip, an orphaned blacksmith’s apprentice who acquires a fortune through a mysterious benefactor. Hinton, Alexander Laban, ed. Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Print. A collection of essays that employ an anthropological lens to analyze the social and political tensions that lead to genocide. Adam Lawrence
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Montano’s Malady By Enrique Vila-Matas
W Introduction Originally published in Spanish as El mal de Montano (2002), Enrique Vila-Matas’s Montano’s Malady (2007) blurs the distinctions between literary criticism and fiction and between fact and invention. It opens with the narrator, José Cardoso Pires (whose name does not appear until halfway through the novel), suffering from what he describes as “literature sickness.” He has immersed himself so deeply in the world of books that his every thought has a textual reference, and it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the real world from the literary world. This sickness is reflected in the narration, as Cardoso Pires repeatedly revises the story he is telling, admitting that oncecentral characters are actually products of his imagination and that other characters (including himself) have different professions or roles than those he previously described. Montano’s Malady has earned critical acclaim for its unusual narrator and its hybrid form, which combines aspects of literary essays and diary entries with those of the more traditional novel. In addition to winning several prestigious literary awards in Spain, the novel’s English translation was short-listed for the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing in 2009.
W Literary and Historical Context
Vila-Matas follows in the literary tradition of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), who is known for distorting the reader’s ability to distinguish fiction from reality. Montano’s Malady alludes to Borges’s work, which clearly influenced the novel: “truth” is always subject to revision, and literary form is unstable. The novel has also been compared to the works of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who is another point of frequent
reference in the novel. Kafka portrays the world as a cold and hopeless place; persecution and isolation are frequent themes in his texts. Vila-Matas’s book is most often likened to Kafka’s journals. Written in the final decade of Kafka’s life, the journals depict the author’s feelings of solitariness and his inner struggles over his relationship with his fiancée. Much of Montano’s Malady uses a journal format, and, like Kafka’s characters, Cardoso Pires is prone to ruminating on both his personal life and his literature and art.
W Themes The novel dramatizes the intersection of life and literature. At the beginning Cardoso Pires declares, “I live surrounded by quotations from books and authors. I am literature-sick. If I carry on like this, literature could end up swallowing me, like a doll in a whirlpool, causing me to lose my bearings in its limitless regions.” He soon learns that his son, Montano, has writer’s block caused by a similar kind of literary sickness; Montano is so overwhelmed by other writers’ stories that he cannot write his own. The discovery of their mutual affliction leads the narrator to christen the disorder “Montano’s malady.” Montano, however, sees literature as a cure as well as an ailment. He brings up literary critic Walter Benjamin’s theory that storytelling might heal physical ailments, and he describes memories of his mother telling him stories when he was sick as a child. Later, Cardoso Pires’s revelation that Montano does not exist emphasizes his indecision about the proper role of literature in life. As in much of the work of Kafka and Borges, the theme of the double, or doppelgänger, is treated extensively. At the beginning of his story, the narrator relates that he had “never fully trusted” the writer Julio Arward because he seemed to be “playing at being the double of the novelist Justo Navarro.” Later, Cardoso Pires admits that he created Montano as a double for
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MAJOR CHARACTERS MIGUEL DE ABRILES MONTANO is the narrator’s son from his first marriage. Early in the novel, Cardoso Pires visits his son in Nantes, France. In the next part of the story, the narrator admits that he invented Montano. JOSÉ CARDOSO PIRES is the novel’s narrator, who has published work under the pen name Rosario Girondo. He has become so obsessed with literature that he fears he cannot separate fiction from reality. ROSA is the narrator’s longtime girlfriend, although she is initially referred to as his wife. She is introduced as a movie director; Cardoso Pires later confesses that she is actually his literary agent. She has very little patience with the narrator’s literature sickness. FELIPE TONGOY is an unattractive, aging actor and a frequent subject of the narrator’s reflections, in part because he believes that Tongoy and Rosa are having an affair. MARGOT VALERI, a friend of the narrator, is an eighty-year-old aviator who served as a pilot with the Free French Air Force during World War II. Rosa suggests that the narrator visit his friend in Chile to get his mind off his literary obsession. Valeri is later revealed to be another figment of the narrator’s imagination.
Cardoso Pires abandons the diary format and reflects on the mediocre authors he encountered at a writers’ retreat in the Swiss Alps. The hybrid nature of the novel led Scott Esposito to comment in the Quarterly Conversation, “Vila-Matas seems to be pioneering a strange new genre: the literary essay as novel.” Montano’s Malady is narrated in the first person by a writer who has published under the name of his mother, Rosario Girondo. While many reviewers have found Cardoso Pires to be likable despite his misanthropy, critics note that he is extremely untrustworthy. In a Daily Telegraph review, Miranda France suggests that “the narrator is unreliable to the point of straining patience.” Esposito notes, “We have gone beyond the unreliably unreliable narrator into something else: the narrator so enmeshed in his personal delusions, so tainted by paranoia, that he doesn’t know when he’s being honest.”
W Critical Reception When it was first published in Spanish in 2002, VilaMatas’s novel was met with overwhelming praise.
himself because “it struck me as a useful idea to transfer some of my problems on to an invented son.” Rosa the filmmaker is actually Rosa the literary agent, and the narrator, a writer, doubles as the literary critic he claims to be at the outset of the novel. The text is itself doubled: Montano’s Malady is the name of both Vila-Matas’s novel and the first section of the book, a journal that Cardoso Pires plans to turn into a novel.
W Style Filled with references to and analyses of literary works spanning a number of historical periods, traditions, and genres, Montano’s Malady is at once a novel and a work of literary criticism. It is divided into five discrete sections. The first is a journal describing Montano’s malady, which the narrator later contemplates turning into a novel; the second is both a diary and a collection of reflections on the diaries of other artists and writers, including Borges and Kafka; the third is written as an academic lecture that, Cardoso Pires explains, will “speak of the private journal as narrative form”; the fourth returns to the diary form, reflecting on a number of topics, from the life and work of Kafka to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. In the novel’s fifth and final section,
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Photo of Enrique Vila-Matas, author of Montano's Malady. ª Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis
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Montano’s Malady
It garnered two of Spain’s most prestigious literary prizes that year: the Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio de la Crítica. The critical acclaim led to the English translation of the novel in 2007. While reviews from English-speaking commentators have been more mixed, the text has still been widely admired. In the online journal Words without Borders, Michael Kern Johnson asserts, “Montano’s Malady is a touching and perhaps hopeful inquiry into what it means to be a reader, or writer, in an increasingly unliterary world.” Nadia Saint, assessing the novel for the New Statesman, calls it “an incredible literary patchwork, a tireless search for definition.” Some of the more negative reviews include France’s, which faults Vila-Matas for writing “mellifluous waffle” so full of allusions to other texts that it risks becoming “a very erudite version of [children’s puzzle book] Where’s Wally?” Financial Times reviewer Melissa McClements critiques the novel’s style, contending, “Its dense sentences contain tangled webs of sub-clauses that must have given its English translator sleepless nights.” Despite such criticism the book has been a success, with some reviewers predicting that it will become a classic of world literature. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Esposito, Scott. “The Fruits of Parasitism: Unraveling Enrique Vila-Matas’s Bartleby & Co. and Montano’s Malady.” Quarterly Conversation 10 (2008). Web. 5 Oct. 2010. France, Miranda. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Daily Telegraph [London]. Telegraph Media Group 16 Dec. 2006: 27. Print. Johnson, Michael Kern. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Words without Borders Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. McClements, Melissa. “Textual Assault.” Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Financial Times. Financial Times 26 Jan. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Web. Saint, Nadia. “Sick of Literature.” Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. New Statesman. New Statesman 29 Jan. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Vila-Matas, Enrique. Montano’s Malady. Trans. Jonathan Dunne. New York: New Directions, 2007. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Elderkin, Susan. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Sunday Telegraph [London]. Telegraph Media Group 21 Jan. 2007: 42. Print. Elderkin finds the book’s misanthropic narrator appealing. Gibbs, Jonathan. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Independent [London]. Independent
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Enrique Vila-Matas was born on March 31, 1948, in Barcelona, Spain. He showed an interest in literature from an early age and began writing when he was only twelve. After studying journalism and law, he moved to France, where he supported himself as a journalist before returning to Spain in 1970. He published his first novel, Mujer en el espejo contemplando el paisaje, in 1973. A number of other novels and short story collections followed, and Vila-Matas’s international reputation grew. To date, his books have been published in more than twenty languages. Montano’s Malady is his second work to be translated into English, after Bartleby & Co. (2004; from Bartleby y Compania, 2000). Like Montano’s Malady, many of the author’s works take writing as their subject matter.
Print Ltd 8 Feb. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Gibbs praises the novel’s hybrid form. Lytal, Benjamin. “Jorge Luis Borges’s Pendulum.” New York Sun. New York Sun 27 June 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Lytal considers a number of works written in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges, including Montano’s Malady. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. Time Out New York. Time Out New York 21-27 Jun. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. This positive review recommends the book to readers who enjoy the works of Kafka and Borges. Smiley, Jane. Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique VilaMatas. Guardian [London]. Guardian 13 Jan. 2007. Print. Smiley explores the novel’s debt to the essayist Michel de Montaigne. Wolff, Carlo. “Author Battles Extreme Literary Temperament.” Rev. of Montano’s Malady, by Enrique Vila-Matas. SFGate.com. Hearst Communications 3 July 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Wolff finds the novel insubstantial. Gale Resources
Corral, Wilfrido H. “Enrique Vila-Matas.” TwentiethCentury Spanish Fiction Writers. Ed. Martha Eulalia Altisent and Cristina Martinez-Carazo. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 322. “Enrique Vila-Matas.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Web site provides audio of a review of Montano’s Malady. The positive assessment was broadcast on ABC Radio
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National’s Book Show. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ bookshow/stories/2008/2435276.htm
a well-known literary scholar, is himself mentioned in Montano’s Malady.
The English page of Vila-Matas’s official Web site includes information about his texts and excerpts from reviews. http://www.enriquevilamatas.com/ pagein.html
Gies, David T. The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print. This comprehensive historical work includes a study of contemporary texts.
The University of Rochester’s Three Percent: A Resource for International Literature Web page offers an online discussion of the novel. The reviewer praises the likable narrator and predicts that the novel will become a classic. http://www.rochester.edu/ College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=10
Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-23. Trans. Joseph Kresh and Martin Greenberg. London: Secker, 1948-1949. Print. Montano’s Malady has drawn comparisons to Kafka’s diaries.
For Further Reading
Bloom, Harold. Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Print. This collection provides an overview of the works of Jorge Luis Borges, whose influence can be traced in Vila-Matas’s work. Bloom,
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Vila-Matas, Enrique. Bartleby & Co. Trans. Jonathan Dunne. New York: New Directions, 2004. Print. The first of Vila-Matas’s works to be translated into English, this novel tells the story of an author suffering from writer’s block. Greta Gard
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Moral Hazard By Kate Jennings
W Introduction Moral Hazard (2002) is a semiautobiographical novel by Kate Jennings. The novel tells the story of Cath, a staunch feminist and freelance journalist who takes a job as a speechwriter at the fictional Wall Street investment bank Niedecker Benecke to pay for the care of her husband, Bailey, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. At Niedecker Benecke, Cath befriends Mike, a fellow leftwinger who gives her a crash course on investment banking and the dangers of derivatives and hedge funds. As Bailey descends into dementia, Cath finds herself facing morally ambiguous situations both at work and in her personal life. Chronicling the moral bankruptcy of 1990s Wall Street, Moral Hazard explores the devastating personal and financial effects of greed and hubris. It also examines issues concerning euthanasia and assisted suicide. Noted for its humor and wit as well as for its biting social commentary, the novel was awarded the 2003 Christina Stead Prize, one of the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.
W Literary and Historical Context
Moral Hazard is set in New York City during the 1990s, a period in which investment banking was a booming business. The boom was fueled by the growth of technology and the Internet, which seemed to offer unlimited financial opportunity for investors. The decade also saw several major financial disasters, such as the 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that was bailed out under the leadership of the Federal Reserve. Hedge funds (aggressively managed funds that are less regulated than mutual funds) reached new popularity during the 1990s and are central to the plot of Jennings’s novel. Cath’s friend Mike oversees
Niedecker Benecke’s risk-management team, to whom the analysis of such funds falls. Mike becomes increasingly concerned about certain hedge funds, including one that a friend of his explains is on the brink of collapse because it has too few assets and too much debt. When the fund fails, even the cynical Mike is shocked that the response to the fund’s questionable practices is a bailout, the proffering of platitudes, and ultimately a return to business as usual. Moral Hazard draws not only on Jennings’s experiences on Wall Street but also on her experiences with Alzheimer’s disease, which claimed the life of her husband, Bob Cato, in 1999. Alzheimer’s disease— named for Alois Alzheimer, the German doctor who first wrote about the disorder—is a degenerative, terminal illness that affects a person’s brain function. The early stages of the disease are often marked by confusion, short-term memory loss, and irritability. Over time, persons with the disease lose control of their motor skills and bodily functions, leading to death. In the novel, Cath’s husband Bailey is diagnosed with the disease after he begins exhibiting mood swings and poor judgment. He progressively loses the ability to work, to remember, and finally to walk or take care of himself. He also sometimes becomes aggressive and at times seems to inhabit “a dim cave where the regrets, frustrations, and sadnesses from his life flew in skirling circles, clicking and squeaking, brushing their wings against him.”
W Themes At the end of the novel, as Cath says goodbye to her colleague Horace, she shares her realization that “Conservatives aren’t the enemy. Liberals aren’t the enemy. Bullshit is the enemy.” This sentiment can be seen to underlie much of the novel. The fundamental crisis faced by Niedecker Benecke is a consequence of what Mike tells Cath is the Wall Street dream: “To have zero capital and infinite leverage.” Mike’s comment arises from his
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Moral Hazard
MAJOR CHARACTERS BAILEY is Cath’s husband, who is twenty-five years her senior. Once a successful graphic designer and collage artist, he sinks quickly into dementia after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Eventually Cath is forced to put him in a nursing home. Later, when his condition seems beyond hope, she finds a sympathetic doctor who provides her with the overdose of drugs that ends his life. CATH is the novel’s narrator and Bailey’s wife. A self-professed “bedrock feminist” and “unreconstructed left-winger,” she takes a job writing speeches at the Wall Street firm of Niedecker Benecke in order to pay for Bailey’s medical care. There she befriends Mike and develops a close working relationship with Horace. At the end of the novel, Bailey’s death frees her to resign from the job. HANNY is Cath’s direct supervisor at Niedecker Benecke. A staunch Republican, he has little use for women or minorities, a fact he makes clear to his team. HORACE is an Englishman who is somewhat of an outcast at Niedecker Benecke despite his powerful position as head of investment banking. In an attempt to ingratiate herself to him, Cath passes along information that has been told to her in confidence by Mike about a hedge fund teetering on the brink. Horace becomes president of the firm, but after Cath resigns she hears that he was forced out by the firm’s CEO. MIKE is Cath’s confidant at Niedecker Benecke. Like Cath, he was a 1960s radical. His mathematical talents led him to the banking industry, where he rose through the ranks of risk management. He eventually managed the bank’s “quants,” the mathematical geniuses who analyze derivatives. Over the course of his friendship with Cath, Mike grows increasingly cynical about the banking industry and becomes outspoken about his radical views. When the hedge-fund disaster looms, he becomes an easy scapegoat for the problem and is fired. At the end of the novel, he leaves for Costa Rica, where he plans to run a diving school.
discovery that a popular hedge fund has only $4 billion in assets but has borrowed $120 billion and cannot sustain itself. Attempts to conceal the truth through “bullshit” echo throughout Niedecker Benecke’s corporate structure. After spending time at the firm, Cath reaches the conclusion that “bankers operated by the seats of their pants, crossed their fingers, winged it.” As a speechwriter, she is expected to make use of what Mike describes as “perfumed” phrases and of buzzwords such as “granular” and “fungible” to hide the bankers’ true practices. Moral Hazard also dramatizes the debate over the right to die. The issue is important to Bailey even before
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his diagnosis. His mother was a member of the Hemlock Society, a group advocating the right to die, and she committed suicide instead of moving into a nursing home. Bailey “often talked about her courage and his own commitment to ‘dignity in death,’” Cath recalls. By the time Alzheimer’s disease begins to rob Bailey of his dignity, however, he is no longer able to advocate for himself. When a hospital ignores his standing order not to be resuscitated, Bailey survives a massive hemorrhage only to end up “reduced to a nub.” He is then relegated to a nursing home’s “slope of hell,” a line of patients kept near the nursing station because they require constant observation. “Seeing him in the line,” Cath explains, “I gave up.” Struggling with her conscience but hoping to fulfill Bailey’s wish to die with dignity, she seeks out a doctor who provides her with an overdose of pills to end Bailey’s life. After serving him the pills in his favorite juice drink, she reads him a poem as he loses consciousness. Although Cath later feels guilt and comes to detest the phrase “with dignity,” it is clear that the author supports the right of patients to end their lives.
W Style With its emphasis on the corporate world and the unique challenges of that world, Moral Hazard has commonly been considered a business novel. Traditionally, business novels use a fictional story to relay lessons either about achieving corporate success or about business ethics and the pitfalls of greed. As commentators have noted, however, Jennings’s novel deviates from this form by introducing the personal plot of Bailey’s illness as a counterpoint to Cath’s struggles in the world of Wall Street. Moral Hazard is written in a straightforward style that is peppered with humor. In the novel’s opening pages, Cath professes a desire to avoid melodrama because, “I’d rather eat garden worms than be earnest or serious. Or sentimental.” Cath retains a sense of humor even as the gravity of her situation increases. The CEO of Niedecker Benecke is, for example, repeatedly referred to as the “Big Toe.” Mike shares Cath’s biting sense of humor, joking at one point that Horace, one of the firm’s executives, is “an oxymoron—a smart conservative.” Even the pills that will end Bailey’s life occasion Cath’s characteristic wit. “I would like to tell you,” she says at one point, “that the Tiffany box [containing the pills] was sitting in the middle of my mind, as difficult to banish from my consciousness as a tarantula.” In the end, however, it is impossible to avoid sentimentality completely. After Bailey dies, Cath confesses that “I can’t abide the sentimental scaffolding that people erect around their lives, but when I’m beset, I allow myself to talk to him, imagine what he might have said in response.” The work ends on a sentimental but upbeat note, with Cath remembering Bailey as she once knew TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Moral Hazard
him: “Eager, transparent, unafraid. A bursting boy. Look, Ma, the world.”
W Critical Reception Moral Hazard was met with critical acclaim when it was published in 2002. In addition to winning the Christina Stead Prize, the novel garnered the 2003 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and was short-listed for the 2003 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. It was also named among the New York Times Book Review’s Notable Books for 2002. Reviewing the novel for the New Statesman, Amanda Craig writes, “This is an extraordinary novel: pleasurable and powerful, mordant and harrowing.” Joanne Wilkinson’s Booklist review suggests that “Jennings manages to intertwine the fates of both Bailey and the investment bank in a contemporary morality tale told with caustic wit.” Several reviewers noted the ways in which the work marked a departure from the business novel genre. For example, the New York Times Book Review describes the work as “A business novel whose modest pace and poetic structure distinguish it from the traditional macho product.” Other commentators noted the novel’s
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kate Jennings was born in Australia on May 20, 1948. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sydney, she published a collection of poetry titled Come to Me My Melancholy Baby in 1975. In 1979 Jennings moved to New York City, where, like the protagonist of Moral Hazard, she worked as a speechwriter on Wall Street. Jennings continued to write, publishing a collection of short stories, Women Falling Down in the Street, in 1990. With her 1997 novel, Snake, she came to the attention of critics and readers in the United States. The award-winning follow-up, Moral Hazard, confirmed her reputation as a talented novelist. Her 2008 memoir, Stanley and Sophie, won critical acclaim for its depiction of life in New York City after the attacks on the city that occurred on September 11, 2001. Published in 2010, Jennings’s autobiography, Trouble, chronicles her life and provides commentary on the age in which she lives.
insistence on bringing humor to the troubling events that it describes. Reviewing the novel for the Women’s Review of Books, for example, Martha Nichols praises
In Moral Hazard, Cath gets a job at a Wall Street investment bank called Niedecker Benecke. mdd/Shutterstock.com
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Jennings’s development of her protagonist, writing, “Cath’s voice is wonderfully tart and funny, and Jennings uses it to great effect.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Craig, Amanda. Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. New Statesman 15 Apr. 2002: 53. Jennings, Kate. Moral Hazard. New York: Fourth Estate, 2002. Print. “Moral Hazard.” New York Times Book Review 7 July 2002: 18. Nichols, Martha. “In the Belly of the Beast.” Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Women’s Review of Books July 2002: 34+.
Open Web Sources
The Web site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation includes the transcript of an interview that focuses on Moral Hazard’s treatment of the issue of euthanasia. In the interview Jennings talks about her own experiences in caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s disease. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/ 2002/s565605.htm The online community ReadingGroupGuides.com offers an online reading guide for the novel, including a brief plot overview, discussion questions, and review excerpts. http://www.readinggroupguides.com/ guides3/moral_hazard1.asp
Additional Resources
The online magazine Salon provides an online book review by Charles Taylor in which he praises Moral Hazard for its portrait of alienation in the workplace and its depiction of the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/06/ 20/jennings
Criticism and Reviews
For Further Reading
Evans, Paul. Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Book July-Aug. 2002: 83. A brief review that describes the novel as Jennings’s best work to date and praises its feminist stance.
Bartley, Robert. The Seven Fat Years: And How to Do It Again. New York: Free Press, 1992. Print. Bartley’s work of nonfiction lauds the economic policies of Ronald Reagan. In Moral Hazard, Cath is given this book by her boss on her first day at work on Wall Street.
Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Booklist 15 Mar. 2002: 1212.
Lalor, Peter. “Dying Light Reveals Emotional Truths.” Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Daily Telegraph [Sydney] 25 May 2002: 74. Print. A review that draws on context from Jennings’s biography in interpreting the novel. McCarthy, Philip. “The Moral of Her Story.” Sun Herald [Sydney] 28 Apr. 2002: 28. Print. A positive review that explores parallels between Jennings’s life experiences and those of her protagonist. McGee, Celia. “A Novelist Confronts the Corporate Books.” Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. New York Daily News 17 July 2002: 38. Print. A review that notes Jennings’s sharp social commentary. Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Kirkus Reviews 15 Mar. 2002: 359+. A review that considers some of the novel’s more memorable characters. Rev. of Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. Publishers Weekly 8 Apr. 2002: 201+. A favorable review that praises Jennings’s emphasis on the devastating effects of corporate greed. Gale Resources
Jennings, Kate. Snake. Hopewell: Ecco Press, 1997. Print. Jennings’s first novel chronicles events in a marriage that is marked by the wife’s hatred of her husband. Mayer, Martin. The Bankers. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1974. Print. In an author’s note in Moral Hazard, Jennings recommends Mayer’s exploration of the world of banking as an introduction to the world of finance. Patterson, Scott. The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It. New York: Crown, 2010. Print. Patterson’s work of nonfiction provides additional insight into the role of Wall Street’s quants, such as the fictional team led by Mike in Jennings’s novel. Taylor, Richard. Alzheimer’s from the Inside Out. Baltimore: Health Professions Press, 2007. Print. Written by a former psychologist diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, this collection of essays offers insight to Cath and Bailey’s struggles with the disease.
“Kate Jennings.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2004.
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Mother’s Milk By Edward St. Aubyn
W Introduction Mother’s Milk (2005) is a stand-alone novel featuring the title character of Edward St. Aubyn’s “Patrick Melrose Trilogy.” In those books, which include Never Mind (1992), Bad News (1993), and Some Hope (1994), readers followed the early years of Patrick’s troubled childhood, during which he was sexually abused by his father and indulged in drugs. Though light on plot, the books found an appreciative audience because of their witty dialogue and insightful observations about life. Additionally, critics lauded the books for their juxtaposition of humor with disturbing scenes. In the Man Booker Prize-short-listed Mother’s Milk, Patrick is no longer the central character, but rather one of three main characters that include his wife, Mary, and son Robert. He has another son, Thomas, who figures somewhat less prominently. His father long dead, Patrick has given up his heroin habit but is hooked on prescription drugs and alcohol. The main concerns in the book are the troubles in Mary and Patrick’s marriage as he cheats on his wife because he feels deprived of sex, and Patrick’s relationship with his dying mother. Eleanor Melrose, Patrick’s mother, has decided to leave her entire estate in Saint-Nazaire, France, to a charlatan named Seamus Dourke who wants to set up a New Age foundation that will help people connect to their previous lives. Patrick, now a barrister, bitterly resists his mother’s wishes but in the end is forced to draw up the legal documents that sign away his inheritance. The primary events over the course of the novel revolve almost exclusively around family summer vacations from 2000 to 2003. The substance of the book is contained in the characters’ contemplations of parents, children, and their connections. The main characters also express heavy
sarcasm and derision toward numerous people and topics, ranging from waiters to American culture. Mother’s Milk won the South Bank Show award and Prix Femina Étranger in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
An intimate family portrayal in which very little from the outside world interferes with family dynamics, Mother’s Milk is set in the years 2000 through 2003. The major political event occurring during the course of the plot is the U.S. and NATO’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Melroses, still belonging to a privileged class, though not as rich as they once were, are unaffected by the war and even make fun of the signs they see asking God to bless the troops. After losing their vacation home in France to Patrick’s mother’s misguided charity, the Melroses travel from England to America for their summer family trip. Here they all express distaste for what they see as the grossness of American culture, especially when it comes to food.
W Themes The central theme of Mother’s Milk concerns the lasting effects of parents’ behavior on their children. Mary devotes herself fully to her two sons because she does not want to emotionally neglect her children the way she feels her own mother did her. While this does, indeed, result in strong mother-son bonds (at one point, Thomas seems to even be able to read his mother’s mind), Mary’s devotion causes her to neglect her marriage, cease intercourse with her husband, and imperil her own health from lack of sleep.
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Mother’s Milk
MAJOR CHARACTERS SEAMUS DOURKE is head of the foundation to which Eleanor Melrose is leaving her estate. The aim of the foundation is to connect people with their former lives, and Seamus spent considerable time with Eleanor convincing her that the two of them had met several times in past lives. JULIA was Patrick’s girlfriend before he met Mary, but now Julia is his lover, filling the need for sex that Mary is no longer providing to Patrick. KETTLE is Mary’s mother. She is a self-absorbed woman and emotionally neglects Mary. ELEANOR MELROSE is Patrick’s mother. Nearing the end of her life, she decides to leave her estate in France to Seamus Dourke, a decision that causes much resentment in her son. MARY MELROSE is Patrick’s wife. A mother of two, she devotes all her love and energies to Thomas and Robert in an effort to compensate for the neglect she herself felt as a child. Because of this, she has little energy left for Patrick. PATRICK MELROSE is a barrister with a biting wit and addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs. He seems to hate most other people in the world, and few are safe from his dry aspersions. Despite having a beautiful family, Patrick is unhappy, especially when he finds out that his mother is not leaving him anything in her will. ROBERT MELROSE is the older of the Melrose sons. Like his father, he has a talent for mimicry that his parents find very humorous. He is a precocious child with a remarkable memory, apparently being able to remember his life all the way back to the womb. Though he loves his younger brother, he also resents the fact that his parents seem to pay more attention to Thomas. THOMAS MELROSE is the younger of the two Melrose sons. He is ebullient and intelligent, as well.
As for Patrick, he resents his own mother to the point of hatred. She is giving away the last of the family fortune to a New Age foundation and its charlatan leader. Although he makes a good living as a barrister, this last act of his mother’s is a final betrayal after he already resented her for not protecting him from his molesting father. As with his wife, Patrick feels he has never gotten the love he needed from his mother. The pattern of childhood resentment for the parent is multigenerational, as Eleanor and her sister, Nancy, also felt they were shortchanged by their own mother. As one critic asserted: “This is the underlying and more or less serious message of the novel—that the sins of the parents are cyclically revisited on the offspring” (McGrath).
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Furthermore, Robert, the eldest of the Melrose children, begins to feel neglected even as a young boy after his brother, Thomas, is born and both parents seem to prefer the younger son in certain ways. That the misery of the prior two generations will be passed along to Robert is hinted at, too, by Robert’s skills with sarcastic mimicry, a trait that his father also exhibited at a young age.
W Style St. Aubyn divides Mother’s Milk into four years and four sections, with each part of the book seen from the point of view of a different character. Part one features Robert’s point of view; part two features Patrick’s; part three features Mary’s perspective; and the last section depicts the perspective of several other characters. St. Aubyn chooses to concentrate on interior dialogue and long scenes in which the characters interact in humorous ways, rather than on a rise and fall in action or climactic, dramatic events. The characters in the story, especially the adults, are all miserable for one reason or another. Even Robert, who is just a young boy, is not entirely happy, having yearnings for a return to the womb and jealousy of his brother. Patrick is upset about his inheritance and lack of sexual relations with his wife, and Mary is unhappy about the increasing distance between her and Patrick. Still, St. Aubyn manages to combine the misery of his characters with humorous dialogue, occasionally lightening the mood of the writing.
W Critical Reception The strength of Mother’s Milk, many critics felt, is St. Aubyn’s clever writing and observations of society and his main characters. Even while most of the characters are unappealing people, they are amusing to read about, remarked reviewers. “[Robert and Patrick are] both snobs, as Thomas doubtless will be, too, but they’re knowing, clever snobs, whose ability to make fun of their own predicament and verbally skewer fools like Seamus Dourke are the novel’s main source of pleasure” (McGrath). While some writers did not find Mother’s Milk as sharply observed as the earlier Melrose trilogy, others felt St. Aubyn’s insights into the human soul to be gratifying. One reviewer felt that the author took cheap shots. “What Mother’s Milk lacks is the sort of gleeful dissection of upper-class life found in the trilogy. Its satire is too often directed against easy targets: Robert’s nanny . . . [or] a nouveau-riche family the Melroses visit in France” (Skidelsky). In contrast, one critic stated: “St Aubyn’s mordant style remains acute for the deeper, darker layer of family misery, characterised as ‘the flow of poison from TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Mother’s Milk
one generation to the next’” (Duguid), and another called it a “keenly observed, perversely funny novel” (Shreve). Finally, a reviewer for the London Observer concluded: “St Aubyn’s new novel, Mother’s Milk, is so good—so fantastically well-written, profound and humane—that all the other stuff, even the inhospitable biography, bleaches to grey beside it. He will be glad about this. In spite of his rare talent, St Aubyn has long been the victim of both inverted snobbery and of a certain kind of literary voyeurism whereby critics have often been as keen to find out which bits of his books are true as they have to point out how deft is his style, how mordant and dark his characters” (Cooke). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cooke, Rachel. “Review: Books: Interview: The Sins of the Father: Edward St. Aubyn Was Raped by His Father, Became a Heroin Addict and Contemplated Suicide—Material He Has Used to Devastating Effect
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Edward St. Aubyn was born into a life of privilege, the son of a family proud of its Norman ancestry. Despite this, he was the victim of child abuse at his father’s hand. He was raped over the course of two years, beginning when he was just five years old. Although the sexual abuse eventually stopped, St. Aubyn was emotionally scarred, and by the time he was attending Keble College, Oxford, he was using hard drugs. Fortunately, he found release through writing, beginning with his roman-à-clef trilogy featuring Patrick Melrose. The first novel, Never Mind (1992), won the Betty Trask Award, and the three books were collectively published as Some Hope: A Trilogy in 2003. St. Aubyn has published other novels, including 1998’s On the Edge, which was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Some parts of Mother’s Milk take place in a village, like the one pictured here, located in the south of France. Elena Aliaga/Shutterstock.com
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in His Fiction. Now, He Is Moving into Intriguing New Territory.” Observer [London] 8 Jan. 2006: 27. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Duguid, Lindsay. “Fall of a Bleak House; Fiction.” Sunday Times [London] 8 Jan. 2006: 56. Print. Academic OneFile. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. McGrath, Charles. “Mother’s Milk; Books/Fiction.” International Herald Tribune 21 Nov. 2005: 6. Print. Business and Company ASAP. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Print. Shreve, Porter, and Jonathan Durbin. “Books.” People Weekly 7 Nov. 2005: 53. Print. General OneFile. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. Skidelsky, William. “Father and Son.” New Statesman [1996] 135.4779 (13 Feb. 2006): 54. Print. General OneFile. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
Taylor, D. J. “Friction That Makes Sparks Fly.” Spectator 299.9256 (31 Dec. 2005): 35. Print. General OneFile. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. A positive assessment of Mother’s Milk in which the critic calls the novel a “class act.” Gale Resources
“St. Aubyn, Edward 1960-.” Contemporary Authors. Vol. 259. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 363-65. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The official Edward St. Aubyn Web site. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. http://www.edwardstaubyn.com/ For Further Reading
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Dennys, Harriet. “Family Misfortunes: Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Seriously Flawed’ Mother’s Milk Made Weald of Kent Wonder Why They Should Bother Reading On.” Bookseller 5223 (2006): 26. Print. General OneFile. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. Records reactions to Mother’s Milk by the Weald of Kent book club, most of whose members found it an unappealing book featuring unappealing characters. Katsoulis, Melissa. “Sex and Drugs and Self-Help; Fiction.” Times [London] 7 Jan. 2006: 16. Print. Academic OneFile. Web. 6 Sept. 2010. An overview of both the Patrick Melrose trilogy and Mother’s Milk. “A Long Way from Om.” Independent on Sunday [London] 27 Jan. 2008: 30. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. An interview with St. Aubyn in which he discusses writing his books, including the fact that Mother’s Milk originally featured characters other than the Melroses. Quinn, Anthony. “‘It Goes beyond Confession—I Want Dramatic Truth.’ Edward St Aubyn’s Novels Draw on His History of Abuse and Addiction. But, He Tells Anthony Quinn, It Is the Artistry of Them That’s Therapeutic.” Daily Telegraph [London] 26 Jan.
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2008: 11. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 5 Sept. 2010. The author discusses the therapeutic effects of writing in overcoming his life’s personal traumas.
Irving, John. The World According to Garp. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. Print. Irving’s acclaimed novel is a combination of tragedy and comedy in a poignantly observed life of the fictional T. S. Garp. Mahajan, Karan. Family Planning: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Print. Set in Delhi, India, Mahajan’s debut is a humorous look at family life in a crowded urban setting. Updike, John. Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print. Including all four of the “Rabbit” books by Updike, the novels feature an ordinary man named Harold Angstrom, following his life over several decades as he struggles with relationships and his own mortality. Waugh, Evelyn. Vile Bodies. London: Chapman & Hall, 1930. Print. Waugh was well known for her witty satires of social life, and in this novel she skewers the self-indulgent group of young people in the 1930s who indulge in sex and drugs. Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. London: L. Smithers, 1899. Print. Often considered one of Wilde’s finest comedies, this is the story of shallow, upper-class people and their complicated romantic lives. Kevin Hile
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Mudbound By Hillary Jordan
W Introduction Set in the American South after World War II, Hillary Jordan’s debut novel, Mudbound (2008), tells the story of Laura McAllan, a teacher whose marriage transports her from a comfortable life in Memphis to one of hardship and privation on an isolated farm in the Mississippi Delta. The novel begins with the burial of Laura’s disagreeable fatherin-law, Pappy, and then traces the events that led to the old man’s death. The book is narrated in the first person by a number of characters, including the black tenant farmers who live on the McAllans’ land and the farmers’ son, who has recently returned from the war. From these various perspectives, Jordan illuminates the web of bigotry and violence that prevailed in the region during that period. The novel also explores the complex power dynamics between men and women. Mudbound won the 2006 Bellwether Prize, an award given in recognition of a work that demonstrates a commitment to social responsibility.
W Literary and Historical Context
Mudbound dramatizes the racial violence of the Jim Crow South during the 1940s. The Ku Klux Klan, which had died out in the South in the 1870s, was experiencing a resurgence during the period in which Mudbound is set. Members of this second wave of Klan activity adopted the hoods that had been worn by the earliest Klan members. Jamie McAllan witnesses his father, Pappy, and other important town figures wearing such hoods when they attack Ronsel Jackson, and Laura later finds one in Pappy’s room. This second iteration of the Klan was even more deeply anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and, importantly in the context of Jordan’s novel, anti-Semitic than its predecessor.
Set primarily in the years following World War II, and including flashbacks to the war itself, the novel illustrates the difficulties experienced by American soldiers. Although the medical term was not yet available, many doctors and historians now believe that World War II servicemen suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. Many, like Jordan’s fictional Jamie McAllan, turned to alcohol to ease their misery. Jamie describes his desire for glory and the crushing letdown of war: “I would have great adventures and perform acts of daring and defend my country, and it would be glorious. And I would be a god. . . . the Army granted my wish. And it was not. And I was not.” For African American soldiers, the readjustment to civilian life was doubly hard. Not only were they burdened by memories of the wartime atrocities they had witnessed, but also they returned to a society (particularly in the Jim Crow South) that was more racially intolerant than the military. Jordan re-creates the alienating experiences of such men in Ronsel Jackson.
W Themes Themes of racial and ethnic violence are central to Jordan’s novel. While the intolerance experienced by African American characters such as the Jacksons is the most visible, the novel also examines anti-Semitism. Both anti-Semitic and antiblack biases surface when Ronsel’s father, Hap, breaks his leg. The local doctor consents to see Hap only on one of his “nigger days,” and even then he sets Hap’s leg improperly. Laura finds a Jewish doctor in town, and she and the Jacksons are shocked by the care with which the man treats Hap. Hap at first believes he has erred in telling the Austrian Doc Pearlman that Ronsel “fought against Austrian folks.” To Hap’s surprise, Pearlman says, “I hope he killed a great many of them.” Hap does not realize that the Jewish doctor was himself a likely victim of anti-Semitism, or that the
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MAJOR CHARACTERS FLORENCE JACKSON is the wife of Hap and the mother of Ronsel. A respected midwife, she also serves as the McAllans’ housekeeper. Her plan to kill Pappy for his attack on Ronsel is thwarted only because Jamie kills him first. HAP JACKSON is a preacher and tenant on the McAllans’ land. His hard work has allowed him to buy his own mule and escape the vicious cycle of sharecropping. RONSEL JACKSON is the son of Hap and Florence. He distinguished himself first as a student, and later as a sergeant in the 761st Tank Battalion. When Pappy discovers a letter revealing Ronsel’s relationship with a German woman, Ronsel becomes the victim of a Ku Klux Klan attack during which his tongue is cut out. HENRY MCALLAN is the husband of Laura and the brother of Jamie. In his desire for land, he moves his family from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta, where they must survive without running water or electricity. JAMIE MCALLAN is the brother of Henry. He is haunted by his experiences in the war and dulls his memories with whiskey. Drawn to Ronsel Jackson because of their shared war experiences, Jamie angers his family by giving the black man rides in his truck. After he is unable to save Ronsel from the Klansmen, he murders his father. LAURA MCALLAN is a teacher who marries Henry and is devastated when he moves their family to Mississippi. There she contends with Henry’s spiteful father, witnesses brutal racism, suffers a miscarriage, and falls in love with her husband’s brother. PAPPY MCALLAN is the father of Henry and Jamie. A bitter man, he makes life miserable for those around him. Angered by Jamie’s relationship with Ronsel, he leads the attack against the young black man.
W Style From a stylistic standpoint, what is most notable about Mudbound is its shared narration. The story begins in Jamie’s voice, but Laura’s soon comes to dominate. Henry, Hap, Florence, and Ronsel all narrate critical sections of the novel, and it is with the “voice” of the mute Ronsel that the novel concludes. The effect of this narrative strategy is that the reader gains insight into events and conflict from multiple points of view. Accounts of the same event are offered by more than one character, and the characters often interpret the same event differently. The only significant voice that is absent from the narration is that of Pappy, who has just died when the novel begins. Considering Jordan’s narrative choice in the Independent, Emma Hagestadt observes that “the novel’s alternating narrative voices work well. Only Ronsel’s wartime flashbacks, which are uneasily shoe-horned into the homespun domestic drama, feel forced.” Given its unique narrative strategy, it is unsurprising that the novel displays a deep interest in narrative more generally. Laura expresses her frustration that “beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that.” From there, she offers several possible reasons for Pappy’s death, including “because I was born plain rather than pretty” and “because a Negro named Ronsel Jackson shone too brightly.” This interest in narrative continues throughout the novel and crosses multiple perspectives. The book ends with Ronsel asking, “Should my story end there, in the back of that mule-drawn wagon? . . . Nobody would like that ending, least of all me.” He then hints at his future, when he “might one day find a strong and loving woman to marry him and give him children. Might help his sisters and brothers make something of themselves. Might march behind Dr. King down the streets of Atlanta with his head held high.”
W Critical Reception Austrians against whom Ronsel was fighting were responsible for the deaths of an estimated seventy thousand Austrian Jews. While racial tensions dominate the novel, Jordan also constructs a careful portrait of the often tense relationships between men and women. The McAllans’ marriage is marked by Laura’s submission to her husband, even though she often disagrees with his treatment of his tenants. Her pent-up resentment of her circumstances culminates in her affair with Henry’s brother. By emphasizing the give-and-take that goes on between Hap and Florence Jackson, on the other hand, Jordan holds up their marriage as the more equitable and, therefore, successful of the two.
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Upon its publication, Mudbound was well received by critics. It was nominated for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2009, garnered an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and was named the 2008 New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association’s Fiction Book of the Year. The novel was almost overwhelmingly praised for its narrative structure and its intriguing characters. When the novel was criticized, it was usually for either what Ron Charles’s otherwise positive Washington Post review describes as its “deadening earnestness,” or for its emphasis on themes that already have been reworked many times by other authors. Reviewing the work for Texas Monthly, Mike Shea notes, for example, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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that “there’s a sense here that Jordan is working fields that have been previously plowed, but it’s hard to begrudge a young author the chance to tackle big themes.” Similarly, Emma Hagestadt suggests that “adultery and alcoholism, rough justice and racism may be the stock in trade of any number of Southern novels, but Jordan neatly sidesteps pat endings and solutions.” Most reviewers have praised Jordan’s style, but a few have faulted it for being excessively ornate in some passages. A Publishers Weekly review suggests that “Jordan convincingly inhabits each of her narrators, though some descriptive passages can be overly florid, and the denouement is a bit maudlin.” The commentator ultimately concludes, however, that “these are minor blemishes on a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hillary Jordan was born on September 27, 1963. She spent her childhood in Dallas, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wellesley College and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University. Before devoting herself full time to writing fiction, Jordan worked as an advertising copywriter. She began her writing career as an author of short stories, publishing works in such literary journals as Story Quarterly and Carolina Quarterly. The award-winning Mudbound, which initially began as a short story, brought her more widespread attention as a writer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Charles, Ron. “Water Rising: A Family Struggles to Survive on a Mississippi Farm after World War II.” Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Washington Post 9 Mar. 2008: BW06. Print.
Hagestadt, Emma. Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Independent [London]. Independent Print Limited 7 Nov. 2008. Web. 24 July 2010. Jordan, Hillary. Mudbound. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008. Print.
In Mudbound, Laura McAllan finds herself living and working on a Mississippi Delta farm that belongs to her husband’s family. Buyenlarge/ Getty Images
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Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Publishers Weekly 5 Nov. 2007: 40. Shea, Mike. Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Texas Monthly Mar. 2008: 54. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Bettencourt, Donna. Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Library Journal 1 Dec. 2007: 100. Praises Jordan’s rendering of the predominant social values of the 1940s. Hoby, Hermione. “There’s No Place for Pity on a Farm.” Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Observer [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd. 19 Oct. 2008. Web. 24 July 2010. Provides a brief overview of the plot’s racial tensions and praises Jordan’s narrative style. Hooper, Brad. Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Booklist Online. American Library Association 15 Nov. 2007: 30. Praises the sophistication of Jordan’s novel. Konig, Christina. “Paperbacks.” Times [London] 1 Nov. 2008: 15. Print. Lauds the novel’s structure and compares it to Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Rev. of Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus Reviews 1 Jan. 2008. A favorable review that praises the skillful composition of the novel. Virshup, Amy. “Newly Released.” New York Times 20 Mar. 2008: 8. Print. Provides an overview of the book’s plot and notes its emphasis on the importance of place. Gale Resources
“Hillary Jordan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
and audio of a Morning Edition story about the work. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=88195380 The National Archives collects photographs of and information about African American soldiers who served during World War II. Digitized versions of the collection are available at its Web site. http://www. archives.gov/research/african-americans/ww2pictures/ For Further Reading
Curtis, Richard. Dumb but Lucky!: Confessions of a P-51 Fighter Pilot in World War II. New York: Random House, 2005. Print. Provides an account of one man who, like Jordan’s fictional Jamie McAllan, served as a World War II fighter pilot. Houston, Ivan J. Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II: Memories of the Only Negro Infantry Division to Fight in Europe. New York: iUniverse, 2009. Print. Written by a member of the 92nd Division, this volume traces the experiences of African American soldiers, who had to fight against racism while serving their country during World War II. MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Print. MacLean’s book traces the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the South after World War I. Rodgers, Clyde Allen. Lives of Quiet Desperation. Baltimore: Publish America, 2004. Print. A novel that depicts the lives of sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta during the 1950s. Walton, Anthony. Mississippi: An American Journey. New York: Random House, 1996. Print. Walton reflects on Mississippi and its history through interviews, poetry, and a travelogue.
The author’s official Web site provides reviews of the novel as well as a number of audio and video resources, including interviews with the author. http://www.hillaryjordan.com/press.php
Greta Gard
The National Public Radio Web site provides an overview of Jordan’s novel, as well as an excerpt from the novel
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Mystic River By Dennis Lehane
W Introduction Mystic River (2001) is a work of detective fiction by Dennis Lehane that traces the aftereffects of childhood sexual abuse in the lives of three working-class men from Boston. The novel begins in 1975 with the abduction and molestation of eleven-year-old Dave Boyle. Dave’s friends Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus witness the abduction but are helpless to prevent it. Dave escapes four days later but is never the same after the abduction. Most of the action in Mystic River takes place twenty-five years later, when Dave, Sean, and Jimmy are reunited through a series of events that begins with the murder of Jimmy’s teenage daughter. Set in fictional East Buckingham, Mystic River gives voice to the working-class Boston of Lehane’s youth, with its Irish American dialect and tight-knit neighborhoods. By 2000, East Buckingham, like its real-world counterparts, is being threatened by encroaching young, urban professionals, or yuppies, and gentrification. Sensitive to the vanishing breed of blue-collar workers, Mystic River has been praised for its well-developed characters as well as its suspenseful plot. The winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the novel has helped establish Lehane’s reputation as a talented writer capable of transcending the crime genre.
W Literary and Historical Context
Mystic River opens in Boston in the 1970s, during an era of newfound economic success. As business boomed, high-rises sprang up in the city’s financial district. In the city’s working class neighborhoods, however, financial success remained out of reach. It is this less affluent side of Boston that Mystic River dramatizes. At the opening of the novel, Lehane introduces his readers to Irish-Catholic East Buckingham in 1975, “a neighborhood of cramped
stores, small playgrounds, and butcher shops where meat, still pink with blood, hung in the windows. The bars had Irish names and Dodge Darts at the curbs.” He creates this vision by combining the features of a number of different Boston neighborhoods. Beginning in the late 1990s, Boston experienced another period of growth as banking and technology jobs attracted a young and educated workforce to the city. By 2000, when the central action of Mystic River takes place, these young, urban professionals were beginning to move into neighborhoods once dominated by working-class families. Soon, Boston had one of the highest costs of living in the United States. High rents and property taxes began to make once-affordable areas prohibitively expensive, pushing blue-collar workers out of their homes. The resulting tension and resentment resonate throughout Lehane’s novel.
W Themes In Mystic River, the physical and emotional destruction wrought by sexual abuse pervades nearly every aspect of the lives of both the victim, Dave Boyle, and the two friends who suffer lingering guilt because they were unable to help him. As an adult still struggling with the trauma of his own abuse, Dave reacts viscerally when he sees a man having sex with a child prostitute, and he kills the man. In a horrible twist of fate, Jimmy’s daughter, Katie, is murdered on the same night. Jimmy comes to suspect Dave of Katie’s murder and kills him. The tragic spiral of events that marks the novel’s climax can thus be traced back to Dave’s molestation twenty-five years earlier. Interwoven with the main characters’ struggles with the past are anxieties arising from class tensions. Although all three men hail from blue-collar families, differences in status between Sean, whose father is a factory foreman, and Jimmy, whose father is a laborer at the same factory, are clear even in childhood. Sean and his family live in a
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CELESTE BOYLE is Dave’s wife. Fearful when her husband comes home with blood on his clothes on the night of Katie Marcus’s murder, she destroys the evidence in an attempt to protect him. Worried by his increasingly strange behavior, however, she eventually confesses her suspicion of her husband’s guilt in Katie’s murder to Jimmy. DAVE BOYLE is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who struggles through life, supporting his family by means of a series of meaningless jobs. His inability to overcome the past eventually leads to his murder. SEAN DEVINE, a homicide detective with the Massachusetts State Police, has been struggling with personal problems since his wife left him. He is assigned to investigate the murder of Katie Marcus. When he realizes that Jimmy has killed Dave, he vows to bring his former friend to justice. BRENDAN HARRIS is the boyfriend of Katie Marcus. Deeply in love with her, he plans to elope with her to Las Vegas. He is later horrified to learn that his brother and his brother’s friend are responsible for his girlfriend’s death. JIMMY MARCUS is a former convict turned family man and convenience store owner. After Celeste Boyle tells him she suspects her husband, Dave, of killing Katie, Jimmy threatens Dave until he confesses to the crime, and then kills Dave, only to later learn that Dave was innocent. At the end of the novel, Jimmy is poised to return to a life of crime. KATIE MARCUS is the beautiful teenage daughter of Jimmy Marcus. She is planning to elope with Brendan Harris, whom her father hates. Her murder sets the novel’s plot in motion.
slightly more affluent section of East Buckingham, The Point, and look down on the other boys’ families, who live in The Flats, or “Wellieville.” Sean’s slightly elevated status sets him on the path to college and a successful career, while his friends become mired in crime and deadend jobs. External class pressures also affect the men’s working-class community as gentrification, with its attendant increases in property taxes and rents, threatens their way of life.
W Style Mystic River is primarily a work of detective fiction. While detective novels have historically been dismissed as an entertaining rather than literary genre, Lehane has been credited with elevating detective fiction to a new level, and his work is often described as “new noir.” Traditionally, the term noir fiction has referred to
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novels in which crime is central to the plot, but in which the detective generally is not the central character. Noir fiction also frequently relies on sexual intrigue to drive its plots. While they share the darkly criminal themes of traditional noir, new noir novels generally are written from the point of view of the detective, rather than that of the criminal or someone wrongfully accused of a crime. Other writers of new noir fiction include Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and George Pelecanos. Prior to the publication of Mystic River, Lehane was best known for a series of detective novels narrated in the first person. In Mystic River, however, the point of view shifts to the third-person omniscient, in which the narrator reveals the thoughts and emotions of a number of different characters, allowing the reader access to multiple perspectives and “truths” about the events described in the novel—whether it is Brendan Harris’s all-consuming passion for Katie Marcus, or Dave Boyle’s fears about his inability to control his wild emotions. A review in the Economist lauds Lehane for his experiment with third-person narration, noting that he “moves confidently between characters, elaborating elements of the story from different points of view.”
W Critical Reception Mystic River was an immediate success with readers and critics alike. The novel was the 2002 winner of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s prestigious Dilys Award, and it was a finalist for the Boston Globe’s L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. The combined literariness and broad appeal of the work led David Pitt to conclude in his Booklist review that “it’s time to stop talking about Lehane as an up-and-coming genre star and acknowledge that he is one of our best fiction writers period.” This has been a common refrain in other reviews as well, as critics have been captivated by Lehane’s ability to create believable characters and dialogue. The novel’s dark subject matter and gritty emotional impact have also been frequent topics of commentary. Comparing Mystic River to Lehane’s earlier detective series, a reviewer in Publishers Weekly suggests that Lehane “has replaced the graphic descriptions of crime and violence . . . with a more pensive, inward view of life’s dark corners.” Commentators such as Newsweek’s Malcolm Jones have also been drawn to Lehane’s sympathetic portraits of Boston’s working-class men and women and unique neighborhoods threatened by gentrification. Jones describes Lehane as having “nearperfect pitch when it comes to capturing the rage that fomented racial war in the ’70s and today fuels the resentment of working-class residents being driven out of neighborhoods like Charlestown and Dorchester by skyrocketing property taxes and rents.” TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Mystic River
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dennis Lehane was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, on August 4, 1965. Raised in a bluecollar, Irish-American family, he grew up absorbing the sounds of a unique Irish-American dialect and his family’s love of storytelling, which fueled his early talent for writing. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Eckerd College and a master of fine arts degree from Florida International University, Lehane launched his career as a novelist. His first novel, A Drink before War (1994), won the prestigious Shamus Award for Best First Novel. The novel introduced detectives Angela Dimassi Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie, who would feature prominently in subsequent novels. The popularity of these characters and the strength of his writing helped establish Lehane as a top writer of detective fiction. With Mystic River, he began to attract a larger following among readers of literary fiction. His reputation and body of work continue to grow.
Taylor, Charles. “Leaving Boston.” New York Times Book Review 17 Sept. 2006: 24(L). Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Portrait of Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River. ª Albert Olive/ epa/Corbis
Reviews of the work have not been entirely positive, however. In the New York Times Book Review, for example, Charles Taylor suggests that the novel aspires to be something that it is not, straining “to turn a squalid tale of stunted lives into Greek tragedy.” Despite such rare criticism, the work has continued to draw readers, becoming the subject of renewed interest with the release of the Academy Award-winning film adaptation in 2003. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Damn Yankees: Two Hot Talents in Detective Fiction.” Economist 12 May 2001: 87-88. Print. Jones, Malcolm. “Mean Street Makeover.” Newsweek 19 Feb. 2001: 58-59. Print. Lehane, Dennis. Mystic River. New York: William Morrow, 2001. Print. Rev. of Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane. Publishers Weekly 4 Dec. 2000: 50. Pitt, David. Rev. of Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane. Booklist 15 Nov. 2000: 588.
Denby, David. “Dead Reckoning.” New Yorker 13 Oct. 2003: 112. Offers an extended review of Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of Mystic River, praising the haunting qualities of its tragic realism. Dunn, Adam. “A Good Place to Die.” Book Mar. 2001: 52. A favorable review of Mystic River that focuses on Lehane’s background and relationship to the community he depicts. Kung, Michelle. “The Author Who Aced Hollywood.” Wall Street Journal 12 Feb. 2010: 10. Print. An interview with Lehane about adaptations of his works, including Mystic River. Rowe, Nicolette. “Centrifugal Bostons and Competing Imaginaries in Mystic River.” Journal for Cultural Research 12.1 (2008): 81-97. Print. A scholarly article that examines Lehane’s Mystic River and its film adaptation in the context of notions of urban community and film noir conventions. Shufelt, Craig. Rev. of Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane. Library Journal 125.20 (2000): 189. Suggests that Lehane’s novel transcends the crime genre with its carefully developed characters and insights into the darker side of human nature. Stasio, Marilyn. Rev. of Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane. New York Times Book Review 18 Feb. 2001: 25. A positive review of Mystic River that focuses on the
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novel’s statement about the devastating effects of crime on relationships and communities. Gale Resources
“Dennis Lehane.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
Dennis Lehane’s official Web site includes overviews of his novels, audio and video interviews, and a schedule of upcoming appearances. http://www.dennislehanebooks.com/ The online January Magazine offers an interview of Dennis Lehane by Linda Richards in which the author discusses the origins of Mystic River and its success. http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/lehane.html Professor of English and detective fiction expert William Marling offers an extensive history of the detective novel on his Web site detnovel.com. http://www. detnovel.com/index.html For Further Reading
Anderson, Patrick. The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. New York: Random House, 2007. Print. Anderson’s analysis of the history of the fictional thriller includes a chapter on Lehane’s work. Lehane, Dennis, ed. Boston Noir. New York: Akashic Books, 2009. Print. Lehane edited this collection of stories written in the noir tradition, all of which are set in Lehane’s hometown of Boston.
Island is the story of a U.S. marshal investigating the escape of an inmate from an institution for the criminally insane. A successful film adaptation was released in 2010. Polito, Robert, et al. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. This collection brings together a number of pulp fiction classics that helped define the American noir tradition on the page and screen. Rogers, Alan, and Lisa Rogers. Boston: City on a Hill: An Illustrated History. Sun Valley: American Historical Press, 2007. Print. An overview of the history and spirit of Boston, the city that is the backdrop of Mystic River. Williams, Dan. Above His Shoulders: A True Account of Sexual Abuse, Its Impact on Relationships, and the Emotional Survival and Healing. Denver: Outskirts Press, 2009. Print. Williams’s memoir offers an account of childhood sexual abuse and its aftermath that, like Lehane’s novel, focuses on abuse from a male perspective. Adaptations
Mystic River. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Perf. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laura Linney. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2003. Film. This well-received film adaptation of Lehane’s novel won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tim Robbins). Greta Gard
———. Shutter Island. New York: Morrow, 2003. Print. Lehane’s 2003 follow-up to Mystic River, Shutter
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The Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri
W Introduction Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel, The Namesake (2003), explores the immigrant experience, the search for identity, and the struggle to attain the American Dream. The novel chronicles the story of an Indian married couple, Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli, as they emigrate from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then to the suburbs. When their only son is born, they name him according to Indian custom: he receives an official name, given by the great-grandmother; and a pet name to be used only by the family. However, the letter from India with the official name never arrives, so the baby is stuck with his pet name, Gogol, named for Ashoke’s favorite author, the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Saddled with a name he detests, Gogol grows up alienated from both his Indian heritage and American culture. The Namesake follows Gogol’s sense of dislocation and his struggle to accept his dual identity. The novel was an international best seller and a critical hit. As Michiko Kakutani observes in her New York Times review, “Jhumpa Lahiri’s quietly dazzling new novel, The Namesake, is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Namesake concerns the migration and limited assimilation of the Ganguli family into American life in the mid-1960s. Ashoke, the patriarch of the family, moves with his young wife to Cambridge to study engineering in a graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He eventually takes a job as a college professor and the couple settle with their young children in a suburb of Boston.
Indians first came in significant numbers to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century to work in the lumber and railroad industries. Then known as “East Indians” to avoid confusion with Native Americans, they also settled as farmers throughout the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Imperial valleys of California. Many of these immigrants came directly from Canada, taking advantage of the lack of border restrictions between the two countries. The increasing influx of cheap labor resulted in several conflicts, such as the Bellingham riots of 1907. Anti-immigration and nativist forces succeeded in passing the highly discriminatory Immigration Act of 1917. Essentially, the new law barred all Asians from entering the U.S. legally and instituted a rule that immigrants had to be able to read and write in English in order to enter the country. The effect was chilling: Indian immigration to America virtually stopped. The situation for Indians living in America got worse in 1923 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Indians were not eligible for U.S. citizenship because they were not “white.” In 1946 President Harry Truman reversed that discriminatory law when he signed the Immigration Act of 1946, conferring the right of citizenship on qualified Indians. They could now lease or own land, vote, and run for public office. In addition, they could marry an American citizen and bring their Indian families to the United States. Because of the new immigration law, Indian immigration began to increase steadily in the later part of the twentieth century. Many of these new immigrants came to study at American universities, like Ashoke in The Namesake. Others came to find jobs, or open businesses, or to join family members already in the country. By 2000, there were 1.67 million Indians living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2007, there were an estimated 2.57 million Indians living in America, making them one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the country.
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The Namesake
MAJOR CHARACTERS ASHIMA GANGULI is the matriarch of the Ganguli family. Born in India, she and her husband, Ashoke, live a traditionally Indian existence in America. She feels alienated from her adopted culture and spends time with other Indian immigrants. ASHOKE GANGULI is the patriarch of the Ganguli family. After surviving a train derailment in India that nearly cost him his life, he sets out with his new bride, Ashima, to study at a graduate engineering program in Boston. He eventually becomes a professor at MIT. He views his life in America as a personal rebirth and a great opportunity. GOGOL GANGULI is the son of Ashoke and Ashima. He was named Gogol by his father—a name he hates—in honor of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Gogol feels like an outsider, alienated from both his Indian heritage and American society. SONALI (“SONYA”) GANGULI is the daughter of Ashoke and Ashima, and the sister of Gogol.
W Themes “The Namesake is a story of guilt and liberation; in this sense, it speaks to the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from the past—from family and obligation and the curse of history,” states Gail Caldwell in her review of the novel. “Lahiri’s subject, here and in her stories, is the loneliness of dislocation, and part of the reason her work succeeds is that her voice is as quiet as the atmosphere of displacement she evokes.” Michiko Kakutani concurs, finding The Namesake to be Chekhovian in nature. “It is a novel about two generations of the Ganguli family, and at the same time it is a novel about exile and its discontents, a novel that is as affecting in its Chekhovian exploration of fathers and sons, parents and children, as it is resonant in its exploration of what is acquired and lost by immigrants and their children in pursuit of the American Dream.” A few reviewers noted Lahiri’s recurring use of themes from Interpreter of Maladies to The Namesake. As David Kipen maintains, “Theme-wise, The Namesake marks no special advance over Interpreter of Maladies. It’s a novel about an immigrant family’s imperfect assimilation into America.” Amy Reiter disagrees, stating that Lahiri manages to expand on the themes of her earlier work. “In her 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri introduced us to people who left behind family and friends and the familiar heat
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Portrait of Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Namesake. ª Scott McDermott/Corbis
and bustle of India to build a new life in America—a cold, bleak land of strangers and new customs,” she contends. “Lahiri’s sweet, sometimes deep, sometimes quirky first novel, The Namesake, picks up on these beloved themes and then expands on them, following the IndianAmerican immigrant experience through to the next generation as she tracks the members of the Ganguli family.”
W Style As in her earlier work, Lahiri was praised by reviewers for her finely-tuned and well-considered prose. David Kipen lauds Lahiri’s masterful use of language in The Namesake. “As in her Pulitzer Prize-winning first story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri writes beautifully controlled prose. She resorts to unusual word choices only when she needs them to fix an important moment in the reader’s mind,” he notes. “In Lahiri’s sweetly unemphatic world, only extraordinary events call for extraordinary words.” TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Namesake
In her New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani applauds Gogol’s character development while noting that other characters do not fare as well. “Although Ms. Lahiri’s portraits of the women in Gogol’s life are somewhat sketchy—Maxine and her parents, in particular, seem more like New York stereotypes than real individuals—she narrates the story of her hero’s coming of age with enormous sympathy and aplomb, while cutting back and forth to fill in the lives of his parents, as they settle into the modest satisfactions of middle age.” Gail Caldwell emphasizes Lahiri’s well-executed narrative choices, which provide a well-balanced viewpoint on the characters in the novel. “Because the devotion within Gogol’s family is portrayed here with such subtlety and complexity, the whole of The Namesake assumes a poignancy even before loss rears its head,” she states. “Which it will, of course; as with that train journey that nearly took, then defined, Ashoke’s own life, we know from the outset that his son will have to make his way alone. And though he hoped to begin his departure by ridding himself of ‘Gogol’ forever, Lahiri presents her protagonist throughout the novel as Gogol, only calling him Nikhil when he’s perceived through the eyes of an assimilated lover. This understated shift in viewpoint is perfectly executed, and it speaks to Lahiri’s empathic grasp of the bargains and sorrows that accompany the flight of any phoenix.” Caldwell argues that although there are some narrative flaws, Lahiri manages to create a carefullycrafted story. “Sometimes Lahiri is heavy-handed in evoking the chasms between two cultures, and she has a tendency to leap elliptically from one of Gogol’s life changes—his girlfriends, his life in New York as a young man—to the next,” she finds. “But more often the narrative displays an intelligence and care that reveal the depths of her characters and the hurdles they face with intricate ease.”
W Critical Reception An international best seller, The Namesake garnered critical praise for Lahiri’s careful and well-crafted prose as well as for her compelling portrait of an immigrant couple and their American children. As Gail Caldwell asserts in her review of the novel: “In its generous, exacting portrait of the clash between cultural dictates and one man’s heart, The Namesake manages to transcend the limits of both.” Michiko Kakutani viewed the novel as an expansion of the themes of Interpreter of Maladies. “In chronicling more than three decades in the Gangulis’ lives, Ms. Lahiri has not only given us a wonderfully intimate and knowing family portrait, she has also taken the haunting chamber music of her first collection of stories and reorchestrated its themes of exile and identity to create a symphonic
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jhumpa Lahiri was born on July 11, 1967, to Bengali parents living in London, England. When she was two years old, her family moved to the United States. They settled in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, where her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a librarian at the University of Rhode Island. Every two years she accompanied her parents to Calcutta, India, for lengthy visits to extended family. In her later fiction, she used these Indian settings. Lahiri became a U.S. citizen at eighteen and enrolled in Barnard College, graduating with a BA in English literature. She later received her MA in English, creative writing, and comparative studies in literature and then a PhD in Renaissance studies from Boston University. After completing a two-year fellowship at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she devoted herself to becoming a full-time writer. She began teaching creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design and had several of her stories published in periodicals, including Salamander, Story Quarterly, Harvard Review, and the New Yorker. In 1999 her first volume of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was published to critical and commercial acclaim. In 2000 the collection received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
work, a debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft,” she concludes. David Kipen applauds her transition from short stories to novel. “As for Lahiri’s immigration from the subcontinent of short fiction to the novel’s hectic mainland, her crossing could scarcely be smoother,” he maintains. “Second books often suffer during this passage, creaking under the strain of leaving both brevity and autobiography behind. Not here. While autobiography is still a little too much with her—the hero’s gender and especially his career sometimes lack the particularity to transcend Lahiri’s own, transposed—she relaxes into the novel’s form and rhythms as if born to them. In the world of literature, Lahiri writes like a native.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Caldwell, Gail. “Boy, Interrupted.” Boston Globe 14 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Kakutani, Michiko. “From Calcutta to Suburbia: A Family’s Perplexing Journey.” New York Times Book Review 2 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Kipen, David. “An Indian Immigrant’s Son Who Is Either Here nor There.” San Francisco Chronicle 14 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Reiter, Amy. Rev. of The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri. Salon.com 12 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.
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The Namesake Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Hanna, Julie. “Second Helping.” Boston Phoenix 12-18 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Offers a mixed assessment of The Namesake, observing that Lahiri’s extensive use of description sometimes functions to alienate the reader from the text. Metcalf, Stephen. “Out of the Overcoat.” New York Times Book Review 28 Sept. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Lauds Lahiri’s poignant rendering of the father-son relationship in The Namesake. Riemer, Andrew. Rev. of The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri. Sydney Morning Herald 25 Oct. 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Commends Lahiri’s narrative style, claiming that it rekindled in him the “simple but infinitely satisfying pleasures of reading.” Gale Resources
“Jhumpa Lahiri.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 184. Print. “Jhumpa Lahiri.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 323. Print. “The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri.” Novels for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2010. For Students Online. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Novels for Students, Vol. 31. Print. Open Web Sources
Jhumpa Lahiri’s official website at http://www. randomhouse.com offers biographical information on the author, critical reviews, interviews, and updates on upcoming events and awards.
The oldest association of Indian Americans is the Association of Indians in America. Founded in 1967, the organization works to advance the political, economical, and social interests of Indian Americans. http://www.aiausa.org. The Taj Mahal is identified as a UNESCO World Heritage site. At http://Taj-mahal.net, you can take an online virtual tour of the world famous monument, with views from the roof, minarets, and crypt. For Further Reading
Gogol, Nikolai. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. Print. A collection of thirteen of Gogol’s best tales, including “The Overcoat” and “The Nose.” Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Interpreter of Maladies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print. A collection of stories that feature Indian characters struggling with the foreign and often alienating culture of their adopted country or confronting the challenges of their native land. Narayan, Kirin. Love, Stars and All That. New York: Pocket Books, 1994. Print. In this novel, Narayan chronicles a young Indian woman’s search for love in America. SarDesai, D. R. India: The Definitive History. Boulder: Westview Press, 2008. Print. Traces the history of India from tradition to modern times. Adaptations
The Namesake. Dir. Mira Nair. Perf. Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, and Jacinda Barett. 2006. Film. This cinematic adaptation of Lahiri’s novel was commended for the nuanced performances of its lead cast and the director’s lush visual style. Margaret Haerens
Read a biographical and critical overview of Nikolai Gogol and his work at the Authors’ Calendar website. Also presents a selected bibliography of the author’s works. http://kirjasto.sci.fi/gogol.htm
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The Naming of the Dead By Ian Rankin
W Introduction The Naming of the Dead is a crime novel set around the Group of Eight (G8) summit that was held in 2005 in Scotland with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The novel is Ian Rankin’s sixteenth work featuring the antiauthoritarian Detective Inspector John Rebus. In The Naming of the Dead, Rebus’s superiors initially sideline him to keep him from butting heads with the summit’s security forces as they deal with protesters. However, when evidence concerning the earlier murder of a rapist surfaces in an eerie Scottish tourist location called Clootie Well, Rebus and his female partner, Siobhan Clarke, are called in to investigate. The investigation is complicated by Rebus’s grief over his brother’s recent death, and chaos ensues after a series of murders takes place in the vicinity of the G8 summit. The novel explores the nature of evil in a contemporary urban environment as well as the conflict between the individual and figures of authority. It also touches on the importance of family relationships.
W Literary and Historical Context
Rankin’s novel largely takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, in early July 2005, when world leaders gathered and met for a G8 summit under heavy security at the Gleneagles Hotel near the town of Auchterarder. On July 2, more than 200,000 people filled the streets of Edinburgh to challenge the world’s leading economic countries to help end world poverty. Over the next few days, demonstrators clashed with police in the city center and brought traffic to a standstill. Dozens of protesters and police were injured. Protesters accused the police of using excessive force, while the police insisted that they
had responded appropriately. Rankin captures this tense atmosphere so well that one critic has asserted that the novel is “not only an intriguing murder-mystery but an excellent piece of reportage” (Sanderson). Rankin also narrows the scope of parts of his narrative to show how the events of those days affect individual lives. Central to the realism of Rankin’s novel is the role that the city plays in shaping conflicts between potential criminals and law-enforcement officers. The dominance of the urban setting in The Naming of the Dead has its closest antecedent in the hard-boiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, which features rough-hewn detectives battling the mean streets of American cities (Diemert). The characters of Sam Spade in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in Chandler’s The Big Sleep are ruggedly handsome, irascible characters who are iconoclastic and at loggerheads with their superiors. Rankin’s John Rebus is a Scottish version of Spade and Marlowe who works in contemporary Edinburgh rather than in the cities of midtwentieth-century America. Perhaps more so than Spade and Marlowe, Rebus is preoccupied by doubts over the legitimacy of his profession, and he struggles to contemplate the meaning of good and evil. As critic Marie Odile Pittin-Hédon has observed, such moral misgivings are enhanced in Rankin’s fiction by the frightening depiction of the “rapidly mutating cityscape as a sprawling, fastmoving, economically determined monster.”
W Themes Although Rebus represents the law, his insubordinate behavior introduces the thematic conflict between the individual and figures of authority. Like his literary predecessors Spade and Marlowe, Rebus is rebellious and is even identified with the criminal underworld. Since Rebus’s maverick investigative methods often circumvent the law, he is compared to his longtime nemesis, Edinburgh gangster Morris Gerald (“Big Ger”) Cafferty.
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The Naming of the Dead
MAJOR CHARACTERS MORRIS GERALD (“BIG GER”) CAFFERTY is a ruthless and physically intimidating underworld crime boss who runs seedy bars and a fleet of minicabs in Edinburgh. Although he is Rebus’s sworn nemesis, Cafferty frequently assists Rebus with his cases. DETECTIVE SERGEANT SIOBHAN CLARKE is Rebus’s protégée, who observes the rules of conduct but worries that her partner’s iconoclastic views will rub off on her. Clarke often does the majority of the work on their murder cases. TEDDY AND EVE CLARKE are Siobhan’s hippie parents who attend the peace march during the summit. Leftist in political views, they disapprove of their daughter’s decision to become a police officer. CYRIL COLLIAR is a bouncer and hired thug for Cafferty. A convicted rapist, Colliar is murdered by a serial killer who goes after sex offenders. RAY DUFF is the forensics expert who assists Rebus and Clarke on the Colliar case. DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR MACRAE is Rebus’s and Clarke’s superior. DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JOHN REBUS is the novel’s irascible protagonist. His clashes with his superiors and with other law-enforcement figures make him something of a maverick. Unwilling to give up on a case, Rebus bends the rules to get his man. COMMANDER STEELFORTH is the arrogant head of security for the G8 summit and a member of the Britain’s Special Branch security unit.
Indeed, Rebus is so distrusted that he is ordered to remain on the sidelines while the police secure Edinburgh’s streets during the summit meetings. Although Rebus’s integrity and grit inspire his partner Siobhan, she worries about his influence on her and about becoming distrusted and marginalized. Rebus’s cynicism, predilection for drinking alone in bars, and estrangement from his family reinforce the negative effects that crime investigation has on his psyche. His psychological well-being is further undermined by his brother Michael’s death from a heart attack and the necessity of setting aside his grief in order to investigate a string of grisly killings. Nevertheless, Rebus’s dogged pursuit of justice is admirable, and there is something heroic about his uncompromising iconoclasm. Rebus’s associations with criminals show that the nature of evil is sometimes difficult to determine. The murder of the despised thug and rapist Cyril Colliar creates a dilemma for Rebus, who seeks justice yet thinks
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that Colliar’s death-by-bludgeoning was well deserved. Both Siobhan and Rebus initially approve of the security forces’ containment of the protesters, but their faith in these figures of authority is shaken when a riot policeman assaults Siobhan’s mother. Finally, the murder of a member of the British Parliament turns out to be linked to some of the summit members, which suggests that evil can be found among those of high as well as low social standing. Even an outstanding detective cannot completely solve the metaphysical conundrum of good and evil.
W Style Rankin’s prose style is well suited to his protagonist’s blunt and cynical view of the world. He provides the basic information about the case in relatively short sentences and uses terse commentary that reflects Rebus’s attitudes about the criminals he investigates—even about those who turn out to be victims: “Nobody could say the words out loud—bastard got what he deserved—that wasn’t the done thing these days.” Rankin’s writing style also gives the reader insight into his protagonist’s deductive skills. Sentence fragments trail off in ellipses as Rebus tries to connect the dots of seemingly unrelated facts. Rankin’s talent for description is particularly apparent during the clashes between protesters and police. He paints precise individual scenes with only a few words, such as “Riot shields, dog handlers, mounted police. A twin-engined Chinook helicopter scything the air overhead. Flames licking from an American flag.” Elsewhere, the author provides a vivid portrait of Edinburgh, giving a clear image of its streets and of the throngs of rioters, police, and bystanders being pushed along by the momentum of the political protest. Rankin’s reliance on lists of names reinforces the significance of seemingly unconnected clues in murder cases. Specifically, the litany of victims’ names, repeated throughout the novel as Rebus and Siobhan investigate the associated crimes, corresponds to the book’s title and stresses the importance of remembering those who have died. This is especially true for Rebus, whose brother Michael must also be counted among the dead.
W Critical Reception The Naming of the Dead has been generally well received by critics, who have viewed the novel as a sign of Rankin’s maturation as a crime writer. In previous novels the author had explored such issues as gun violence and immigration laws; with his shift to global politics, commentators observe, Rankin offers a fresh perspective on the nature of crime. Critics vary in their judgment of Rankin’s plotting. Some insist that he has interwoven the various strands masterfully, but others suggest that he has TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Naming of the Dead
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ian Rankin was born in Cardenden, Scotland, in 1960. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and he began to pursue a PhD in Scottish literature but suspended his studies in order to begin writing. The result was his first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, which was published in 1987. Rankin has received numerous awards for his crime fiction, including four Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers’ Association. Influenced by the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Rankin consciously tries to write what he calls “gothic crime” fiction, which probes the psychological landscape of urban crime worlds. In many of the Rebus novels, Rankin explores the difficulty of distinguishing between guilt and innocence and the possible links between crime and social disillusionment.
McKay Carla. “On Form? Ian Rankin.” Daily Mail [London] 27 Oct. 2006: 65. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Naming of the Dead, by Ian Rankin. Observer 12 Nov. 2006: 24. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010.
Portrait of Ian Rankin, author of The Naming of the Dead. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
perhaps developed too many subplots. Writing for the Daily Mail, Carla McKay argues that the novel’s “heady mix of crime and current affairs” is “staggering,” even though the plot remains somewhat “convoluted.” In his review for Scotland on Sunday, James W. Wood similarly contends that Rankin’s “ambition to cram in lots of subplots inevitably risks the occasional lapse into clumsiness.” Even while noting such shortcomings, most reviewers acknowledge Rankin’s polished writing style and his eye for detail. Wood, for example, avows that “Rankin’s storytelling is as captivating and perplexing as ever, the close blend of action and dialogue ensuring that the reader’s mind never focuses on one or the other for too long. This creates impressive pace and range, allowing him to pass off crucial details as complete banalities, only to recall those details later in the story.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Diemert, Brian. “Ian Rankin and the God of the Scots.” Race and Religion in the Postcolonial British Detective Story. London: McFarland, 2005. 164-88. Print.
Pittin-Hédon, Marie Odile. “Re-imagining the City: End of the Century Cultural Signs in the Novels of McIlvanney, Banks, Gray, Welsh, Kelman, Owens and Rankin.” The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: Modern Transformations: New Identities (from 1918). Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. 25361. Print. Rankin, Ian. The Naming of the Dead. London: Orion Books, 2006. Print. Sanderson, Mark. “Life’s a Riot with Testy Old Rebus.” Evening Standard 16 Oct. 2006: 38. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Wood, James W. “World According to Rebus.” Scotland on Sunday. Scotsman.com, 15 Oct. 2006. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of The Naming of the Dead, by Ian Rankin. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2007. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. An anonymous reviewer considers the iconoclastic personality of the Rebus character. Rev. of The Naming of the Dead, by Ian Rankin. Publishers Weekly 22 Jan. 2007: 155. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. This unsigned review states that the many subplots and twists in Rankin’s novel are confusing.
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Rev. of The Naming of the Dead, by Ian Rankin. Publishers Weekly 30 July 2007: 77. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 August 2010. This more positive unsigned review comments on Rankin’s skillful portrayal of character and introspection. Ott, Bill. Rev. of The Naming of the Dead, by Ian Rankin. Booklist 1 Feb. 2007: 6. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Ott maintains that Rankin juggles his subplots well. Waugh, Harriet. “A Choice of Crime Novels.” Spectator 9 Dec. 2006: n. pag. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. In her positive review, Waugh declares that Rankin is “back on splendid form.” Gale Resources
Boccardi, Mariadele. “Ian Rankin (28 April 1960-).” Twenty-first-Century British and Irish Novelists. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 267. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. “Ian Rankin (1960-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 257. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The official Ian Rankin Web site features biographical and bibliographical information about the author, links to videos of author interviews, audio versions of his novels, news about upcoming events involving the author, and Rankin’s own regular newsletter. http:// www.ianrankin.net The Deutsche Welle Web site features an interview with Rankin in which the author discusses his views about the differences and similarities between crime fiction and literary fiction. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/ article/0,,5360698,00.html For Further Reading
Gorringe, Hugo, and Michael Rosie. “It’s a Long Way to Auchterarder!: ‘Negotiated Management’ and Mismanagement in the Policing of G8 Protests.” British
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Journal of Sociology 59.2 (2008): 187-205. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. In their article, Gorringe and Rosie discuss various examples of protest policing in democratic countries, focusing particularly on the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland. Using interviews, they demonstrate that stereotyping of both police and protesters often leads to an escalation in violence. Hearn, Jonathan. Claiming Scotland: National Identity and Liberal Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Print. Hearn’s book begins by considering the impact of the 1997 referendum that led to the establishment of a Scottish national parliament in 1999, the first in more than three hundred years. From this vantage point, Hearn then considers the development of Scottish national identity, offering an historiographical study of the urban environments so often depicted in Rankin’s detective stories. Horsley, Lee. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print. Horsley considers the history of the development of mystery and crime fiction, the genre’s long association with classic literature, and its diversity of approaches to gender, race, and politics. Plain, Gill. “Concepts of Corruption: Crime Fiction and the Scottish ‘State.’” The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. Ed. Berthold Schoene. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. 132-40. Print. Plain argues that Scottish crime fiction since the 1980s has explored not only individual criminality but also the systematic criminality evident in government institutions. Priestman, Martin, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print. This diverse collection features individual essays on the history of crime fiction going back to the eighteenth century and on specific forms such as spy thrillers, postwar American police fiction, and black crime fiction. Adam Lawrence
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Nation By Terry Pratchett
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Terry Pratchett’s young adult novel Nation takes place in a world that is recognizably our own but in which history has taken a divergent course. It tells the story of two young disaster survivors from different cultures thrown together on an island. The narrative follows the challenges they face in staying alive and making sense of their drastically altered circumstances. Thirteen-year-old Mau returns to his island home after a rite-of-passage journey only to find that his entire culture has been wiped out by a tsunami. The same wave also drives a ship from an unnamed nation (greatly resembling Great Britain) onto the island; the sole survivor of the shipwreck is Ermintrude Fanshaw, a young noblewoman whose upbringing has been very strict. She was sailing to join her father, the newly appointed colonial governor of his country’s possessions in the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean (identifiable as the South Pacific), when the calamity struck. Mau and Ermintrude have barely learned to communicate when survivors from other islands in the archipelago begin to appear, looking for asylum on the island they call the Nation. As the two young people work together to create a new nation from the crowd of refugees, they are forced to reevaluate the beliefs that have ruled their lives. Like the novels in Pratchett’s popular Discworld series, Nation has been praised for a combination of humor, social commentary, and philosophy that Amanda Cockrell, writing in the Hollins Critic, calls “screamingly funny and bone-chillingly serious at the same time.” In 2009 Nation was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Prize for best children’s and young adult fiction.
Context
Nation takes place in an alternate version of the nineteenth century. When the book opens, the Russian Plague has decimated the ruling family of an empire very like Victorian Britain. The 138th heir to the throne, Ermintrude’s father is suddenly the new king. At the same time, another disaster has wiped out the Nation, an undeveloped island community in the Pelagic Ocean that turns out to be the final remnant of a great ancient civilization. At its most basic level, Nation is a parody of the desert island adventure genre that began with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and has included books as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). Pratchett offers the reader an entire island of castaways, beginning with Mau, who finds himself marooned on his own island. The author uses all the common tropes of the desert island novel. Like Defoe’s shipwrecked hero, Crusoe, Pratchett’s survivors find a way to make fire, pillage the wrecked ship for raw materials, improvise solutions with the materials at hand (including milking a wild pig to feed a baby), discover secret treasures, defeat cannibals and mutineers, and encounter exotic animals. The important difference is that, with the exception of Ermintrude, Nation’s castaways and protagonists are people Defoe would have called savages. Pratchett even re-creates the iconic moment in Defoe’s novel when Crusoe discovers the native Friday’s footprint and realizes he is not alone. Nation turns the event upside down, however: the “naked savage” (in the words of both Defoe and Ermintrude) Mau discovers a baffling toeless footprint in the sand.
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W Themes
MAJOR CHARACTERS ATABA is a priest from one of the other islands who clings to his traditional gods even as Mau begins to question them. THE HONORABLE MISS ERMINTRUDE FANSHAW is shipwrecked on Mau’s island on her way to join her father, who was sent to a different, already colonized island in the archipelago. Ermintrude has a taste for science that her domineering grandmother attempted to squelch as unbecoming in a young woman, especially one who is only 139 lives away from the imperial throne. Although she doesn’t know it, Ermintrude is now the official heir to the monarchy. LOCAHA is the island’s god of death, who taunts and tests Mau. MAU is the last surviving member of the Nation. He has completed his rite-of-passage ordeal, so he is no longer a boy, but he is not yet a man because there is no one left to perform the proper ceremonies. Consequently, he fears he has no soul.
In The Postmodern Fairytale, Kevin Paul Smith sums up Nation’s main theme: “It addresses the nature of the myths we live by and the fantasies that govern our daily existence.” Both Mau and Ermintrude are driven at first by the social conventions of their cultures. In Mau’s case, the ancestors of his tribe literally shout in his head, in capital letters, demanding that he “MUST DO THE THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DONE.” The voice that intrudes into Ermintrude’s consciousness is less direct but just as real. The grandmother who raised her had very rigid ideas about the behavior appropriate for a respectable young lady— ideas that Ermintrude quickly decides are not applicable to life on a desert island. Her first act of rebellion is to rename herself Daphne. In order to survive, the two young people begin to ask what both Mau’s tribal elders and Daphne’s grandmother dismissed as silly questions: “Why?” and “Why not?” Soon they challenge not only social mores but all of the ideological structures they have lived by, including gender roles, religious faith, nationalism, imperialism, and science.
A massive wave strands a group of survivors from very different cultures on an island in Nation. EpicStock/Shutterstock.com
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W Style Pratchett’s novels are philosophical explorations masquerading as parody. Each work builds on the themes and tropes of a recognized cultural topic: opera, Shakespeare, Santa Claus, the birth of rock and roll, soccer, the nature of faith, and, in the case of Nation, desert island adventures. As Cockrell explains, “Pratchett borrows anything usable . . . [he] constructs his world using scraps of popular culture, folklore, the collective unconscious, duct tape, and string.” Making use of imagery from other texts, he provides authorial asides in the form of footnotes, surprising the reader with unexpected twists. Pratchett approaches his subject with the apparatus common to postmodern literary works, never letting the reader forget that his novel is itself a cultural artifact. For example, he writes, “Ah this is parody, we think, we know the parodied material, so we know where this is going.” Then, Cockrell explains, the “parody departs from its source material and takes on a deeper, more substantial life of its own.” Within the framework of the parody, Pratchett has developed a distinctive prose style that uses puns, literary allusions, cultural references, and a literal approach to cliché and metaphor. In an interview with the author in the Guardian, Elizabeth Young describes his technique as a “combination of generally familiar lore with a cold douche of the prosaic, the homely, the familiar and the down-to-earth.” Achieving the opposite at the same time, Pratchett elevates the ordinary to the level of poetry.
W Critical Reception Critics regularly praise Pratchett’s writing for its satirical bite and imaginative wordplay, comparing him to Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, and P. G. Wodehouse. The Sunday Times calls Nation “Pratchett at his most philosophical, with characters and situations sprung from ideas and games with language.” Reviewing the work for the Winston-Salem Journal, Steve Wishnevsky also commends the author’s characterizations: “Even the bit players . . . have length, breadth, thickness and duration, as well as quaint vocabularies and obscure motivations of their very own.” A number of critics, and Pratchett himself, have recognized Nation as one of his best novels. Wishnevsky claims, “Pratchett’s genius . . . is to walk the razor’s edge between plausible fantasy and irrational reality, indicating amusing points of interest, unusual spectacles, sprightly follies and noble edifices along the way.” In the Guardian Frank Cottrell Boyce praises the novel as “funny, exciting, lighthearted and, like all the best comedy, very serious.” Cottrell Boyce concludes that “if you read it to your ten-year-olds they will gasp and
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Terence David John Pratchett was born on 28 April 1948 in Beaconsfield, England, the only child of David and Eileen Pratchett. He is best known as the author of the comic fantasy Discworld series. At the age of ten, he discovered The Wind and the Willows and became hooked on reading. He published his first short story, “The Hades Business,” when he was thirteen years old and his first novel, a children’s fantasy called The Carpet People, when he was twenty-three. Pratchett did not attend college. He worked as a reporter and as a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board before the success of his Discworld books allowed him to become a fulltime author. Since 1987 he has written two to three books a year, including several children’s novels. Pratchett was named fantasy and science fiction author of the year by the British Book Awards in 1994 and won the New England Science Fiction Association’s Skylark Award in 2009. He was knighted as an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009 for his contributions to literature. In 2008 Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s. He has become a spokesperson for those who suffer from the disease and, more controversially, an advocate for the right to assisted suicide.
giggle” but “you could read it to a conference of philosophy professors and they would learn something.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cockrell, Amanda. “Where the Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.” Hollins Critic 43.1 (2006). General OneFile. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Cottrell Boyce, Frank. Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. Guardian [London] 13 Sept. 2008: 14. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. Sunday Times [London] 21 Sept. 2008: 57. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Pratchett, Terry. Nation. New York: Harper, 2008. Print. Smith, Kevin Paul. “Battling the Nightmare of Myth: Terry Pratchett’s Fairytale Inversions.” The Postmodern Fairytale: Folkloric Intertexts in Contemporary Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2007. 133-64. Print. Wishnevsky, Steve. “A Fable-lous Genius.” Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. Winston-Salem Journal 21 Feb. 2010: A30. General OneFile. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
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Young, Elizabeth. “Funny Old World.” Guardian [London] 23 Oct. 1993: 6. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“The Funny Side of Truth on an Island of Lost Souls.” Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. Independent [London] 26 Sept. 2008: 32. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. This review looks at Nation in terms of one of Pratchett’s recurring themes, the liberating power of science and reason. Hunt, Jonathan. Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. Horn Book Magazine 86.1 (2010): 19+. General OneFile. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Hunt’s article includes the text of a speech Pratchett gave at the ceremony for the Horn Book Award. In it, he discusses how he wrote Nation. Hunt, Peter. “Terry Pratchett.” Alternate Worlds in Fantasy Fiction, ed. Peter Hunt and Millicent Lenz. London: Continuum, 2001. 86-121. Print. A detailed examination of Pratchett’s children’s books. Hynes, James. “The Ghost Girl and the Naked Savage.” Rev. of Nation, by Terry Pratchett. New York Times Book Review 7 Dec. 2008: 55(L). General OneFile. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Hynes focuses on Pratchett’s examination of religious faith in Nation. Pratchett, Terry. “Cult Classics.” Meditations on Middle Earth. Ed. Karen Haber. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. 75-87. Print. In this essay Pratchett evaluates the impact of Tolkien on his intellectual development. ———. “Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories.” Folklore 111.2 (2000): 159. General OneFile. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. Pratchett describes the role of folklore in his novels. Rehfield, Alexandra, Jan Schnitker, and Mathias Schröder. “‘Fantasy Is the Whole Cake’: An Interview with Terry Pratchett.” “Do You Consider Yourself a Postmodern Author?”: Interviews with Contemporary English Writers. Ed. Rudolf Freiburg and Jan Schnitker. Hamburg: Lit Verlag Münster, 1999. 173200. Print. An interview in which Pratchett addresses his use of cultural allusions and intertextuality. Gale Resources
“Pratchett, Terry 1948-” Concise Major 21st-Century Writers. Ed. Tracey Matthews. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. “Pratchett, Terry 1948-” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 170. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
“Pratchett, Terry 1948-.” Something about the Author. Vol. 185. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Tredell, Nicolas. “Pratchett, Terry.” Contemporary Novelists. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. 7th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 2001. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Pratchett’s Web site includes author podcasts, videos, and a discussion guide for Nation. http://www. terrypratchettbooks.com The Internet Speculative Fiction Database includes a page on Pratchett with links to several interviews. http:// www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Terry_Pratchett For Further Reading
Butler, Andrew M. An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2008. Print. Butler presents a Pratchett encyclopedia, including a brief biography of Pratchett and essays on the themes and characters found in his novels and stories. Butler, Andrew M., Edward James, and Farah Mendlesohn. Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature. Baltimore: Old Earth, 2004. Print. The study contains a collection of scholarly articles on Pratchett’s work. Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. 1719. New York: Scribner’s 1983. Print. The original desert island novel that Nation is patterned on and satirizes. Pratchett, Terry. Reaper Man. London: Gollancz, 1991. Print. The god of death is a major character in Nation. A very different version of Death is an important recurring character in the Discworld series and is the major character in Reaper Man. Pratchett, Terry, Sheila M. Perry, and Priscilla Olson. Once More with Footnotes. Framingham: NESFA, 2004. Print. This collection of Pratchett’s essays, articles and stories includes “The Hades Business.” Adaptations
Nation. By Terry Pratchett. Dir. Melly Still. Perf. Gary Carr and Emily Taffe. National Theatre, London. 16 November 2009. Performance. Despite impressive special effects, Mark Ravenhill’s two-act adaptation of Nation for London’s National Theatre received uniformly bad reviews. It was criticized for its heavyhanded treatment of Pratchett’s thematic concerns and inability to maintain the multiple plot strands. A live performance was broadcast to movie theaters around the world on 30 Jan. 2010.
“Pratchett, Terry.” Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Sept. 2010.
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Pamela Toler
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Netherland By Joseph O’Neill
W Introduction Joseph O’Neill’s third novel, Netherland (2008), tells the story of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch expatriate equities analyst and self-described “bystander” (103), who works for a bank in New York City and lives in Tribeca with his lawyer wife Rachel and their new son Jake at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers. Forced to move uptown, the family settles in the famous Chelsea Hotel but are unable to carry on as before. With the decision by the Bush administration to invade Iraq, Rachel decamps with their son, moving from what she sees as the no longer safe New York back to London and into the home of her wealthy parents. Left alone and depressed, Hans seeks diversion and friendship among the immigrant members of a local cricket team, and in so doing, he meets Chuck Ramkisson, born in Trinidad and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, a man who presents himself as an entrepreneur and visionary but who is also running a numbers racket. Ramkisson exploits Hans’s pursuit of a U.S. driving license, and on the pretext that he is helping Hans practice his driving, Ramkisson has Hans drive him around in a 1996 Cadillac. Linked thus with Chuck, Hans sees a side of New York he would not visit as a Manhattan investment banker and is unwittingly drawn toward the periphery of a crime plot he does not understand and finds revolting. Told from Hans’s point of view, the story moves from a time in 2006 when Hans is back in London reunited with his wife and son to their 1998 relocation to New York City and through the birth of their son and their separation in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Netherland locates its center in the experience of a European man working in the States. It provides an outsider’s view of post-September 11 New York, the Bush
administration, and U.S. international military action. In the personal life of that outsider, Netherland maps a trajectory from isolation and depression to reunion. The novel won the PEN/Faulkner Award for 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
One literary context for Netherland is a rags-to-riches scenario, relegated in this novel to the plotline concerning Chuck Ramkisson. Popularized by Horatio Alger Jr. (1832-1899), these stories literalized a nineteenthcentury American idea that given a free marketplace and a democratic political system, ordinary hard-working individuals could become wealthy. Chuck preaches this belief and broadly applies it to himself. According to him, he is living the anything-is-possible immigrant’s dreamcome-true. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, he is an entrepreneur, he sees challenges as opportunities, and he knows he is on his way to becoming a millionaire. Chuck diverts from the Alger plotline in two ways. Alger envisioned this economic rise for native-born Americans, whereas Chuck is an immigrant, and Alger preached honesty and hard work, whereas Chuck engages in criminal activity. Netherland also suggests links to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). In his link to the New York numbers racket and crime scene, Chuck has something in common with Jay Gatsby. That Chuck is viewed by an outsider who sees him from the “rim of things” (105) is another point of comparison. In the Fitzgerald novel, questions remain about the murdered Gatsby, about his rise and his criminal involvement, because that story comes through the peripheral narrator Nick Carraway, an outsider to Gatsby’s world. The historical context for Netherland lies in its setting: New York City between 1998 and 2005. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Trade
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MAJOR CHARACTERS MIKE ABELSKY, a Russian Jewish American, works with Chuck Ramkisson. CHARLES BOLTON is Rachel van den Broek’s English father. HANS VAN DEN BROEK, the Dutch protagonist, is a high-paid equities analyst living in New York City and London and working for an unnamed bank. MIRIAM VAN DEN BROEK is the widowed mother of Hans. She lives in The Hague, Netherlands, and visits her son and daughter-in-law after the birth of their son. RACHEL VAN DEN BROEK, the wife of Hans van den Broek, is a lawyer who returns to England with the couple’s son Jake after the Bush administration pronounces its intention to invade Iraq. MARTIN CASEY, a London chef, is the short-term love interest of Rachel van den Broek while she is living apart from her husband and considering divorce. ELIZA, the mistress of Chuck Ramkisson, is a specialist at arranging photos in albums. KHAMRA (CHUCK) RAMKISSON, is a cricket umpire and entrepreneur, born in Trinidad but now a naturalized U.S. citizen, who runs a numbers racket. MOHMET TASINAR, called the Angel, is a sexually ambiguous resident of the Chelsea Hotel.
Center towers, people living in the Tribeca area, like Hans and Rachel, were forced to move elsewhere. The historic and artwork-emblazoned Chelsea Hotel was only one of many sites that received new residents. Hans remarks on how in the post-9/11 days, New Yorkers would invariably talk about the attacks and whatever politics and other issues surrounded them whenever they gathered for drinks and dinner. After Rachel moves back to London, in a phone call to Han, she attacks the Bush administration, its decision to invade Iraq, and what she sees as U.S. imperialism. The novel alludes to the Northeast power-grid outage of 2004 and describes what it was like for New Yorkers to witness their city in total darkness. It also provides some history regarding the Staten Island Cricket Club, founded in 1872, whose members in the early 2000s are mostly immigrants from South Asia, India, and the Caribbean. Cricket was enjoyed in the United States before baseball and football, but it was eclipsed by these subsequent so-called all-American games. The novel also alludes to the famous Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, which became a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
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W Themes A central theme of Netherland is obliquely connected to the novel’s title. Literally, the nether land is that situated below the surface, the low land, hence the name for Holland because it is below sea level, a country made possible by dikes. The protagonist is a Netherlander, a Dutch man by birth, one whose memories begin with ice skating on the frozen ditch water near his home in The Hague. The netherworld is the world of the dead, and that may be extended to include the underworld of criminal activity, the world that is hidden or tries to hide from the work-a-day world of ordinary people. In this sense, Chuck belongs to the netherworld, as a criminal, as a man whose body remains below the canal surface for two years. The word netherland may also refer to that part of the personality that remains hidden and unexpressed. Faced with Rachel’s decision to leave New York, Hans admits he “had no idea how to respond effectively,” that he “could not disarrange the boundless, freezing dismay that undermined every personal motion” he made (9899). He is suspended in a nether world of depression, of inaction, of not-knowing. Sharply unlike his poetic prose that describes his memories, Hans’s spoken words are abbreviated, trail off in silence, or fail to communicate his feelings. Another example of this inability to verbalize occurs when his colleague, Rivera, confides that he is being fired. Hans admits “not knowing what to say” (104). The two men stand at the window looking down on the rainy street, and Hans narrates that they “surveyed, twenty-two floors down, the roving black blooms of four-dollar umbrellas” (104). A connected theme concerns the notion that individuals are changed by each time in their lives, that they are one person facing a current time or event and a different person in a subsequent time or event. O’Neill’s handling of photographs and albums illustrates this notion. Hans collects in a box the “Kodak moments” (129) of his son Jake and then wishes they were arranged in an album. He hires Eliza, who does this kind of work, and she reports that the key to arranging an album is finding the story in the photographs. She arranges pictures of Jake chronologically, showing him growing up. Hans admits to her that she “has the knack” (235), but then he reflects that he did not tell her how the album also “documented my son’s never-ending, never truly acceptable selfcancellations.” As he sees it, “In a space of a few pages his winter self was crossed out by his summer self which in turn was crossed out by his next self” (235). The self does not persist; it is canceled out. Thus, when he is back in London at work, Hans was likely to say of himself that he was “out of New York” (181), meaning on the surface that he had transferred from the New York branch of this bank to the London branch. But
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then he narrates what he calls his “secret, almost shameful feeling . . . that New York interposed itself, once and for all, between [him] and all other places of origin” (181). In other words, he was in returning to London not the same man who left it six years before. Cricket provides the one anodyne for Hans of this sense of the lost self. It takes him to a sense of group membership that softens his loneliness and in batting the way he was taught as a child, playing the game connects him to what he calls his “mothered self” (50). Memory and the love of this game tied to his childhood sustain Hans as he faces the parts of himself he does not know and emerges as a different person shaped by his past.
W Style Netherland can be said to be a postcolonial work, which means that it calls into question notions of international dominance and empire that many outsiders saw in the George W. Bush administration and its response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Postcolonial works present diverse views and challenge the tacit assumptions of preeminence held in the West. The spectrum of views voiced in the novel can be marked by contrasting Rachel’s angry phone speech (97-98) with the opening ceremonies at the Elegant Antun’s (136-37). Rachel speaks about the United States as it appears to many people outside the country. Explaining why she does not want Jake to “grow up with an American perspective” (96), Rachel asserts: “Bush wants to attack Iraq as part of a right-wing plan to destroy international law and order as we know it and replace it with the global rule of American force” (96). Her opinion sees the invasion of Iraq as a perverse continuation of the belief in manifest destiny: First the United States subsumes the continent, next the world. Her position is contrasted with the fancy dinner party Hans attends as Chuck’s guest. The dinner party begins with the national anthem immediately followed by “a prayer for ‘our troops abroad, who are tonight putting their lives at risk for our freedom’” (136-37). The assumption here is that the United States is defending the freedom of its citizens by invading Iraq; Rachel would maintain the U.S. invasion violates international law and puts at risk the freedom of the residents in the country it invades.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Cork, Ireland, in 1964, Joseph O’Neill is part Irish and part Turkish. He was mostly raised in the Netherlands and then educated in law at Cambridge University and worked as a barrister through the 1990s, keeping his interest in literature and writing as a hobby. He wrote two novels, This Is the Life (1991) and The Breezes (1995), and an autobiography, BloodDark Track (2000), before publishing Netherland (2008). This third novel made the New York Times list of “The 10 Best Books of 2008” and won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction prize. As of 2010, O’Neill was a regular contributor to the Atlantic and lived in the Hotel Chelsea in New York City with his wife, Sally Singer, editor of Vogue, and their children. Playing cricket in New York City gave O’Neill access to the South Asian and West Indian subculture he describes in Netherland.
W Critical Reception Netherland was well received, as is reflected in its having been included in the New York Times “10 Best Books of 2008.” Several critics commented on its portrait of New York City. For example, Heather Paulson stated: “Through the author’s outsider vision of the city, New
Photograph of Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland. Ulf Andersen/ Getty Images
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York’s particular blend of cultural oddities and multifarious inhabitants are brought to the surface, revealing something touching and distinct about contemporary life.” A review in Publishers Weekly noted that the work “offers an outsider’s view of New York bursting with wisdom, authenticity and a sobering jolt of realism.” John Freeman agreed, stating that Netherland “turns the city once known as Nieuw Amsterdam inside out with the tale of an ex-pat Dutch banker.” A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews linked the urban portrait with Chuck Ramkisson and compared the setting to Joseph Conrad’s famous novel set in Congo: “A classic charismatic rogue, Chuck leads Hans on a ‘Heart of Darkness’ tour of New York’s immigrant underbelly.” Critics also noted the novel’s timeframe, which places the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers, in the near background. For example, Dwight Garner wrote: “In the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction yet about post-9/11 New York and London, the game of cricket provides solace to a man whose family disintegrates after the attacks.” Many commented on enjoying the book. For example, Laurie A. Cavanaugh wrote: “Hans’s meandering, somewhat old-fashioned narrative takes a patient reader in and out of past and present.” Garner confessed that reading the book “satisfied a craving” he did not know he had, and Freeman called the novel “a fabulous, profoundly enjoyable New York story about . . . that deeply New York penchant for new beginnings.” Garner praised the descriptions of cricket, which were handled with “grace,” and Chuck’s “rambling political and cultural” monologues. But the book did not escape negative criticism. A review in the Economist faulted the plot for leaving Ramkisson’s murder unexplained and for his death having no effect on Hans. Also criticized were O’Neill’s lengthy descriptions of routes through the city, which read like a tourist’s road map. In this reviewer’s mind, “the plot is light and fragile.” Garner also found weak spots in the role of other Chelsea Hotel residents, which in Garner’s view “were asked to carry cheap metaphorical weight.” Such criticism was barely registered among the compliments, however. Paulson summed up the novel as “a powerful merger of seen and unseen struggles, the unraveling of an American dream, and one man’s rebirth through it all,” and Publishers Weekly noted that Netherland “offers an outsider’s view of New York bursting with wisdom, authenticity and a sobering jolt of realism.” In all, O’Neill’s third novel was affirmed as a personal accomplishment and an excellent portrait of New York City.
Freeman, John. “New York, Ever Renewing; Fiction: In Netherland, Joseph O’Neill Looks at How the City and Its Citizens Continue to Reinvent Themselves.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Minneapolis Star Tribune 6 July 2008. Print. Garner, Dwight. “The Ashes.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. New York Times Book Review 18 May 2008: 1(L). Print. Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Publishers Weekly 3 Mar. 2008: 28. Print. “New Fiction: Bowled Out, not Over. (Netherland by Joseph O’Neill).” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Economist 28 June 2008. Print. O’Neill, Joseph. Netherland. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. Print. “O’Neill, Joseph: Netherland.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Kirkus Reviews 15 Mar. 2008. Print. Paulson, Heather. “Netherland.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Booklist 15 Apr. 2008: 26. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Beck, Stefan. “Beside the Golden Door.” New Criterion 27.3 (2008): 30+. Print. Compares Netherland to other great American novels, for example, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and explains connections between Chuck Ramkisson and Jay Gatsby. Kushner, Adam B. “A Lost Boy Grows Up.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Newsweek International 30 June 2008. Print. Explains how cricket is the wormhole through which antihero Hans travels in order to find himself. Lucey, Anne. “Netherland by Joseph O’Neill Wins [euro] 15,000 Kerry Group Fiction Prize.” Irish Times 8 Mar. 2009. Print. Describes the festival at which O’Neill was awarded this prize and how he explained the Irish literary connection to cricket. Sherwell, Philip. “The Man Who Bowled Over New York.” Sunday Telegraph [London] 3 Aug. 2008. Print. Describes the hard sell of getting this novel published, given its depiction of cricket in New York. Thompson, Bob. “Netherland Has Its Day in the Sun.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Washington Post 11 May 2009. Print. Describes PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony and Barack Obama’s endorsement of novel. Gale Resources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cavanaugh, Laurie A. “O’Neill, Joseph. Netherland.” Rev. of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. Library Journal 15 May 2008: 93. Print.
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“Joseph O’Neill.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1000126022&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Netherland Open Web Sources
The 2009 interview, titled “Novelist Joseph O’Neill Revisits ‘Netherland,’” conducted by Terry Gross of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, is available online at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=106392287 For Further Reading
Branch Press, 2008. Print. A professor’s examination of the 9/11 report and the unanswered questions concerning the attacks of September 11, 2001. Jacobson, Sid, and Ernie Colón. After 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2001-). New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. Print. A graphic approach to explaining the effects of the so-called war on terror which draws on international news reports.
DiMarco, Damon. Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11. Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press, 2007. Print. Includes the experiences of people in the towers, outside them, at Ground Zero volunteering to help, and reflecting on the aftermath.
O’Neill, Joseph. Blood-Dark Track: A Family History. New York: Vintage, 2010. Print. Tells the story of the author’s two grandfathers who were both, for very different reasons, imprisoned during World War II.
Griffin, David Ray. The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-up, and the Exposé. New York: Olive
Melodie Monahan
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Never Let Me Go By Kazuo Ishiguro
W Introduction Although told in the form of flashbacks from an England of the late 1990s, Never Let Me Go is a story about a terrifying future world in which human clones are raised for the express purpose of donating their organs to prolong the lives of humans afflicted with life-threatening diseases. The novel is narrated by thirty-one-year-old Kathy H., a “carer” for fellow clones who are in the agonizing process of giving up their organs for transplant. As with much of Kazuo Ishiguro’s fiction, Never Let Me Go evokes a near-distant past, viewed from the perspective of a protagonist looking back at a world she perceives to be more idyllic than the present. In the case of Never Let Me Go, this world is a picturesque boarding school in the English countryside, Hailsham, where Kathy spent her childhood isolated from the outside world with best friends Ruth and Tommy. The true nature of the institution—a breeding center for organs—is only gradually and mysteriously revealed to the reader, consistent with the clones’ own halting progression toward knowledge of their role in this dystopian universe. As Kathy’s memories proceed, she and Ruth and Tommy graduate from Hailsham and enter their transition phase—residence at an adult halfway house known as the Cottages, before being called upon to “complete,” or die, which generally occurs after their fourth donation. Despite being criticized for some implausibilities in its plot, Never Let Me Go has been roundly praised as a heartbreaking variation on the theme of “man’s inhumanity to man” in an alternate world where human decency takes a backseat to scientific progress. A finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the National Book
Critics Circle Award, Never Let Me Go was named by Time magazine as the best English-language novel of 2005.
W Literary and Historical Context
Never Let Me Go was described by Kliatt reviewer Sarah Howard as “an eerie novel about the potential future relationship between modern science and Western society—and the conflicting consequences.” Never Let Me Go is dystopian fiction on a small scale, as Ishiguro explained it in an interview with Emily Mead for Publishers Weekly: “I’m not really interested in reimagining the whole world and writing the details of everyday life—what cars will look like, what government will look like—80 years from now. . . . All I did was imagine the world as it would be if our nuclear technology, our capacity to destroy ourselves many times over, was replaced with a kind of medical technology.” Themes of loss, memory, and regret, and of life unexamined, have infused all of Ishiguro’s fiction, and Never Let Me Go is no exception. Never Let Me Go is a meditation on a past history lived according to veiled truths. Most often, and most famously in Ishiguro’s portrayals of the obedient butler, Stevens, in Remains of the Day, the lack of discernment appears to be the fault of his self-deluded protagonists. But in Never Let Me Go the clones are the victims of a carefully orchestrated and cruel deception, and Ishiguro suggests that they have very little choice but to accept without question their life of self-sacrifice. It is not until the clones are adults that they are able to fully comprehend the hints and vague innuendos at Hailsham that signal their futures. Indeed, the clones are told that they are “special,” different from their guardians at the school
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Never Let Me Go
and from normal people, brainwashed into believing that they have been chosen for the most honorable of causes, the survival of the human species.
MAJOR CHARACTERS
W Themes
MISS EMILY is the head of Hailsham, responsible for its policy of ethical treatment of the clones.
Critic Peter Kemp spoke of this indoctrination process as an important theme in Never Let Me Go: “Lives maimed by oppressive milieu have been at the heart of almost every Ishiguro novel. Here, he carries this preoccupation a cruel stage further. Exploitation, always an important theme, emerges in a disturbingly macabre form.” What makes the call to duty so heartbreaking in Never Let Me Go, according to critics, is its imposition on a world of childhood innocence at Hailsham. Furthermore, it is, in Ishiguro’s words, the “small decencies” (“Profile”) that occur among friends and teachers at Hailsham that expose the callous self-indulgence of the so-called normal people. Concerned about the clones’ subhuman status in
KATHY H, with no surname as befits her clone status, is the narrator of the novel. The story consists mainly of her recollections of her life at an English boarding school that doubles as an organ farm. But her memories also progress into her early adult years and those of her fellow clones and classmates, Ruth and Tommy, who become donors before her. MISS LUCY, a human teacher at Hailsham, eventually leaves the school in protest over its policy of keeping the clones in the dark about their futures. MADAME is a human who delivers the clones’ artwork for public display in a gallery in the outside world. RUTH is a student-clone at Hailsham, more coldhearted than either Kathy or Tommy, and so destined to be the leader of their little group of friends. On her deathbed, Ruth admits regret at having intervened in the romance of Kathy and Tommy. TOMMY is Kathy’s soul mate and, after Ruth’s death, the two hope for a brief reprieve from their fate, only to discover that they had been misled into thinking that true love could force a deferral of their donations.
A strand of human DNA. In Never Let Me Go, human clones are produced in order to create donor organs for real humans. James Steidl/Shutterstock.com
the real world, the teachers there are loving and nurturing and attempt to prove, by way of displaying the clones’ artwork at a public gallery in the world outside, that they are possessed of souls. One of the most touching incidents in the novel involves Tommy’s devoted quest to replace Kathy’s favorite music tape, which has disappeared from her room and which contains the song of the novel’s title. Ruth, despite being the least emotional of the trio of friends, is compelled on her deathbed to confess her error in seeking a romantic relationship with Tommy, knowing that he and Kathy were much better suited to one another. In the final analysis, according to most reviewers, Never Let Me Go is a novel that asks questions about what it means to be human. Although Never Let Me Go does not directly confront the many ethical issues involved in cloning, they are at the heart of Ishiguro’s story in the contrast between Hailsham and the world outside its walls. As Jonathan Yardley expressed it, “It is almost literally a novel about humanity: what constitutes it, what it means, how it can be honored or denied. These little children, and the adults they eventually become, are brought up to serve humanity in the most astonishing and selfless ways, and the humanity they achieve in so doing makes us realize that in a new world the word must
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR One of the most acclaimed novelists of his generation, Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British writer famous for his Booker Prize-winning international best seller Remains of the Day. The novel was adapted for the screen in a highly popular MerchantIvory production starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Now the author of six novels, Ishiguro is known for his themes of loss and nostalgia as reproduced in the memories of unreliable narrators given to romanticizing the past. Ishiguro’s most recent novel, Never Let Me Go, also takes the form of a reminiscence, but it is set in a terrifying alternate universe where human cloning has become an accepted practice. In 1995 the Order of the British Empire was bestowed upon Ishiguro for services to literature.
be redefined.” The clones’ state of blissful ignorance at Hailsham and their acts of human kindness have been seen as all the more heart wrenching given the evil of the world to which they are eventually delivered.
W Style The duality of ignorance and knowledge attached to the theme of the loss of childhood innocence is reproduced in the style of the novel, which only gradually, through a pattern of flashbacks, reveals the true nature of the clones’ confinement. Yardley observed, quoting Kathy, “If the guardians at Hailsham ‘timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of information,’ by the same token Ishiguro carefully and deliberately unfolds Hailsham’s secrets one by one, piece by piece, as if he were slowly peeling an artichoke.” The air of mystery is enhanced by Ishiguro’s reliance on euphemisms that become clear only as the novel progresses. Critic Kemp wrote of Ishiguro’s characteristic “appetite for the enigmatic”: “What initially seems a near-idyll of benign teachers, lively students, stimulating classes, . . . assumes an increasingly out-of-true aspect. Innocuous words—‘carer’, ‘students’, ‘donation’, ‘complete’—take on deepeningly sinister overtones. Gradually, through Kathy’s rosy-tinted retrospect, the contours of a horrific situation loom.”
Kathy, the main character of Never Let Me Go, recalls spending her childhood at a boarding school in the English countryside. stocker1970/ Shutterstock.com
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Never Let Me Go
W Critical Reception Critics have frequently praised Never Let Me Go as a universal metaphor for the corruption of childhood happiness. Joseph O’Neill called the novel “an extreme and heartbreaking version of the exodus of all children from the innocence in which the benevolent but fraudulent adult world conspires to place them.” Siddhartha Deb agreed, writing, “Although the story of Kathy and her friends is especially poignant because of their status as clones, we can still identify with their predicament. Does not all childhood involve an interplay between knowledge and ignorance, hope and fear?” Ishiguro’s dystopian vision, imposed as it is on an organ farm rare in its regard for the clones’ humanity, has been admired for compelling readers to reconsider what it means to be human. Yet some reviewers have complained that his subtle but powerful approach to the ethics of cloning is marred by the implausibility of its plot. Philip Hensher’s reservations about the novel in this regard are representative: “When the products of these institutions become aware of their fate, why don’t any of them ever run away? Why on earth should they be educated to a high point of liberal humanity, when human vegetables would serve the purpose just as well?” When asked by Emily Mead about the clones’ failure to rebel, Ishiguro responded, “A lot of clone stories wind up being about slavery and a fight for freedom, but I was specifically interested in looking at how Tommy and Kathy, at least, try to love and be friends to each other in the time that they have.” Most critics have in the end found Never Let Me Go both alarming and touching, a “work of sciencefiction horror with a tragic payoff,” in the words of Time’s Lev Grossman, “an existential waltz, set to the music of hopelessness, about ordinary people trying to wring some joy out of life before it ends, and trying not to flinch as the axe falls.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Deb, Siddhartha. “Lost Corner.” New Statesman 18.849 (7 Mar. 2005): 55. Print. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 219. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Grossman, Lev. “Best Movies, TV, Books and Theater of the Decade. Books: 1. Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro.” Time.com. 29 Dec. 2009. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Hensher, Philip. “School for Scandal.” Spectator 297.9212 (26 Feb. 2005): 32. Print. Howard, Sarah. “Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go.” Kliatt 40.5 (Sept. 2006): 24. Print. Kemp, Peter. “Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.” Sunday Times [London] 20 Feb. 2005. Print.
Reviewsofbooks.com. Amazon.com. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Mead, Emily. “Future Present.” Publishers Weekly 252.5 (31 Jan. 2005): 47. Print. O’Neill, Joseph. “Never Let Me Go.” Atlantic 295.4 (May 2005): 123. Print. “Profile: Kazuo Ishiguro and His Newest Novel, Never Let Me Go.” Day to Day 4 May 2005. Broadcast transcript. Yardley, Jonathan. “Never Let Me Go.” Washington Post 17 Apr. 2005. Print. complete-review.com. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Ishiguro, Kazuo: Never Let Me Go.” Kirkus Reviews 73.1 (1 Jan. 2005): 11. Print. Outlines the plot of Never Let Me Go, with exuberant praise for the novel’s emotional power. Kakutani, Michiko. “Sealed in a World That’s Not as It Seems.” New York Times 4 Apr. 2005. nytimes.com. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. Considers Never Let Me Go as accomplished a work as Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, calling the later novel “an elegiac meditation on mortality and lost innocence: a portrait of adolescence at that hinge moment in life when self-knowledge brings intimations of one’s destiny.” Menand, Louis. “Something about Kathy.” New Yorker 81.6 (28 Mar. 2005): 78. Print. Notes that the characters in all of Ishiguro’s novels struggle with the question of what it means to be really human so that the theme of cloning was a logical next step for him. “Never Let Me Go.” complete-review.com. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. A website about fiction that provides its own review of the novel along with links to biographical sources and over twenty reviews and interviews concerning Never Let Me Go. “Never Let Me Go.” Publishers Weekly 252.5 (31 Jan. 2005): 46. Print. A thoughtful plot summary praising Ishiguro’s poignant depiction of Hailsham school days, made more sweetly innocent by the clones’ limited knowledge of their future responsibilities. Gale Resources
“Kazuo Ishiguro.” Contemporary Authors Online. Merritt:CengageGale,2006.Web.29Aug.2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, vols. 49, 95, 133, and 159. Print. “Kazuo Ishiguro.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale Group, 1998. 145-53. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Also covered in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Complete Online. Web. 29 Aug. 2010.
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Never Let Me Go Open Web Sources
Ishiguro was interviewed about Never Let Me Go on May 4, 2005, by Karen Grigsby Bates for the National Public Radio program Day to Day. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=4629918 For Further Reading
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books, 2004. Print. Speculative science fiction in which biotech companies run the world, having perfected gene splicing and DNA manipulation and the manufacture of products that, while highly damaging to the environment, ensure sexual satisfaction, constant happiness, and everlasting youth. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1998. Print. Often held up as the prototypical twentieth-century dystopian novel. First published in 1932, Brave New World describes the horrors of a genetically and socially engineered society.
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Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. London: Gollancz, 2000. Print. Frequently anthologized Hugo Award-winning short story with a premise similar to that of Never Let Me Go. In Le Guin’s work, a fairy-tale society is achieved at the expense of one child who is imprisoned in a dark and dirty cellar with no human contact. McGee, Glenn. “Primer on Ethics and Human Cloning.” actionbioscience.org. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. A succinct guide to the ethical, legal, and social issues of cloning. Adaptations
Never Let Me Go. Dir. Mark Romanek. Perf. Keira Knightley, Charlotte Rampling, Carey Mulligan, and Andrew Garfield. DNA Films, 2010. Film. The film version of the novel headlined the Toronto and London film festivals, fall 2010, and is slated for general release January 21, 2011. Janet Mullane
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Night Watch By Sarah Waters
W Introduction Sarah Waters began her novel-writing career with three popular books set in England’s Victorian age: Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (2000), and Fingersmith (2002). The 2007 winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, The Night Watch, her fourth work of fiction, was a departure from these earlier works, which centered on lesbian themes and are more melodramatic. Although some of the characters in Night Watch are lesbians, other types of relationships are also important, and Waters depicts a mixture of female and male characters whose tales are compellingly rendered. Also, The Night Watch is set during the London Blitz of World War II and continues a few years after the war, rather than being set in the nineteenth century. Naturally, the war affects these people’s lives, but relationships are a main concern for Waters in this book. Three of the characters are lesbians involved in a complex and interwoven relationship, a fourth is a heterosexual woman having an affair with a married soldier, and the fifth is a man who clearly is struggling with his homosexual inclinations. The narrative structure of how all these relationships develop and threaten to fall apart has fascinated a number of reviewers of the novel, which was also short-listed in 2006 for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
The setting of The Night Watch is World War II London, England, and the years immediately following the war. London—and the rest of England—was victim of the Blitz, named for a series of all-out bombings in which
Nazi Germany attacked the city steadily from September 1940 to May 1941. During the Blitz, approximately twenty thousand Londoners were killed, and attacks were also perpetrated in many other British cities. Germany’s purpose was to bring Great Britain to its knees and cause an early surrender. However, the British people endured and the bombings dissipated while Germany’s Adolf Hitler attacked other nations. Then, in 1944, the Germans completed development of the V-1 rocket. While the Blitz was the result of the German Luftwaffe dropping bombs over cities, the V1 rocket had a range that could reach from Germany to England. While this signaled a frightening development in German military technology, the V-1 attacks were not as intense as the earlier Blitz. The tide of the war had also begun to turn by then in the favor of the Allies. Waters’s novel also takes place in 1947, two years after the end of the war in Europe. While hostilities were at an end, millions had lost their homes, possessions, and family members. It was still an extremely difficult time for Britain and Europe, with many people suffering economically and emotionally.
W Themes Loneliness, loss, and the inability to find acceptance are at the heart of Waters’s The Night Watch. While sexual orientation is sometimes a problem within the protagonist’s lives, as in Helen’s case, the loneliness of these characters is largely the result of people treating others badly. For the author, the sexuality of her characters is just one part of their personas. Waters was quoted in a Herizons review by Zoe Whittal: “I’ve never especially been interested in just writing a story about people just dealing with homophobia. The gay stuff tends to be a bit more incidental to the other issues.” The wartime setting serves to emphasize the destructive environment in which Waters’s characters find themselves. As Diana Postlethwaite wrote in The
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The Night Watch
MAJOR CHARACTERS ROBERT FRASER was Duncan’s cell mate. He is a conscientious objector of the war and he and Duncan form a bond while in prison. HELEN GINIVER, who works with Viv running a matchmaking service for people who are now single because of the war, and is the love interest of Kay, who met Helen during the war. However, Helen is now interested in Julia Standing, who writes mystery novels. Helen becomes jealous of Ursula Waring, who has been writing criticism of Julia’s work and who has been spending a lot of time with the author. KAY LANGRISH is an ambulance driver during the war, when she worked with Mickey. She meets Helen during one of the air raids and soon develops strong feelings for her. Life for Kay after the war seems a disappointment, and she spends many of her nights going to the movies by herself. MR. LEONARD is the landlord of the building where Kay lives. He is extremely sympathetic and helpful to people who have been hurt in one way or another by the war. MR. MUNDY is the man with whom Duncan lives. Mr. Mundy was also a prison guard where Duncan served time. DUNCAN PEARCE is Viv’s brother. During the war, he spent several years in prison, where Viv and their father visited him. It is not really clear until the end of the book why Duncan went to prison, though it is hinted at that it had something to do with a man named Alec. After the war, Duncan lives with Mr. Mundy, whom he calls “Uncle Horace.” Duncan is in denial, apparently, that he is gay. REGGIE is a married soldier who has an affair with Viv. He is unhappily married and still pursues Viv after the war, but she begins to lose her passion for him. JULIA STANDING is a successful mystery novelist and Helen’s love interest. VIVIEN (Viv) is Duncan’s sister. She works as a typist during the war and falls in love with a married soldier named Reggie. The affair leads to a pregnancy and a botched abortion that almost kills her. After the war, she works with Helen at a matchmaking service.
Women’s Review of Books: “Botched suicide attempts and grisly back-street abortions, grim prisons and even grimmer bedrooms: Waters deploys her historical setting as metaphorical window-dressing for the emotional blitzkrieg these women and men inflict upon one another in the name of love.” Daneet Steffens, writing in Time International, further maintained that the effects of the war, and not just the interpersonal relationships, is a significant theme: “The novel’s ultimate theme . . . is the damage that war
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The Night Watch examines unique relationships that grow among a number of people following the London Blitz of World War II. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
inflicts beyond the front lines, the way that it scars the personalities even of civilians.” Ultimately, the problems that Helen, Kay, Duncan, Viv, and the others face is their inability to openly express their loves for others, whether it is a homosexual romance —like those involving Kay, Helen, and Duncan—or the desire for someone who is already married, as in Viv’s case. They therefore can never find the same kind of relief felt by the injured and troubled tenants who are ministered to by the kindly Mr. Leonard. “Waters’s characters struggle to maintain love in the absence of social acceptance, and they must continually reinforce their own faith in its legitimacy. ‘Deviant’ love—whether gay, lesbian, or adulterous—must survive not only the upheaval of war but also the denial in peacetime of the open expression of its joys,” concluded Thomas March in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.
W Style When one of Waters’s characters, Kay, goes to the movies, she remarks that she is more interested in the beginning of the film than the end because people’s pasts are more interesting than their futures. The same seems true for the author, because The Night Watch is constructed in such a way as to emphasize the importance of people’s personal history. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Night Watch
The story begins in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. The main characters are introduced and their varied relationships are portrayed as being in stages of distress. Waters is very careful not to reveal too much in this first section, and dialogue only implies a number of incidents in the past. Of course, the characters, having lived those lives, know what they are speaking of and don’t have to explain to the others what they mean when they refer to the past. Readers learn about such events as Duncan’s earlier imprisonment, for instance, but do not know why he was there or who his present roommate, Mr. Mundy, really is. Key details are thus left unclear, and readers are left guessing about particular facts. The second part of the book, set during 1944 in London, is also the longest. Here readers learn much more about the dynamics of the author’s characters as they struggle to exist in war-torn London. The story reveals how Viv meets the married Reggie and how Kay panics when she thinks a bomb strike has killed Helen. The final section occurs in 1941 and is the shortest at only about fifty pages. Here the reader gets a quick look at important first meetings, such as how Kay met Helen and how an important relationship that Duncan had resulted in his imprisonment. The reader sees in this section, as well as in the 1944 section, how important Helen was to Kay and how Duncan’s personal loss has affected him and why.
W Critical Reception Reviewers have noted this novel was a departure from the Victorian books Waters had previously penned, praised the research that went into recreating wartime London, which makes the story come alive. “Waters, acclaimed for her Victorian-era romps, has done meticulous research, and renders wartime scenes with unnerving authenticity,” stated one New Yorker writer. A Publishers Weekly critic similarly averred: “Night Watch is a skillfully written historical account of love of all persuasions trying to survive the dark prospects of London during the blitz.” Library Journal contributor Devon Thomas wrote that “Night Watch is structurally more complex than her previous works, but the astonishing period detail and focus on the forgotten corners of society remain.” Spectator critic Kate Chisholm averred that Waters’s dialogue occasionally slips and causes her characters to sound too modern; she points out in particular how Duncan’s antiwar comments do not sound like those that would be made by someone in the 1940s. Despite this, Chisholm stated: “There’s a visceral intensity to Waters’s writing about relationships so that you can almost feel the poison of her characters’ jealous passions coursing through your own veins.” An Observer critic congratulated Waters on her ambitious work of fiction, marveling at how the author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Neyland, Wales, in 1966, Sarah Waters is the daughter of an oil refinery engineer and a housewife. As a child, she enjoyed writing stories and poems. Later, she majored in English literature at the University of Kent and Lancaster University. After finishing her master’s degree at the latter, she worked in libraries and bookstores for a time. Waters then went back to school, completing a doctorate at the Open University, where she focused on gay and lesbian historical fiction. She published some nonfiction works and wrote for journals on topics such as history and sexuality before moving on to fiction. This switch was inspired by her interest in London’s history, which became the setting of her first three novels, all set in Victorian London. Not only were they historical novels, though, they also centered on gay and lesbian themes. Waters was praised for her writing, both by those in the mainstream and by critics in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transexual press. Her works have earned her Man Booker and Orange Prize nominations, and she was named Author of the Year by the Booksellers’ Association, the British Book Awards, and by Waterstone’s Booksellers. Now a full-time author, Waters lives in Kennington, London, England.
pulls together a complex narrative into a cohesive whole: “The complex web connecting the characters, the swooping themes of love and death and the reverse chronology should condemn this novel to a messy noodle soup. Instead, Waters skillfully makes the complicated narrative look like child’s play.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Briefly Noted.” Rev. of The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters. New Yorker 10 Apr. 2006: 79. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Chisholm, Kate. “Change and Decay.” Spectator 28 Jan. 2006: 42. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. March, Thomas. “War and Love.” Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide 14.1 (2007): 41+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Night Watch audiobook. Publishers Weekly 253.23 (2006): 58. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. “Paperback of the Week: The Night Watch Sarah Waters.” Observer [London] 28 Jan. 2007: 26. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 15 Sept. 2010.
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Postlethwaite, Diana. “A Lot of Everything.” Women’s Review of Books Sept.-Oct. 2006: 6+. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Steffens, Daneet. “A Book in Reverse: Backwards Runs Sarah Waters’s Gripping New Novel, Until in a Wartime Setting Revealed Is all.” Time International [Europe ed.] 167.9 (2006): 54. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Thomas, Devon. Rev. of The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters. Library Journal 131.1 (2006): 106. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Whittal, Zoe. “Sarah Waters.” Herizons (2006): 44. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Grant, Sunnie. “Waters, Sarah. The Night Watch.” Kliatt 40.5 (2006): 60. Print. General OneFile. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. A review of the audiotape adaptation of The Night Watch, remarking on how the story is mainly about how people betray one another. “The Night Watch; Sarah Waters.” Times [London, England] 16 Dec. 2006: 10. Print. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. An interview with the author that explores Waters’s decisions on how to approach the narrative.
experienced the bombings. http://www.museumo flondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/blitz/index.html The History’s Place’s page on the Blitz gives historical background about the event, photos, and more about World War II to place it within historical context. http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ about-blitz.htm For Further Reading
Corcoran, Gary Paul. The Trip into Milky Way. Nashville: Cold Tree Press, 2006. Print. A fictionalized account of the author’s own experiences. Like Duncan in Waters’s book, Corcoran was a conscientious objector, though his war was in Vietnam. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Cape. 1927. Print. This acclaimed novel about an ambulance driver in World War I Italy who falls in love with a nurse was loosely based on Hemingway’s own experiences. Torrès, Tereska. Women’s Barracks. New York: Fawcett Publications, 1950. Print. Written by a French woman who was in London during World War II, this novel is a fictionalized account of those days. It involves the romantic relationships between soldiers, both heterosexual and lesbian.
Gale Resources
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death. New York: Delacorte, 1969. Print. Vonnegut experiments with chronology in this science fiction classic about a man who seems to skip around in time, experiencing everything from his miserable time in World War II and imprisonment in Dresden to his imprisonment in an alien zoo. The book contains a strong antiwar message.
“Waters, Sarah 1966-.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 414-16. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 9 Sept. 2010.
Willis, Connie. Blackout. New York: Spectra Ballantine Books, 2010. Print. Scientists go back in time to the London Blitz and accidentally change the course of events.
Open Web Sources
Adaptations
The Sarah Waters official home page has an FAQ page about the author, list of book signing events, and information about books and adaptations. http:// www.sarahwaters.com
The Night Watch. “Book at Bedtime,” Radio 4, 2006. A fifteen-part television miniseries adaptation of Waters’s novel presented by the British television network.
“On the Launchpad.” The Bookseller 5214 (2006): 13. Print. General OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Talks about the fifteen-part BBC radio serialization of The Night Watch and the marketing campaign for the book.
The Museum of London Blitz Web Exhibition is a repository of shared testimonials by those who
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No Man’s Land By Duong Thu Huong
W Introduction The story of a love triangle, No Man’s Land, by the Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong, depicts the painful circumstances of a nation ravaged by decades of war and communist repression. At the center of the narrative is Mien, a woman torn between the desire for personal fulfillment on one hand and the need to submit to societal expectations on the other. Years before, her first husband, Bon, went away to war and never returned. Mien remarried and built a happy home with a second husband, the prosperous Hoan. Then Bon suddenly reappears and demands that Mien leave behind all that she values. Mien resumes her life with Bon, and Hoan pursues a life of dissolution in the city. Critics admire No Man’s Land for the author’s sensitivity and attention to detail. Her books are banned in Vietnam. No Man’s Land—originally “Chon vang,” a novel Duong began in the 1990s—was first published in English.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Vietnam War—known in Vietnam as “the Resistance War against America” or simply “the American War”— was but one chapter in a series of wars that spanned five decades and claimed more than five million lives on all sides. The struggle had its roots in World War II, when the Japanese seized control of Indochina, a French colony that included modern-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Communist forces led by Ho Chi Minh fought not only the Japanese but also the French, after the Japanese surrender concentrated their efforts on driving out the colonialists. Having defeated the French in the First Indochina War (1946-1954), Ho established a pro-Soviet government in North Vietnam, with its capital at Hanoi, and
began pressing for control of the Western-allied South Vietnam. Intent on resisting communist domination in Southeast Asia, the United States and allied nations supported South Vietnam, first with equipment and ultimately with troops. This Second Indochina War ended with the communist defeat of South Vietnam in 1975, two years after American forces evacuated. The communist government of North Vietnam was a repressive system and now imposed its totalitarian rule over the South in the newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In 1978 it went to war against the neighboring Cambodia or Kampuchea, whose even more radically communist regime was aligned with China. This action brought about a Chinese invasion the following year, a relatively short campaign known as the Third Indochina War. Having reached the gates of Hanoi, Chinese forces withdrew, but the Cambodian-Vietnamese War (the Third Indochina War) continued until December 1989.
W Themes Two themes emerge in No Man’s Land: the personal consequences of war and the injustice of political and social systems that elevate the needs of the collective over those of the individual. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Mien, lives a life of contentment with her husband, Hoan, and her son, Hanh, in the rural village of Mountain Hamlet. This happy equilibrium is shattered by the sudden appearance of Mien’s former husband, Bon. Mien had assumed that Bon died in the wars. Broken in body, mind, and spirit by the horrors he has endured, Bon has but one hope: to be reunited with his beautiful wife. Although she no longer loves Bon, Mien feels obligated to honor the wishes of a man whose status as a war veteran makes him an object of the utmost respect in the communist state: “The veteran returns to the special gratitude of the community and when he speaks out to claim his share of happiness in this world, no one dares dispute or refuse him.”
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MAJOR CHARACTERS BON is Mien’s first husband. Mien had given him up for dead in the war, but he returns unexpectedly at the beginning of the book. One of the novel’s three story lines concerns his grim wartime experiences, providing insight into the events that made him the troubled man he has become. HANH is the son of Mien and Hoan. Though his mother is forced to leave his father, she returns to their home every day to take care of him. HOAN is Mien’s second husband. A prosperous farmer, he has provided his wife with a life of happiness and contentment that is shattered when she returns to Bon. Hoan’s response to these circumstances constitutes one of the book’s three story lines. Though he leaves Mountain Hamlet to pursue a dissolute existence in the city, he continues to care for Mien both emotionally and financially, sending her money that helps support not only her but also Bon, Ta, and Ta’s children. MIEN is the story’s protagonist and the point-of-view character in one of its three story lines. Formerly married to Bon, she gave her husband up for dead after he failed to return from war, and she subsequently began a new life with Hoan in the rural village of Mountain Hamlet. TA is Bon’s sister. Lazy, promiscuous, and conniving, she allows her many children to steal from the already penurious Bon and eventually manages to siphon from the money Hoan sends to Mien.
Furthermore, Mien faces pressure from her neighbors, who have long envied the material luxuries she has enjoyed with Hoan and who regard her act of selfsacrifice as a form of penance. Esther Allen, writing in World Literature Today, suggests that an “implacable duty to the collectivity . . . dominates every character in the novel.”
W Style No Man’s Land follows three lines of narrative, all written in the third person. First is the story of Mien, who struggles to adapt to her reduced circumstances: not only does Bon live in a shack, but also, the wars have destroyed him physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A second story line consists of Bon’s flashbacks to his wartime experiences, and this narrative affords the reader much greater perspective on him. Seen through Mien’s eyes, he appears repugnant. Allen describes him as “a querulous, foul-breathed old man, a ghoulish stranger.” However, as Duong exposes the horrors that have shaped Bon, he becomes much more sympathetic.
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Finally there is the tale of Hoan, who leaves the village and descends into a self-destructive existence among the brothels of the city. He, too, is shown to be a complex character: he never ceases to love Mien and continues to provide for her even though his money also goes to support Bon as well as his troublesome sister, Ta, and her brood of children. A key component in the writing style of No Man’s Land is the author’s sharp attention to detail and her penchant for lush description. For example, in a passage near the beginning of the book, Mien lingers over the various dishes to be served in a housewarming banquet for her and Hoan. Duong’s powers of description are equally compelling when the subject matter is far less attractive, as for instance in one of Bon’s wartime flashbacks. Digging up the body of a beloved comrade so that he can bring it home to the man’s family, Bon realizes that he might soon become food himself for the vultures surrounding the corpse: “They preened their feathers and wiped their beaks, straining their necks to observe him. These were the looks of torturers waiting to execute a condemned man.”
W Critical Reception Critics have praised the sensitivity with which Duong portrays people, circumstances, and things in No Man’s Land. “As in her previous works,” observes Shirley N. Quan in a review for Library Journal, Duong “here captures the emotional essence of her characters: she attempts to present questions on all sides relating to the issues of love and duty.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer argues that “the outsize emotions of [Hoan and Bon] and the tropical landscape lend an air of melodrama, but Mien’s more calculating sensibility and the complicated choices she makes to satisfy herself and society keep the novel from descending into sentimentality.” Commenting on the attention to detail in No Man’s Land, a writer for Kirkus Reviews notes the “lush description—a bit too metaphor-replete—[that] makes the Vietnamese flora, fauna and cuisine enticingly real.” Likewise Donna Seaman, reviewing the book for Booklist, favorably compares this “ravishing novel” to one of Duong’s earlier works, observing that Duong “evokes the beauty of the land, Vietnam’s ancient traditions, and the timeless rhythms of daily life in counterpoint to the tragedies of communist oppression and war.” In her long review for World Literature Today, Allen makes special note of the passages describing food: “Food has always been central to Duong’s work and to her vision of human individuals and societies . . . . [I]n No Man’s Land, finally, food is no longer mere survival or the assertion of power over others; it is the possibility of living ‘a life fit for human beings.’” Allen contrasts the pampered alienation of Westerners with the far more basic concerns of people struggling simply to enjoy life TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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amid privation and repression, concluding that “in No Man’s Land’s Vietnam, the simple acceptance of an entitlement to comfort and material pleasure is a radical political stance.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allen, Esther. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. World Literature Today 80.5 (2006): 58-61. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Duong Thu Huong. No Man’s Land. Trans. Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. New York: Hyperion East, 2005. Print. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2005: 196. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. Publishers Weekly 7 Mar. 2005: 50-51. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Quan, Shirley N. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. Library Journal 1 Apr. 2005: 86. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR The daughter of a party member, Duong Thu Huong grew up a fervent supporter of communism. She served in a women’s youth brigade during the Vietnam War, which claimed the life of her first husband. She later married a man selected for her by the party and gave birth to a son and a daughter in the defensive tunnels constructed by Vietnamese forces. Her ardor for communism began to cool, however, when the unification of Vietnam in 1975 failed to bring about the peace, prosperity, and equality that the regime had long promised. Duong soon began to express her disillusionment in her writings, and the Vietnamese government responded by branding her a “dissident slut.” The government banned her work, arrested and imprisoned her, and later prevented her from leaving the country. As a result, most of her novels have been published in either France or the United States, in some cases by small Vietnamese-language houses. “Chon vang,” which has yet to be published in its original language, appeared first in English as No Man’s Land. International pressure forced Duong’s release from Vietnam in 2005, and she emigrated to France.
No Man’s Land features a love triangle that is formed when a soldier returns home years after going to war only to find that his wife has married another man. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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No Man's Land is set in the South Asian country of Vietnam. Khoroshunova Olga/Shutterstock.com
Seaman, Donna. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. Booklist 1 Apr. 2005: 1344. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources
Riding, Alan. “Vietnamese Writer Won’t Be Silenced.” New York Times. New York Times 11 July 2005: E1. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Profiles Duong soon after her arrival in Paris, with a discussion of No Man’s Land.
Criticism and Reviews
Gale Resources
Ford, Daniel. Rev. of No Man’s Land, by Duong Thu Huong. Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company 29 Apr. 2005: 6. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Brief, positive review that praises Phan and McPherson’s translation.
“Thu-Huong Duong.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 166. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
Hammond, Margo. “Writers without Borders.” St. Petersburg Times 24 Apr. 2005: 5P. Print. Describes the PEN International Writers Festival in New York, with reference to Duong (who could not attend because she was detained in Vietnam) and No Man’s Land.
“Thu Huong Duong.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 273. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
Morison, Stephen, Jr. “Demilitarized Zone.” Poets and Writers 37.5 (2009): 23-28. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Discusses Vietnamese writers and their works, including Duong and No Man’s Land. “Recently Banned Books.” World Literature Today 80.5 (2006): 25. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Lists works, including No Man’s Land, banned by governments around the world.
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“Thu Huong Duong.” Southeast Asian Writers. Ed. David Smyth. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 348. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
A videotaped interview with Duong appears on the Web site Videocrux. http://www.videocrux.com/video/ 13244/Duong-Thu-Huong-reveals-Minh-love-life David Kilgour, a former member of the Parliament of Canada, has posted a document on his Web site TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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urging support for a Nobel Prize in Literature for Duong. http://www.david-kilgour.com/2009/ Jun_09_2009_02.php The transcript of an interview with Duong is provided on the Web site of Radio Free Asia. http://www.fva. org/0700/story03.htm An audio interview with Duong, along with a transcript, is available online from National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=4990877 The Vietnam Studies Group of the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies has posted on its Web site a lengthy e-mail exchange concerning efforts by the Vietnamese government to suppress Duong. http://www.lib.washington.edu/ southeastasia/vsg/elist_2002/bannings.htm An annotated bibliography of works by Vietnamese writers, including No Man’s Land, is available on the Web site In Focus: Vietnam. http://academic.hws. edu/pge/infocus/vietnam/study_guide_segment7_ literature.html For Further Reading
Daniels, Anthony. Utopias Elsewhere: Journeys in a Vanishing World. New York: Crown, 1991. Print. Soon after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the British physician Daniels set out to visit various parts of the communist world—including North Korea, Albania, Romania, Vietnam, and Cuba—before the international system that shaped them faded into history.
Print. Duong hastily titled this novel before arranging to smuggle it to a small Vietnamese-language press in California. Novel without a Name portrays the horrors of war and communism from the perspective of a North Vietnamese veteran. ———. Paradise of the Blind. Trans. Phan Huy Duong. New York: Morrow, 1993. Print. In this first Vietnamese novel ever translated and published by a major U.S. house, Duong portrays the lives of three women struggling to survive under a system that demands their complete submission. Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. New York: Grove Atlantic, 1997. Print. Though it is set in a time and place quite different from those of No Man’s Land, this novel of the U.S. Civil War likewise employs contrasting points of view to illustrate the horrors of battle as seen through the eyes of a soldier, as well as the fear and uncertainty of the woman at home who wonders whether he is still alive. Hayslip, Le Ly, with Jay Wurts. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print. The true story of a woman’s experience in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, later interpreted in film by the director Oliver Stone as Heaven and Earth (1993). Tucker, Spencer C. Vietnam. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999. Print. This volume chronicles the history of Vietnam from ancient times through the end of the twentieth century.
Duong Thu Huong. Memories of a Pure Spring. Trans. Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. New York: Hyperion East, 2000. Print. Set during and after the wars in Vietnam, this novel tells the tragic story of two lovers whose lives are destroyed by their nation’s repressive regime.
Webb, James H. Lost Soldiers. New York: Bantam, 2001. Print. In this compelling novel, the author (later elected a U.S. senator from Virginia) provides readers with a look at modern Vietnam through the eyes of men who fought on opposite sides.
———. Novel without a Name. Trans. Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. New York: Morrow, 1995.
Judson Knight
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No One Will See Me Cry By Cristina Rivera-Garza
W Introduction No One Will See Me Cry (2003) is a historical novel by the Mexican writer Cristina Rivera-Garza. Originally published as Nadie me verá llorar (1997), it was translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley. The book centers on the stories that the two main characters, Joaquín Buitrago and Matilda Burgos, tell each other about their lives. When the novel opens in 1920, Joaquín is a failed photographer who photographs patients in an insane asylum. Matilda is a patient in the asylum. Narrated in the third person, with frequent flashbacks and shifts in point of view, the novel portrays characters who live on the margins of a society in the throes of revolutionary change. Even on the margins, however, modernization and revolution take their toll, giving rise to the novel’s themes of loss, failure, and madness. These themes are highlighted by interludes of tenderness, passion, and love that survive only in memory, fragile beacons that are more likely to torment than to give comfort. No One Will See Me Cry was the first of Rivera-Garza’s novels to be translated into English. In 2005 it won an Anna Seghers Prize. In its original Spanish, Nadie me verá llorar garnered a José Rubén Romero Prize (1997) and an IMPAC/ CONARTE/ITESM Prize (2000).
W Literary and Historical Context
In 1920, the year in which No One Will See Me Cry opens, Mexico was just beginning the painful process of rebuilding after ten ruinous years of civil war. Once a symbol of Mexico’s modernizing aspirations, the General Insane Asylum, known as La Castañeda, was struggling to do more than merely incarcerate its inmates. In the novel Eduardo Oligochea, the psychiatrist at La Castañeda who
treats Matilda, dreams of advancing his field of study, increasing his wealth, and improving his social standing, but he holds little hope of achieving his goals. Opened in 1910, La Castañeda was intended to revolutionize the treatment of mentally ill patients and was just one of many institutions charged with teaching the modern, democratic values of hard work and moral uprightness among all levels of society. The widespread cultivation of democratic ideals, however, ultimately clashed with the government’s ruthless drive to grow the national economy. Mexico’s rich—and the foreign investors who controlled vast swathes of Mexican land and industry—became richer, while factory workers and displaced farmers grew desperate. As modernization appeared ready to triumph, Mexico was ripe for revolution. In their youth, both Joaquín and Matilda are drawn to the fruits of modernity: elegant shops, beautified streets and parks, electric lighting, and other technological novelties, including cameras. Their involvement with the labor activist Diamantina Vicario, however, exposes them to the first winds of revolution, which does not affect them directly but which nonetheless brings death and destruction to their lives. As the narrator observes at the beginning of Chapter 7, “Both were forever on the wet, messy banks of history, ready to slip and fall out of its spell and yet always inside it. Very much inside it.”
W Themes In No One Will See Me Cry, words, images, and experiences recur in the histories of different characters so that the novel’s themes of loss, failure, and madness are thoroughly developed. Historical references throughout the text show these themes echoed in worldly events as well—in modernization that ruptures but does not mend and in revolution that destroys much but in the end changes little.
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No One Will See Me Cry
Because of modernization and revolution, Joaquín and Matilda both experience the loss of the worlds they knew in childhood. Even more devastating, however, are their lost opportunities in love. Joaquín realizes early that his “first woman,” Diamantina Vicario, “would never belong to him.” Later, as an ambitious young photographer, Joaquín abandons his lover Alberta in Rome to pursue his career in Mexico, only to become tormented by her memory. Insomnia leads to morphine addiction, and soon he is as destitute as the prostitutes and asylum inmates he photographs. Matilda also falls in love with Diamantina Vicario, but Matilda realizes too late the full extent of her love. Grief then drives her into prostitution and, eventually, to a cot in La Castañeda. Her relationship with the engineer Paul Kamàck slows her trajectory somewhat, but his suicide leads Matilda to this assessment of herself: “Outside: desert: inside. The difference is nil.” Her last “experiment” with Joaquín, in which he imagines that the stories they told each other will “join them forever,” fails to restore her heart, and Matilda returns to the insane asylum to find peace.
W Style No One Will See Me Cry is narrated in the third person. The distance between the narrator and the characters varies as the individual histories of the characters unfold across the chapters. For long stretches, the narration is focused through Joaquín or Matilda—or occasionally another character—yet the distance between the ostensibly omniscient narrator and the focal character is never completely bridged. The characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings are hinted at or deducible from their actions but are not described explicitly. The reader knows, for example, the deep darkness of Joaquín’s obsession with his Roman lover, Alberta, precisely because he so rarely allows himself to think of her or speak her name. When he finally brings himself to tell Matilda about Alberta, Alberta’s name escapes his lips like “a rat scurrying from his mouth.” Furthermore, even though the painful grip of Joaquín’s obsession is plainly evident in his morphine addiction, insomnia, anxiety, and withdrawal from the world, the deep psychological reason for its existence remains hidden. Rivera-Garza’s careful enforcement of the gap between the narrator and the subjects of the tale leaves the reader with a tantalizing sense of the mysteries of human experience and memory. Rivera-Garza deploys flashbacks in the novel to answer the questions that Joaquín and Matilda ask of each other when they meet at the insane asylum: “How does one come to be a photographer of crazy people?” and “Why don’t you tell me how a woman goes crazy?” The author’s inclusion of historical details in these flashbacks emphasizes the distance and difference in scale between these solitary, broken lives and the momentous
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOAQUÍN BUITRAGO is a photographer who makes portraits of inmates at La Castañeda, the General Insane Asylum. The son of a wealthy Mexico City physician, Joaquín spurns his father’s wish that he attend medical school and instead takes up photography. His love affairs with Diamantina Vicario and Alberta Mascardelli end in disappointment and, in the case of Alberta, in a damaging lifelong obsession. MATILDA BURGOS is an inmate at La Castañeda. Uprooted as a child from the village of Papantla, where her father once cultivated vanilla, Matilda was sent to Mexico City to be educated by her reform-minded uncle. Matilda was entranced by the charismatic Diamantina Vicario and was devastated by her disappearance. During her remaining years, most of them spent at La Castañeda, Matilda longs for Diamantina and rest. PAUL KAMÀCK is an engineer from the United States who falls in love with Matilda. She accompanies him to Real de Catorce, where he hopes to make his fortune in silver mining. The revolution destroys their dream, however, and Paul commits suicide. EDUARDO OLIGOCHEA is a psychiatrist at La Castañeda. Joaquín cultivates a friendship with Eduardo and thereby gains access to Matilda’s file. Near the end of the novel, Eduardo signs a document stating that Joaquín is cured of his morphine addiction (though Eduardo knows that he is not), enabling Joaquín to claim the large inheritance he once rejected. DIAMANTINA VICARIO is a labor activist who is loved by both Joaquín and Matilda, though neither is aware of the other at the time. She disappears after setting off in December 1906 to take part in the deadly labor strike at the Rio Blanco textile mill.
events taking place around them. At the same time, however, the parallels between Joaquín’s and Matilda’s brokenness and the brokenness of a society torn apart by civil war are evident.
W Critical Reception Critics have praised No One Will See Me Cry for the rich, multilayered quality of its narration and for the research that gives the story its historical authenticity. Writing for the Library Journal, Michelle Reale describes the novel as “a tale that is at once compelling and wholly believable.” The incorporation of historical figures, events, accounts of social and political movements, and excerpts from actual medical files is smoothly accomplished within the flow of the characters’ histories. In her essay in the
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cristina Rivera-Garza was born in 1964 in the northern Mexican town of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. She studied urban sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1995 she received a PhD in Latin American history from the University of Houston. She has taught history and creative writing at several universities in the United States and Mexico. Her academic research has focused on the social construction of mental illness and the history of Mexican psychiatry. In addition to No One Will See Me Cry, Rivera-Garza has published four novels, three collections of short stories, three volumes of poetry, and a book about patient files from La Castañeda. Her first novel, Desconocer, was a finalist for the 1994 Juan Rulfo Prize for best first novel. In 2009, with her novel La muerte me da, Rivera-Garza won the Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz Prize for the second time.
Hispanic Review, Laura Kanost argues that RiveraGarza’s “multiple narrative strategies reinforce a central preoccupation at work on many levels in the novel: the ethical problem of how one person can access and represent another individual’s private history and
perspective.” Joaquín comes closest to accessing Matilda’s private history, though ultimately he does not succeed. Lucrecia Artalejo, writing in World Literature Today, comments that Joaquín undertakes the task “with the discretion and patience required to observe ‘the movement of a sunflower.’” As it resists the conventions of third-person narration, Rivera-Garza’s storytelling also resists clichés of characterization and setting. Martha Gies, writing in the Women’s Review of Books, notes that Rivera-Garza eschews clichés common to historical novels about revolutions and wars, choosing to set her story within the walls of an insane asylum rather than on battlefields or in halls of power. Gies likewise explains that RiveraGarza’s characters have little in common with historically popular stereotypes of women in literature. Matilda, for example, is not seduced as a girl by the uncle responsible for her care, her love affair with the prostitute Ligia “does not solve . . . the riddle of her sexuality,” she is not saved by the blond American engineer Paul Kamàck, and in the end she sees the madhouse as her sanctuary. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Artalejo, Lucrecia. Rev. of No One Will See Me Cry, by Cristina Rivera-Garza. World Literature Today 78.3-4 (2004): 146+. Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Aug. 2010.
The National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico. In No One Will See Me Cry, Joaquín, a photographer, and Matilda, an asylum inmate, tell each other stories about their lives in Mexico. ª The Print Collector / Alamy
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Lewiston: Mellen, 2008. Print. Chapter 3, “Abjection, National Progress, and the Female Body,” analyzes the novel’s portrayal of the treatment of prostitutes and their bodies in official views of national progress and explores the various ways in which Matilda resists attempts by various men to control her body. Open Web Sources
Belletrista literary magazine offers an interview with Cristina Rivera-Garza in which she discusses the novels No One Will See Me Cry and La muerte me da, as well as literature by Latin American women. http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue5/ features_1.php An English translation of Rivera-Garza’s poem “Terzo” is available on the site of the political and literary forum Boston Review. http://bostonreview.net/BR28.3/ sampler.html Cristina Rivera-Garza hosts the blog No hay tal lugar, in which she talks (in Spanish) about topics in contemporary culture. http://www.cristinariveragarza.blogspot.com For Further Reading
Picture of Cristina Rivera-Garza, author of Nadie me vera llorar or No One Will See Me Cry. ª Rune Hellestad/Corbis
Gies, Martha. “Old Mexico.” Rev. of No One Will See Me Cry, by Cristina Rivera-Garza. Women’s Review of Books Oct. 2003: 11+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Kanost, Laura. “Pasillos sin luz: Reading the Asylum in Nadie me verá llorar, by Cristina Rivera-Garza.” Hispanic Review 76.3 (2008): 299+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Reale, Michelle. Rev. of No One Will See Me Cry, by Cristina Rivera-Garza. Library Journal 128.15 (2003): 93. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Rivera-Garza, Cristina. No One Will See Me Cry. Trans. Andrew Hurley. Willimantic: Curbstone, 2003. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Roberts-Camps, Traci. Gendered Self-Consciousness in Mexican and Chicana Women Writers: The Female Body as an Instrument of Political Resistance.
Buffington, Robert M., and William E. French. “The Culture of Modernity.” The Oxford History of Mexico. Ed. William Beezley and Michael Meyer. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. 373-405. Print. This essay surveys the vast effort by the administration of President Porfirio Díaz to modernize Mexico. Monasterio, Pablo Ortiz, ed. Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond: Photos by Agustín Víctor Casasola (19001940). New York: Aperture, 2003. Print. This largeformat book shows the broad range of Casasola’s oeuvre, from portraits of the powerful to tableaux of street life, entertainment, and war. In No One Will See Me Cry, Joaquín Buitrago is mentioned as being a young associate of Casasola. Rivera-Garza, Cristina. “Dangerous Minds: Changing Psychiatric Views of the Mentally Ill in Porfirian Mexico, 1876-1911.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 56.1 (2001): 36-67. Print. In this scholarly article, Rivera-Garza discusses changes in the classification of mental illnesses and their implementation in Mexican psychiatry. ———. “General Insane Asylum: La Castañeda (Mexico).” Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History in North America. Ed. John M. Herrick and Paul H. Stuart. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005. 148-50. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. RiveraGarza’s essay provides a brief history of Mexico’s General Insane Asylum, from its early planning in the 1890s to its closing in 1968.
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Samuelson, Cheyla Rose. “Writing at Escape Velocity: An Interview with Cristina Rivera-Garza.” Confluencia 23.1 (2007): 135-45. Print. This wide-ranging interview offers insights into Rivera-Garza’s views on contemporary Mexican literature, her interest in
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narrative techniques, her study of the history of Mexican psychiatry, and her recent writings. Janet Moredock
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The Northern Clemency By Philip Hensher
W Introduction The Northern Clemency (2008) traces the lives of two ordinary, middle-class British families over two decades, from 1974 to 1994. Set in Sheffield, in northern England, the story revolves around the Glover and Sellers families, whose lives begin to intersect when Bernie Sellers is transferred from London to Sheffield. From the day the Sellers family moves into the house across the street from the Glovers, the two families’ lives become interconnected. Over the next twenty years, they struggle through marital strife and infidelity, the pains of growing up, illness, and death. They also weather a changing political landscape, a legal scandal, and a national coal strike that greatly impacts their region. Centered on questions of sexuality, social class, and the struggles of childhood and adolescence, The Northern Clemency has been praised for its in-depth characterizations and its attention to period detail. The novel was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Northern Clemency is set primarily in Sheffield, a northern British town known for its coal and steel industries. The novel draws on the national and regional politics of the periods during which it is set, most notably the rise of Margaret Thatcher, who became Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979, and the 1984-1985 British miners’ strike. The strike began when the government announced a decision to close a number of mines that were large employers in northern England. Coal workers in these areas went on strike. Yorkshire, where Sheffield is located, was one of the most active areas. The strike was very contentious, with pickets being intimidated by police and striking workers attempting to
prevent nonstriking workers from doing their jobs. In total, six pickets were killed in strike-related violence. The events captured public attention, with many British citizens siding with the employers over the miners. The strike ended in victory for Thatcher’s government and was a serious blow to the once-powerful National Union of Mineworkers. In the novel, Tim, the youngest child of the Glover family, becomes personally invested in the conflict surrounding the strike. He and his friend collect food for the miners’ families and chant anti-Thatcher slogans, such as “Maggie Maggie Maggie! Out out out!” and “Coal not dole!” Tim’s stance is also reflective of the political climate of Sheffield during the era. During the 1980s, the community was known as a hotbed of leftist politics. Tim becomes committed not only to the strike but also to Marxism, publishing a radical newspaper called the Spartacist.
W Themes As Tim Glover’s conversion to Marxism and the emphasis on the miners’ strike makes clear, social class is one of the dominant themes of The Northern Clemency. Although both the Glover and the Sellers families are staunchly middle class, their experiences bring to light a number of perspectives and experiences. The miners’ strike, which pits Tim against his father, Malcolm (whom Tim’s friend describes as “Tory scum with a briefcase”), highlights the divisions between the middle and working classes. Author Philip Hensher’s sympathies, however, are clearly not with Tim, who is lampooned for his wholehearted commitment to a cause he cannot fully understand. The staid Malcolm, on the other hand, is among the novel’s most sympathetic characters, as is the Glovers’ older son, Daniel. While Tim is protesting Thatcher and her policies, Daniel is benefiting from them, working his way up from selling houses to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
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The Northern Clemency
MAJOR CHARACTERS DANIEL GLOVER is the oldest son of Malcolm and Katharine. Over the course of the novel, he grows from a sex-crazed adolescent to a successful entrepreneur whose restaurant reinterprets his mother’s 1970s cuisine. JANE GLOVER is the middle child of Malcolm and Katharine. After a somewhat lonely adolescence and early adulthood, she marries and has a child. KATHARINE GLOVER is the wife of Malcolm and the mother of Daniel, Jane, and Tim. Trapped in a dull marriage, she takes a job in a florist’s shop and soon begins fantasizing about her boss, Nick. MALCOLM GLOVER is the husband of Katharine and the father of Daniel, Jane, and Tim. Throughout the novel he struggles to understand and relate to his wife. TIM GLOVER is the youngest son of Malcolm and Katharine. He is haunted throughout his life by the traumatic events of his childhood and eventually commits suicide. NICK is Katharine Glover’s boss and the subject of her infatuation. His business, however, is a means of laundering drug money, and he is eventually arrested. ALICE SELLERS is the wife of Bernie. Although she befriends Katharine Glover, she has trouble adapting to life in Sheffield. Toward the end of the novel, she suffers a brain hemorrhage. BERNIE SELLERS is a London businessman who relocates with his family to Sheffield for his work with the electricity board. As a manager, he becomes involved in defeating the miners’ strike. FRANCIS SELLERS is the youngest child of Bernie and Alice. A somewhat awkward child, he struggles as a young adult before becoming a writer. SANDRA SELLERS is the oldest child of Bernie and Alice. She develops a lasting friendship with Daniel Glover. As an adult, she relocates to Australia, where she changes her name to Alex.
The lasting effects of family dysfunction and childhood trauma are also frequent targets of Hensher’s commentary. Malcolm and Katharine Glover have a passionless marriage that suffers from a lack of communication. Early in the novel, Malcolm leaves home, convinced, erroneously, that Katharine has been unfaithful. The ensuing crisis causes Katharine to realize how little she and her husband understand each other but does not prevent her from committing adultery after he returns. The inability to communicate extends to two of the family’s children as well. Jane has trouble conveying her desires, even for something as mundane as bedroom decor,
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and Tim watches the world from his hiding place behind the family’s couch. The pattern continues into the children’s adulthood. In the most extreme case, Tim, though he marries and achieves professional success, cannot escape the trauma of his childhood. He finally travels to Australia, where he confronts Sandra Sellers, reliving the death of his pet snake and an episode in which a fifteen-year-old Sandra encouraged him to fondle her breasts—an event he claims ruined his life. Hensher depicts Tim’s subsequent suicide as the horrific but inevitable consequence of early trauma.
W Style The Northern Clemency is narrated in the third person, shifting frequently among the perspectives of members of both families and, occasionally, outsiders. At times the effect is jarring, as are gaps in the narration, such as when Book Two ends in Sheffield in the mid-1970s and Book Two-and-a-Half opens in London a decade later. Many critics have noted that the novel does not have a traditional plot but is focused instead on creating realistic portrayals of ordinary people and their lives. Commenting on the slow-moving plot in his Washington Post review, Ron Charles suggests that “it’s easy to imagine some readers waiting impatiently—and futilely—for the story to begin.” He also praises the work, however, stating that “Hensher’s intricately crafted sentences flash with wit, his dexterity with telling detail is captivating, and his dialogue delivers the guilty pleasure of eavesdropping. If you give yourself over to this novel’s organic movement, you’ll fall in love with its startlingly perceptive depiction of these people.” Many commentators have pointed to similarities between The Northern Clemency and popular novels of the Victorian period. The comparison arises, in part, from the novel’s length of more than seven hundred pages—a narrative expanse more typical of the nineteenth century than of the twenty-first—and from its realism, a style predominant in the Victorian era. At the same time, critics have noted some distinctly modern elements of the novel, such as gaps in the narrative and multiple narrators. In her New York Times review, Sophie Gee describes the novel as stylistically derivative. “The striking thing about The Northern Clemency,” she writes, “is that it doesn’t do anything new. It resembles a Victorian drama, ‘Middlemarch’ or ‘Barchester Towers,’ but there’s plenty of Modernism too, [Virginia] Woolf and [E. M.] Forster and even a [Evelyn] Waugh-indebted cruelty. A touch of Alan Hollinghurst, notes of Ian McEwan—Hensher’s edifice is built solidly from the bricks and mortar of English social realism.”
W Critical Reception Since its publication in 2008, The Northern Clemency has received mixed reviews. While the novel has garnered TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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several high-profile honors, including being short-listed for the Booker Prize, its length has been off-putting to many readers and critics, and some have found fault with its lack of a traditional plot. Commentators have, however, almost universally praised Hensher’s careful attention to character development and his eye for detail, both of which contribute to the book’s success in capturing the feel of ordinary people and everyday life. For example, in a review of the book in the Spectator, Simon Baker comments that “The novel is beautifully organised at three levels—close up, at the level of the sentence, further back, at the level of narrative progress over ten or 20 pages, and then overall, as a fully realised whole—but its most impressive feature is that it manages to be a page-turner while eschewing the traditional devices we associate with such a book.” Similarly, Keir Graff’s Booklist review states that “Readers not daunted by this book’s heft will be rewarded by poetic prose and astonishingly lifelike character sketches, by Hensher’s sly wit, and, above all, by a moving sense of life, faithfully re-created, its most humble conflicts treated with utmost respect.” While most reviewers have lauded the novel for its authentic re-creation of the minutiae of daily life, some have ultimately found it lacking in message and impact. Such is the case with Gee, who writes that “Hensher’s novel is tremendously adroit, reminding us of what it’s like to sink luxuriously into the great novels of an earlier era: all-inclusive, interconnected, lavishly detailed, ample. And yet, for the same reasons, it’s tremendously dull. Despite all the twists and turns (each beautifully set up and delivered), there are no surprises; this is a book that seems to have been written too many times already.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Baker, Simon. “Sounds of the Seventies.” Spectator 5 Apr. 2008: 38+. Charles, Ron. “Our House, in the Middle of the Street; Two Families Make Their Way through Modern England’s Transformations.” Washington Post 30 Nov. 2008: BW06. Print. Gee, Sophie. “Desperate Households.” New York Times Book Review 14 Dec. 2008: 15(L). Graff, Keir. Rev. of The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher. Booklist 15 Nov. 2008: 18. Hensher, Philip. The Northern Clemency. London: Fourth Estate, 2008. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Connolly, Cressida. “The Daily Chronicle.” New Statesman 14 Apr. 2008: 58+. Commends Hensher for his
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Philip Hensher was born on February 20, 1965, in London, England, and grew up in Sheffield, which would later provide the setting for The Northern Clemency. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in 1986 and a PhD from Cambridge University in 1992. His first novel, Other Lulus, was published in 1994. His second novel, Kitchen Venom (1996), garnered the 1997 Somerset Maugham Award, and The Mulberry Empire (2002) was nominated for the Booker Prize. These works helped to establish Hensher as an important young writer, and in 2003 he was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists. In 2005 Hensher took a position teaching creative writing at the University of Exeter, where he continued to write novels such as The Northern Clemency that reflect his interest in European history. In addition to working as an academic and a novelist, Hensher is a well-respected journalist and critic whose work has appeared in periodicals such as the Independent, the Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement.
attention to detail and for capturing the changing atmosphere of Britain over several decades. Hensher, Philip. “Diary.” Spectator 18 Oct. 2008: 9. Hensher reflects on the experience of being short-listed for the Booker Prize. Jones, Thomas. “The Thing That Couldn’t Be Told: Thomas Jones Assesses a Sensitive Portrait of Everyday Family Lives.” Daily Telegraph [London] 5 Apr. 2008: 26. Print. Examines the structure of the novel’s plot and its narrative strategy. Love, Barbara. Rev. of The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher. Library Journal 1 Dec. 2008: 112. A favorable review that lauds Hensher’s gift for characterization. Maslin, Janet. “A Group Portrait with an Unflinching Focus.” New York Times 4 Dec. 2008: 9. Print. A positive review that focuses on Hensher’s flair for characterization and description. Rev. of The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher. Kirkus Reviews 1 Nov. 2008: 1132. Lauds the novel’s dialogue but notes that the plot drags at times. Rev. of The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher. New Yorker 17 Nov. 2008: 105. Praises the novel’s portrait of ordinary life but characterizes the plot as disorganized. Zipp, Yvonne. Rev. of The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher. Christian Science Monitor 30 Dec. 2008: 25. Print. Likens Hensher’s novel to those by Charles Dickens.
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The Northern Clemency Gale Resources
“Philip Hensher.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
The Mostly Fiction Web site offers an interview with Hensher by Guy Savage in which the author discusses The Northern Clemency. http://www.mostlyfiction. com/authorqa/hensher.html The official Web site of the Man Booker Prize includes an overview of The Northern Clemency and a profile of the author. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/ prize/books/366 For Further Reading
Bennett, Larry. Neighborhood Politics: Chicago and Sheffield. New York: Garland, 1997. Print. This study of communities in Chicago and Sheffield provides insight into community politics in the world inhabited by Hensher’s characters. Forster, Laurel, and Sue Harper. British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade. Newcastle:
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Cambridge Scholars, 2010. Print. Forster and Harper provide an overview of British life during the period in which the early part of Hensher’s novel is set. Hensher, Philip. The Mulberry Empire; or, The Two Virtuous Journeys of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan. London: Flamingo, 2002. Print. Hensher’s historical novel, which was nominated for the Booker Prize, traces British interference in Afghanistan in the 1830s. Hutton, Guthrie. Coal Not Dole: Memories of the 1984/ 1985 Miners’ Strike. Catrine: Stenlake, 2005. Print. Hutton’s volume provides insight into the miners’ strike, an important event in The Northern Clemency. Vinen, Richard. Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Print. Vinen’s book provides an overview of the Thatcher years and attempts to dispel common misperceptions about Britain’s first female prime minister and her policies. Greta Gard
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Novel about My Wife By Emily Perkins
W Introduction Nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and winner of the New Zealand Montana Award in 2009, Emily Perkins’s Novel about My Wife (2008) is narrated by one of the main characters, Tom Stone, as he tries to piece together his memories of his wife, Ann, and their life together. Tom begins his story five years in the past when Ann was pregnant with their child and continues up to her tragic death, weaving a fictional account of their trip to Fiji into his narrative. That trip provides the clues to the cause of Ann’s death—clues that Tom missed while he was too wrapped up in his pursuit of economic and professional success. Tom’s recollections take the form of a psychological thriller as he and readers try to determine who and what caused Ann’s death. Ironically, Tom reveals more about himself in his narrative than he does about his wife, providing insights about the nature of delusions and the often inescapable influences of the past.
W Literary and Historical Context
Postmodernism is a term used to describe a literary movement that emerged during the last few decades of the twentieth century. One of the key elements of postmodernism is a narrative self-consciousness, which calls attention in the text to the act of writing. A text that displays this type of self-consciousness is called metafiction, which raises questions about the nature of fiction and reality. Novel about My Wife can be considered an example of metafiction as it jumps back and forth between Tom’s narrative about his last five years with Ann and excerpts of his novel about their wedding in Fiji. Ironically, Tom’s novel appears more realistic than his
narrative regarding his time with Ann, which points out how blind he often was about the reality of Ann’s illness. The dire financial situation in which Tom and Ann find themselves reflects the hardships many Londoners faced in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The United Kingdom entered a recession in 2008, but the economy had slowed years before that date, which negatively affected the job market for workers in London and throughout the rest of the country. During this decade, the unemployment rates in London were higher than in many other parts of the United Kingdom.
W Themes The novel’s main theme focuses on the causes and effects of delusions. Both Tom and Ann suffer from delusions about their life together. Tom wrongly believes that Ann’s erratic behavior is due to her pregnancy and that once their child is born, she will calm down and act in a more rational manner. He fails to see the real cause of her anxieties because he is too wrapped up in his pursuit of a job, which, he hopes, will provide him with all the status he desires. Ann’s primary delusion, which eventually causes her death, is that a man is stalking her and so is a threat to her and her family. Other delusions that contribute to her descent into madness include strange odors that only she can detect and infestations of rats and ants in the house that no one else ever sees. These delusions are fed by present dangers such as the train derailment that Ann experiences and Tom’s being mugged in the nearby park. Another important theme, the difficulty in separating oneself from the past, is related to the primary cause of Ann’s delusions. This theme becomes evident in Ann’s reaction to John Halliburton during their trip to Fiji, which is chronicled in Tom’s novel. Halliburton reveals that he and Ann have met before, and Tom later hears rumors about the troubled life that Ann lived in Australia—a life that involved Halliburton. These
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Novel about My Wife
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOHN HALLIBURTON is a boorish film producer who twice hires Tom to write a script for him and who claims to have known Ann in Australia. ANN STONE, Tom’s Australian wife, has a hidden past that begins to intrude on the present as she and Tom prepare for the birth of their first child. ARLO STONE, Tom and Ann’s child, is a toddler at the beginning of the story and is being raised by Tom. TOM STONE is a forty-year-old, unemployed screenwriter living in London, whose main focus is on making enough money to support his wife and child. KATE WRIGHT is a holistic therapist who tries to help Ann during her pregnancy. SIMON WRIGHT, Kate’s husband, is an arrogant television scriptwriter who promises to help Tom find work.
memories, exacerbated by her present anxieties over her pregnancy and the couple’s difficult financial situation, cause hallucinations that she tries to control with obsessive cleaning and by putting bars on the window to keep out the stalker. When Halliburton resurfaces in Ann’s and Tom’s lives, her delusions push her over the edge into insanity.
W Style The novel is written in first-person point of view—a narrative style that often highlights the unreliability of the narrator. Tom is unreliable as he describes his life with Ann and Arlo, up to the point when Ann died, which he announces at the start of the novel. He claims that his goal is to try and reconstruct her on the page in order to understand her more fully as well as their life together. Ironically, though, the reader learns more about Tom than about Ann or Arlo. What Tom unintentionally reveals about himself is that his inability to understand and face the fact that Ann was slowly descending into madness most likely contributed to her illness. The novel’s irony is compounded by the fact that Tom juxtaposes bits of a novel he is writing about their trip to Fiji with his memories of their life together, and those socalled fictional bits get more at the heart at what was troubling Ann than do any of his narrative ruminations on their life together. The narrative takes the form of a mystery story, with its disrupted chronology. It jumps from the time after Ann’s death to the incidents that lead up to it, a structure
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Portrait of Emily Perkins, author of Novel about My Wife. David Levenson/Getty Images
that heightens the suspense as readers, along with Tom, try to piece together how and why she died.
W Critical Reception The critical reception for Novel about My Wife was quite positive, with reviewers citing its intriguing narrative and compelling characters. A review for Kirkus Reviews found the novel to be “a smart, scary combination of neoGothic and comedy of manners,” providing “great psychological acuteness and mordant humor.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called the novel “haunting” and claimed: “the suspense mounts with each added detail, until everything falls into place in an unsettling climax.” In a review for the Telegraph, Heather Thompson argued that “Emily Perkins picks out Tom’s memories with the nimbleness and accuracy of a hummingbird.” Lindsay Duguid in the Sunday Times determined that “the pace is fast and inexorable” and that “the narrative moves with certainty, taking in swift biting portraits.” She added that “Perkins draws out the emotional tension and the thematic parallels while keeping the action tight and TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Novel about My Wife
gripping.” The Kirkus reviewer insisted that the novel’s “apparatus can be clumsy” when the narrative jumps to Tom’s fictional version of the events but concluded that while the novel is “not perfect,” it is “pungently observed, suspenseful and often funny.” Carrie O’Grady in the Guardian focused on Perkins’s characterizations, claiming that the author “writes brilliantly about dismal people.” O’Grady singled out Perkins’s depiction of Tom and what was going on inside his head, which she determined was “impressively convincing” in its focus on his “many anxieties and fears . . . [and his] need to avoid admitting them, even internally.” She concluded that “if Tom is not, perhaps, someone you’d want to take for a drink after the last page, you certainly believe in him—and care about him to an extent that reveals Perkins’s subtle power.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1970 in Christchurch, New Zealand, Emily Perkins developed as a writer by taking creative writing at Victoria University and working as a television actress. Her first book, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories (2006), won the Best First Book (Fiction) Award in New Zealand and the Faber Award in the United Kingdom. After the publication of this collection, she wrote three acclaimed novels, including Novel about My Wife, and articles for periodicals in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. As of 2010, Perkins lived in New Zealand.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Duguid, Lindsay. “Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. timesonline.co.uk. Sunday Times 11 May 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. “Novel about My Wife.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. Publishers Weekly, 14 Apr. 2008: 33. Print. O’Grady, Carrie. “Reasons to Be Tearful.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. guardian.co.uk. Guardian 24 May 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Perkins, Emily. Novel about My Wife. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008. Print. “Perkins, Emily: Novel about My Wife.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2008. Print. Thompson, Heather. “A London Tragedy.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. Telegraph.co. uk. Telegraph 18 May 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Collins-Hughes, Laura. “Navel-Gazing: Emily Perkins’s Novel about My Wife.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. nysun.com. New York Sun 8 Sept. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Focuses on how the novel reveals more about Tom than it does about Ann. Freud, Esther. “Novel about My Wife: A Novel by Emily Perkins.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. fantasticfiction.co.uk. Fantastic Fiction 5 May 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Praises the novel’s focus on the subjects of escape and forgetting. Kleid, Suzanne. “A Review of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. believermag.com. Believer Sept. 2008.
Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Analyzes the novel’s exploration of middle-class anxiety. Morris, Paula. “London Calling.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. Listener.co.nz. New Zealand Listener 7-13 June 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Provides background information on Perkins and reviews the novel as a psychological thriller. “Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins.” Rev. of Novel about My Wife, by Emily Perkins. thebookbag.co.uk. The Bookbag, n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Explores the issue of mental health in the novel. Gale Resources
“Emily Perkins.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.pgcc.edu/ ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000129393&v=2.1 &u=pgcc_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
Quick Ten with Emily Perkins, available at http://www. helenheath.com/4-aug-2010/quick-ten-emily-perkins, contains an interview with the author who discusses her writing process and her interest in the construction of identity. For Further Reading
Kershner, R. B. The Twentieth-Century Novel: An Introduction. New York: Bedford-St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Print. Presents an overview of the modern, postmodern, and contemporary novel as well as historical and social contexts. Lyall, Sarah. The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British. New York: Norton, 2008. Print. Provides an outsider’s view of the character and eccentricities of the English and of English life at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.
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Novel about My Wife
Perkins, Emily. Not Her Real Name and Other Stories. New York: Picador USA, 2002. Print. Twelve of Perkins’s short stories that focus on relationships and art.
Zuk, Gerald H. The Psychology of Delusion. New York: Richard Altschuler, 2005. Print. Proposes that delusions can result when an individual is overwhelmed by uncertainty.
Quindlen, Anna. Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City. Washington: National Geographic Society, 2004. Print. Makes comparisons among historical, twenty-first-century, and fictional London.
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Of Kids & Parents By Emil Hakl
W Introduction Originally published in Czech as O rodicích a detech (2002) and translated into English by Marek Tomin in 2008, Of Kids & Parents is a semiautobiographical novel by poet and fiction writer Emil Hakl. Set in the Czech Republic, it tells the story of Honza Benes and his father, Ivan. Written almost entirely in dialogue, the novel chronicles an afternoon that the two men spend walking through Prague and visiting the city’s pubs. The plot is uneventful, and Honza and Ivan are its only central characters. The novel focuses on the dialogue between the two men, who are unaccustomed to spending time together. As their afternoon unfolds, they find themselves talking about their lives, old memories, and their relationship with each other, touching on issues both humorous and grim, as well as personal and political. Of Kids & Parents won praise for its depiction of the complicated relationship between fathers and sons, its exploration of Czech history, and its innovative plot in which very little actually happens. It was awarded the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year Award in 2003 and quickly became the best known of Hakl's works. The English translation has won praise for capturing the unique character of the original Czech version.
W Literary and Historical Context
The discussion between Honza and his father draws extensively on the long and contested history of the region in which they live. Many of Ivan’s memories date from the period of World War II and its immediate aftermath. Czechoslovakia and neighboring Croatia fell to Nazi forces during the war. Much of the resistance to the Nazis was led by Communist guerrillas, and when the war ended, Communist regimes came to power in both
countries. Under Communist rule Czechoslovakians had very few freedoms, and opportunities for education and self-expression were severely limited. In the spring of 1968, after reform-minded Alexander Dubcek began to institute liberal reforms, Czechoslovakia was invaded by forces of the Soviet Union and its allies, who quashed these attempts. After the fall of Communism in 1989, the county began to create democratic institutions, and in 1993 it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Prague, the city in which Hakl’s novel is set, is the capital of the Czech Republic. In the novel Honza’s father reflects on some of the traumatic historical events he witnessed in his youth. Like Hakl’s grandfather, Ivan’s father relocated to Croatia during World War II. There he owned a factory and took part in anti-Nazi activities led by the Communist guerrilla leader Josip Broz Tito, who would later establish a Communist regime in Yugoslavia. Ivan tells Honza about a time when, as an adolescent, he narrowly escaped a mass execution carried out by the Ustashi, the Croatian fascist movement. Drawing on history and biographies of the author’s family members, the novel recounts the story of Ivan’s family and their return after the war to Czechoslovakia, where they discovered that the new Communist regime there was hostile to Tito’s regime, leading to the imprisonment of Ivan’s father and preventing Ivan from pursuing his dream of attending the naval academy. Honza remembers the 1968 invasion, during which he waved happily to the Soviet troops while his grandfather threw a stone at their tanks.
W Themes As the title of the novel suggests, the father-son relationship is thematically central to Of Kids & Parents. Honza and his father share an often strained relationship. Honza is embarrassed by his father’s behavior, which includes picking rudely at his food in a pub, criticizing others incessantly, telling lewd jokes, and quoting
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MAJOR CHARACTERS HONZA BENEs is a man in his early forties who is attempting to get to know his aging father, Ivan, despite what he sees to be fundamental differences in their characters and outlooks on life. As he walks through Prague with Ivan, Honza confesses that he himself is also a father to a child whom he only recently learned about and met. At the end of the novel, Honza is frustrated by Ivan, but he also realizes that he may have few opportunities to spend time with his father and reminds himself to be patient. IVAN BENEs is the seventy-one-year-old father of Honza. His outlook on life has been colored by his experiences as an adolescent during World War II, as well as by an adulthood spent under the rule of a repressive Communist regime. A retired scientist, he has taken a job conducting tours at the zoo to supplement his pension. He maintains a scientist’s outlook on the world but enjoys humor and has trouble relating to Honza’s less scientific, and generally gloomier, outlook on life.
William Shakespeare loudly in public. Ivan, on the other hand, is bothered by his son’s gloomy outlook on life and worries that Honza will not achieve happiness in life. He wants Honza to settle down and encourages him not to cheat on his girlfriend. He tries to apologize to his son for the divorce that broke apart their family and created a rift in their relationship. Honza, in turn, opens up to his father and confesses that he has only recently learned that he fathered a son who is now an adult and whom he is just now getting to know. At the end of the novel, after the two men have had numerous squabbles but also attempted to settle some of their differences, Honza puts Ivan in a cab and reminds himself that he needs to be more patient with the old man: “He’s your father . . . ! The man who raised you . . . ! He’s the only person in the world who has patience with you!” As he goes to get a cup of coffee, Honza sees a man sitting in a tree and finds himself inexplicably tempted to ask, as his biologist father no doubt would, “I wonder if you at least know the name of the tree you’re sitting in?”
W Style The plot of Hakl’s novel is very simple: two men stroll through Prague, stopping in at pubs, drinking, eating, and talking. There is very little action, with emphasis falling instead on dialogue. Many critics have suggested that it is this emphasis on dialogue that makes the book interesting and unique. In addition to being a notable point of style, conversation is also topic in the novel. Early in the novel, Honza accuses his father of turning every
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In the novel Of Kids & Parents, Ivan recalls the horrors of Nazi occupation during World War II. ª INTERFOTO / Alamy
discussion into a one-sided lecture. Ivan’s response is to assert that “Conversations are an illusion, everyone on earth wants to talk about his own thing and, if at all possible, all the time!” The conversations that unfold over the course of the novel confirm this pessimistic perspective to some degree, as both father and son attempt to keep the conversation focused on their own interests. As the two men make their way through Prague, they touch on a number of topics, from nature, to war, women, and airplanes. Mimicking the give-and-take of conversation, the novel shifts quickly from one topic to another. Reviewing the novel for the Independent, Boyd Tonkin praises the novel’s form, noting that “The fatherson dialogue, beautifully caught by Marek Tomin’s dancing translation, is a delight. Hakl trusts his readers to complete the emotional jigsaw, and spell out the heartbreak behind the hedonism.” Other critics, however, have noted that Hakl’s dialogue-heavy style presents some unique challenges. Writing in the New Haven Review, for example, Greg Pierce notes that “because the novel is nearly all dialogue with very few I saids or he saids, if the reader loses focus for a split second, it’s virtually impossible to tell who’s talking.”
W Critical Reception Upon its initial Czech release, Hakl’s novel was met with critical acclaim, leading to its translation into multiple languages, including English. In translation the novel has quickly become the author’s best-known work. Critics have widely praised the English translation by Marek Tomin for retaining the character of the original Czech. The translation was short-listed for the 2009 OxfordWeidenfeld Translation Prize. Many reviewers have focused on the novel’s style, particularly its emphasis on dialogue and its lack of a TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Of Kids & Parents
traditional plot. Stylistically it has drawn comparison to James Joyce’s Ulysses (a novel that Honza and his father discuss at some length in the novel), as well as to works by notable literary figures such as Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal and avant-garde Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Reviewing Hakl’s novel for Booklist, Ray Olson describes it as “Skittishly insouciant, direly funny,” while Tonkin lauds it as an “utterly beguiling novel of uproarious surfaces and melancholy depths.” Pierce’s discussion of the work focuses on the gloomier side of the novel, suggesting that “Hakl has given us a fine, dark novel whose simple premise allows us to explore Prague and the elusive relationship between two unsatisfied and inseparable men.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Delbos, Stephen. “A Literary Pub Crawl.” Prague Post 8 Jan. 2009. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Hakl, Emil. Of Kids & Parents. Trans. Marek Tomin. Prague: Twisted Spoon, 2008. Print. Olson, Ray. Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. Booklist 1 Sept. 2008: 49.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Emil Hakl was born Jans Benes in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on March 25, 1958. As a child Hakl showed an early interest in poetry and dreamed of becoming a poet. With limited options under Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime, however, Hakl took work doing menial labor in Prague’s waterworks, writing in his spare time. In the 1990s, as the Czech Republic emerged from Communist rule, Hakl launched his literary career. His first published work, the poetry collection Rozpojená slova (Disconnected Words), appeared in 1991. A second collection, Zkusební trylky z Marsu (Trial-run trills from Mars), followed in 2000. In 2001 Hakl branched out into fiction with the story collection Konec sveta (The end of the world). A novel, Intimní schránka Sabriny Black (Sabrina Black’s intimate mailbox), followed in 2002. It was with O rodicích a detech (2002; translated as Of Kids & Parents, 2008), however, that Hakl’s work reached the widest audience, and it is for Of Kids & Parents that he is best known internationally. Since the success of that work, Hakl has published short fiction as well as the novel Let carodejnice (2008, The flight of a witch).
In Of Kids & Parents, Honza and his father Ivan spend an afternoon walking through the streets of Prague, Czech Republic. ª simon margetson travel / Alamy
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Pierce, Greg. Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. New Haven Review 1 June 2008. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Tonkin, Boyd. Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd 27 June 2008. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. Three Percent: A Resource for International Literature at the University of Rochester. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. A review that analyzes the novel’s use of dialogue. Pinker, Michael. Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. Review of Contemporary Fiction 29.3 (2009): 179+. A positive review that focuses on the characterization of Honza and his father. Reeser, Cynthia. Rev. of Of Kids & Parents, by Emil Hakl. Prick of the Spindle: A Quarterly Online Journal of the Literary Arts 2.3 (2008). Web. 13 Oct. 2010. A review that focuses on the literary and historical contexts of the novel. Simon, Alissa. “Of Parents and Children.” Variety 11-17 Aug. 2008: 25. Print. A brief review of the film adaptation of Hekl’s novel. Taylor, John. “Prague as a Poem: Vitezslav Nezval and Emil Hakl.” Antioch Review Spring 2010: 374+. A positive review that compares Of Kids & Parents to works by James Joyce and Bohumil Hrabal. Gale Resources
Culík, Jan. “Emil Hakl.” Twenty-first-Century Central and Eastern European Writers. Ed. Steven Serafin and Vasa D. Mihailovich. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 353. “Emil Hakl.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
Bookmunch offers an online review of the novel that praises Hekl’s cultivation of atmosphere and his realistic characters. http://bookmunch.wordpress. com/2009/04/29/like-scurf-encrusted-staropra men-glasses-of-kids-parents-by-emil-hakl/
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The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook online provides an introduction to the Czech Republic, examining its people, culture, and history. https:// www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ez.html The Web site of Twisted Spoon Press provides an introduction to the novel, as well as review excerpts and a short biography of Hakl. http://www.twis tedspoon.com/parents.html For Further Reading
Holý, Jirí. Writers under Siege: Czech Literature since 1945. Portland: Sussex, 2008. Print. This nonfiction work explores the evolution of Czech literature after World War II. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Paris: Beach, 1922. Print. Of Kids & Parents has often been likened to this novel by Irish modernist James Joyce. Kovaly, Heda Margolius. Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968. Trans. Helen Epstein. Cambridge: Plunkett, 1986. Print. This memoir offers an account of the author’s experiences in Czechoslovakia during and following World War II and thus additional insight into the experiences of the fictional Ivan. Lau, J. M. Prague Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay, 2007. Print. This volume of photographs pairs images of contemporary Prague with images from the city’s past, offering insight into the setting of Hakl’s novel. Sayer, Derek. The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. Print. This volume of nonfiction offers a historical and sociological account of Czech identity and culture. Adaptations
Of Parents and Children. Dir. Vladimír Michálek. Perf. Josef Somr, David Novotny, Mariana Kroftova, Lubos Kostelny, Zuzana Stivinova, and Jiri Labus. Bioscop, 2008. Film. This film adaptation has been praised for its cinematography and careful re-creation of the feel of the novel. It also adds a subplot involving the protagonist’s girlfriend. Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Olive Kitteridge By Elizabeth Strout
W Introduction Olive Kitteridge (2008), by Elizabeth Strout, is a story told through thirteen linked short stories about life in a small town on the coast of Maine in the early twenty-first century. The inhabitants of the fictional town of Crosby, Maine, are tough yet fallible. The protagonist, Olive, is an irascible older woman who grows more sympathetic to the reader as the novel unfolds her complicated personality. The author does not shy from the messy and sometimes unresolved problems such as Olive’s deep love of her son who wants little to do with his difficult mother, or the sudden loss of a loved one who has succumbed to the half-life of a stroke victim. Olive is the point-of-view character in six of the thirteen stories and plays a significant role in another three; she appears only peripherally (although not insignificantly) in the remaining four. Strout’s use of short stories gives the book a different pace than a traditional novel. The plot is not a story of action but of emotional development, with craggy Olive at its center. Olive Kitteridge was nominated for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award and won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
Following World War II, short stories grew in popularity. In the 1950s, authors such as Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor were primarily known for their short stories, although they both wrote novels as well. Many monthly magazines, such as Saturday Evening Post and Harper’s Magazine, published fiction alongside their nonfiction content; however, the popularity of the short story waned late in the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first century. Short stories had a dedicated following but such readers were not in the majority and
magazine publishers began to drop fiction from their issues. Some magazines, such as the Atlantic, turned to annual fiction specials or contests, and many others, such as Glamour, declined to publish fiction altogether. (Glamour returned to publishing short fiction in 2004 after a twelve-year hiatus.) Quinn Dalton wrote in her article on the death of the short story for mediabistro.com, “Just as some writers make the mistake of thinking [short stories are] easier to write [than novels], perhaps some readers think they’re not long enough to offer a return on what they demand.” Olive Kitteridge was marketed as a novel-in-stories, perhaps to avoid the twenty-first century stigma of being a short story collection.
W Themes Loneliness is a major theme in Olive Kitteridge. The stories are all told from the first person point of view, which gives the impression that each character exists in his or her own bubble. Crosby is a small, hardscrabble town: The winters are long, the population is small, and the economy is middling (based, in part, on tourism). Everyone knows everyone else’s business, so what secrets do exist are held very close, often times not even shared with family members or close friends. Olive keeps others at a distance with her biting tongue, all but Henry. After her husband dies, Olive is forced to look at the world differently in order to continue to live. Family is also an important theme in Olive Kitteridge. In a small town, one’s family defines one’s place in the social order. This is why Harmon, in part, is so upset that his sons have all moved far away, and none will stay to take over the family hardware store; he is adrift, without roots. Denise Thibodeau cannot stay in Crosby after her husband dies because she is somewhere between belonging to his family and being an out-of-towner. Family is the glue that holds people’s lives together. Thus, Jack Kennison and Olive, an likely pair, are drawn together after the deaths of their respective spouses.
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Olive Kitteridge
MAJOR CHARACTERS MARLENE BONNEY, a mild-mannered woman, works as a cashier at her husband Ed’s grocery store. REBECCA BROWN, daughter of a preacher, cannot keep a job and starts to steal things out of boredom. KEVIN COULSON, a psychiatrist in training, returns to his hometown of Crosby, Maine, to commit suicide. DAISY FOSTER, a widow, attends church with Henry Kitteridge and is having an affair with Harmon. HARMON, married to Bonnie, owns a hardware store and is having an affair with Daisy Foster. WINNIE HARWOOD, the eleven-year-old daughter of Jim and Anita Harwood, admires her big sister Julie. JANE HOULTON, a quiet, mousy woman, worked with Olive at the junior high as a school nurse. JACK KENNISON, a Republican, becomes Olive’s unlikely boyfriend after Henry dies. ANN KITTERIDGE, Christopher Kitteridge’s second wife, has two children from previous relationships and is pregnant with Chris’s child. Olive considers her dumb but nice. CHRISTOPHER KITTERIDGE, Olive and Henry’s son, is a podiatrist living in New York City with his second wife, Ann, with whom he has a child and two stepchildren. HENRY KITTERIDGE, Olive’s husband, is a retired pharmacist. His friendly nature is a foil to Olive’s sharp tongue. OLIVE KITTERIDGE, the central figure of the book, is an ornery woman who is retired from teaching math at the local junior high school. LOUISE LARKIN is an unhappy, unhinged woman Olive visits after Henry has a stroke. ANGELA O'MEARA, an unrealized piano prodigy, plays piano at the local pub and is having an affair with Malcolm Moody. DENISE THIBODEAU worked in Henry Kitteridge’s pharmacy in the 1980s. She lost her husband, also named Henry, in a hunting accident. NINA WHITE is a teenager who briefly lives in Crosby with her boyfriend. Daisy, Harmon, and Olive try to help her with her anorexia.
W Style Characterization is achieved through what the person says, does, and thinks, as well as what others say and think about a character. The novel Olive Kitteridge is named after the central character and serves as one long
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Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge. ª MARKA / Alamy
characterization of Olive, as well as of some of the people in her life in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Beginning with the narrative of her husband Henry, Olive is seen to be prickly, short-tempered, and unlikable, serving baked beans to the guests Henry has invited for dinner. Henry himself does not seem fazed by her behavior. By the end of the novel-in-stories, Olive is understood by the reader to be a difficult, complicated woman who some will find admirable or at least sympathetic. Strout chose an unusual format for her novel, using a series of thirteen chronologically ordered short stories to tell Olive’s story. In a few of the stories Olive is barely glimpsed, but in most she is a central figure or even the point-of-view character. By using short stories, Strout takes advantage of a powerfully focused format that does not need an overarching plot to be engaging. Olive’s difficult personality, how she moves through the world, and how she changes or does not change are the topics of this novel.
W Critical Reception Strout’s three novels have all been well received by critics and audiences, but Olive Kitteridge, her third book, has TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Olive Kitteridge
been the most successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009. New York Times Book Review critic Louisa Thomas was among those who preferred Olive Kitteridge, writing, “It manages to combine the sustained, messy investigation of the novel with the flashing insight of the short story.” A reviewer for the Atlantic magazine called this novel in stories “superb” and considered Strout “particularly adept at showing the complex coincidence of tenderness and fury, appreciation and disappointment that exists between those who are closely tied.” The titular character of Olive garnered significant attention as proof of Strout’s considerable abilities with characterization. Christian Science Monitor critic Yvonne Zipp observed that “Strout makes a reader feel protective, even tender, toward Olive—despite her prickliness.” Referring directly to Olive, Thomas added: “There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer summarized: “the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Dalton, Quinn. “The Atlantic and the Decline of the Short Story.” www.mediabistro.com. Media Bistro 11 Apr. 2005. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Strout was born in Portland, Maine, in 1965. She wanted to be a writer from a young age and was an avid reader. Strout graduated from Bates College in Maine with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1977 and earned a law degree from Syracuse University in 1982. That same year she married Martin Feinman, with whom she had a daughter. Strout worked briefly in law, specializing in geriatrics, then took a position in the English Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her first novel, Amy and Isabella, was published in 1998, followed by Abide with Me in 2006 and Olive Kitteridge in 2008. Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009. As of 2010, Strout lived in New York City and Maine.
craftsmanship at weaving together the narrative and writing about complex characters. Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Kirkus Reviews 1 Feb. 2008. Print. Admires Strout’s balanced portrayal of the good and bad things in life. Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. New Yorker 5 May 2008: 77. Print. Praises Strout’s skill at making an unlikable character sympathetic.
“Olive Kitteridge.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Atlantic July-Aug. 2008: 140. Print.
Quinn, Mary Ellen. “Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Booklist 1 Jan. 2008: 46. Print. Presents a positive review, highlighting Olive’s characterization.
“Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007: 31. Print.
Teicher, Craig Morgan. “Maine Idea.” Publishers Weekly 4 Feb. 2008: 32. Print. Examines the real-life influences in Strout’s novels.
Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories. New York: Random House, 2008. Print.
Gale Resources
Thomas, Louisa. “The Locals.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. New York Times Book Review 20 Apr. 2008: 13(L). Print. Zipp, Yvonne. “A Prickly Protagonist with a Tender Heart.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. www.csmonitor.com. Christian Science Monitor 16 May 2008. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Andersen, Beth E. “Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories.” Rev. of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Library Journal 1 Feb. 2008: 65. Print. Offers a generally positive review with some reservations about the ending. McClurg, Jocelyn. “Olive Kitteridge: Intertwined Lives, Stories.” www.usatoday.com. USA Today 23 Apr. 2008. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Celebrates Strout’s
“Elizabeth Strout.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Elizabeth Strout’s official Web site has information about her life, her novels, her professional appearances, and reviews of her books. There is also a contact form for those who wish to write directly to the author. Her Web site is available at http://elizabethstrout.com Melissa Bank’s review “Who Says You Have to Like a Character?” was presented on National Public Radio’s program All Things Considered, 26 Dec. 2008. Audio and text of this review are available at http://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97941739 For Further Reading
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print. Explores the lonely struggles of middle-class Americans.
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Gratwick, Harry. Hidden History of Maine. Charleston: History Press, 2010. Print. Contains portraits of those who have made a difference for the Pine Tree State. Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories. New York: Signet, 2009. Print. First published in 1896, examines the hardship of life in coastal Maine.
daughter conflict over the daughter’s illicit relationship with a teacher. Updike, John. Villages. New York, Knopf, 2004. Print. Reflects on a long life of romantic relationships in New England. Carol Ullmann
Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle. New York: Random House, 1998. Print. Describes the mother and
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Omega Minor By Paul Verhaeghen
W Introduction The title of Paul Verhaeghen’s Omega Minor (2004) refers to a concept in physics: It represents the ratio between the apparent density of our universe and the density that would theoretically be needed to keep the universe from collapsing. This is one of many scientific ideas explored in the novel; others include the meaning of memory, the nature of truth, the origins of Nazism, the evolution of the Cold War, and the explanation of the universe. Verhaeghen intertwines past and present stories involving a Holocaust survivor turned magician, a German scientist who took refuge in the United States and helped create the atomic bomb, a neoNazi conspiracy, and a sexy Italian physicist in search of ultimate answers. The plots revolve around a central protagonist, Paul Andermans, who (like Verhaeghen himself) is a psychologist studying memory. The author’s extreme writing style combines prose and poetry, huge plot twists, and many descriptions of sex. Critics frequently describe the seven-hundred-page work as ambitious and sprawling; they generally concur that it is fascinating in spite of various flaws. Translated by its author, Omega Minor was published in English in 2007. After receiving several European awards, it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2008.
W Literary and Historical Context
The present narrative of Omega Minor is set in Potsdam, Germany, in the mid-1990s. Andermans, a postdoctoral psychology student, is assaulted by neo-Nazis. While he is recovering in the hospital, he meets Jozef De Heer, an elderly Holocaust survivor who has attempted suicide. Much of the novel is concerned with De Heer’s story, which includes not only his experiences in prewar Germany and in Auschwitz but also his involvement with
postwar events, such as the building of the Berlin Wall. An overlapping plotline recounts the experiences of Professor Goldfarb, a famed German physicist. After fleeing to the United States in the 1930s, he worked on developing the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. These two tales of the past turn out to have unexpected interconnections that reach into the novel’s present, during which Goldfarb’s young associate, Donatella Brani-Scelti, is engaged in a research project she believes will explain and even change the universe. At the same time, a violent plot unfolds in the politically charged atmosphere of post-Cold War Germany. In interweaving these plots, Verhaeghen illustrates how complex social, political, and scientific developments interlink and underlie the selective narrative we call history. As Ludo Stynen suggests in World Literature Today, “Omega Minor is a sea of stories, a sea of plots and subplots providing a multi-angled, panoramic view of the previous century.”
W Themes Library Journal reviewer K. H. Cumiskey claims that Omega Minor “deals with arguably the most important and traumatic events of the twentieth century: the Holocaust and the arms race.” The novel’s many themes can be viewed as falling within these two large categories. Through the narrative of an Auschwitz survivor, Verhaeghen explores not only the extraordinary horror and pathos of the Holocaust but also the interplay between creative imagination and imperfect memory. As a counterpoint, the story of a physicist who escapes the Holocaust only to become a key participant in a different mass killing (through his work on the atomic bomb) links science to the potential for political extremism. The neoNazi component of the plot demonstrates the persistence of inhumanity and existential despair, flowing from Adolf Hitler’s Germany into the narrative present of the novel. The themes of continuity and the cycles of human
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Omega Minor
MAJOR CHARACTERS PAUL ANDERMANS is a psychologist doing postdoctoral work in Potsdam, Germany. His record of the story told by Jozef De Heer is the primary narrative of the novel, and his associations with the other characters drive the plotline that takes place in the present. DONATELLA BRANI-SCELTI, an Italian physicist, is trying to prove that a theory discarded by Albert Einstein is actually correct. She has sexual liaisons with both Goldfarb and Andermans and imparts much of the scientific information in the book. PROFESSOR GOLDFARB is a scientist who escaped from Nazi Germany and worked on the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. His story is brought into the narrative through that of his beautiful research assistant, Donatella, who lives in Andermans’s apartment building. JOZEF DE HEER is a Holocaust survivor and a theatrical magician. While telling Andermans a story about his experiences, De Heer provides commentary on the events of the twentieth century and demonstrates the complex relationship between memory and history. NEBULA, a photographer, is initially involved with a neo-Nazi leader but becomes Andermans’s lover. She survives the novel’s climactic event with Andermans and Donatella, and the three move to New York.
experience are reinforced through references to Hindu philosophy and mysticism, which are in turn related to discussions of postmodern physics and emerging cosmologies. The many ideas introduced in the novel can seem disconnected as they pop in and out of the fast-paced narrative, but thematic patterns become more recognizable when the work is viewed as a whole.
W Style Omega Minor features a convoluted narrative, extreme characters, and dramatic plot manipulations. To connect the various elements, Verhaeghen organizes the novel into three long parts, each titled with a Sanskrit word— Tamas (darkness), Rajas (passion), and Sattva (purity)— that defines the focus of the section. According to one school of classical Hindu philosophy, these are the three basic operating principles of universal nature. There is a short fourth part, “Om” (mystical unity); and a prefatory chapter, “Ophelia, Upon Drowning” (subtitled “A Form of Prelude”). As the narrative begins, the novel’s characters are all at a dramatic point in life, and their circumstances continue to intensify as the novel unfolds. With the exception of Andermans, the characters are
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This photograph shows replicas of the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. In the story, Professor Goldfarb has a hand in the creation of such bombs. ª Corbis
revealed by sweeping plot turns to be very different than they first appear. Verhaeghen further complicates the reader’s experience by employing a variety of prose styles and viewpoints. Sections of poetry and very ornate prose are interspersed with passages of straightforward description and dialogue. The tone of Omega Minor is dark overall, but Verhaeghen uses humor and intellectual conversation to lessen the emotional intensity. Matt Thorne writes in the Independent that the novel’s “unpleasant violence” is “elevated by the fact that the characters are searching for evidence that we don’t live in a dying universe.” Thorne also sees “a lightness to Verhaeghen’s depiction of the interaction between Donatella and Paul that counterbalances his desire to explore the twentieth century’s worst atrocities.”
W Critical Reception Most reviewers have found Omega Minor impressive but also flawed. Financial Times reviewer Carol McNaughton asserts that this “beautiful, poetic novel is almost a masterpiece” in which the “characters’ stories connect to create a matrix of life, love, survival and death.” She concludes, however, that “like much of the existential sex peppered throughout the book, [Omega Minor] gets rather absurd by the end.” Other reviewers voice frustration with Verhaeghen’s often overwrought writing style and frequent, graphic depictions of sex. Cumiskey recommends Omega Minor with reservations, concluding TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Omega Minor
that “the scale is ambitious, but the novel would have benefited from more rigorous editing.” In a similar vein, Publishers Weekly calls the work “an ambitious, epic literary debut” but believes that it falls short of similar works, such as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. The Guardian’s Lindesay Irvine reports an observation made by Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of the Independent, that sums up much of the critical commentary on the novel: “It is vast and sprawling—and I think it’s OK to say that it is quite uneven, because 80 percent of it is absolutely brilliant.” Writing in the New Statesman, Heather Thompson offers a similar but more nuanced view: “In this brilliant, improbable mishmash of heart-rending horror and hilarious sex, of Hinduism and theoretical physics, of Greek mythology and conspiracy theory and Hebrew lore, Verhaeghen’s dense, dazzling efforts are at once engaging and alienating.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul Verhaeghen was born in Belgium in 1965. He received a PhD in psychology (1994) from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and in 1995 he began postdoctoral research in Potsdam, Germany. There, he became interested in the cultural history of twentiethcentury Europe and in the scientific developments that led to the atomic bomb. After taking courses in physics and cosmology, he spent almost nine years writing Omega Minor. During that time he taught psychology at Syracuse University in New York and continued his research in the psychology of memory and aging. Following the success of Omega Minor in Europe, Verhaeghen prepared his own English translation of the book, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2008. He lives with his wife in Atlanta, where he is an associate professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cumiskey, K. H. Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Library Journal 1 Nov. 2007: 62. Print. Irvine, Lindesay. “Belgian Author Scoops Double Foreign Fiction Prize Win.” Guardian [London].
Guardian News and Media Ltd 8 May 2008. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. McNaughton, Carol. Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Financial Times [London]. Financial Times Ltd 27 Oct. 2007. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.
In Omega Minor, Professor Goldfarb, a German scientist who defects to the United States, helps build the first atomic bomb. ª Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Omega Minor
Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Publishers Weekly 3 Sept. 2007: 39. Print. Stynen, Ludo. Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. World Literature Today 79.3-4 (2005): 99. Print. Thompson, Heather. “Hello to Berlin.” Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. New Statesman 19 May 2008: 57. Print. Thorne, Matt. “A Blast of Nuclear Fiction.” Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 11 Jan. 2008. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Herman, David. “When SS Means Sex and Science.” Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Jewish Chronicle. Jewish Chronicle Ltd 1 Mar. 2008. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Herman’s positive review provides a thoughtful analysis of the Holocaust theme in Omega Minor. Lehrer, Natasha. “Gravity’s Fountain.” Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Times Literary Supplement 30 May 2008: 21. Print. Lehrer acknowledges the novel’s flaws but admires the author’s achievement and praises his fearlessness. Morrison, Donald. “Hot Fusion.” Time International 17 Dec. 2007, European ed.: 58. Print. Morrison’s article combines commentary on the novel with a profile of Verhaeghen. Williams, Lynna. “In the Grip of Memory: Georgia Tech Professor Tackles History, Life on a Grand Scale.” Rev. of Omega Minor, by Paul Verhaeghen. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 16 Dec. 2007: L6. Print. Williams focuses on the novel’s scope in a positive though balanced review. Gale Resources
“Paul Verhaeghen.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.
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Open Web Sources
Verhaeghen posts news and observations on his personal blog, Babylon Blues. http://verhaeghen.blogspot. com A video of Verhaeghen discussing Omega Minor is available on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Wpbex8ckbnc For Further Reading
Gordon, Robert S. C. The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. This collection of essays surveys the life and work of Holocaust survivor, chemist, and writer Primo Levi, whose story is related to De Heer’s narrative. Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print. Herf examines differing views of Nazism that developed in West Germany and Communist East Germany after World War II. His book provides useful background for understanding Verhaeghen’s representation of the period. Kelly, Cynthia C., ed. The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians. New York: Black Dog, 2009. Print. Kelly’s collection of diverse materials sheds light on the details of Professor Goldfarb’s story. Verhaeghen, P., J. Joormann, and R. Khan. “Why We Sing the Blues: The Relation between Self-Reflective Rumination, Mood, and Creativity.” Emotion 5 (2005): 226-32. Print. This scholarly paper, one of many published by Verhaeghen, illuminates both his research interests and his ideas about creativity. Webb, Stephen. Out of This World: Colliding Universes, Branes, Strings, and Other Wild Ideas of Modern Physics. New York: Springer, 2004. Print. Webb introduces the general reader to some of the unanswered questions in contemporary physics, many of which are important in Omega Minor. Cynthia Giles
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On Beauty By Zadie Smith
W Introduction On Beauty (2005) is a social satire and campus novel set in a fictional college town near Boston, Massachusetts. The novel explores professional and personal jealousy between two Rembrandt scholars—one liberal, the other conservative—and the resulting upheaval that eventually results in the disintegration of both families. The work won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006 and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2005. On Beauty focuses on the seismic interactions of two families: the liberal Belseys, a multiracial clan who live just outside Boston, where husband and father Howard Belsey is a discontented and untenured professor at Wellington College, and the conservative Anglo-Caribbean Kipps family living in London, whose traditional head-of-household is Sir Montague (Monty) Kipps, a successful British scholar whose politics, religious beliefs, and professional status stand in stark contrast to those of Howard Belsey. The novel is an homage to E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel, Howards End, in plot, structure, and characterization, yet it is also clearly a story set in the “culture wars” milieu of the early twenty-first century. Howard Belsey and his African American wife, Kiki, are testily navigating the aftermath of Howard’s affair with a colleague, while their oldest son, Jerome, the atheistic family’s lone practicing Christian, has gone to London for a summer. While there, he is not only working for Monty Kipps, but living with the Kipps family, as well, enthralled with the prayer-and-faith centered lifestyle he observes under their tutelage. He falls in love with their beautiful daughter, Victoria. While his infatuation is brief, it is lifealtering for Jerome, and eventually for the rest of his family, as well. After the publication of a landmark work on Rembrandt, a success that has thus far eluded Belsey, Kipps
is invited to be a guest lecturer at Wellington College. Thus the Kipps family lands squarely in the personal and professional world of the Belseys. Improbable liaisons result, including a close friendship between the wives of the academic rivals. As the adults muddle their way through a thicket of divisive politics, interpersonal betrayals, and philosophic and moral hypocrisy, the children of both families engage in typical young adult identity struggles, seeking to both deny and redefine their perceived boundaries of race, culture, and family legacy.
W Literary and Historical Context
On Beauty takes place in the United States during the early years of the twenty-first century, an era marked by the so-called culture wars between conservative and liberal political and religious ideals. Issues of racial identity have advanced beyond the stark polarities of the mid-twentieth century, and mixed-race marriages, such as that of the Belseys, are no longer considered controversial or noteworthy. However, American society has not fully mitigated traditional divisions of social and cultural identities along lines marked by race and ethnicity. Answers to the question of aesthetics—what is beauty?—are still largely influenced by one’s racial, ethnic, and class identification and socialization. And defining “beauty” and defending one’s right to pursue it is ultimately at the heart of nearly every conflict that emerges in On Beauty. The work is an example of the campus novel, a genre whose contemporary origins date to the mid-1950s. The politics and polemics of academic life cannot be separated from the interpersonal dramas and foibles of the characters. The narrative is an examination not just of the lives of two families, but of the cultural milieu of the educational elite. The action takes place in a New
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On Beauty
MAJOR CHARACTERS HOWARD BELSEY is a white, liberal, professor of art history at Wellington College, nursing an obsessive professional jealousy toward conservative British scholar Sir Montague Kipps. A series of affairs with a colleague and the young daughter of his rival lead to the unraveling of his family life and his professional aspirations. JEROME BELSEY is the eldest son of Howard and Kiki Belsey. The only practicing Christian in a family of nonbelievers, Jerome ignites a connection between the Kipps and Belsey families when he goes to England to work for Monty Kipps and falls in love with the attractive and sexually precocious Kipps daughter, Victoria. KIKI BELSEY, Howard’s wife, is a black woman who works as a hospital administrator. The earthy center of her disintegrating family, she deals with the hurt and humiliation of betrayal while trying to maintain normalcy for Jerome, Zora, and Levi as they encounter the upheavals of young adulthood. LEVI BELSEY, the youngest of the Belsey offspring, adopts a hip-hop appearance and the language of contemporary urban black culture in an effort to distance himself from his siblings, his parents, and his middle-class, white collegetown upbringing. ZORA BELSEY, daughter of Howard and Kiki, is a student at Wellington College, where one of her most influential professors is the poet—and family friend—with whom her father is having an affair. CARLENE KIPPS is the traditional, stay-at-home wife of Monty. When the Kipps and Belsey families’ lives become intertwined, Carlene and Kiki Belsey become unlikely comrades and confidantes. SIR MONTAGUE (MONTY) KIPPS is an Anglo-Caribbean art historian and Rembrandt scholar, whose academic and professional status are as irksome to Howard Belsey as are his religious and political conservatism. VICTORIA KIPPS is the daughter of Monty and Carlene Kipps. She uses her sexuality to control men, including Jerome Belsey, who loses his virginity in a brief, infatuation with her, as well as Howard Belsey, who has sex with her while she is one of his students at Wellington. CLAIRE MALCOLM is a poet and professor at Wellington College whose connection to the Belseys is complex: She is a close friend of Kiki, she is one of Zora’s professors, and she engages in an ongoing affair with Howard.
England college town, ostensibly a culturally diverse community that is nonetheless predominantly white and middle class in orientation. While traditional political, religious, and cultural stereotypes persist, boundaries are
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becoming more permeable and they do not regulate the behavior of groups and individuals so rigidly as they once did. The characters in On Beauty thus operate on multiple levels of interpersonal and intercultural interaction as they strive—consciously or otherwise—to define and shape their identities in a cultural landscape where the boundaries of black and white, liberal and conservative, masculine and feminine, even “right” and “wrong,” are in flux.
W Themes As the daughter of a white father and a Jamaican-born black mother, author Zadie Smith grew up in a world defined by the juxtaposition of cultural identities that, in an earlier era, were separate and perhaps in conflict. Smith’s personal experience is a natural starting point for exploring the themes of race and class in everyday contemporary life. In On Beauty, Smith’s characters discover or intuitively know that there is no single answer to the question, “What does it mean to be a black man or woman in contemporary American society?” And while much identity-defining behavior happens in Smith’s storytelling, her characters are more concerned with finding their place in the world, or within their families, rather than finding their racial or cultural labels in society. The permeability and impermanence of such boundaries is thus a key theme in this novel. Family life is a key theme in On Beauty. What characterizes “normal” interactions between parents and children? What causes marriages to struggle? Is there a relationship between conservative political and social values and a strong family structure? How do gender, race, and class issues impact family preservation priorities? Smith offers no simple solutions to complex questions, only characters acting and interacting in ways that are consistent with the internal and external influences that guide their choices in other spheres of influence as well. Additional themes addressed by On Beauty center around issues that pervade academic life, including the granting of tenure, the exercising (or not) of intellectual honesty, professional rivalry, and the question of whether or not there should be certain immutable boundaries of behavior between professors and students, or between colleagues. Closely related are the themes of politics and religion, particularly where academic freedom and integrity are concerned: is there—or should there be— an ideological spectrum that can accommodate divergent viewpoints equally? And what is the role of beauty and aesthetics? Can the pursuit of “beauty” provide valid justification for taking actions that cause pain, hurt, or humiliation to another human being?
W Style On Beauty is an example of the campus novel, a genre that dates to the early 1950s. As in other examples of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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On Beauty
genre, the action is centered on professional and academic life on a college campus; the quirks and foibles of academia are presented, explored, and frequently skewered in a satirical way. In On Beauty, the central professorial characters, Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps, are extreme examples of liberal and conservative thinking, respectively. One of the strengths of the novel is that Smith does not favor one side of this cultural divide over the other, instead presenting both men as flawed, pompous human beings whose personalities are nonetheless entertaining enough to keep the reader interested in what happens to them—or at least to the people whose lives are most affected by their hapless and often selfish choices. In addition to its functions as social satire and a campus novel, On Beauty is modeled closely, in plot and structure, on E. M. Forster’s Howards End. The author is deliberate and overt in her references: from the name of one of the central characters to the structural and plot device of pitting two fundamentally different families against one another, there is no effort to hide the “borrowed” framework. Smith does allow her characters to behave in ways that Forster’s characters would not have, and the underlying tone and outcome of her story does not evoke Forster’s style of storytelling, but the
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Zadie Smith is a young British author whose premier novel, White Teeth (2000), met with both critical and commercial success. Raised in a multiethnic family in London—her father is white, her mother is Jamaican—and educated at Cambridge University and later at Harvard, Smith deftly employs humor and sharply drawn characters in her explorations of cultural boundaries in contemporary society. She is a talented storyteller who entertains while simultaneously illuminating the roles of race, religion, class, politics, and aesthetics in interpersonal relationships and societal discourse. Her narratives are critically acclaimed for their fresh perspective, successful satire, authentic dialects, and insightful treatment of human dynamics. Smith’s other novels include The Authentic Man (2002) and On Beauty (2005), for which she won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction. On Beauty was also short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In addition, she has published numerous short stories and essays, including the collection Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009), on the topic of writing. In July 2009 New York University announced that Smith would join the creative writing program as a full professor as of September 2010.
The events of On Beauty take place at a fictional college outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Jorge Salcedo/Shutterstock.com
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On Beauty
novel would elicit comparisons even if the author had not explicitly stated, in her acknowledgment, that she intended for this novel to pay homage to Forster’s work. To fully appreciate and understand the interactions between the Belseys and the Kippses, it is helpful to be familiar with Howards End, the work that inspired On Beauty. A central hallmark of On Beauty is the author’s deft use of comedic dialogue. Zadie Smith has established a reputation for creating memorable characters whose dialogue and dialect is realistic, witty, and true to the age, demographic profile, and personality of people from all walks of life. Smith’s satirical portrayal of academia does not disappoint in this regard. Her characters are not made cartoonish by their unique dialectical details; they are given depth, dimension, and vulnerability. The characters are believable, even if the circumstances in which the reader finds them may occasionally strain the bounds of plausibility.
W Critical Reception Most critics and reviewers reiterate that On Beauty is an obvious homage to E. M. Forster’s Howards End and many also note that in her acknowledgment to the novel, Smith uses the French word hommage to make her point. Not all critics agree that the structural and thematic parallels between the two works are successfully navigated. Both novels contrast two vastly different families and Smith lifts numerous plot elements directly from Forster’s story. And, as Seattle Times reviewer Michael Upchurch writes, the first sentence of On Beauty, “One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father,” is an obvious nod to Forster’s opening line: “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.” Upchurch suggests that Smith’s tribute is ultimately successful because she retains the “key ingredient”: the complicated families whose lives overlap and interact in potentially explosive ways. By contrast, Max Watman, in the New Criterion, opines that while the structural aspects of Smith’s work admirably pay tribute to Forster’s, the characters in On Beauty remain resolutely disconnected from one another and unchanged by each other, despite their many collisions and interactions, whereas in Howards End, “there are only connections and their ramifications.” In general, On Beauty was well received by both British and American critics, particularly after it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Publishers Weekly noted that Smith’s exploration of the “complicated (and beautiful)” aspects of twenty-first-century life survives the “elaborate Forster homage,” and David Heim, in the Christian Century, called the novel “shrewd and entertaining,” and praised the author’s “virtuoso ear for speech.” Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Ihsan Taylor termed the novel “one of the year’s 10 best
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books,” and Frank Rich (also for the New York Times Book Review) lauded Smith’s fictional effort to “adjudicate the culture wars” between liberal and conservative values in the world of American academics. Rich noted approvingly that Smith does not take sides, but “is merciless about both Howard and Monty,” the characters who represent the extremes of each side of the divide. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Heim, David. “Language Games.” Christian Century 123.9 (2 May 2006): 38. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Leddy, Chuck. “Zadie Smith’s World View: The Acclaimed British Author Crosses Racial and Cultural Boundaries.” Writer 119.2 (Feb. 2006): 20. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 July 2010. Martin, Mark. “High Art as a Straitjacket.” New Leader 88.5 (Sept.-Oct. 2005). 34. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. “On Beauty.” Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Rev. ed. Ed. Steven G. Kellmann. Vol. 6. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2009. 2429-30. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 July 2010. “On Beauty.” Publishers Weekly 1 Aug. 2005: 44+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 July 2010. Rich, Frank. “Zadie Smith’s Culture Warriors.” New York Times Book Review 18 Sept. 2005: 1(L). Taylor, Ihsan. “Paperback Row.” New York Times Book Review 17 Sept. 2006: 32(L). Upchurch, Michael. “On Beauty: Where to Begin? At Howards End.” Seattle Times 16 Sept. 2005. Web. 26 July 2010. Veersteegh, Adrian. “Zadie Smith Joins NYU Creative Writing Faculty.” Poet and Writers Daily News Online Only 24 July 2009. Web. 26 July 2010. Watman, Max. “The Ever-Present Human Hint of Yellow.” New Criterion 24:9 (2006): 58+. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Beauty Renewed: Smith Earns Her Man Booker Shortlist Place.” Bookseller 16 Sept. 2005: 46. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 July 2010. A brief summary of British critical response to On Beauty after the novel was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Gray, J. A. “Beauty Is as Beauty Does.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 167 (2006): 48+ General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. A negative review of On Beauty in which the reviewer finds fault with the novel, suggesting that the author TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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On Beauty
has relied on “stale stereotypes” in the writing of what he terms a “big, messy, ambitious book.” Gross, Terry. “Zadie Smith: On Beauty and Difference.” Fresh Air 17 Oct. 2005. Web. 23 July 2010. An audio interview in which Zadie Smith talks about On Beauty with Terry Gross of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air radio program. Also includes an excerpt from the book. Mason, Wyatt. “White Knees: Zadie Smith’s Novel Problem.” Harper’s Magazine 311.1865 (Oct. 2005): 83. From Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. A substantial review of On Beauty in which other critical reviews of the work are referenced. Mehegan, David. “Zadie Smith Goes to Town.” Boston Globe 8 Oct. 2005. From Highbeam.com. Web. 27 July 2010. In this interview, which was conducted shortly after the publication of On Beauty, Smith discusses the uneasy impact of critical and commercial literary success. Moo, Jessica Murphy. “Zadie, Take Three.” Atlantic Sept. 2005. Web. 27 July 2010. In this interview, Smith discusses specific influences on the setting and characters of On Beauty and talks about how the characters continued to live in her consciousness after the book was finished. Gale Resources
Schwalboski, Ann. “Smith, Zadie (1975-).” Newsmakers. Ed. Laura Avery. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Web. 26 July 2010. http://find. galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&content Set=GBRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T001&pro dId=DC&docId=EK1618003796&source=ga le&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=itsbtrial&ver sion=1.0 Walters, Tracey L. “Zadie Smith.” Twenty-first-Century “Black” British Writers. Ed. R. Victoria Arana. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 347. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 16 July 2010. “Zadie Smith.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
The Penguin Group Book Club offers a reading guide for On Beauty that includes an overview of the novel, an interview with Zadie Smith, and a dozen discussion questions. http://us.penguingroup.com/static/ rguides/us/on_beauty.html A conversation with Zadie Smith about her first novel, White Teeth, is posted at the Random House website. http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0700/ smith/interview.html For Further Reading
Edemariam, Aida. “Who’s Afraid of the Campus Novel?” Guardian 2 Oct. 2004. Web. 27 July 2010. Discussion of the campus novel genre, its usual themes, and a brief list of representative and recent titles, from Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe (1952) to Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004). McAlpin, Heller. “Brave, Brainy, Changeable—Zadie Smith Revealed.” Arts and Life/Books/Books We Like/ NPR.org. (11 Nov. 2009). Web. 26 July 2010. This review of Smith’s collection Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays includes an excerpt from the book in which Smith writes about her father; “comedy snobbery” and its influence on her; and the end of her father’s life. Smiley, Jane. Moo. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print. Darkly humorous novel set at a fictional midwestern agricultural university. Smith, Zadie. “Zadie Smith’s Rules for Writers.” Guardian 22 Feb. 2010. Web. 23 July 2010. Smith offers a list of ten “golden rules” that she brings to her own writing practice. Wolfe, Tom. I Am Charlotte Simmons. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print. A satirical look at academic and social life at the fictional Dupont University. Womack, Kenneth. “Academic Satire: The Campus Novel in Context.” A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000. Ed. Brian W. Shaffer. Blackwell, 2005. Print. Scholarly review of literature of the campus novel genre published during the latter half of the twentieth century.
Zadie Smith is profiled at the website, Contemporary Writers in the UK, with a bio-bibliographic entry that includes a critical overview of her works. http:// www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/? p=auth257
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Pamela Willwerth Aue
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On Chesil Beach By Ian McEwan
W Introduction On Chesil Beach tells the story of a newly married British couple trapped by the sexual restrictions of the early 1960s, before the permissive era of the sexual revolution. The novel was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. The story takes place in 1962 and is set on the Dorset coast, where Edward and Florence are spending their honeymoon. Readers discover that Edward is anxious about his sexual performance and that Florence is repelled by the very thought of sexual intercourse. While the main action of the narrative covers just a couple hours, flashbacks give us some insight into each character’s individual psychology. Employing a swift and lean writing style, free of ornamentation and metaphorical density, Ian McEwan dramatizes the difficulty of exposing our inner selves and demonstrates how the romantic destinies of men and women can hinge on one misunderstanding.
W Literary and Historical Context
The opening sentence of McEwan’s novel establishes the social milieu of early 1960s England: “They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” While British men and women of the protagonists’ generation may well have been more sexually active than the social mores of the time would indicate, the subject of sexuality was still quite taboo, even for discussion between a married couple. The year when the story is set, 1962, is right on the cusp of what has been called the “permissive moment,” when contraceptives became widely available and sexual freedom was celebrated by the new “rock ‘n’ roll” music of the Beatles. The major conflict between sexual frustration and sexual prudery—embodied by Edward and
Florence—reflects two different responses to the heavy moral objection to promiscuity and premarital sex. While the swinging ‘60s and the “Pill” were just around the corner (Clarke), a psychological barrier stood in the way of such a revolution, as illustrated by the revulsion Florence expresses when she reads the clinical description of intercourse in her handbook for young brides.
W Themes Centrally concerned with the problem of sexual repression, On Chesil Beach manages to expose the humorous aspects of the period’s social prohibitions while still maintaining a compassionate stance toward its protagonists’ individual anxieties. Edward is worried about “arriving too soon,” while Florence is confused and disturbed by the bewildering descriptions in her sex handbook, such as “mucous membrane,” “penetration,” and “engorged.” Edward, wants to impress his wife with his sexual prowess but lacks the actual knowledge of the female anatomy since he has been unable to gain access to his wife’s body until their honeymoon. For her part, Florence would prefer that the consummation be over and done without her participation: “If only she could, like the mother of Jesus, arrive at that swollen state by magic.” In such ways, McEwan presents the comic helplessness of the situation: an attractive couple in love with each other and utterly terrified of sex. The misery of this predicament becomes apparent, however, when Edward mistakes Florence’s shyness for coyness, and readers are reminded of the potential for grave misunderstanding that looms over situations of sexual intimacy. In addition to the theme of sexual repression, McEwan also explores how a single event can have farreaching repercussions. The disastrous failure to consummate the marriage precipitates a terrible row between Edward and Florence, from which they ultimately do not recover. McEwan emphasizes the fact that the couple’s courtship developed out of an accidental meeting and
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On Chesil Beach
that their lives had likely overlapped for a number of years before that fateful day in 1959 when they both attended a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) meeting. In the aftermath of their divorce, which occurs within weeks of their disastrous wedding night in 1962, Edward wonders if their relationship was simply a cruel mistake, given that they had such incompatible views on life and sexuality. Chesil Beach, which the couple had planned to roam together as an expression of their marital unity, becomes instead the harsh setting for their final cataclysmic separation.
W Style In his writing McEwan typically dispenses with “metaphorical pyrotechnics” in order to get to the heart of his story’s plot (Daily Mail); as a result, his prose tends to be economical but exact, providing a clear picture of the scene. McEwan is also known for the “forensic detail” (Publishers Weekly) of his stories, evidenced in the graphic depiction of Edward and Florence’s sexual encounter. While such a scene could be employed for ribald or sensational purposes, for McEwan it serves the purpose of illustrating the physical attraction and revulsion that contribute to the couple’s catastrophic argument. Michael Weiss argues that McEwan relies upon “body mechanics” to illustrate “the centrifugal force that separates and layers two personal tragedies as subtly as the famed shingle of Chesil Beach.” The story is deftly presented through an omniscient narrator whose shift from past to present creates suspense as we await the inevitable entanglement and separation of two bodies.
W Critical Reception On Chesil Beach was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, but a number of critics objected to the novel’s nomination, claiming that, given its short length (some 40,000 words), it should be considered a novella. The Daily Mail reviewer felt that the novel’s apparent “compression” did not add “intensity” but rather consisted of “thin material stretched to [the] breaking point.” Philip Hensher from the Spectator found that the novel’s historical background seemed too overtly researched: “A small anthology of dug-up early-1960s cliches could be furnished from this short novel.” The New Statesman’s Rachel Aspden admired the novel’s message but felt that it “fails to throw off the feel of a private technical exercise.” The majority of reviews celebrated both McEwan’s writing style and his ability to pinpoint meticulously an important moment in the history of British sexual mores. The Evening Standard admitted that Chesil Beach was not “a major novel” but declared it “as exquisitely crafted as any of his fiction.” Francine Prose, writing in O: The Oprah Magazine, echoed this sentiment, concluding that
MAJOR CHARACTERS EDWARD MAYHEW is a university graduate with a degree in history. Quiet and strongly built, he possesses an explosive, violent temper and an embarrassing fondness for streetbrawling. He is excited about the prospect of sex, although he is worried about his performance on his wedding night. LIONEL MAYHEW, Edward’s father, has raised Edward and his twin sisters, Anne and Harriet, in a little cottage in Turville Heath. The headmaster of a primary school in Henley, Lionel must prepare his lessons and mark his students’ work, while also tending to his children and the household chores. MARJORIE MAYHEW, Edward’s mother, suffered brain damage when he was only five. Marjorie functions well enough but lives in her own world in the Mayhew household, seemingly oblivious to the family around her. FLORENCE PONTING is a well-educated woman from North Oxford whose talents as a violin player have inspired in her an ambition to one day lead a string quartet. She loves Edward dearly and feels that it is her marital duty to have sexual intercourse with him, but is frightened and repulsed by the prospect of it. GEOFFREY PONTING, Florence’s father, is a short but solidly built man who is intimidating in his gruffness but surprisingly affable in conversation. While Florence loves her father, there are times when she finds him physically repellant. VIOLET PONTING, Florence’s mother, teaches philosophy at Oxford and supports the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Violet is intolerant of her daughter’s ambitions to be a concert violinist and makes it difficult for Florence to broach the subject of sexuality.
“McEwan has never written more beautifully than he does in his melancholy and haunting new novel.” Many other critics praised the “compression” of the work, and Maxine Clarke from the Philadelphia Inquirer called it a “masterpiece—in miniature, maybe, but a masterpiece nonetheless.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Aspden, Rachel. “Their Generation.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. New Statesman 30 Apr. 2007: 58. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Clarke, Maxine. “A Beach Honeymoon amid Shifting Sands.” Philadelphia Inquirer 6 June 2007. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Davis, Barbara Beckerman. Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Antioch Review 66.1 (2008): 187. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in Aldershot, England, and was raised by David McEwan, a soldier, and Rose Lilian Violet (Moore) McEwan. McEwan spent a happy but somewhat overprotected childhood while his father was stationed in such locations as Singapore and North Africa. In 1970 he received a BA in English literature from the University of Sussex and, one year later, an MA in English from the University of East Anglia. During his time at East Anglia, McEwan participated in a creative writing course conducted by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. Early in his career, McEwan became known as an analyst of childhood fantasies and fears, particularly with his first publication, First Love, Last Rites (1975), a collection of nightmarish stories. His more recent novels, including Atonement (2001), Saturday (2005), and On Chesil Beach (2007), expand this exploration to include social and political crises as well as the consequences of lost innocence and declining religious faith. He has often been associated with literary modernism, although some critics have found a “Neo-Victorian” element in his work.
Hensher, Philip. “Private Faces Are Wiser and Nicer.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Spectator 24 Mar. 2007. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. McEwan, Ian. On Chesil Beach. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007. Print. Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Publishers Weekly 254.10 (2007): 3. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Prose, Francine. “Lovesick.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. O: The Oprah Magazine June 2007: 156. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. “Two Hours That Shape a Lifetime.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Evening Standard 26 Mar. 2007: 37. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Weiss, Michael. “Unconsummation; The Sexual Battleground before the Revolution.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Weekly Standard 20 Aug. 2007. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“The Earth Didn’t Move for Me, Darling.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Daily Mail 23 Mar. 2007: 63. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010.
Adams, Tim. “Innocents Abroad.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Observer 25 Mar. 2007. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. In this positive review of McEwan’s work, Adams explores the novel’s subtle use of Chesil Beach as a metaphor for paths of destiny.
In On Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, a young couple on their honeymoon, experience marital discord as a result of sexual problems. wavebreakmedia ltd/Shutterstock.com
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Davidson, Max. “McEwan Makes Misery a Delight.” Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Mail on Sunday 8 Apr. 2007: 61. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Davidson finds in McEwan’s novel a dazzling remedy to the trashy romances that depict sex as easy and “automatic as putting on a kettle.” Hooper, Brad. Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Booklist 15 Mar. 2007: 5. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. In his review Hooper praises McEwan for not shying away from the inherent tensions of human sexuality. Letham, Jonathan. “Edward’s End.” New York Times Book Review 3 June 2007: 1. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. Reviewing the novel, Letham explores in detail McEwan’s “forensic” vocabulary and the features of his writing that identify him as “modernist.” de Waard, Marco. “Agency and Metaphor in the NeoVictorian Imagination: The Case of Ian McEwan.” Real: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 25 (2009): 145-61. Web. 16 July 2010. In this theoretical essay de Waard analyzes the rigid class structure that is presented in On Chesil Beach, arguing that it is reinforced by a “Darwinian model of sexual selection” that reflects McEwan’s preference for the nineteenth-century assurance of self-agency over modernist or postmodernist doubt. Walter, Natasha. Rev. of On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. Guardian 31 Mar. 2007: 7. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 16 July 2010. In her review Walter considers the polished style of McEwan’s novel. Gale Resources
“Ian McEwan (1948-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 269. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 128-243. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 16 July 2010. “Ian McEwan (1948-).” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 106. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 89-193. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 16 July 2010. Lang, James M. “Ian McEwan (21 June 1948-).” British and Irish Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-2000. Ed. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm and David Malcolm. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 319. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 216-21. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 16 July 2010. Moseley, Merritt. “Ian McEwan (21 June 1948-).” British Novelists since 1960, Second Series. Ed. Merritt Moseley. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. 207-15. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 16 July 2010. Open Web Sources
some of his novels, including On Chesil Beach. http://www.ianmcewan.com/ The official BBC News Web site discusses the findings of “Little Kinsey,” a 1949 British sex survey named after the famous American Kinsey Report of 1948. The report reveals that British men and women were quite enthusiastic about sexual experimentation years before the sexual revolution of the 1960s. http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4293978.stm For Further Reading
Bentley, Nick. Contemporary British Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008. Print. In this work Bentley surveys a number of important contemporary British novels, including McEwan’s best-selling Atonement, which Bentley analyzes for its exploration of history and memory. This study is valuable for situating McEwan within the larger context of contemporary British literary trends and social concerns. Lodge, David. How Far Can You Go? London: Penguin, 1980. Print. In this acclaimed novel Lodge explores the sexual revolution of the 1960s through the perspective of several Catholic British men and women. Like McEwan’s novel, Lodge’s work reveals the sometimes comical awkwardness of sexual inexperience and shyness. Lodge, however, places special emphasis on the late 1960s, when conversations about sex were becoming more socially acceptable. Malcolm, David. Understanding Ian McEwan. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2002. Print. This book offers a thorough introduction to major themes in many of McEwan’s works up to 2002. McEwan, Ian, and Matthew D’Ancona. “The Magus of Fitzrovia: Ian McEwan Talks about His New Novel.” Spectator 7 Apr. 2007: 16-17. Print. In this interview with Matthew D’Ancona, McEwan discusses his novel On Chesil Beach and reflects on his interests in classical music, seaside landscapes, and the war on terrorism. Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Modern Sexualities. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. Print. Weeks’s book concerns the philosophical, religious, and scientific debates over human sexuality since the nineteenth century. The book is invaluable as an exploration of the history of sexuality and especially the period leading up to the sexual revolution, which is the central concern of McEwan’s novel. Adaptations
Ian McEwan has written a screenplay for On Chesil Beach, which as of 2010 was scheduled to be directed by filmmaker Sam Mendes.
The official Ian McEwan Web site features a biographical sketch of the author as well as a critical overview of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Opportunity By Charlotte Grimshaw
W Introduction Charlotte Grimshaw’s Opportunity (2007) is a collection of nineteen slightly related short stories about people living in and around Auckland, New Zealand, in the mid-1990s. The New Zealand Book Council quotes Grimshaw as describing the collection as “a novel with a large cast of characters . . . each story stands by itself, and at the same time adds to the larger one.” Taken as a whole, the collection describes a wide assortment of New Zealanders: an aging author, a lawyer, an ob/gyn doctor, a dentist, a policeman, college students, married and single people with children, gay musicians, poor rural whites, northern Maoris, and others. The title of the collection serves also as the title of one of the stories and identifies a recurrent theme: Opportunity or opportunism is viewed in various ways in these stories. The final story in the collection, “Going Back to the Ending,” is about the fictional author Celia Myers, author of a collection of stories called Opportunity, which are stolen from her. Opportunity was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
Short stories have been told for millions of years; evidence of short stories exists in Egyptian manuscripts, in the Old and New Testament, and down through the Common Era, for example, in the medieval works of Boccaccio and Chaucer. Nineteenth-century Americans such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote short stories and wrote about them, describing features of works in this genre, such as length, structure, point of view. O. Henry’s hundreds of popular stories were published in magazines. Short stories held their wide appeal into the twenty-first century.
The historical context for Opportunity is New Zealand in the 1990s. References are made to the conflict in the Balkans in the early 1990s that resulted in the breakup of Yugoslavia and the 1994 Rwanda war between Tutsis and Hutus. Relevant to New Zealand are references to the Maoris and their land rights, especially regarding the Far North, the northernmost part of the North Island, about four hours by car from Auckland. Prior to and throughout the twentieth century, Maoris resisted European encroachment, and the Maoris protest movement worked to establish Maori rights to control their lands and the influx of European peoples into it. Inclusion of the Maori language, Te Reo, as a national language and the naming of national landmarks in that language, as well as other cultural preservation efforts, are parts of the ongoing Maori effort to assert the indigenous people’s rights and ownership of the land. In the early 2000s, the return of lost land was a major focus of Maori activists.
W Themes The title of this collection suggests one idea that recurs in the stories. Criminals take the opportunity to procure drugs; rich businessmen exploit a free hour in the afternoon to visit the local brothel; a worker takes a free cab ride and then ends up abused in the cabby’s apartment; a doctor’s wife networks after a ballet; a husband cuts out on his wife to enjoy a brief interlude with his mistress; a wife leaves a cricket match to run along a river looking for clues to a murder; an entrepreneur is opportunistic about business ventures, using an import business as a front. In all of these and other ways, the stories explore various kinds of opportunities and how people use them. But nowhere is this concept more fully explored than in the story that bears this word as its title. The first half of “Opportunity” is about the religious Lisa Green and her difficulties with flat mates,
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Opportunity
two female friends, and later, two males, Sean and the policeman Reid. This second living arrangement ends abruptly when Lisa’s penchant for cleaning gets to her two scruffy roommates, the climax occurring when Reid breaks her possessions and literally throws her out of the flat. The story moves from this period in Lisa’s young adulthood into her subsequent marriage and her return with her husband and mother-in-law to the Far North where as a child Lisa vacationed with her parents and became lifelong friends of a local Maori family. Coincidentally, while enjoying the beach on this rare visit, Lisa spies Reid, now heavily bearded and working as an undercover detective, trying to entrap some relatives of her Maori friends. Lisa takes the opportunity to blow his cover, protect her friends’ relatives, and enjoy some long-overdue revenge. A second theme in the collection has to do with how fiction writing completes real life. This idea is presented in the first story, “Animals,” in which the protagonist, a writer who interviews novelists, recuperates from an operation. He occupies himself with observing mothers with their children in the courtyard outside his home, taking notes for a novel. The women notice his behavior and alert the police who investigate. When the protagonist begins to write his novel, he
MAJOR CHARACTERS LISA GREEN is a religious woman who becomes convinced there is something wrong with her until she takes the opportunity to retaliate against the man who abused her. JACK JAMES is a journalist and novelist, recovering from surgery, who concludes that all people are animals. SIMON LAMPTON is a wealthy obstetrician and gynecologist, the adult child of an alcoholic father. CELIA MYERS is an established author. A widow, she lives alone in Remeura. VIOLA works in Dr. Lampton’s office and accepts a ride from Lampton’s alcoholic father, who abuses her. CLAUDIA ZAMBUCKA, whose father lives outside New Zealand to avoid being charged with illegal business dealings, works as a receptionist at a brothel called Land of Opportunity.
describes a protagonist much like himself and fashions his story so that it demonstrates his belief that all people are animals. The second story in the collection,
This photograph shows the skyline of Auckland, New Zealand, which is the setting of Charlotte Grimshaw's Opportunity. ª Will Steeley / Alamy
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1966, Charlotte Grimshaw’s first novel is the crime thriller Provocation (1999). Her short fiction is frequently included in anthologies, and she won the 2006 Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award. Opportunity won the 2008 Montana Award for Fiction and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry. Both Opportunity and Singularity (2009) were shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. In 2010 Grimshaw published The Night Book, which centers on two characters from Opportunity, Dr. Simon Lampton and his wife Karen Rutherford. As of 2010, Grimshaw lived in Auckland, New Zealand.
called “Stories,” also shows how writing can supplement or fulfill life. Here, established author Celia Myers is critical of her neighbors, and as she watches a man catch his balance on the roof of his house next door, she begins a story in which just such a man slips and falls, and the old woman, observing the accident from the neighboring house, slowly leaves her home and drives away. Celia has her own issues, and irritation with her neighbors is only one of them, but in writing her story, she has the satisfaction of imagining what she would probably like to see actually happen. In the collection's final story, she pays for these desires, for in it, Celia is robbed of her story drafts, along with several other valuables. Still, she manages to have the final word, invigorating herself with a strenuous swim.
W Style All of the stories in Opportunity are written from a firstperson perspective, but interestingly, the gender of the narrator is not made immediately clear. As Matt Bowler commented in his review of the collection, the firstperson point of view creates “a casual, anecdotal style that draws the reader familiarly into the story.” The reader feels an immediate confidential relationship with the speakers, many of whom state quite openly what their secret obsession or failing is. The stories read virtually like confidential monologues, and this handling of point of view gives a sense of being-there authenticity to the stories. The links between stories are often unexpected and, when they occur, serve to frame or contextualize current action and events in previous stories. It is as if the link gives the reader a leg up in understanding the truth behind the current story’s characters. For example, “Plane Sailing” is told from the point of view of an unmarried dentist who bears a son fathered by Max, the husband and father in the earlier story “Him.” The
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narrator wife in “Him” describes the uncommunicative Max as clueless and unobservant, yet she is oblivious to his infidelity. In the subsequent story, “Plane Sailing,” readers get an entirely different look at Max, seeing him from the point of view of a discarded mistress; he is unfaithful and irresponsible, both in his marriage and in this extramarital relationship.
W Critical Reception Though Opportunity got some recognition and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award in 2007, it did not receive much attention from reviewers. Praise came from Clare McIntosh, who noted Grimshaw’s strengths as “intertwining storylines, skips and slides in time, action in the unsaid, skewering social criticism and crystalline prose.” Matt Bowler praised Grimshaw’s style. “Her tight, realistic writing never drops a beat, and she has an ear for dialogue and an eye for detail,” he wrote. But Grimshaw was also criticized for insufficiently developing the links connecting the stories in her collection. Bowler, for example, found “no meta-narrative of any substance,” and Caren Wilton agreed, commenting that central characters in certain stories play only cameo or peripheral roles in other ones, which is “clever” but does not deliver a “larger narrative.” Another area of criticism pertained to Grimshaw’s characters and her tone. Bowler found her “SUV-driving Auckland fat cats” unappealing, and her “‘normal’ and down-and-out types . . . every bit as self-absorbed.” Wilton agreed, finding the stories “cold and uninvolving” because the characters are unlikable. Wilton faulted the “terse prose,” and Bowler speculated that the “worldweary flatness and a carefully constructed naturalism” was likely to be “alienating” for some readers. In short, praise was given with qualification. Wilton felt Grimshaw’s best stories display her “emotional insight.” Bowler pointed to the first-person point of view as drawing in the reader, and he praised the final story as having a “clever twist.” Reaching a mixed final assessment, however, Bowler wrote: “There are some great moments in here—some excellent, thoughtful writing and some clever, likeable stories—but as a whole, the book feels too complex and too ambitious for its own good.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bowler, Matt. “Great Writing but a Lack of Connection.” Rev. of Opportunity, by Charlotte Grimshaw. Nelson Mail, 13 June 2007. Print. Grimshaw, Charlotte. Opportunity. New York: Vintage Books, 2007. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“Grimshaw, Charlotte.” www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/ grimshaw. New Zealand Book Council, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. McIntosh, Clare. “Breaking the Rules.” Rev. of The Night Book, by Charlotte Grimshaw. Sunday StarTimes 2 May 2010. Print. Wilton, Caren. “Getting Connected.” Rev. of Opportunity, by Charlotte Grimshaw. New Zealand Listener 208.3497 (2007). Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“The Author: Charlotte Grimshaw.” Sunday Star-Times 2 May 2010. Print. An interview in which Grimshaw speaks about her writing strategy and philosophy regarding her fictional characters. LeBas, Jessica. “Short Fiction: A Grand Tradition.” Nelson Mail, 27 Aug. 2008. Print. Discusses the history and popularity of short fiction for writers and readers in New Zealand. Open Web Sources
The New Zealand Book Council has an author page on Charlotte Grimshaw available at http://www.book council.org.nz/writers/grimshaw.html
For Further Reading
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Norton, 1995. Print. The Norton Critical Edition of this collection of short stories, consisting of portraits of townspeople in an early twentieth-century midwestern town. Carver, Raymond, and Tom Jenks, eds. American Short Story Masterpieces. New York: Dell, 1987. Print. Includes stories by James Baldwin, Ursula Le Guin, Andre Dubus, Flannery O’Connor, Philip Roth, and others. Gioia, Dana, and R. S. Gwynn, eds. The Art of the Short Story. New York: Longman, 2005. Print. More than nine hundred pages, including fifty-two stories from twenty countries, of authors’ biographies and comments on the art form, and other information pertaining to the genre. Mansfield, Katherine. Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2006. Print. The collected stories of the famed New Zealand short fiction author, including “The Garden Party” and “The Daughters of the Late Colonel.”
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Melodie Monahan
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Oryx and Crake By Margaret Atwood
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Oryx and Crake (2003) is the first in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, dystopian stories of the future of earth as envisioned by the author if contemporary society continues on its present course. The novel opens in an unspecified time and place in the future, hinted to be on the southeastern coast of the United States in the later twenty-first century. The main character, Snowman (Jimmy), believes he is the last man on earth. The planet has been destroyed by climate change and a genetically engineered virus that wiped out the population. Snowman lives in a tree, wrapped in a sheet, to hide from the scorching sun and the predatory hybrid animals, pigoons and wolvogs. He must care for the new human race, the Crakers, genetically invented by the scientist Crake (Glenn), who was once Snowman’s best friend. The gentle and perfect but empty-headed Crakers were taught by Oryx, the beautiful Asian girl loved by both Snowman and Crake. The Crakers worship Crake as their maker and Oryx as their teacher. Both are dead, but they believe Snowman is a prophet who can speak to them and receive messages. In flashbacks, through third-person limited point of view, Snowman’s memories of growing up as Jimmy in a compound of privileged scientists, sheltered from the common folk of the cities (pleeblands) and gaining his values from computer games, gradually reveal the basis of the coming catastrophe. Crake works in a biotech lab genetically engineering new breeds of animals, people, and drugs, and Jimmy writes the sales pitch for products such as the BlyssPluss pill, containing the deadly virus that will kill everyone on earth. At last, the lonely Snowman sees footprints in the sand showing there are some other survivors. He struggles with a dilemma about whether he should he shoot them to protect the Crakers or try to communicate with these strangers.
Atwood’s assertion that Canadian literature focuses heavily on survival surfaces once again in this novel. Survival is a motivation in Oryx and Crake, as humans plot to deal with a deteriorating environment by using genetic engineering, only to have it go awry. Atwood’s futuristic scenarios are extrapolations of procedures and policies known to exist in the early 2000s. Many factions, for example, hold that global warming, caused by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, has melted polar ice caps and is destroying the ozone layer protecting the earth. Atwood visited the Arctic and saw the melting ice caps for herself. In the novel, the sun’s direct rays cause cancer, and Snowman must avoid sunlight. The scientists in the novel see species becoming extinct and decide to create new, more practical species through genetic engineering. Grotesque hybrids, such as pigoons, or pigs designed to be human organ donors, are only a step away from current real inventions such as oncomouse, a mouse designed and trademarked by DuPont for cancer research. Human genetic modifications are possible, so the Crakers in the story, deliberately made less intelligent and immune to climate change and disease, are not far-fetched, Atwood implies. Atwood was in the midst of writing Oryx and Crake when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred in the United States. She reportedly stopped work on the book because it felt shocking to be creating a fictional apocalypse while a real one seemed to be happening. Atwood has never classified her work as science fiction, and readers have recognized an uncomfortable continuity between her satire and what is actually happening in the world. Oryx and Crake is thus in the tradition of, and contains echoes of, other fiction that satirizes the amoral progress of human society at high cost, such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
Context
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Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
W Themes The most obvious theme in the novel focuses on the dangers of scientific knowledge growing without regard to humane ethics. Crake is a mad scientist. The boys are part of a society of elite scientists who learn to manipulate objects and people. Jimmy believes—until the catastrophic plague, secretly engineered by Crake—that Crake has benevolent ideas about improving life. Jimmy is the only one left after the plague runs rampant, proving to be an immoral and inhumane invention designed to kill off the old humans so the Crakers could take their place. Corporate greed is another theme, illustrated by biotech companies who want to fund Crake’s virus, cleverly embedded in an aphrodisiac pill, BlyssPluss. Crake’s own father is killed when he finds out that pharmaceutical companies like HelthWyzer manufacture diseases to make money from medicines. Finally, Atwood hints at some enduring features of human nature that cannot be destroyed. Though Crake tries to limit the intelligence and desire of the Crakers, they seem recognizably human. Snowman invents myths about Oryx and Crake, who become gods to the Crakers. They begin to invent religion and art, using symbolic thinking.
MAJOR CHARACTERS CRAKE (Glenn) is Jimmy’s best friend who becomes a brilliant geneticist and creates a plan to wipe out Homo sapiens and replace the species with his environmentally friendly humanoids. CRAKERS, or Children of Crake, are the humanoids created by Crake to replace the old violent humans. JIMMY’S FATHER is a genographer for HelthWyzer Corporation, who remarries after his wife runs away. JIMMY’S MOTHER runs away from the HelthWyzer compound and joins environmental guerrillas. KILLER is Jimmy’s pet rakunk (skunk-raccoon), taken by his mother and liberated when she runs away. ORYX is a beautiful Asian sex worker, loved by both Crake and Jimmy. Crake hires her as a teacher for the Crakers. UNCLE PETE is the former boss of Crake’s father at HelthWyzer. He marries Crake’s mother and becomes Crake’s stepfather. SNOWMAN (Jimmy) is the protagonist, the protector of the Crakers and the only apparent survivor of the old human race wiped out by Crake’s virus.
in this future world. The postapocalyptic world is described as hostile in nature with abundant depictions of human debris.
W Style Oryx and Crake is the second dystopia Atwood has written after her first effort in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). She has called this form speculative fiction, based on a premise that asks, “What if?” Oryx and Crake, however, is the first book in her planned MaddAddam trilogy, of which The Year of the Flood (2009) is the second. The name of the series suggests a retelling of Paradise Lost, with a mad Adam (Crake) who, to make up for all the extinct species, wants to take on the role of creator and build improved animals and people. Oryx completes the Eden imagery, as Snowman makes her into a mother goddess or Eve character in his stories. The biblical imagery is satiric with Crake’s laboratory called Paradice. The genetically engineered species makes the earth into hell. The present tense is used in the postapocalyptic world, told from Snowman’s point of view as a survivor trying to care for the Crakers. The rest is told in his pasttense flashbacks as he returns to Crake’s lab, foraging for food. The grim and darkly humorous details of the preapocalyptic earth society represent a satire on contemporary life. The young boys, for instance, play a computer game called Extinctathon, based on extinct animals, of which the oryx (antelope) and crake (marsh bird) will be
W Critical Reception Reviewers in 2003 were impressed by Oryx and Crake; some were enthusiastic, while others found flaws. All gave Atwood credit for her satiric details that make the book a delight to read, but critics such as Philip Hensher and Elaine Showalter felt Atwood failed to convince readers of her premise. Hensher, in “Back to the Future” for the Spectator, contends that what the author does well is to present “the whole atmosphere of arrogant irresponsibility,” but asserted “you have to accept a most unlikely premise about science’s capabilities.” Showalter, in “The Snowman Cometh” for the London Review of Books, praised Atwood for launching into new artistic territory with a fast-action novel full of male characters but cautioned that “provocative though her speculative fiction can be, it does not hold up to logical scrutiny.” Showalter compared Atwood's character of Jimmy to J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield or Neo in The Matrix. David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle objected on other grounds. He wrote of “the mixed but often marvelous results” of this novel that “can’t be counted as an outright success.” He disliked the way the plot moves
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Ottawa on November 18, 1939, Margaret Eleanor Atwood is one of Canada’s most celebrated authors, a noted speaker, poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic, editor, visual artist, and children’s writer. She was educated at the University of Toronto, Radcliffe College, and Harvard University, and has taught at several universities. Critically acclaimed for her literary achievement, she is a best-selling author as well. Atwood is known for her feminist and environmental themes and political activism through Amnesty International, PEN International, and membership in Canada’s Green Party and Canadian Civil Liberties Association. She is married to novelist Graeme Gibson and has a daughter, Jess. She is best known for her novels, such as Surfacing (1972); The Handmaid’s Tale (1985); Alias Grace (1996); The Blind Assassin (2000), which won the Man Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake (2003); and The Year of the Flood (2009).
in jerks back and forth between past and present so there is no momentum. The character of Oryx, in his view, is also left undeveloped. Barbara Mujica gave a favorable review of Oryx and Crake in Americas, but warned it poses serious questions about the human capacity for self-destruction. Lorrie Moore in “Bioperversity” for the New Yorker had only praise for Atwood’s “towering and intrepid new novel,” calling it “a bad dream of our present time.” She compared Atwood’s vision to that of Dante Alighieri as presented in the Divine Comedy. Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor, 2004. Print. Hensher, Philip. “Back to the Future.” Rev. of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. Spectator 291.9116 (2003): 35. Print.
Oryx and Crake is set in a dystopian future where humankind has been virtually wiped out, an event represented by the illustration above. Phecsone/Shutterstock.com
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In Oryx and Crake, the human race has been devastated by a genetically engineered virus. Creations/Shutterstock.com
Kipen, David. “It’s the End of the World as He Knows It.” Rev. of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. San Francisco Chronicle 27 Apr. 2003: M-1. Print. Moore, Lorrie. “Bioperversity.” Rev. of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. New Yorker 79.12 (2003): 88. Print. Mujica, Barbara. “Of Fantastic Futures and Imagined Pasts.” Rev. of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. Americas 55:5 (2003): 55+. Print. Showalter, Elaine. “The Snowman Cometh.” Rev. of Orxy and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. London Review of Books 25.14 (2003): 35. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barzilai, Shuli. “‘Tell My Story’: Remembrance and Revenge in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 50.1 (2008): 87+. Print. Sees the novel as a revenge tragedy, with Snowman as Horatio to Crake’s Hamlet. DiMarco, Danette. “Paradice Lost, Paradise Regained: Homo Faber and the Makings of a New Beginning in Oryx and Crake.” Papers on Language and Literature 41.2 (2005): 170+. Print. Describes homo faber in
the person of Crake as the human maker who views nature and objects as instruments to an end. D’Souza, Irene. “Margaret Atwood: Is This the Path We Want to Be Seen On?” Herizons 17:4 (2004). 16+. Print. An interview with Atwood about her background, including her ideas on the function of dystopias. Ingersoll, Earl G. “Survival in Margaret Atwood’s Novel Oryx and Crake.” Extrapolation 45.2 (2004): 16275. Print. Views Atwood’s satire as highlighting differences in the humanities and in the sciences toward the environment, as illustrated in the different responses of Crake and Snowman to Oryx. Posner, Richard A. “The End Is Near.” New Republic 229.12 (2003): 31-36. Print. Looks at the novel as a chance to discuss the real threats of human technology today and the lack of governmental regulations. Gale Resources
“Margaret Atwood.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1000003647&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w
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The Margaret Atwood Society, at http://themargare tatwoodsociety.wordpress.com, lists awards, bibliography, calls for papers, conferences, reviews, news, tours, and links to interviews with Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose, and National Public Radio, as well as to poetry readings and to her Web page. Margaret Atwood’s Web site, at http://www.margar etatwood.ca, includes news of her activities, interviews, reviews and essays, resources for writers with her advice on getting published, poetry readings, and media clips. Margaret Atwood’s blog, at http://www.marg09.word press.com, contains literary, political, and personal travel news with photos. For Further Reading
Atwood, Margaret. Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983-2005. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005. Print. Includes Atwood’s reviews of the work of Toni Morrison and Ursula Le Guin, among others, as well as an essay on utopias and one on how she wrote Oryx and Crake.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Margaret Atwood. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Print. Part of the Modern Critical Views series, essays examining Atwood’s major works and including a short biography, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introduction by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood. 2004. Print. An introduction to Atwood’s novels by a Canadian who places Atwood in a Canadian tradition. Howells, Coral Ann, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print. Essays covering Atwood as a writer, a media star and performer, a cultural critic, an environmentalist, and human rights activist. Le Guin, Ursula K. Rev. of The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian 29 Aug. 2009. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Le Guin’s review of Atwood’s speculative fiction, including Oryx and Crake, arguing that her work qualifies as science fiction.
———. The Year of the Flood. New York: Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday, 2009. Print. The sequel to Oryx and Crake, presenting the same apocalyptic end of the world from the point of view of women—Ren, one of Jimmy’s former lovers, a sex worker; and Toby, one of God’s Gardeners.
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Susan Andersen
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Out Stealing Horses By Per Petterson
W Introduction In Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses (2003), Trond Sander, sixty-seven, loses his wife in a car accident and moves to a remote cabin in the far east of Norway with only his dog, Lyra, for company. His solitude is disturbed when a neighbor comes to call, bringing back a flood of memories from a summer more than fifty years earlier when he spent time at a similar cabin with his father. The story alternates between past and present storylines as it “interlaces times of tragedy and times of joy in the teenager’s life with his reflections upon them in his maturity” (Dole). Like many of Petterson’s works, Out Stealing Horses explores themes of “Norway’s workingclass men, fathers and sons, and people who have had to deal with horrendous loss” (Petterson). The novel received the 2007 International MPAC Dublin Literary Award, given to the best single work of fiction published in English in the world.
W Literary and Historical Context
At the onset of World War II in 1939, Norway declared itself neutral, but its proximity to England made its ports a “considerable strategic prize” for the German military. In 1940 Germany invaded Norway and established Vidkun Quisling as the prime minister of the new, proGerman government. King Haakon escaped to England, where he established a government-in-exile for the duration of the war. The London exiles made regular radio broadcasts into Norway, and a strong Norwegian resistance movement soon developed (the Norwegian Anti-Nazi Protest). In Out Stealing Horses, Trond’s father serves as a courier for the Norwegian resistance during the war, transporting documents and helping fugitives from the Gestapo cross the border into Sweden. Though Petterson did not set out to write a novel about the war, he admits
that it ultimately proved “essential to the story” (Campbell). Indeed, “so much of this book’s melancholy derives from the long shadow of men with guns” (McGuane). Alf Walgermo points out that Petterson’s work is less overtly political than that of many other Norwegian writers. Instead, he tends to use his political themes as a backdrop for more intimate family stories. Asked why he writes historical novels, Petterson has responded, “They’re not historical, they’re contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn’t just what you can see now” (qtd. in Campbell).
W Themes “All I ever think about,” Petterson says, “is families” (qtd. in Thompson). In Out Stealing Horses, the central focus is on fathers and sons. For Trond, the notion that his father loved him deeply, yet abandoned their family, creates a complex mix of emotions he cannot make sense of. After meeting a man who has recently lost his father to illness, Trond thinks, “I can see that he misses his father, quite simply, and straightforwardly, and I would wish it was as easy as that, that you could just miss your father, and that was all there was to it.” Dealing with personal tragedy is another common theme of Petterson’s work. Trond’s father repeatedly tells him, “You decide for yourself when it will hurt.” As Walgermo points out, this refrain comes to reflect “not only the physical pain of the sometimes hard work in the forest but also, and more important, Trond’s pain as he looks back on the father who abandoned him.” This is the survival strategy that Trond’s father passes down to him. The idea that one’s life is formed through of a series of personal choices goes beyond the matter of dealing with pain. Out Stealing Horses is full of moments where an event or a choice ensures that “from this moment on . . . nothing will be as it was.”
851 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Out Stealing Horses
MAJOR CHARACTERS MR. BARKALD is the owner of a nearby farm. The horses Jon and Trond set out to “steal” during the summer Trond was fifteen years old belong to Barkald. FRANZ is a friend of Trond’s father and an active member of the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II. JON HAUG is Trond’s boyhood friend, with whom he went “out stealing horses” the summer he was fifteen. LARS HAUG is the younger brother of Jon, and Odd’s twin. MRS. HAUG is Jon’s mother. Also involved in the Norwegian resistance movement, she works closely with Trond’s father, with whom she has an affair. ODD HAUG is Lars’s deceased twin brother. ELLEN SANDER is Trond’s elder daughter, who tracks him down at his remote cabin for a visit, despite the fact that he has failed to inform anyone where he has gone. TROND TOBIAS SANDER is the narrator of the story. Widowed three years ago, sixty-seven-year-old Trond has recently moved to a cabin in an isolated area in the far east of Norway, with only his dog, Lyra, for company. The cabin is similar to the one in which he spent his boyhood summers with his father. TROND’S FATHER, whose name is never revealed, works as a courier for the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II, spending his summers at an outpost in a remote area of Norway, near the Swedish border, bringing Trond along with him.
Trond says of his trip into Sweden with his father, “it was right what I had expected, that it felt different although everything looked the same after we had crossed.” When a stranger doesn’t respond to his request for directions, Trond becomes angry and threatens him. But Trond realizes that the decision to hit this man or not will shape his life from that point forward. “If I had punched the man in Karlstad, my life would have been a different life, and I a different man. And it would be foolish to maintain, as so many men do, that it would have come to the same thing. It would not.”
W Style “I hate plots,” Petterson says in an interview with Bob Thompson for the Washington Post. He says of Out Stealing Horses, “I just had the boy, the father, and the summer. That sense you have of catching up as the layers of the story are peeled away—that’s me catching up”
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(qtd. in Campbell). The story jumps back and forth from the present to the past, avoiding a traditional narrative structure. As Petterson “fluently jumbles his chronology . . . time moves forwards and back, in tangled loops as an incident in the present prompts a memory from the past” (Kinnes). This mirroring is employed by Petterson in different ways. “Even the title, ‘Out Stealing Horses,’ serves as both the announcement of an adolescent prank and a password for the dangerous activity of the resistance” (McGuane). The effect is “teasingly elliptical” (Wilson). Trond, the narrator, reveals important facts about his life, his marriages and children, late in the story, “combining mystery and resolution” at the same time (Sexton). Reviewer Alf Walgermo has described Petterson’s work as “laconic, understated . . . what remains unsaid is of central importance.” The author’s stark prose avoids sentimentality, yet still resonates with raw emotion. Trond describes a letter his father sends to their family telling them he will never return. “Best wishes. End. No special greeting to me. I don’t know. I really thought I had earned one.” The statement contains a touch of Petterson’s signature black humor (Walgermo). Trond’s discovery that Lars, his neighbor in a very remote area, is the brother of a boyhood friend, may seem entirely too coincidental. Trond says, “Lars is Lars even though I saw him last when he was ten years old, and now he’s past sixty, and if this had been something in a novel it would just have been irritating.”
W Critical Reception Critics have found much to praise in Out Stealing Horses. According to the New Yorker, Petterson’s “spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force,” and Sally Kinnes of the Scotland Herald writes, “Perfect sentences unfold, sometimes about entirely ordinary things, as if by describing the world he is clarifying it, like a hand smoothing a sheet.” Many critics are captivated by the author’s ability to take seemingly banal bits of life— cooking eggs, clearing nettle, chopping firewood—and make them entirely captivating. When Petterson turns his attention to the scenery of his novel, describing in detail the harsh beauty of the Norwegian landscape, the result is a story that “has that special quality that lets the reader smell the novel rather than just read it” (Walgermo). Critics also admire the plotting of the book, which “is so subtle that one barely notices questions being raised and then, cleverly, answered. By the end, when all the pieces fall into place, we can see how elegantly Petterson has constructed matters, letting us live in a mystery we didn’t know needs solving until the solution is presented” (Ness). Special mention is also made of Anne Born’s translation, which “does justice to an impressive novel of rare and exemplary moral courage, and commendably TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Out Stealing Horses
makes convincing the confrontations of different individuals, different milieux” (Binding). Andrea Hoag, writing for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, complains that women in the novel remain “largely faceless and nameless . . . happy to offer their uncomplaining support to the menfolk.” She concedes, however, that Trond is aware of his own “subtle contempt” in his treatment of women, referring to the narrator’s response when his mother suggests he needs a scarf. “I . . . heard an impatient and irritated edge in my voice. I have been criticized for that later in life, by women especially, and that is because it is women I have used it against. I admit it.” Most reviewers, however, find Petterson’s characters—Trond in particular—“compelling and convincing” (Keates). “Petterson accepts with great tenderness the way his characters respond to fate, and the varied nature of their resilience is what makes the novel, in the end, so moving” (Oberndorf). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Binding, Paul. “Handstands in the Rain with my Father.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1952 in Oslo, Norway, Per Petterson knew he wanted to write from the age of eighteen, but found it impossible to finish anything. “I was a coward. If I finished a story, I could see it was no good. I didn’t want that” (qtd. in Thompson). Finally, in 1986, while working at an Oslo bookstore, he finished a story, and it won a prize. He has since published several novels and short story collections and has received numerous writing awards. Like many of his characters, Petterson is no stranger to personal tragedy; he lost his mother, father, one of his brothers, and his niece to the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990. He acknowledges that the loss affected his writing, but not in any directly translatable way. “You transfer the emotions. You use the emotions . . . and then you compose. You choose and as soon as you choose, it becomes something else” (qtd. in Kinnes). Petterson now lives with his second wife, Pia, and her children from a previous marriage, in a remote area of Norway near the Swedish border, in a place very similar to the one Trond, the protagonist of Out Stealing Horses, calls home.
In Out Stealing Horses, Trond, the protagonist, reflects on an incident in his early life when he stole horses as a prank. Jeanne Hatch/Shutterstock. com
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Independent on Sunday [London] 6 Nov. 2005. Web. 23 July 2010. Campbell, James. “A Life in Writing: Per Petterson.” Guardian.co.uk 3 Jan. 2009. Web. 26 July 2010. Dole, Pat. “Petterson, Per. Out Stealing Horses.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Kliatt Nov. 2008: 60. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Hoag, Andrea. “The Sins and Heroics of the Father.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Minneapolis Star Tribune 3 June 2007. Web. 22 July 2010. Keates, Jonathan. “Into the Norwegian Wood.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Spectator 28 July 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Kinnes, Sally. “Per Petterson Turns Personal Loss into Literary Gain.” Herald Scotland 19 July 2010. Web. 25 July 2010. McGuane, Thomas. “In a Lonely Place.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. New York Times Book Review 24 June 2007: (L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Ness, Patrick. “Deep Feelings, Slowly Stirred.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Telegraph.co.uk 15 Jan. 2006. Web. 22 July 2010. “Norwegian Anti-Nazi Protest.” Government, Politics, and Protest: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 126-29. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 24 July 2010. Oberndorf, Charles. “Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Cleveland Plain Dealer 3 July 2008. Web. 22 July 2010. “Out Stealing Horses.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. New Yorker 9 July 2007: 93. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. “Per Petterson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Petterson, Per. Out Stealing Horses. Trans. Anne Born. New York: Picador, 2005. Print. Sexton, David. “Moments that Change Life Forever; Paperback of the Week.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Evening Standard [London] 18 June 2007. Web. 22 July 2010. Thompson, Bob. “A Northern Light; Per Petterson’s Poignant Family Tales Have Placed Him on the Literary Map.” Washington Post 26 Dec. 2007.
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Highbeam Research. Web. 22 July 2010. http:// www.highbeam.com Walgermo, Alf. “The Old Man and the Woods.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Books and Culture Mar.-Apr. 2008: 29. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Wilson, Frank. “Norwegian’s Out Stealing Horses Merits Its Fat Prize.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Philadelphia Inquirer 15 Aug. 2007. Web. 22 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cheuse, Alan. “Out Stealing Horses Beats Fiction Heavyweights.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. All Things Considered 16 July 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. A concise, favorable review of Petterson’s work. DeBell, Jenny. “Out Stealing Horses.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Harvard Review 33 (2007): 205+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Discusses the themes of identity and forgiveness in Out Stealing Horses. Sjavik, Jan. “Per Petterson. Out Stealing Horses.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. World Literature Today 82.1 (2008): 65+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. A review of Petterson’s work focusing on loneliness, loss, and the influence of the war on the novel’s characters. Thompson, Ian. “No Time for Trolls.” Rev. of Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. Guardian.co.uk 17 Dec. 2005. Web. 24 July 2010. Short, positive review of Out Stealing Horses. Gale Resources
“Per Petterson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Open Web Sources
The Web site for Per Petterson’s literary agency, http:// www.aschehougagency.no/authors/oktober/petter son_per, includes biographical information about the author and each of his books, with links to sample translations of each, and worldwide publication information. The BBC’s Web site, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ worldwars/wwtwo/norway_campaign_01.shtml, contains information about the Norway Campaign in World War II. Written by Dr. Eric Grove, a naval history consultant and professor, it includes a list of further readings about Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Norway. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Out Stealing Horses For Further Reading
Kersaudy, Francois. Norway 1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Print. An account of Adolf Hitler’s 1940 invasion of Norway. Kjaerstad, Jan, Birgit Bjerk, and Harald Bache-Wiig, eds. The Norwegian Feeling for Real. London: Harvill Secker, 2005. Print. A collection of short fiction about contemporary life from Norwegian writers from the past four decades. Mann, Chris. Hitler’s Arctic War: The German Campaign in Norway, Finland, and the USSR 1940-45. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003. Print. A comprehensive account of Germany’s World War II campaign in the far north, including the invasion and occupation of Norway. Petterson, Per. I Curse the River of Time. Trans. Charlotte Barlslund. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2010. Print. In Petterson’s latest novel, a prequel to In the Wake, Arvid Jansen leaves his failing marriage and returns to the beach house where his family summered to care for his mother, who is dying of cancer.
———. In the Wake. Trans. Anne Born. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. The winner of several literary prizes in Europe, this is Petterson’s story of the witty, self-deprecating Arvid Jansen and his attempt to put his life back together after losing his family in a ferry accident. ———. To Siberia. Trans. Anne Born. New York: Picador, 1998. Print. The narrator, a young girl in Denmark, recounts the events of her life, including her close relationship with her brother, Jesper, the Nazi invasion, and her own unfulfilled dreams of an escape to Siberia. Williams, Sarah T. “Per Petterson: The Call of Solitude.” Minneapolis Star Tribune 26 Sept. 2007. Web. 25 July 2010. An interview with Petterson discussing his fondness for solitude, the success of Out Stealing Horses, and how the tragedy of the ferry fire influenced his writing.
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Bisanne Masoud
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Twenty-First Century Novels THE FIRST DECADE
VOLUME 3 P-Y
Jeffrey W. Hunter EDITOR
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Contents VOLUME 3 Volume 3 Contents by Title Entries P-Y Title Index
...................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................
Author Index
...................................................................................................................................
Major Prizewinners Nationality Index
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vii 857 xi xvii xxiii xxv
v (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 3 Contents by Title Perdido Street Station China Miéville ...............................................................
857
Purge Sofi Oksanen ...................................................................
918
Perma Red Debra Magpie Earling .............................................
861
The Quickening Maze Adam Foulds...................................................................
922
865
Quicksilver Neal Stephenson ..........................................................
926
869
Rainbows End Vernor Vinge ..................................................................
930
875
Ransom David Malouf .................................................................
934
880
Raven Black Ann Cleeves .....................................................................
939
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Mohsin Hamid ............................................................
944
Requiem for a Lost Empire Andrë Makine ................................................................
948
The Road Cormac McCarthy ......................................................
952
The Road Home Rose Tremain .................................................................
957
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Personality Andrew O’Hagan ........................................................ The Pickup Nadine Gordimer ........................................................ A Pigeon and a Boy Meir Shalev ...................................................................... A Place of Execution Val McDermid............................................................... The Plague of Doves Louise Erdrich ............................................................. The Plot Against America Philip Roth .......................................................................
884 888
The Polished Hoe Austin Clarke ..................................................................
893
The Polymath Bensalem Himmich ...................................................
898
Prodigal Summer Barbara Kingsolver .....................................................
902
The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem Kanan Makiya ...............................................................
The Promise of Happiness Justin Cartwright .........................................................
907
The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño ............................................................
965
Property Valerie Martin ................................................................
912
The Scents of Marie-Claire Habib Selmi.....................................................................
970
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Volume 3 Contents by Title
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Small Island Andrea Levy .................................................................
1060
Sea of Poppies Amitav Ghosh ................................................................
978
Snow Orhan Pamuk ..............................................................
1064
The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd ............................................................
983
Soldiers of Salamis Javier Cercas.................................................................
1069
The Secret River Kate Grenville ................................................................
988
Solo Rana Dasgupta ...........................................................
1074
The Secret Scripture Sebastian Barry ..............................................................
992
Someone to Run With David Grossman ........................................................
1078
Seeker Jack McDevitt ................................................................
996
Song of Time Ian R. MacLeod ........................................................
1083
The Separation Christopher Priest ....................................................
1001
The Spare Room Helen Garner ..............................................................
1087
Shadow Family Miyuki Miyabe ...........................................................
1006
Sparks: An Urban Fairytale Lawrence Marvit .......................................................
1091
The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafón ...................................................
1009
The Speed of Dark Elizabeth Moon ........................................................
1095
The Shag Incident Stephanie Johnson ...................................................
1013
“Spenser” Series Robert B. Parker .......................................................
1099
Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie .........................................................
1017
Spies Michael Frayn .............................................................
1104
Shanghai Dancing Brian Castro .................................................................
1022
Spin Robert Charles Wilson .........................................
1109
Sharp Objects Gillian Flynn.................................................................
1026
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost Ismail Kadare ...............................................................
1114
Silence of the Grave Arnaldur Indriðason ...............................................
1031
Stonedogs Craig Marriner............................................................
1119
Silent Joe T. Jefferson Parker ..................................................
1036
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle David Wroblewski ....................................................
1123
Sirena Selena Mayra Santos-Febres ..............................................
1040
The Story of Lucy Gault William Trevor ...........................................................
1129
Sixty Lights Gail Jones .......................................................................
1044
Suite Française Irène Némirovsky .....................................................
1133
Skim Mariko Tamaki ...........................................................
1049
Summertime J. M. Coetzee .............................................................
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The Slap Christos Tsiolkas .......................................................
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The Swallows of Kabul Yasmina Khadra .........................................................
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The Small Boat of Great Sorrows Dan Fesperman ..........................................................
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The Tango Singer Tomás Eloy Martínez ...........................................
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The Sea John Banville ..................................................................
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Volume 3 Contents by Title
Tender Morsels Margo Lanagan .........................................................
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Unless Carol Shields ................................................................
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The Testing of Luther Albright MacKenzie Bezos .....................................................
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This Blinding Absence of Light Tahar Ben Jelloun ...................................................
Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death DBC Pierre ...................................................................
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Vertigo Amanda Lohrey .........................................................
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War Trash Ha Jin ...............................................................................
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The Way of the Women Marlene van Niekerk .............................................
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We Need to Talk about Kevin Lionel Shriver ..............................................................
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What Is the What Dave Eggers .................................................................
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When the Emperor Was Divine Julie Otsuka ..................................................................
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When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro ..........................................................
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Where I Must Go Angela Jackson ...........................................................
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The White Earth Andrew McGahan....................................................
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White Teeth Zadie Smith ..................................................................
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The White Tiger Aravind Adiga .............................................................
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Why Did I Ever Mary Robison .............................................................
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Tu Patricia Grace ..............................................................
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Windows on the World Frédéric Beigbeder ..................................................
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Twelve Bar Blues Patrick Neate ...............................................................
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The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi ......................................................
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2666 Roberto Bolaño .........................................................
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Winter and Night S. J. Rozan ....................................................................
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The Twin Gerbrand Bakker ......................................................
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Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel ..............................................................
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A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini ........................................................
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Three Days to Never Tim Powers...................................................................
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Three Junes Julia Glass .......................................................................
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The Time of Our Singing Richard Powers ..........................................................
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The Time We Have Taken Steven Carroll .............................................................
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Tinkers Paul Harding ...............................................................
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Tomboy Nina Bouraoui ............................................................
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Train Pete Dexter ...................................................................
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Tranquility Attila Bartis ................................................................... Tricked Alex Robinson ............................................................ True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey ................................................................... Truth Peter Temple ...............................................................
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Volume 3 Contents by Title
Wolf Totem Jiang Rong ....................................................................
1312
The Yacoubian Building Alaa al-Aswany............................................................
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A Woman in Jerusalem A. B. Yehoshua ..........................................................
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Yalo Elias Khoury .................................................................
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The World Beneath Cate Kennedy .............................................................
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The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Michael Chabon ........................................................
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x
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Perdido Street Station By China Miéville
W Introduction Perdido Street Station (2000) is China Miéville’s second novel and the first of three works set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag. The work is massive—more than 700 pages long— and intricately detailed, filled with vividly imagined creatures and carried along by an endlessly surprising stream of events. Set in a kind of twilight zone between science and magic, Perdido Street Station explores a world of darkness, crime, and cruelty, yet its main characters still exhibit strands of hope and beauty. The novel, which has a large and enthusiastic following, established Miéville as a leading figure in the development of the radical or postmodern fantasy genre. It was nominated in 2002 for the prestigious Nebula and Hugo Awards and won the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 2000 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2001.
W Literary and Historical Context
Perdido Street Station’s setting, the imaginary world of Bas-Lag, is defined by the coexistence of a wide variety of life-forms. Almost anything can happen in this fictional realm, where reality is not limited by the laws of nature and magic (referred to as “thaumaturgy”) is the primary form of technology. The action takes place in the large industrial city-state of New Crobuzon, which is somewhat similar to London during the gaslit Victorian era. The title of the novel refers to a vast railway hub at the center of the city. The fantastic reality of Bas-Lag exemplifies a type of fantastic literature described by William J. Burling in Extrapolation as “radical fantasy.” According to an article in the Independent, Miéville prefers the term weird fiction, which he views as a blend of horror, epic fantasy, low fantasy, and science fiction. American author
H. P. Lovecraft and British writer Lord Dunsany are considered early practitioners of weird fiction. Perdido Street Station also has qualities in common with a subgenre of speculative fiction known as “steampunk,” which became popular in the 1980s. Steampunk often combines aspects of nineteenth-century urban life with alternate histories in which technology has evolved along different lines, such as those envisioned by French novelist Jules Verne and English author H. G. Wells.
W Themes Although Perdido Street Station covers an enormous amount of narrative territory, three main themes can be traced throughout the work. Most obvious is the subject of diversity, evident in the complete lack of social barriers between the various races inhabiting Bas-Lag. Many of the groups depicted are not only extremely strange in appearance but also have almost incomprehensible customs and motives. Despite this, individuals from different races manage to coexist and even fall in love. Another major theme is the relationship between individuality and social organization. The variety of races depicted in the novel also contributes to the development of this theme, providing examples of different social structures. Miéville offers detailed excursions into the history and sociology of various groups, such as his lengthy description of the Khepri (humanoid beings with heads like beetles) diaspora. Similarly, the realistic, intricate depiction of New Crobuzon’s geography, architecture, and politics explores the nature of the city as a social collective. A third theme in Perdido Street Station is alienation. In many respects New Crobuzon is a sprawling dystopia, with little social infrastructure to create a sense of community. The inhabitants are essentially dependent on whatever alliances they can make among themselves. This idea is supported by the similarities between New Crobuzon and Victorian London, an urban setting that
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Perdido Street Station
MAJOR CHARACTERS LIN is from an insectoid race called the Khepri. She is an artist, commissioned by the gangster Mr. Motley to create a sculpture in his likeness. Lin is also protagonist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin’s lover, and their mutual passion is vividly portrayed in the novel. YAGHAREK is from a winged race called the Garuda. After Yagharek commits an offense against the complex mores of his tribe, his wings are removed and he is sent into exile. He asks Isaac to restore his wings, creating a scientific challenge that leads to catastrophe. Throughout the novel Yagharek’s desire to regain wholeness provides a powerful narrative thread. ISAAC DAN DER GRIMNEBULIN, the novel’s main protagonist, is a human scientist who is seeking a theory that will unify physics and thaumaturgy. While trying to help Yagharek restore his wings, Isaac becomes so consumed with his research that he accidentally releases a monstrous slakemoth, a huge insect that subsequently preys upon the city’s inhabitants. He must endure many difficulties in order to undo his mistake. MR. MOTLEY is a Remade, whose body has been mutilated, repaired, and augmented so often that it has become a grotesque collection of parts. One of his many illegal activities is trading in dreamshit, a bizarre narcotic that plays an important part in the novel’s plot.
epitomized the loss of community brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
W Style Perdido Street Station takes place in a reality that is based on significantly different principles than those typically found today. However, Miéville succeeds in making the world of Bas-Lag believable, primarily through the extensive use of descriptive detail. Roland Green’s Booklist review describes the novel as more concerned with world building than with storytelling. Miéville creates multiple major and minor plotlines that propel the characters into many different situations, thereby providing the reader with an extensive tour of Bas-Lag’s alternate reality. Writing in the Spectator, Michael Moorcock notes that the author’s generous use of physical, often sensual detail encourages the reader to imagine the surreal environment of New Crobuzon and the appearance of its exotic inhabitants. Also, by treating nonhuman creatures exactly the same as humans, both in descriptive and narrative terms, Miéville establishes a seamless world in which readers are never allowed to question the terms of the novel’s fantastic reality.
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Perdido Street Station adapts, even distorts, the typical elements of traditional fantasy—such as heroic quests and noble nonhuman races—to create a much darker view. The tone of the book is often disturbing, depicting the decadent, the grotesque, and the macabre as ordinary parts of reality. Here again, an evenhanded treatment of the horrific and the sublime encourages readers to accept Miéville’s created world as a whole. By offering an overabundance of events and characters and blending the conventions of gothic horror with those of high fantasy and urban punk, Miéville avoids establishing any genre-specific expectations.
W Critical Reception One of the most popular recent novels in the fantasy genre, Perdido Street Station has also received mostly positive critical praise. Edward James’s review in the Times Literary Supplement calls the work “an astonishing novel, guaranteed to astound and enthrall the most jaded palate.” Jackie Cassada’s review in Library Journal describes the novel as “a powerful tale about the power of love and the will to survive in a dystopian universe that combines Victorian elements with a fantasy version of cyberpunk.” Green’s Booklist review of the novel, however, notes that “critical readers may carp that much of the complication is just piled-on grunge and much of the characterization involves kinky sex and repetitious violence.” Similarly, Publishers Weekly observes that “Miéville’s canvas is so breathtakingly broad that the details of individual subplots and characters sometimes lose their definition.” Still, the review notes that Perdido Street Station “is also generous enough to accommodate large dollops of aesthetics, scientific discussion and quest fantasy in an impressive and ultimately pleasing epic.” In 2002 Perdido Street Station was nominated for the two major awards in the field of speculative fiction: the Hugo and the Nebula. In both cases, however, it was bested by Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which also swept most of the other science fiction awards that year. Miéville’s work garnered the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Amazon.com Editors’ Choice Award in Fantasy in 2001. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Burling, William J. “Periodizing the Postmodern: China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and the Dynamics of Radical Fantasy.” Extrapolation 50.2 (2009): 326+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2010. Cassada, Jackie. Rev. of Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Library Journal 15 Feb. 2001: 204. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“China Miéville and Charles Shaar Murray.” Independent [London] 18 Mar. 2000: 9. Print. Green, Roland. Rev. of Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Booklist 15 Feb. 2001: 1122. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2010. James, Edward. “Living with Golems.” Rev. of Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Times Literary Supplement 1 Sept. 2000: 11. Print. Moorcock, Michael. “City of Dreadful Light.” Spectator 6 May 2000: 33-34. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 235. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. Rev. of Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Publishers Weekly 8 Jan. 2001: 52. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1975 in Norwich, England, China Miéville grew up in London, where he has lived most of his life. He taught English in Egypt for a year before entering Cambridge University and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in social anthropology (1994). Miéville completed both an MA (1998) and a PhD (2001) in international relations at the London School of Economics. His first novel, King Rat, was published in 1998, and his eighth, Kraken, appeared in 2010. A committed Marxist and member of the British Socialist Workers Party, Miéville is active in left-wing politics and has published articles on both political theory and speculative literature. He is the coeditor (with Mark Bould) of the anthology Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction (2009).
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allen, Bruce. “‘Monsters Are the Main Thing’: The Worlds of China Miéville.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 235. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2007. 187-223. Rpt. in
Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. A thorough overview of China Miéville’s works through 2007, tracing the development of his fictional worlds and the evolution of his style. Allen’s
Miéville‘s novel portrays a fictional world populated by a variety of non-humans. One winged raced is called the Garuda; a member of this tribe has his wings removed after committing a terrible offense. Getty Images
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analysis illuminates the connections between Perdido Street Station and the other Bas-Lag novels. Cooper, Rich Paul. “Building Worlds: Dialectical Materialism as Method in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag.” Extrapolation 50.2 (2009): 212-23. Print. Considers the methods and meaning of world building in fantastic literature, comparing Miéville’s approach with Marxist ideology and with J. R. R. Tolkien’s doctrine of subcreation. The article discusses all three of the Bas-Lag novels, providing analysis of both stylistic and thematic elements. Gordon, Joan. “Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville.” Science Fiction Studies 30.3: (2003): 355-73. Print. In this wide-ranging discussion, Miéville describes his influences, explains his approach to fantastic literature, and talks about the relationship between his political ideas and his fiction. Palmer, Christopher. “Saving the City in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Novels.” Extrapolation 50.2 (2009): 22438. Print. Explores images of hope in the three Bas-Lag novels, focusing on the political dimension of the works. Palmer contends that hope, for Miéville’s protagonists, is ultimately a matter of belief rather than practical reality, since the city survives in each novel but is never redeemed. Rankin, Sandy. “AGASH AGASP AGAPE: The Weaver as Immanent Utopian Impulse in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and Iron Council.” Extrapolation 50.2 (2009): 239-57. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. A scholarly examination of the Weaver, an inhabitant of the Bas-Lag world who communicates through free-form poetry. Rankin contends that the Weaver represents a Utopian counterpoint in the often bleak and unredeemed world of Perdido Street Station. Gale Resources
“China Miéville.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. “China Miéville.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. Open Web Sources
An extended interview with China Miéville is available online at Horizon Review, an independent literary journal from Salt Publishing. Miéville talks about the
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conceptual evolution of Perdido Street Station. http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/ 01/text/Mieville_china01.htm Worlds Without End, an extensive Web site devoted to the coverage of science fiction and fantasy literature, provides a synopsis and excerpt from Perdido Street Station, along with links to blogs that discuss the novel. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel. asp?ID=66 China Miéville’s annotated list of fifty fantasy and science fiction works that socialists should read is available online at Fantastic Metropolis, a Web journal that focuses on speculative literature. http://www.fantas ticmetropolis.com.nyud.net:8080/i/50socialist/full/ For Further Reading
Hassler, Donald M., and Clyde Wilcox, eds. New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2008. Print. This collection of essays provides a conceptual background designed to help readers understand not only Miéville’s overall approach to fantastic literature but also the political dimensions of Perdido Street Station and the other Bas-Lag novels. Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition. New York: Modern Library, 2005. Print. This expanded edition of the macabre masterpiece includes an introduction by Miéville as well as Lovecraft’s important essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2008. Print. Mendlesohn develops an innovative view of modern fantasy, describing four approaches (portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and luminal) frequently used by writers to construct fantastic worlds. The book discusses a variety of works, including Perdido Street Station. Miéville, China. The Iron Council. London: Macmillan, 2004. Print. Miéville’s third Bas-Lag novel focuses on a revolt in New Crobuzon, affording a deeper look into the author’s political ideas. ———. The Scar. London: Macmillan, 2002. Print. Although not a sequel to Perdido Street Station, the work offers further insights into the imagined reality of Bas-Lag, as the narrative follows fugitives from New Crobuzon to other parts of the realm. Cynthia Giles
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Perma Red By Debra Magpie Earling
W Introduction Debra Magpie Earling’s debut novel, Perma Red (2002), tells the story of Native American Louise White Elk. Set in the 1940s on western Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation, the novel traces Louise’s adolescence and young womanhood. She is nicknamed Perma Red because of the color of her hair and her wild ways. Though she repeatedly runs away, attempting to escape the strict Catholic schools that she is forced to attend and the poverty of her life on the reservation, she always returns to her home. She eventually marries Baptiste Yellow Knife, a notorious drinker with a violent temper, and subsequently has affairs with the tribal police officer Charlie Kicking Woman and the white real estate mogul Harvey Stoner. Tragedies, such as the drowning of Louise’s sister and the murder of another young Indian woman, highlight the difficulties of reservation life. The novel also addresses the racial tensions between Native Americans and whites during the period. Perma Red draws on stories from Earling’s childhood in Montana and on the real-life figure of her aunt Louise, on whom Louise White Elk is based. Nearly twenty years in the making, the work is the result of numerous drafts, the first of which was lost in a fire. It won several honors, including the 2003 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award, and was generally well received by critics.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Flathead Indian Reservation depicted in Perma Red is home to several tribes, including the Bitterroot Salish, the Kootenai, and the Pend d’Oreille. They are collectively known as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, of which Debra Magpie Earling is a member. Created in 1855 through
the Treaty of Hellgate, the reservation takes in portions of four Montana counties and currently has a total population of more than twenty-six thousand. When the tribes were moved to the reservation, each spoke a dialect of the same language (Salish). By the 1940s, when the novel takes place, for the most part only older tribal members continued to use the language of their ancestors. Louise is unable to understand some of the dialogue between Baptiste Yellow Knife and his mother, who speaks Salish. Racial discrimination against Native Americans was overt during the 1940s and figures prominently in the novel. Earling’s Indian characters are regularly demeaned by whites and are prohibited from entering white-run establishments. Also reflected in Perma Red are the activities of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the U.S. government agency that manages land held in trust for Native Americans. The BIA was once responsible for providing health care to Native Americans and is still charged with supporting their education. In the past the agency engaged in controversial practices related to the instruction of minors. During the 1940s, for example, BIA policy compelled many Native American children, like Earling’s protagonist Louise White Elk, to attend boarding schools and to abandon their native languages and traditions.
W Themes Abject poverty and the difficulties of overcoming it dominate Perma Red. The main characters persistently attempt to escape their deficient environments, without lasting success. Several times Louise runs away from the white boarding schools in which the BIA has placed her—only to be apprehended and escorted back by the government social worker and Charlie Kicking Woman, who believe it represents an opportunity for a better life. Louise also looks to Baptiste Yellow Knife for liberation, marrying him so that she does not have to return to school. Shortly after they are married, however, she runs
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Perma Red
MAJOR CHARACTERS CHARLIE KICKING WOMAN is a tribal police officer who narrates several chapters of the novel. He is alienated from other Native Americans because of his position in law enforcement and from whites because of his Native American heritage. His passion for Louise White Elk destroys his marriage. HARVEY STONER, a wealthy white real estate mogul, owns a number of allotments on the Flathead Reservation. He uses his money and power to manipulate others and is one of several men who become involved with Louise after her marriage to Baptiste Yellow Knife. LOUISE WHITE ELK, the novel’s protagonist, is a young Native American woman who lives on the Flathead Indian Reservation. She is sent to predominantly white Catholic schools but repeatedly runs away. She eventually marries Baptiste Yellow Knife to avoid being taken from her family again. Even after her marriage, she continues to run, becoming involved with several men. She always returns home to her family and in search of her husband. BAPTISTE YELLOW KNIFE is the son of Dirty Swallow, a Native American woman who is reputed to commune with snakes. His fiery, violent temper and dangerous drinking habits repeatedly get him in trouble with the law. He marries Louise, whom he beats severely after he discovers her with another man.
away from her husband and into the arms of the wealthy Harvey Stoner—in part because Harvey feeds her. Baptiste also flees whenever he gets into trouble. Nevertheless, both characters always end up back on the reservation, bound to their lives of destitution, hunger, and hopelessness. For Earling’s protagonists, the ongoing cycle of flight and return underscores the impossibility of escaping a culture of poverty and, at the same time, demonstrates the strength of their ties to their cultural heritage. David Abrams, writing for January Magazine, observes, “Louise is always in motion— literally and figuratively. She is running away from herself, but what is she running toward?” With no real options outside the reservation, Louise and Baptiste both struggle against and are resigned to their fate. The characters’ attempts at escape also represent their search for identity in the face of racial prejudice and dying traditions. Repeatedly hearing from white people that Indians are dirty, Louise feels ashamed of her heritage at times, yet she cannot shake off her roots. Charlie Kicking Woman sometimes feels superior to his fellow Native Americans (and is reluctant to confess that he is related to Baptiste) because he has a job and a degree of authority. He also falls victim to prejudice, however, when his supervisor ridicules his intelligence
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and excludes him from investigations that involve whites. Charlie does not fit into either world, and he grapples with his sense of self-worth. Another theme develops around the mysticism that suffuses the novel in the form of superstitions and unexplained happenings. Louise’s grandmother believes that Baptiste has used love medicine on Louise to gain control over her. Dirty Swallow, Baptiste’s mother, communes with snakes. When Louise first refuses her son’s advances, Dirty Swallow declares that someone in Louise’s family will be bitten by a rattlesnake. Louise’s sister is, in fact, bitten soon after Dirty Swallow makes her threat. This and other strange events suggest the power and resonance of Native American traditions and beliefs in a world where not everything can be rationally explained.
W Style Perma Red alternates between two narrators: a limitedomniscient third-person narrator, who tells the story from Louise’s point of view; and Charlie Kicking Woman, who provides a first-person account of events in the novel. Earling uses minimal dialogue, preferring instead to delve into the thoughts and feelings of her characters and to convey action through vivid description. Abrams’s review contends that the author’s “simple, graceful way with words creates a world where we can all find some part of ourselves on the page.” Characters seem to accept events with a matter-of-factness that mirrors the hopelessness of their situations. For example, when Louise’s sister, Florence, drowns, her grandmother stoically reports, “We have lost Florence.” The passage of time is not well defined in the novel. Louise moves from girlhood into womanhood without any defining moments. The reader learns of this transition through the descriptions of Louise’s changing physique rather than through direct narrative commentary or specific events. A critic for the University of Minnesota’s Web site observes that “the sense of time in the novel has a slippery quality: it is difficult to determine for certain when any event happens. Past and present—memory and perception—blend together and overlap organically.” The reviewer further suggests that “the indefinite time adds a dreamlike quality to the story.”
W Critical Reception Most reviewers of Perma Red have offered positive commentary and analysis. Critics admire Earling’s lifelike characters and her depictions of not only the physical setting but also the cultural milieu of reservation life. Nola Theiss, writing in Kliatt, notes that “Earling captures a sense of place and time from inside her world, drawing the reader to its center. Her descriptions of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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West are of more than the physical place, but also of the mystical, cultural and traditional worlds” that influence the characters of the novel. Susan Salter Reynolds, reviewing the novel for the Los Angeles Book Review, argues that Earling “bypass[es] the conscious mind in describing her world of Indian reservations, so that we almost smell that world before we understand it. . . . There are countless smells, sounds, and even feelings that are unfamiliar to many readers.” Reviewers who have found fault with the novel generally cite predictability as its major drawback. A Publishers Weekly reviewer, for example, charges that “the predictable and disorganized plot makes this book less memorable than it might have been” and that Louise’s relationship with Harvey Stoner is “contrived and stilted.” Though some critics note that the ending can be anticipated well in advance of the novel’s final pages, they nevertheless praise Earling as a novelist with great potential and Perma Red as a worthwhile read. In addition to the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award, Perma Red garnered a Spur Award for Best Novel of the West, a Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best First Novel (both from the Western Writers Association), a WILLA Literary Award, and an American Book Award, all in 2003. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Abrams, David. “Stepping Forward.” January Magazine July 2002. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Earling, Debra Magpie. Perma Red. New York: BlueHen, 2002. Print. Everest, Adrien, Katie Fraser, and Jessica Miles. “Debra Magpie Earling.” Voices from the Gaps. Regents of the University of Minnesota, 6 May 2004. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. Publishers Weekly 20 May 2002: 47. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. Reynolds, Susan Salter. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. Los Angeles Times Book Review 21 July 2002: R15. Print. Theiss, Nola. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. Kliatt July 2003: 20. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Debra Magpie Earling was born on August 3, 1957, in Spokane, Washington. A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Earling grew up in Montana. Perma Red is based on the stories she heard as a child, especially those about the life of her aunt Louise, who was murdered at the age of twenty-three. Earling quit school when she was fifteen and later earned a GED from Spokane Community College. At age eighteen she became the reservation’s first public defender, serving in the Tribal Justice System until she left to attend the University of Washington in Seattle. There she received a BA in English (1986), graduating magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors. She earned an MA in English (1991) and an MFA in fiction (1992) from Cornell University. Currently an associate professor, she teaches fiction and Native American studies at the University of Montana in Missoula. Earling received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.
Marlowe, Kimberly B. “Perma Red Is Earling’s Labor of Love.” Seattle Times 14 June 2002: H41. Print. A favorable assessment that focuses on the protagonist of Perma Red and features biographical information about the author and her writing process. McDonough, Victoria Tilney. “Mourning’s End: Calling Back the Spirits with Debra Magpie Earling.” Missoula Independent. Missoula News 23 May 2002. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. A lengthy analysis that includes quotes from the author that situate the novel in the context of her life and experiences. Ott, Bill. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. Booklist 1 June 2002: 1683. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. An evaluation that praises the novel for its rich characterizations and for the author’s portrayal of cultural conflicts. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. All Things Considered 11 July 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. A transcript of a radio broadcast review that lauds Earling’s ability to bring her characters and their world to life. Gale Resources
Additional Resources
“Debra Magpie Earling.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Aug. 2010.
Criticism and Reviews
Open Web Sources
Bogenschutz, Debbie. Rev. of Perma Red, by Debra Magpie Earling. Library Journal 1 May 2002: 132. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. A brief, positive review that hails the novel as a worthy example of Native American literature.
Minnesota State University’s Web site archives the interviews of the Good Thunder Reading Series, including one with Debra Magpie Earling from the 2003-04 season. http://www.english2.mnsu.edu/ gt/interviews.html
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The Flathead Reservation Historical Society offers a timeline of its tribes’ history from the precontact era through the present. http://www.flatheadreserva tion.org/timeline/timeline.html The National Endowment for the Arts Web site features an excerpt from Perma Red, a brief biography of the author, and an author statement. http://www.nea. gov/features/writers/writersCMS/writer.php? id=06_42 For Further Reading
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown. 2007. Print. Earling is often compared to Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian author. Alexie’s first young-adult novel, the semiautobiographical story of a fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian named Arnold Spirit, provides a different view of growing up on a reservation. Earling, Debra Magpie. “Bad Ways.” Ploughshares 20.1 (1994): 15+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. This short story is one of several early drafts that Earling eventually expanded into the novel Perma Red.
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Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984. Print. The struggles of Native Americans throughout the twentieth century are chronicled in Erdrich’s novel, which is set on a reservation in North Dakota. Haladay, Jane. “‘It Just Seemed to Call to Me’: Debra Magpie Earling’s Self-Telling in Perma Red.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 30.1 (2006): 53-65. Print. Haladay discusses the ways in which Earling’s family stories influenced the writing of Perma Red. Purdy, John L., and James Ruppert, eds. Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print. This anthology features a broad selection of Native American literature in a variety of genres. Harrabeth Haidusek
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Personality By Andrew O’Hagan
W Introduction Personality (2003) concerns a young musical prodigy from a small Scottish island, and the rapid rise to fame that leads to her physical disintegration. The novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 2003. Thirteen-year-old Maria Tambini lives on the Isle of Bute with her mother, Rosa. Gifted with a powerful singing voice, Maria wins first prize in a London talent show with a performance that propels her to instant fame. Leaving behind her childhood home to pursue a singing career, Maria is suddenly cut off from her family and friends; her rising success, as managed by her domineering agent, Marion, becomes progressively more isolating. Unprepared for these pressures, Maria develops an eating disorder. The emotional cost of her stardom is further underscored when she is stalked by an obsessive fan. Andrew O’Hagan’s novel explores the way in which celebrity can drain away an individual’s true self. As Ruth Franklin observes in the New York Times, “personality,” in the case of Maria Tambini, “means exactly its opposite: the eradication of character, the ability to ‘disappear into a song.’” Indeed, with what Franklin calls Maria’s “steady disappearing act,” O’Hagan dramatizes the spiritual dissolution that precedes her physical collapse.
W Literary and Historical Context
The story of Maria Tambini closely resembles that of the real-life Scottish-Italian singing prodigy Lena Zavaroni (1963-1999). “Discovered” at the age of ten, Zavaroni was deeply affected by the pressures of stardom and developed an eating disorder. Other parallels between the real and fictional singers are striking: Maria grows up in the same place where Zavaroni was raised, meets many of
the same stars that Zavaroni encountered, and even appears on the same television shows. Zavaroni died as a result of her eating disorder at age thirty-five. Although Maria remains alive at the end of Personality, O’Hagan nevertheless presents her as a child ruined by fame and tortured by obsessive fans. Its obvious parallels to Zavaroni’s story make Personality a roman à clef (novel with a key), a novel that can be “unlocked” by identifying the real-life figures on which the fictional characters are based. Although O’Hagan acknowledges that Zavaroni’s story sparked his desire to “describe what it was like for a girl from a backwater to be propelled by her dreams of success,” he maintains in an interview in the Bookseller that “my character . . . goes her own way to such an extent that I wouldn’t claim too much of a closeness.” Further, the author claims that his treatment of Maria Tambini is also inspired by, and a response to, some of the great novels of the nineteenth century: “[In the works of] Flaubert, Tolstoy, Hardy, what you see is a woman having a relationship to society and an interior life, being tortured and then murdered—Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Tess. I wanted the book to be delicately a commentary on that.”
W Themes Personality is a meditation on celebrity and its effect on those who become its focus. In the context of Maria’s life the word personality has, besides its conventional meaning, also a more artificial, media-oriented connotation. The latter is embodied in television host Hughie Green’s breathless appraisal: “She had talent. She had personality.” His words imply that talent and personality (in the genuine sense) are the same thing. From the moment Maria first appears, dressed as Mary Queen of Scots for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, O’Hagan makes it clear that she really has no personality of her own. Only when she performs does the
865 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Personality
MAJOR CHARACTERS GIOVANNI Rosa’s charming boyfriend, is a notorious womanizer. MARION GASKELL, Maria Tambini’s tyrannical agent, has a secret contempt for the girl’s family. KEVIN GOSS is the dangerously fanatical fan who sends letters to Maria. HUGHIE GREEN, the host of the television show Opportunity Knocks, is based on the real talent show host of the same name. While he plays a minor part in the action, Green’s clichéd commentary on show business and his smug sincerity (“Show business is glory in the afternoon and sunshine after dark.”) aptly reinforce O’Hagan’s implied warnings about the seductiveness of the celebrity lifestyle. KALPANA JAGANNADHAM is Maria’s best friend on the Isle of Bute. Unlike Maria, whose life seems to be dictated by her agent and her fans, Kalpana develops into a smart, wellrounded young woman. MARIA TAMBINI, the story’s protagonist, is a skinny thirteenyear-old with a powerful voice. When she wins a television talent show in London, she is propelled to instant stardom. Under the pressure of media attention, however, she becomes anorexic. ALFREDO TAMBINI is Rosa Tambini’s twin brother and a hairdresser on the Isle of Bute.
In Personality, child prodigy Maria Tambini develops an eating disorder after becoming an overnight singing sensation. ª Odilon
LUCIA TAMBINI, Rosa Tambini’s mother, loses herself in reflections about her dead husband.
Dimier/PhotoAlto/Corbis
ROSA TAMBINI is Maria’s mother, the owner of a fish-andchips shop, and a neurotic worrywart. Rosa is always advising her daughter on hygiene, posture, and appearance, although the reader eventually discovers that these concerns reflect Rosa’s own personal dissatisfaction with life. Self-pitying, she cries frequently and ultimately strives for vicarious fulfillment through her daughter’s success.
from an audience. Early in the novel Maria pretends that the light from an open refrigerator is a spotlight. The significance of this will become apparent later, when Maria develops an eating disorder in an attempt to still the noise inside her.
W Style otherwise timid girl truly seem to come alive: “She gripped the microphone and swayed into every note; she bent her knees and clambered up for the feeling in the words; her eyes grew wide and suddenly narrow; she couldn’t be without the song.” Not only is Maria unable “be without the song” in the sense that she cannot ignore it or leave it alone, but she is truly unable to “be”—to exist—without having a song to perform. The book’s epigraph quotes Judy Garland, who was herself ultimately swallowed by her stage persona: “We need applause. That’s how we live. When you don’t have a lot of noise around you, the noise inside you becomes overwhelming.” Implicit in this remark is a gnawing desperation that manifests in the effort to gain approval
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Tragic as the story line of Personality is, the tone of the writing is humorous and expansive. O’Hagan draws on a variety of literary formats and renders the peculiarities of speech in rich detail. Early in the narrative, for example, two old men are sitting on a pier discussing the properties of fish and chips, and one avers that “good chips [french fries] depends on getting a hold of the best tatties [potatoes]. It’s the tatties that make the difference. They used to have them all the time. Nowadays the chips shops are buying are rubbish tatties that should never have been planted in the first place.” His companion agrees and ventures that “this lot are using spuds you wouldn’t feed to the pigs.” Much of Personality is written in the third person, though not always from an omniscient point of view. In TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Personality
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1968. He studied at the University of Strathclyde and later worked as an editor for the London Review of Books. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 1999, he was also named to Granta’s list of the 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003. In his earliest work O’Hagan rejected the tendency to romanticize the past and, in works like The Missing (1995), demonstrated the ways in which violence often permeates the lives of the innocent. In both his fiction and his journalism he has repudiated sectarianism in his native Scotland by highlighting the aggressive aspects of nationalistic fervor. In such recent works as Personality and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (2010), O’Hagan’s writing has straddled the boundary between fact and fiction.
W Critical Reception
Photo of Andrew O’Hagan, author of the novel Personality. ª Colin McPherson/Corbis
some cases—most notably, with regard to the question of what drives Maria’s anorexia—the narrator seems as much at a loss for an explanation as the protagonist herself. Chapters narrated in the first person bear the narrator’s name in the title and are written in the form of dramatic monologues. Personality brings together various kinds of writing— diary entries, newspaper articles, song lyrics, and interviews, for example. The shifts in style create a humorous, playful effect, as does the mention of such real-life figures as Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana. The blurring of the real and the fictional reaches its apogee with the author’s portrayal of Opportunity Knocks, a television talent competition. The over-the-top host of Opportunity Knocks is Hughie Green, who delivers such non sequiturs as “Talent is the fight against silence. I mean that most sincerely, folks.” The fact that the character Hughie Green is based on, though quite different from, a real person of the same name, who once happened to host a popular show called Opportunity Knocks, only adds to the air of absurdity that surrounds the character.
Personality has attracted attention from critics who recognize the work as a darkly satirical take on the tragic story of Lena Zavaroni. Others, while impressed with O’Hagan’s writing style and themes, have expressed some dissatisfaction with the plot and characterization. Writing for the Library Journal, Josh Cohen concludes that, while “the story is interesting, it never rises to the heights Maria herself attains.” Publishers Weekly echoes this sentiment in its guarded comment that while the “novel is a solid addition to O’Hagan’s body of work . . . the absence of a truly compelling plot makes it a bit of a disappointment” given the critical acclaim for the author’s previous novels. John Mullan of the Guardian (“Dramatic Dialogue”) argues that O’Hagan’s narrative techniques reveal the muted distance between Maria and her family. Mullan, who examines the novel in depth through a fourpart series devoted to its specific literary aspects, nonetheless concludes that the author has inadvertently created a distance between the reader and the story itself. He argues that while the stitching together of different writing styles and the collision of so many different voices in the novel “highlights the author’s command of style and mimicry,” these techniques also push “the people in the novel away from us” (Mullan, “Heteroglossia”). Hugo Barnacle’s review in the New Statesman offers an alternative perspective on these apparent flaws by suggesting that the distance created between the reader and the characters is deliberate: “we never know what it’s like to be Maria. Perhaps this is deliberate: there is nothing to know because, as with many showbiz personalities (supposedly), she has no real inner existence.” Kirkus Reviews advances one of the most positive responses to O’Hagan’s work, claiming that it is “[h]aunting and
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rewarding as an intimate family chronicle and journalistic take on the entertainment industry.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Discusses the historical details included in the novel as well as O’Hagan’s use of multiple perspectives.
Works Cited
Gale Resources
Barnacle, Hugo. “Telly Tubby.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. New Statesman 24 Mar. 2003: 50. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Aug. 2010.
“Andrew O’Hagan.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008.
Bradford, Richard. The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. Print. Franklin, Ruth. “A Star Is Born.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. New York Times Book Review 10 Aug. 2003: 23. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Mullan, John. “Dramatic Dialogue.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Guardian [London] 29 Jan. 2005: 32. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. ———. “Heteroglossia.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Guardian [London] 5 Feb. 2005: 31. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. O’Hagan, Andrew. Personality. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Kirkus Reviews 1 July 2003: 879. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Publishers Weekly 21 July 2003: 174. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. “When Opportunity Knocks You Down.” Bookseller 10 Jan. 2003: 32. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
McWilliam, Candia. “What Voice Can Do.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Spectator 29 Mar. 2003: 46. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Commends O’Hagan’s exploration of the detrimental effects of fame, which drowns out the individual “voice.” Mullan, John. “Dramatic Monologue.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Guardian [London] 22 Jan. 2005: 33. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Explores O’Hagan’s skilled use of third-person narration and dramatic monologue. ———. “Real People.” Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Guardian [London] 15 Jan. 2005: 32. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 5 Aug. 2010. Discusses the unique ways in which O’Hagan adapts real characters and events in his novel.
Tredell, Nicolas. “Andrew O’Hagan.” Contemporary Novelists. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. 7th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 2001. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 24 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Guardian features an essay by O’Hagan in which the author discusses his early years living in London, when he worked at a charity for blind ex-servicemen. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/ may/02/once-upon-a-life-andrew-ohagan In an interview in the Scotsman, O’Hagan talks about fame, celebrity, and his book The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe. http://news.scotsman.com/arts/Interview-AndrewO39-Hagan-novelist.6450590.jp For Further Reading
Malsona, Helen M., and Jane M. Ussher. “Beyond this Mortal Coil: Femininity, Death and Discursive Constructions of the Anorexic Body.” Mortality 2.1 (1997): 43-61. Print. Using information from interviews with women diagnosed with anorexia, Malsona and Ussher analyze the subjects of death and dying through a feminist poststructuralist lens. O’Connor, Jane. The Cultural Significance of the Child Star. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print. O’Connor’s book is concerned with the ways in which the media help shape children’s identities and explores the scenario in which vulnerable child stars are thrust suddenly into the adult world. O’Connor alludes briefly to the story of Lena Zavaroni, whose death from anorexia offers a real-life parallel to the near-tragic circumstances of Maria’s life in Personality. Radford, John. “Prodigies in the Press.” High Ability Studies 9.2 (1998): 153-64. Print. Radford’s article explores the phenomenon of “child prodigies” and argues that mass media, rather than scientific study, have shaped our understanding of such precocious individuals. Rojek, Chris. Celebrity. London: Reaktion, 2001. Print. Rojek offers a witty exploration of “celebrity” in contemporary culture, arguing that celebrity status denotes a division between the public and private self.
Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan. Booklist Aug. 2003: 1957. Book Review
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Judson Knight
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
(c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
The Pickup By Nadine Gordimer
W Introduction The Pickup, Nadine Gordimer’s 2001 novel, has been called “a spare and eloquent study of huge truths” (Kellman). When Julie Summers’s expensive car breaks down, she takes it to be serviced and meets Abdu, whose full name is actually Ibrahim ibn Musa, an illegal immigrant working in South Africa as a mechanic. They date, marry, and eventually move to his village in an unnamed Arab country. As Ibrahim continues his quest to obtain visas for them to travel somewhere else, Julie learns the ways of his household, becoming close with Ibrahim’s family and teaching English to his sisters and others from the village. Recalling her life in public relations back in South Africa, Julie “thinks it’s the first time that expensive education has been put to use” (170). As they each wish for a different kind of escape, “the gap between them is the space in which this novel finally rests” (Adair). James Sallis writes, “this is surely what art at its highest octane does: attempts to push its way around the ineffable, to get inside other heads, to cross the many boundaries that so terminally and tragically divide us.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Nadine Gordimer calls The Pickup her “least South African book” (qtd. in Steele). Indeed, The Pickup has little to do with apartheid directly, instead “the South African baggage that Julie carries with her abroad is intricately connected to her reaction to life in the world at large” (Smith). The impetus for Julie’s decision to date Ibrahim can be viewed as a desire for her to shun her moneyed background by taking up with the “Other.” Which begs the question, who picks up whom? “For Julie, her husband is an exotic escape from all she despises about her taken-for-granted
background. For Ibrahim, that background represents the chance to belong: to escape from poverty, to join the ranks of those who can come and go freely across borders” (de Kretser). Gordimer makes a statement that this is “a world of such profound inequities that pure motives are impossible” (Thomas). Gordimer also implies that, in this world, legal status “has replaced racial probity in the minds of the establishment” (Binding). In telling Ibrahim’s story, and taking the reader with him to his village in the desert, Gordimer “takes one face from the ranks of contract workers . . . which move with so little recognition and with increasing suspicion through developed cities” and “follows him home, revealing the ‘grease monkey’ who sleeps in a tiny room behind a garage to be Ibrahim, the hope and treasure of a large family” (Thomas). In doing so, Gordimer “has done what great novelists have always done: proclaimed the individuality of human beings in the teeth of creeds that would deny them that individuality” (Flynn).
W Themes Nadine Gordimer has said “the truth is the real definition of ‘home.’ It is the final destination of the human spirit beyond national boundaries” (qtd. in Kellman). The search for home, and the physical and emotional rootlessness that accompany it, lies at the heart of The Pickup. Several different aspects of the novel address this theme. “The countries to which Abdu applies for visas stand for an international world of freedom of choice” (Duguid). The clearest demonstration of this search for place occurs in the relationship between Julie and Ibrahim. “Each of them has experienced love as displacement; as an opportunity to escape what it is they loathe about themselves” (Cusk). For Julie, it is her privileged background, for Ibrahim, his poor one and the lack of opportunity that accompanies it. There is no place for the two of them to fully belong to; neither feels
869 (c) 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
The Pickup
MAJOR CHARACTERS ABDU (IBRAHIM IBN MUSA) is the illegal immigrant working as a car mechanic in South Africa, despite his degree in economics. MARYAM is Ibrahim’s younger sister, who becomes very close with Julie when they move home to his village. DR. ARCHIBALD CHARLES SUMMERS is Julie’s favorite uncle, and a renowned gynecologist. JULIE ACKROYD SUMMERS is the young woman who meets and marries Ibrahim ibn Musa, a young Arab working illegally in South Africa. NIGEL ACKROYD SUMMERS is Julie’s wealthy and connected father.
affinity to one specific place. Sex, which Gordimer writes about “so easily we barely notice the accomplishment,” is their one refuge (Sullivan). “That night they made love, the kind of love-making that is another country, a country of its own, not yours or mine” (96). But despite
this intimacy, distance remains between Julie and Ibrahim. “We are made to see . . . how these two lovers’ respective dreams of escape draw them together and how they also create a wedge against their future” (Kakutani). In the end, The Pickup “is not a paean to the power of love, but a lament for a world in which some gulfs are too great to be bridged” (Flynn).
W Style Nadine Gordimer “has developed a singular style with jagged edges derived in part from her fragmented sentences and tangled word order” (Ross). The Pickup has been called a “linguistic experiment,” and the prose, which “loops back on itself, constantly revising its assertions . . . works well when Gordimer wants to describe Ibrahim’s dislocation in South Africa; less well when there is basic factual information to be conveyed” (Lowry). Marion Halligan notes “it is clear we are dealing with a writer who knows she can make us work at following her, however hard she makes it.” The prose is “tortuous, tense, convoluted, needing to be paid attention to. It has odd fractured tenses and sometimes is so elliptical as to defy divination” (Halligan). The
While living in her husband’s Arab homeland, Julie Summers—a character in the novel The Pickup—would likely have to wear a burka in public. ª EmmePi Travel / Alamy
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The Pickup
Pickup abounds with sentences such as “When—if— no!—when, this time, he would have something to say to her, it would be: news” (218). Because she often writes with a distance from her characters, Gordimer’s writing is sometimes referred to as cold (Rudikoff). Her style is also often referred to as spare, bleak, and controlled (Cusk). The Pickup contains several passages that abruptly shift from third person narration to first. After describing, in third person, Julie’s stalled car, Gordimer writes, “There. You’ve seen. I’ve seen . . . a woman in a traffic jam . . . but I know because from the sight of her I’ll find out—as a story—what was going to happen as the consequence of that commonplace embarrassment on the streets; where it was heading her for, and what” (4). This change is perhaps a nod to the title of the novel. “A case of ‘writer picks up reader.’ A case of ‘reader picks up book . . . ’ Let’s take a ride” (Adair).
W Critical Reception Critics seem to agree that “even Gordimer’s weaker productions could be another writer’s triumph” (Kantrowitz). With The Pickup, however, some took issue with her decision not to place Ibrahim’s village in a specific Arab country. “Because Ms. Gordimer coyly refuses to give Ibrahim’s country a local habitation and a name, the couple’s sojourn there feels somewhat abstract and disembodied” (Kakutani). However, some believe that this “communicates the sense that the hardship and yearning depicted here are not confined to one group but constitute reality for millions of people” (de Kretser). Michiko Kakutani, writing for the New York Times, found that though “many of the minor characters verge perilously close to caricature,” in contrast, the relationship between Julie and Ibrahim was lent “an unusual poignancy and depth” by “Ms. Gordimer’s ability . . . to delineate the psychological consequence of exile, class disaffection and racial prejudice.” Corey Mesler also praises the author’s “quiet reverberations of the human psyche laid bare, the distances between us examined, the common threads tangled, unraveled or woven beautifully together.” Gordimer’s prose has been criticized for being “willfully awkward” (Kakutani). Margaret Grayson points out, “a professor of English literature at CUNY tells her classes that reading Nadine Gordimer is ‘like having a mouth full of too much toothpaste.’ I would tone that assessment down to read that her work is sticky in that getting through it is hard going. I would add that it is worth the effort.” This seems to be the consensus: Tom Adair calls The Pickup “a dolorous, beautifully measured exploration of belonging,” and a critic for Kirkus Reviews writes, “Gordimer can still deliver a rabbit punch to the solar plexus as efficiently as anybody now writing. Maybe they should give her the Nobel prize again.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, a small mining town outside Johannesburg, in South Africa. Between the ages of eleven to sixteen, she was educated privately at home, and had no formal education other than one year in a general studies program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Always outspoken about her political views, Gordimer has written many political essays damning apartheid, and many of her books deal with the subject extensively (Smith). She was a member of the African National Congress, and two of her books were banned in South Africa (Steele). The author of numerous novels, short stories, and essays, in 1974 she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Conservationist, and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991 (Smith). Gordimer has said that to be a writer, “you have to be a great observer, you have to be an eavesdropper, you have to have big ears and big eyes” (qtd. in Martin). Gordimer has been married twice and has two children, a daughter, Oriane, from her first marriage, and a son, Hugo, from her second. “Writing,” she says, “is the continuing reason to be in my life, above everything else” (qtd. in Riley).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adair, Tom. “Driven to a New Understanding.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Scotsman [Edinburgh] 15 Sept. 2001: 11. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Binding, Paul. “Books: Flat Battery, Charged Emotions; Love across the Ethnic Divide; For Paul Binding, No One Does It Better.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Independent on Sunday [London] 9 Sept. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Cusk, Rachel. “The Desert’s Balm; Rachel Cusk Admires a Bleak Portrayal of Love.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Daily Telegraph [London] 15 Sept. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. de Kretser, Michelle. “Desperate Aspirations.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Weekend Australian [Sydney] 24 Nov. 2001: B06. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Duguid, Lindsay. “Contradictions and the Clashing of Cultures; Fiction.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Sunday Times [London] 23 Sept. 2001: F5. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Flynn, Julia. “When Loves Comes under Strain; Julia Flynn Admires a Novel of Contrasts.” Rev. of The
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Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Sunday Telegraph [London] 16 Sept. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Gordimer, Nadine. The Pickup. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. Print. Grayson, Margaret. “Book Page: A Not-So-Simple Twist of Fate.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Roanoke Times 10 Mar. 2002: 6. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Halligan, Marion. “As Tough as Life Itself.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Courier-Mail [Brisbane] 29 Dec. 2001: M05. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Kakutani, Michiko. “Lovers Dream of Escape, from Different Worlds.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. New York Times 9 Oct. 2001: E7(L). InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Kantrowitz, Melanie, and Melanie Kaye. “Commitment Ceremonies.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Women’s Review of Books Oct. 2001: 10. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Kellman, Steven G. “Books: On Belonging vs. Being Adrift.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 7 Oct. 2001: F5. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. “Loot, and Other Stories.” Kirkus Reviews 71.1 (1 Jan. 2003): 11. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 80. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Lowry, Elizabeth. “Books: Notes of Harmony in an Age of Discord.” Rev. of The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer. Independent [London] 22 Sept. 2001. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Martin, Sandra. “Gordimer’s All Class: Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction Has Always Been about Truth, Justice, and Love’s Mysteries. She Talks to Sandra Martin about Immigration, Race, and Writing.” Globe and Mail [Toronto] 6 Oct. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Mesler, Corey. “She Loves Him and He Loves Her and All Is Not Well in Gordimer’s South Africa.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Memphis Commercial Appeal 4 Nov. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Riley, Sheila. “Writer Nadine Gordimer, Discipline and Drive Help Her Keep Turning Out Great Literature.” Investor’s Business Daily 23 July 2001: A04. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Ross, Robert. “The Dispossessed: Nadine Gordimer’s New Novel Explores the Contradictory Longings of Ill-Fated Lovers Caught between Two Worlds.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. The World and I
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1 Mar. 2002. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Rudikoff, Sonya. “Nadine Gordimer.” African Writers. Ed. C. Brian Cox. New York: Scribner’s, 1997. Sallis, James. “Sexual Politics.” Rev. of The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer. Washington Post 30 Sept. 2001. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Smith, Roland. “Nadine Gordimer.” Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 2. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 330. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Steele, Jonathan. “Saturday Review: The Guardian Profile: Nadine Gordimer: White Magic: She Is a Nobel Prizewinning Novelist Little Read in Her Own Country of South Africa Despite—or Perhaps Because of—the Way Her Stories Have Chronicled Life under Apartheid. But Her New Book, Set in a Modern Arab Nation, Marks a Bold Departure with Striking Contemporary Relevance.” Guardian [London] 27 Oct. 2001: 6. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Sullivan, Andrew. “How the Other Half Loves: In Nadine Gordimer’s Novel, an Attraction of Opposites Pairs a Rich South African Woman and a Poor Muslim on the Run.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. New York Times Book Review 16 Dec. 2001: 10. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Thomas, Joan. “Pickup.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Globe and Mail [Toronto] 6 Oct. 2001. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Armiger, Martin. “Defying the Gods.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Sydney Morning Herald 26 Jan. 2002. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Armiger positively reviews The Pickup. Barker, Derek A. “Crossing Lines: The Novels of Nadine Gordimer with a Particular Focus on Occasion for Loving and The Pickup.” Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies 28.3 (2007): 91+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. This comprehensive essay compares two of Gordimer’s novels, and the shared theme of cross-racial relationships. Dannenberg, Hilary P. “Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup and the Desert Romance Tradition in Post/Colonial Anglophone Fiction.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 20.1 (2008): 69+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Dannenberg’s essay examines The Pickup as a combination of two narrative traditions: the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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traditional romance and the desert romance, a genre developed in colonial fiction. Dimitriu, Ileana. “Nadine Gordimer: Getting a Life after Apartheid.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 21.1-2 (2009): 117+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. An essay that examines Gordimer’s writing after the end of apartheid, which serves as the subject for much of her work. Groskop, Viv. “Enjoy!: Books; Who’s Using Who?” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Sunday Express 23 Sept. 2001. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Groskop’s review emphasizes the question implied by the book’s title: who exactly has been picked up in Gordimer’s novel? Hunt, Emma. “Post-Apartheid Johannesburg and Global Mobility in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow.” ARIEL 37.4 (2006): 103+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Hunt’s essay examines two works written in the postapartheid era and the way they illustrate two opposing viewpoints of globalization. “Journey to Elsewhere; New Fiction.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Economist 15 Sept. 2001. Highbeam Research. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. A mixed review that takes issue with the “peculiarly elliptical and rather irritating style” of Gordimer’s writing. Noor, Ronny. “Nadine Gordimer: The Pickup.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. World Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 115. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. A positive review of The Pickup that praises Gordimer’s ability to vividly convey a sense of place. Perrick, Penny. “Rich Girl, Poor Man; New Titles.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Times [London] 22 Sept. 2001: 20. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Perrick praises the emotional depth of Gordimer’s novel. Sebestyen, Victor. “Aliens in Their Own Land.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Evening Standard [London] 10 Sept. 2001: 50. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Sebestyen gives a mixed review of Gordimer’s novel, arguing that the half of the book set in Ibrahim’s village is romanticized and weaker than the portions of the novel set in South Africa. York, Anthony. “The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer.” Rev. of The Pickup, by Nadine Gordimer. Salon.com, 6 Dec. 2001. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Salon’s review focus on the gulf that develops between Julie and Ibrahim in the novel.
Gale Resources
“Nadine Gordimer.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. “Nadine Gordimer.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 263. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. “Nadine Gordimer.” Novels for Students. Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Nixon, Rob. “Nadine Gordimer.” British Writers: Supplement 2. Ed. George Stade. New York: Scribner’s, 1992. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Smith, Rowland. “Nadine Gordimer.” South African Writers. Ed. Paul A. Scanlon. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 225. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The British Council website, at http://www.contempor arywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03D25I553012 635618 has biographical information about Nadine Gordimer, as well as a list of her works, her prizes and awards, her publisher information, and links to further readings. The New York Times website for Nadine Gordimer, http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/time stopics/people/g/nadine_gordimer/index.html, has a comprehensive collection of highlights from the archives, including biographical pieces, interviews, and reviews of her novels. The Roland Collection of Films on Art, http://www. rolandcollection.com/films/?prm=a20-b116-c1684d2-e0, has a link to a forty-five minute video interview with Nadine Gordimer. The website for the Nobel Prize in Literature, at http:// nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/ 1991/, contains information about the awards, as well as the ceremony speech given when Gordimer was awarded the prize in 1991. For Further Reading
Bazin, Nancy Topping. “An Interview with Nadine Gordimer.” Contemporary Literature. 36.4 (1995): 571+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Gordimer discusses her books, with an emphasis on July’s People and None to Accompany Me. Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Penguin Group, 1999. Print. Coetzee’s novel tells the story of David Lurie, a fifty-two-year-old professor at Cape Town University College in South Africa who has an affair with one of his students.
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Gien, Pamela. The Syringa Tree. New York: Random House, 2006. Print. In Gien’s autobiographical novel, adapted from her one-woman criticallyacclaimed off-Broadway play—in which she played twenty-four distinct characters—Gien describes a childhood growing up in South Africa under apartheid. Gordimer, Nadine, and Karen Lazar. “A Feeling of Realistic Optimism: An Interview with Nadine Gordimer.” Salmagundi (1997): 150-165. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Gordimer discusses her politics, in particular her involvement during the 1980s and 1990s with the ACAG (Anti-Censorship Action Group) and the ANC (African National Congress). Jeyifo, Biodun. “An Interview with Nadine Gordimer.” Callloo 16.4 (1993): 922+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Jeyifo talks with Gordimer about how the current political situation in South Africa affects her writing, and the work of other writers and activists.
Criticism Supplement 1-2: A Selection of Major Authors from Gale’s Literary Criticism Series. Ed. Polly Vedder. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Gordimer discusses her upbringing and childhood in South Africa, and her writing routine and writing process. Wheelwright, Julie. “Interview: Giant Steps along the Road to Freedom; Nadine Gordimer Portrays the New South Africa with the Same Fierce Candour She Brought to the Apartheid Era. But Julie Wheelwright Finds the Nobel Laureate Still Proud and Hopeful.” Independent [London] 7 June 2003: 29. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Wheelwright talks with Gordimer about truth telling in her writing and about the author’s signature sharp, candid style. Wicomb, Zoe. You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 2000. Print. Wicomb’s debut collection of short stories centers around mixed-race women living in Cape Town, South Africa, during the apartheid era. Bisanne Masoud
Marchant, Peter. “Judith Kitchen, and Stan Sanvel Rubin, an Interview with Nadine Gordimer.” Ontario Review 26 (1987): 5-14. Rpt. in World Literature
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A Pigeon and a Boy By Meir Shalev
W Introduction A Pigeon and a Boy (2007), written by Israeli novelist Meir Shalev and translated by Evan Fallenberg, is a story with two distinct plotlines that coalesce near the book’s conclusion. The first of these two story lines concerns Yair Mendelsohn, an Israeli tour guide dissatisfied with his work and his marriage who sets about restoring an old house and finds new love with a former flame—childhood sweetheart Tirzah Fried—in the process. Paralleling this narrative is the story of “the Baby,” who trains carrier pigeons for Israeli forces during the 1948 War of Independence, and his relationship with an unnamed woman known simply as “the Girl.” The author of numerous works for both young readers and adults, Shalev has been hailed as a leading practitioner of “magic realism,” a literary style that juxtaposes aspects of the fantastic with a sharply defined portrayal of the ordinary, mundane world. Though his life and experiences bear the imprint of Israeli history and politics, Shalev, a liberal who supports increased cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, has generally avoided direct political commentary in his work; thus, A Pigeon and a Boy is less about the conflicts that shaped and continue to shape Israel than it is about one man’s search for love and meaning. The novel won Israel’s Brenner Prize in 2006.
W Literary and Historical Context
An understanding of works by Israeli writers such as Shalev requires an appreciation of the nation’s unique modern history. Founded in 1948, with the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust still a recent memory, the state of Israel provided a homeland for Jews scattered throughout the world in the two millennia since the Romans dispersed them from Palestine. Yet the Arab inhabitants
of the region bitterly opposed their displacement from lands they regarded as their own, and the period since the establishment of Israel has seen numerous wars—in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1982—along with countless military skirmishes between Israel and its Arab neighbors. A number of Shalev’s formative experiences were closely tied to Israeli history. Born during the 1948 war (his mother, eight months pregnant, had to be smuggled out of Jerusalem), he grew up to fight in the 1967 conflict. That left him with not only a physical wound, but a changed view of Israel’s place in relation to its Arab neighbors. On a visit with his father to the holy sites of Jerusalem, captured during the war, Shalev predicted, “We’ve bitten off something that will choke us.” Thenceforth, he emerged as a liberal who eschewed a hard line in favor of attempts toward peaceful coexistence with Israel’s enemies. Despite the influence of historical and political events on his life, however, Shalev has tended to take an apolitical approach to fiction. This is the case not only in his numerous works for young readers, such as My Father Always Embarrasses Me (1988), but also in his novels for adult audiences. The first of these, The Blue Mountain (1988), draws heavily on Israeli history for its portrait of immigrants from Ukraine working on a kibbutz, or farm cooperative; yet the focus of the narrative is on the characters, rather than politics.
W Themes Noting the author’s disdain for larger social themes— including religion, which figures heavily into the political landscape of the world’s only majority-Jewish state—in favor of more personal issues, Sarah Fay in the New York Times observes that, in A Pigeon and a Boy, Shalev “is less concerned with the intricacies of a particular religion than with the question of what any person needs in order to be happy.” Nevertheless, as in much Israeli fiction, the influence of politics and history on the narrative is virtually inescapable.
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MAJOR CHARACTERS THE BABY is an unnamed young soldier who trains carrier pigeons for the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1948 War of Independence, which claims his life. The story of his relationship with the Girl forms the secondary plot line of A Pigeon and a Boy. MESHULAM FRIED is Tirzah’s wealthy father, an old friend of Yair’s family. TIRZAH FRIED is Yair’s love interest, both in childhood and later, when he meets her again and hires her as a contractor for his house restoration project. THE GIRL is the unnamed young woman with whom the Baby falls in love and to whom he sends messages with the help of his carrier pigeons. BENJAMIN MENDELSOHN is Yair’s younger brother, whose memory he often consults in attempting to recall aspects of their childhood and family life. LIORA MENDELSOHN is Yair’s beautiful but frigid wife, from whom he separates in his quest to find himself. RAYA MENDELSOHN is Yair’s mother, who gives him both emotional and financial support in making a break from his life and undertaking the restoration of an old house. She later dies of cancer. YAIR MENDELSOHN is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. An Israeli tour guide unhappy with his job and his marriage, he sets out to find himself by restoring an old house even as he explores past events involving the Baby and the Girl. “YORDAD” MENDELSOHN is Yair’s pediatrician father, known thus because Raya always refers to him simply as “your dad.” Deserted by Raya years before, he devolves into a dementia in which he imagines he still sees her even after she has died.
This historical underpinning is symbolized by the profession of the book’s protagonist: a tour guide, Yair spends his days taking visitors from all over the world to ancient sites, many of them mentioned in the Bible. Unhappy in his job and his marriage, Yair decides to take a break and, with money and encouragement from his mother, sets out to find himself. This he does by renovating an old house with the help of Tirzah Fried, his childhood sweetheart. Paralleling Yair’s present-day quest for meaning and identity is another, at first seemingly unrelated, one. This is the tale from which the novel takes its name: the story of a young man, known simply as “the Baby,” who trains carrier pigeons for the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1948 war. The Baby is in love with a young woman, likewise known only by a title and not a name (“the
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In the book A Pigeon and a Boy, “The Baby” releases one final pigeon after being mortally wounded in battle. G. Tipene/ Shutterstock.com
Girl”), and the story of the couple’s long-ago interaction provides a key to Yair’s own questions about himself.
W Style Shalev’s writing has often been compared to that of Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude is perhaps the most well-known example of the style known as “magic realism.” As its name suggests, magic realism combines the everyday and the fantastic, placing the strange in sharp juxtaposition with the familiar. By rooting the reader firmly in the “real” world, writers of magic realism heighten the impact of the surreal and often supernatural events they portray. Thus, the narrative of A Pigeon and a Boy moves back and forth between the realms of fact and fantasy. It does so through scenes that depict the impossible—for instance, a conversation involving pigeons that talk—and through an implied connection between Yair and the Baby. Though this connection ultimately turns out to be a quite palpable one, the very nature of the relationship TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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between the two stories is ultimately so improbable that it calls into question the reality of what Yair has experienced. Yair is the narrator. “This is my story,” he announces at one point, “and I shorten it and lengthen it, I fabricate and confess.” He tells his tale in the first person, though his investigations into the events of the secondary plot line necessarily require a shift to the third person for long passages. “By working stories in the present and the past against each other,” writes Fay in the New York Times, “Shalev brings into question the validity, and the reliability, of memory.”
W Critical Reception Reviewing A Pigeon and a Boy for the Jerusalem Report, Matt Nesvisky faults the author’s magic-realist approach, noting that it is “the major problem with the book, and
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Meir Shalev is the son of Israeli poet Yitzhak Shalev. Born in 1948, the year that Israel was established as a nation and won a war of independence against its Arab neighbors, he was raised in Nahalal, a cooperative agricultural community, or moshav. Shalev fought and was wounded in the 1967 Six-Day War, and afterward he developed a liberal political view that stressed coexistence between Israel and the Arab world. After studying psychology at Hebrew University, he began a career as a radio and television host. His first published work was Michael and the Monster of Jerusalem (1981), a story for young readers. He went on to write numerous juvenile titles as well as novels for adults, beginning with The Blue Mountain in 1988. Married, with two sons, he lives in Jerusalem.
In A Pigeon and a Boy, a man called “The Baby” trains pigeons for the Israeli Defense Forces to use during the 1948 War of Independence. AFP/Getty Images
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indeed with all of Shalev’s fiction, that milk-and-meat melding of realism and fantasy.” A critic in Kirkus Reviews sounds an even more negative tone, concluding that “Forklift-loads of extraneous material dilute the drama.” B. Glen Rotchin of the Gazette compares A Pigeon and a Boy unfavorably with The Blue Mountain: Shalev’s “stock in trade,” Rotchin maintains, “has been creating believable, affecting, larger-than life characters. . . . The technique worked beautifully in The Blue Mountain. . . . By comparison, this novel is somewhat weighted down by earnestness.” Rotchin nevertheless finds that revelations near the end of the book of Yair’s “improbable origin” are “fitting . . . given the improbability of Israel’s birth out of the Holocaust’s ashes, and its continued survival.” Similarly, Fay in the New York Times observes that while “[t]he Baby story can initially feel distant and contrived when compared with the vivid characters and sharp dialogue of Yair’s present-day wanderings . . . as the novel proceeds, these two plots create interesting friction.” Less muted is the critique offered by Carolyn Kubisz, who writes in Booklist that A Pigeon and a Boy reaffirms Shalev’s status as a “master storyteller.” Likewise, a commentator in Publishers Weekly praises the “luminous originality” of this “stunning” novel.
review by al-Shaweff, a Lebanese writer, who praises Shalev’s “refreshingly nuanced picture of Israel.” Beck, Mordechai. “Hebrew Literature in English.” Jerusalem Post 12 May 2008: 15. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Brief discussion of works recently translated from Hebrew, among them A Pigeon and a Boy. ———. “Writing in Hebrew, but for Whom?” Jerusalem Post 12 May 2008: 14. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Extended discussion of literature in Hebrew, including A Pigeon and a Boy. Glinter, Ezra. “The Place of Politics in Fiction: Two Israeli Novelists Have Different Perspectives.” Gazette [Montreal] 18 Apr. 2009. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Comparison and contrast of approaches to politics in the fiction of Shalev, including A Pigeon and a Boy, and fellow Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua. Herschthal, Eric. “The Best Israeli Novelist You’ve Never Heard Of.” New York Jewish Week 221:48 (24 Apr. 2009): 29-30. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Brief profile of Shalev coupled with a favorable review of A Pigeon and a Boy. Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Bookmarks 33 (2008). Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Short favorable review.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Gale Resources
Fay, Sarah. “Homing In.” Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. New York Times 25 Nov. 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
“Meir Shalev.” Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 9 Oct. 2010.
Kubisz, Carolyn. Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Booklist 15 Sept. 2007: 34. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
“Meir Shalev.” Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Ref., 2007. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 9 Oct. 2010.
Nesvisky, Matt. “A Hodgepodge of Fiction.” Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev, along with works by other authors. Jerusalem Report 7 Jan. 2008: 40. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Kirkus Reviews 15 Aug. 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Publishers Weekly 23 July 2007: 41. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Rotchin, B. Glen. “Probing What ‘Home’ Really Means.” Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Gazette [Montreal] 17 Nov. 2007. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Shalev, Meir. A Pigeon and a Boy. Trans. Evan Fallenberg. New York: Schocken, 2007. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
al-Shaweff, Rayyan. “A Dream House for Yair.” Rev. of A Pigeon and a Boy, by Meir Shalev. Miami Herald 18 Nov. 2007: 6M. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Favorable
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Open Web Sources
A video of a discussion with Shalev is available on the Web site of the Whizin Center for Continuing Education at American Jewish University. http:// wcce.ajula.edu/Content/ContentUnit.asp? CID=1766&u=7728&t=0 Ulrike Putz interviewed Shalev for the German magazine Der Spiegel, which features an English version of the article along with photos on its Web site. http:// www.spiegel.de/international/world/ 0,1518,599142,00.html An audio interview with Shalev, conducted by Daniel Menaker, is available on the Web site of the PEN American Center, a literary and human-rights organization. http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/ prmMID/3215/prmID/1831 Discussion questions relating to A Pigeon and a Boy can be found on the Web site Reading Group Guides. http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_p/ pigeon_and_a_boy1.asp TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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An audio interview with Shalev, conducted by writer and broadcaster Nigel Beale, appears on Beale’s Web site. http://nigelbeale.com/2009/06/12/audio-inter view-with-meir-shalev-by-nigel-beale/ For Further Reading
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. Franklin Center: Franklin Lib., 1981. Print. Shalev’s work has often been compared to that of Nobel laureate García Márquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude is the bestknown example of “magic realism.” Nusseibeh, Sari, with Anthony David. Once upon a Country: A Palestinian Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007. Print. This nonfiction work by Palestinian author Nusseibeh discusses his deep family roots in the region, his close relationships with many Israelis, and his own liberal views on Arab-Israeli coexistence, which in many respects mirror those of Shalev.
Irish journalist O’Brien chronicles events leading up to and following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Shalev, Meir. The Blue Mountain. Trans. Hillel Halkin. New York: Harper, 2002. Print. Shalev’s first novel draws quirky and sometimes humorous portraits of a group of immigrants from Ukraine working on an Israeli collective farm, or kibbutz. ———. My Father Always Embarrasses Me. Trans. Dagmar Herrmann. Chicago: Wellington, 1990. Print. The most popular of Shalev’s juvenile titles, My Father Always Embarrasses Me depicts the relationship between young Mortimer Dunne and his sometimes bumbling dad. Wheeler, Joe L. Soldier Stories: True Tales of Courage, Honor and Sacrifice from the Frontlines. Nashville: W Pub., 2006. Print. This anthology, whose contributors include Senator John McCain, includes a chapter on the use of carrier pigeons in wartime.
O’Brien, Conor Cruise. The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Print.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Judson Knight
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A Place of Execution By Val McDermid
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
A Place of Execution (1999) is the first stand-alone novel by acclaimed crime and detective series novelist Val McDermid. The novel is written as a story within a story, divided into two parts. Part 1 is the manuscript of a true-crime story by journalist Catherine Heathcote about the 1963 death of thirteen-year-old Alison Carter at the hands of her pedophile stepfather, Philip Hawkin. Heathcote’s book is being written more than a quarter of a century after Alison’s disappearance, and it is based on interviews with the case’s former investigator, George Bennett. The second part of the book, the story within the story, is about Bennett’s investigation of Alison’s death. His work, it is revealed, was impeded by the close-knit and exceedingly private community, whose members are all interrelated. Over the course of his investigation, Bennett is forced to delve into the private lives of the town’s residents, and he is met with increasingly uncooperative people. The girl’s body is never found, but the inspector succeeds in convicting Hawkin, resulting in his execution. When, decades after the execution, Heathcote attempts to publish her book, Bennett halts the publication without offering an explanation. This leads Heathcote to launch her own investigation and find out what really happened to Alison Carter. A Place of Execution is a thriller that raises questions about the tribal mentality of insular societies and the moral implications of guilt and punishment. It has won several awards, including a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Dilys Award, and a Macavity Award.
A Place of Execution employs two parallel storylines. While Catherine Heathcote’s manuscript was written years later, most of A Place of Execution takes place during the mid-1960s, in the isolated community of Scardale, a hamlet of Derbyshire in the dreary English countryside. Around the same time as Alison’s disappearance, several other children in and around Manchester disappeared, and two of their bodies were found in graves dug on nearby Saddleworth Moor. The Brady and Hindley Moors murders, which took place between July 1963 and October 1965, included five victims, most of whom were sexually assaulted. McDermid refers to the Moors murders several times in the text, and it is implied in the story that Alison is another victim of the serial killers responsible for the other murders. The residents of the Scardale community are all descended from the same three families and have been the town’s sole inhabitants for generations. They harbor a strong distrust of the outside world, and the missing girl’s stepfather is an outsider who recently inherited his property. Alison, envied by her friends because her stepfather spoils her, goes missing on a cold winter night. Much of the search for her body takes place around the gray moors of postwar, rural Manchester, and the police inspector’s investigation runs into dead end upon dead end as he interviews the tightlipped townspeople, who are wary of outsiders invading their community. The novel’s setting contributes to the dark and ominous tone of the story. In the book’s first chapter, the inspector describes the town by saying, “It’s like the Middle Ages down there. There’s only one road in and out and it comes to a dead end by the telephone box on the village green.”
Context
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A Place of Execution
The book has been called “a Greek tragedy in modern England,” and creates a mythical, isolated society juxtaposed against modern, bustling Manchester. The setting creates a context for the story that, rather than functioning as mere scenery, proves integral to the story as a whole.
W Themes A Place of Execution examines the nature of crime and vengeance, and raises questions about conflicts between justice and law. The people of Scardale view themselves and their community as uniquely qualified to deal with their judicial concerns. Marilyn Stasio (New York Times) has identified Scardale as “an insular village in rural Derbyshire that functioned like an ancient feudal tribe when doling out justice.” This is illuminated through the Ma Lomas character, who serves as the village matriarch. The inspector has to repeatedly question Alison’s cousin, Charlie Lomas, in order to earn the confidence of Ma Lomas, and only then does she divulge information that leads to the arrest, conviction, and execution of Hawkin.
MAJOR CHARACTERS GEORGE BENNETT is a retired investigator who won the conviction of Alison’s stepfather for her murder. He is the basis for Heathcote’s book, but without explanation, he halts the publication leaving Heathcote to discover the truth about Alison’s disappearance. PHILIP HAWKIN is the stepfather of the missing girl. He was convicted and executed for murdering Alison by circumstantial evidence, as Alison’s body was never recovered. CATHERINE HEATHCOTE is a journalist who is writing a truecrime book about the 1963 disappearance of Alison Carter. The book is based on the investigation by Bennett, Carter is primarily interested in the case because she spent her childhood summers in the manor house where Alison lived. MA LOMAS is the matriarch of Scardale, and is responsible for leading Bennett to evidence that led to Hawkin’s conviction.
A field in the English countryside. Much of the novel A Place of Execution takes place in rural England. David Hughes/Shutterstock.com
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Val McDermid was one of the youngest undergraduates ever to be accepted to St. Hilda’s College at Oxford and began her career working as a journalist for national newspapers in Glasgow and Manchester. Her crime fiction writing career began with Report for Murder (1987), and she has written more than two-dozen books, including three popular series— the Lindsay Gordon mystery series, the Kate Brannigan mystery series, and the Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan mystery series. She has also written short stories and a book of nonfiction, A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Women Private Eyes (1995). She contributes to several British newspapers and radio programs and, in 2010 she won the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing.
Loss and redemption also figure prominently in the novel. The villagers go to extremes to keep the outside world separate from theirs, and exhibit remarkable cunning to keep Bennett from discovering the truth. When he is interviewed by Heathcote, he is reluctant to openly discuss the case, indicating that he is uneasy with its outcome. McDermid draws parallels between the ways in which the villagers deal with Allison’s disappearance and murder and the way that Bennett processes his own guilt when he finds out the truth about what really happened to Alison.
W Style In A Place of Execution, McDermid integrates elements of the police procedural, detective and mystery fiction, and the psychological thriller. She skips back and forth through time, between the time of Alison’s disappearance and the present, using the device as a vehicle to describe differences in society in general, as well as the differences in police investigation methodology. Bennett’s investigation, as told through the lens of Heathcote’s manuscript, serves as a template by which Heathcote’s own investigation, years later, can be measured. Through the gathering of evidence and Bennett’s interrogations, the reader learns about the nature of the community and its members, and through Heathcote’s investigation, the reader is given a deeper understanding of Bennett’s character. Since the case was solved years before Alison writes her manuscript—years after Hawkin’s conviction— the reader presumably knows the identity of the killer, but because of hints and clues dropped by McDermid throughout the narrative, as well as her adherence to form, we know there is something left to discover. Enough information is planted that the reader is waiting
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for the twist. The temporal shifts also allow McDermid to employ a story within a story convention, providing psychological insight into her characters. No stranger to detective fiction or to journalism, McDermid uses journalistic techniques in the manuscript section of the book, which affords her license to describe violent scenes in gruesome detail, but she opts for restraint and instead uses the brutality to illuminate a “mournful view of murder as a moral reckoning” (Stasio).
W Critical Reception Critics have commented on McDermid’s expert manipulations of genre techniques, citing A Place of Execution as exemplary. Writing for the New York Times, Marilyn Stasio has said, “Speaking of the ‘very disciplined form’ of the murder mystery, whose formulaic rituals put her in mind of ‘a modern morality play,’ P. D. James once said, ‘These rather strict conventions liberate my creative imagination.’ Val McDermid’s elegiac study of a heinous crime and its aftermath, A Place of Execution is very much in the Jamesian mode, both in its inventive use of the devices of detection and its mournful view of murder as a moral reckoning.” A Place of Execution was received almost unanimously favorably by critics from England’s Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, and Time Out, and the novel won several awards, including the prestigious Anthony Award for Best Novel in 2001. The book has been cited as an illustrative example of a subgenre of crime fiction—“British Noir”—“in which the morality of the investigators’ behavior is often more in question than that of the criminals.” (Anderson). Some critics, however, have found McDermid’s reliance on genre conventions less than ambitious. Jennifer Monahan Winberry, in the Mystery Reader, has commented, “The revisiting of the case by a journalist many years later is an interesting vehicle to get to the truth of the events in 1963, but parts of it are almost too contrived.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Anderson, Karen G. “Brilliant Execution.” January Magazine. Oct. 2000. Web. 21 Jul 2010. Stasio, Marilyn. “H.M.S. Bounty Hunting.” New York Times Book Review 25 Feb. 2007: 19(L). Stasio, Marilyn. Rev. of A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid. New York Times. 7 Oct. 2007. Web. 20 July 2010. Winberry, Jennifer Monahan. Rev. of A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid. Mystery Reader. Web. 21 Jul 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Beatty, Jack. Rev. of A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid. Atlantic Oct. 2000: 137. Web. 21 July TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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2010. Rev. of the book that praises McDermid’s characterization, drawing attention to psychology and class distinctions. “A Place of Execution.” Publishers Weekly 18 Sept. 2000: 91. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. Review that discusses the book’s time and setting, as well as the structure and McDermid’s adeptness at conveying police procedure. Sheehan, Bill. Rev. of A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid. Barnes and Noble Reviews. Web. 21 July 2010. A favorable review of the book that summarizes the novel and focuses on McDermid’s technique. Gale Resources
Fletcher, Connie. “A Place of Execution.” Booklist Aug. 2000: 2121. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. “A Place of Execution.” Publishers Weekly 18 Sept. 2000: 91. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 July 2010. “Val McDermid.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Val McDermid’s website contains a biography, information about her books, interviews, a fan forum, and information about her work that has been adapted for television. There are also podcasts of interviews and speaking engagements. http://www.valmcdermid. com/index.html PBS offers a site featuring information on their Masterpiece Theater series, including a site dedicated to the adaptation of A Place of Execution. The site includes a synopsis, a link to the cast and credits, and the option to watch episodes online. http://www .pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/placeofexecution/ index.html The TruTV website includes a section about the actual Moors Murders that features biographies of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, information about the murdered children, trial and evidence information, and current news about the case. http://www.trutv. com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/moors/ index_1.html
The British Council’s Contemporary Writers website features a page about Val McDermid that includes a biography, a complete bibliography, a list of prizes and awards she has received, and a critical overview of her work. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ authors/?p=auth519CDABD11a0d212A0V sT1E76C2C For Further Reading
Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon mystery series features an openly lesbian freelance journalist turned amateur sleuth. The series includes Report for Murder (1987), Common Murder (1989), Final Edition (published in the U.S. as Open and Shut) (1991), Union Jack (published in the U.S. as Conferences Are Murder) (1993), Booked for Murder (1996), and Hostage to Murder (2003). McDermid’s Kate Brannigan series features private investigator Kate Brannigan and includes the titles Dead Beat (1992), Kick Back (1993) Crack Down (1994), Clean Break (1995), Blue Genes (1996), and Star Struck (1998). McDermid’s Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series includes the titles The Mermaids Singing (1995), The Wire in the Blood (1997), The Last Temptation (2002), The Torment of Others (2004), Beneath the Bleeding (2007), and The Fever of the Bone (2009). McDermid, Val. A Suitable Job for a Woman. Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 1994. Print. A Suitable Job for a Woman is a nonfiction book McDermid wrote to examine the lives of female detectives that challenges gender assumptions about women working in the industry. It features sixteen chapters by McDermid as well as sixteen stories from female private investigators. Adaptations
A Place of Execution. Masterpiece Contemporary. PBS. 1-8 Nov. 2009. Television. A Place of Execution was adapted for television as a three-part thriller by ITV1 in the United Kingdom, and screened in two parts by PBS in the United States, playing to largely positive reviews.
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Todd Breijak
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The Plague of Doves By Louise Erdrich
W Introduction Louise Erdrich’s twelfth novel, The Plague of Doves (2008), traces the intertwined lives of whites and Native Americans in the small Minnesota town of Pluto over the course of a century. The novel begins in 1896, with an infestation of passenger pigeons—the “doves” of the title—which Erdrich uses as a multilayered symbol for the rest of the novel. The novel’s central event is the brutal murder of five members of a white farm family in 1911 and the subsequent lynching of three Native Americans—one a thirteen-year-old boy— accused, but innocent, of the crime. In the ensuing years, members of Pluto’s white community and the Ojibwe Indians from the nearby reservation intermarry, work alongside one another, and develop friendships and feuds, until eventually nearly every resident is in some way connected to the murders. Critics almost unanimously acknowledged The Plague of Doves to be a challenging work in its subject matter and its complex narrative structure, but the result, according to Joan Frank, writing for the San Francisco Gate, is a rare literary achievement: “[Erdrich’s] accomplishment in these pages is Tolstoy-like: to render human particularity so meticulously and with such fierce passion as to convey the great, glittering movement of time.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The murders and subsequent lynchings that inform the lives of the characters in Erdrich’s novel have their roots in a historical event—the 1897 killings of a farm family in Emmons County, North Dakota, and the lynching of the three Native Americans, including thirteen-year-old Paul Holy Track, who were accused but never convicted of the murders. Beyond that incident, however, lies the tragic
history of indigenous North Americans following the immigration of Europeans to the continent beginning in the late fifteenth century. Early white explorers brought with them diseases against which the Indians had no immunity, and millions of them were wiped out. With the start of colonization, which was sponsored by European governments and corporations, the Indians had to fight wars for land they had occupied for centuries. Following the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States, the “Indian problem” came to a head as the ideology of Manifest Destiny—the belief that westward expansion was inevitable and divinely ordained—took hold in government. How to remove the Native Americans from their land and assimilate them into the white culture, or failing assimilation, eliminate them altogether, was a major political and ethical issue for the new government, beginning with President George Washington (1732-1799), whose intentions regarding the Indians were honest but ultimately meaningless in the face of opposition. In the 1820s the tribes signed a number of treaties with the government agreeing to give up their land in the southeastern states in exchange for land in the western portion of the continent. Most remained on their own land, however, and those who relocated did so voluntarily. Then in 1830 President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which gave the U.S. government the power to forcibly move Indians from their lands east of the Mississippi River to an established Indian territory in the current location of the state of Oklahoma. Between 1831 and 1837 an estimated forty-six thousand Indians from the Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee nations were relocated from their homes in the southeast. The Cherokee were the last to leave, forced out by the terms of an illegal treaty, in an exodus that came to be known as the Trail of Tears because disease and starvation killed four thousand of them along the way. Westward expansion of white settlers continued through the nineteenth century, and by 1851 conflicts
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between whites and Indians had arisen in the resettled areas of modern-day Oklahoma. In response, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, which allotted parcels of land, called reservations, to native tribes. In the 1860s the reservations were overseen by religious leaders in an effort to “Christianize” the Indians. Over the decades various plans were conceived and laws passed to manage the legal and ethical issues brought about by the reservation system, but none could alter the fact of the near-genocide of the indigenous peoples. In the twentieth century reservations became known for rampant unemployment, high rates of infant and child mortality, alcoholism, intimate partner violence, and abject poverty.
W Themes The metaphor that structures the entire novel is the plague of doves from the book’s title, which Erdrich uses to comment on innocence, purity, and holiness gone awry. Ron Hall, editor of Washington Post Book World, noted in his review, “The tale of a dove infestation in 1896—which gives the novel its title—reads like a Native American twist on Alfred Hitchcock, the lovely birds accumulating until they become grotesque.” Hall goes on to observe, “Hovering over the entire novel is the image of those voracious doves, covering the ground, blanketing everything, consuming everything in a fluttering wave of white feathers.” Margaret Noori also comments on the significance of the doves in her review for the Women’s Review of Books, relating the “plague” ultimately to the takeover of Indian land by whites: “The doves . . . are simultaneously historical realities, biblical signs, and political nightmares. Like the locusts that plagued Egypt, the birds—actually now-extinct passenger pigeons—descended in 1896 on the North Dakota town of Pluto. A biblical dove can be a sign of peace or of the Holy Ghost, and a flock is a message from God. Yet all that whiteness descending on Chippewa reservation farmland, hungry and destructive, is also a metaphor for the myth of manifest destiny.” Erdrich’s other major theme in Plague of Doves is that the past is connected inexorably to the present, and vice versa. Ann Harleman references the predicament of one of the book’s main narrators, Evelina Harp, who has both white and Native ancestors who played roles in the 1911 lynching, in her review in the Boston Globe: “Evelina is descended from both the wrongly accused and the accusers. Her beloved grandfather, Mooshum, was the only one of the four to survive the lynching; her father’s adoptive father was one of the lynchers. How do individuals—how does a community—absorb such contradictions? How do we live in the present without being destroyed by the past?” Harleman goes on to quote Evelina as she attempts to confront the events of the past as they continue to exist in the present: “I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and
MAJOR CHARACTERS JUDGE ANTONE BAZIL COUTTS is a descendant of the white explorer Joseph Coutts, one of the founders of Pluto, North Dakota. EVELINA HARP is a young woman of mixed blood trying to come to grips with the roles played by both sides of her family in the 1911 crimes. DOCTOR CORDELIA LOCHREN is Antone Coutts’s lover and the keeper of the town’s secrets. The book’s final chapter, narrated by Cordelia, ultimately reveals the identity of the killer of the farm family. MOOSHUM—whose real name is Seraph Milk—is Evelina’s Indian grandfather. He is the only one of the lynching victims to have escaped death and may or may not have had a part in the murder of the farm family. BILLY PEACE is the nephew of Cuthbert Peace. He is a charismatic cult leader married to Marn Wolde. CUTHBERT PEACE is the grandson of Metis Indians Henri and Lafayette Peace, who aided Joseph Coutts in his exploration of the territory. Cuthbert took part in the crimes of 1911. MARN WOLDE is married to Billy Peace, with whom she ran off as a young girl. She has two children and is a snake charmer.
friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles.” Erdrich addresses concepts such as survivors’ guilt and scapegoating in the novel, which she has in interviews traced explicitly to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In an interview published in the Albany Times Union, Erdrich said: “I think vengeance, rather than sitting back and allowing justice to be done over time, is really so much a part of our history. And unfortunately, it’s part of our present, as well. This is common after any sort of horrific event. There’s a terrible thirst for someone to blame, for someone to be caught and punished right away, and immediately. We saw that after 9/11. I felt the same thing in my own heart. . . . And it became twisted around until we’re in this terrible situation we are in now.”
W Style Many of the chapters of The Plague of Doves were originally published as short stories before Erdrich realized she had the makings of a novel. Because of this, the chapters are narrated by a wide variety of townspeople living in Pluto, North Dakota, and on the Ojibwe
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1954. Her father, Ralph Erdrich, was German American, while her mother Rita was French and Ojibwe Indian. Her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Erdrich graduated from Dartmouth College in 1976 and earned her MA degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. She published her first novel, Love Medicine, in 1984, after earning a reputation as a premiere American poet and short story writer.
reservation over the course of the twentieth century, all of whom are in some way affected by the murders. The two primary narrators are Evelina Harp, a young woman of mixed blood who traces her family history to both sides of the lynching, and Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a descendant of both white settlers and Indians. But more minor characters also have speaking roles, narrating their own chapters. This narrative technique illustrates Evelina
Harp’s description of the town as a series of “elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles.”
W Critical Reception The Plague of Doves was hailed as one of Erdrich’s best novels. Many critics favorably compared Erdrich’s writing in the book with that of William Faulkner, who was known for his complex family storylines and multiple narrators. Like Faulkner, Erdrich uses her narrative technique, according to reviewers, to create a collagelike effect and raise questions about guilt, blame, and culpability as each narrator reveals a little more about the past and present. Discussing the novel in the Women’s Review of Books, Margaret Noori comments on the overarching purpose of Erdrich’s lyrical intersection of past and present: “As her characters review and revisit not only their own actions but also those of everyone before and after them, [Erdrich] reminds us that although we live in a self-centered world, our selves are nothing more than bright stars, which may burn for a time, but eventually reshape themselves as part of a greater universe.” Additionally, Noori asserts, Erdrich’s exploration of the usurpation of language and land has special
A Native American reservation in North Dakota. The plot of The Plague of Doves is centered on the complicated relationship shared between the white residents of Little Falls, Minnesota, and the local Native American tribe. ª Ed Eckstein/Corbis
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Notes Erdrich’s ability to capture the tragedy, comedy, and eroticism of life in The Plague of Doves.
relevance in the twenty-first century: “Her characters confront religious zealotry, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, the desire to avenge crimes extralegally, and the state’s right to determine sexual deviance and insanity. These are old wounds in America—wounds we still see weeping across the front pages of newspapers today.”
Gale Resources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Open Web Sources
Works Cited
Native Languages of the Americas: Chippewa (Ojibway, Anishinaabe, Ojibwa) provides information on Native American tribes and languages. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. http://www.native-languages.org/chippewa. htm
Baenen, Jeff. “Injustice for All. Vengeance at the Heart of Historical Novel.” Albany Times Union 8 June 2008. Print. Erdick, Louis. The Plague of Doves. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Frank, Joan. “The Plague of Doves: Killings’ Aftermath.” SFGate.com 11 May 2008. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Hall, Ron. “Crimes of the Heart.” Washington Post 27 Apr. 2008. Print. Washingtonpost.com. Web. 29 Aug. 2010. Harleman, Ann. “The Lyrical Plague of Doves Plays with the Tensions between Past and Present, Myth and Reality.” Boston Globe 27 Apr. 2008. Print. Noori, Margaret. “The Shiver of Possibility.” Women’s Review of Books 1 Sept. 2008. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barcott, Bruce. “Rough Justice.” New York Times Book Review 11 May 2008. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Sept. 2010.
“Louise Erdrich.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Sept. 2010.
For Further Reading
Beidler, Peter G., and Gay Barton. A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Print. Includes an explanation of the geography, genealogy, and chronology of the storylines in Erdrich’s novels. Freeman, John. “Louise Erdrich: Secrets in the Indian File.” Independent [London] 6 June 2008. Print. independent.co.uk. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. Interview in which Erdrich discusses Plague of Doves. Hansen, Liane. “Plague of Doves, Multigenerational Murder Mystery.” National Public Radio, Weekend Edition 4 May 2008. Radio interview transcript. Interview in which Erdrich discusses her intent in drawing connections between the past and the present in The Plague of Doves.
Frase, Brigitte. “A Shot Resounds.” Los Angeles Times 27 Apr. 2008. Print. latimes.com. Web. 4 Sept. 2010.
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Nancy Dziedzic
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The Plot against America By Philip Roth
W Introduction In The Plot against America (2004), Philip Roth situates his own family in a fictionalized history in which Charles Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 and anti-Semitism becomes a common experience for American Jews. Seven-year-old Philip narrates the story and begins by telling readers that his father turned down a good promotion at work because it would mean moving into a Christian neighborhood, where Jews are not welcome. Presidential candidate Lindbergh announces that if he is elected president, the United States will not enter into a war against Germany. Lindbergh wins the election, and cousin Alvin leaves for Canada, where he joins the Canadian military to fight against Adolf Hitler. Incidents of anti-Semitism quickly escalate during the Lindbergh presidency; sometimes there are violent confrontations, but often Jewish Americans are simply ostracized and treated rudely and with contempt. Philip’s older brother, Sandy, admires Lindbergh and agrees to participate in a program created by Rabbi Bengelsdorf that is designed to separate Jewish boys from their families. Alvin is wounded in France and returns home to recover but soon leaves because of family conflict. Philip’s mother is afraid and begins to save money in case the family must flee to Canada; however, some Jews begin to support Lindbergh and Rabbi Bengelsdorf ideas. The Roth family is torn apart by Sandy’s support of Lindbergh and his father’s hatred of the president. Lindbergh creates Homestead 1942, which requires Jews to move to a location in Kentucky. After Lindbergh and his plane mysteriously disappear, martial law is declared. There are many violent riots, in which Jewish Americans are attacked. Lindbergh’s fascist vice president assumes the presidency and threatens to declare war on Canada. Rabbi Bengelsdorf is arrested, as is former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt; both are charged with
conspiring against the United States. The next day, Mrs. Lindbergh escapes from the mental hospital where she was being held by order of the acting president. She broadcasts an appeal in which she pleads for calm. Just over two weeks later, President Roosevelt is again elected president, and the United States enters World War II. Lindbergh is never found or heard from again.
W Literary and Historical Context
In the pre-World War II United States, anti-Semitism was common and certainly not hidden. Jews were not permitted to join many country clubs, and many hotels and resorts had policies that excluded Jews. Henry Ford published an anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, at his River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and stopped only because of an organized protest against buying Ford cars. In the late 1930s, from Royal Oak, Michigan, Father Charles Coughlin broadcasted radio attacks accusing President Franklin Roosevelt of being part of a Jewish financial conspiracy. Vandalism at Jewish cemeteries and synagogues was common in the 1930s and 1940s. In the State Department, Breckenridge Long (1881-1958) used his position in the Immigrant Visa Section to deliberately create bureaucratic obstacles that prevented immigration by European Jews to the United States. As a result, an estimated 190,000 Jews who might have been saved from the Holocaust were not. Although in this novel the Roth family dreams of fleeing to Canada, the reality is that Canada also failed to offer European Jewish immigrants a safe haven. In the early years of World War II, many Americans strongly opposed U.S. entry into what was perceived by them to be a largely European war. Much of the antiwar rhetoric stemmed from the recognition of the human cost
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The Plot against America
MAJOR CHARACTERS RABBI LIONEL BENGELSDORF supports President Lindbergh and helps to persuade many Jews to do so as well. EVELYN BENGELSDORF, Bess’s sister, marries Rabbi Bengelsdorf and, until he is arrested, sees herself as privileged and superior to her sister. ALVIN ROTH, Philip’s cousin, is an orphan who was taken in by the Roth family. Alvin joins the Canadian military and loses a leg while fighting against Germany. BESS ROTH, Philip’s mother, is the moral center of the family, ameliorating arguments, caring for a former neighbor’s child and an orphaned nephew, and working to protect her family from threats outside the home. HERMAN ROTH, Philip’s father, takes a low-paying job and works at night to support his family. He is vocal in his opposition to Lindbergh’s policy and to the increased antiSemitism to which the family is subjected. MONTY ROTH, Philip’s wealthy uncle, the Tomato King, made his fortune shipping green tomatoes from Cuba to New York. PHILIP ROTH, the child narrator, knows more than his parents think. He accurately reports on events with a child’s lack of guile but with the clarity of an adult.
In The Plot against America, Charles Lindbergh, pictured here, is elected president of the United States and unleashes a reign of antiSemitic terror. ª Archive Pics/Alamy
in casualties of World War I, but the Great Depression also led citizens to focus on the problems of the United States and not the problems of European countries. People opposed to the war were labeled isolationists, and Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) was one of the leaders of this group. Lindbergh also admired German military might and did not think that the United States could win a war against Germany. In contrast, President Roosevelt thought that both Germany and Japan posed a dangerous threat to the United States. He urged Congress to pass bills allocating money to produce military weapons, which helped the U.S. military respond rapidly once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war against the United States.
W Themes Anti-Semitism was well established in the United States before World War II, the historical period that provides the background for Roth’s novel. Roth focuses on antiSemitism in the first chapter when Herman Roth’s new promotion would mean a move into a gentile
SANDY ROTH, Philip’s twelve-year-old brother, worships Lindbergh, which creates tension and anguish in the Roth household. SELDON WISHNOW is Philip’s friend. Seldon’s father commits suicide and his mother is murdered during the anti-Jewish riots in Kentucky.
neighborhood, where the Roth family would be the only Jews. Philip’s father would also be required to supervise an all-gentile staff. In Roth’s novel, his father recognizes that he is being put in an untenable position, in which he would be the object of anti-Semitic smears. Fear permeates The Plot against America. The first line in the book is about fear and how fear occupies seven-year-old Philip’s imagination. Initially Philip is afraid that Lindbergh will be the Republican candidate for president. When that happens, Philip fears President Lindbergh’s actions and the effect on his family. As each change in their circumstances occurs, it is Philip’s fear that Roth relies on to move the plot. Philip’s mother shares his fear at the changes that are occurring and begins to save money for a possible flight to Canada. Even at the end of the novel, in a chapter titled “Perpetual Fear,” when Herman and Sandy disappear for several days to save Seldon, fear continues to be the focus of the plot.
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The Plot against America
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Philip Roth was born March 19, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey. For many years he was a professor of comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Goodbye Columbus, and Five Short Stories (1959), won the National Book Award and so did his Sabbath’s Theater (1995). Roth was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction three times, in 1993 for Operation Shylock; in 2001 for The Human Stain; and in 2007 for Everyman. Roth was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998 for American Pastoral (1997). In 2006, Roth received the PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement. The Plot against America was nominated for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award and the Society of American Historians Prize.
Although there are occasional quarrels and sometimes arguments so violent that a parent strikes out, Roth make clear in this novel that the family unit is more important than anything else. Philip conveys the family’s closeness by describing their meals and their trips. These ordinary activities show that each member of the family is dependent on the others for protection from whatever dangers lurk outside the home.
W Style Roth uses first-person point of view in The Plot against America to tell the story from the perspective of a sevenyear-old child. Roth has his young narrator listen at doors and through walls, which is believable behavior for a child, and thus, the boy’s knowledge of the world around him is increased. When Lindbergh captures the Republican nomination for president, Philip and his brother join the rest of the family gathered at the radio. No one even notices that the boys are present. There is too much history being made at that moment to notice a sevenyear-old listener. For much of the novel, the adults are too traumatized by events to remember the child listening on the sidelines. As an additional benefit of a child narrator, readers are able to share Philip’s surprise when his father emerges as an experienced street fighter, who learned to defend himself as a young Jewish boy growing up in the Irish tenements (293). Philip’s earlier descriptions of his father never indicate this hidden strength. Philip’s surprise at his father’s actions adds to the narration of the novel, making the events even more believable. In many sections of Roth’s novel, the tone is one of innocent guile. When Philip relates the conflict between Sandy, who continues to admire Lindbergh, and Alvin, who has lost a leg fighting the Germans, he does so
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“guilelessly” but “with all of a child’s cunning” (183). The contradiction works because the speaker is a child. Philip knows that Sandy supports Lindbergh, but he lies to Alvin to protect his brother, even though Alvin knows that Philip is lying. When confronted, Philip is unable to sustain the lie. When Philip becomes tired of the young neighbor boy, Seldon, he asks his Aunt Evelyn if Seldon’s family can be sent to Kentucky in place of his own family. To Aunt Evelyn, Philip seems to be making this request only to keep his own family in New Jersey, but readers know that one significant reason for the request is Philip’s ongoing irritation with Seldon, who persists in following Philip and trying to be friends with him. Aunt Evelyn is incapable to seeing her young nephew’s guile for what it is, and soon, Seldon and his mother are on their way to Kentucky. At the end of the novel, Seldon is an orphan and Philip feels profound guilt that he was the indirect cause of the death of Seldon’s mother.
W Critical Reception The Plot against America attracted many critical reviews, most of which celebrated Roth’s depiction of his family in a fictionalized memoir, while at the same time condemning the book for its historical faults. For example, in his review in New Criterion, Max Watman noted that Roth excels at “the small picture,” with the portrait of his family “intimately portrayed.” These sections of the novel flow “seamlessly” and are “gracefully told in a series of reminiscences.” The problem is in the larger plot, according to Watman. The Lindbergh plot, according to Watman, is unbelievable. Having Lindbergh “swoop into power” and “bring into the open all of the hatred that had been submerged in America is too tough to sell.” In his review for the New Statesman, Jason Cowley agreed, stating that The Plot against America is an “unsatisfactory book: not quite fiction and not quite believable.” While Cowley conceded that the portraits of Roth’s family are the strongest element of the book, he stated that much of the rest of the book is filled with “dull explicatory passages of historical narrative” that ends in “a fairy tale.” Ruth Wisse, writing in Commentary, provided a generally more positive review of The Plot against America. Wisse explained that Roth gives his own family the same experiences as Jews in Nazi Germany, who experienced anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Moreover, Wisse affirmed the use of a child narrator goes “a long way toward establishing credibility” for the events unfolding in the novel. The use of Lindbergh as an antiwar candidate, who comes to power and prevents the United States from entering World War II “rings true,” according to Wisse. What does not work, Wisse thought, is “the premise of America’s Nazification.” Wisse claimed that “Roth’s lack of conviction about his own central plot device” prevented the novelist from writing convincingly TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Plot against America
about any attempt to create a Nazi state in the United States. Two separate columnists for the New York Times reviewed The Plot against America much more favorably. In the first review, Frank Rich had no qualms about recommending Roth’s novel, saying that the “book is riveting from the very first sentence.” As for Lindbergh’s presidency and the actions that he takes against Jews, Rich stated that this is “all the scarier for being plausible rather than over the top.” In the second review, Paul Berman claimed that the “novel is sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible.” In an extended discussion, Berman declared that Roth’s tone is “marvelously ruminative and sorrowful.” For Berman, Roth’s “timbre of explosive anger” is matched by “a timbre of husky pathos.” Berman devoted half of his long review to arguing that the plot is credible, which is in direct contrast to many other reviews of this novel. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Berman, Paul. “The Plot against America: What if It Happened Here?” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. nyt.com. New York Times 3 Oct. 2004. Web. 27 July 2010. Cowley, Jason. “The Terror of the Unforeseen.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. New Statesman 133.4709 (11 Oct. 2004): 48. Print. Rich, Frank. “President Lindbergh in 2004.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. nyt.com. New York Times 26 Sept. 2004. Web. 27 July 2010. Roth, Philip. The Plot against America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print. Watman, Max. “Worse Yet, Real Life.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. New Criterion 23.3 (2004): 54. Print. Wisse, Ruth R. “In Nazi Newark.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. Commentary 118.5 (Dec. 2004): 65. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Halio, Jay L. Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. Shofar 24.2 (2006): 204. Print. Suggests that Roth’s novel is a reminder that the Holocaust remains a significant event for Jews and that anti-Semitism can still lead to violence. “Interview: Philip Roth Discusses His Novel The Plot against America.” All Things Considered. All Things Considered 23 Sept. 2004. Web. 27 July 2010. Discusses use of historical figures, such as President Roosevelt and Lindbergh, and Roth’s choice to make gossip columnist Walter Winchell a heroic figure.
James, Clive. “Fatherland: Philip Roth Has Conjured Up an Alternative America.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. Atlantic 294.4 (2004): 143. Print. Draws comparisons between Roth’s writing in the past and his recent work, including The Plot against America. Parrish, Timothy. Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. Philip Roth Studies 1.1 (2005): 93. Print. Analyzes major characters and discusses Roth’s success in imagining a fascist and anti-Semitic state in a fictional memoir. Roth, Philip. “The Story Behind The Plot against America.” New York Times Book Review 19 Sept. 2004: 10. Print. Describes the writing of this book and why Roth included twenty-seven pages of historical facts about the real historical people he used in writing this novel. Stinson, John J. “‘I Declare War’: A New Street Game and New Grim Realities in Roth’s The Plot against America.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. ANQ 22.1 (2009): 42+. Print. Discusses the historical significance of the “I declare war” game that the children play. Wood, Michael. “Just Folks.” Rev. of The Plot against America, by Philip Roth. London Review of Books 26.21 (2004): 3-6. Print. Draws parallels between Roth’s book and the politics of President George W. Bush. Gale Resources
“Philip (Milton) Roth.” Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GA LE%7CK1632000219&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRG&sw=w “Philip Roth.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000085212& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w “Philip Roth.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i. do?&id=GALE%7CH1113770000& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w Pinsker, Sanford. “Philip (Milton) Roth.” TwentiethCentury American-Jewish Fiction Writers. Ed. Daniel Walden. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 28. http://go.galegroup. com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1200001931& v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w Open Web Sources
In this interview on National Public Radio, Roth discusses The Plot against America and what inspired him to write this novel. The interview can be heard at
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The Plot against America
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=3932632 In an interview on the Today Show, Roth discusses The Plot against America. This video can be viewed at http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/philiproth-on-the-plot-against-america/6300ucb For Further Reading
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh. New York: Putnam, 1998. Print. Relies on unpublished diaries and letters, written by Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Gabler, Neal. Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print. Traces Winchell’s career, particularly his role as a political commentator whose broadcasts were against Nazi policy. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Print. Tells the story of World War II by focusing on the personal relationships of the Roosevelts and their close circle of friends and White House allies.
opposition to Roosevelt’s willingness to involve the United States in the war in Europe. Lewis, Sinclair. It Can’t Happen Here. New York: Signet, 1935. Print. A novel that explores the fragility of democracy and the ease with which the United States could be turned into a fascist state. Moore, Deborah Dash. GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print. Relies on memoirs and interviews with veterans to explore the impact of anti-Semitism and the challenges that Jewish members of the military faced in World War II. Parrish, Timothy, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. Collected essays on Roth, providing excellent secondary sources in one book. Shapiro, Robert Moses, ed. Why Didn’t the Press Shout? American and International Journalism during the Holocaust. Jersey City: Ktav, 2003. Print. Thirty essays that examine the role of journalists in reporting on anti-Semitism in the years leading up to and during the Holocaust.
Hammel, Eric. How America Saved the World. Minneapolis: MBI, 2009. Print. Examines U.S. preparedness for World War II, in the face of widespread public
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Sheri Karmiol
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The Polished Hoe By Austin Clarke
W Introduction Set on the fictional Caribbean island of Bimshire, The Polished Hoe (2003) tells the story of plantation worker Mary-Mathilda, who confesses to the murder of a sugar plantation manager. Through the course of her narrative, she recounts the island’s history of violence and exploitation. The novel won the 2002 Giller Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the 16th Annual Trillium Prize. The story begins after Mary-Mathilda has contacted the local law enforcement in order to give a statement about the death of the plantation manager, Mr. Bellfeels. What begins as a murder confession develops into an oral history of Bimshire, complete with flashbacks and digressions on food, music, and other aspects of island culture. The narrative is at once a fictional exploration of a woman’s racial and sexual exploitation and an alternative account of Barbadian history, during a period when British colonial rule had successfully transformed native institutions into English ones. Employing Bajan, the Barbadian dialect, author Austin Clarke explores the phenomenon of internalized oppression and racism, in which a subjugated people learns to think and act through its oppressor’s culture.
W Literary and Historical Context
“Bimshire” is the fictional name for Barbados. The novel is set in the early 1950s, about fifteen years before Barbadian political independence (1966). Mary-Mathilda’s “incendiary” narrative (Clarke) can be viewed as an anticipation of the constitutional changes that eventually led to freedom from British rule. Mary-Mathilda cannot forget the moment when her young body was symbolically marked as the property of Mr. Bellfeels, the man who became her plantation manager. Through her,
Clarke illustrates the consequences of British colonial rule, under which black men and women are forced to express themselves through a foreign language and religion. Mary-Mathilda’s and Sergeant Percy’s stories counteract the myth of a romantic Caribbean (Thomas), where rum flows freely and Barbadian culture flourishes without the interference of white society. Instead, their narratives detail how the colonists imported their own culture in the form of English gardens and cricket. The novel also highlights the way in which colonists maintained the system of slavery by calling their supposedly free black laborers “field hands,” while treating them no better than slaves.
W Themes Like many postcolonial authors, Clarke celebrates the importance of personal histories, which, as they become embedded in the historical record, are often forgotten or ignored. As the Constable in the novel says, “we need to know the whole background to a person, for a Statement to be a statement worth its salt.” Mary-Mathilda wholeheartedly agrees with this notion and argues that her “confession” requires the little details—the food consumed, the music enjoyed, as well as the abuse suffered—in order to properly explain her current role as a potential murderer. Mary-Mathilda’s (and Clarke’s) point is that the history of this island is important for understanding its inhabitants’ motives for specific actions. Her narrative is filled with numerous anecdotes that include miniature histories of some of the island’s residents. Recounting incidents of racial and sexual abuse, these personal histories challenge an official colonial history, which would have expurgated such incidents to maintain its image of civility and order. MaryMathilda’s retaliation against Mr. Bellfeels represents a collective history of abuse that has occurred on the island. She tells the stories of other women on the island, such as Clotelle, who was raped and then murdered when she
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The Polished Hoe
MAJOR CHARACTERS GERTRUDE is Mary-Mathilda’s sultry maid, who attends MaryMathilda and Percy during their all-night conversation. In the past, Gertrude has had intimate relations with Percy. WILBERFORCE is the son of Mary-Mathilda and Mr. Bellfeels who wins a scholarship to study at Oxford University. He returns to Bimshire, now a doctor of “Tropical Medicine,” and entertains his mother with discussions of books and foreign places. MARY GERTRUDE MATHILDA BELLFEELS (ALSO CALLED MARY-MATHILDA, TILDA, MISS BELLFEELS) is the mistress of Mr. Bellfeels and resides in the “Great House.” She confesses to his murder and recounts her own history of the island of Bimshire. MR. BELLFEELS is the tyrannical sugar plantation manager who rapes Mary-Mathilda when she is only thirteen and then makes her his mistress. Abusive to all he comes into contact with, he is also slovenly in his habits and, according to Mary-Mathilda, has “no class.” GRANVILLE CHESTERFIELD BENNETT BROWNE is a shy and affable constable in the Royal Bimshire Constabulary Police Force. He is first sent to take a preliminary statement from Mary-Mathilda as he awaits the arrival of Sergeant Percy. PERCY DACOSTA BENJAMIN STUART is a sergeant in the Royal Bimshire Constabulary Police Force who takes MaryMathilda’s statement regarding the death of Mr. Bellfeels. He has been in love with Mary-Mathilda since he was a boy and shares many memories of the island with her.
became pregnant; and her mother and grandmother, who were kept as mistresses and treated like drudges. Clarke demonstrates that the sharing of personal histories enables a community of sufferers to bond together. Over the course of their conversation, Percy’s and Mary-Mathilda’s memories coalesce. In love with her since childhood, Percy sympathizes with her plight and is frustrated that Mr. Bellfeels took possession of her. In turn, Mary-Mathilda helps to educate Percy by opening his eyes to a history of which he was unaware: the subjugation of the island’s women.
W Style Clarke’s characters often speak Bajan, a Barbadian dialect that has been said to contribute to the realism of the novel (Barnett). By allowing Mary-Mathilda to transmit her story in her own voice, with her ungrammatical but colorful speech, Clarke calls attention to both her lack of official education and her wealth of personal experience.
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Slang words such as “foop” (to refer to sexual intercourse) provide local color, while mispronounced words, such as “Amurcan” and “Eyetalian,” function as postcolonial transliterations signifying Clarke’s wish to defy both North American and European supremacy. Clarke’s frequent use of wordplay also contributes to his critique of colonial oppression. “Polished hoe” is a play on “polished whore,” which is what Mary-Mathilda claims that she is (Carroll). Her power resides in two ironies: the hoe, which represents labor and servitude, is merely kept and polished, seemingly for no practical purpose but to make it shine; similarly, Mary-Mathilda is taken out of the cane fields and placed into the house of Bellfeels and wonders what her purpose is. Both the “hoe” and the “whore” are undervalued, and both turn the tables in the end. As Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw argues, “The polished hoe is then both subject and object of a crime as Bellfeels has been murdered by his polished whore with the farm instrument.”
W Critical Reception The Polished Hoe was published to critical claim, winning three major awards between 2002 and 2003. A few reviewers, however, criticized Clarke’s overt use of moralistic commentary. A Publishers Weekly review, while generally positive, complained of Clarke’s tendency to turn his characters into mouthpieces for sociological truths. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Ihsan Taylor echoed this sentiment, noting Clarke’s penchant for ratcheting up the novel’s “sociological urgency” in the passages where the dialogue is interrupted and the author’s voice predominates. Taylor further charged that Mr. Bellfeels “suffers from Clarke’s heavy-handedness” and found it unrealistic that the plantation manager could really be the “root of all misery” in the village. Kirkus Reviews was critical of Clarke’s digressive technique, calling it a “rambling, plotless tale.” As a result, the anonymous reviewer claimed, Mary-Mathilda remains an ambiguous character: is she or is she not a “champion of women’s rights?” For the most part, The Polished Hoe has been celebrated for its success in linking the personal history of the female protagonist with the collective history of Barbados. In a review that appeared in Kola, Nigel Thomas pointed out the ways in which Mary-Mathilda’s and Percy’s stories are used to counteract the myth that post-slavery abuses occurred only in the United States and South Africa. As for Mr. Bellfeels, he may be only an individual, but he is the representative of an institution: not slavery but the “plantocracy,” or the hierarchy of plantation owners installed by the same empire that introduced slavery in a previous era (Thomas). Others, such as Denolyn Carroll (Black Issues Book Review), praised Clarke’s effective use of dialect and called the work his crowning masterpiece. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Polished Hoe BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barnett, Sara. “Limin’ in the Caribbean.” Rev. of Caribbean, by James Michener; Don’t Stop the Carnival, by Herman Wouk; The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat; Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini; In the Palm of Darkness, by Mayra Montero; Tiepolo’s Hound, by Derek Walcott; Death Lurks in the Bush, by Kate Grilley; and The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Library Journal 131.1 (2006): 176. Print. Carroll, Denolyn. “Austin Clarke on Honing His Craft.” Black Issues Book Review 5.6 (2003): 64. Print. Clarke, Austin. The Polished Hoe. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2003. Print. Fisher, Susan. Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Canadian Literature 178 (2003): 113-14. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Austin Clarke was born in Barbados in 1934. He immigrated to Canada in 1955 to study at the University of Toronto. During the early part of his writing career, Clarke held various positions as a writer in residence and lecturer at a number of prominent universities and also worked as a freelance journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Survivors of the Crossing, Clarke’s first novel, was published in 1964. Many of his novels and stories are set in Barbados and critique political corruption and the exploitation of Barbados by wealthy and powerful countries. Other works concern black immigrants to Canada who suffer racism and prejudice. In his most celebrated works, Clarke employs an energetic prose infused with West Indian dialect.
Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Kirkus Reviews 71.9 (2003): 624. Print. Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Publishers Weekly 21 Apr. 2003: 3. Print.
Thomas, Nigel. Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Kola 15.1 (Winter 2003): 47. Print.
Taylor, Ihsan. “Mary-Mathilda’s Murderous Monologue.” New York Times Book Review 14 Sept. 2003: 16. Print.
Walcott-Hackshaw, Elizabeth. Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Callaloo 29.2 (2006): 680-82. Print.
The Polished Hoe chronicles the tale of Mary-Mathilda, a sugar plantation worker who murders her manager. ª Ted Spiegel/Corbis TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Polished Hoe Gale Resources
“Austin (Ardinel) C(hesterfield) Clarke (1934-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski, Roger Matuz, and Sean R. Pollock. Vol. 53. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. 84-97. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 8 July 2010. “Austin C. Clarke (1934-).” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 116. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008. 1-38. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 8 July 2010. Boxill, Anthony. “Austin C(hesterfield) Clarke.” Canadian Writers Since 1960: First Series. Ed. William H. New. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 53. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. Ramraj, Victor J. “Austin C(hesterfield) Clarke.” TwentiethCentury Caribbean and Black African Writers: Second Series. Ed. Bernth Lindfors and Reinhard Sander. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 125. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. 29-34. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Having endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of Mr. Bellfeels, Mary-Mathilda finally snaps and kills him with her finely polished hoe. Comstock Images Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Chadwell, Faye A. Rev. of The Polished Hoe, by Austin Clarke. Library Journal 128.9 (2003): 122. Print. Reviewing the novel, Chadwell praises Clarke’s exposure of racist tyranny. Misrahi-Barak, Judith. “Skeletons in Caribbean Closets: Family Secrets and Silences in Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe and Denise Harris’s Web of Secrets.” CDS Research Report 23 (2005): 53-64. Print. In this essay Misrahi-Barak explores the ways in which the families and family members in Clarke’s and Harris’s novels fabricate myths in order to illuminate hitherto ignored truths. ———. “Tilling the Caribbean Narrative Field with Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe.” Cultures de la confession: Formes de l’aveu dans le monde anglophone. Ed. Sylvie Mathe and Gilles Teulie. Aix-en-Provence, France: PU de Provence, 2006. 127-42. Print. Misrahi-Barak considers the function of confession in Clarke’s novel.
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Postcolonial Text features an interview with Austin Clarke from June 2003, in which the author commented on the importance he ascribed to winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the influence of both the West Indies and Canada on his personal character, his opinion of the term “postcolonial,” and other subjects. http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/ar ticle/viewArticle/300/782 The Web site of the magazine Quill and Quire offers a profile of Clarke, which originally appeared in the May 2003 print issue. Written by Donna Bailey Nurse on the basis of two meetings with the author, the profile discusses the evolution of his literary reputation and offers insight into the author’s personality. http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile. cfm?article_id=2655 The feature British History In-depth on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Web site offers an accessible overview of Barbados’s colonial history. Titled “Slavery and Economy in Barbados,” it was written by Karl Watson, a history professor at the University of the West Indies. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml For Further Reading
Algoo-Baksh, Stella. Austin C. Clarke: A Biography. Barbados: West Indian Press, 1994. Print. This first book-length biography of Clarke explores his colonial education in Barbados, his immigration to Canada, and his development as a writer. Birbalsingh, Frank. The Rise of West Indian Cricket: From Colony to Nation. Antigua: Hansib Publishing, 1996. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Polished Hoe
Print. This study analyzes the development of West Indian cricket from the 1950s onward. The author also provides insight into the impact of British colonial rule, which imported cultural activities such as cricket to help assimilate non-British subjects. Chanady, Amaryll. “The Construction of Minority Subjectivities at the End of the Twentieth Century.” Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada. Ed. Domenic A. Beneventi, Lianne Moyes, and Licia Canton. Toronto: Guernica, 2004. 21-38. Print. In this essay Chanady explores multicultural identity in minority writing and focuses on the work of two Caribbean-born Canadian writers, Neil Bissoondath and Austin Clarke. Clarke, Austin. Growing Up Stupid under the Union Jack: A Memoir. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980. Print. This fictional autobiography, which recounts Clarke’s life growing up in Barbados, examines the impact of British colonial rule in the West Indies.
———. Pigtails ’ n Breadfruit: The Rituals of Slave Food, A Barbadian Memoir. Toronto: Random House Canada, 1999. Print. This later autobiographical work focuses on the gustatory themes that dominate much of Clarke’s fiction, including The Polished Hoe. Adaptations
Taylor, Colin, and Alison Sealy-Smith, adapt. The Polished Hoe. By Austin Clarke. Perf. Alison Sealy-Smith. Enwave Theatre, Toronto. 2007. Performance. In 2007 Obsidian Theatre Company presented The Polished Hoe at the Enwave Theatre, located at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Adapted for the stage by Colin Taylor and Alison Sealy-Smith, the production ran from 22 Feb. to 4 Mar. Sealy-Smith played the lead role of Mary-Mathilda.
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Adam Lawrence
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The Polymath By Bensalem Himmich
W Introduction Originally published in Arabic as Al-’Allamah (1997), The Polymath (2004; translated by Roger Allen) is a historical novel that dramatizes the life and philosophy of the fourteenthcentury philosopher ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun. The work traces the final decades of the scholar’s life, during which he was living in Egypt. There he served as a judge and a teacher and was subjected to the caprice of the Egyptian sultan. In the novel, as Ibn Khaldun attempts to come to terms with the deaths of his wife and children, he devotes himself to revising his earlier works of historical theory. He is aided by a devoted scribe named Hamu al-Hihi, who serves as a friend and a sounding board. As the story progresses, Ibn Khaldun becomes caught up in the threat posed by Timur ibn Chaghatay ibn Genghiz Khan (Timur Lang), a bold warrior whose forces threaten Egypt and who shows personal interest in Ibn Khaldun and in his philosophy of history. The novel was well received upon its initial publication and was subsequently translated into English. Praised for its historical insights and its rigorous attention to detail, The Polymath won the American University in Cairo Press’s prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2002.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Polymath takes as its focus the life and work of ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, a noted polymath, or a person who has expertise in a number of disciplines. Born in Tunisia in 1332, Ibn Khaldun rose to prominence in the Arab world as a historian and a philosopher and held a number of political posts in Tunis and Morocco. He drew on his experiences to compose a number of texts, including Muqaddimah (translated into English as Introduction to History), which is generally considered
his masterpiece. The book expounds upon Ibn Khaldun’s view of history, and it is largely on the strength of this work that the author is today counted among the greatest Arab historians. In 1382 Ibn Khaldun traveled to Cairo, where he received an appointment as a judge. In the novel Ibn Khaldun is emotionally destroyed when his wife and children are killed at sea while traveling from their home in Tunis to meet him in Egypt. Seeking peace, he devotes himself to revising his writings, including, most notably, Introduction to History. The novel also recounts Ibn Khaldun’s famous encounter with Timur Lang (or Tamerlane), an alleged descendant of Genghis Khan who launched campaigns against a number of countries, including Iran (then called Persia), Turkey, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. In the novel Ibn Khaldun is part of the forces defending Damascus (then under Egypt’s control) from Timur, and Ibn Khaldun is eventually called upon to lead negotiations with the invader. Bensalem Himmich depicts Timur as a sharp-witted leader who warms to Ibn Khaldun and eventually frees him, allowing him safe passage back to his home in Egypt.
W Themes The central theme of Himmich’s novel is the quest for knowledge and understanding and the impediments to that quest. When questioned by his scribe about his changing views, Ibn Khaldun explains that “history must develop a better, more refined seed, one that will enable it to change its skin and its course of development.” Himmich emphasizes that throughout Ibn Khaldun’s many experiences in the politically capricious Egypt and with the conqueror Timur, Ibn Khaldun remains true to his beliefs and genuinely invested in seeking knowledge and conveying it to those around him. In his efforts to refine his own understanding of historical and philosophical truth, however, Ibn Khaldun frequently faces conflicts between personal conviction and political expediency. He is ill prepared to deal with
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The Polymath
MAJOR CHARACTERS UMM AL-BANIN is the wife of Hamu al-Hihi. She suffers greatly because she has not been able to conceive a child. After alHihi’s death, she marries Ibn Khaldun, with whom she has a daughter, al-Batul. When Ibn Khaldun is away facing Timur Lang, she is erroneously informed that her husband has been killed and flees with their daughter to her home in Fez. When she receives word that Ibn Khaldun is safe, she returns to him in Egypt and begs him accompany her back to Fez. HAMU AL-HIHI is a forty-year-old man who, like Ibn Khaldun, is an immigrant to Egypt. The two men meet when al-Hihi requests Ibn Khaldun’s learned opinion about whether he should honor the wish of his wife, Umm al-Banin, to walk together in public, though she is taller than he is. Ibn Khaldun offers his servant to accompany Umm al-Banin on her walks if al-Hihi will, in return, serve as his scribe. Al-Hihi later dies while Ibn Khaldun is away on a pilgrimage.
Statue of scholar Ibn Khaldun. The novel dramatizes the life and thoughts of this fourteenth-century philosopher. ª Michael Klinec/Alamy
political corruption, a point made clear in the opening pages of the book, in which the narrator explains that the protagonist “had no experience in the various arts of subterfuge and intrigue nor was he savvy when it came to political infighting.” Ibn Khaldun’s situation is complicated when he accepts Sultan al-Zahir Barquq’s offer of a judgeship in Cairo. Ibn Khaldun almost immediately finds himself facing a difficult situation: “On one side were God’s own laws and the need to apply them . . . on the other, the political powers of the time devoutly tied to their own particular beliefs and interests.” The injustices that Ibn Khaldun encounters include the “preference to sycophants over competent bureaucrats in making chancellery appointments” and the frequent “display of pomp amid a veritable ocean of poverty.” Although he strives to remain true to his beliefs, he is repeatedly subjected to the whims of the sultan, who dismisses Ibn Khaldun from his appointment as judge and then reappoints him as his reputation waxes and wanes. At the end of the novel, appointed to yet another
IBN KHALDUN (OR ‘ABD AL-RAHMAN) is a fourteenthcentury historian and philosopher. In Himmich’s novel, mourning the deaths of his wife and children at sea, he turns to the task of revising his prior volumes of history as a means of occupying his mind and advancing his thinking. The scribe Hamu al-Hihi’s probing questions help him to think more deeply about philosophical and historical issues and to identify what he perceives as his own earlier failings as a scholar and a politician. After he returns from a pilgrimage to find al-Hihi dead, he becomes Umm al-Banin’s benefactor and eventually her husband. This marriage helps to open Ibn Khaldun’s eyes to pleasure, and his love for Umm al-Banin and their daughter helps him to endure hardship. At the end of the novel, he is seventy-six years old and facing death alone, unable to reunite with his wife in Fez. TIMUR LANG (TIMUR IBN CHAGHATAY IBN GENGHIZ KHAN) is a brilliant strategist and warrior whom Ibn Khaldun feels is “the most ruthless and dangerous of the Mongols.” As he prepares to take control of Damascus, Timur requests a meeting with Ibn Khaldun. After Ibn Khaldun spends many weeks in Damascus, where he discusses the relationship of history and Islam with Timur, Ibn Khaldun is eventually spared and granted safe passage back to his family in Egypt. At the end of the novel, Ibn Khaldun learns of Timur’s death.
judgeship, Ibn Khaldun is unable to join his wife and child in Fez.
W Style The Polymath is a historical novel—a work that relies on recorded events, developing the characters and occurrences through fictional devices. Himmich, who studied Ibn Khaldun’s writings while crafting his doctoral
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The Polymath
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bensalem Himmich was born in Meknes, Morocco, in 1949. He earned a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne in 1986. His studies of Ibn Khaldun’s works as part of his dissertation would later inform The Polymath. Himmich is fluent in both French and Arabic and has published works in both languages. He is the author of more than twenty texts, including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. The Polymath helped establish Himmich’s reputation with English readers. His follow-up, translated into English as The Theocrat (2005), also chronicles the life of a notable Arab figure, the tenth-century theocrat al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah. The Theocrat garnered Himmich a second Naguib Mahfouz Medal.
dissertation, draws on his familiarity with the polymath’s life and works to create a fictionalized account of his experiences and inner struggles. Some scholars have noted that The Polymath goes beyond the traditional boundaries of the historical novel in its treatment of the life and philosophy of Ibn Khaldun. In an article titled “Historiography as Novel: Bensalem Himmich’s al-’Allamah,” for example, Roger Allen, the translator of the English version of The Polymath, writes that “the novel is certainly one that fits into the category of historical novel, but, one might suggest, in a way that is somewhat different from many previous contributions to that subgenre.” The difference, he suggests, is at least in part attributable to the complicated structure in which “a historical novelist and philosopher of history [Himmich] is writing a novel about a historian rewriting his own historical record.” Although narrated primarily in the third person, The Polymath occasionally shifts to dramatic dialogue, such as when Ibn Khaldun discusses the threat posed by Timur with the sultan and his advisers. Some parts of the book also feature first-person narration from the perspective of Ibn Khaldun himself, such as when he describes falling in love with his second wife or, at the end of the novel, anticipates his own approaching death. In his “Translator’s Note” to the novel, Allen outlines the unique challenges that he faced in translating Himmich’s novel into English. “The montage of geographical detail and historical information,” he writes, “is not a little daunting, not only for the reader of its translation, but also for native speakers of Arabic.” In an attempt to resolve this dilemma, Allen includes in his English translation an extensive glossary that explains important terms, people, and events from the novel.
W Critical Reception When it was first published in Arabic in 1997, Al’Allamah was well received by critics and scholars. In
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2002 it garnered the American University in Cairo Press’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, an award that recognizes the best work of fiction written in Arabic each year. The novel has been likened to the writings of Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist and short story writer for whom the award is named. In discussing the original Arabic version of the text, Paolo Viviani characterizes it as “one of the most recent and brilliant examples of the contemporary Arabic historical novel.” As part of the Naguib Mahfouz prize, Himmich’s novel was translated into English and published by the American University in Cairo Press. The Polymath has not been widely reviewed in English, but the reviews that exist are largely positive. It has occasionally been faulted for its dense discussions of Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy. A review of the novel in Newsweek, for example, notes that “readers have to plow through a long introduction to Ibn Khaldun’s ideas before reaching the best part of this work, translated from Arabic: the personal history of a still-influential polymath.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allen, Roger. “Historiography as Novel: Bensalem Himmich’s al-’Allamah.” Transforming Loss into Beauty: Essays on Arabic Literature and Culture in Honor of Magda Al-Nowaihi. Ed. Marlé Hammond and Dana Sajdi. Cairo: American U in Cairo P, 2008. 269-80. Print. ———. Translator’s Note. The Polymath. By Bensalem Himmich. Trans. Roger Allen. New York: American U in Cairo P, 2004. Print. Himmich, Bensalem. The Polymath. New York: American U in Cairo P, 2004. Print. “Snap Judgment: Books.” Newsweek 17 May 2004. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. Viviani, Paolo. “Considerations upon Binsalim Himis’s Al-Allamah.” Authority, Privacy and Public Order in Islam. Ed. Barbara Michalak-Pikulska and Andrzej Pikulski. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2006. 239-47. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Elbendary, Amina. “Ibn Khaldun Resurrected.” AlAhram Weekly Online 19-25 Dec. 2002. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. An article that discusses Himmich’s novel as the winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. Halim, Hala. “Between Words: Living Language.” AlAhram Weekly Online 30 Mar.-5 Apr. 2006. Web. 1 Oct. 2010. An article about Roger Allen, the translator of The Polymath, that discusses his interest in modern Arabic literature and translation. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Polymath
Rev. of The Polymath, by Bensalem Himmich. Middle East Journal 58.4 (2004): 709. Print. A review that provides a brief summary of the novel’s plot. Gale Resources
“Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. “Roger Michael Ashley Allen.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
The Web site of the British Broadcasting Corporation features an audio program about the life and philosophy of Ibn Khaldun. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b00qckbw A translation of Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah is available on the Web site Islamic Philosophy Online. http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddi mah/ The Web site of International Publishers Marketing provides a short overview of the novel and brief biographies of its author and translator. http://www. internationalpubmarket.com/clients/auc/books/ BookDetail.aspx?productID=207377 For Further Reading
Allen, Roger. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. This volume of nonfiction by the translator of The Polymath offers an overview of the historical development of Arabic
literature and considers major works in the Arabic literary tradition. Dunn, Ross E. The Adventure of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. Print. Ross’s book tells the story of Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan adventurer from the same historical period as Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Battuta’s adventures are mentioned in Himmich’s novel. Himmich, Bensalem. The Theocrat. Trans. Roger Allen. New York: American U in Cairo P, 2005. Print. Himmich’s follow-up to The Polymath examines the life and career of the tenth-century Egyptian ruler alHakim bi-Amr Illah. Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Trans. Franz Resetnhal. Ed. N. J. Dawood. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. Print. This translation of Ibn Khaldun’s work offers insight into The Polymath’s fourteenth-century protagonist and his view of history. Mahdi, Muhsin. Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964. Print. This nonfiction work examines the philosophy of Ibn Khaldun, the central character of The Polymath. Marozzi, Justin. Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Print. This volume provides an overview of the life and conquests of Tamerlane (Timur Lang), an important figure in Himmich’s novel.
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Greta Gard
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Prodigal Summer By Barbara Kingsolver
W Introduction In her novel Prodigal Summer (2000), Barbara Kingsolver weaves together three distinct yet related stories of love and loss set against the backdrop of a single hot, humid summer in southern Appalachia. Lush, descriptive language and detailed character portrayals create an intimate feel, with perhaps the most vividly drawn character being the Zebulon Valley itself, giving the novel a profound sense of place. The novel is about relationships: not only those between people, but the bond that exists between people and their environment and the importance of adaptability— to each other and their surroundings—for their physical and emotional survival. Like much of her work, Prodigal Summer foregrounds the characters’ struggles to reconcile their cultural differences—in this case the clash of the rural with the urban. “Solitude,” Kingsolver writes, “is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”
W Literary and Historical Context
In her collection High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995), Barbara Kingsolver writes “Good art is political, whether it means to be or not, insofar as it provides the chance to understand points of view alien to our own” (qtd in Woods). Although Prodigal Summer is lighter in tone than some of her other works, it tackles timely environmental issues as well as the cultural clash between the rural and the urban. Coyotes are moving into the ecological space
created when America’s white settlers killed off the native Eastern wolf; are they an invasive species that should be eradicated by bounty hunters, or an example of nature restoring the necessary balance between predator and prey? Garnett Walker labors to develop a strain of chestnut tree resistant to the blight that destroyed Appalachia’s chestnut forests in the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, local farmers struggle to maintain their farms and their way of life. As Suzanne Jones points out, the novel provides “no less than a blueprint for saving the small family farm and for restoring ecological balance in a southern Appalachian bioregion that is struggling to survive.” Many of the families in the small farming community where Prodigal Summer is set are forced to take night shifts at the local supermarket, working for the very agribusiness that has driven their small farms under. Their children are disconnected to the land around them, more familiar with television than their own habitat. Pesticides provided by the local U.S. Agricultural Extension Service kill the insects that organic farmers rely on to pollinate their crops, and many of the local people have developed cancer. Through the novel, Kingsolver suggests that the survival of the family farm is possible only through cultivating adaptability to local conditions and needs, and by understanding the connections between the human and nonhuman worlds.
W Themes The overriding theme of Prodigal Summer is connectedness: the intricate interrelationships of ecological systems, the physical connection between mates, family ties, friendship, connections between the land and its nonhuman inhabitants, with one’s past, and ultimately, with oneself. Although each of the major characters starts in a situation of isolation—whether actively chosen or imposed by chance—they triumph when they learn to connect with others and to live in harmony with their
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Prodigal Summer
surroundings, thus gaining a sense of place and purpose. Kingsolver stresses that this is possible only when one rejects an anthropocentric worldview. As one of her characters comments, “Every creature alive believes this: The center of everything is me.” One must learn to recognize the self as always part of something larger in order to adapt and survive. Ghosts also play a part in Prodigal Summer, as each character is subtly haunted in his or her own way. For some it is ancestral ghosts, while others see specters from the natural world: the now extinct red fox, or the ghosts of the American chestnut forests devastated by a parasitic blight in the early twentieth century. Kingsolver makes the point that understanding one’s environment means not only seeing what is there, but also paying close attention to what is absent.
W Style Kingsolver’s work is generally noted for being deeply rooted in a sense of place, and Prodigal Summer is no exception. Kingsolver firmly believes that nothing can replace firsthand research when writing a novel. “You have to know what it smells like after a rain . . . and you have to know how people are, how they talk,” she told an interviewer on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. The lush and loving detail with which the author depicts her southern Appalachian setting reflects both her personal experience of the area in which she grew up and her background in the biological sciences. Even the way Kingsolver’s characters speak is specific to Appalachia and renders outsiders immediately noticeable. As young Crystal comments to her aunt, who hails from Lexington, “Aunt Lusa, did you know you talk really funny?” Kingsolver describes in vivid detail the fertile landscape of an especially hot summer in southern Appalachia. “Bullfrogs had wandered up out of the duck pond and carelessly laid their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms. . . . In all her life Lusa had never seen such an oversexed, muggy summer. Just breathing was a torrid proposition.” The author combines scientific fact with poetic, seductive lyricism in evoking this “season of extravagant procreation.” The novel contains a wealth of information concerning the bioregion of southern Appalachia, including the reproductive habits of its human and non-human inhabitants. In discussing the book, Kingsolver admitted to being initially nervous about the inherent sexiness of the material, which challenged her to “invent a new poetry of copulation and then to write it without blushing.” Nonetheless, she commented, she “couldn’t write about the biological exigencies of life on Earth . . . without including the most important one” (“Interview: Barbara Kingsolver Discusses . . . ).
MAJOR CHARACTERS EDDIE BONDO is a handsome Wyoming sheep rancher come to Appalachia for a coyote bounty hunt. He falls in love with Deanna Wolfe, staying with her for the summer. LUSA MALUF-LANDOWSKI is the young widow of local tobacco farmer Cole Widener. A self-described “religious mongrel” with a Jewish father and Palestinian mother, Lusa, an entomologist who has spend most of her life in the city, inherits her husband’s farm when he dies in a hauling accident. NANNIE LAND RAWLEY is Garnett’s elderly neighbor and the proprietor of a successful organic apple farm. She confounds Garnett with her inappropriate short pants and absolute refusal to use pesticides of any kind. Nannie is also Deanna’s stepmother. GARNETT SHELDON WALKER III is a retired agriculture teacher on a mission to create a blight-resistant chestnut tree. He is also the neighbor of Nannie Land Rawley, whom he considers the “bane of his existence” and with whom he feuds constantly. JEWEL WIDENER is Cole’s youngest sister and Lusa’s sister-inlaw. She and Lusa become close before she becomes ill with cancer. DEANNA WOLFE, a forest ranger and wildlife biologist, lives high in the woods of Zebulon Mountain, maintaining the Forest Service trails and driving away out-of-season hunters. After discovering a family of coyotes on the mountain, Deanna appoints herself their protector, an objective complicated by her ensuing affair with Eddie Bondo.
W Critical Reception Overall, Prodigal Summer has received very favorable reviews. Critics applaud Kingsolver’s sense of place and her ability to evoke so clearly the lush, fertile landscape of southern Appalachia, “described in sensuous language and precise detail,” as well as her “effortless prose and subtle use of Appalachian patois” (Publishers Weekly). Critics also praise the novel’s portrayal of strong, complex characters, who despite having each endured their own personal losses, embrace life and its constant opportunities for growth and renewal. Prodigal Summer “leaves readers wanting more, hoping to witness these fascinating characters as their lives inevitably intertwine in Zebulon County” (Smith). According to Janet Maslin of the New York Times, the novel contains similar themes to Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, but is smaller in scope, and at first one might mistake it for a “landscape miniature with a didactic
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Prodigal Summer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Though born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955, Barbara Ellen Kingsolver spent much of her childhood in Carlisle, Kentucky, on a tobacco farm in southern Appalachia. In second grade she moved to Africa with her family, while her father worked for a year as a physician in the Congo. The author of more than a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, Kingsolver draws on her degrees in biology, ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as her experiences as an activist in the Sanctuary movement to assist refugees in Central America, in dealing with “clashing cultural values, social justice issues, ecological awareness, and the intersection of private and public concerns” (Ognibene). Her work has received great critical acclaim, and her most recent novel, The Lacuna, earned her the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction. In 1997 Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which recognizes literature that exposes injustice and explores issues of social responsibility. Kingsolver now lives on a small farm in Virginia with her husband and two daughters, just over the Kentucky line from her childhood home, in the same region where Prodigal Summer is set.
mission.” But Prodigal Summer is much lighter in tone, and this “deceptively modest-seeming book” soon impresses with Kingsolver’s “wisdom, passion, and sweet,
ennobling enthusiasm for every natural phenomenon that animates her characters’ rural world.” (Maslin). Kingsolver’s advanced degrees in ecology and biology are on display here, as she infuses each storyline with a vast amount of information about the natural world, from the dangers of using pesticides to the mating habits of Luna moths. Michael Tyrell, writing in Us, claims that some passages read like “overzealous lectures on ecology,” and others contend that Kingsolver’s moral sense sometimes overpowers her dramatic sense. “She is an effective writer with a resounding message. She needn’t shout so often or so loudly” (Tekulve). However, most critics contend that the warmth of the book renders the scientific underpinnings fascinating and the story “compelling, sexy, and cathartic” (Seaman). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Jones, Suzanne W. “The Southern Family Farm as Endangered Species: Possibilities for Survival in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.” Southern Literary Journal 39 (Fall 2006): 83-97. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 269. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. Kingsolver, Barbara. “Interview: Barbara Kingsolver Discusses Her Latest Novel, ‘Prodigal Summer.’” All Things Considered 23 Oct. 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010.
In Prodigal Summer, Deanna vows to protect a family of coyotes from a group of hunters. Denis Pepin/Shutterstock.com
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Prodigal Summer
A tractor applies pesticides to a field of crops. In Prodigal Summer, pesticides have killed off the insects that pollinate the local farmers’ crops, and many residents have developed cancer. ª Dave Reede/AgStock Images/Corbis
Kingsolver, Barbara. Prodigal Summer. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.
Tyrell, Michael. Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Us 30 Oct. 2000: 49. Print.
Maslin, Janet. “3 Story Lines United by the Fecundity of Summer.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. New York Times 2 Nov. 2000: E.8. Print.
Woods, Gioia. “Barbara Kingsolver.” Twentieth-Century American Western Writers: First Series. Ed. Richard H. Cracroft. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 206. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010.
Ognibene, Elaine R. “The Missionary Position: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.” College Literature 30.3 (2003): 19+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 July 2010. “PRODIGAL SUMMER.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Publishers Weekly 2 Oct. 2000: 57. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. Seaman, Donna. “Prodigal Summer.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Booklist 1 Oct. 2000: 292. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010. Smith, Anne. “Passion, Loss, and the Life Span of a Moth: Barbara Kingsolver Takes Readers Slowly, Beautifully, Through One ‘Prodigal Summer.’” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Austin American Statesman 29 Oct. 2000: L.6. Print. Tekulve, Susan. “Prodigal Summer.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Book Nov. 2000: 69. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 July 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cockrell, Amanda. “Luna Moths, Coyotes, and Sugar Skulls: The Fiction of Barbara Kingsolver.” Hollins Critic 38.2 (2001): 1+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 July 2010. Cockrell discusses how the drive for connection—both to the living and to our ancestors—lies at the heart of Kingsolver’s fiction. Judd, Elizabeth. “Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Salon.com 17 Nov. 2000. Web. 14 July 2010. A review of Prodigal Summer focusing on the novel’s emphasis on nature’s driving force to reproduce, and praising the work for its balance of the emotional with the biological.
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Narduzzi, Dilia. “Living with Ghosts, Loving the Land: Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15.2 (Summer 2008): 59-81. Web. 10 July 2010. Discusses haunting in Prodigal Summer, describing each characters’ personal “ghosts” and how they shape their choices and their connection to the world around them. Schuessler, Jennifer. “Men, Women, and Coyotes.” Rev. of Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. New York Times. 5 Nov. 2000. Web. 14 July 2010. A mixed review that discusses some of the major themes in Kingsolver’s novel. Includes a link to a reading from the novel by the author. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Introduction to Barbara Kingsolver: A Literary Companion. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Web. 10 July 2010. Gives an overview of Kingsolver’s writing, including her individual works, and their characters and themes. Wenz, Peter S. “Leopold’s Novel: The Land Ethic in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.” Ethics & The Environment 8.2 (Autumn 2003): 106-125. Wilson Web. Web. 10 July 2010. Discusses in detail the environmental aspects of Prodigal Summer, with special emphasis on hunting, the destruction of natural ecosystems, anthropocentrism, and agriculture. Gale Resources
“Barbara Kingsolver.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Watson, Dana Cairns. “Barbara Kingsolver.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement 7. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Scribner’s, 2001. Open Web Sources
Barbara Kingsolver’s official website at www.kingsolver. com includes biographical information as well as links to recent articles by the author, and information about the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which she established.
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The website for the American Chestnut Foundation contains information about the mission to restore the American chestnut tree to its native range in the eastern United States, and the backcross method employed to create blight-resistant seedlings. http:// www.acf.org/index.php For Further Reading
Forster, E. M. Howards End. England: Putnam’s, 1910. Print. In this story of class struggle in turn-of-thecentury England, Forster emphasizes the necessity of connection between individuals, as well as the reconciliation between the private life and the public, and issues of inheritance. Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002. Print. Kidd’s novel about a young Southern girl’s search for family contains themes of cultivating bonds that cross cultural and racial boundaries, finding home in unexpected places, and developing an understanding and reverence for nature. Kingsolver, Barbara. Small Wonder. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print. This collection of essays by Kingsolver, written in response to the events of September 11, emphasizes the importance of understanding the relationships we maintain—both the global and the local—and why it is vital to have an accurate perspective of our place in the world. Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. Kingsolver’s book chronicles the year she and her family spent eating only the foods they could grow or raise themselves on their small family farm in Virginia. Stockton, Shreve. The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. Print. Stockton chronicles the first year of life raising her orphaned coyote pup, Charlie. Bisanne Masoud
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Promise of Happiness By Justin Cartwright
W Introduction The Promise of Happiness (2005) is the story of the Judd family’s attempt to restore its honor after having been shamed by Juliet, the oldest child, when she was convicted of selling a piece of stolen art. As the novel begins, Charles—a cantankerous sixty-eight-year-old retired accountant—and his wife Daphne have moved from London to Cornwall to live out the final phase of a dispirited marriage comprising mainly a series of disappointments and humiliations. Sophie, their other daughter, has had a drug habit since she was in high school and she is dating a married man who is twice her age. The Judds’ son Charlie runs a two-employee Internet business that specializes in selling budget-rate socks. The family’s hopes for redemption lie in Juliet’s release from prison and in Charlie’s marriage to his pregnant girlfriend. The Promise of Happiness won the 2005 Sunday Times (South Africa) Fiction Prize and the 2005 Hawthornden Prize, a British literary award. Author Justin Cartwright has been praised for offering a frank account of the betrayals that accumulate over time in a family and for handling the vices and missteps of each family member with sensitivity and compassion. During the course of the novel, Cartwright gives each family member the opportunity to tell the story of the family, and he shows how one generation understands the follies of the other.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Promise of Happiness is set sometime between 1995 and the early 2000s during the dot-com bubble, when new Internet-based retail businesses were making great profits from a revolutionary business model. Instead of selling clothing, books, or other merchandise in retail
stores, the new business model, exemplified by Amazon. com, called for selling merchandise through online channels. Charlie, the Judds’ middle child, runs an online clothing business that specializes in the sale of lowbudget socks, which can be purchased at either of two Web sites, sockscribe.com or sock-it-to-me.com. Charlie employs two workers to conduct market research and to arrange the distribution of his products. Midway through the novel an international firm based in Germany offers to purchase the company, not because it is interested in Charlie’s product but because it wishes to acquire his massive database of customers’ credit-card information. Without even a business degree, Charlie finds himself on the brink of making millions of dollars. The dot-com boom produced scores of millionaires like Charlie, young entrepreneurs lacking a formal business education who found a way to reach a niche market through the World Wide Web. Much of Juliet’s story is set in the art circles of Manhattan, where she worked as a buyer at a trendy gallery. She is sent to jail for facilitating the sale of what is believed to be a stolen Tiffany stained-glass window to a Japanese collector. Tiffany windows were created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, a New York-based interior designer who initially made his reputation when he decorated Mark Twain’s house in 1881 and then the White House in 1882 for President Chester A. Arthur. By 1885 Tiffany was concentrating on his glassworks, creating bowls, lamps, and stained glass windows for churches.
W Themes Cartwright’s novel examines the themes of betrayal and redemption. The two betrayals central to the text involve business and sex. When Charles sues his firm for the loss of his position as partner as part of its merger with another company, the new board of directors blackmails him with a statement in which a former secretary accuses
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The Promise of Happiness
MAJOR CHARACTERS CHARLES JUDD is a sixty-eight-year-old retired accountant who laments not having visited his favorite daughter, Juliet, when she was in jail. He also broods over the manner in which he was forced out of his partnership at the accounting firm where he spent his entire career. CHARLIE JUDD, who is in his late twenties, has come to be regarded by his siblings and by his mother as the most competent person in the family. He runs a successful Internet clothing business that specializes in selling socks and has attracted the interest of international investors. He has been assigned the job of picking up Juliet from prison and easing her back into the world. DAPHNE JUDD is Charles’s wife. She despairs that she and her husband do not share any common interests and that her family has earned a bad name in Cornwall because of the conduct of her two daughters. To cope she takes up gourmet cooking and flower arranging. She fails comically as an amateur chef but is competent working with flowers. When her son, Charlie, announces his engagement, Daphne lays all hope for redeeming the family on his wedding, which she plans with zeal. JULIET JUDD, the oldest of the three Judd children, is called JuJu by everyone in her family. She is thirty-two when the novel begins and just getting out of prison. She had been convicted of facilitating the sale of a stolen piece of art while working as a buyer for an art gallery in Manhattan, and she spent two years incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison. SOPHIE JUDD is in her mid-twenties. She works at an advertising company, mainly running errands for the middle-aged creative designer with whom she is having an affair. She habitually uses cocaine and marijuana but plans to quit and pursue a college degree in creative writing. RICHIE DE LISLE is one of Juliet’s two lovers. He owns the gallery where she works and is involved in the crime for which Juliet receives time in jail. Although it appears that Richie played a larger role in crime than Juliet, the court only fines him and sentences him to community service. DAVIS LYENDECKER is one of Juliet’s two lovers. He is from Mississippi and has published a successful novel. Juliet meets Davis after she has been partnered professionally and romantically with Richie for some time. She claims to love Davis and pity Richie.
Charles of sexual harassment. Although the relationship he had with the woman had been consensual, Charles backs down in order to prevent his wife from discovering the affair. Juliet’s downfall also had its roots in an affair. She and Richie de Lisle form a glamorous couple in New
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Justin Cartwright, author of The Promise of Happiness, at the British Book Awards in London. ª Rune Hellestad/Corbis
York City’s art scene, but Juliet starts seeing a young novelist named Davis Lyendecker. She later claims that she became involved in the sale of a Tiffany window for which she was later prosecuted because she felt guilty about her affair and wanted to help Richie save his failing art gallery. Other extramarital affairs also figure in the novel, including that of Sophie, the youngest Judd, who is dating a married man and that of Daphne, Charles’s wife, with a former boyfriend when she was in her midthirties. No one engaged in these affairs has any regrets about them. In fact, Juliet and Charles identify their trysts as the most thrilling time of their lives, and Daphne remembers her affair with fondness. Nevertheless, the characters attempt to redeem themselves by honoring the commitments they have made to one another. Daphne never thinks of leaving her husband and Charles never considers ending his marriage. The novel concludes with Charlie’s marriage to Ana, whom he may not love, but he does not question going through with the ceremony. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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W Style Cartwright shapes the Judd family history with a shifting point of view among the five family members and flashbacks to important moments in each family member’s past. The shifting point of view allows the author to highlight the characters’ unequal knowledge about the matters weighing on the family and shows how their conclusions about each other are based on partial evidence. For example, when Daphne narrates the story, the reader learns that she is aware that Sophie used marijuana when she was in high school and that she suspects that her daughter may still use drugs. When Charlie narrates the story, however, the reader learns that Sophie’s drug use intensified considerably in early adulthood and that in her early twenties she enrolled in a six-week detoxification program, for which Charlie helped pay. Charles explains that he withdrew his lawsuit against his firm when it became probable that the trial would expose his affairs and that he wished to spare Daphne the pain and embarrassment that such exposure would have caused. Charles does not know that Daphne had an affair in her mid-thirties and he also thinks that Daphne is unaware of his reputation as a philanderer at work. In her narration, Daphne says that Charles’s partners at the firm informed her about her husband’s affairs when they were trying to oust him but that she decided not to tell him what she knew. In this manner Cartwright not only exposes the family secrets to the reader but also demonstrates that protecting secrets within a family can be an important part of the family’s survival. Cartwright uses extended flashbacks to tell the story of Juliet’s crime and her trial. The action of the novel begins when Charlie picks Juliet up from prison in upstate New York to take her back to the family estate in Cornwall. In Charlie’s narration, he prods Juliet about the circumstances of her crime, but she refuses to give details. When the point of view shifts to Juliet, the reader gains access to Juliet’s memories about what happened with the Tiffany window. The novel drifts into several extended flashbacks as Juliet recalls the events that led her to prison. Likewise, Charles’s solitary reflections on his walks reveal his misdeeds at his former accounting firm.
W Critical Reception The Promise of Happiness has received mostly positive reviews, with most critics citing as the novel’s greatest strengths its frank, yet sensitive treatment of family trauma and its deft management of an ensemble of troubled characters. Writing in the Library Journal, Laurie Sullivan observes that Cartwright “inhabits his female characters as fully as he does the male, and that he “knowingly delineates the darkest traits of decent people; the vain, petty, and hateful things most people say only to
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Justin Cartwright was born in 1945 in South Africa and educated at Trinity College, Oxford. The Revenge, the first novel published under his name, appeared in 1978. He gained renown and a wider readership with his seventh novel, In Every Face I Meet, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award in 1995. In addition to writing, Cartwright also worked in advertising and directed films and television commercials. He managed the election broadcasts for the SDP-Liberal Alliance during three election campaigns (1979, 1983, and 1987). Not counting a few early works he wrote under pseudonyms, by 2010 Cartwright had published fourteen novels and two works of nonfiction.
themselves. His characters are nonetheless endearing and his intricate, nuanced portrayals of family relationships astoundingly good.” In Booklist, Joanne Wilkinson asserts that Cartwright “effortlessly shifts the setting from New York to London to the Cornish coast and ranges freely between the verve of youth and the regrets of late middle age.” Simon Beckett of the Observer writes, “Cartwright creates a compelling drama in which the complexities of familial relationships are laid bare. This is a riveting, pitchperfect exploration of the fine line that exists between tragedy and the English middle-class tradition of muddling along,” and the reviewer for the Economist calls the novel “a funny, moving and powerful story” that “deserves wide acclaim.” Some reviewers who found flaws in the novel were quick to counter their critical remarks with praise. For example, Alfred Hickling of the Guardian claims, “The novel has its share of glib metaphors,” but he continues, “Cartwright generally achieves the fine balance of seeming both accessible and profound, mixing plot strands about Manhattan art theft, internet start-ups and Cornish cooking disasters with remarkable fluency. And though it all concludes with a sumptuous wedding, Cartwright manages to keep things edgy, the groom terrified that his bride may yet turn into ‘something large and moist and demanding.’” Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times writes, “Though the novel has its flaws– the plot machinery clanks and groans, and the bits set in America manage to be clichéd and off-key at the same time—it deserves to win the South African-born, Oxfordeducated Mr. Cartwright a following here.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Beckett, Simon. Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Observer [London] 20 Feb. 2005: 18. Print.
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Cartwright, Justin. The Promise of Happiness. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005. Print. Hickling, Alfred. Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Guardian. Guardian News and Media Ltd 5 Feb. 2005. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. Kakutani, Michiko. “The Happy Family, the Golden Girl, and the Crime.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. New York Times 7 Apr. 2006. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. Sullivan, Laurie. Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Library Journal 1 Dec. 2005: 110. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.
pages induces in the reader an almost incredulous admiration—as for some astonishing feat of physical strength and grace—that lasts right to the final sentence.” Taylor, D. J. Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd 22 Aug. 2004. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. This uncompromisingly positive review calls The Promise of Happiness “a storming piece of work, the equal of anything published on this side of the Atlantic this year.” Gale Resources
“Unhappy Families; New Fiction.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Economist 21 Aug. 2004: 71. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.
“Justin Cartwright.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.
Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Booklist 1 Dec. 2005: 24. Gale Biography in Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.
Open Web Sources
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Eprile, Tony. “Redemption Value.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. New York Times Book Review 8 Jan. 2006. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. Eprile notes that Cartwright is frequently mentioned in England alongside Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Kazuo Ishiguro as one of the most astute commentators on contemporary British life. Kehe, Marjorie. “How Did a Nice Girl Like JuJu End Up in Jail.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Christian Science Monitor 27 Dec. 2005. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Kehe commends Cartwright for indicating clearly without mawkishness that the Judds’ love for each other has survived all of the humiliations and betrayals that they have endured. Kellaway, Kate. “Promises, Promises.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Observer [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd 22 Aug. 2004. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. In this rare negative review, Kellaway asserts that the novel’s “world view is rancid” and that Cartwright’s treatment of popular culture gives the novel “a perishable feel—as if it were setting its own sell-by date.” Shilling, Jane. “When a Nuclear Family Explodes.” Rev. of The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Telegraph [London]. Telegraph Media Group 16 Aug. 2004. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. This review highlights Shilling’s wish that Cartwright had a wider audience. The reviewer calls the work of the author’s peers “pedestrian” and states, “Justin Cartwright’s latest novel, The Promise of Happiness, is a lot better than good enough. The elegant assurance of its opening
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Cartwright discusses the similarities between The Promise of Happiness and his other family novel, To Heaven by Water, in a video interview posted on the Web site of Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, a marketing guide for writers. http://www.writersan dartists.co.uk/inside-publishing/the-writers/justincartwright/ The Web site of BBC Radio 4 contains a link to an audio interview with Justin Cartwright in which he discusses his decision to write The Promise of Happiness. Cartwright also speaks about the role he believes that the family plays in the life of an individual. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/ openbook/openbook_20040815.shtml The Web site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a page that displays stained-glass windows and drawings for stained-glass windows from its collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany. http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/tiffany/ listsgw.htm For Further Reading
Carey, Peter. My Life as a Fake. New York: Vintage, 2005. Print. In this novel a woman discovers what she believes to be real genius in a literary manuscript by Christopher Chubb, a known con man in the circles in which both characters work. Carey examines, as does Cartwright in The Promise of Happiness, what makes a work of art authentic and whether any piece of art is worth staking one’s reputation on it. Cartwright, Justin. To Heaven by Water. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print. This Cartwright novel focuses on a family with an aging and unhappily married patriarch. David Cross finds happiness when his wife dies but must answer to his troubled adult children, who look askance at his behavior, which TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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they regard as self-indulgent and besmirching of their mother’s memory. Coupland, Douglas. Microserfs. New York: Harper, 2008. Print. Coupland’s novel satirizes the Silicon Valley technology sector and dot-com businesses such as the one run by Charlie in The Promise of Happiness. It chronicles the adventures of group of programmers in their late twenties who leave a Microsoft firm to sell virtual Legos. Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Picador, 2007. Print. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from 2002 chronicles the history of the Stephanides family. The book’s narrator is a hermaphrodite who first goes by the feminine name Callie and, after age fourteen, by the masculine Cal. Like the Promise of Happiness, the novel focuses on how some family members deny things that they find embarrassing to the family name.
Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. New York: Picador, 2002. Print. This National Book Award-winning novel traces the raucous misadventures of the three adult children of Alfred Lambert, a former disciplinarian now suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and Enid, his embittered wife. Reviewers have frequently compared The Promise of Happiness to Franzen’s novel. McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Random, 2003. Print. McEwan’s novel tells the story of the precocious Briony Tallis, who, at age thirteen, falsely accuses a neighbor of assaulting her sister, Cecilia. The neighbor, Robbie Turner, goes to jail based on Briony’s testimony. Briony spends her adult life trying to atone for this betrayal. Reviewers have frequently compared Juliet’s quest for redemption to that of Briony.
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Property By Valerie Martin
W Introduction Set in 1828 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Valerie Martin’s novel Property (2003) is narrated by Manon Gaudet, the young wife of a white plantation owner. Manon’s sharp, clear voice relates the events surrounding a slave rebellion on the plantation, her slave Sarah’s subsequent escape, and her own efforts to recover Sarah. Property focuses on Manon’s obsession with Sarah, with whom Manon’s husband has fathered two children. The novel dramatizes the ways in which slavery degrades both the slaveholders and the slaves it victimizes, binding one to the other in a cruel, never-ceasing power struggle. The struggle is further complicated by the legal status of white women in the antebellum South; both Manon and her slaves are the “property” of her husband. Andrea Kempf, writing for Library Journal, asserts that Property “contains all the trademarks of Martin’s fiction—a female narrator sensitive to her own misery but somehow missing the big picture; the depiction of individuals and society as violent, self-absorbed, and base, and a mass of twisted sexual and interpersonal relations.” Out of this comes a story that Martin herself has described as “a tour of hell with a guide who works for the management” (2003 Interview).
W Literary and Historical Context
“I grew up in a world where the past beckoned to me from behind a curtain of what Czelslaw Milosz calls ‘official lies,’” Valerie Martin comments on her Web site. The place was New Orleans, Louisiana, and the conflict was between the tourist version of history handed out on the plantation trail, and the reality of an antebellum society built around slavery.
Before beginning her novel, Martin had read of the German Coast Uprising of 1811, at that time the largest slave rebellion to occur in the United States. The eighteen men responsible for the insurrection were executed, their heads displayed on pikes along the Mississippi River. The image formed in Martin’s mind—of a “Southern lady driving down River Road in her carriage, discreetly lowering her veil so as not to be offended by the sights,”—prompted the realization that “this place was hell for everybody, owned and owners alike.” Martin sets her novel in 1828, after the German Coast Uprising and before the better-known revolt led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831. In her review of Property, Joyce Carol Oates writes, “It’s a world of ceaseless tension, anxiety; whites’ obsessions with their intransigent and always unpredictable Negro ‘property;’ runaway slaves hiding in swamps like rogue beasts bent upon revenge; impromptu uprisings and premeditated insurrections.” To gain insight into how the wife of a plantation owner might think and act, the author drew on diaries and account books kept by slaveholders—some of whom were women—which included information about whippings and chainings alongside banal descriptions of the weather and crop conditions. Out of this process came the voice of Property’s narrator, Manon Gaudet, and the beginning of Martin’s story.
W Themes The central theme of Martin’s novel is, as the title suggests, property, and the laws that governed it in the antebellum South. “People as property; a woman’s inheritance as her husband’s property; the claims of land on those who try to wrest a living from it . . . all add up to a labyrinth in which human dignity, autonomy, and even commonsensical self-interest are lost or discarded” (Upchurch). Manon is possessed of a keen awareness
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that she is her husband’s property, almost as much as his slaves are. When her mother dies, Manon knows her house and inheritance will pass straight to her husband, who will make short work of losing it. “The laws of this state,” she observes, “are designed to provoke the citizens to murder.” Though Manon sees the injustice inherent in this, she fails completely to notice the cruelty of other property laws, such as the one that asserts that if her slave Sarah were to marry a free black man, their children would belong to Manon. This reveals another theme of Property, the idea that it is easy “even for the astute, to adopt the prevailing notions of one’s age, to allow deeper contradictions to go unquestioned, and to protest only when our own rights and comforts are curtailed” (Miller). Manon refers to her own future as “dark and small” and calls the hypocrisies in her society “lies without end.” Yet she remains blind to the inherent evil of slavery and its corrosive effect on everything it touches. This is the heart of Property, its central theme: “A bleak tale, elegantly told, carrying the message that slavery debases and dehumanizes the owners just as surely as it does the slaves” (Kelner).
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOEL BORDEN is a charming bachelor who calls frequently on Manon. They share a mutual attraction. MANON GAUDET is the narrator of the story and Sarah’s white owner. Miserable and possessed of a sharp intelligence and fiercely acerbic wit, Manon resents her husband and her station, realizing she is merely chattel in her own marriage. MR. GAUDET is Manon’s husband and the owner of a sugarcane plantation. Cruel, brutish, utterly banal, and, according to Manon, committed to “outrage decency every day of his life.” AUNT LELIA is Manon’s aunt and the closest thing she has to a friend and confidante. MR. EVERETT ROGET, the successful proprietor of a carpentry business, is a free black man who wishes to marry Sarah. SARAH is Manon’s personal slave and attendant, and Manon’s husband’s unwilling mistress, who has borne him two children. WALTER is Sarah and Mr. Gaudet’s eight-year-old deaf son.
In the historical novel Property, Manon Gaudet lives on a large plantation with her husband. Caitlin Mirra/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Valerie Martin was born in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1948, but three years later her family moved to New Orleans, where Property is set. After earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Martin returned to Louisiana and took at job with the State Welfare Department. “It wasn’t a bad way to live at all,” Martin says, as she often drew inspiration from the people she met and the hard-luck stories she heard (Brace). However, “As a New Orleanian,” Martin admits on her Web site, “I was naturally drawn to all things romantic, spooky, and gothic.” In addition to Property (2003), which earned her the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, Martin has published more than a dozen novels and short story collections, as well as the biography Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis.
W Style Property is told from the first-person perspective of its narrator, Manon Gaudet, the wife of a plantation owner and a slaveholder herself. Being trapped in Manon’s head,
forced to witness all she sees and listen to her every thought, adds to the “emotional, claustrophobic intensity” of Martin’s writing (Brace). A keen observer, Manon is “poised, precociously cynical, mordantly amusing, despairing,” and believes herself stripped of all illusions about the world she inhabits (Oates). After sentiments pour in asserting her mother’s death from yellow fever was surely part of “God’s plan,” Manon maintains, “Exactly . . . his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?” Martin’s work is known for its striking evocation of mood and place, and Property is no exception. The constant whisper of slave revolts, coupled with yellow fever and cholera epidemics sweeping the city, paint a picture of a New Orleans that is suffocated with tension; a miasma of fear and death infects the air, pervades everything. Martin describes a scene at the cemetery in grisly detail. “A sulfurous smoke had spread like a dirty yellow blanket settling over the buildings . . . our carriage followed the hearse into what seemed to me the very vestibule of hell . . . bones had simply been tossed onto the path, so we were forced to alight from the carriage with care that our skirts not sweep some finger or thighbone along with us.”
Several old slave cabins in New Orleans, which serves as the setting of the novel Property. ª Louie Psihoyos/Corbis
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Martin’s stark, clear style propels the reader through the story at a fevered pace, leaving little breathing room and no extra space. As Margaret Atwood says, “There’s not a wasted word” (Holt).
Ezard, John. “Turn-up for the Books as Surprise Winner Takes Orange Fiction Prize.” Guardian [London] 4 June 2003: 5. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 20 July 2010.
W Critical Reception
Holt, Karen. “Valerie Martin’s Moves.” Publishers Weekly 29 May 2006: 20+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010.
Property received highly favorable reviews and won several awards, among them the Orange Prize for Fiction. Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who chaired the judging for the prize, said of Martin’s novel, “The story is told through an unsympathetic narrator, yet the book is utterly clear about what its moral heart is. This is a terribly difficult thing for a writer to do. The gaps in the book, what is left unsaid, are very important” (Ezard). Reviewers have called the book “ferociously honest,” especially in its acknowledgement of the “fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed” (Basini). Some reviewers have complained that Property gives no voice to the slaves, but Martin contends that this would be an entirely different book (Brace). “I’m really more interested in what power does to the person who has it than to the person who doesn’t. I’m interested in what it does to a person’s psychology to be someone who does terrible things” (Holt). Others have been critical of Martin’s use of an unlikable narrator. Martin, however, points out that “our forebears were not us in the making, but rather stubborn supporters of the wretched status quo. They wouldn’t admire us, nor is there any reason that we should admire them” (2003 Interview). Laura Miller, writing for Salon.com, points out that besides her intelligence and dark wit, it is Manon’s toughness in surviving the horrific violence of the slave revolt that keeps us invested in her story. This “makes Manon a shadow sister, a rewriting, of Scarlett O’Hara, the iconic selfish Southern beauty.” Overall, critics agree that “Property is bold and uncompromising, providing an unflinching depiction of our nation’s most shameful historical chapter and insight into the unexpected forms oppression can take” (Ciuraru). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Basini, Mario. “Back to My Roots; Mario Basini Talks to Orange Prize Winning Author Valerie Martin.” Western Mail [Cardiff, Wales] 28 June 2003. Highbeam Research. Web. 21 July 2010. Brace, Marianne. “Valerie Martin: Good Girls, Bad Girls, Sex and Power.” Independent 4 July 2004. Highbeam Research. Web. 20 July 2010. Ciuraru, Carmela. “Style and Culture Book Review.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Los Angeles Times 26 Mar. 2003. Web. 19 July 2010.
Kelner, Martin. “Property.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Orange Prize for Fiction 2003. Web. 19 July 2010. Kempf, Andrea. “Martin, Valerie. Property.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Library Journal 1 Feb. 2003: 118. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. Martin, Valerie. Property. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003. ———. “2003 Interview. Valerie Martin.” Orange Prize for Fiction 2003. Web. 19 July 2010. Miller, Laura. “Property by Valerie Martin.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Salon.com 13 Feb. 2003. Web. 19 July 2010. Oates, Joyce Carol. “Desire and Dread.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. New York Review of Books 1 May 2003. Web. 21 July 2010. The Official Website of Author Valerie Martin. Web. 19 July 2010. http://www.valeriemartinonline.com Upchurch, Michael. “A Chilling Look at How Power Can Corrupt.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Chicago Tribune 16 Feb. 2003. Web. 21 July 2010. “Valerie Martin.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Christopher Giroux and Brigham Narins. Vol. 89. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. 103-39. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 19 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Campbell, Bebe Moore, Susan McHenry, and Valerie Martin. “This Property Is Not Condemned.” Black Issues Book Review 5.5 (Sept.-Oct. 2003): 12-17. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 246. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. Bebe Moore Campbell, author of Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, and Valerie Martin talk with Susan McHenry on writing about race in America. Cheuse, Alan. “Short on the Milk of Human Kindness.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. San Francisco Chronicle 16 Feb. 2003. Web. 19 July 2010. A mixed review that discusses the theme of bitterness in Martin’s novel. Donaldson, Susan V. “Telling Forgotten Stories of Slavery in the Postmodern South.” Southern Literary Journal 40.2 (2008): 267+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. Donaldson discusses
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Edward P. Jones’s The Known World and Valerie Martin’s Property, identifying them as narratives that question and undermine official accounts of slave history.
experiences of Mr. March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, during his time as a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves.
Feeley, Kathleen. “Subjugating Sarah.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. America 23 June 2003: 25-26. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 July 2010. Feeley discusses the power struggles woven throughout Martin’s novel.
Bury, Liz. “The Orange Prize.” Bookseller 5 Dec. 2003: S8. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. Brief article about the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Martin’s 2003 win for Property.
McDonough, Yona Zeldis. “Property.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Artforum Spring 2003: 29. Web. 19 July 2010. A mixed review focusing on the believability of the narrator. Murray, Yxta Maya. “Possession.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Washington Post 6 Apr. 2003. Highbeam Research. Web. 21 July 2010. http://www. highbeam.com. Stresses the strangely intimate nature of the relationship between slave and master. Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Publishers Weekly 13 Jan. 2003: 38+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 July 2010. A succinct, positive review of Martin’s novel, touching on its major themes. Taylor, Helen. “How the Chains of Slavery Shackle Both Owner and Owned; Books.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Times [London] 18 June 2003: 21. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 20 July 2010. Taylor focuses on the parallels between black slave women and their white mistresses, in respect to their relationships with the plantation owners, who exploited both groups. Gale Resources
“Valerie Martin.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Open Web Sources
The Web site for the Louisiana State Museum contains many online exhibits about New Orleans. Of particular interest is an exhibit called The Cabildo, which contains links to three articles with extensive information about antebellum New Orleans, including politics, education, entertainment, immigration, and plantation life. http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/index. htm Valerie Martin’s official Web site at www.valeriemarti nonline.com includes biographical information as well as links to reviews of Martin’s work and interviews with the author. For many of her novels, the site includes synopses, background information, excerpts, podcast readings by the author, and reading guides. For Further Reading
Brooks, Geraldine. March. New York: Penguin Group, Inc., 2005. Print. Brooks’s novel chronicles the
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Craft, William, and Ellen Craft. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. Foreword by R. J. M. Blackett. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Print. The narrative of William and Ellen Craft’s remarkable escape from slavery in 1848, from Georgia to Philadelphia, to Boston, and eventually, to England. Sarah’s escape in Property is reminiscent of Ellen’s, who disguised herself as a white male. This new edition contains the original 1860 text, plus eleven annotated supplementary readings. Davis, Edwin Adams. “Bennet H. Barrow, Ante-Bellum Planter of the Felicianas.” The Journal of Southern History 5.4. (Nov., 1939): 431-36. Web. 20 July 2010. A short biographical account of the life of Bennet H. Barrow, a successful plantation owner in New Orleans. ———. Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836-1846, as Reflected in the Diary of Bennet H. Barrow. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Print. The diaries of Bennet H. Barrow, a cotton planter in the West Feliciana Parish of Louisiana. Barrow chronicles the day-to-day activities of the plantation, including weather and crop conditions and the handling and disciplining of slaves. Davis has included the inventory of Barrow’s estate, a list of his slaves, and cotton sales records. Martin used this text when writing Property, specifically when developing the character of Manon. Though out of print, the text is available in many university libraries. Herbert, Rosemary. “Property Lines; Author Explores the Peculiar Psyche of a Female Slave Owner.” Rev. of Property, by Valerie Martin. Boston Herald 7 Mar. 2003: 34. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 20 July 2010. Talks with Martin about the research involved in writing Property. James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. New York: Penguin Group, Inc., 2009. Print. The story of Lilith, a slave born on a Jamaica sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century and possessed of a strange, dark power. Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print. Jones’s Pulitzer Prizewinning novel about widow Caldonia Townsend, an educated black slaveowner. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Property
Lessing, Doris. The Grass Is Singing. New York: Crowell, 1950. Print. Set in South Africa in the late 1940s, Lessing’s novel tells the story of Mary Turner, the depressed, frustrated wife of an unsuccessful farmer, and her disturbing relationship with their black servant, Moses. Miller, Phil. “Novel Slant on Slavery Wins Orange Prize; American Author’s Success.” Herald [Glasglow, Scotland] 4 June 2003: 5. InfoTrac Newsstand. Web. 20 July 2010. Brief article about the Orange Prize for Fiction, with information about past winners. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1987. Print. Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of a former slave, Sethe, and her haunting by the spirit of her murdered child, known as Beloved.
Smith, Rob. “An Interview with Valerie Martin. (Interview).” Contemporary Literature 34.1 (1993): 1+. Academic OneFile. Web. 19 July 2010. Interview with Martin from 1993, in which she discusses her writing career up to that point, with a special emphasis on her 1989 novel, Mary Reilly, a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the female servant’s point of view. Tademy, Lalita. Cane River. New York: Warner Books, 2001. Print. Tademy’s novel chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana.
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Bisanne Masoud
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Purge By Sofi Oksanen
W Introduction Purge (2010) is a novel by the Finnish Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen that tells a story of family tragedy against the backdrop of World War II and the Soviet occupation of Estonia. Originally published in Finnish under the title Puhdistus (2008), the novel was translated into English by Lola Rogers. The story opens in 1992 with the arrival of a battered young woman, Zara, at the farmhouse of an elderly Estonian widow, Aliide Truu, who reluctantly takes in Zara. Slowly and painfully, the two women, each damaged by violence and having something to hide, begin to win each other’s confidence. Through flashbacks, Oksanen unwinds the convoluted life of Aliide, whose youthful passion for her sister’s husband, Hans Pekk, a collaborator with the Germans during World War II, led her to make fateful choices with disastrous consequences for herself and her family. Hardened by her struggle for survival, Aliide now must decide whether to help the desperate Zara, a sextrafficking victim on the run whose own secrets propel the novel to its wrenching climax. Purge is the first work to win both of Finland’s highest literary honors, the Finlandia Award (2008) and the Runeberg Award (2009). In 2010 Oksanen received the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
In 1992, the year in which Purge opens, Estonia had been independent for about one year. Before its independence, Estonia had been a part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets began their occupation of Estonia in 1940, during World War II, but they were soon driven out by invading German forces. Like the character Hans in the novel, some Estonians joined with the Germans to drive out the
Soviet Red Army. In 1944, however, Soviet forces regained control of the Baltic states, including Estonia, and the Soviet Union officially took political control of Estonia in 1945. The Soviets immediately began to arrest Estonians like Hans who had served with the Germans or resistance groups. Estonian society was subjected to the violent imposition of Soviet control over every aspect of social, political, and cultural life. People like the novel’s characters Aliide and Ingel, suspected of aiding the Germans or the resistance, were terrorized through mass deportations to labor camps and through violence, including rape and torture. Aliide was raped by Soviet officials for not divulging information about Hans, and her seven-yearold niece, Linda, was tortured and perhaps also raped. On the night of March 25, 1949, more than twenty thousand Estonians were deported to Siberia. In the novel, Aliide, set on having the hidden Hans to herself, does nothing to save her sister and niece from being taken away. In 1991, amid the widespread economic and political confusion that followed the collapse of the Soviet government, organized crime moved swiftly to take advantage of societies in flux. Young women like Zara, with few prospects at home, were vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers who promised them access to education or jobs in the West, only to kidnap them and force them into prostitution.
W Themes Each of the main characters in Purge struggles to survive, but the novel is hardly a celebration of survival. Rather, as Oksanen peels back each painful layer of Aliide’s and Zara’s history, she reveals the debilitating cost of survival. Fear and shame eat away at their humanity. Aliide clung so determinedly to her passion for Hans that she sacrificed herself to the everlasting humiliation of being raped by her country’s oppressors, married a supporter of the regime that was attempting to destroy her family, and
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stood by while her sister and niece were deported. In the end, she sacrifices Hans himself when she realizes he will never love her. The bargains she has made with life leave Aliide with nothing but desolation, for “the only thing left alive was the shame.” Purge also offers a detailed study of the brute exercise of political power—from the vantage point of the powerless. Ultimately, it is the circumstances of Aliide’s life that determine the cost of her survival, and those circumstances were created by the Soviet state under Joseph Stalin. Although Soviet authority is no longer around to menace her, Zara endures its violent legacy, losing control of her life to men who use terror to enslave her. The corrupting influence of such power is pervasive. In their extreme situation, both Aliide and Zara are forced to take up the weapons of terror themselves simply to keep breathing.
W Style Purge is narrated in the limited-omniscient third person. The point of view shifts irregularly between Aliide and Zara. Interspersed throughout the novel are excerpts from the journal that Hans kept while hiding from the Soviet secret police in the family farmhouse’s secret room. Flashbacks serve both to fill in the characters’ backgrounds and to jolt the suspenseful narrative along by revealing past events that are key to understanding strange or mysterious features of the characters’ present circumstances. Early in the novel, for example, the reader is made aware that Aliide wears two pairs of underwear, and there are allusions to an event, transformative yet obscure, that occurred long ago in a basement. A later chapter, dated 1947, which describes Aliide’s gang rape by Soviet officials in the local town hall, suddenly and shockingly makes sense of the underwear and the oblique references to the basement. Similarly, the reader knows from the beginning of the novel that Zara in fact had been searching for Aliide and that her appearance at the farm is not accidental, but the reason for the search becomes clear only several chapters later with the telling of the story of a photograph given to Zara by her grandmother—a photograph of Zara’s grandmother, in her youth, with her younger sister, Aliide. Oksanen’s novel is adapted from her play, also titled Puhdistus, which was staged at Finland’s National Theatre in 2007. Joan Smith observes that the novel’s “short, intense scenes hint at its origins in the theatre.” This brevity, combined with the frequent flashbacks and shifts in point of view, could lead to confusion on the part of the reader; however, as Paul Binding comments in his review for Independent.co.uk, the order of Oksanen’s “vivid cameos . . . defies conventional chronology but corresponds to an inner logic of association and feeling, and so builds up the more strongly to the emotionally shattering climax.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS HANS PEKK, Zara’s grandfather, was an Estonian peasant and a former collaborator with the German forces that occupied Estonia during World War II. As a young woman, Aliide Truu was tormented by Hans’s love for her sister, Ingel. The sisters’ efforts to conceal Hans from Soviet occupation forces after the war led to Aliide’s rape, the torture of Linda (Ingel and Hans’s seven-year-old daughter), and the eventual deportation of Linda and Ingel. INGEL PEKK, Aliide Truu’s sister and Hans Pekk’s wife, is Zara’s grandmother, living out her last years in Vladivostok near the end of the twentieth century. It is Ingel who teaches Zara to speak Estonian and encourages her to go to Estonia to search for Aliide. ALIIDE TRUU, Zara’s great-aunt, is an elderly widow living alone in her family home when Zara appears on her doorstep in the summer of 1992. Much of Purge is devoted to telling Aliide’s story, weaving the tragic consequences of her obsession with Hans into the larger story of Estonian suffering under Soviet occupation. Aliide takes Zara in with reticence, and Aliide’s ingrained wariness and her suspicions regarding Zara make it uncertain until the very end whether she will help the younger woman. ZARA is the young victim of a sex-trafficking scheme who, at the beginning of the novel, escapes her captors and finds her way to the house in Läänemaa, Estonia, where Aliide Truu still lives. Zara was given directions to the house by her grandmother, back in the Siberian port city of Vladivostok. Zara must persuade Aliide to help her elude her violent pimp, but she fears that any revelation of her involvement in the sex trade will harden Aliide’s heart against her.
W Critical Reception Oksanen’s novel has been widely praised as an unflinching examination of what Booklist’s reviewer described as “Europe’s still-living postwar pain.” The author has been credited with helping to reclaim Estonia’s recent history, which was all but forgotten in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union. The power of Oksanen’s writing has been a popular focus of reviewers. The reviewer for the Economist declares that Oksanen’s writing “is all the more powerful because she tells her story through the eyes of damaged and self-deceiving people.” Describing Purge as a “flawed, brilliant work,” Joan Smith of the London Times observes that the novel “does not easily relinquish its grip on the reader’s imagination.” Writing for Guardian.co.uk, Maya Jaggi praises Oksanen’s courage in telling Aliide’s bleak tale: “Aliide’s own warped cruelty enables a brutal honesty about the moral ambiguities of
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Purge
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sofi Oksanen was born in Jyväskylä, Finland, on January 7, 1977. She enrolled at the Helsinki Theater Academy as a dramaturgy student before starting to write full time. Her first novel, Stalinin lehmät (Stalin’s cows; 2003), was short-listed for the 2004 Runeberg Award. Her other published works include the novel Baby Jane (2005); the play Puhdistus (Purge; 2007), from which the novel of the same title was adapted; and a collection of essays, Kaiken takana oli pelko (2009; Fear behind us all), which she coedited with the Estonian journalist Imbi Paju. Much of Oksanen’s writing has focused on the harm inflicted on women by war and the politics of terror, and she has become widely known in Europe for her outspokenness on the subject. In 2009 the Postimees, the largest daily newspaper in Estonia, designated Oksanen its “Person of the Year” for her efforts to restore Estonia’s “historical memories.”
collaboration, with Oksanen . . . brave enough to depict earlier generations as clearly culpable.” The power of Oksanen’s writing may have overshadowed other aspects of the work that are not as well developed. Joan Smith finds some of the symbolism in the novel to be “a little heavy-handed” and remarks that “a startling series of revelations—some of them contained in secret police files that appear near the end—veers occasionally towards melodrama.” The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat reports that critical reception of the novel in Estonia did not evince the “unconditional warmth as might have been expected on the basis of Oksanen’s personal popularity in the country” and that at least one critic declared that similar stories had already been published in Estonia a decade earlier. The many prizes won by Purge include the Kalevi Jäntti Award for new outstanding voices (2008), the Mika Waltari Award (2008), the SSKR/Great Finnish Book Club Prize (2008), and Le prix du roman FNAC (2010).
In the novel Purge, several characters recall the Soviet Union’s occupation of Estonia during the 1950s. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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Purge Open Web Sources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Binding, Paul. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Independent.co.uk [London]. Independent Print Ltd 27 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Jaggi, Maya. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Guardian. co.uk [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd 21 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Oksanen, Sofi. Purge. Trans. Lola Rogers. New York: Black Cat-Grove/Atlantic, 2010. Print. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Economist. Economist Newspaper Limited 3 July 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Scott, Whitney. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Booklist 15 Apr. 2010: 29. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Smith, Joan. “Sofi Oksanen Lifts the Lid on Soviet Imperialism.” Times [London]. Times Newspapers Ltd 26 June 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. “Sofi Oksanen Named Person of the Year in Estonia.” Helsingin Sanomat 18 Dec. 2009, internatl. ed. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Beck, Evelyn. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Library Journal 15 Feb. 2010: 90. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Beck’s brief review makes special note of the disturbing power of Oksanen’s prose. Garman, Emma. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Words Without Borders. Words Without Borders, 13 Apr. 2010. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. In her review, Garman discusses in detail the links and parallels between the life histories of Aliide and Zara. Kyzer, Larissa. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Three Percent. University of Rochester 18 June 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. This review focuses on Oksanen’s empathetic treatment of the character of Aliide. Murphy, Jill. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Bookbag. Bookbag July 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Murphy’s review discusses the theme of shame as explored in Oksanen’s novel. Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. This brief review focuses on Purge as a family history. Villalon, Oscar. “Surviving Human Trafficking: A Noir Fairy Tale.” Rev. of Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. NPR. org. NPR, 14 Apr. 2010. Web. 3 Sept. 2010. Villalon discusses how the development of the novel’s characters mirrors the debasement of society under totalitarian rule.
Sofi Oksanen’s Web site offers a biography of the author, information about her novels and the play on which Purge is based, excerpts from reviews, and links to other resources, including interviews. http://www. sofioksanen.com/ The announcement of the 2008 Finlandia Award in the international edition of Helsingen Sanomat includes a discussion of how Oksanen and her prize-winning novel have been received in Estonia and Russia, as well as in her native Finland. http://www.hs.fi/ english/article/Finlandia+Prize+goes+to+Sofi+Oksa nen+and+portrait+of+Estonia+under+Soviet+occupa tion+/1135241686200 This Is Finland, an online publication of the Finland Promotion Board, has an interview with Oksanen in which she discusses the themes of Purge, her personal memories of Soviet Estonia, and Finland’s troubled relationship with the Soviet Union. http://finland.fi/ Public/default.aspx?contentid=160146&no deid=41798&culture=en-US The history section of Estonica, an online encyclopedia maintained by the Estonian Institute, provides overviews of events in Estonia during World War II, the period of Soviet occupation, and the post-Soviet era. http://www.estonica.org/en/History/ For Further Reading
Farr, Kathryn. Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children. New York: Worth, 2004. A top-to-bottom assessment of the global sex trade, from the lives of its victims to its top-level operatives and the economic realities that help sustain it. Hyman, Marc. Back on the Map: Adventures in NewlyIndependent Estonia. Seattle: Krimar Mustoli International, 2009. A memoir of the author’s experiences as a journalist and university professor in Estonia in the years immediately following Estonia’s independence from the Soviet Union. O’Connor, Kevin. The History of the Baltic States. Westport: Greenwood, 2003. Surveys the history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, including the long and troubled relationship between the Baltic states and Russia. Rausing, Sigrid. History, Memory, and Identity in PostSoviet Estonia. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Explores how the closing of a collective farm affected former farmworkers in a remote coastal area of Estonia. Offers insights into farm life, the Soviet system, and the struggle to reform Estonian society in the post-Soviet era.
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Janet Moredock
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The Quickening Maze By Adam Foulds
W Introduction The Quickening Maze is the second novel by Adam Foulds, whom the London Sunday Times named Young Writer of the Year in 2008. The book offers an imaginative account of the four years that John Clare, an unstable but brilliantly gifted “peasant poet,” spent at High Beach Asylum in England’s Epping Forest. During this period, from 1837 to 1841, the celebrated poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, also stayed for a time near High Beach. Although the two men never met, Foulds uses these real-life events as the starting point for a powerful exploration of creativity, madness, melancholy, and love. The novel also paints a picture of growing social upheaval as industrialization and urbanization accelerated in the early Victorian era. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009, The Quickening Maze has been praised by reviewers for its poetic language, sensitive characterization, and affecting narrative. Critic Tom Gatti of the London Sunday Times, for example, observed that “Foulds’s exceptional novel is like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic— the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and a novelist’s limber reach.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Quickening Maze takes place in the early nineteenth century, at the beginning of the Victorian age, when the traditional way of life in rural England was undergoing dramatic change. Enclosure laws had begun to shift common land, long shared by the peasantry, to private ownership, and farmers were being displaced to the cities, where they became urban laborers. Work traditionally done by hand was beginning to be done by machines, leaving craftsmen with fewer opportunities for work.
At the same time, England’s natural resources were being depleted to provide industrial power and to fuel railway transportation. The Victorian fascination with nature, in both science and art, reflected an awareness that the natural world was being altered forever. This loss influenced the Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, the time during which John Clare’s poetry attracted popular attention. In Epping Forest, where The Quickening Maze takes place, there were protests against enclosure, and a large area was preserved for public use by the Epping Forest Act of 1878. Dr. Matthew Allen located his High Beach Asylum in Epping to take advantage of the beautiful surroundings, and he implemented a progressive approach to treatment that was quite different from the typical management of mental illness in the nineteenth century. Clare stayed at High Beach from 1837 to 1841, at which time he undertook an eighty-mile walk back to his home, a journey that is recounted in his now-famous Journey Out of Essex. Clare was institutionalized again and remained in another asylum for the remaining twentythree years of his life, during which time he continued to write poetry.
W Themes The themes elaborated in The Quickening Maze fall into two broad categories. One relates to the social changes that were taking place in England at the time of the story. As a peasant himself and a writer of nature poetry, Clare is shown to be deeply concerned with the effects of urbanization on both the land and the local people. This theme is reflected in Clare’s visit to a Gypsy encampment in the forest. Another aspect of social change is explored in Allen’s scheme to profit from industrialization by automating the woodcarving process. Allen’s preoccupation with this idea leads him to neglect the oversight of High Beach, and he fails to notice that some of his staff members are cruelly mistreating the sickest patients.
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The Quickening Maze
MAJOR CHARACTERS HANNAH ALLEN is Matthew Allen’s teenage daughter, who fancies herself in love with Alfred Tennyson. Her comical pursuit of the poet is rebuffed. DR. MATTHEW ALLEN is the charismatic owner of High Beach Asylum, where he tries to provide a progressive form of care for mentally ill patients. He also is an aspiring entrepreneur who persuades Alfred Tennyson to invest in his scheme for a mechanical woodcarving device. JOHN CLARE is a self-taught “peasant poet” who briefly achieved fame in the 1820s and then fell out of fashion. Disappointment, heavy drinking, and financial stress worsened his mental instability, and he was persuaded to enter High Beach in 1837. ALFRED TENNYSON is a successful poet of about thirty years who still is mourning the sudden death in 1833 of his close friend Arthur Hallam. He stays near High Beach for a time in order to visit a brother who is being treated there for depression.
The Quickening Maze is a fictional account of the four years that English poet John Clare, pictured here, spent at High Beach Asylum. ª Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy
Another set of themes relate to psychological disorder. The Quickening Maze depicts a variety of mental conditions, ranging from the relatively simple depression that affects patients such as Septimus Tennyson (Alfred’s fictional brother) to the psychotic delusions that afflict Clare and others. These derangements are portrayed convincingly, and the novel contrasts the enlightened care envisioned by Allen with the unkind treatment typically experienced by the mentally ill during this time. Although both Clare and the melancholy Alfred Tennyson are brilliant and talented poets, Foulds does not oversimplify the connection between their mental conditions and their creative abilities. Both men experience psychological suffering that sometimes blocks their writing and at other times seems to enrich it.
W Style The Quickening Maze is based on real-life events. The author takes no liberties with the facts of the time that Clare and Tennyson spent at High Beach, although he compresses the four years of Clare’s residence into a sequence of seven seasons. Foulds creates a fictionalized version of each poet, but they never meet in the book, and there is no explicit connection between the two
stories. All the same, they share the milieu of High Beach and its surroundings, which serves to draw out the contrast between the two men and their poetry. On the one hand, Tennyson is a well-educated rising star whose beautifully crafted poems will be considered masterpieces. On the other, Clare is an intuitive visionary who seems to think in poetry, but whose genius will not be appreciated until long after his death. Foulds uses the whole cast of characters at High Beach to illuminate the two poets from different viewpoints. For example, Tennyson barely notices Hannah Allen’s romantic pursuit, whereas Clare is intensely aware of every nuance of the forest night. Matthew Allen not only represents the common ground inhabited by the two poets, but also emerges as a complex character whose ambitions undo his good intentions, with significant effects on both Clare (who is brutalized by Allen’s unsupervised staff) and Tennyson (who is nearly bankrupted by Allen’s woodworking scheme). The delicate structure of the novel presents these disparate events in short scenes, which are rendered vividly and held together by language that maintains a poetic quality without sacrificing narrative clarity.
W Critical Reception Although The Quickening Maze has received high praise from many reviewers, some assessments have been mixed. In the New Statesman, for example, Fatema Ahmed admired the contrasting portraits of the two poets and the
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The Quickening Maze
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adam Foulds was born in 1974 in London, England, and began writing as a teenager. After studying English literature at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, he earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2001. For the next several years, he wrote steadily, supporting himself with odd jobs. On the strength of his first novel, The Truth about These Strange Times (2007), Foulds was named Young Writer of the Year for 2008 by the London Sunday Times. That bittersweet, often comical novel was followed the next year with a different and much darker work, The Broken Word. Set during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the book-length poem was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and won the Costa Book Award for poetry, both in 2008. The Quickening Maze came out just a year later, making the Man Booker shortlist for 2009. Foulds lives in London.
perceptive characterization of Hannah Allen but concluded that the novel “is ultimately too schematic in structure to be entirely successful.” Publishers Weekly found Tennyson’s character unconvincing but noted that “John’s madness is richly imagined, and Matthew comes off as powerfully sympathetic as he grows ever more desperate.” Although Mary Ellen Quinn of Booklist judged the novel unfocused and too episodic, she credited Foulds with “a sure sense of time and place and often lyrical prose.” Other reviewers have extolled the novel’s poetic language, subtle characterization, and imaginative development with little reservation. Clare Colvin observed in the London Daily Mail that “Foulds’s writing has a poetic intensity and his descriptions of the autumnal woods around the asylum are as piercingly keen as his insight into the minds of the patients, the doctor and his family.” Neel Mukherjee agreed, in his review for the London Sunday Telegraph, that “the chief pleasure of the book is its prose: exquisite yet measured, precise, attentive to the world,” noting the “sure way Foulds gives every single character . . . generous and utterly credible interior lives.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Ahmed, Fatema. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. New Statesman 18 May 2009: 45+. Print. Colvin, Clare. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Daily Mail [London] 15 May 2009: 56. Print. Gatti, Tom. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Sunday Times [London] 7 May 2009: 11. Print.
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Mukherjee, Neel. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Sunday Telegraph [London] 10 May 2009. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Publishers Weekly 257.20 (2010): 29. Print. Quinn, Mary Ellen. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Booklist 1 July 2010: 32. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Charles, Ron. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Washington Post 23 June 2010: CO4. Print. An entertaining commentary on the novel that highlights the types of mental illness portrayed and praises the sympathetic rendering of Clare. Motion, Andrew. “The Asylum in the Forest.” Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Guardian [London] 2 May 2009: 10. Print. A detailed appreciation of the novel focusing on the theme of identity. Rennison, Nick. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Times [London] 3 May 2009: 11. Print. A profile of the novel in the context of Foulds’s writing career. Shriver, Lionel. Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Daily Telegraph [London] 16 May 2009: 24. Print. A positive review that focuses on Foulds’s portrayal of madness. Solomita, Alec. “A Not-So-Fine Madness.” Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. Boston Globe 4 July 2010. Web. 11 October 2010. An appreciative overview of the novel, with insights about the historical figure of John Clare. Wood, James. “Asylum.” Rev. of The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds. New Yorker 28 June 2010: 67. Print. A detailed essay that provides a literary perspective on the novel, paying special attention to Foulds’s use of language. Open Web Sources
A brief interview with Foulds on the Man Booker Prizes Web site includes links to audio excerpts from The Quickening Maze. http://www.themanbookerprize. com/perspective/articles/1265 Foulds reads from The Quickening Maze in a video interview on the Guardian Web site. http://www. guardian.co.uk/books/video/2009/may/07/ adam-foulds-quickening-maze Photographs of Epping Forest capture some of the natural beauty of the area described in The Quickening Maze. The Web site also provides information about the history of Epping Forest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. http://www.epping-forest. co.uk/ TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Quickening Maze For Further Reading
Bate, Jonathan. John Clare: A Biography. New York: Farrar, 2003. Print. An authoritative volume that provides an insightful, detailed account of Clare’s life. Clare, John, Eric Robinson, and David Powell. John Clare. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. Print. A critical edition of Clare’s poetry that provides helpful background for understanding the poet’s work. Foulds, Adam. The Broken Word. London: Jonathan Cape, 2008. Print. A book-length poem about the Mau Mau uprising in Africa during the 1950s that demonstrates the author’s poetic style.
———. The Truth about These Strange Times. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007. Print. Foulds’s first novel, the contemporary tale of an unlikely pair on an improbable road trip, offers a very different view of the author’s imagination and literary skill. Tennyson, Alfred., and Robert W. Hill. Tennyson’s Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. New York: Norton, 1999. Print. A critical edition that includes an introduction to the poet and his life, along with annotated texts of many of his major works.
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Cynthia Giles
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Quicksilver By Neal Stephenson
W Introduction Quicksilver (2003) is the first volume of the Baroque Cycle, a trilogy by noted post-cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson. The novel includes many characters drawn from history, such as the mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, and two of its major fictional characters (Daniel Waterhouse and Jack Shaftoe) are ancestors of major characters in Stephenson’s popular novel Cryptonomicon (1999). Structured in three internal books, totaling more than nine hundred pages, Quicksilver combines swashbuckling adventure with philosophical debate to explore the currents of culture that created the modern world. The novel is set during a time when science and mathematics were emerging as new tools for understanding the phenomenal world, and it focuses on the ways that the exchange of information transforms society. Quicksilver’s mixture of humor, scientific explanation, detailed description, and imaginative character development have fascinated many reviewers and readers, but some critics have found the novel overblown and uninteresting. Quicksilver received the Hugo Award in 2004 and was nominated for the 2004 Locus Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
The events of Quicksilver take place from 1661 to 1713, in what is generally called the Late Baroque period. The term Baroque is typically used to describe the artistic style of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whereas the term Enlightenment is usually applied to the philosophical and scientific developments of the eighteenth century. However, the two time frames overlap, in that the Baroque style of art, music, and architecture extends into the early eighteenth century, and the roots of the
Enlightenment can be seen in the later seventeenth century, when the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge was founded (in 1660). In 1713, when Quicksilver begins, protagonist Daniel Waterhouse is called upon to resolve a dispute between Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over the invention of calculus, and this commission forms the larger structure for the whole Baroque Cycle. A series of flashbacks in novel takes the reader to 1661, when Daniel is attending Cambridge University. There he becomes acquainted with Newton and a number of other scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians who will lay the groundwork for the scientific revolution. Stephenson provides detailed descriptions of the period in order to convey the enormity of the transformation that was taking place and the complexity of the factors that brought about a new worldview. There is an emphasis throughout the novel on the crucial role of information and the emergence of technology, which places Quicksilver in the subgenre of speculative fiction often called post-cyberpunk. Although the setting of the novel is meticulously historical, the events are fictionalized, and Stephenson interprets the period from a twentyfirst-century viewpoint.
W Themes Quicksilver is a novel of ideas, and its themes are primarily intellectual rather than psychological or moral. Although Daniel has relationships, difficulties, and disappointments, his primary challenges are concerned with the conflict of old and new ideas. Like other intellectuals of the time, he must confront the dual claims of religion and reason, instinct and method. During the course of the novel Daniel witnesses calamitous events (such as the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London) and participates in experiments that trouble his conscience. He also finds himself embroiled in politics, both
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Quicksilver
MAJOR CHARACTERS ELIZA is an exceptionally clever young woman who is rescued by Jack Shaftoe. After a series of adventures with him, she finds her way into the upper echelons of society, advising several characters on investments, serving as a spy, and gaining the noble title Countess of Zeur. ENOCH ROOT is an alchemist who appears throughout the book but remains mysterious. JACK SHAFTOE is a swashbuckling vagabond whose exploits include the rescue of Eliza. By means of skillful scheming, he rises from the slums of London to become a ruthless but charismatic adventurer, involved in events all over the world. DANIEL WATERHOUSE is a philosopher-scientist whose quest to understand the world leads him into the intellectual ferment of the early scientific revolution. The son of a prominent Puritan, Daniel also finds himself involved in political and religious conflicts of the time.
Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, the famous scientist who is featured in Neal Stephenson’s book Quicksilver. ª North Wind Picture Archives/ Alamy
in the Royal Society and in the English court. These dramatic experiences, however, are often presented through the medium of facts and information rather than action and feeling. Similarly, the novel’s other main characters, Jack Shaftoe and Eliza, have extensive adventures and many liaisons, but to a certain extent these stories serve as vehicles through which the workings of the seventeenthcentury world are revealed. The two characters interact with a variety of political and economic circumstances, which allows Stephenson to portray the intricate relationship of power, money, and belief that formed the background of the scientific revolution. In a broad sense the essential theme of Quicksilver is the power of information, and the essential story is the early history of modern science.
they became associated with each other, follows their early adventures, and sets them on separate paths. In the final book, “Odalisque,” Daniel and Eliza cross paths in the Netherlands, and both are caught up in the dramatic events surrounding the Revolution of 1688, in which King James II of England was overthrown by William of Orange. The three books differ in tone, from an intellectual beginning to a boisterous middle to a synthesis of both in the final part. Although there is enough resolution in the story to justify reading only Quicksilver, the novel clearly sets up larger plots and themes that will be worked out in the rest of the trilogy. Throughout the novel Stephenson uses a style of language suggestive of the historical period, but he occasionally includes intentional anachronisms. The narrative voice is often humorous and seems at times to have a modern point of view. Stephenson frequently interrupts the story for extended explanations and digressions, creating multiple layers of content that sometimes connect events and characters to a larger structure of ideas; at other times these interruptions seem to be merely informational.
W Style
W Critical Reception
Quicksilver is divided into three internal books. The first, which is also titled “Quicksilver,” starts and ends in 1713 but is mainly an account of how Daniel came to be in the position to arbitrate the rival claims of Newton and Leibniz. The second, “The King of the Vagabonds,” introduces the characters of Jack and Eliza, explains how
Quicksilver has received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Although most found aspects of the book entertaining, several agreed with Elizabeth Hand, whose Washington Post review concluded that “the truly prodigious research that went into writing Quicksilver ultimately sinks it.” In the Times Literary Supplement
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Quicksilver
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Neal Stephenson was born in 1959 in Maryland. As the son of a professor of electrical engineering, Stephenson grew up in the college towns of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and Ames, Iowa. He began working as a research assistant at a young age and was already writing fiction by the time he graduated with a BA from Boston University in 1981. During the next decade Stephenson published two science-fiction novels, followed in 1992 by Snow Crash, a popular work that established him as a leader in the cyberpunk movement. His next work, The Diamond Age, won the science-fiction community’s prestigious Hugo Award in 1995, but it was not until the publication of Cryptonomicon in 1999 that Stephenson’s writing reached a broader audience. Cryptonomicon reached number twelve on the New York Times best-seller list, becoming one of the first big crossover hits for speculative fiction. The Baroque Cycle, published in 2003 and 2004, proved a popular success and was followed in 2008 by Anathem, winner of a Locus Award in 2009. Stephenson is regarded as one of the most important figures in contemporary speculative fiction.
Henry Hitchings observed that “despite Stephenson’s often thrilling fluency, the wealth of authenticating detail can be stifling.” Elizabeth Weise, writing in USA Today, is one of several critics who compare Quicksilver unfavorably with its predecessor, noting that “what Quicksilver lacks, sadly, is the momentum of Cryptonomicon.” Still, Weise describe the book as “an enjoyable read,” and Hitchings devotes a full-page discussion to Quicksilver, noting its strengths as well as its weaknesses. A few reviews have offered unqualified enthusiasm about the work. In Library Journal Jackie Cassada gave Quicksilver the coveted “highly recommended” status, contending that “sparkling prose, subtle humor, and a superb knowledge of the period make this grand feast of a novel a mandatory choice for libraries of all sizes.” Similarly, Roland Green’s review in Booklist found the novel “as rich in character sketches as it is in welldeveloped scenes,” concluding that “Quicksilver will have readers—especially the history buffs among them— happily turning all its many pages.” Kirkus Reviews summed up the middle ground with this judgment: “An incorrigible showoff, Stephenson doesn’t know when to stop, but that’s a trifle compared to his awe-inspiring ambition and cheeky sense of humor.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cassada, Jackie. Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Library Journal 15 Sept. 2003: 94. Print. Green, Roland. Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Booklist 1 Sept. 2003: 8+. Print.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German mathematician and philosopher depicted in this portrait, is one of many real-life historical figures featured in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. ª North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy
Hand, Elizabeth. “The Secret History.” Washington Post 12 Oct. 2003: 8. Print. Hitchings, Henry. “The Cryptographer’s Needlework.” Times Literary Supplement [London] 3 Oct. 2003: 21. Print. Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Kirkus Reviews 15 July 2003: 935. Print. Weise, Elizabeth. “Stephenson Recycles Cryptic ‘Quicksilver.’” USA Today 30 Sept. 2003: D7. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Boutin, Paul. “The World Outside the Web.” Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Slate 23 Sept. 2003. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Discusses Quicksilver in relation to its audience and marketing. Emsley, Iain. “The Confus’d Age.” The Arthur C. Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Paul Kincaid and Andrew M. Butler. Daventry: Serendip, 2006. Print. Offers a close reading of Quicksilver in the context of modern speculative fiction. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Quicksilver
Friedell, Deborah. “Tap Tap Tap.” Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. New Republic 10 Oct. 2003: 39. Print. Provides a detailed critique in a negative review of the novel, along with remarks on its intellectual backgrounds. Giuffo, John. Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Village Voice 8 Oct. 2003: 159+. Print. Focuses on Stephenson’s exploration of ideas and use of humor in the novel. Shulman, Polly. “The Original Information Age.” Rev. of Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. New York Times Book Review 5 Oct. 2003: 11. Print. Considers the novel’s strengths and weaknesses, concluding that Quicksilver will need to be judged in the context of the whole Baroque Cycle trilogy. Gale Resources
“Neal Stephenson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. “Neal Stephenson.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
Stephenson’s official Web site includes an interview with the author and a link to view portions of the book online. http://www.nealstephenson.com/quicksil ver/index.htm The author’s personal Web site offers his reflections on diverse topics, along with additional interviews and photos. http://web.mac.com/nealstephenson/ Neal_Stephensons_Site/Home.html A video of Stephenson’s talk on science fiction as a literary genre, delivered at Gresham College in 2008, is available for viewing online at the Web site FORA.tv. http://fora.tv/2008/05/08/Neal_Stephenson_ Science_Fiction_as_a_Literary_Genre
For Further Reading
Godwin, Mike. “Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future.” Reason 36.9 (2005): 38-45. Print. In this interview Stephenson discusses the implications of ideas explored in the Baroque Cycle and places the trilogy in the context of his other work. Johnston, John. “Distributed Information: Complexity Theory in the Novels of Neal Stephenson and Linda Nagata.” Science Fiction Studies 28.2 (2001): 223-45. Print. Johnston examines the works of these authors as examples of contemporary science fiction that draws significantly on complexity theory and new ideas about computation. Kin Yuen, Wong, Gary Westfahl, and Amy Kit-Sze Chan, eds. World Weavers: Globalization, Science Fiction, and the Cybernetic Revolution. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2005. Print. This wide-ranging look at speculative fiction, based on cutting-edge ideas about information technology and global culture, provides a helpful context for understanding Stephenson’s work. Lewis, Jonathan P. Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2006. Print. An in-depth examination of Stephenson’s work, this collection of essays includes a chapter on the Baroque Cycle. Stephenson, Neal. The Confusion. New York: Morrow, 2004. Print. The second volume of the Baroque Cycle trilogy follows the further adventures of Jack and Eliza. ———. The System of the World. New York: Morrow, 2004. Print. The third volume of the Baroque Cycle trilogy begins in 1714 and brings all the characters together.
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Rainbows End By Vernor Vinge
W Introduction Rainbows End (2006) is a work of speculative fiction that explores the ideas of author Vernor Vinge, one of the most influential figures among the “futurist” thinkers who speculate on possible evolutions of technology and society. Vinge is a mathematician turned science fiction writer, credited by many as the first person to describe the type of communications network that is now called cyberspace. He is also a leading proponent of the theory that technology will bring about a substantive transformation of human experience. In Rainbows End, which is set in 2025, that transformation has already begun. People wear their computers and can not only create their own experiences of reality but can also interact with others in shared virtual realities. The novel’s protagonist, a poet who is cured of Alzheimer’s disease and awakens to a wildly unfamiliar world, is faced with the challenge of learning to function in this new environment while also confronting the personal demons of his past. At the same time, he finds himself at the center of a global cyberterrorism conspiracy. Rainbows End won the Hugo and Locus awards for best novel in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
At a 1993 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conference, Vinge presented a paper titled “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Written while he was teaching mathematics at San Diego State University, the paper speculated that rapid developments in technology would lead to the creation of a superhuman intelligence that would effectively end the “human era.” Vinge remarked that he would be “surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.” Although other futurists (such as Ray Kurzweil and Steward
Brand) were already thinking along the same lines, Vinge’s ideas were influential in establishing a name (the “singularity”) and a tentative time frame for the concept of technological transformation. The proposed advent of the singularity is based on a scientific principle known as Moore’s law, which states that computing capability roughly doubles every eighteen months. Rainbows End is set near the end of the period in which Vinge thought the singularity might occur. It depicts a society that is on the verge of the transformation he has described. Although the cultural and technological setting of Rainbows End is speculative, the novel is not intended as a fantasy or a parallel universe story but rather as the projection of a possible future reality.
W Themes Vinge’s novel depicts a society in which almost everyone lives in an augmented reality that can overlay the physical world with virtual appearances and informative data. Wearing computerized clothing and display devices that fit in the eye like contact lenses, people can both see and create projected images. Global networking allows individuals to communicate anytime and anywhere through video chatting and telepathy-like “sming” (silent messaging). Groups with similar interests or ideas form interactive “belief circles.” Many structures and objects have tags that give viewers instant access to expanded information, such as schematics and descriptions. Although people vary in how skilled they are at using and manipulating the augmented reality, only a few refuse to participate and instead continue to use antiquated laptops. This sophisticated technology landscape provides a context for the exploration of several large themes, including the relationship between group dynamics and individual experience, the complex factors involved in constructing reality, and the potential risks of technological dependency. In addition, through the experiences of
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Rainbows End
MAJOR CHARACTERS BOB GU is Robert Gu’s son and Miri’s father. Both he and his wife, Alice, occupy powerful positions in the Marine Corps and are involved in national security. MIRI GU is Robert Gu’s granddaughter and the only member of his family with whom he establishes a connection. Miri becomes involved in Gu’s quest to save the library books.
Rainbows End, which is set in 2025, focuses on a man who awakens after many years and learns to survive in a world filled with new types of technology. Amid/Shutterstock.com
a protagonist who discovers that his talent no longer matters and his narcissism has alienated his family, the novel deals with such personal issues as confronting loss and rebuilding relationships. A subplot involving the destruction of a library’s physical books in favor of creating virtual replicas raises questions about how or even whether the past should be preserved.
W Style Rainbows End is a thriller with a complex plot involving global cyberterrorism and conspiracy; it is also a novel of ideas, exploring a near future transformed by technological innovations. These two modes are integrated in the unusual circumstances of the protagonist, Robert Gu. Throughout the period in which accelerating technological development dramatically changed society, Gu was cognitively impaired by Alzheimer’s. When his normal brain functions are restored, he effectively wakes up in a new world. Presenting the society of 2025 through Gu’s eyes allows Vinge to dramatize the amount of change that has taken place and discuss the difficulties of moving from one historical period to another. Vinge’s attention to detail creates a believable future. He portrays an everyday reality that is extremely different from the world we know but that is based on logical extensions of familiar technologies. Wearable computers are not far removed from smart phones. The ability to project representations of people and landscapes is only a few steps beyond the online world of avatars and simulated environments. The novel’s belief circles are similar to such gaming communities as World of Warcraft. Even the security concerns that arise in Rainbows End reflect real-life situations—predicaments that have affected social networking applications, corporate
ROBERT GU is a seventy-five-year-old Chinese American who was a world-renowned poet until Alzheimer’s disease reduced him to a nearly mindless state. When medical advances restore him to mental health and youthful appearance, Gu must adapt to an unfamiliar reality ruled by technology and to a family he has alienated. JUAN OROZCO is a Fairmont High School student assigned as Gu’s technical adviser. He becomes a pawn in a shadowy group’s efforts to use Gu in a terrorist plot. RABBIT/MYSTERIOUS STRANGER is a powerful, unidentified intelligence who manifests to some people as a rabbit avatar and to others as a voice.
Web sites, and even government computer systems. Because of this continuity, the developments depicted in the novel may surprise the reader but do not seem fantastic.
W Critical Reception Rainbows End was received enthusiastically by many in the science fiction community. On his science fiction and fantasy book review Web site SFReviews.net, Thomas M. Wagner writes, “Rainbows End is a feverishly entertaining next-gen tech thriller, centered on a protagonist who undergoes a character arc that, while it may follow a fairly conventional ‘redemption’ blueprint, brings genuine warmth and heart to a future setting in which both are in short supply.” Some mainstream reviewers also responded with appreciation. Writing in the Denver Post, Fred Cleaver describes the novel as “a spy thriller, a coming-of-age novel and an academic comedy,” noting that “Vinge is on the cutting edge of technology, and it’s a delight when tomorrow’s wonders are displayed with humor.” Regina Schroeder concludes in her Booklist review, “The near future is less alien here than in some of Vinge’s other work, but no less fascinating and well constructed.” Other opinions were mixed, and reviewers tended to disagree about which aspects of the novel succeed and which fail. Publishers Weekly, for example, contends that the novel “offers dazzling computer technology but lacks dramatic tension,” with the result that “too much of the
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Rainbows End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1944 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Vernor Vinge is the son of two geographers, Clarence Lloyd and Ada Grace Vinge. He attended Michigan State University as an undergraduate then earned a master’s degree (1968) and a doctorate (1971) at the University of California at San Diego. The following year he joined the university’s mathematics faculty. In 2000 he retired in order to write full time. By then he had already produced several well-received works of science fiction, among them the pioneering cyberspace novella “True Names” (1981). In 1993 he received a Hugo Award for his novel A Fire upon the Deep (1992). That year his groundbreaking paper “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” established him as a leading futurist. He also received Hugo Awards for his novellas “Fast Times at Fairmont High” (2002) and “The Cookie Monster” (2004) and for Rainbows End. Vinge continues to speak and write about the future of computer science and the evolution of society.
book feels like a textbook introduction to Vinge’s nearfuture world.” Michael Berry’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle comes to a similar unfavorable conclusion for the opposite reasons: “As the story of a deeply flawed individual given a second chance at finding meaning in life, Rainbows End is involving and frequently poignant. As the near-future thriller that it pretends to be, the novel proves frustrating and ultimately disappointing.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Berry, Michael. “Vampires Just Wanna Have Fun.” Rev. of Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, by Marta Acosta, The Baby Merchant, by Kit Reed, and Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. San Francisco Chronicle 25 June 2006: M3. Print. Cleaver, Fred. “Standing Astride the Future of Books.” Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Denver Post 28 May 2006: F12. Print. Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Publishers Weekly 27 Feb. 2006: 38. Print. Schroeder, Regina. Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Booklist 1 Apr. 2006: 30. Print. Vinge, Vernor. “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Proceedings of the NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute Symposium, March 30-31, 1993: Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace. NASA Conference Publication 10129. N.p.: NASA Office of Management,
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Scientific and Technical Information Program, 1993. NASA Technical Reports Server. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Wagner, Thomas M. Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. SFReviews.net. SFReviews.net, 2006. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allbery, Russ. Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Eyrie.org. Ed. Russ Allbery. N.p., 30 Mar. 2007. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. This detailed review finds the novel ultimately unsatisfactory, especially its tone. Brand, Stewart. “Vinge’s Singular Vision: Cyberfiction’s Founder Returns with a Preview of Our Virtual Future.” Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Technology Review 109.3 (2006): 86+. Print. Brand, a noted futurist, provides an extensive, thoughtful analysis of the novel and its speculations about technology. Godwin, Mike. “Superhuman Imagination: Vernor Vinge on Science Fiction, the Singularity, and the State.” Reason May 2007: 33+. Print. Godwin examines Rainbows End in the context of Vinge’s ideas. The article includes an interview with the author. Hopper, Jim. “Will the Belief Circle Be Unbroken?” Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. San Diego UnionTribune 14 May 2006, Books sec.: 1. Print. A generally positive review that finds some fault with Vinge’s integration of the novel’s several narrative strands. Kleffel, Rick. Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Agony Column. Rick Kleffel. 5 June 2006. Web. Sept. 28, 2010. In a positive yet balanced evaluation, Kleffel discusses the range of science fiction ideas included in the novel. Tierney, John. “Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master?” Rev. of Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. New York Times 26 Aug. 2008: F1. Print. This essay includes both a review of novel and a discussion of some issues raised by Vinge’s singularity hypothesis. Gale Resources
“Vernor Vinge.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
An excerpt from the novel is available on the publisher’s Web site. http://us.macmillan.com/rainbowsend IEEE Spectrum magazine (published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) published a 2008 special issue on the technological singularity. The issue is accessible online, with full text from the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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print version of the magazine as well as special Web features. http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/singularity Listen online to Machine Man Merger Arriving Sooner than You Think, a 2006 National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday conversation with Vinge and science fiction author Cory Doctorow. http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=5576503 The video Web site FORA.tv presents footage of a Vernor Vinge lecture titled “What if the Singularity Does Not Happen?” http://fora.tv/2007/02/15/ What_If_the_Singularity_Does_NOT_Happen For Further Reading
Clarke, Bruce, and Manuela Rossini. Routledge Companion to Literature and Science. London: Routledge, 2010. Print. In addition to providing a broad overview of speculative fiction, this volume offers a chapter on artificial intelligence (AI) that includes a discussion of Vernor Vinge and his work. Dooling, Richard. Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ. New York: Harmony Books, 2008. Print. Dooling’s detailed and irreverent examination of futurist ideas about technology features a section on Vernor Vinge. Singer, P. W. Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century. New York:
Penguin, 2009. Print. A thorough survey of emerging technologies in warfare and terrorism, Singer’s book has a chapter titled “To Infinity and Beyond: The Power and Future of Exponential Trends” that discusses Vinge’s influence on futurist speculation. Vinge, Vernor. The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. New York: Tor, 2001. Print. Vinge’s 2002 novella “Fast Times at Fairmont High,” included in this volume, establishes the near-future setting in which Rainbows End takes place. Vinge, Vernor, et al. True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier. Ed. James Frenkel. New York: Tor, 2001. Print. Vinge’s 1981 novella “True Names” is widely regarded as the first fictional work to explore the idea of cyberspace. This volume contains the original story along with eleven essays exploring its influence on both science and science fiction. Zimmerman, Michael E. “The Singularity: A Crucial Phase in Divine Self-Actualization?” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 4.1-2 (2008): 347+. Print. Zimmerman provides a different view of singularity speculation, focusing on the philosophical aspects of posthumanism. The article discusses Vinge’s ideas within this expanded context.
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Ransom By David Malouf
W Introduction Ransom (2009), a novel by the Australian writer David Malouf, fleshes out two “untold stories” from the Trojan War. The first recounts the origins of the great friendship between the Greek warriors Achilles and Patroclus, which is only briefly outlined in Homer’s Iliad, the 2,700-year-old epic poem that inspired Malouf’s novel. The second explains how the Trojan king, Priam, acquired his name, which means “the ransomed one.” These stories supply the background to Malouf’s poignant account of Priam’s attempt to ransom the corpse of his son Hector from Achilles, who killed Hector to avenge the death of Patroclus. Priam risks traveling to the enemy camp to approach the raging Achilles and beg him not as a king but as a father to release Hector’s body for a ransom. Priam is accompanied on this unprecedented mission by Somax, a humble cart driver. Along the way, Somax introduces the king to life as he has never seen it from his throne. In the end, Achilles is released from his rage, an eleven-day truce is declared, and Priam returns with Hector’s body to Troy and achieves everlasting fame as a man who accomplished the unthinkable. Ransom won the 2009 John D. Criticos Prize awarded by the Hellenic Society of London.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Iliad, the Greek epic poem on which Ransom is based, was probably composed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The conflict between Greeks and Trojans at the center of the Iliad is thought to have taken place sometime around 1200 BCE. Although the war lasted ten years, the Iliad focuses on the final year of the conflict. During this
time, a squabble over war booty leads to a violent confrontation between Achilles and Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks. Achilles responds by withdrawing himself and his troops, the Myrmidons, from the war. Led by the prince Hector, the Trojans now beat back the Greeks, many of whose leaders fall wounded. Patroclus begs Achilles to rejoin the fight; Achilles refuses, but he does allow Patroclus to put on his armor and lead the Myrmidons in battle himself. The Greeks make gains, but Patroclus is killed by Hector, who now becomes the object of Achilles’s rage. Malouf’s story of Priam’s plan to ransom Hector’s body is based on the twenty-fourth and final book of the Iliad. Whereas in the Iliad the entire transaction is conceived, planned, and closely supervised by the gods, in Malouf’s novel it originates in and is carried out in response to the most human of needs. Malouf’s story concerning King Priam’s name draws from an account of the life of Hercules in Apollodorus’s Library, an ancient history of mythology. In this account, Podarces, the only royal male of Troy left alive after Hercules conducts a murderous attack on the city, is restored to his princely role when his sister ransoms him from slavery. It is Hercules who renames him Priam, “the ransomed one.”
W Themes Ransom is a concentrated treatment of monumental themes. Achilles and Priam grieve for men they loved deeply. At first, the Greek hero and the Trojan king are trapped by their emotions—Achilles in his rage and Priam in his agony. The goddess Iris reveals a way out, however. In response to Priam’s lament that his days as king of Troy have been “a mockery as [the gods] had all along intended,” she whispers to him that things are “not as they must be, but the way they have turned out. In a world that is also subject to chance.” Iris’s message helps Priam realize that, in a world subject to chance, humans
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are free to try to change the course of history. By going to Achilles as a father, and not a king, Priam believes that he can offer Achilles “the chance to break free of the obligation of being always the hero.” Critic Daniel Mendelsohn sees in Priam’s “attempt to cut this knot that we are all tied in” a symbolic reference to the novel as literary genre. Writing in the New Yorker, Mendelsohn suggests that, “the solution to this epic problem is, in both senses of the word, the novel—a new way of thinking, and a new form for thinking it.” It is the flexible medium of the novel—as opposed to the encrusted traditions of the epic—that is best suited to telling the story of Priam’s attempt to “force events into a different course.”
W Style The story of Priam’s ransom of Hector’s body is told from the viewpoint of a third-person omniscient narrator. The narration is lyrical, and a slight sense of detachment gives it a majesty akin to that of its epic source. As Michael Dirda notes in his Washington Post review, “While Malouf can write brilliantly in the ‘low’ register of a Somax or describe nature with a Wordsworthian attentiveness, he is equally convincing in suggesting the grave diction of epic.” Malouf’s poetic language also gives a concreteness to his descriptions of visions and supernatural beings. For instance, when “the air, as in the wake of some other, less physical disturbance, shimmers with a teasing iridescence,” Priam knows that “one or other of the gods will materialize, jelly-like, out of the radiant vacancy.” The god Hermes, who guides Priam and Somax to the Greek camp, is partly given away by his scent, “a musky sweetness that if you were fighting at close quarters might be overpowering and hard to resist.” When Achilles has a vision of his son, Neoptolemus, avenging Achilles’s death by murdering Priam, he feels “as if his eyeballs were awash with blood.” He sees Neoptolemus as “a fireball” that “comes whistling through the air, a fiery-headed agent of such destructiveness as all these nine years of slaughter have not seen.” Malouf employs several “flash forwards” in the course of Ransom which both honor the story line of the Iliad and underscore Priam’s accomplishment in defying expectations. When, by mentioning his own death, Priam unleashes in Achilles the vision of Neoptolemus slaughtering the Trojan king, Achilles realizes that he is witnessing the near future, a time when he will be a corpse, like Hector. This reminder of his most human attribute, his mortality, inspires in Achilles a “cleansing emotion” that frees him from the heavy burden of heroic obligation and allows him to see in Hector’s death a “quiet he can accept now as a mirror of his own.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS ACHILLES is the Greek hero whose protracted withdrawal from the battlefield provokes Patroclus’s fateful request to wear his armor and lead the Myrmidons. When Patroclus is slain by Hector, Achilles avenges his friend by killing Hector and then desecrating his body by dragging it to and fro before the walls of Troy. HECTOR is Priam’s son. He is killed by Achilles in revenge for the death of Patroclus. Despite Achilles’s daily abuse of Hector’s corpse, at night the gods make the body whole again, which enrages Achilles all the more. PATROCLUS has been Achilles’s closest companion since boyhood, when Patroclus came to live in the home of Peleus, Achilles’s father, after accidentally killing a playmate. Torn between his loyalty to Achilles, who huddles in his tent nursing his wounded pride, and his sense of duty as a soldier, Patroclus finally asks Achilles if he can lead the Myrmidons in battle if Achilles will not. Wearing Achilles’s armor, Patroclus is slain by Hector. PRIAM is Hector’s father and the king of Troy. Grieving desperately for his dead son and taking his cue from the words of Iris, the messenger of the gods, Priam conceives a plan to persuade Achilles to accept a ransom in exchange for Hector’s body. SOMAX is the cart driver who helps Priam deliver the ransom and transport Hector’s body back to Troy. Garrulous and warmhearted, he also introduces Priam to the world beyond the royal court.
W Critical Reception Ransom has been warmly received by critics, many of whom have been particularly impressed with the novel’s language. Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Gregory Leon Miller comments that Malouf’s prose “feels timeless—lyric and direct in ways that recall the source material yet seem wholly contemporary.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer praises the novel’s “sparingly deployed details, vigorous language, and sly wit” and finds that it “evokes the final days of the Trojan War with cinematic vividness.” The novel’s treatment of powerful themes has also appealed to reviewers. Describing Ransom as an “apparently simple, yet immensely moving, modern novel,” Elizabeth Speller notes in the Independent that its themes “are still vast: loss, forgiveness, love, and redemption.” Alastair Mabbott writes in the Herald Scotland that the novel is “a reimagining that respects Homer’s original while expanding expertly on its themes.” Tom Holland, reviewing Ransom for the Guardian, feels that the novel’s emotional impact falls short, however. The work,
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR George Joseph David Malouf was born on March 20, 1934, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He is considered one of Australia’s foremost writers. He graduated from the University of Brisbane in 1955. Afterward he taught in England until 1968, when he returned to Australia to teach at the University of Sydney. In 1977 Malouf began to work full time as a writer. His second volume of poetry, Neighbours in a Thicket (1974), won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, a gold medal from the Australian Literature Society, and the James Cook Award for best Australian book of the year. Malouf published his first novel, Johnno, in 1975. Malouf’s fiction, like his poetry, is characterized by economical yet lyrical language, descriptive detail, resonant themes, and sureness of narrative drive. His numerous prizewinning novels include An Imaginary Life (1978), The Great World (1990), and Remembering Babylon (1993).
he writes, is “neither true enough to Homer, nor sufficiently untrue to him” to succeed. Several reviews have commented on Malouf ’s introduction of the cart driver Somax into the story of Priam’s ransom. Somax is Malouf’s invention; he does
not appear in the Iliad or any other related works. Daniel Mendelsohn observes that Priam’s talkative companion on his journey to the Greek camp and back is “the first of many bards in a long line that leads to Homer.” The impulse that brings Priam and Somax together is, ultimately, what enables the story of Priam’s memorable deed to survive, since Somax lives to impart the tale to countless audiences long after its protagonists are dead. As J. Greg Mathews writes in Library Journal, Ransom is an exploration of “how chance, or opportunity, serves as the muse of all great storytelling.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Dirda, Michael. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Washington Post. Washington Post Co. 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Holland, Tom. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd 19 Dec. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Mabbott, Alastair. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Herald Scotland. Newsquest Media Group 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Malouf, David. Ransom: A Novel. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009.
Author David Malouf ’s novel Ransom focuses on the characters involved in the Trojan War. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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Ransom
The Greek warrior Achilles engages his enemies in battle. The novel Ransom recounts the tale of his relationship with Patroclus, a fellow warrior. ª North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy
Mathews, J. Greg. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Library Journal 134.20 (2009): 100. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Mendelsohn, Daniel. “Epic Endeavors: Three Novels Take on Greek Myth.” New Yorker. Condé Nast Digital 5 Apr. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Miller, Gregory Leon. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Communications Inc. 26 Feb. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Publishers Weekly 26 Oct. 2009: 31. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Speller, Elizabeth. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd, 13 Nov. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Coates, Steve. “Troy Story.” New York Times Book Review 24 Jan. 2010: 11(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Praises Malouf’s poetic descriptions and reverence for the power of myth but finds the character Somax “unpersuasive.” Nicholls, Glenn. “When Towers Topple.” Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Inside Story. Inside Story 20 Apr. 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. A critical review that argues that the novel fails to embody the “new values and ways of thinking” it purports to uphold. Olson, Ray. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Booklist 15 Dec. 2009: 20. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. A brief review that highlights the
“egalitarian” spirit that characterizes the relationship between Priam and Somax. Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Kirkus Reviews 1 Dec. 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Emphasizes the ways in which Malouf’s language and inventive narrative give contemporary relevance to the themes of the Iliad. Rose, Peter. “The Very Edge of Things.” Rev. of Ransom, by David Malouf. Australian Book Review May 2009: 7-8. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. An extensive review that finds much to admire in Malouf’s prose style but expresses impatience with the prolonged elegiac tone of the novel. Gale Resources
“David Malouf.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. “David Malouf.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 245. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Rooney, Brigid. “(George) (Joseph) David Malouf.” Australian Writers, 1950-1975. Ed. Selina Samuels. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 289. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
Encyclopedia Mythica offers more than six hundred entries on Greek mythology, including biographies of all the major actors in the Trojan War. http://www. pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/greek/ articles.html
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Ransom For Further Reading
Apollodorus. The Library of Greek Mythology. Trans. Robin Hard. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Compiled in the first or second century BCE, the Library is a comprehensive guide to Greek myth. Heaney, Seamus. The Cure at Troy. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1991. Print. The Irish poet’s play is about the outcast Greek hero Philoctetes, who must be persuaded to rejoin the Greeks in the Trojan conflict because only his invincible bow can bring them victory. Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print. The rendering of the epic in contemporary English by Fagles has been praised for its readability, style, and faithfulness to Homer’s poem. Latacz, Joachim. Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. Trans. Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
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Homeric scholar Latacz provides an overview of the current state of research on Troy and argues that the Troy that forms the backdrop of the Iliad was based in historical reality. Logue, Christopher. War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. Print. Logue’s poetry reprises in modern language some of the most powerful episodes from the Iliad, including the death of Patroclus and Achilles’s return to battle. Simmons, Dan. Ilium. New York: Harper, 2003. Print. Simmons’s sci-fi novel has the Trojan War taking place on Mars while twentieth-century human scholars, imported from Earth by the race of metahuman “gods” inhabiting Mars, track the progress of the war against Homer’s record of it in the Iliad. Janet Moredock
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Raven Black By Ann Cleeves
W Introduction Raven Black (2006) is the first novel in the Shetland Quartet, a series of four crime novels (Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning) that feature the detective Jimmy Perez and that take place on the Shetland Islands, north of mainland Scotland. The story opens on New Year’s Eve, when two teenage girls, Sally Henry and Catherine Ross, visit the elderly Magnus Tait to wish him a happy New Year. A few days later Catherine is found strangled with her own scarf, her remains lying in the snow near Magnus’s home. Citizens and authorities immediately suspect Magnus, a recluse who had been accused (but never convicted) in the disappearance of another girl eight years earlier. Inspector Perez, however, is not convinced that Magnus is guilty, and his investigation reveals the dark secrets of the close-knit Shetland community. Ann Cleeves’s nineteenth book, Raven Black garnered widespread critical praise. The novel was the first recipient of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (2006), a prestigious and lucrative prize presented by the British Crime Writers Association.
W Literary and Historical Context
Ann Cleeves draws on the rich history and customs of the Shetland Islands to create the setting for Raven Black. The group of about one hundred islands, fewer than twenty of which are inhabited, lies 130 miles north of the Scottish mainland. The novel refers to surviving Shetland customs and practices. Knitting, for example, became an important activity in Shetland, and women in the past knitted articles for personal use and for trade. In the novel Cleeves refers several times to the traditional Shetland knitting famous for its
complex, brightly colored patterns. The craft is still practiced in the region. Raven Black is an example of Nordic crime fiction, which has been gaining in popularity particularly since the end of the twentieth century. As such the book pays homage to the islands’ Viking heritage. Scandinavians began colonizing Shetland in the ninth century. The fire festival Up Helly Aa, held annually on the last Tuesday in January, is anticipated throughout the novel and plays an important role in the story’s climax. The festival is a tribute to the Viking influence in Shetland. At the high point of the festivities, torches are thrown into a replica of a Viking ship, or galley. In Raven Black, Cleeves also gives a nod to her own life experiences. Inspector Jimmy Perez, the local detective who investigates the murder of Catherine Ross, hails from Fair Isle. Cleeves worked for a time as a cook at a bird observatory on Fair Isle, where she met her husband, an ornithologist.
W Themes The theme of isolation figures into Raven Black in a number of ways. The island setting is physically isolated from the mainland, and local life and customs are in some ways untouched by time. Investigators are unconcerned that suspects will attempt to escape, as there is really nowhere for them to go. The novel also alludes to the challenges of outsiders who try to fit into a wellestablished, close-knit community. Many Shetlanders descend from families who have lived on the islands for generations and are reluctant to accept “incomers” into their society. Fran Hunter, for example, now divorced from Duncan Hunter, a wealthy Shetlander, realizes that she will “always be an outsider. . . . It would have been different if Fran had stayed married to Duncan. There would have been acceptance of a kind then.” Fran observes that some incomers try to embrace local practices, while others deliberately separate themselves
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MAJOR CHARACTERS SALLY HENRY is the daughter of a local schoolteacher and the best friend of Catherine Ross. The two girls visit Magnus Tait on New Year’s Eve, a few days before Catherine is murdered. CASSIE HUNTER is the five-year-old daughter of Fran and Duncan Hunter. She goes missing during a night of festivities on the island. DUNCAN HUNTER, a local, wealthy playboy, is the ex-husband of Fran Hunter and the father of Cassie Hunter. FRAN HUNTER is a single mother who finds the body of the murdered teen, Catherine Ross. She and her daughter, Cassie, have returned from London to Shetland so that Cassie can be near her father. ROBERT ISBISTER is a wealthy islander and a love interest of Sally Henry. JIMMY PEREZ, originally from Fair Isle, is the local inspector who investigates the murder of Catherine Ross. Even though most residents believe that Magnus Tait is the culprit, Perez is not convinced of his guilt. CATHERINE ROSS is a beautiful teenage girl who is murdered at the beginning of the novel. Her body is discovered in the snow near Magnus Tait’s home. MAGNUS TAIT is an elderly loner who is accused of killing Catherine Ross.
from the natives. The isolation theme extends to individuals as well. Magnus Tait is an elderly recluse who is shunned by the community because he was accused in the disappearance of a young girl eight years earlier. Sally Henry, best friend of the murdered teen, struggles to fit in with her peers and rebels against her strict schoolteacher-mother. Recurring imagery of fire and ice also pervades the novel. The book includes several references to Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice,” in which Frost considers the destructive nature of both desire and hatred. The winter setting is juxtaposed with Up Helly Aa, the fire festival that takes place every January. Cleeves also contrasts the passions of the islanders with their unemotional or superficial reactions to tragic events.
W Style The novels of the Shetland Quartet have been classified in the Nordic crime genre, which refers not only to literature produced by Scandinavian authors but also to works with a Nordic setting, including long winter months, a barren landscape, a confined environment,
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and a small-town atmosphere. The action in Raven Black takes place in January in an island village. Jane Jakeman, in her review for the Independent, notes that “Cleeves draws added power from a claustrophobic setting, driving the novel into deeper exploration of character than is usual.” The setting does not overpower the narrative, however, and serves more as a backdrop for events than as a catalyst for them. Cleeves’s descriptions of the physical environment, like the landscape itself, are stark and bare. Cleeves has been recognized for her ability to develop suspense and for her “customary teasing skill” (Edwards). Writing for Spinetingler Magazine, Martin Edwards observes that once the murderer is identified, “it becomes clear how much vital information—and insight into character—was conveyed in the leisurely but subtle early chapters.” Cleeves offers a number of false leads, suggesting that any number of people could have murdered Catherine Ross. The story is told from several different points of view. In each chapter a third-person narrator describes events as they unfold for and are experienced by one of the major characters: Fran Hunter, Jimmy Perez, Sally Henry, and Magnus Tait. The narrative structure provides insight into the personal lives and thoughts of the characters while at the same time withholding key details and information that the characters are not yet ready to share. This technique of using third-person limited-omniscient narrators also aids in building suspense and keeping readers off balance until the mystery is solved. Cleeves’s straightforward, economical prose is accessible to young adult readers but appeals to mature readers as well.
W Critical Reception Raven Black garnered largely positive reviews. Critics have praised Cleeves’s ability to capture the essence of island life and the complexities of small-town society. In a review for the Web site Euro Crime, Maxine Clarke calls Raven Black “an absorbing study of a remote community.” Clarke further argues that Cleeves “provides plenty of insights into the attractions of living away from the pressures of urban, cosmopolitan life, and the associated boredom that this rural, cold existence offers.” Jakeman likewise observes that “Cleeves creates a convincing world of hostility against outsiders, of genuine ancient feuds but pseudo-history for the tourists, of small snobberies and major jealousies.” Reviewers have also lauded Cleeves’s talent for building suspense and delivering a satisfying surprise ending. Emily Melton, writing for Booklist, comments that Raven Black is “a dark, brutal, suspenseful pageturner that will keep even seasoned mystery buffs guessing right up to the end.” Reviewing the novel for Helium, Sun Meilan notes that Cleeves “has done an excellent job of building up the atmosphere, then leaving TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Raven Black
the reader in suspense for a few pages, before imparting the next bit of information.” Some critics have complained, however, that Cleeves becomes so absorbed in her character development that she loses track of the mystery for a time. Others have expressed a wish that the author had offered more description of the landscape. Meilan points out, for example, that Cleeves “could have gone to a little more effort to describe the surroundings,” calling the lack of “visual description of the islands” a “wasted opportunity.” Nevertheless, even those reviewers who have noted minor flaws in the novel have endorsed the work as a whole. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Clarke, Maxine. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Euro Crime Dec. 2007. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Cleeves, Ann. Raven Black. London: Pan Books, 2006. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ann Cleeves was born in Hereford, England, and worked at a variety of jobs before becoming a writer. Following stints as a child-care officer, a cook at a bird observatory, an auxiliary coast guard member, and a probation officer, Cleeves began writing crime novels. She met her husband, Tim, an ornithologist, while she was working on Fair Isle at a bird observatory; birds and bird-watching figure heavily in some of Cleeves’s fiction. For a time Cleeves and her husband lived on a tiny island, where they were the only residents. In 1987 the author and her family moved to the Northeast, an area that inspired many of Cleeves’s subsequent works. Cleeves was named reader in residence for three library authorities for the National Year of Reading, and she continues to work with libraries and reading groups. Her works have been translated into sixteen languages.
In Raven Black, Catherine Ross is found strangled with a knit scarf. Kadroff/Shutterstock.com
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Raven Black
A harbor town on the Shetland Islands of Scotland, is the setting of author Ann Cleeves’s Raven Black. ª Martin Almqvist/Alamy
Edwards, Martin. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Spinetingler Magazine Summer 2006. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Jakeman, Jane. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Independent 31 Mar. 2006. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. Meilan, Sun. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Helium. Helium, n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Melton, Emily. “Cleeves, Ann. Raven Black.” Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Booklist 1 May 2007: 20. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Burnside, Anna. “Ann Cleeves Unveils Shetland Murder Mystery.” Sunday Times [London] 20 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. An article that discusses the author’s career and her inspiration for writing Raven Black. Gill, Sunnie. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Euro Crime Dec. 2006. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. A review that praises the author’s depiction of island life. Rev. of Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves. Publishers Weekly 30 Apr. 2007: 136+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. A brief, positive review that provides an overview of the novel.
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Robinson, David. “Interview: Ann Cleeves—Every Contact Leaves a Trace.” Scotsman 25 Apr. 2009. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. An interview that profiles the author and discusses the setting of the Shetland Quartet. Stasio, Marilyn. “Thai Takeout.” New York Times Book Review 24 June 2007: 23(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. An article that reviews several mysteries, including Raven Black. Gale Resources
“Ann Cleeves.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Ann Cleeves’s official Web site provides a biography, diary entries by the author, overviews of Cleeves’s works, and short films with the theme “My Shetland.” http://www.anncleeves.com/ The Shetland Tourism Portal offers information (e.g., on weather, nature and wildlife, and history) about and maps of the area in which Raven Black is set. http:// www.shetlandtourism.com/ For Further Reading
Cleeves, Ann. White Nights. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Print. In Cleeves’s second novel in the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Shetland Quartet, Inspector Jimmy Perez investigates the death of an unknown man suffering from amnesia. Edwards, Martin. The Cipher Garden: A Lake District Mystery. Scottsdale: Poison Pen, 2005. Print. Edwards’s second Lake District murder mystery focuses on a crime committed in an English village. Jungstedt, Mari. Unseen. Trans. Tiina Nunnally. London: Doubleday, 2007. Print. Jungstedt’s debut novel is the first murder mystery in a series set on the island of Gotland, Sweden.
In Mankell’s Nordic crime novel, three young people are found dead in the wilderness. Scott, Walter. The Pirate. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001. Print. Originally published in 1821, Scott’s classic novel is set in a remote part of Shetland. Adaptations
“Raven Black.” Afternoon Play. British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio 4. 23 Jan. 2010. Radio. Cleeves’s story was adapted for BBC Radio.
Mankell, Henning. One Step Behind. Trans. Ebba Segerberg. New York: New Press, 1997. Print.
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Harrabeth Haidusek
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist By Mohsin Hamid
W Introduction The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) is the story of a brilliant, American-educated Pakistani who achieves his financial and career goals in New York City. He comes to feel displaced in the United States and decides to return to Pakistan, eventually protesting against U.S. policies. Mohsin Hamid, the novel’s author, is a Princeton and Harvard graduate, who wrote this book to help others understand what could attract such young men to al-Qaeda. He actually started the book before the terrorist attacks that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001, and then completely rewrote it to fit the changed circumstances. He also purposely kept the book short—184 pages—so that he could incorporate the politics of the situation without turning off the readers. The book is a monologue with the central character telling his story to an American he meets in the Old Anarkali district of Lahore. Between 2007 and 2010, this novel was published in twenty-seven languages. It was short-listed for a dozen awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Man Booker Prize, and it won the Ambassador Book, Anisfield-Wolf Book, Asian American Literary, and South Bank Show awards.
W Literary and Historical Context
Pakistan is situated on the Arabian Sea with the Gulf of Oman to the south, Afghanistan and Iran to the west, India to the east, and China to the far northeast. It lies in the heart of the ancient Indus Valley, covering an area that for many centuries marked the crossroads between South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Pakistan became an independent country in 1947 and left the British Commonwealth to become the Islamic Republic
of Pakistan in 1956. After that, the country experienced periods of military rule, political instability, and conflict with India over the Kashmir region. With the sixth-largest population in the world, Pakistan also has the sixthlargest military. It is home to the second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia. It is the only Muslim-majority country with nuclear weapons. An ally of the United States as of 2010, Pakistan has fought Taliban insurgents for a number of years and has become the refuge of three million displaced Afghanis fleeing the Taliban. Pakistan is a member of several treaty organizations. The Reluctant Fundamentalist refers to the Janissaries, a military force consisting of male prisoners taken by the Ottoman Empire from conquered nations and thus required eventually to fight their own people. The Turks levied what was called the blood tax on populations they subdued. They took male children, converted them to Islam, and raised them to be soldiers, who were then often sent back to rule in their homelands as a military force. Instituted in the fourteenth century, the Janissaries were the first standing army in Europe since the Roman Empire. Although subject to strict discipline, they were paid salaries and pensions and formed a distinct social class that eventually exercised considerable power. By 1826, however, their privileges had dissipated as had their military effectiveness.
W Themes A major theme of The Reluctant Fundamentalist concerns finding an identity within a group. The poignancy of being unable to join the crowd is evident in Changez’s life, especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks. However, an important message within the book is that trying to fit in can damage a person’s sense of self. Changez realizes that he does not want to fit in if it means adopting an attitude of superiority and entitlement typical of Americans. He begins to hate himself for ever having similar aspirations and realizes that he does not
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
want to become complicit in U.S. corporate arrogance and exploitation, nor does he want to be a Janissary fighting for the powerful against the powerless. Related to this theme is that of discovering that there are allegiances more fundamental than one’s commitment to acquiring money, power, or even love. Sometimes, one is compelled to choose between two cultures. Changez comes to resent U.S. power and influence, given that his own once proud nation struggles and its ally, the United States, does not seem to value its many contributions to the alliance. Another theme concerns the damaging effects of mutual distrust that arises with increased fear and prejudice. Suspicion is contagious and results in ethnic profiling, misinterpretation of actions, and resistance to understanding the other. All of this is seen in the reactions of Americans after September 11 and subsequently of Changez toward the United States. He realizes that perhaps the real fundamentalism is U.S. capitalism. After all, the slogan of Underwood Samson is “Focus on the fundamentals.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE AMERICAN, addressed in the second person as “you,” is the unnamed listener who is addressed in Changez’s monologue. This person is supposedly a tourist but may be an agent or assassin carrying a gun. CHANGEZ, the sole speaker in the novel, is an honest, thoughtful, Pakistan-born Princeton graduate and successful business analyst who rethinks his priorities and searches for his identity after September 11. ERICA, whose name derives from America and who symbolizes the United States, is the beautiful classmate and love interest of Changez. It is possibly depression that drives her to commit suicide. JIM, Changez’s boss and mentor at Underwood Samson, says he was also once an outsider and so he understands Changez. WAINWRIGHT, also a nonwhite, befriends Changez and offers helpful advice while being his top competition at Underwood Samson.
W Style The most obvious stylistic feature of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the monologue. The narrator’s opinions are provocative, and digressions convey the tension and danger in the meeting between Changez and the American stranger. Hamid uses a sense of mystery to keep the reader engaged in the monologue. In fact, the novel has an organization like that found in Arabian Nights: the end of the story may mean the death of the narrator. Hamid also uses digressions about mundane matters such as ordering tea and food, which provide breaks in the tension. The characters’ names suggest their role in the story. For example, the name Changez sounds like “changes” and suggests the changes the narrator decides to make in his life. The name Erica derives from the word America. This character symbolizes the nostalgia that Changez thinks might affect the United States. Underwood Samson stands for U.S. corporate wrongdoing. The dead boyfriend Chris represents the exploitive history of the United States, its cancerous past, all the way back to European colonization of North America. The novel also uses many parallels. For example, Erica’s renewed obsession with the past parallels U.S. nostalgia and Changez’s yearning for his nation’s previous glory. His world gets better as hers crumbles; Erica slips away as his love for the United States slips away. Her disappearance occurs shortly before his departure. Adept foreshadowing, the buildup of tension, a sympathetic handling of Changez, and an ability to make the reader and the American listener in the story become one, all exemplify Hamid’s method in handling the story.
W Critical Reception Many critics focused on the voice Hamid uses in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Hamid’s voice and style was frequently described as elegant. Eithne Farry was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that the novel is both elegant and “provocative,” a “delicate meditation on the nature of perception and prejudice.” Brad Hooper agreed. He wrote in Booklist, “This novel’s firm, steady, even beautiful voice proclaims the completeness of the soul when personal and global issues are conjoined.” John Greenya, whose review appeared in the Washington Times, remarked on “Changez’s formal speech and old-fashioned language.” Greenya stated that these created “a sense of time past that enhances rather than dispels the feeling of danger that becomes downright urgent in the final pages.” Joan Bakewell in the Mail on Sunday agreed that “the tension tightens with the excitement of a thriller,” and Roger Soder in Phi Delta Kappan stated that the novel “defines ‘page-turner.’” Greenya explained that Hamid achieved this “captivating” tension and “eerie plausibility” through his “storytelling skill.” He added that “This is an uncommonly moving novel about the world today, the power of the tale’s obvious symbolism matched by the artistry of its author.” Giles Harvey in the Village Voice concurred that the novel succeeds because of its voice and structure, calling the latter a “shrewdly managed framing device” with the American’s identity “gradually disclosed by an unsettling drip-feed of information.” Further, Harvey pointed out Hamid’s “fantastic cunning” and his ability to
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 in Lehore, Pakistan. He lived in the United States from the age of three to nine years while his father pursued his PhD at Stanford. Hamid attended Princeton, spent a year at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and then graduated from Harvard School of Law in 1997. He also worked for a while as a management consultant in New York City. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000), won the Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in 2001. A secular Muslim, Hamid became a British citizen and, as of 2010, lived in London with his wife, Zhara, where he worked part time as a freelance journalist and brand analyst.
simultaneously address “the byzantine monstrosity of contemporary existence and care about the destiny of one’s characters.” Hamid’s political observations are not really different from the boilerplate of many blogs, but his compelling main character shows the personal repercussions of politics, and readers, whether they agree with Changez’s views or not, find the novel a powerful study. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bakewell, Joan. “A Year That Made It Fun to Look Back in Languor.” Mail on Sunday 9 Dec. 2007: 72. Print. Farry, Eithne. “New Fiction.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Daily Mail 23 Mar. 2007: 62. Print. Greenya, John. “An American Meets a Radical Islamist in Pakistan.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Washington Times 19 Aug. 2007: 808. Print. Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Print. Harvey, Giles. “The Stranger: Mohsin Hamid’s American Invasion.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Villagevoicecom. Village Voice 20 Mar. 2007. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Hooper, Brad. “Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Booklist 1 Jan. 2007: 50. Print. Soder, Roger. “Books for Summer Reading.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Phi Delta Kappan 89.10 (2008): 741+. Print.
Notes that the novel is about the fear between Muslims and the West. Holtsberry, Kevin. Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Collectedmiscellany.com. Collected Miscellany 30 Apr. 2007. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Discusses the effectiveness of the monologue, Changez’s motivation, and the themes as well as the novel’s flaws. Lasdun, James. “The Empire Strikes Back.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian, 3 Mar. 2007. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Comments on the Janissary connection, the cultural observations in the monologue, and the allegories in the story. Olsson, Karen. “I Pledge Allegiance.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. New York Times Book Review 22 Apr. 2007: 8(L). Print. Focuses on the moment when Changez hears about the World Trade Center and then explains how the book pivots on that moment and becomes a thriller. Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Kirkus Reviews 75.5 (2007): S5. Print. Uses Hamid’s own comments about the book to explain its theme of fear and suspicion. Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. New Yorker 83.14 (2007): 77. Print. Briefly remarks on Changez’s situation, especially his unease with American insolence and his Janissary position. Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. Publishers Weekly 253.49 (2006): 42. Print. Explains Changez’s perspective gained from his education, Erica, his job, and being a perceptive Pakistani. Gale Resources
“Mohsin Hamid.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. http://infotrac.galegroup.com/ itw/infomark/334/145/84758270w16/purl=rc2_ CA_au_Mohsin+Hamid Open Web Sources
LitGuides provides a synopsis, a biography of Hamid, and excerpts from an interview and various reviews at http://www.litlovers.com/guide_reluctant_ fundamentalist.html
Criticism and Reviews
A transcript of an interview with Hamid on All Things Considered, National Public Radio, which was aired on 14 May 2010, is available at http://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126831865
Garner, Dwight. “TBR: Inside the List.” Rev. of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. New York Times Book Review 22 Apr. 2007: 30(L). Print.
Hamid has his own Web site at http://www.mohsinhamid. com, which provides information about him, his two novels, his articles, short stories, interviews, and more.
Additional Resources
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TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The official Web site for The Reluctant Fundamentalist is at http://www.harcourtbooks.com/Reluctant_Fun damentalist.default.asp. This site includes links to a synopsis, an interview, discussion questions, review excerpts, and the publishers’ comments on the book. For Further Reading
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Annotated Ancient Mariner: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Intro. Martin Gardner. Illus. Gustave Dore. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2003. Print. Established the technique of the single narrator, addressing a reluctant but fascinated stranger, with notes to help with nineteenth-century language and references. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Norton, 2010. Print. Explores the psychological impact on a European man living in a remote station far up the Congo River and notes the exploitation conducted in the Ivory Coast under the direction of Leopold II of Belgium.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Psychological thriller concerning a morally confused intellectual and deals with guilt and retribution. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1999. Print. A cautionary tale about the American dream, which describes an outsider who succeeds financially but not personally. Hamid, Mohsin. Moth Smoke: A Novel. New York: Picador, 2001. Print. Hamid’s award-winning first novel about a social-climbing, drug-addicted man in modern Pakistan. Jones, Owen Bennett. Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. Print. Comprehensive coverage of the various forces at play in modern Pakistan.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Lois Kerschen
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Requiem for a Lost Empire By Andrë Makine
W Introduction Andrë Makine’s Requiem for a Lost Empire (2001; originally published in France as Requiem pour l’Est in 2000) opens with a nameless narrator recalling how he was saved from a home in the Caucasus by Sasha, a French national and good friend of his grandmother. The narrator blends the individual and overlapping histories of his grandfather Nikolai and his exploits during the Russian Revolution and ensuing World War I and his father Pavel’s travails as a soldier in Joseph Stalin’s army, with his own experiences as a KGB spy during the Cold War. What is left for the narrator to solve is the mystery of what became of the woman he loved. Grandfather Nikolai joins the Bolsheviks in an illconceived bid to escape the poverty of peasant life. The horrors of war culminate in his decision to break rank when he discovers a pregnant woman buried up to her neck, whose tongue had been slashed. He never learns her name until he teaches her to write. He and this woman seek refuge from the chaos and carnage, retreating from combat to the remote place where Pavel is born in 1920. His happy childhood, however, ignores the rise of communism and World War II that will make a soldier of him. Like Nikolai, he too reacts with disdain to the senseless brutality he witnesses, and like Nikolai, he saves a woman, though in this case from rape at the hands of a Soviet officer. He is quickly condemned to a penal colony but survives his imprisonment and marries an exile. Together they create a life in a tiny house at the foot of a mountain, where the novel’s narrator is born. When Pavel’s fate is sealed by an imminent Soviet firing squad, Sasha, the Frenchwoman, agrees to take the child away to save his life. It is she who conveys the otherwise lost history of Nikolai and Pavel to the orphaned boy in French. Eventually the novel’s narrator becomes a medic in the Soviet army and witnesses the devastation of war up close.
He is recruited by a KGB handler and meets a colleague whose name is never given and with whom he falls in love. He loses this woman, however, when he abandons Russia for France, but he later resolves to find out what happened to her. His search leads him to Florida, where his handler has revealed the identity of the man who was responsible for her torture, rape, and murder.
W Literary and Historical Context
In A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 (1998), historian Orlando Figes sets the stage for Makine’s narrative, beginning with the end of czarist Russia and the famine and social turmoil that followed. He explains that by 1924, “a privileged ruling elite, random terror, secret police, torture, mass executions, [and] concentration camps” were the products of the Bolshevik Revolution in defiance of any democratic alternative. Requiem for a Lost Empire captures the implication of the rise of communism over three generations of men who experienced the evolution of this costly and oppressive system and the wars associated with it. Nikolai stands as a typical peasant of the times, put upon by the poverty common to villages who had previously suffered under the boyars of Imperial Russia. The seductive propaganda of the Bolsheviks, fueled by the exploitation of class envy, persuaded many Russians to take up the cause. However, forced collectivization of peasant land, coupled with the rampant corruption among party members, the military, and the KGB, quickly led to general oppression and mass starvation. Torture and death for noncompliant citizens became a signature of the Soviet secret police. Russians became Soviets and lost national and personal identities in the process, as well as access to the historical record.
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Requiem for a Lost Empire
Peter the Great (d. 1725) initiated many important reforms as a means of opening a window to the West. He looked to France to cultivate the arts, which left a lasting influence on Russian theater, ballet, and literature. Makine, like his protagonist-narrator, is bilingual in Russian and French, as many classical Russian writers were and are. French was the language at the Russian court and, for Makine, the language suggests vestiges of a glorious past. The sovietization of Russia, however, targeted western influences as the precedent for the bourgeois forces against which communism railed. The Bolsheviks sought to quash all traces of foreign influence, even revoking the name of St. Petersburg in favor of Leningrad, then Stalingrad, following the Russian Revolution. Soviet ideology quickly replaced the historic characteristics of empire, from the arts and the Russian Orthodox Church, to all other national institutions, much to the sorrow of Russians, as the title of Makine’s novel suggests.
W Themes Makine has been compared to Marcel Proust for his attention to the role time and memory play in the novel’s major theme. For Makine, the key to understanding the past lies not in facts, but in glimpses of images and, to some extent, sounds. The atrocities that Nikolai witnesses defy full measure of understanding. The facts have already dehumanized the soldiers who have sunken to mindless brutality, but the recollection of remembered images reveals the humanity that has been lost. Makine uses these images in the act of remembrance to carry the theme that memory favors images over text. War is also a powerful theme in the novel. Three generations of men have experienced the effects of armed conflict, made all the more horrifying for the shameful conduct within the ranks of their own military and government. The arms dealer, a character in the narrator’s timeframe, points to the role the West, including the United States and France, plays in manipulating global conflicts at the height of the Cold War. Even the narrator’s father cannot outrun the violence of war, which would have claimed his son were it not for the Frenchwoman who rescues him. But the life to which he is rescued offers only more death, loss, and betrayal. The casualty of national and personal identity is another theme. Makine alludes to the idea of a phantom limb, as experienced by amputees, to reflect the larger plight of Russia’s loss in the name of one cause or another. The relentless struggle to live and love is marred continuously by treachery and violence all too common to the people who represent ordinary victims in three murderous chapters in Russian history. The themes are sustained in repeated images, such as Nikolai’s plow and a rocky disk blown from a mountain explosion that lodges within inches of the cradle in which Pavel’s son lies
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANNA is Nikolai’s wife. Nikolai rescues her after the White army mutilated her and buried her alive in a field. She is mute. BATUM, a former sailor, is a Soviet emissary for the town of Dolshanka. GOLDFISH is a cowardly communist activist who keeps company with Krassny. COMRADE KRASSNY is a communist enforcer in the village of Dolshanka, where Nikolai lives with his wife Anna and their son, Pavel. MARELST is a young Soviet soldier Pavel suspects of being a Jew. His violent death by an exploding bomb affects Pavel deeply. NAMELESS NARRATOR is Pavel’s son. He miraculously survives an explosion that lodges a rocky disk inches from his crib and, soon after, a raid by Soviet soldiers. He is saved by Sasha and becomes a KGB agent. NAMELESS WOMAN is the narrator’s lost love, whom he evokes by addressing directly in his first-person narrative. NIKOLAI is the narrator’s grandfather, who trades his plow for a rifle in the Bolshevik Revolution. He regrets doing so when he confronts the atrocities of war. PAVEL is the child born to Anna, whom Nikolai saves from being buried alive. He has a happy childhood in Dolshanka. SASHA, a French national, is a good friend of Anna, whose son she saves when the Soviets catch up with Pavel and shoot him to death. SHAKH, the narrator’s KGB handler, claims to have known Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, whom he insists were framed for espionage.
sleeping. The added dimension of sound as a vehicle for the theme of identity is the narrator’s recollection of hearing French language as he is carried across a bridge by Sasha who at one point catches with her teeth the falling infant by his shirt.
W Style Requiem for a Lost Empire is written in the first and third person, narrated by a protagonist who is not given a name. The narrator has become disaffected by his life as a KGB agent and finds no other reason to live but to find his lost love, whom he addresses as “you” in the present narrative. The namelessness of the narrator and the woman with whom he sustains an interior dialogue reinforce the palpable feelings that fill his present, though their relationship no longer exists in the present. Russia,
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Requiem for a Lost Empire
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrë Makine was born September 10, 1957, in Siberia. He became bilingual in Russian and French at an early age. Before defecting to France in 1987, Makine pursued university studies at Kalinin and Moscow. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Ivan Bunin. Makine has published several novels in French and won the Prix Goncourt and Prix Medici, both 1995, both for Le testament français.
in general, and the woman in particular, are phantom members whose presence still persist though they are severed. Reminiscent of Proust’s nonchronological handling of the remembered past, the narrator moves between collected memories of his father and grandfather, as given to him by Sasha, framed by his first-person dialogue to the woman he addresses in the second person. His prose is peppered with imagery and keen detail to random catches of sight and sound, with intermittent repetition of key memories. The characteristics of Makine’s poetic prose style are evident even in the translation, which preserves the vivid descriptions of grisly war scenes and the intimate lament of the narrator in dialogue with a woman who is absent. Makine’s narrative is taut and emotionally evocative, though the tone remains subdued by strands of existentialism that temper the few fleeting moments of happiness experienced by grandfather, father, and son.
W Critical Reception Many critics praised Makine’s novel as a success, even as it borrows elements of his famous Le testament français. In his article in Lire, Jean-Rémi Barland proclaimed Makine’s Requiem for a Lost Empire “Un roman fiévreux, hanté, peuplé de cauchemars” (“a feverish, haunted novel, filled with nightmares”) and added it is a “Récit au scalpel” (“story with a scalpel”), as it dissects the Russian past into a “fable sur les arcanes du mensonge et de la mémoire, chant compassionnel d’un enfant pour la terre de ses ancêtres à jamais souillée par des cohortes de barbares” (“fable about the mysteries of lies and memory, the compassionate voice of a child to the land of his ancestors forever sullied by throngs of barbarians”). In her article appearing in Acta-Fabula, Murielle Lucie Clément cited Geneviève Lubrez’s observation that the novel’s structure is divided into three phases: “‘le temps proche,’ ‘le temps plus lointain’ et ’le temps encore plus loin’, que forme le récit dans le récit, le tout englobé dans le ’temps retrouvé’ qui est le récit du narrateur” (“‘near time,’ ‘time over distance,’
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and ‘time even further,’ that forms the narrative in the story, all included in ‘time regained,’ which is the story of the narrator”) as positive critical praise for Requiem for a Lost Empire. Writing in the Review of Contemporary Literature, Jason Picone admired Makine’s saga, claiming “it maintains an epic feel through its sweeping variation of setting and character.” Richard Dyer dissented, however, in his article in the Boston Globe. Dyer determined that the novel was flawed: “it is paradoxically restricted in span—focused detail, images, and clusters of images distill a dreadful century into 264 pages.” Barbara Hoffert agreed in her review in Library Journal: “Makine is always elliptical and dreamlike when telling his tale, but this one is particularly fractured.” Clare Cavanagh qualified her praise in her article in the New York Times Review, insisting the novel “reads like a transitional work in the career of a talented writer who is not content merely to repeat his initial successes, but has not yet found a new form that would do justice to his remarkable gifts.” A complicated work at best, Requiem for a Lost Empire was thus admired for some of its parts but found wanting in other ways. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barland, Jean-Rémi. “Requiem pour l’est.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andreï Makine. Lexpress.fr. Express 3 Jan. 2000. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Cavanagh, Clare. “Back in the U.S.S.R.: Andrë Makine’s Latest Novel Takes 20th-Century Russian History as Its Subject.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. New York Times Book Review 106.40 (2001): 24. Print. Clément, Murielle Lucie. “Dialectique Est-Ouest.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. fabula.org. Acta-Fabula 7.4 (2006). Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Dyer, Richard. “Finding Humanity in Lost Empire.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. bostonglobe.com Boston Globe 25 Sept. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print. Hoffert, Barbara. “Requiem for a Lost Empire.” Rev. Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. Library Journal 126.12 (2001): 125. Print. Makine, Andrë. Requiem for a Lost Empire. Trans. Geoffrey Strachan. New York: Washington Square Press, 2001. Print. Picone, Jason. “Review of Requiem for a Lost Empire.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. Review of Contemporary Fiction 27.1 (2002): 125. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Requiem for a Lost Empire Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Angier, Carole. “When History Explodes Happiness.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. independent.co.uk. Independent 25 Aug. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Finds the novel lacking in historical background for its imperial references. Arguedas, Pascale. “Requiem pour l’est.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. calounet. pagesperso-orange.fr. Calou, Livre de lecture, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Gushes over Makine’s engagement of the absurd and admires the lyrical violence and tender rage. Text is in French. Champagne, Roland A. “Review of Requiem for a Lost Empire.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. World Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 181. Print. Applauds Makine’s narrative abilities, proclaiming he has secured his mark once again by continuing to offer stories from the Russian past for posterity. Massie, Allan. “History in the Making.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. scotsman.com. Scotsman 18 Aug. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Compares Makine’s novel to the works of Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for its clarity and depth. Claims that principal characters lack definition; grants, however, that Makine turns this into a strength. Phipps, Sam. “Recounting the Cost.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. spectator.com. Spectator 1 Sept. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Notes Makine’s grasp of raw material as a compliment to his acute moral sensibilities. Riemer, Andrew. “The Russian Testaments of Andreï Makine.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. quadrant.org. Quadrant Magazine 1 July 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Concludes that the novel is Makine’s best for its complexities and disconcerting topics. Rudick, Nicole. “A Hero of His Time.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. artforum.com. Artforum 1 Feb. 2005. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Finds Makine’s style similar to Mikhail Lermontov as a strength. Spinella, Michael. “Requiem for a Lost Empire.” Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. Booklist 97.21 (2001): 1982. Print. Cites that Makine’s prose masterfully captures the tale of horrific events.
Rev. of Requiem for a Lost Empire, by Andrë Makine. washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 12 Aug. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Accords Makine a concise but positive review, affirming that the novel is captivating and illuminating. Gale Resources
“Andrë Makine.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com/ ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000131483&v=2.1&u= itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w For Further Reading
Cherkashin, Victor, and Gregory Feifer. Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Print. An insider’s account of the psychological and economic methods of recruiting and handling KGB spies. Includes observations about the ironic motivations that drive KGB operatives, particularly double agents. Cohen, Stephen. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Print. Critical analysis of the theories of Bukharin in the historical context of the period between Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924 and Joseph Stalin’s rise in 1929. Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print. Gaddis’s concise introduction to American analysis of new historical information on seminal events of the Cold War. Marshall, Alex. The Caucasus under Soviet Rule. Oxford: Routledge, 2010. Print. Focuses on the impact of Soviet rule from 1917 to 1958 as it created nations out of diverse and indigenous populations, as well as forced migrations to the region. Massie, Robert K. Peter the Great. New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print. Definitive biography of one of Russia’s most progressive and controversial czars. Schneir, Walter. Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case. New York: Melville House, 2010. Print. Schneir’s update of his original investigation of the Rosenberg trial and execution, Invitation to an Inquest, with new analysis that contends Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent of the charges that they passed secrets of the atomic bomb, though they were guilty of lying about previous espionage activity.
“Tales of Past-Haunted Losers, Magic-Realist Misfits, Obsessive Rowers and Doomed Revolutionaries.”
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Doris Plantus-Runey
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The Road By Cormac McCarthy
W Introduction Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic novel The Road (2006) offers a haunting vision of America following a massive global holocaust. The book follows an unnamed protagonist and his young son as they journey across a ruined, wintry landscape, in a desperate effort to reach the warmer climate of the south. Widely hailed by critics, The Road earned McCarthy the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. On one level, the novel is a chronicle of the father’s efforts to protect his son against starvation, cold, and the various menacing characters they encounter in their travels. At the same time, the work represents a profound exploration into the nature of loyalty, faith, and human dignity, particularly as these qualities manifest themselves under conditions of extreme duress. In this sense, the novel is at once a straightforward survival narrative and a philosophical meditation on what it means to be human. In McCarthy’s telling, the answer to this question is likely to make many readers uncomfortable. Ultimately, The Road offers a bleak portrait of a world stripped of all legal and moral codes. In its unflinching depictions of mass cannibalism, murder, and slavery, the book suggests that human goodness is a precarious notion, and that the instinct to live almost invariably supersedes questions of ethics or dignity. In this context, the father’s refusal to descend into barbarism has uncertain significance; his actions appear as both an emblem of hope and a final flickering of the human spirit.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Road takes place somewhere in the eastern United States, in a postapocalyptic, not-so-distant future. The
novel’s setting is at once alien and vaguely familiar. Although the geography in McCarthy’s book is ruined and desolate, traces of early twenty-first century society remain recognizable throughout the narrative. The protagonist and his young son follow the path of ashcovered roadways, pushing a broken shopping cart containing possessions scavenged over the course of their journey, such as binoculars, a pistol, blankets, and various tools. In one scene, the man retrieves a can of cola from a dilapidated soda machine and gives it to his son; the boy, however, does not even know what soda is. Through their ordinariness, these details enhance McCarthy’s harrowing vision of the future, lending the work a pronounced sense of foreboding and dread, as if the line between the reader’s world and the novel’s devastation is ultimately very thin. At the same time, the precise nature of the disaster remains ambiguous throughout the work. McCarthy makes only a handful of oblique allusions to the circumstances leading up to the catastrophe, using flashbacks to describe a series of distant explosions, followed by a power outage; the relationship between these events and the end of human civilization remains unexplained. Ultimately, it is the swiftness with which society descends into chaos, coupled with McCarthy’s painstaking depiction of a world still containing vestiges of culture that are familiar to readers, that provide the novel with its dramatic force.
W Themes The Road depicts a world where virtually all human values have been abandoned. Images of savagery and violence dominate McCarthy’s fictional landscape, to the point that civilized human interactions give way to an atmosphere of deep distrust. In the midst of this dire view of human nature, the man and the boy become symbols of an abiding goodness, however tenuous this goodness may have become. Indeed, the father’s protective attitude
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The Road
toward his young son embodies everything that remains of traditional moral standards: qualities of loyalty, courage, and hope in the face of an all-encompassing misery. McCarthy creates a stark opposition between good and evil in The Road, as the father’s adherence to a basic moral code comes into continual conflict with the craven, desperate behavior of other men and women. In the face of these inhospitable forces, the father must struggle to protect his son both from physical danger and from moral and emotional despair. When the father finally succumbs to illness in the book’s closing pages, his son’s prospects of survival are thrown into question. Shortly after his father’s death, however, the boy encounters a man walking down the road. While the boy has no way of knowing that the man is “one of the good guys,” a basic sense of trust soon develops between them. The man introduces the boy to his woman companion, and they resume the journey south, as the new guardians of the boy’s physical and spiritual health. In this respect, McCarthy establishes a sense of continuity for the young boy’s faith, a clear line linking the father with other survivors who have retained their fundamental humanity in a landscape devastated by calamity.
W Style McCarthy’s style in The Road is striking in its simplicity, in contrast to the rich, almost baroque quality that characterizes his earlier writings. The writing in the novel is unrelentingly spare, broken up only by an occasional burst of lyrical, poetical prose. Indeed, much of the novel’s emotional power derives from its precise, unadorned language and diction. The rhythms and syntax of The Road are sharp and direct; dialogue occurs without punctuation, and McCarthy frequently employs sentence fragments to lend the narrative an air of urgency. Biblical language and imagery pervade the work, particularly in its evocations of themes of sin, forgiveness, and redemption. The novel is also noteworthy for its eschewal of proper names. McCarthy’s characters remain anonymous throughout the book, while convenient geographical markers such as towns and regions are permanently shrouded in obscurity, as if history itself has been eradicated. At the same time, McCarthy’s descriptions of the world following the disaster are remarkably straightforward. When the boy and his father encounter burnt corpses, looted supermarkets, and other signs of ruin, they react with almost no emotion. They have long become accustomed to a world where horrific events are routine. Throughout the book, McCarthy introduces menacing events without the use of foreshadowing or conventional forms of dramatic tension, further increasing the reader’s sense of unease and dread. In one early example, the boy and his father quickly go into hiding when a band of armed, marauding thugs appears on the
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE BOY is the man’s son and the novel’s only other major character. His name is never given; throughout the book he is known simply as “the boy.” In many respects, the boy is a student of the father, who teaches him not only the skills he will need to stay alive, but also the modes of behavior and thought that will help him retain his humanity. At the same time, the boy also serves as a counterpoint to his father’s deep distrust of others. In one scene, after the father has stripped a thief of his garments, the boy pleads for his father to show the man mercy. While the boy’s awakening to the human capacity for evil is among the novel’s most devastating aspects, he is also the book’s moral core—demonstrating, through his innocence and innate goodness, a deep sense of hope that ultimately drives his father’s will to survive. HE (also called Papa) is the main protagonist of The Road. The man is never named; throughout the book he is referred to as “He” (although his son occasionally addresses him as “Papa”). The man serves as the work’s moral and dramatic center. The movement of the narrative hinges on his efforts to lead his son to a safe, warm climate. The protagonist’s survival instincts are made evident from the beginning, as he continually locates sources of food and shelter, while shrewdly averting dangerous situations or potential traps. One of the most revealing moments for the character comes in a flashback, when he and his wife witness the explosions that signify the origin of the catastrophe. Although McCarthy’s protagonist has no way of knowing exactly what has happened, he immediately fills the bathtub with water, as if in anticipation of the coming disaster. In a sense, the character’s worldview is also foreshadowed by these actions, revealing him to be a man who is innately prepared to confront the worst-case scenario.
Set after a devastating nuclear holocaust, The Road takes place in the barren remains of the southeastern United States. ª Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1933, Cormac McCarthy is among the most influential American novelists of the late twentieth century. His fiction is distinguished by its ornate and rugged prose, violence, and themes of alienation and death. McCarthy’s novels are generally set in the American West and revolve around isolated individuals struggling to survive in harsh, unforgiving environments. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses (1992) and the Pulitzer Prize for The Road. In 2009 McCarthy won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.
road. The father’s reaction to the sudden appearance of other people reveals, indirectly, the extent to which human civilization has broken down. Rather than offering a promise of assistance or solidarity, the men are immediately perceived as an existential threat— indeed, the embodiment of evil, in opposition to the unfaltering integrity and decency that guide the actions of
the man and his son. By portraying the desolation solely through the perspectives of the father and son, McCarthy establishes a strong sense of isolation and fear, one that makes The Road a gripping narrative.
W Critical Reception Many critics consider The Road to be Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, as well as his most accessible work. Most have focused their critiques on the book’s fundamentally pessimistic tone and worldview. Allen Barra of the Philadelphia Inquirer calls McCarthy’s novel “about the bleakest book he has ever written.” Other reviewers have attributed the book’s emotional power to its “eerie simplicity,” viewing the absence of proper names or notable landmarks as symbols of a world stripped of all recognizable meaning (Donahue). Some critics, notably Barra and Yvonne Zipp (Christian Science Monitor), have suggested that The Road owes more to the horror and science fiction genres than to literary fiction, particularly in its evocation of corpses, cannibalism, and other ghastly images. A number of critics have located the book’s redemptive force in the power of McCarthy’s literary
In The Road a father and his sickly son travel a dangerous road through the ruins of a nuclear holocaust in order to reach the sea. Nacivet
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virtuosity. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin describes The Road as “an exquisitely bleak incantation— pure poetic brimstone,” while asserting that the work “would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.” Writing in the Guardian, Alan Warner compares McCarthy’s style in The Road to the later writings of Samuel Beckett, while also identifying elements of Ernest Hemingway and William Shakespeare in his prose. Other writers have seen McCarthy’s “poetical, mythic prose” as the perfect medium for describing the desolation, comparing the author’s depiction of the ruined earth to a “scarred human body” (Gatti). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barra, Allen. “Delving into Post-Apocalypse; A Bleak Novel by Cormac McCarthy Has a Father and Son Fighting to Live in a World Turned to Ash.” Philadelphia Inquirer 25 Sept. 2006: C4. Lexis-Nexis Academic. Web. 16 July 2010. Donahue, Deirdre. “All the Unpretty Forces Unleashed in ‘Road.’” USA Today. USA Today 26 Sept. 2006. Web. 16 July 2010. Gatti, Tom. “Hope Flickers, but Only Just.” Times [London] 28 Oct. 2006: 12. Lexis-Nexis Academic. Web. 16 July 2010. Maslin, Janet. “The Road through Hell, Paved with Desperation.” New York Times. New York Times 25 Sept. 2006. Web. 16 July 2010. Warner, Alan. “The Road to Hell: Cormac McCarthy’s Vision of a Post-Apocalyptic America Is Terrifying, but Also Beautiful and Tender.” Guardian [London] 4 Nov. 2006: 7. Lexis-Nexis Academic. Web. 16 July 2010. Zipp, Yvonne. “To Be Alive in a World That Is Dead.” Christian Science Monitor 3 Oct. 2006: 14. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 16 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Carlson, Thomas A. “With the World at Heart: Reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with Augustine and Heidegger.” Religion and Literature 39.3 (2007): 47-71. Print. This study investigates the theological underpinnings of McCarthy’s novel, questioning whether human existence can remain valid after it has been stripped of all recognizable cultural and social frameworks. Graulund, Rune. “Fulcrums and Borderlands: A Desert Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Orbis Litterarum 65.1 (2010): 57-78. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 July 2010. Identifies aspects of the desert in McCarthy’s depiction of a barren, postapocalyptic world, locating the novel’s symbolic and
metaphorical power in its evocations of barrenness and absence. Hampsey, John C. “Aestheticizing the Wasteland, Revisioning the Journey: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Gettysburg Review 21.3 (2008): 495-99. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web. 16 July 2010. Analyzes McCarthy’s “aestheticization” of disaster in The Road, identifying traces of Robert Browning and William Shakespeare in the novel’s lyrical power. Hudock, Sandy. “‘If They Saw Different Worlds What They Knew Was the Same’: Moral Inversion in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” The Image of the Outsider II. Ed. Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo: Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, Colorado State U-Pueblo, 2008. 122-25. Print. Examines the framework of an ethical code that emerges through the interactions between the father and the son. Kunsa, Ashley. “Maps of the World in Its Becoming: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Journal of Modern Literature 33.1 (2009): 57-74. Project MUSE. Web. 16 July 2010. Argues that the novel’s spare, “essential” prose style embodies underlying themes of hope and redemption, both for human society and for culture itself. Rambo, Shelly L. “Beyond Redemption? Reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road after the End of the World.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 41.2 (2008): 99-120. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 July 2010. Questions the stability of the novel’s themes of redemption and renewal, suggesting that these concepts are ultimately stripped of meaning once their social and historical contexts have been destroyed. Gale Resources
“Cormac McCarthy (1933-).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. 131-206. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 15 July 2010. Luce, Diane C. “Cormac McCarthy.” American Novelists since World War II, Third Series. Ed. James Richard Giles and Wanda H. Giles. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 143. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. 118-36. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 15 July 2010. “McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-.” Concise Major 21stCentury Writers. Ed. Tracey L. Matthews. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 2370-75. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 July 2010. Priola, Marty. “Cormac McCarthy.” Twentieth-Century American Western Writers, Third Series. Ed. Richard H. Cracroft. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 256. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. 162-73. Dictionary
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of Literary Biography Complete Online. Web. 15 July 2010. Open Web Sources
The official Web site of the Cormac McCarthy Society serves as a clearinghouse for information about the author and his works, including brief summaries of all of his novels, a discussion forum, and links to other valuable resources. http://www.cormacmccarthy. com “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine on 19 Apr. 1992, shortly before the publication of All the Pretty Horses, is widely considered to be the most substantive interview the reclusive author has ever given. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html?_r=1 Originally published in the Southern Quarterly (Summer 1992) and most recently updated in July 2007, this bibliography of scholarship and criticism, compiled by noted McCarthy scholar Diane C. Luce, is the most comprehensive available in English. http://www. midlandstech.com/edu/ed/eng/biblio.htm For Further Reading
Burgess, Anthony. The Wanting Seed. London: Heinemann, 1962. Print. This erudite novel offers a satirical glimpse into a dystopian future where overpopulation drives society to cannibalism. Durand, Alain-Philippe, and Naomi Mandel. Novels of the Contemporary Extreme. New York: Continuum, 2006. Print. This essay collection provides a range of perspectives on emerging apocalyptic and postapocalyptic trends in world literature.
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Frank, Pat. Alas, Babylon. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959. Print. This seminal postapocalyptic novel was inspired by popular fears of nuclear annihilation during the 1950s. Heffernan, Teresa. Post-Apocalyptic Culture: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. Print. By analyzing literary representations of disaster, this comprehensive study examines the erosion of traditional belief systems during the twentieth century. Kinane, Karolyn, and Michael A. Ryan. End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity. Jefferson: McFarland, 2009. Print. This far-reaching scholarly work surveys the evolution of apocalyptic ideas throughout world history and culture. It includes an essay by Lorenzo DiTommaso that examines the contrast between humanist and spiritual notions of redemption in The Road. King, Stephen. The Stand. New York: Doubleday, 1978. Print. This novel portrays a world devastated by a deadly plague and the ensuing struggle between surviving forces of good and evil. Adaptations
The Road. Dir. John Hillcoat. Perf. Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron. 2929/Dimension Films, 2009. Film. Distinguished by its hauntingly bleak atmosphere and its fine acting performances, the film received widespread praise as a faithful cinematic rendering of McCarthy’s text. Stephen Meyer
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The Road Home By Rose Tremain
W Introduction Rose Tremain’s 2007 novel, The Road Home, is a story exploring ambition, grief, loss, and the challenges of economic migration from the immigrant’s perspective. Set mainly in contemporary London, the novel chronicles the journey of Lev, a middle-aged widower from a village in Eastern Europe. When he is let go from the lumberyard where he has worked for twenty years with little prospect of a new job, he decides to immigrate to London to find work, hoping to support his daughter and his elderly mother back home. In London he struggles to keep his head above water—alienated but yet also attracted to the material wealth he finds there, Lev makes his way with the help of a number of fellow immigrants, full of a burning desire to make something of himself. By the conclusion of the book, Lev realizes that he has ability, drive, and a desire to return to his family and confront his grief over his wife’s death. The Road Home was published to critical acclaim, receiving the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008. For critics, the novel masterfully addresses the immigrant experience and fits in well within the context of Tremain’s well-accepted literary oeuvre. As critic Digby Durrant states, “The Road Home is another notable achievement from this most thoughtful and readable novelist.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Road Home confronts the issue of globalization and Eastern European immigrants in England. Globalization—the growing interconnectedness of economies, societies, and cultures—became a controversial subject in the late twentieth century. Intended to increase prosperity and peace by breaking down trade and cultural barriers, globalization also resulted in massive migrations
of immigrants from poor and less developed countries to more prosperous and more developed ones to find jobs. Known as economic migration, this process had profound repercussions worldwide. In 2004, eight Central and East European countries were added to the European Union: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Despite some early restrictions on the movement of workers, membership in the European Union allowed people from these Eastern European countries to easily migrate to Western European countries. Estimates of the number of Eastern European immigrants working in the United Kingdom range from 380,000 to 600,000. According to the Home Office, 211,000 Eastern Europeans came to England in 2007 to work. Although some English citizens welcomed the new arrivals and celebrated the growing diversity and multiculturalism brought about by immigration, others lamented the supplanting of traditional English culture in some areas, and felt economically and culturally threatened by these new immigrants. This opposition to Eastern European immigrants sometimes led to discrimination, harassment, and even violence. Originally drawn to the opportunities they might find in England, many of these immigrants became trapped by poverty, discrimination, and law enforcement to live permanently in the shadow of wealth and privilege. This stratification between the haves and have-nots is a key theme of The Road Home, as Lev longs for the material wealth he finds in England.
W Themes Grief and loss are key themes in The Road Home. After Lev loses his beloved wife, Marina, to leukemia and loses his job at the lumberyard, he leaves his village in Eastern Europe in order to seek a better life. As Edward Marriott notes in his review of the book in the Guardian, “The Road Home is thematically rich, dealing with loss and
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MAJOR CHARACTERS AHMED is a Muslim kebab-shop owner who gives Lev his first job—distributing leaflets—in London. GREGORY ASHE is the arrogant celebrity chef who owns the restaurant at which both Sophie and Lev work. LEV is a 42-year-old widower living in Auror, a village in an unspecified Eastern European country. After the lumberyard he has worked in for twenty years closes down, Lev leaves his young daughter with his mother and migrates to London in order to find work. He proves to be ambitious, resourceful, and diligent. LYDIA is Lev’s friend who takes him in when he needs a place to stay. A fellow immigrant, she is from Lev’s home country and meets him on the bus trip over to England. She has wealthy friends who are able to help her and offers Lev help when he begins to run out of money. RUDI is Lev’s best friend back home. A schemer and hustler, Rudi provides Lev with a link to his old life—especially memories of his wife—and reminds him of what he has left behind. SOPHIE is a trendy young chef who befriends Lev and eventually becomes his lover. The two work together, and the romance gets Lev fired. CHRISTY SLANE is an Irish plumber and landlord who becomes Lev’s best friend in London. A good-natured fatalist, Slane is a recovering alcoholic whose wife has divorced him and limited his access to his daughter. Despite his problems, he remains an open and generous man.
separation, mourning and melancholia, and what might underlie the ostensibly altruistic act of moving to another country to earn money for one’s family.” By the conclusion of the novel, Lev realizes that his time in England was motivated not only by economic necessity, but also by his need to escape his grief and his inability to deal with his loss. Critics find the novel a poignant portrait of the immigrant experience, particularly the alienation, powerlessness, isolation, and humiliation involved in being a foreigner struggling to survive in an alien culture. Lev cannot speak much English; he has trouble finding work and affordable living accommodations; and he doesn’t understand English culture. Yet he is attracted to the material wealth he finds in segments of English society, even while being repulsed by some of its societal mores and values. Eventually, he feels the pull of his home country, where exciting political, economic and societal changes promise more opportunity and a chance to reunite with his young daughter.
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A double-decker bus in London, England. In The Road Home, an Eastern European man immigrates to England hoping to find work so he can support his mother and daughter at home. robert paul van beets/Shutterstock.com
W Style The Road Home is a picaresque, episodic novel written from an omniscient, third-person point of view. Reviewers commend Tremain’s narrative style and her sensitive and insightful portrayal of the immigrant experience. As Digby Durrant observes, “Rose Tremain writes as effortlessly and rhythmically as she breathes, tackling the serious misery of a hidden homesickness with a light and humane touch but with a firm grasp of the day-to-day realities and a rare ability to enter into the complex emotional world of the stranger.” Many reviewers praised Tremain’s careful language, well-crafted phrases, and vivid descriptions. In his Guardian review, Edward Marriott states that Tremain’s “writing has a delicious, crunchy precision: plants sold in a market are ‘fledgling food’; winter is described as having a ‘deep, purple cold’; new buds on larch trees are ‘a pale dust, barely visible to the eye.’” Lev’s culinary experiences are especially vibrant for reviewer Kathy Weissman. “Probably my favorite moments in the book are set in the restaurant. Rose Tremain evokes the controlled chaos, pinpoint timing and near-military precision of a professional kitchen—it’s run like a small autocratic state—in several brilliantly cinematic scenes,” she argues in her review. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Tremain’s ability to realistically portray Lev’s feelings and surroundings—a characteristic that they find in her other fictional work—impressed a number of critics. As Liesl Schillinger noted in the New York Times Book Review, “reading any novel by Rose Tremain, one suspects that what is torture for so many writers comes naturally to her. She has written about a dozen novels, set in different eras and places: Restoration England, presentday Paris, Denmark in the late Renaissance, New Zealand during the mid-19th-century gold rush, a Suffolk farm community in the 1950s. Each book has an entirely distinct voice, tone and subject, but all have an equal vigor, fluency and authenticity of characterization.”
W Critical Reception Regarded as one of the top British novels of 2007, The Road Home was awarded the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008. In critical assessments of the novel, reviewers found it a nuanced, realistic, and timely story of twenty-first century immigration in multicultural London. As Kathy Weissman noted in her review, “I dreaded an uplifting parable of the Immigrant Experience. What I got was a hero of such specific integrity, depth, decency and pain that his journey becomes not simply the story of a stranger in a strange land, but a revelation of the truths ‘foreigners’ tell us about ourselves.” In her review in the New York Times, Liesl Schillinger concurred. “Journeys like Lev’s are very much a part of Britain’s present reality, with discussion of the Eastern European invasion appearing all over,” she asserts. “But Tremain elevates the subject beyond its outlines by making Lev not a statistic or a caricature or the standard-bearer of a trend but simply a man—fully embodied, his ignoble and noble acts presented without exaggeration, without excessive praise or condemnation. His difficulties, though specific, are not exceptional.” Digby Durrant also finds Tremain’s characterization of Lev masterful. “Rose Tremain writes as effortlessly and rhythmically as she breathes, tackling the serious misery of a hidden homesickness with a light and humane touch but with a firm grasp of the day-to-day realities and a rare ability to enter into the complex emotional world of the stranger,” he maintains in his Spectator review. A number of critics discuss The Road Home in the context of Tremain’s impressive range, noting her ability to convincingly portray different character types, settings, and time periods. As Edward Marriott asserts, “for a writer more accustomed to the distant past of the historical novel, the story of a modern-day economic migrant is a bold move, but Rose Tremain does not disappoint.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Durrant, Digby. “Return of the Native.” Spectator 23 June 2007. Web. 19 July 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rose Tremain was born on August 2, 1943, in London, England. After attending Francis Holland School in London, she went to the Sorbonne in Paris to study literature. In 1967 she received her BA in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. She took a job teaching French and history at a primary school, and then spent a year as an editor at a publishing company in London. In the early 1970s she became a full-time writer. In 1973 she published her first book, The Fight for Freedom for Women, an illustrated history book on the struggle for women’s rights. Her first novel, Sadler’s Birthday, was published in 1976. She has also written numerous radio and television plays; one of them, Temporary Shelter, received a Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play. In 1983 Tremain was named by Granta as one of the twenty best young British novelists. That same year, she became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her work has been honored with several prestigious awards: Sacred Country received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1993 and the Prix Femina Etranger in France in 1994; Music & Silence was designated as the Whitbread Novel of the Year in 1999; and The Road Home received the Orange Broadband Prize in 2008. Tremain was also awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in 2008. She lives in London and Norwich, England with biographer Richard Holmes.
Marriott, Edward. “Down but Not out in Latterday London.” Guardian [London] 10 June 2007. Web 19 July 2010. McDowell, Lesley. Review of The Road Home, by Rose Tremain. Independent [London] 24 June 2007. Web. 19 July 2010. Schillinger, Liesl. “Strange New World.” New York Times Book Review 29 Aug. 2007. Web. 19 July 2010. Weissman, Kathy. Review of The Road Home, by Rose Tremain. Bookreporter.com. Web. 19 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Brownrigg, Sylvia. “No Place Like Home: Sylvia Brownrigg Finds Empathy in Rose Tremain’s Immigrants.” Guardian [London] 9 June 2007. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 20 July 2010. Elucidates the key thematic concerns of The Road Home and commends Tremain’s characterizations and poignant portrayal of Lev’s friendships and relationships. Greenlaw, Lavinia. “Home Economics: A Migrant Worker in London Discovers the Real Price of Living Abroad.” Financial Times 7 July 2007. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 20 July 2010. Deems The Road Home “a subtle and challenging account of a
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story we think we know already and of a person we all too often reduce to nothing more than a political issue or a statistic.” “Land of Milk and Money.” Sunday Times [London] 24 June 2007. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 20 July 2010. Finds some flaws in Tremain’s lyrical prose but praises her poetic imagination and engaging characters. Moore, Caroline. “Caroline Moore Is Gripped by This Tale of an Immigrant’s Attempt at a New Life.” Sunday Telegraph 10 June 2007. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 20 July 2010. Contends that Tremain is one of the few contemporary authors who can create and sustain an interesting and believable “essentially good” character. “Tremain, Rose: The Road Home.” Kirkus Reviews (15 Aug. 2008). General OneFile. Web. 20 July 2010. Favorable review of The Road Home. Gale Resources
“Rose Tremain.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 July 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revisions, Vol. 186. Print. Open Web Sources
Rose Tremain’s official Hatchette Book Group Web site allows readers to read excerpts from The Road Home and also provides biographical information on the author. The Orange Prize Web site offers information on Rose Tremain, her novel The Road Home, and the award of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008. The website also has a Q & A with Tremain that discusses the inspiration for the novel. First-person stories of the immigrant experience can be found on the Scholastic Teachers Web site. Get an interactive tour of Ellis Island, publish your own story online, and explore the immigration history of different ethnic groups in the United States. http://www.teacher.scholastic.com/activities/ immigration
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For Further Reading
Bacon, David. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. Print. Investigates the ways in which global economic and political policy impact migration. Orner, Peter, ed. Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2008. Print. A collection of oral histories from undocumented workers struggling to survive in America, offering a first-person look at the immigrant experience. Panayi, Panikos. An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2010. Print. Provides a historical context for recent debates about immigration in the United Kingdom. Siers, Gloria. Once There Was and Will Never Be Again. Mount Pleasant: Autumnberry Hill, 2009. Print. Based on a true story, this fictional memoir chronicles the journey of a young Ukrainian boy to North America in search of a better life. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking Press, 1939. Print. The Road Home is often compared to this classic American novel, which explores the experiences of the Joad family during the Great Depression. When a drought drives them from their home in Oklahoma, the family travels to California to find work and a better life. Tremain, Rose. The Colour. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print. In this novel, Tremain also focuses on the stories of immigrants, telling the story of a pair of English immigrants in nineteenth-century New Zealand who try to become wealthy during the gold rush. ———. Restoration: A Story of Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Viking, 1989. Print. Historical novel set during the Restoration that traces the rise and fall of an Englishman, Robert Mercival, who becomes a favorite at the court of King Charles II. When he falls out of favor and is cast out, he forced to confront the grim realities of life without privilege. Margaret Haerens
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The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem By Kanan Makiya
W Introduction Kanan Makiya’s The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem is a historical novel that weaves stories of the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The novel is a fictional account of the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The site of the Dome has deep significance for each of the religions—it is where Abraham went to sacrifice his son, where Jesus preached, and the site from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven. The story takes place at a time when the religions were more tolerant of each other and religious identity was relatively fluid. The main protagonist, Ka’b al-Ahbar, is a historical personage. He was a Yemenite Jew who converted to Islam and was a confidant of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the caliph who conquered Jerusalem around 635CE. Ka’b and Umar find the Rock of Foundation while on a conquest of Jerusalem, where Ka’b discovers that, if he kneels in the right place, he can pray facing both Mecca and the Rock. Near the end of the seventh century, when Caliph Abd al-Malik orders the construction of the Dome over the Rock, it is Ishaq, Ka’b’s son, who designs it. Ka’b converted when Islam was in its infancy, before much of the dogma was established and when the religions mutually influenced one another. At the heart of the story is Ishaq’s difficulty in accepting the fluid nature of his father’s faith amid the growing rigidity of religious doctrine.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Rock carefully straddles the line between historical fact and fiction. Sources for each chapter are meticulously documented in a section following the narrative, and, according to a reviewer, “Makiya says that he has ‘not
allowed [himself] the liberty of changing the original sources from which the pieces were taken’ except for ‘changes in language, continuity and the modification of detail’” (Goodheart). This serves to illuminate presentday conflicts between Jewish and Islamic regimes, and the relationship between the Arab world and the West, by reminding each side of their shared history and the fact that Islam grew out of Judaism, and, according to one critic, “Islam was consciously intended by the Prophet to be an inheritor religion to Judaism” (Spufford). As the story is told, the Qur’an is still being compiled, “and it had not yet become a point of doctrine that the Jewish Torah was a dangerously corrupted work that a Muslim should not read” (Spufford). Makiya’s aim in writing the novel is to remind people of the connected histories and shared traditions of the three monotheistic religions. Largely based on legends, myths and beliefs of the religions, the book intends to illustrate the basic commonalities between the three rather than emphasize their differences. According to Stephen Howe, writing for London’s the Independent, “Kanan Makiya’s purpose is to recall . . . intertwined history. Through that, a wider argument is made: that in the early years of Islam the three great monotheisms were not fixed in separation, let alone in antagonism. There were pervasive mutual influences, cultural borrowings, constant traffic to and fro.” One way Makiya accomplishes this is by using a narrator who identifies with both Judaism and Islam, saying in the book’s notes section, “Like Ka’b, I ardently hope that my readers have a difficult time discerning whether a given tale in this book, or a particular detail of one, is Jewish, Muslim, or Christian in origin” (qtd. in Salih).
W Themes Since he is an architect, it is understandable that Makiya would concern himself with the construction of what has been called “Islam’s first grand monument” (Salih) and
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The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem
MAJOR CHARACTERS KA’B AL-AHBAR is a historical figure and the main protagonist in the novel. He was a Yemenite Jew who converted to Islam and discovered, while following the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Rock of the Foundation. He uncovers the rock and encourages Muslims to revere the holy stone, but ultimately fails as Muslims turn toward Mecca to pray. ISHAQ is the son of Ka’b al-Ahbar. He is enlisted by the Caliph Abd al-Malik to be the architect of the temple dome to be constructed over the Rock. He narrates the story and debates the rigidity of Islamic doctrine with Abd al-Malik. UMAR IBN AL-KHATTAB is a caliph who is followed by Ishaq’s father, Ka’b. Like Ka’b, Umar is less rigid and dogmatic than al-Malik and Ishaq, although he leads the conquest of Jerusalem in 638 CE. ABD AL-MALIK is a caliph who is obsessed with building the Dome of the Rock in order to associate himself and Islam with Jerusalem.
“one of the world’s most beautiful buildings” (Howe) as the subject of his novel. According to Stephen Howe, “[The] detailed story of the Dome’s construction . . . owes a lot to the author’s architectural training.” The Dome, and the Rock it celebrates, however, are accurately portrayed in the novel as the source of some of history’s most contentious and controversial conflicts. The metaphors of building and construction are extended to encompass the pervasive theme of idolatry, represented often as Ishaq’s preoccupation with the temple that he is building. All three religions observe strict tenets against idolatry and, as a reviewer for the Partisan Review has observed, “Idolatry, from the point of view of the great religions, diverts us from the true object of veneration, the invisible transcendent Deity” (Goodheart). In the novel, Ka’b warns Ishaq against his obsession with the dome, leading Ishaq in turn to comment to the reader on Ka’b’s own worship of the Rock. Makiya provides historical facts and commentary on the claims of each religion to the Rock, rather than assigning it special significance to one particular faith. He acknowledges its importance to Jews, but, building on the theme of idolatry, also maintains, through Ishaq, that “A thing
The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem takes a fictional look at the building of one the city’s most important structures, the Dome of the Rock. tamir niv/Shutterstock.com
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belongs to the one who remembers it most obsessively.” (qtd. in Reich)
W Style Widely acknowledged as being only marginally fiction, The Rock uses real people and events to describe the rebuilding of the Dome of the Rock. One critic has noted that “For each chapter in the unfolding of this story Makiya provides an illuminating list of scholarly references—citing primarily Arab authorities, but also Jewish and Christian—to back up almost every detail and quotation” (Reich). Structuring history in this way—by disguising it as fiction—Makiya enables himself to construct a history that is self-consciously fragmented and layered, a technique reflected by his protagonist, who, “in telling stories about the summit of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem . . . did not favor one source or religious tradition over another” (qtd. in Salih). The accomplishment of creating a fictionalized history depends, according to one critic, on Makiya’s decision to have a character narrate the story: “Unlike the historian, who aims for an objective narration of events (whether he can achieve it is another matter), Makiya entrusts his story to a participant in the events who, by virtue of his participation, cannot claim objectivity” (Goodheart). Makiya has commented on his reason for assigning a narrator to the story by saying, “I wanted to travel through the stories I had unearthed and use myself as a narrator—but it didn’t work, and the reason, I think, is that the central character of my book is the Rock itself. I couldn’t make that rock come alive; I needed a character to give it voice.” The novel has a lyrical quality and is written with the rhythm and flow of a prose poem. Recalling Makiya’s nonfiction books and his history of writing about Iraqi policies and politics, The Irish Times reported that The Rock “is closer to poetry than to politics,” calling it “a leisurely meditation on the building of the Dome of the Rock” (Wallace).
W Critical Reception Criticism of The Rock is largely divided into two camps: those who view the novel as historical fiction and those who identify a political agenda. Many critics understand The Rock as a project undertaken by Makiya to prompt readers to consider the origins of religious doctrines and to illuminate their shared cultural traditions. According to the Nation, “The Rock is a historical novel with a difference. While it traces the lives and developments of people who did exist and events that did happen, its real sources and ultimate focus are the traditions of monotheism” (Munthe). London’s the Independent, as well, has suggested that “Kanan Makiya’s purpose is to recall . . . intertwined history. Through that, a wider
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kanan Makiya was born in Baghdad in 1949. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a British national in 1982. Along with his father, he worked on a number of architectural projects for Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War, was a leading adviser to the U.S. government, and a strong proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He is a member of the Iraqi intelligentsia who has published several nonfiction books criticizing Iraq and the Arab world, and has collaborated on many films for television. He is currently the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University.
argument is made: that in the early years of Islam the three great monotheisms were not fixed in separation, let alone in antagonism” (Howe). Many other critics, however, noting Makiya’s political history, have accused him of advancing political and religious views through the guise of a fiction of unity. An article in the New Leader suggests that, “[W]hat weakens The Rock’s claim to fiction above all is the transparent agenda that drives it,” continuing, “An agenda, when pushed as hard as happens here, has a way of sabotaging the fictional authority of a tale.” The author goes on to say that, “Makiya’s agenda, clearly, is to reaffirm the religious, and by extension political, centrality of Jerusalem for Islam, and to recall the tolerance the city’s Muslim rulers demonstrated to other religions in the years when the faith was closest to its wellspring of revelation” (Reich). An article in London’s Evening Standard has taken a similar tack, saying, “[Makiya] shows a fine imaginative civility towards the Jewish and Christian strands in his fabric. But on his own account he seems calmly aligned to the faith inscribed on the inside of the Dome, where it is declared that God has no sons, and Muhammad is His prophet, as well as Moses. This is a Muslim work of historical imagination and understanding” (Spufford). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Goodheart, Eugene. “Whose Rock?” Partisan Review 70.1 (2003): 146+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Green, John. “Makiya, Kanan. The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem.” Booklist 15 Apr. 2002: 1367. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Howe, Stephen. “Books: Children of Abraham, One of Saddam’s Leading Critics Has Written a Fable of Faiths at War—and at Peace. Stephen Howe Finds out Why.” the Independent [London]. Independent
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News & Media. 18 May 2002. HighBeam Research. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. “Interview: Kanan Makiya Talks about His Latest Novel, The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem.” All Things Considered National Public Radio 18 Mar. 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Makiya, Kanan. The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem. New York: Pantheon, 2001. Print. Munthe, Turi. “Muslim Jerusalem: A Story. (The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem).” Nation. The Nation Company L.P. 1 Apr. 2002. HighBeam Research. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Reich, Tova. “Reaching across Boundaries. (Winter Books).” New Leader. American Labor Conference on International Affairs 1 Nov. 2001. HighBeam Research. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. “The Rock: A Seventh-Century Tale of Jerusalem. (Fiction).” Booklist 1 Jan. 2002: 761+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Salih, Sabah A. “The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem.” Middle East Journal. Middle East Institute 1 Jan. 2003. HighBeam Research. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Spufford, Francis. “Sacred Stories of Peace.” Evening Standard [London]. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 29 Apr. 2002. HighBeam Research. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. Wallace, Arminta. “Getting Caught between the Rock and a Hard Place; Kanan Makiya Exposed the Operation of Saddam Hussein and His Inner Circle to the Outside World in the 1990s. Now He Turns to the Dome of the Rock, Throwing a New Light on Age-Old Questions of Tradition, Religion and Tolerance.” Irish Times 14 May 2002. HighBeam Research. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Abbey, Alan. “Three Heavenly Rocks.” Jerusalem Post. 25 Jan. 2002. HighBeam Research. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Positive review and summary that discusses the novel in the context of history and the conflicts between Judaism and Islam.
Hedges, Chris. “Best Address in Jerusalem.” New York Times 25 Nov. 2001. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. Review of The Rock that discusses the author, and the history, religion, and the significance of the historical novel in light of current events. Reston, James, Jr. “Hard Places.” Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 9 Dec. 2001. HighBeam Research. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. Review and summary of the novel that considers historicity in light of 9/11. Open Web Sources
Page from “NOW with Bill Moyers,” PBS’s educational section, devoted to the author. Includes sections and links to work by and related to Kanan Makiya http:// www.pbs.org/now/politics/makiya.html Page from National Public Radio’s “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” that contains a link to a recording of a 27 Nov. 2001 broadcast featuring Makiya as a guest. http://www.onpointradio.org/2001/11/the-iraqconundrum Author’s page at Brandeis University, where he is a professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. http://www.brandeis.edu/ departments/nejs/faculty/makiya.html For Further Reading
Ahluwalia, Pal, and Bill Ashcroft. Edward Said. 3rd. ed. London: Routledge, 2008. Print. Book about a Palestinian cultural critic and literary theorist who was a vocal critic of Makiya’s and engaged him in open debate. Grabar, Oleg. The Dome of the Rock. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006. Print. Historical account of the Dome of the Rock from the seventh century to present. Makiya, Kanan. Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World. New York: Norton, 1994. Print. Indictment of much of the Arab world and its political and social structures, especially in Iraq under the Hussein regime. ———. The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. New York: Tauris, 2004. Print. Critique of art in Hussein’s Iraq before and after the first Gulf War.
Cohen, Nick. “A Question of Faith.” Observer 12 May 2002. Web. 23 Sep 2010. Review of the novel in the context of Makiya’s political views and his relationship to the Bush administration’s policies and the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
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The Savage Detectives By Roberto Bolaño
W Introduction The Savage Detectives (2007), originally published as Los detectives salvajes in 1998, is regarded by many critics to be the most important work by Chilean fiction writer and poet Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003). The novel’s plot revolves around two young poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, who found an avant-garde literary group known as the visceral realists. A sprawling narrative that spans two decades and several continents, the novel traces the lives of the protagonists and their numerous friends, acquaintances, and followers, from their youthful idealism in Mexico City during the 1970s through their slow, inexorable decline into disillusionment and obscurity—and, in some cases, madness and death. More broadly, The Savage Detectives concerns the uncompromising pursuit of literary greatness and its impact on the mental and physical well-being of the individual artist. The novel defies easy categorization, employing devices from a range of literary styles and genres to generate a story that is at once a mystery, a cultural history, a thinly veiled autobiography, and an epic prose poem. A landmark work of modern Latin American literature, The Savage Detectives earned Bolaño numerous awards, including the Premio Rómulo Gallegos, the most prestigious writing prize in the Spanish-speaking world.
W Literary and Historical Context
Much of The Savage Detectives is set against the political and cultural upheavals that shook Latin American and Mexican society during the 1970s. In particular the novel unfolds in the aftermath of two traumatic years: 1968, when a brutal period of police oppression in Mexico resulted in the imprisonment and deaths of thousands of leftist intellectuals and radicals; and 1973, the year of
Augustus Pinochet’s military coup in Chile. These events cast a long shadow over the lives of several of the novel’s characters, notably Arturo Belano, the Chilean poet whose participation in the socialist resistance against Pinochet shapes his later life in exile. In one memorable section, a Uruguayan woman, the self-proclaimed “mother of Mexican poetry,” hides in a bathroom stall during a military takeover at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she spends several days scribbling poetry onto a roll of toilet paper. Her actions later become the subject of myth among the novel’s other aspiring writers, a symbol of opposition to the forces of repression. At the same time, The Savage Detectives is also firmly rooted in Roberto Bolaño’s personal history. As Natasha Wimmer and others have noted, the novel’s two main protagonists, Belano and Ulises Lima, are modeled after the author and his good friend and collaborator, Mario Santiago, respectively. Belano and Lima’s efforts to launch the visceral realism movement, which forms the heart of the novel, mirror Bolaño and Santiago’s real-life founding of infrarealism, a radical literary movement that achieved notoriety in Mexico City during the mid-1970s. Furthermore the diverse visceral realists who populate the novel are, to varying degrees, modeled after Bolaño’s actual contemporaries, a strategy that lends the work its qualities of intimacy and pathos.
W Themes The Savage Detectives is, at its heart, a quest novel. On one level the work concerns the search for a longforgotten Mexican poet, Cesárea Tinajero, who during the 1920s helped found an obscure literary movement known as visceral realism. Although few examples of Tinajero’s writings remain, Belano and Lima are so inspired by stories of her iconoclasm and resistance to traditional poetic forms that they name their own group after hers. Belano and Lima’s quixotic mission to find
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The Savage Detectives
MAJOR CHARACTERS LUPE is a young prostitute who is rescued from her pimp by a middle-aged architect, Joaquin Font, who enlists Belano and Lima to take her away from Mexico City. Scarred by her time walking the streets of Mexico City, Lupe becomes transformed through her association with the visceral realists. In the book’s closing pages, she even begins to see herself as a member of the group, as she accompanies Lima, Belano, and Madero on their search for Cesárea Tinajero. ARTURO BELANO and ULISES LIMA are the novel’s main characters. As cofounders of a visceral realism group, Belano and Lima are responsible for bringing together many of the work’s principal characters, including not only their fellow poets and intellectuals but also prostitutes, thugs, and other figures in Mexico City’s underworld. After they murder a pimp and a corrupt policeman, Belano and Lima are forced into exile. Although they slowly slip into obscurity, periodic reports of their activities are provided by the novel’s narrators. JUAN GARCÍA MADERO is the teenage poet who becomes the unofficial scribe of the visceral realists. A precocious and naive young talent, Madero provides some of the book’s most in-depth descriptions of Belano and Lima, capturing them while they are still in their prime. At the same time, Madero’s journal entries recount his own sexual and literary coming-of-age, representing some of the most earnest and passionate passages in the novel. CESÁREA TINAJERO is the founder of the original visceral realists in the 1920s and the object of Belano and Lima’s obsession. Known for her searing intellect in her youth, Tinajero has abandoned poetry in her old age and lives in humble obscurity in the Sonora Desert.
Tinajero, as well as their subsequent wanderings throughout Europe, Israel, Mexico, and Latin America, establish the adventurous, seeking tone that characterizes The Savage Detectives as a whole. A powerful sense of liberation—at once creative and sexual—drives the actions of the novel’s protagonists, as they reject prevailing social and cultural norms in order to pursue bold forms of experimentation, both in literature and in living. As the book’s various narrators reflect on their encounters with the two poets, a portrait of poetic striving and bohemian freedom gradually develops. With the passage of time, however, these aspirations give way to disillusionment, poverty, and despair. “Youth is a scam,” one former friend declares late in the novel, shortly before he is involved in a devastating car crash. Yet in the book’s evocation of the extremes to which Belano
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In the novel The Savage Detectives, Lupe is a prostitute who works the streets of Mexico City. ª Nik Wheeler/Corbis
and Lima chase their goal for literary purity, a sense of their fundamental integrity and honesty emerges. These qualities are what ultimately endure in the novel, even in the face of sorrow and tragedy.
W Style The language used in The Savage Detectives is quick paced, idiomatic, and vigorous, in ways that embody the novel’s underlying sense of passion and urgency. Andrew McCann identifies qualities of “indecorousness, energy and impatience with the belletristic rules of ‘taste’ and ‘style’” in Bolaño’s prose, while Christopher Goodwin describes the novel’s technique as “unpretentious” and “conversational.” The novel’s use of crime novel motifs, most noticeable in the subplot involving the prostitute Lupe and her pimp, Alberto, also lend the work an edgy, informal quality. Structurally The Savage Detectives features roughly fifty narrative points of view, all of which are devoted to telling some story involving either Belano or Lima. The novel begins and ends from the perspective of Juan García TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Savage Detectives
Madero, a teenage orphan and poet, whose diary writings frame the book’s central plot line and themes. The book’s large middle section, on the other hand, comprises a long series of individual narratives, featuring more than four dozen distinct speakers. These short pieces, which resemble eyewitness testimonies, are recounted by people who, over a span of twenty years, have had some form of memorable encounter with either Belano or Lima. Some of these narratives take the form of brief anecdotes and unveil discrete aspects of the poets’ idiosyncratic—and enigmatic—personalities. Other personal accounts are longer and more detailed and often reveal as much, if not more, about the speaker than about their subjects. Gradually, portraits of the protagonists emerge that are complex and rich and yet also vague and intangible. Although there are points in the narrative when a witness recollects a snippet of dialogue delivered by one of the two poets, Belano and Lima never speak for themselves at any point of the book. While in one sense they are the “savage detectives” of the novel’s title, restlessly pursuing some elusive truth, Belano and Lima are themselves the object of a broader, more expansive investigation, conducted by some unknown figure. Ultimately the mystery of the two poets remains unsolved at the novel’s conclusion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, on April 28, 1953. He spent his teenage years in Mexico City. At the age of twentythree, Bolaño founded the infrarealists, an avant-garde literary group that vehemently rejected mainstream Latin American literature. In 1977 Bolaño moved to Europe, where he traveled widely and worked odd jobs, while continuing to write poetry; during these years Bolaño also struggled with alcoholism and heroin addiction. He eventually settled in the coastal town of Blanes, Spain, where he quit heroin, and married a Spanish woman, Carolina López. Shortly after the birth of his son in 1990, Bolaño was diagnosed with a fatal liver disease. At about this time he began writing fiction. In 1996 he published his first major work, the novel Literatura nazi en América (Nazi Literature in the Americas, 2007). That year he also published a novella, Estrella distante (1996; Distant Star, 2004). Bolaño produced steadily over the next several years. In addition to The Savage Detectives, his notable works include Amuleto (1999; Amulet, 2006) and Nocturno de Chile (2000; By Night in Chile, 2003). Bolaño died on July 15, 2003. His epic novel 2666, widely considered to be his masterpiece, was published posthumously in 2004, while an English translation followed in 2008.
In the novel The Savage Detectives, Cesárea lives in the Sonora Desert. Paul B. Moore/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Savage Detectives
W Critical Reception
Additional Resources
Los detectives salvajes was an instant literary sensation upon its publication in Spanish in 1998 and established Bolaño as one of the most important figures in Latin American literature of the late twentieth century. With the publication of Natasha Wimmer’s translation in 2007, the novel gained widespread recognition among English-speaking audiences. As a number of critics have noted, Bolaño’s novel is partly intended as a brash repudiation of mainstream Latin American literature from the period between the 1960s and the 1990s. Among the objects of Bolaño’s wrath is Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, who is openly detested by the visceral realists in the novel. By contrast Bolaño’s work is characterized by what Daniel Zalewski calls the “outlaw spirit that pervades every avant-garde movement.” At the same time, many English-language commentators have been struck by the deeply personal quality of Bolaño’s narrative. James Wood calls the work “craftily autobiographical,” while Zalewski describes the work as a “lament, a chronicle of dissipated potential.” Zalewski also identifies an underlying tension between the work’s raw, passionate tone and its complex, “cerebral” structure. Comparing Bolaño’s storytelling techniques to those of Jorge Luis Borges, Zalewski concludes that the work has a “style worthy of its own name: visceral modernism.” Most critics have asserted that The Savage Detectives defies straightforward classification. Christopher Goodwin describes the work as “rich in uncertainties, a mixture of thriller, philosophical and literary reflections, pastiche and autobiography.” Remarking on the novel’s convoluted and ambiguous plot, Michael Schmidt suggests that language is both “an instrument of understanding and misunderstanding” in The Savage Detectives. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Goodwin, Christopher. “This Author Is Dead, but His Books Are Now Being Recognized as Some of the Greatest of Our Age.” Sunday Times [London] 7 Dec. 2008: 4. Print. McCann, Andrew. Rev. of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. Age [Melbourne] 5 May 2007: 27. Print. Schmidt, Michael. Rev. of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. Times [London] 21 July 2007: 12. Print. Wimmer, Natasha. Introduction. The Savage Detectives. By Roberto Bolaño. Trans. Wimmer. New York: Picador, 2008. Print. Wood, James. “The Visceral Realist.” Rev. of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. New York Times 15 Apr. 2007: 1. Print. Zalewski, Daniel. “Vagabonds: Roberto Bolaño and His Fractured Masterpiece.” New Yorker 26 Mar. 2007: 82-88. Print.
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Criticism and Reviews
Gander, Forrest. “Un lio bestial.” Nation 31 Mar. 2008: 38-42. Print. Discusses the novel’s style and major themes within the context of Bolaño’s early poetical writings. Hallberg, Garth Risk. “Why Bolaño Matters.” Millions. N.p., 22 Aug. 2007. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Identifies various narrative threads in The Savage Detectives that form the basis of Bolaño’s other fictional works. Medina, Alberto. “Arts of Homelessness: Roberto Bolaño or the Commodification of Exile.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.3 (2009): 546-54. Print. Analyzes the underlying tension between themes of recollection and renunciation in The Savage Detectives. Pollack, Sarah. “Latin America Translated (Again): Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives in the United States.” Comparative Literature 61.3 (2009): 346-65. Print. Compares The Savage Detectives with other works of Latin American literature that have been translated into English. Sauri, Emilio. “‘A la pinche modernidad’: Literary Form and the End of History in Roberto Bolaño’s Los detectives salvajes.” MLN 125.2 (2010): 406-32. Print. Interprets the novel as an exhaustive and vigorous attempt to push narrative fiction beyond modernism. Gale Resources
“Roberto Bolaño.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. “Roberto Bolaño.” Literature Criticism Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 294. Print. Open Web Sources
Las obras de Roberto Bolaño, a tribute site dedicated to the late author, featuring posts from various bloggers discussing aspects of Bolaño’s life and work. http:// www.bolanobolano.com/ The National Public Radio (NPR) Web site maintains an audio recording of “Poets and Gangsters: Discovering Roberto Bolaño,” an All Things Considered feature that originally aired on April 28, 2007. http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=9852989 For Further Reading
Bolaño, Roberto. 2666. Trans. Natasha Wimmer. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2008. Print. Regarded by many critics to be the author’s most important work, this devastating novel revolves around the brutal unsolved murders of hundreds of women in a Mexican border town. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. Trans. Donald A. Yates, James E. Irby, et al. New York: New Directions, 1962. Print. Acknowledged to have exerted a profound influence on Bolaño’s narrative style, these intricately structured stories and essays explore such themes as truth, certainty, and the reliability of human perception. Cortázar, Julio. Hopscotch. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Pantheon, 1966. Print. This playful, episodic novel subverts traditional narrative structures, as it follows various characters in their pursuit of personal and creative meaning. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking, 1957. Print. This landmark work follows the lives of the
author’s alter ego, Sal Paradise, and his friends as they embark on an ambitious, revelatory voyage across the United States. Maristain, Mónica. Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview, & Other Conversations. Trans. Sybil Perez. Brooklyn: Melville, 2009. Print. Maristain elucidates Bolaño’s thoughts on family, death, and his literary legacy during the final period of his life. Rimbaud, Arthur. Complete Works. Trans. Paul Schmidt. New York: Harper, 1975. Print. These incantatory, derisive, and boldly experimental poems offer insights into Bolaño’s own aesthetic sensibility, as described in The Savage Detectives and other works.
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Stephen Meyer
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The Scents of Marie-Claire By Habib Selmi
W Introduction Habib Selmi’s novel The Scents of Marie-Claire (2010, translated by Fadwa al Qasem) is the story of a relationship between a Tunisian man and a French woman. The story is narrated in the first person by Mahfouthe, a scholar of Arabic literature who works in a Parisian hotel. He reflects on his relationship with a French postal worker named Marie-Claire, from its beginnings in a chance encounter in a café to its development over time and, eventually, its demise. As the story unfolds, Mahfouthe reveals important incidents from his own childhood in Tunisia and reflects on what Marie-Claire has told him about her early life as the daughter of a waiter in Paris. The Scents of Marie-Claire has been recognized for its insightful treatment of the difficulties attendant upon relationships that cross racial and ethnic divides. It is also, however, concerned with the complications, such as self-doubt and jealousy, that can undermine any romantic relationship. The novel boosted Selmi’s international reputation and was shortlisted for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a prestigious award sometimes known as the “Arabic Booker.”
W Literary and Historical Context
The Scents of Marie-Claire is set in France, which contains the largest number of people of Arab descent in Europe. In the decades following World War II, many Arabs immigrated to France; specifically, young Arab men entered the country to look for work during the 1960s and 1970s. Immigration was especially heavy from countries in North Africa, such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Many of these immigrants settled permanently in France, sending for their relatives to join them or starting new families, which resulted in the significant number of second-generation Arabs in France today.
In the novel Mahfouthe has come to France from his home country of Tunisia. After spending many years as a student, supporting himself by working in a hotel, he earns his PhD but decides to remain in Paris, where he enjoys his job and the opportunities his life in France affords. In Paris he is part of a large Arabic-French community, which includes his Tunisian boss and a colleague from Morocco. Mahfouthe fears returning to Tunisia, where “they would confiscate the passport of anyone who returned to Tunisia after a long time spent abroad, in order to ensure that their minds had not been tainted and that their love for their country remained true.”
W Themes Early in Selmi’s novel Marie-Claire exclaims, “What strange coincidence brought us together!! A Parisian born in Minelle Menton and a peasant from a small Tunisian village.” The differences in culture and experience between the two characters frame the novel’s plot. The distinction between their two perspectives is dramatized when Marie-Claire comments that “when I was born, you were seven years old. Seven years, three months, and nineteen days to be exact.” This desire to quantify his age and the differences between them is foreign to Mahfouthe, who explains that “I’m not sure that I was actually born on that date. People in rural areas didn’t pay much attention to dates of birth in those days.” Later, Mahfouthe’s descriptions of his childhood spent torturing ants and scorpions and molesting donkeys is contrasted with Marie-Claire’s accounts of her childhood in the Parisian suburb of Minelle Menton, where she lived in an apartment building with an elevator and tagged along with her father to the café where he worked. Ironically, it is not the vast differences in culture and childhood experiences that ultimately create a rift between the two characters but rather issues such as jealousy and failures of communication—problems that can be found in relationships between people of more
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The Scents of Marie-Claire
similar backgrounds. Indeed, the challenge of creating true intimacy with another person becomes a dominant theme of Selmi’s novel. Mahfouthe finds himself irrationally jealous of Marie-Claire’s first love, a young man named Ladislaus. Although he is disappointed with himself for being so jealous, he is unable to communicate his feelings to Marie-Claire and instead enters into a downward emotional spiral that undermines his already tenuous self-esteem: “I had proved myself to be a weak, fragile man, who was jealous of a child who used to kiss her more than twenty years ago.” Marie-Claire often exacerbates the communication problems in their relationship by withdrawing and ignoring Mahfouthe. Eventually, their love and sexual desire for one another fades, and the relationship collapses. Eschewing the differences in race and culture, Mahfouthe concludes that “there is nothing more fragile than the relationship between a man and a woman.”
W Style In an interview with the Assyrian writer Samuel Shimon in Banipal, Selmi explains his beliefs about what makes an effective novel. He states, “I favour novels with few
MAJOR CHARACTERS MAHFOUTHE is a Tunisian scholar who has been living in Paris for nine years when he meets Marie-Claire in a café. After completing his PhD in Arabic literature, he decides to continue working in a hotel while teaching occasionally on the side. At the beginning of his affair with Marie-Claire, Mahfouthe starts to develop confidence in himself as a man and a lover. As their relationship progresses and they move in together, however, he discovers that he is a jealous man and has trouble handling Marie-Claire’s discussions of her first love. At the end of the novel, he is saddened by, yet understands, her decision to leave him. MARIE-CLAIRE is a French woman who gave up her studies in history and geography before earning a degree. She works in a post office, where she enjoys handling other people’s letters. A free spirit, she draws the reserved Mahfouthe out of his shell, getting him to talk about his childhood in Tunisia and his relationship with his parents. She eventually ends the relationship when she realizes that she no longer loves him.
In The Scents of Marie-Claire, a Tunisian man tells the story of his romantic relationship with a French woman named Marie-Claire. lightpoet/ Shutterstock.com
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The Scents of Marie-Claire
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Habib Selmi was born in Kairouan, Tunisia, in 1951. As a young man he experienced some success as a writer of short stories. In 1985 he moved to Paris, where he published his first novel, Jabal al-’Anz (Goat mountain) in 1988. His reputation as a novelist continued to grow as he published more works, including the critically acclaimed Ushaq Bayya (2002; Bayya’s lovers). His novels and pieces of short fiction have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and Rawa’ih Marie-Claire was the first of his novels to be translated into English. Selmi continues to live and write in Paris, where, like the protagonist of The Scents of Marie-Claire, he teaches Arabic literature.
events and places. I believe that a novel is not a tale or a myth that is full of characters and events. The novel is not a sack full of occurrences and changes.” This commitment is reflected in The Scents of Marie-Claire, which focuses not on dramatic events but on the characterization and psychology of its two major characters. The work can be categorized as one of psychological realism, a subgenre that centers on characters’ thoughts and perceptions, often expressed through first-person narration. As is typical of such writing, the novel focuses on the interiority of its narrator. For example, at one point in the story, Mahfouthe explains how he occupies his mind during long breakfasts with Marie-Claire: “Because I was afraid of getting bored with sitting down and would then get up, or because I was afraid that my mood would be spoiled, I would turn inward and embark on a journey of memories. I would recall the day my mother had died. I would remember how on that day people had loved me as they had never loved me before.” Later, Selmi fills several pages with Mahfouthe’s inner turmoil when, toward the end of his relationship with Marie-Claire, he lies in bed filled with desire for her but lacks the courage to act on it. Commentators have pointed out the emphasis that Selmi places on characterization. Discussing the novel in its original language for the Daily News Egypt, a reviewer notes that “Marie-Claire is a character-driven novel. All events of the story are produced from the fluctuation of their relationship. Using flashbacks to chronicle the childhood of each, [Selmi] takes his time to solidly build his characters, giving them the space to grow and reveal themselves as the novel progresses.”
W Critical Reception When it was published in Arabic in 2008, the novel garnered international acclaim and was short-listed for
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the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Commentators have been drawn to the work for its timely exploration of tensions between men and women and between lovers of different racial and cultural backgrounds. Reviewing the Arabic version of the book for Time Out Bahrain, Gareth Clark praises Selmi for revitalizing a common literary theme. The novel, Clark suggests, “belongs to a well-established theme in Arabic fiction, the east-west encounter, as told through a love story between a European woman and an Arab man. [Selmi] makes his own contribution and it actually brings a breath of fresh air to this well-trodden theme.” While praising The Scents of Marie-Claire for its insight into character and human relationships, commentators have occasionally pointed out weaknesses in the novel, primarily its uneventful plot. The Daily News Egypt, for example, suggests that “its only downside, however, is that simply, there isn’t much happening in the novel.” The book’s international success helped confirm Selmi’s reputation of one of Tunisia’s foremost contemporary writers. It also led to the publication in 2010 of the English translation. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Clark, Gareth. “International Prize for Arabic Fiction.” Time Out Bahrain 23 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. “The Dreamy Fragrances of Marie-Claire.” Daily News Egypt 15 Jan. 2009. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. Selmi, Habib. The Scents of Marie-Claire. Trans. Fadwa al Qasem. New York: American U in Cairo P, 2010. Print. Shimon, Samuel. “Tunisian Writer Habib Selmi: Writing Is a Journey Using Language from Within.” Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 18 (2003): 4. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Karkouti, Mustapha. “The Abu Dhabi Booker Prize.” Middle East 400 (2009): 36. Print. Offers an overview of the nominees for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, including The Scents of Marie-Claire. Pieprzak, Katazyna. Rev. of La nuit de l’étranger, by Habib Selmi. Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arabic Literature 33 (2008). Web. 24 Sept. 2010. A review of the French translation of Selmi’s novel La nuit de l’étranger (The night of the stranger) that provides insight into the author’s methods for depicting the complex relationships between his characters. Qabal, Mu’ti. Rev. of The Scents of Marie-Claire, by Habib Selmi. National [Abu Dhabi] 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. An interview in which Selmi TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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discusses his life experiences and how they have affected his writing. Open Web Sources
Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature offers an online biography of Selmi, who is a contributor to the independent literary magazine. http://www.banipal. co.uk/contributors/184/habib_selmi/ The Web site of the company International Publishers Marketing provides a short overview of The Scents of Marie-Claire and a brief biography of its author. http://www.internationalpubmarket.com/clients/ auc/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=219448 Seeing the World through Books features an in-depth online review of Selmi’s novel. http://marywhip plereviews.com/books/?p=14461 For Further Reading
Frangieh, Bassam K. Anthology of Arabic Literature, Culture, and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Print. This collection of Arabic literature provides insight into Mahfouthe’s field of study. Kallir, Jane, and Alfred Weidinger. Gustav Klimt: In Search of the Total Artwork. New York: Prestel, 2009. Print. In the novel, Klimt’s The Kiss is Marie-Claire’s favorite painting. This study of the Viennese artist provides insight into Marie-Claire’s taste and vision of ideal love.
Laurence, Jonathan, and Justin Vaïsse. Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France. Washington: Brookings Institution, 2006. Print. This volume of nonfiction examines the history of Muslim immigration to France and explores the political, social, and religious challenges of integrating Islamic heritage and traditional French culture. Perkins, Kenneth J. A History of Modern Tunisia. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print. Although The Scents of Marie-Claire is set in Europe, Mahfouthe’s background in Tunisia is important to the story. This nonfiction exploration of the country’s history provides insight into his cultural heritage. Richardson, Brenda Lane. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Celebrating Interethnic, Interfaith, and Interracial Relationships. Berkeley: Wildcat Canyon Press, 2000. Print. Drawn from interviews, this nonfiction collection tells the stories of couples whose relationships cross racial, ethnic, or religious borders. Whittaker, Andrew. Speak the Culture: France: Be Fluent in French Life and Culture. London: Thorogood, 2008. Print. This guide offers an overview of French life and culture and provides context for Marie-Claire’s background.
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Greta Gard
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The Sea By John Banville
W Introduction John Banville’s The Sea (2005) is a first-person novel. The narrator is recent widower Max Morden, an art historian in his sixties who returns after fifty years to the seaside village where he spent summer vacations with his parents. Set in the early 2000s with flashbacks to the 1950s, the novel traces the protagonist’s memories as he processes the recent loss of his wife and evaluates his experiences from the month of August when he was eleven. The autumn after his wife dies, Morden stays at the Cedars, the boarding house that was once the August rental home of his childhood friends, the Graces. He thinks about his wife’s medical treatments, her suffering, and death, and he recalls the Grace family, particularly his adolescent crush on Mrs. Grace and his friendship with the fraternal twin children, Chloe and Myles. Now well past midlife, he mulls over his early impressions of this family and regrets his misinterpretations of the parents and the children’s governess, which may have contributed to a series of tragic events. Reminiscent of James Joyce’s “Araby,” The Sea is rich in literary and artistic allusions. It borrows the interior and landscape palette of Pierre Bonnard, who is the subject of a monograph Morden is stalled in writing. The novel’s title points to its central metaphor: the sea in its constant rise and fall conveys to Morden the larger world’s indifference to an individual person’s suffering.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Sea focuses on two periods in Irish history, the 1950s and the early 2000s. It also describes class differences between the working-class Mordens and the wealthy Graces. Mid-twentieth-century Ireland faced economic
difficulties, exacerbated by loss of population. In fact, between the mid-1940s and the early 1980s about 500,000 people emigrated, roughly one-eighth of the national population of four million. However, exports began to increase in the late 1950s, and by the 1960s, there was less unemployment. Free secondary education had been initiated, and the general curriculum improved, changes that would have enhanced the education and professional prospects of the young Max Morden. In 1972 Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC), often called the Common Market, a move designed to enhance trade among member nations and regulate certain industries, notably in the area of energy production. In 1977 Ireland passed the Employment Equality Act, which made sex discrimination illegal in the workplace. In 1990 Mary Robinson, a feminist lawyer, was elected president. Thus, through his professional years as an art historian, Max Morden would have seen improving working conditions and greater benefits for working women. As the new millennium got underway, economic contraction occurred in Ireland as it did elsewhere in the West, with significant loss of jobs in information technology and housing construction. At the same time, the influence of the Catholic Church gradually weakened. While abortion remained a subject of debate, contraception use and divorce became common in Ireland, and homosexual acts were decriminalized.
W Themes The Sea illustrates how an immediate loss causes a person to think back to earlier ones. The narrator, Max Morden, broods on how his wife dealt with her stomach cancer and faced death, and these memories trigger earlier ones, when on vacation as a child he experienced his first erotic attachments and witnessed the drowning of two children. Connected to this theme of grief is one about memory. Max concedes that he cannot escape the past.
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At one point, he remarks, “The past beats inside me like a second heart” (10). In his return to the seaside village after fifty years, he invites suppressed memories to surface. The immediate setting evokes the earlier one, and he repeatedly conflates recent experiences with distant events. Woven together and at the same coming unraveled, these memories are framed by the mature man’s perspective and his present grief. A third theme connected to those of grief and memory concerns how time itself molds point of view. For example, Max recalls his childhood interpretation of the Graces and his first infatuation—with Mrs. Grace. He remembers how as a child he felt he was changed permanently in that moment of first love. But as an adult reflecting on that experience, he ponders that each moment changes all the rest of them in a given life. Aging changes perception of the present and the past; it shifts the way things are defined and evaluated. Maturity gives a context of its own to individual experiences, but it does not necessarily mitigate grief and regret. These three themes are central to Banville’s novel.
W Style Banville’s style is lush, descriptive, and highly metaphoric. Part of its effectiveness comes from his unique choice of modifiers and his vocabulary, which may send even good readers to a dictionary. The point of view moves seamlessly between the narrator in his early sixties and the boy he was at age eleven, conveying the child’s narrow view of his world and innocent ways of interpreting it within the larger framework of the mature man’s vantage point. Thus, Banville constantly frames past action within the larger context of present understanding. Max Morden is a cultivated man, well-read and knowledgeable in the visual arts. His allusions, both explicit and subtle, enrich his interpretations. Describing the seashore setting he borrows from the palette of Pierre Bonnard; in characterizing the Graces he offers a Vermeer-like attention to detail; in commenting on a diary he ought to have kept during the last year of his wife’s life, he calls it “My journal of the plague year” (18), an allusion to Willem Defoe’s 1722 novel. He alludes repeatedly to Greek mythology, at one point calling himself a “lyreless Orpheus” (18). In these and other ways the style causes one to read slowly, with appreciation, as one might a poem. It causes one to stop reading and visualize in a new way, seeing the scene and events with this narrator’s informed and cultivated perspective.
W Critical Reception With considerable experience in journalism, John Banville moved into fiction with apparent ease, impressing readers
MAJOR CHARACTERS CARLO GRACE, a rough fellow but fun loving, is the father of the Grace twins. CHLOE GRACE is the daughter who gives the young Max Morden his first kiss. CONSTANCE GRACE is the mother of the fraternal twins Chloe and Myles and the object of Max’s first erotic attachment. MYLES GRACE is the son who does not speak and has webbed toes. ANNA MORDEN is the narrator’s deceased wife. Max recalls how she handled herself with her doctors and confronted without self-pity the fact that she was dying from cancer. CLAIRE MORDEN is the daughter of Anna and Max who is worried about her father and tries to assist him. MAX MORDEN is the narrator and protagonist, an art historian and recent widower who returns to a childhood vacation spot in order to process his grief and review his life. ROSE VAVASOUR is the governess who tends to the Grace twins and is erotically drawn to Mrs. Grace. When Max returns to the Cedars, he finds Rose is the landlady.
with his refined diction, poetic style, and keen eye for detail. His fourteenth novel, The Sea, was warmly received from the start and recognized as a contender, though not the favorite, to win, as it did, the Man Booker Prize, which singles out the best full-length novel in English written by a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, and Zimbabwe. Many reviewers in 2005 gave unqualified praised for Banville’s The Sea, placing the work among those of the best Irish authors, including George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce, and focusing on its narrative method and style. Typical of such praise is Lewis Jones’s comment in the Telegraph that the book is striking for its “fastidious wit and exquisite style.” Comparing his work to another famous author, Deidre Donahue praised Banville’s style in USA Today: “Like [Vladimir] Nabokov, Banville describes everything with the precision of a scientist and the language of a poet.” Summing up the assessment of many, Ronan Farren in the Independent praised the novel for “its surface simplicity concealing creative artistry at an exalted level, its luminous, measured prose offering new delights.” But some reviewers qualified their praise. In the Boston Globe, for example, Gail Caldwell tempered her general admiration by asserting that the prose is “sometimes too exquisite.” Caldwell also found fault with the character of Max Morden, stating that he is much like early Banville protagonists, a man who is
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The Sea
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Wexford, Ireland, on December 8, 1945, John Banville worked as a journalist in the 1960s and then served as an editor for the Irish Press (1969-1986) and the Irish Times (1986-1999). He published thirteen novels before The Sea (2005) and received widespread recognition as a novelist by winning the Man Booker Prize for that novel. Thereafter, he found an even wider readership by writing crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, producing Christine Falls (2006), The Silver Swan (2007), and The Lemur (2008). As of 2010, Banville lived in Dublin.
“oblivious to his own behavior or his impact upon others.” In his review for the Guardian, Finn Fordham also focused on the protagonist, explaining that Max Morden’s name “points to death” and Morden binges to comfort himself. Fordham stated, “Reconstruction
through memory is Morden’s drug: he binges on it and on grief, booze and writing.” Caldwell would seem to agree, concluding that “The Sea is an exploration of how a man so brilliantly cultivated and articulate lacks the core of self that provides us with a moral footing.” In all, though, Banville’s novel was widely admired for its prose style and its portrait of a man awash with grief, caught in the backwaters of his own memories. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Banville, John. The Sea. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print. Caldwell, Gail. “Sepulcher by the Sea.” Rev. of The Sea by John Banville. Boston.com. Boston Globe 6 Nov. 2005. Web. 26 June 2010. Donahue, Deidre. “The Sea: Waves of Elegant, Evocative Words.” Rev. of The Sea, by John Banville. usatoday.com. USATODAY 7 Nov. 2005. Web. 26 June 2010. Farren, Ronan. “I Remember that Summer of Revelation.” Rev. of The Sea, by John Banville. Independent. ie. Independent 19 June 2005. Web. 26 June 2010. Fordham, Finn. “High Tidings.” Rev. of The Sea, by John Banville. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian 25 June 2005. Web. 26 June 2010. Jones, Lewis. “Ghost of a Ghost.” Rev. of The Sea, by John Banville. Telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph 5 June 2005. Web. 26 June 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Crowley, John. Rev. of The Sea, by John Banville. washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 13 Nov. 2005. Web. 25 June 2010. Explains Banville’s handling of memory as a creative function that fuses fragments retained about the past into a still-life moment. Friberg, Hedda. “‘Waters and Memories Always Divide’: Sites of Memory in John Banville’s The Sea.” In Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present. Eds. Hedda Friberg, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, and Lene Yding Pedersen. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007, 244-62. Print. Explores the central metaphor in The Sea and its psychological import for the novel. Murphy, Neil. “From Long Lankin to Birchwood: The Genesis of John Banville’s Architectural Space.” Irish University Review 36.1 (2006): 9+. Print. Analyzes Banville’s first three works in an attempt to explain the way the author conceptualizes structure, what Murphy calls “immanent problems of artistic form,” in his fiction and conveys it. Having recently lost his wife, a man returns to the small seaside town where he spent many childhood family vacations and recalls his past in The Sea. javarman/Shutterstock.com
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Powell, Kersti Tarien. “The Lighted Windows: Place in John Banville’s Novels.” Irish University Review 36.1 (2006): 39+. Print. Investigates Banville’s use of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Sea
spatial relationships, particularly his use of windows as focal point, a threshold between outer and inner spaces, and a device whereby the perceiver frames the world. Zipp, Yvonne. “Dark Musings by the Irish Sea.” csmonitor.com. Christian Science Monitor 8 Nov. 2005. Web. 25 June 2010. Analyzes the character of Max Morden and his erudite language, pinpointing this aspect of the novel as determining whether readers will enjoy the book. Gale Resources
Moseley, Merritt. “The Sea, by John Banville.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 326. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 June 2010. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CH1220000969&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it= r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
The Benjamin Black Web site, available at http:// www.benjaminblackbooks.com, contains a video interview with John Banville in which the author differentiates between the books he wrote using his own name and the crime novels he later wrote using his pseudonym Benjamin Black.
For Further Reading
Banville, John. Doctor Copernicus. New York: Vintage, 1993. Print. A fictionalized biography of the Renaissance scientist who developed the heliocentric theory of the solar system. ———. Shroud. New York: Vintage International, 2004. Print. The 2002 novel, portraying a fraud, a professor of literature who does not have the education or family in Antwerp that he claims. Bartley, Brendan, and Rob Kitchen, eds. Understanding Contemporary Ireland. London: Pluto Press, 2007. Print. Collected essays that cover various aspects of life in twenty-first century Ireland, including the economy, politics, population, and social issues. Imhot, Rudiger. The Modern Irish Novel: Irish Novelists after 1945. Northampton: Interlink, 2005. Print. Discusses the tradition and legacy of Irish novelists, including Banville. Zimmerman, George Dennis. The Irish Storyteller. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001. Print. Explores the evolution of oral storytelling in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Melodie Monahan
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Sea of Poppies By Amitav Ghosh
W Introduction Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) is the first in a proposed trilogy that follows the adventures of cast of characters in the tradition of Charles Dickens, with a smattering of English, French, and Indian dialects, written in the first person. Deeti Singh, the protagonist, is a widowed poppy farmer who is rescued from the selfimmolation ritual known as suttee on her husband’s funeral pyre, by Kalua, a man of a lower caste. Forced to flee their village, they seek passage on the Ibis, a refitted slave ship newly commissioned to carry opium, convicts, and coolies (indentured servants). There they encounter a myriad of colorful characters, each with a story and a particular dialect in which to convey it. The common influence that brings the characters together on the schooner is the imminent opium wars between the British of the East India Company and the Chinese in 1838. Deeti’s husband dies of an opium overdose. Paulette, the maverick French orphan, cannot endure her station as a ward of Benjamin Burnham, who compensates his loss in slave trading by exporting opium and coolies on his ship. Neel Rattan Halder, the bankrupt raja, becomes a victim of his debt to Burnham and finds himself sentenced to prison in Alipore, his crime tattooed on his forehead. Zachary Reid, a mulatto American freedman, passes as white in the role of second mate. Nabu Bob Kissin rounds out the primary cast as Burnham’s accountant, slowly transfigured into his spiritual mentor, Ma Taramony, his deceased great aunt. Together, they shed their former cultural and economic limitations for a chance at freedom from caste, race, and circumstance. The heart of the novel is a sprawling collision of diverse personalities sharing a single journey from Calcutta to the sugar plantations of Mauritius. As the first installment of a
larger work, the climax of the novel is open-ended, leaving readers to speculate on the ultimate fate of the leading characters. The journey, however, addresses complex issues associated with the personal narratives, as strangers come together as ship-brothers.
W Literary and Historical Context
Sir George Grierson (1851-1941), Irish philologist, was dispatched by the British government to address abuses of indentured servants who were recruited in India for British plantations. His linguistic skills allowed him to collect oral testimonies of victims of British East India Company trade practices and to produce, as one consequence, a seminal work on various languages. In his Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh provides the imagined narratives of such characters aboard the Ibis, a slave ship refitted to serve as an opium schooner. The literary passages that vary in dialect, called chrestomathy, generally function as a tool for learning languages. The novel uses this technique to suggest language as significant in understanding the effects of the opium wars. The dawn of the trade conflict that began in 1838 opens Ghosh’s historical novel with a transport of coolies and convicts from Calcutta to Mauritius, in an aggressive move to force the trade of opium that was paralyzing China at the time. The British economy was dependent on tea and other commodities that could be purchased with money made from selling opium to the Chinese. When China resisted, the British used force to open Chinese ports and eventually won the city of Hong Kong. In his book Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates, Peter Fay Ward argues that England’s monopoly of the opium market, though little known, contributed to the fall of the Ching dynasty and still echoes in Sino-Western
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Sea of Poppies
MAJOR CHARACTERS BENJAMIN BURNHAM is a planter and owns the Ibis ship. CAPTAIN CHILLINGWORTH is the captain of the Ibis and avowed opium addict. MR. DOUGHTY is the pilot of the Ibis. ELOKESHI is the raja’s mistress. KALUA is Deeti’s low-caste lover. He is an ox-car driver and an exceptionally large man. NEEL RATTAN HALDER, the raja, is a Bengali landowner and opium profiteer quasi framed for forgery and marked with an ink tattoo on his forehead for transport on the Ibis when he refuses to sell his lands to Burnham. BABOO NOB KISSIN, Burnham’s accountant who is given to malapropisms, believes he is undergoing a sex change into his female avatar, Ma Taramony. PAULETTE LAMBERT is the daughter of an educated Frenchman and horticulturalist in Calcutta. She is adopted by Burnham following her mother’s death, and she is raised by a Bengali wet nurse, Tantima. JODU NASKAR, the son of a boatman and Tantima, the wet nurse, is Paulette’s Indian soul mate. TANTIMA NASKAR is Jodu’s mother and wet nurse to Paulette.
Picture of Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies. ª Sophie Bassouls/ Sygma/Corbis
relations. Ghosh’s fictional account of the realities of this historical footnote provides numerous voices that have been lost to history and fills in the spaces with colloquialisms that humanize those voices.
ZACHARY REID is the ship’s second mate and son of a Maryland freed woman and white father. He passes for white. DEETI SINGH, the protagonist, is a widow of an opium addict who is rescued from the suttee death ritual by her large and imposing lover, Kalua, with whom she flees on the Ibis. She is a Bihari poppy farmer. HUKAM SINGH, husband of Deeti, becomes addicted to opium following a war injury and dies.
W Themes There are several themes in this novel that correspond to its diverse narratives. The theme of freedom is central and commands the various subthemes. Deeti seeks freedom from her caste (social status or position conferred by a rigid system based on class), further complicated by cultural laws that demand her ritual death by burning when her husband dies. Kalua, bound by a lower rank in the caste system, seeks freedom when he rescues Deeti. Paulette tries to escape a life that subjects women to male dominance, and Zachary seeks relief from his racially mixed birth, though he is an American freedman. Baboo Nob Kissin struggles with a mystical passage to a different gender, and Neel Rattan Halder is forced to exchange a socioeconomic prison for the Alipore jail. The novel
unfolds against this flight from collective bondage, though the final disposition of these characters’ quests for freedom is left a mystery. A second important theme is addiction. As the colonial British powers shift from the lucrative slave trade to opium, the Indian infrastructure changes. Deeti is, like many others, forced to cultivate poppies. Her husband, Hukam, who works in the Sudder Opium factory, eventually succumbs to his addiction, which he refers to as “his first wife.” Burnham profits from the addictive properties that drive the market and promote the demand for indentured servants. Even the raja Halder, ruined by debt, but unwilling to sell his lands to Burnham, becomes a product of addiction.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born July 11, 1956, in Calcutta, Bengal, India, Amitav Ghosh earned his BA from Delhi University (with honors), followed by his MA in 1976. He took his PhD at Oxford University in 1978 and went on to study at the Institut Bourgui des Langues Vivantes in Tunis. His professional background as an anthropologist and historian influenced his fiction, particularly his preoccupation with linguistics. One of his several novels, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997, and Sea of Poppies was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Ghosh has taught, traveled, and written extensively.
Language as historical narrative is a third major theme. Ghosh infuses his multiple storylines with many voices, each speaking a pidgin dialect from the Lascars of the Pacific Rim, to the Anglo-Indian of Calcutta, and all points in between. According to Neel Rattan Halder, “words, no less than people, are endowed with lives and destinies of their own.” Languages, thus, like people, can
be subject to the same forces; they survive when spoken and recorded and perish when lost and forgotten.
W Style Ghosh’s style is perhaps as varied as the saga he begins in Sea of Poppies. Unlike his previous novels, frequently compared to Salman Rushdie’s magical realism, his seventh novel shares its use of chrestomathy with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, although Joyce invented his language, while Ghosh uses established languages with accuracy. Despite the distractions of the strings of dialect and obscure nautical phrases, Ghosh maintains enough of a stylized context to make the narrative understood. Given that his ensemble cast requires readers to pay extra attention, Ghosh offers assistance by carefully matching external action with his character’s internal emotions. For example, when the once powerful and privileged raja must share his cell with a forsaken opium addict struggling with withdrawal, he is moved to pity and washes the man of filth. While his characters sometimes border on caricature (a representation that highlights a distinctive feature), Ghosh’s panoramic prose adds a realistic, if gritty touch. The effect is that no two characters are the same, and the
Sea of Poppies takes place in the midst of an international opium war. ª Gerd Ludwig/Corbis
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focus of each chapter helps to place every character within comprehensible range of the action. As the first book of three, an open-ended quality makes for an abrupt conclusion, but rightly so, if the saga is to be continued.
W Critical Reception Though it was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Sea of Poppies, the first in a proposed trilogy, met with mixed reviews. While many critics admired the ambitious task of historicizing the lost narratives of coolies and criminals yoked together on an epic journey across the Indian Ocean, many others found the novel lacking in sustainable characters and coherent language. Writing in the Library Journal, Sally Bissell expressed fear that Ghosh’s novel leaves readers “distracted by the author’s fascination with word origins.” Toby Lichtig, in his article appearing in the New Statesman, found the story a “readable romp”; however, he accused the novel’s ambitious collision of character and colloquialism for contributing to a “general sense of caricature.” In her review in the New York Times, Gaiutra Bahadur suggested that Ghosh’s zeal for pidgin languages may be “incomprehensible to readers,” although she praised him for his effort to imagine otherwise lost dialects by people who could not leave written accounts. Carol Herman’s review in the Washington Times noted similar examples of “rollicking” passages. Other critics such as Janet Maslin suggested Ghosh’s presumptuous polyglot angle provided the novel with a “mischievous linguistic fascination.” For Mary J. Elkins, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, Ghosh’s deft handling of the context overcomes the linguistic challenges of competing dialects. Echoing others who enjoyed the cumbersome, though often comedic stylized dialects of Ghosh’s colorful characters, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar noted in the Christian Science Monitor the author’s impressive feat in resuscitating the forgotten language of the lascars and the “nautical Babel of English, Portuguese, Malay, Hindi, and other languages.” Maya Jaggi, however, praised Ghosh for creating a “page-turner” driven by historical detail in her review in Artforum. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bahadur, Gaiutra. “A Passage from India.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. nytimes.com. New York Times 30 Nov. 2008. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Bissell, Sally. “Ghosh, Amitav. Sea of Poppies.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. libraryjournal.com. Library Journal 1 Oct. 2008. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Chandrashekhar, Vaishnavi. “Sea of Poppies.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. csmonitor.com. Christian Science Monitor 29 Oct. 2008. Web. 3 Aug. 2010.
Elkins, Mary J. “Author Amitav Ghosh Takes a Trip aboard the Ship Ibis.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. rockymountainnews.com. Rocky Mountain News 6 Nov. 2008. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Ghosh, Amitav. Sea of Poppies. New York: Picador, 2008. Print. Herman, Carol. “What the Opium Wars Wrought.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. washingtontimes. com. Washington Times 16 Nov. 2008. Web. Aug. 2010. Jaggi, Maya. “Heavy Traffic: Amitav Ghosh’s Novel Illuminates the British Empire’s Polyglot Opium Trade.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. artforum.com. Artforum Oct. 2008. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Lichtig, Toby. “Sex ’n’ Drugs ’n’ Folderol.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. newstatesman.com. New Statesman 5 May 2008. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Maslin, Janet. “Afloat in a World Made Dizzy by Opium.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. nytimes.com. New York Times. 5 Nov. 2008. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Ward, Peter Fay. Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates. Chapel Hill: North Carolina UP, 1998. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Andersen, Hephzibah. “Opium Addicts, Beheaded Traders Crowd Ghosh’s Shipboard Trilogy.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. bloomberg.com. Bloomberg 10 Oct. 2008. Web. 6 Aug. 2010. Comments on the British trade wars with China in 1838, intended to force the opium market and applauds Ghosh for managing the sprawling epic. Binyon, Michael. “Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. entertainment. timesonline.co.uk. Times [London] 6 June 2008. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Describes the British role in the Opium Wars and the novel’s major characters. “The Call of the Running Tide.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. economist.com. Economist 24 May 2008. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Cites the author’s skill in characterization and the attention to place. Chew, Shirley. “Strangers under Sail.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. independent.co.uk. Independent 16 May 2008. Web. 6 Aug. 2010. Commends the author’s creative use of language for the eclectic cast aboard the opium schooner, Ibis. Tharoor, Sashi. “Soldiers and Victims of the Opium War.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh.
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washingtonpost.com. Washington Post 19 Oct. 2008. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Compares Ghosh to Salman Rushdie and gives background to British rule in India, with insights on postcolonialism. Wrangler, Chris. “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Rev. of Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh. thephoenix.com. Boston Phoenix 8 Oct. 2008. Web. 7 Aug. 2010. Notes Ghosh’s research of the East India Company’s role in opium production and its general effects on the characters. Gale Resources
“Ghosh, Amitav.” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Aug. 2010 http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE| H1000036268&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
The Amitav Ghosh homepage, at http://www.amitav ghosh.com, includes a blog and a profile of the author, along with access to interviews and discussion of the Ibis chrestomathy. For Further Reading
Beeching, Jack. The Chinese Opium Wars. New York: Mariner Books, 1977. Print. Explores the Chinese government’s response to British imperialism by way of the nineteenth-century opium. Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. Suggests in a thorough though controversial argument that India’s caste system was manipulated by British control.
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Hanes, W. Travis, III, and Frank Sanello. The Opium Wars. Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2002. Print. Discusses the British Empire’s forced flooding of the opium market in order to subsidize imports such as tea. Jung, Moon-Ho. Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008. Print. Describes the plight of the coolie regarding race, labor, and migration issues and argues that Asian coolieism was a solution to Southern planters’ labor problems after the American Civil War. Perez, Rosa Maria. Kings and Untouchables: A Study of the Caste System in Western India. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004. Print. An anthropological approach that reconsiders the rigidity of the caste system, and suggests a reevaluation of social norms. Ray, Sangeeta. En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. Print. Postcolonial and feminist study that argues that portraits of native Indian women in English and Indian novels were promoted in defense of Indian self-rule as well as British imperialism. Yule, Henry, and Arthur Coke Burnell. Hobson-Jobson 2 Part Set: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. Etymological dictionary of words current in colonial India daily usage. Doris Plantus-Runey
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The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd
W Introduction Set in South Carolina in 1964 The Secret Life of Bees chronicles the story of fourteen-year-old Lily Owens as she flees her abusive father and racist town with her African American nanny, Rosaleen. The two runaways end up in Tiburon, South Carolina, as Lily searches for information on her mother, who was fatally shot in a mysterious accident when Lily was a very young girl. There they are taken in by a generous, eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters—May, June, and August Boatwright—who help the two women and provide a safe and supportive atmosphere for the traumatized young girl. They also teach Lily a lesson on the power of community and about the strength of the feminine, which is symbolized by the figure of the Black Madonna. The Secret Life of Bees proved to be a commercial and critical hit. It sold more than six million copies and was published in thirty-five countries. It was also adapted into a feature film, which was released in 2008, and starred Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, and Queen Latifah. “Honey-sweet but never cloying, this debut by nonfiction author Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter) features a hive’s worth of appealing female characters, an offbeat plot and a lovely style,” stated a Publishers Weekly review of the novel.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Secret Life of Bees is set in South Carolina in the early 1960s, just after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. A landmark piece of American legislation, the Civil Rights Act legally ended racial segregation in schools, at work, and in public facilities. It also forbid discrimination on the basis of sex and race in hiring and promotion practices. Section 703 (a) made it unlawful for an employer to “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or
otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” It also outlawed unequal application of voter registration requirements. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a sweeping piece of legislation that had a profound political, economical, and social effect on the country—but particularly in the American South, where racial segregation permeated every part of life and was part of the political and social fabric. Right away, discriminatory Jim Crow laws were invalid and segregation became illegal. Opposition to the bill and its implementation in the South was fierce. Southern politicians and community leaders resented federal intervention into their affairs. They were determined to keep the status quo, and sometimes violent clashes resulted. Politically, the passage of the bill had long-term and far-reaching consequences. Because the Democratic Party had proposed and championed the bill into law, many Southern voters abandoned their loyal support of the party and switched over to the Republicans. Although Lyndon B. Johnson was reelected in 1964, the electoral swing of Southern voters was a trend that would continue into the 1990s and would greatly impact future elections.
W Themes The Secret Life of Bees tackles a number of weighty themes: child abuse, suicide, racism, forgiveness, mother-anddaughter relationships, and the transforming power of love. For Lily, her search to find out what happened to her mother takes her from her cold, abusive patriarchal home to a warm, communal one run by three compelling and supportive African American sisters. At her new adopted home with Rosaleen and the Boatwrights, Lily feels safe and valued for the first time in her life. As Rachel Simhon observes in her review of the novel, “in the strange, poignant world of the sisters, where honey and beeswax
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MAJOR CHARACTERS AUGUST BOATWRIGHT is one of the African American Boatwright sisters, also known as “the calendar sisters,” who take Lily and Rosaleen into their Tiburon, South Carolina, home. August teaches Lily the secrets of beekeeping and also provides some much-desired information about her mother’s life. JUNE BOATWRIGHT is one of the Boatwright sisters who takes Lily and Rosaleen into their Tiburon, South Carolina, home. At first she seems resentful of Lily, but grows quite fond of her during the novel. MAY BOATWRIGHT, another one of the Boatwright sisters. May is prone to depression, like her twin sister, April, who killed herself at a young age. May eventually kills herself. LILY OWENS is a fourteen-year-old girl living with her father, an abusive peach farmer. Young Lily’s life has been indelibly affected by the mysterious death of her mother when Lily was a little girl. When she flees with her nanny, Rosaleen, to South Carolina, she finds herself in the home of the warm and eccentric Boatwright sisters. T. RAY OWENS is Lily’s father. He neglects and abuses Lily. ROSALEEN is Lily’s fierce-hearted nanny and mother figure. A proud and sharp-tongued African American woman, she encounters trouble when she insults three of the most dangerous racists in town. Afraid for her safety, she agrees to flee with Lily to Tiburon, South Carolina. Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, attends the premiere of the movie based on her book. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty
are balm for life’s hurts (‘nothing was safe from honey . . . the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses’) and bees restore order and harmony, Lily unravels the mystery of her mother’s death and finds hope: ‘The world will give you that once in a while, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.’” Lily is now able to experience an emotional and spiritual rebirth. In her Women’s Review of Books essay, Rosellen Brown compares Lily and Rosaleen to two of Mark Twain’s infamous literary characters: Huck Finn and the enslaved Jim. Like them, Lily and Rosaleen “make a break for freedom and dignity,” she states. “Like bees that seem to fly randomly, they will turn out to know exactly what they need and what will feed them.”
W Style The Secret Life of Bees uses a first-person narrator. As Rosellen Brown states in her review of the book, “Sue
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Monk Kidd’s fine first novel The Secret Life of Bees begins with a paragraph in which she establishes the voice that will carry us pleasurably through her story, and lays out, implicitly, the emotional terrain she will take us through.” Brown outlines just what Kidd accomplishes. “By the end of that paragraph we know a lot—short of her name and age—about Lily Owens,” she observes. “If we’re paying attention, we take note of the demographics: bees at large in her bedroom, cruising in not via door or window but through less than solid walls. And, of course, we notice the attentiveness to detail of a sensitive, empathetic observer. Finally, unavoidably, we hear the desperate sadness of someone with modest emotional expectations—‘not even looking for a flower’— that are not being met. This is solid writing, efficient, elegant and poignant.” Brown also commented on the narrative structure of the novel. “Both the strength and the weakness of The Secret Life of Bees are exemplified by the presence at the head of every chapter of brief excerpts from books such as TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Man and Insects, The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men, Exploring the World of Social Insects, Bees of the World,” she notes. “Glosses for what’s to come, they raise the engaging and unanswerable question of whether we’re like the bees or the bees are like us. But though the quotations are undeniably intriguing, their smooth fit with the story is a touch too perfect, as if to point out conveniently snug connections we must not be allowed to miss. Kidd must have found them irresistible.” Elizabeth Rule also discusses Kidd’s use of symbolism. “[Her] symbolic and metaphoric use of the Black Mary, or Black Madonna, as a stand-in mother for Lily, and a homemade wailing wall built for May, who has trouble distinguishing between others’ suffering and her own, work beautifully to mine the nuanced themes of this book. Even the bees themselves evoke the spiritual and the maternal in a delightful way.” She also underscores the essential role that songs and music play in The Secret Life of Bees. “Despite its weighty themes, the novel has enough humour to keep you reading, and Kidd has an enviable facility with dialogue, conveying lilting, drawling language which practically drips off the page to a musical rhythm,” she states. “In fact, songs and music play a key role in the characters’ lives.”
W Critical Reception The Secret Life of Bees was published in 2002 to critical praise. It was a commercial hit too, selling more than six million copies. The Secret Life of Bees was also adapted into a feature film, which was released in 2008. As Publishers Weekly maintains, “Kidd’s success at capturing the moody adolescent girl’s voice makes her ambivalence comprehensible and charming. And it’s deeply satisfying when August teaches Lily to ‘find the mother in (herself)’—a soothing lesson that should charm female readers of all ages.” In her review, Elizabeth Ruth deems the novel informative and compelling. “The Secret Life of Bees, much like Canadian writer Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s A Recipe for Bees, is richly descriptive and enthralling, particularly as it relates to bee lore. This novel, with its southern American setting, its focus on adolescent and female relationships and its musicality, seems part Fried Green Tomatoes, part Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, and, oddly enough, part Flight of the Bumble-Bee. Well worth the read.” Rosellen Brown found the novel to be too safe and without an edge, considering the serious themes. “Though it is never frivolous, there is in it the sweetness and trust that things will work out in the end that one tends to see in comedy, not tragedy; or perhaps, more appropriately, in the comfort of fairy tales that put their characters through harsh trials so that, every demon slain, they can triumph reassuringly over danger,” she states. “At tale’s end, the princess-scullery maid, the cast-out
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sue Monk Kidd was born on August 12, 1948, in Albany, Georgia. She grew up in the town of Sylvester, Georgia, which she later used in her novel, The Secret Life of Bees. She became interested in writing from an early age, but stopped writing at the age of sixteen. In 1970 she graduated from Texas Christian University with a nursing degree, and went on to graduate work in nursing at Emory University. Kidd worked for years as a nurse and a nursing instructor. She turned back to writing, however, when undergoing a spiritual journey in her thirties. Many of the essays she wrote during that period describing her spiritual awakening were published in periodicals, and led to the publication of her first book, God’s Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved, in 1987. Kidd received the Isak Dinesen award for nonfiction in 1994. In her forties, she set her mind to writing fiction and was immediately successful, producing several award-winning short stories. Her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, was published in 2002 and received the Book of the Year Award from the Southeast Booksellers Association in 2003. It sold more than six million copies and was published in thirty-five countries. The Secret Life of Bees was also adapted into a feature film, which was released in 2008. Today, Kidd lives in Southwest Florida and is writer-in-residence at The Sophia Institute in Charleston, South Carolina.
wanderer through the dark wood, will be saved, even cherished. For all the volatility of its subjects—violent death, child abuse both physical and emotional, suicide, racism and injustice—I had a hard time believing that anything truly terrible or irrevocable would be allowed to happen in these pages. There are no rough edges, no threat of unresolvable pain, though many atrocious things happen, or threaten to happen, along the way.” Brown argues that this sweetness will appeal to some readers, but repulse others. “But there are those—clearly I vacillated—who will also find its loving kindness like honey, nourishing but a touch cloying. Curmudgeonly, perhaps, but unless a book is meant for the very young we resist comfort that comes too readily. A consoling balm, The Secret Life of Bees has less sting in the end than its swarm of griefs would seem to promise.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Brown, Rosellen. “Honey Child.” Women’s Review of Books 19, no. 7 (Apr. 2002): 11-12. Print. Ruth, Elizabeth. Rev. of The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Globe and Mail (2 Mar. 2002). InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Publishers Weekly 248, no. 46 (2001): 33. Print. General OneFile. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.
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In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens is taken in by three beekeeping sisters after fleeing from her family’s peach farm. sima/Shutterstock.com
Simhon, Rachel. “Honey Is the Balm.” Daily Telegraph 23 Feb. 2002. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Huntley, Kristine. “The Secret Life of Bees.” Booklist 1 Dec. 2001: 628. Print. General OneFile. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Finds The Secret Life of Bees to be warm and uplifting. Mazmanian, Adam. Rev. of The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. New York Times Book Review 31 Mar. 2002. Print. General OneFile. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. Praises the well-crafted and fully realized characters in the novel. Thompson, Bill. “Power of Story Drove Bees Author to Pen Her First Novel.” Post and Courier 27 Jan. 2002: H4. Print. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. Traces the development of The Secret Life of Bees from a short story to a novel.
2010. Print. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. “Sue Monk Kidd.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. “Sue Monk Kidd.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The American Beekeeping Federation examines the issues affecting the beekeeping profession and sponsors events, such as the North American Beekeeping Conference and Tradeshow. http://abfnet.org/ A range of bee facts, bee stories, and bee lore can be found at the Bee Lore website. You can contribute your own story about bee keeping at the site. http:// beelore.com/
Gale Resources
Hobby Beekeepers can find a wealth of resources at Gobeekeeping.com. You can ask questions to an experienced beekeeper and take a beekeeping correspondence course. http://gobeekeeping.com
“The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale,
Images of the Black Madonna hold a distinctive place in Roman Catholicism. The Interfaith Marian
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Pilgrimages website offers an overview of the Black Madonna, written by Ella Rozett, including a number of examples of the Black Madonna figure from all over the world. More images of the Black Madonna can be found on Flickr. http://www.interfaithmar ianpilgrimages.com/pages/blackmadonna.html http://www.flickr.com/groups/blackmadonnas/ pool/ Sue Monk Kidd’s website provides biographical information on the author and her books, the latest news on her appearances and career, and reflections on several of her fiction and nonfiction works. http:// www.suemonkkidd.com/ For Further Reading
Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print. Noted bee expert Eva Crane traces the complicated relationship between bees, humans, and animals throughout history.
Sacred Feminine. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996. Print. A reflection on Monk’s spiritual journey from her Southern Baptist roots to a nontraditional feminist religious paradigm that fosters creativity, love, and spiritual awareness. Kidd, Sue Monk, and Ann Kidd Taylor. Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France. New York: Viking, 2009. Print. A mother and daughter reconnect during a tour of sacred sites in Greece, Turkey, and France. In the process, both women reflect on their lives and futures. Peacock, Paul. Keeping Bees: A Complete Practical Guide. Neptune City: T.F.H. Publications, 2008. Print. A comprehensive beginner’s guide to beekeeping, including they equipment an aspiring apiarist needs. The focus is on keeping a healthy and happy hive. Adaptations
Glass, Julia. The Widower’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010. Print. A family saga that explores the world of Percy Darling, a retired widower, and his children and grandchildren.
The Secret Life of Bees. Dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood. Perf. Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, and Sophie Okonedo. 2008. Film. A heartwarming cinematic adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel that was praised for the empathetic performances of the lead actresses.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the
Margaret Haerens
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The Secret River By Kate Grenville
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River (2005) was inspired by the Australian author’s fascination with her homeland’s history, in particular the relations between Europeans and the aborigines. Narrated in third-person limited point of view, the story focuses on William Thornhill, a convicted British bargeman exiled to New South Wales, Australia, as punishment for theft. The novel first chronicles his early years as Thornhill struggles to survive in the London slums during the late eighteenth century. Thornhill becomes a petty thief on the street and finds solace only in his relationship with Sal, his childhood love. After an apprenticeship on the Thames river, Thornhill marries Sal, and after years of hard labor, he becomes a well respected bargeman. However, during a severe winter, he resorts to thievery again and is caught stealing a shipment of lumber. Rather than being sentenced to death by hanging, Thornhill, Sal, and their family are sent to the penal colony of New South Wales. After years of servitude, Thornhill is pardoned and becomes a self-employed boatman and trader. As Sal dreams of returning to London, Thornhill grows increasingly connected to the land, its untamed forests, and the beauty of the Hawkesbury River. He becomes obsessed with owning a stretch of land he discovers along the river and, after persuading Sal to move there, claims it as his own. However, the land is already occupied by an aboriginal tribe that refuses to be displaced. What first begins as an uneasy cohabitation escalates into violence as Thornhill is swayed by the elitism of European colonization. While The Secret River presents the complex quest of a displaced Thornhill, it illuminates the imperfect nature of history—its myths and facts of the lesser known origin of Australia.
Context
The East End slums of London provide the initial setting for The Secret River. In late eighteenth-century London, increasing population led to overcrowding. As a result, a sharp contrast existed between the rich who lived in the West End and the poor, forced into slums in East London. Slums, such as St. Giles, were characterized by squalor, disease, and crime. Will’s childhood town, Tanner’s Court, would be similar to that of St. Giles. The novel moves to New South Wales in the early nineteenth century, beginning in 1806. In 1770 Captain James Cook was the first European to see New South Wales. The area was later established as a penal colony with the arrival of the First Fleet that transported exiled European convicts, like Will, who were sentenced to servitude in the penal colony. After several years, convicts could receive a pardon, which declared them free men. However, colonization by the British was met with opposition. For thousands of years prior to Captain Cook’s arrival, New South Wales was occupied by aboriginal tribes, who in the eighteenth century refused to be displaced from their land. Tense relations ensued that often led to violence; for example, many aborigines were killed by settlers for stealing their crops or livestock. This conflict is illustrated through Smasher’s brutal acts against the natives and the massacre of an aboriginal tribe.
W Themes The Secret River examines displacement from a geographical and psychological perspective. Will is forced to live in the London slums and shunned by the rich. Because of this class division, he feels angry and powerless as a young man. In addition to the economic oppression he experiences, he is haunted by the ghost of his brother, also named William, and believes his dead brother is the real Will. In New South Wales, his separation from
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London is geographic, but the internal sense of displacement continues. He is now a stranger and compares himself to a flea on a gigantic animal. His sense of displacement disappears as his connection to the land deepens; however, he is faced with forcibly removing the aborigines. Here, displacement is cyclical. Will is displaced within his own city, exiled, and sent to the home of the aborigines, who now face displacement by white settlers. One man’s displacement leads to the displacement of many. In examining displacement, a second theme emerges: The recording and retelling of history is flawed. The novel questions the accuracy of events during colonization as well as the treatment of the aborigines. This is evoked through Smasher’s distorted narration of clashes between the settlers and aborigines, with each retelling glorifying the settlers. In the novel’s conclusion, a local tribe is murdered by the settlers, yet in reporting the event, a local paper describes it as necessary action against natives “guilty of depredations and outrages” (322). There is no mention of a massacre; rather it is simply described as a fight resolved by the settlers. Will reflects that invented history cannot be as bad as what actually has occurred, suggesting that glossed over versions of the past can never replace the truth. Because the landscape plays an integral role in the protagonist’s quest, it is used to illustrate the novel’s most pervasive theme—the connection among people by virtue of common humanity. Will recognizes that the earth, moon, sky, cliffs, and forests seem “different everywhere, yet everywhere the same” (88). He begins to view the aborigines as similar to himself when he watches his son, Dick, swim in the river with aboriginal children. He sees the water shining on their black and white skin and can hardly tell the difference between them. The river is no longer a secret, a place that Will feels is his alone to explore; it can be shared by all.
W Style To chronicle the quest of Will, Grenville uses third-person limited point of view. As his character develops from impoverished child to a man, readers are privy to Will’s thoughts and fears. As Will is teased for his common name, a tangible sense of anger is felt when he shouts, “William Thornhills will fill up the whole world” (11). However, when he thinks of Sal, his anger melts, and he feels his face relax, revealing a softer side. When Will is exiled, his despair is palpable; he realizes “he would die here under these alien stars” (4). Finally, when he realizes the depth of his connection to the land, “it seemed that he had become another man altogether” (289). Not only is third-person limited conducive to revealing character, it is suitable for narrating one man’s quest. The use of “he” (rather than the exclusivity of first person) suggests that any reader could be this protagonist.
MAJOR CHARACTERS THOMAS BLACKWOOD, a trader along the Hawkesbury River, hires Will as a boatman. Blackwood has befriended the aborigines and lives among them peacefully. SMASHER SULLIVAN, Will’s crass and mean-spirited neighbor, commits brutal acts of violence against the aborigines and urges Will to do the same. RICHARD THORNHILL, called Dick, is the second oldest son of Will and Sal who defies his father by befriending the aborigines and imitating their customs. SARAH THORNHILL, called Sal, is Will’s selfless wife who accompanies her husband to New South Wales. Although she adapts to her new surroundings, she is wary of the aborigines and wishes to return to London. WILLIAM THORNHILL, called Will, the protagonist, is a kindhearted, yet quick-tempered man who is convicted of stealing and exiled to New South Wales. Once free, he claims ownership of land already occupied by an aboriginal tribe and must decide whether to forcibly displace them or share the land.
Grenville’s dramatic imagery and personification bring to life the slums of London and the untamed terrain of New South Wales and present landscape as character. Details such as daylight struggling through soot covered windows and “houses hunched down on themselves” (9) set the tone of Will’s indigent childhood and convey his struggle to survive. Imagery is also used to express Will’s anxious thoughts when he first arrives in New South Wales. The night appears “huge,” the forest stands over him, and the wind “shiver[s]” (4). Here, the personification presents the landscape as Will’s antagonist. Over time, however, Will develops a profound connection with the land, and Grenville’s foreboding imagery shifts. She now describes Will as falling in love with the land. The light “sparkles and dances” (106) in the forest, and the land welcomes Will.
W Critical Reception The publication of The Secret River (2005) solidified Kate Grenville’s reputation as one of Australia’s leading authors. In 2006 the novel was named a Man Booker Prize finalist and received the Commonwealth Prize. Many reviewers praised Grenville’s portrait of early nineteenth-century Australia. Anita Sethi, writing for New Statesman, described Grenville’s work as “lush, sensuous prose” and discussed how readers were “transported to Australia, an alien landscape of heat, light, cliffs and a vast, unpredictable sky.” A review in
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kate Grenville was born on October 14, 1951, in Sydney, Australia. After receiving a BA in English literature from the University of Sydney in 1972, she worked as an editor in the film industry. She then traveled to Europe, where she freelanced as a writer and film editor. In 1982 she received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado. She returned to Australia in 1983 and published her first collection of short stories, Bearded Ladies, a year later. After that, she published several novels, including The Idea of Perfection (2001) and The Secret River (2005), and several works of nonfiction on the creative writing process. Grenville has received numerous accolades, including the Orange Prize for Fiction for The Idea of Perfection and the Commonwealth Prize for Literature for The Secret River. As of 2010, Grenville resided in Sydney.
Publishers Weekly echoed the praise of Sethi, claiming that The Secret River “illuminates a lesser-known part of history . . . with sharp prose and a vivid frontier family.” The novel also garnered positive reviews for Grenville’s approach to the tense relationship between European settlers and Australia’s aborigines. Publishers Weekly commented that this conflict was presented with “equanimity and understanding,” while Kirkus Reviews stated that the story “unfolds into a chilling allegory of the mechanics and the psychology of colonialism” and concludes in “genuine tragic grandeur.” However, reviewers such as Robert Murray, writing in Quadrant, found Grenville’s depiction of history misleading. Murray concluded that the portrayal was more favorable to the Europeans than the aborigines and “open to serious question in its portrayal of the really sensitive aspect, black-white confrontation.” Unlike Kirkus Reviews, Murray found the novel’s resolution “contrived to suit the plot and improbable.” Overall, however, The Secret River was warmly received. In her review for the Southerly, Ann Penhallurick focused on the protagonist, summing up the novel’s appeal for an audience: “What gives the book its depth is the inescapable sense that this flaw, albeit technically belonging to a man born over two hundred year ago, could be found in any of us.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Grenville, Kate. The Secret River. New York: Canongate, 2005. Print. “Grenville, Kate: The Secret River.” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Kirkus Reviews 15 Mar. 2006: 252. Print.
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Murray, Robert. “Hollywood on the Hawkesbury.” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Quadrant Apr. 2007: 67+. Print. Penhallurick, Ann. “Kate Grenville, The Secret River.” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Southerly 66.1 (2006): 194+. Print. “The Secret River.” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Publishers Weekly 27 Mar. 2006: 54. Print. Sethi, Anita. “To Die For.” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. New Statesman [1996] 13 Feb. 2006: 55. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Barbour, Judith. “The Comic Poetry of Suffering: Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (1).” Southerly 67.1-2 (2007): 423+. Print. Examines the comedic subtext of in-jokes, characters’ names, and nicknames. Behrendt, Larissa. “What Lies Beneath.” Meanjin 65.1 (2006): 4+. Print. Advocates for the inclusion of aboriginal traditions in developing modern Australian communities. Collins, Eleanor. “Poison in the Flour: Historical Novel or Tragic Love Story?” Rev. of The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Meanjin 65.1 (2006): 38+. Print. Discusses the brutality and colonial injustices in Australia’s history, suggesting The Secret River can be considered a tragic text. McGonegal, Julie. “The Great Canadian (and Australian) Secret: The Limits of Non-Indigenous Knowledge and Representation.” English Studies in Canada 35.1 (2009): 67+. Print. Analyzes how Grenville and other writers use the secret as a figurative device to narrate the displacement of the aborigines through European colonization. Gale Resources
Ackland, Michael. “Kate Grenville.” Australian Writers, 1975-2000. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 325. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 July 2010. http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1200012985&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p= LitRC&sw=w “Kate Grenville.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? &id=GALE%7CH1000039641&v=2.1& u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRG&sw=w Open Web Sources
The Kate Grenville official Web site, available at http:// kategrenville.com, contains a brief biography, information and reviews on books, essays, and interviews, and notes for readers’ groups. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Secret River For Further Reading
Flood, Josephine. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. New York: Allen and Unwin Academic, 2006. Print. Chronicles the history of Australia’s aboriginal people and their relationship with Europeans. Grenville, Kate. The Idea of Perfection. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print. Tells the story of a shy engineer and a lonely museum curator who fall in love while living in the Australian Bush. ———. The Lieutenant. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. Print. Tells the story of Daniel Rooke, a soldier accompanying the first prisoners sent to Australia in 1787, who befriends an aboriginal girl.
Keneally, Thomas. A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia. New York: Anchor Books, 2007. Print. Examines the founding of Australia during its formative years (1788-1793) as a penal colony. McMichael, Philip. Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Capitalism in Colonial Australia. New York: Cambridge UP, 1984. Print. Traces Australia’s transition to agrarian capitalism in the context of nineteenth-century British economics. Page, Benedicte. “Darkness Down Under.” Bookseller 4 Nov. 2005: 21. Print. Explores how the author’s ancestry informs The Secret River.
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Michele Hardy
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The Secret Scripture By Sebastian Barry
W Introduction Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture is a third-person novel with first-person narratives by Roseanne Clear, a onehundred-year-old resident of the Roscommon Regional Mental Health Hospital, and Dr. Grene, psychiatrist, who must assess the status of his patients in light of the imminent closing of the asylum. Roseanne, who has been institutionalized for several decades, begins a secret memoir of her life, which she hides under the floorboards in her room. She records her personal history and exchanges with Dr. Grene, who also keeps a reflective log in his commonplace book. He recalls that Roseanne was already old when he first started working at Roscommon thirty years before, but now he is determined to solve the mystery of why and how she had come to be committed. As he prods her with questions, she reveals bits of her past; however, Dr. Grene cannot be sure that her memories are to be trusted. Roseanne’s childhood was idyllic, if bleak. She was the doted-upon daughter of a Presbyterian grave digger and rat catcher who tries to provide for his family, while dealing with his wife’s mental decline. Already an outsider because of his religion, Tom Clear withstands the political turmoil of Ireland’s wars and unrest until his questionable death, ruled suicide by hanging. After her mother dies, Roseanne is vulnerable to the cold and calculating Catholic priest, Father Gaunt, who tries to marry her off to an older man, because he feels her beauty and religion are dangerous distractions. Eventually, Roseanne marries Tom McNulty, but her brief happiness is destroyed at the hands of Father Gaunt by an annulment and subsequent incarceration by reason of nymphomania. The co-narrators have something else in common beyond their separate secret writings. Dr. Grene struggles with his past. He is the widower of a woman he betrayed,
causing her decline into depression and death. So the more he deciphers from Roseanne’s ambiguous recollections, the deeper he questions his own life. When he discovers a document written by Father Gaunt, Grene resolves to figure out the truth about Roseanne’s tragic life and missing baby and, in the process, finds answers to his own questions.
W Literary and Historical Context
Ireland in the 1930s provides the backdrop for Barry’s novel about religious and political forces determining the lives of powerless people, marginalized by faith, social status, and gender. The violent legacy of the Irish War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that followed did little to stabilize the tensions that persisted between Protestant and Catholic, church and state, and individual families and the community. The Roman Catholic Church was particularly powerful at this time and exercised often cruel authority over poor, disenfranchised people who were seen as outsiders by the church and its clergy. In Inventing Ireland, Declan Kiberd describes seven centuries of (English) colonial occupation and rule as a decisive factor in persistent Irish poverty and the famine of the 1840s that extended beyond the Civil War of 1922 and 1923. Issues of land, religion, and cultural convention continued to threaten social order. Children and women were especially victimized. The novel’s main protagonist suffers a series of misfortunes beginning with her father’s innocent involvement in the burial of a young irregular (nonconscripted soldier), killed while fighting for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As a Presbyterian, the grave digger John Clear, was already shunned by the local church. His innocent association with the IRA rebels further compromises his position, and shortly after, he is found hanged. His mysterious and unexpected suicide leaves
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Roseanne to deal with her mother’s mental illness and eventual death, but not before Father Gaunt tries to press Roseanne’s marriage to her father’s choice of a replacement. Although Roseanne finds happiness when she marries Tom McNulty instead, she makes the mistake of meeting the brother of the slain rebel. Her indiscretion, witnessed by Father Gaunt, turns her into a victim of the Lunacy Act laws, citing nymphomania as grounds for incarceration in an insane asylum. Acting under the authority of Rome, Father Gaunt has her marriage to Tom annulled, and she is sent to the Roscommon mental hospital for the rest of her life. Her plight is all but forgotten until the asylum is scheduled to close, when arrangements for her release or relocation bring her to the attention of Dr. Grene. His evaluation is to determine if she goes free, at one hundred years of age. This situation reflects the severe lack of social support services for the discarded underclass of Sligo.
W Themes One of the major themes of The Secret Scripture is the sanctity of life. Roseanne Clear has little to celebrate, given the bleak prospects in Sligo as the young Presbyterian wife of an Irish Catholic of very modest means. Nevertheless, the bitterness of her tragic imprisonment in a mental hospital is subordinated to her memories of the father she adored, the man she loved, and a baby born out of wedlock, whereabouts unknown. Barry’s two narrators nurture the relationship between experience and narrative in their secret recording of memories. Promise and regret play against their mutual recollections and give them comfort, providing spiritual sustenance and guidance as they continue to live. Another important theme is exile. Like her father, Roseanne is set apart from daily life because of her Presbyterianism. She is also kept at a distance because of her uncommon beauty, which Father Gaunt finds dangerous to young lads. After she gives birth to a baby on the rocks by the water’s edge, she is forced to live in an iron-bar hut, again cut off from her husband and the community. Finally, Father Gaunt successfully commits her to a hospital for the insane and cuts her off from her husband’s name by securing an annulment. As she mentions on more than one occasion, she is denied the fact that she was ever married at all. A third theme is the role and reliability of memory. Roseanne’s version of events differs from the official record given by Father Gaunt. The discovery of secret scriptures, whether in the form of a private memoir, a commonplace journal, or personal letters, colors what people accept as truth. While Dr. Grene records an account of his own personal grief and lost opportunities, his story remains incomplete until he gains access to Roseanne’s memories, though they often contradict the official record.
MAJOR CHARACTERS CISSY CLEAR, Joe Clear’s wife and Roseanne’s mother, suffers from mental illness. She borrows money to buy an expensive clock though the family is poor, and then smashes it. JOE CLEAR is the grave digger in Sligo, demoted to rat catcher. He adores his loving daughter, Roseanne, despite the hardships he endures as a Presbyterian and pauper. One of the rats escapes his furnace and burns down an orphanage, killing many children. He is found hanged, but he may have been killed. ROSEANNE CLEAR, the one-hundred-year-old protagonist, writes the story of how she was falsely accused of adultery and unjustly committed to an asylum. With the impending closure of the hospital where she has lived for over sixty years, her doctor must decide her fate based on her recollection of the past, recorded on pages hidden in the floor. FATHER GAUNT is a cruel, corrupt Catholic priest who implicates Joe Clear as an undesirable Presbyterian when he buries a young IRA soldier. Father Gaunt is also responsible for annulling Roseanne’s marriage and forcing her incarceration. DR. WILLIAM GRENE is the disaffected psychiatrist who becomes intrigued with Roseanne’s ambiguous answers as he evaluates her condition for possible release. His firstperson narrative in the form of a commonplace journal reveals his own grief over his dead wife, whom he betrayed. JOHN KANE is the odd man who works at the Roscommon Regional Hospital and holds a particular interest in looking after Roseanne’s room. JOHN LAVELLE is the brother of the slain IRA soldier, whose illconceived meeting with Roseanne leads to Father Gaunt’s accusing her of adultery. ENEAS MCNULTY is one of three brothers who visits Roseanne when she is held in a hut by the sea, following Father Gaunt’s charge that she betrayed Eneas’s brother, Tom. Eneas is the father of Roseanne’s missing child, William (Grene). TOM MCNULTY is Roseanne’s husband and brother of Eneas. He leads a Jazz band in Sligo, remarries after the annulment, and dies of a stomach ailment.
W Style Sebastian Barry writes in elevated prose with a sense of individual voice for each of his characters. Roseanne’s writings reflect her great age and her endurance in an institution, but they also present her life from the point of view of a young girl and of a married woman who was “not entirely childless.” Dr. Grene’s journal makes him a co-narrator in dialogue with Roseanne’s “testimony of
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sebastian Barry was born July 5, 1955, in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he became writer in residence at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland (1990-1991) and, later, writer in residence at Trinity College, Dublin (1995-1996). Recognized as a poet, playwright, novelist, and short story writer, Barry has published a dozen plays and several novels. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Costa Novel Award and Man Booker Prize for The Secret Scripture. As of 2010, Barry lived in County Wicklow, Ireland, with his wife and children.
herself,” while the third-person narrator mediates between the two and provides narrative continuity. Barry’s skill as a playwright lends dramatic flourish to this tragic story. His characters have a masterful contour, and the dialogue illustrates a rich Irish tradition, reminiscent of Ireland’s golden age that began with William Butler Yeats
and the founding of its National Theatre. Barry’s story relies heavily on his research, which supports his grasp of issues, such as the treatment of Protestants, for example, at the mercy of the powerful Father Gaunt. The dialect of the IRA boys is a stylistic contrast to the proper English of Dr. Grene, and the unpretentious prose narrative of Roseanne’s diary. One of Barry’s stylistic strengths is his blending of the realistic and the symbolic. The heroine of his novel draws her inspiration from his great-aunt who, like scores of women, was locked away for social, rather than psychological reasons. Inventing characters as a way of recovering the lost history of discarded and displaced lives gives the novel a sense of restoration, similar in kind to restored paintings. In this way, the restored portraits of the damaged characters emerge in rich and moving tones.
W Critical Reception Barry’s novel was well received, and critics agreed that he is a master dramatist as well as novelist. Writing in Booklist, Patricia Monaghan called Barry’s prose “sheer poetry . . . now heart-stoppingly lyrical, now heart-poundingly thrilling.” Dermot Bolger, in his review appearing in the Daily Mail, saw Barry as “an archaeologist, deftly delving back through his myriad ancestors to let them breathe again in novels and plays.” Echoing her fellow critics, Carole Goldberg applauded Barry for having created a “wondrous character in Roseanne.” Others were more cautious, noting the novel’s ending as a weakness. Lisa Jewell found the “neat conclusion,” a surprise, given the “obvious twist building throughout the book.” However, she qualified the convenient denouement as the novel’s only flaw. Sean O’Hagan put it another way in his critique in the Guardian: “The Secret Scripture is a book that, despite the lyrical beauty of Barry’s prose, may stand and fall for some readers on the dramatic plot twist that occurs late in the story.” The Economist review summed it up best, perhaps, this way: “The novel’s delight lies in the way in which the two tales—and, eventually, the two lives—begin to coalesce, to the utter surprise of both the characters,” if not all readers. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Barry, Sebastian. The Secret Scripture. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print. Bolger, Dermot. “The Trick, as Barry Has Found, Is Never to Let a Good Irish Family Go to Waste.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. dailymail. co.uk. Daily Mail 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 16 Aug. 2010.
Sebastian Barry, author of The Secret Scripture, attends the Costa Book Awards in 2009. Tim Whitby/Getty Images
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Goldberg, Carole. “The Secret Scripture: A World of Woe in One Long Life.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. seattletimes.nwsource.com. Seattle Times 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Secret Scripture
Jewell, Lisa. “Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture: It’s Not Flawed—It’s a Gem.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. Print. Monaghan, Patricia. “The Secret Scripture.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. booklistonline. com. Booklist 15 May 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. O’Hagan, Sean. “Ireland’s Past Is Another Country.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. guardian.co.uk. Guardian [London] 27 Apr. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. “The Unremembered; New Fiction 2.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. economist.com. Economist 26 Apr. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Booker Favourite Barry on Digging Up His History; Second Time Lucky?” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. dailymail.co.uk. Daily Mail 10 Oct. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Discusses the relevance of Barry’s autobiographical sources for characters and themes and cites the author’s own experience of visiting his mother in a hospital in support of his background for the novel. Gatti, Tom. “The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. timesonline.co.uk. Times [London] 1 May 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Finds that despite the straining plot, the prose keeps the narrative engaging and bright with description and imagery. Hanks, Robert. “Fools and Madmen.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. newstatesman.com. New Statesman 26 May 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Finds Barry’s heightened prose tedious and his predictable ending far too pat. de la Hey, Rosamund. “The Main Street Books Owner Applauds a Novel with a Centenarian Heroine.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. bookseller. com. Bookseller 10 July 2009. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Calls this a literary thriller whose protagonist captures the intimate portrait of 1930s Ireland.
2010. Confirms the disconcerting portrait of women at the mercy of religion and misogyny in the novel as an accurate representation of conditions in 1930s Ireland. Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. kirkusreviews.com. Kirkus Reviews 15 Apr. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Cites the blending of narratives and contour of characters as the book’s accomplishment. Smith, Dinitia. “The Secret Scripture BOOKS/Fiction.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. global.nytimes.com. New York Times 26 June 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Notes the author’s poetic skill as preeminent in the narrative and the motif of secret writing as assets in the structure of the plot. Winslow, Art. “Ordinary Madness.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. newyorktimes.com. New York Times 18 Jan. 2009. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Analysis of plot and character, with emphasis on angelic and religious imagery as evidence of experience, not religion. Gale Resources
“Sebastian Barry.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Aug. 2010. For Further Reading
Allen, Nicholas. Modernism, Ireland and Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print. Locates the crisis of Irish Independence as a formative force in culture and literature. Farry, Michael. The Aftermath of Revolution: Sligo 1921-23. Dublin: U College Dublin P, 2000. Print. Using Sligo as a microcosm, reconstructs the period of Irish Civil War from local and national archives and includes many interviews with survivors. Inis, Tom. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. Dublin: U College Dublin P, 1998. Print. Balanced criticism of the church’s influence during the twentieth century and considers its role and effects over all aspects of life in Ireland. Larkin, Emmet. Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1888-1891. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2009. Print. Tracks the history of the church and its role in the political forces that destroyed Parnell.
McDonagh, Melanie. “Beautiful, Bleak and Very Irish.” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. standard.co.uk. Evening Standard 28 Apr. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Robust and unapologetic reaction to the stereotypical perception of bleak Irish characters as portrayed in the novel.
O’Dowd, Mary. A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800. New York: Longman, 2004. Print. Accessible analysis of the role of women in key events such as the Ulster plantation, the 1641 rising, and the 1798 rebellion and also explores forces of the Roman Catholic Church and colonization.
Scurr, Ruth. “I Do Remember Terrible Dark Things . . . ” Rev. of The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph 2 May 2008. Web 16 Aug.
Doris Plantus-Runey
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Seeker By Jack McDevitt
W Introduction Seeker (2006) is the third novel in Jack McDevitt’s series about the adventures of antiquities dealer Alex Benedict and his pilot, Chase Kolpath. Set ten thousand years in the future, the series follows the pair around human-inhabited areas of the galaxy on quests to locate valuable antiquities and solve both past and present mysteries. In Seeker, Alex and Chase try to uncover the fate of five thousand humans who fled a religious dictatorship on twenty-seventh-century Earth aboard one of the earliest starships. As part of the investigation, Chase must contact telepathic beings known as the Ashyyur, with whom humans have an uneasy relationship. Seeker explores myth, history, and cultural identity, as well as presenting a variety of scientific concepts. The Alex Benedict series, which grew to five titles with the publication of Echo in 2010, takes place in a future world that is a technically and socially advanced version of our own culture. The very large historical view of the novels has prompted comparisons with Isaac Asimov’s influential future history, the Foundation series. Seeker received the Nebula Award for best novel in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
Seeker takes place ten thousand years in the future, in a time when humans have spread throughout the galaxy. Technological advances include space travel and pervasive uses of artificial intelligence, but in most ways people seem to think and act much as they do today. Conflict still exists, but in less institutionalized forms. On the whole, there seems to be a higher degree of enlightenment, but there are still misunderstandings between races, and instinctive fears continue to affect people.
Because the past has been recorded and studied for millennia, the novel’s main characters have a greatly expanded view of history. Many of the threats to Earth that we now imagine—such as natural catastrophes and global warfare—are in the distant past, and humanity has a much larger frame of reference. At the same time, however, irrationality still exists, and people romanticize aspects of the unknown. On the whole, the future setting of Seeker seems to be a somewhat more benign extension of our own world, with human civilization depicted as neither a utopia nor a dystopia. This moderate vision of the future places the novel in the tradition of classical science fiction, with none of the imaginative extremes that mark more radical postmodern subgenres such as cyberpunk, biopunk, or New Weird.
W Themes On the surface, Seeker is an intellectual adventure tale in which the protagonists use science and logic, as well as action, to solve a mystery. The novel also raises a variety of philosophical issues, however. One theme is the relationship between history and myth, which is illuminated by the stories that have developed around the missing starship Seeker and its occupants, the Margolians. The lost colony supposedly established by the Margolians has become romanticized in much the same way that Atlantis has acquired legendary status in our own time, but the historical truth uncovered by Alex and Chase turns out to be very different from the popular stories. Another theme concerns the roles of perception and communication in racial relationships. Though similar in certain fundamental ways, humans and Ashyyur are repelled by one another’s appearances and threatened by their respective cultural differences. Each race considers the other untrustworthy, in part because of the radically different ways they communicate. Humans are fearful of the mind-reading capabilities of Ashyyur,
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while the telepathically linked Ashyyur see humans as fragmented and unpredictable due to their individuality. One conflict among humans that emerges as a theme of Seeker is the debate over archaeological ethics and the treatment of artifacts from other cultures.
W Style Seeker combines a moderate amount of character development with a narrative focus on logical thought and scientific investigation. The tone of the novel is restrained, with only mild violence and no sexual content. Protagonists Alex and Chase have a friendly relationship that focuses on their work, and the plot is driven as much by their intellectual curiosity as by their professional objectives. Chase’s first-person narration maintains a certain amount of suspense because it allows the reader to observe Alex’s actions and ideas without knowing what he is thinking. Chase’s narrative style also reveals her
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE ASHYYUR (also known as the Mutes) are a race of telepathic beings. They are physically repugnant to humans, and vice versa. ALEX BENEDICT is an antiquities dealer who uses his scientific knowledge to find and identify valuable relics. Intellectual curiosity leads him to investigate further when mysteries arise. OLIVER BOLTON is a rival antiquities dealer who interferes in the artifact search. CHASE KOLPATH is Alex’s pilot, who also assists him in finding artifacts and solving mysteries. As the narrator of the novel, she describes their activities and offers her own observations.
In Seeker, Alex Benedict and his pilot, Chase Kolpath, try to figure out what happened to more than five thousand humans who fled Earth. 1971yes/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Seeker
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jack McDevitt was born on April 14, 1935, in Philadelphia. He graduated from LaSalle College with a BA in 1957, and although he wanted to become a science fiction writer, he was uncertain about his talent. After serving in the U.S. Navy for three years, he became a high school English teacher. McDevitt married Maureen McAdams in 1967 and completed a master’s degree at Wesleyan University in 1971, by which time he was chairman of the English department at a New Hampshire high school. Then, in a sharp change of direction, McDevitt joined the U.S. Customs Service, and while stationed in North Dakota, he took advantage of long nights to renew his interest in science fiction. His wife prompted him to begin writing, and his first novel, The Hercules Text, earned a Locus Award in 1987. McDevitt’s skill at combining space adventure with intellectual puzzles attracted a growing audience, along with numerous award nominations, and in 1995 he retired from the Customs Service to write full time. The prolific author has published a new novel every year since.
personality, which for the most part is neither introspective nor emotional. In addition, her observations about Alex offer the reader some insight into her partner’s character. McDevitt complicates the narrative structure by revealing several layers of the mystery as the plot progresses. The story begins when Alex is asked to evaluate a cup of unknown origin, which turns out to be an artifact from the Seeker, the legendary vanished ship. This makes the artifact very valuable, so Alex and Chase set out to learn where it came from and whether there are more. When they have tracked down the ship, they find a new mystery onboard, and they begin trying to discover what happened to the Seeker and the Margolians. In each step of the story they utilize scientific reasoning, research, and expert opinions, a process McDevitt uses to inform as well as engage the reader. The mystery of the past is overlapped by a related one in the present, as someone attempts to eliminate Alex and Chase. This second, more active plotline creates dramatic tension that prevents the novel from becoming too cerebral.
An illustration depicting an alien landscape similar to those described in McDevitt’s novel Seeker. Angela Harburn/Shutterstock.com
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Seeker
W Critical Reception Critical assessments of Seeker have been generally enthusiastic. Publishers Weekly observes that “ideas abound in McDevitt’s classy riff on the familiar lostspace-colony theme,” noting that “the scientific interpolations are as convincing as the far-future planetscapes and human and alien societies, bolstering an irresistible tractor beam of heavy-duty action.” Library Journal reviewer Jackie Cassada agrees, praising the novel for its combination of “hard science” and “superb storytelling.” Cassada concludes that “this compelling take belongs in most SF collections.” Kirkus Reviews provides one of the few negative comments, observing that “it’s hard to sympathize with protagonists who are merely looters,” and adding, “What really grates is that McDevitt is capable of much better work.” Among science fiction enthusiasts, the reaction has been frequently mixed. Several commentators have voiced opinions similar to those of online reviewer Russ Allbery, who finds the novel “quite enjoyable and wellworth reading,” but characterizes it as “a safe and conventional sort of SF novel that would appeal to a conservative audience.” Although some felt the novel deserved its Nebula Award, others saw the choice as overdue recognition for McDevitt, who had thirteen previous Nebula nominations without a win. Seeker is decidedly traditional rather than postmodern, and it falls into the category of “hard science fiction” (emphasizing science and technology rather than sociology and psychology), so to some extent commentary concerning the novel reflects differences of opinion about what constitutes excellence in contemporary speculative fiction. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Allbery, Russ. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Eyrie.org. Ed. Russ Allbery. N.p., 18 Mar. 2008. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Cassada, Jackie. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Library Journal 130.17 (2005): 50. Print. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Kirkus Reviews 1 Sept. 2005: 947. Print. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Publishers Weekly 252.35 (2005): 39. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Allbery, Russ. Rev. of A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt. Eyrie.org. Ed. Russ Allbery. N.p., 24 Feb. 2008. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Allbery’s commentary on the first Alex Benedict novel provides insight into the characters and setting revisited in Seeker. Elhefnawy, Nader. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Internet Review of Science Fiction Apr./May 2007.
Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Elhefnawy’s lengthy review presents an examination of the novel and discusses the comparisons often made between McDevitt and Isaac Asimov. Green, Roland. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Booklist 1 Nov. 2005: 32. Print. In this brief positive review, Green asserts that McDevitt should win a major award to mark his professional stature. Parker, Danielle L. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Bewildering Stories 196 (2006). Web. 4 Oct. 2010. This positive reader review draws a parallel between Alex Benedict and fictional detective Nero Wolfe. Shaw, Kirk L. Rev. of Seeker, by Jack McDevitt. Vagabond Voice. N.p., 26 Aug. 2008. Web. 4 Oct. 2010. Shaw’s review offers a reader’s perspective on contemporary issues reflected in the future world of Seeker. Gale Resources
“Jack McDevitt.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site includes schedule information, book excerpts, and a journal in which McDevitt records his activities and observations. http://jackmcdevitt.com/default.aspx In an interview with Tim O’Shea on the blog Talking with Tim, McDevitt discusses his political views as well as his writing career. http://talkingwithtim. com/wordpress/2009/07/29/jack-mcdevitt-onhis-writing/ For Further Reading
Asimov, Isaac. Foundation Trilogy. London: Everyman, 2010. Print. McDevitt is often compared to Asimov, whose epic Foundation series is also set in a far distant human future. Asimov’s stories in the original trilogy were published between 1942 and 1950, but Asimov wrote several additional volumes between 1980 and 1993, during the period when McDevitt began his own writing career. McDevitt, Jack. The Devil’s Eye. New York: Ace, 2008. Print. The fourth Alex Benedict novel takes place a year after the events in Seeker. This novel continues to illuminate McDevitt’s version of humanity’s distant future. ———. Polaris. New York: Ace, 2004. Print. This is the second Alex Benedict novel, set one year before the events of Seeker. Although each novel in the series stands alone, Polaris offers interesting insights into the main characters.
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Seeker
Schellinger, Paul E., Elizabeth Nishiura, and Karen P. Singson. Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers. Chicago: St. James, 1991. Print. This collection of essays profiles leading science fiction writers of the late twentieth century. Included is a discussion of McDevitt’s work, which was still in its formative stage at the time.
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Schweitzer, Darrell. Speaking of the Fantastic II. Rockville: Wildside, 2004. Print. A collection of interviews with “masters of fantasy and science fiction,” including McDevitt. Cynthia Giles
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Separation By Christopher Priest
W Introduction The Separation is an alternate, parallel history of what might have happened in a world where England and Germany formed a truce during World War II. Told through diary entries, letters, and documents, the book relates the paths of twins Joe and Jack Sawyer, a peace activist and a pilot for the Royal Air Force. In one reality—the one reflected by the real world—Jack survives. In the other, Joe is instrumental in the development of a peace accord. Like several of Christopher Priest’s earlier novels, The Separation deals heavily with doubles: from the twins who relate the narrative to the body doubles who stand in for Winston Churchill and Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s second in command. The story also looks at the mythology surrounding World War II, questioning truths that are taken for granted by showing an alternate history—one of peace—that becomes equally mythologized in its future. The novel does not use time travel or other traditional science fiction tools to achieve this duality; instead, there is only one intersection of the two realities: The daughter of Jack Sawyer brings her father’s memoirs to a historian from Joe’s reality. The novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Separation is a novel in a long tradition of reimagining World War II. In fact, writing of a Nazi triumph in a speculative way dates to even before World War II with Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night in 1937. However, unlike many other novels within this tradition, The Separation hardly mentions Hitler, and rather than depicting either a utopia or dystopia as a result of a German and British armistice, Priest merely posits a
complex image of what the world might have been like. Instead of romanticizing World War II—a trend represented in journalist Tom Brokaw’s book Greatest Generation and Steven Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan, both in 1998, four years before The Separation was published—Priest reveals the myth of a romantic war by positing a myth of peace. In Priest’s alternate reality, the peace through armistice is just as romanticized as the battles of World War II are in the real world. Best known as a science fiction writer, Priest is known for pushing the boundaries of that genre to the degree that other writers question whether he is writing science fiction at all. At the beginning of his career, Priest was associated with the New Wave, a phrase he may have coined (Burelbach). But as his career progressed, Priest distanced himself from any particular movement, according to Frederick M. Burelbach writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, instead “clos[ing] the gap between science fiction and ‘mainstream’ fiction while opening both to postmodern speculation and self-reflexivity.” Priest himself considers all his novels science fiction, or something like it. He explained in his Guest of Honor speech at Worldcon, 2005: “all my better novels are further away from the centre of science fiction than the others. I believe in the inner workings of SF: the way the unimaginable or the fantastic can be made to stand for things the reader is interested in, or feels about, or can be made to be interested in, or to feel about.”
W Themes The idea of doubles permeates Priest’s work, including his well-known book The Prestige, about rival magicians who simultaneously develop the ability to transport from one location to another by different means (St. James Guide). The Separation refers to the pain of separation from a double directly in the title. The two brothers in the story are first separated by their opinions about the war, later by their choices and by the war itself, and still
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The Separation
MAJOR CHARACTERS ANGELA CHIPPERTON is the daughter of Jack and Bridget Sawyer. She delivers a manuscript of her father’s memoirs, from the reality in which her father survives, to Stuart Gratton at a book signing. WINSTON CHURCHILL, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and 1951 to 1955, is considered by Joe Sawyer a war monger. In Joe’s reality, however, Churchill experiences a full change of heart, agreeing to an armistice with Germany. In both realities, Churchill uses look-alike actors to complete some of his more public duties. STUART GRATTON, a historian from Joe Sawyer’s timeline, receives the memoirs of Jack Sawyer at a book signing. He is researching the identity of J. L. Sawyer, apparently one man who was both a peace activist and an RAF pilot, for a book, but recognizes that nothing may come of it. RUDOLF HESS is the deputy fuhrer of Germany. When the Sawyers earn medals in the Berlin Olympics, he endeavors to win their sympathies. Jack Sawyer rejects him, but Joe Sawyer works with Hess. In Joe’s reality, Joe’s relationship with Hess is instrumental in bringing about an armistice between Germany and the United Kingdom. BRIDGET SAWYER is a Jew whom the Sawyer brothers help escape from Nazi rule. Though she marries Joe, she has an affair with Jack Sawyer. In the different realities, the child of that affair is either a boy or a girl. The girl grows up to become Angela Chipperton. JACK SAWYER, twin brother of Joe Sawyer, wins an Olympic medal with Joe at the 1936 Olympics. Together they rescue Bridget from Nazi rule. Differing political opinions, and Joe’s marriage to Bridget, estrange them; Jack’s decision to become an RAF pilot and his affair with Bridget further drive them apart. In Joe’s reality, Jack dies in one of the final conflicts of World War II. In Jack’s reality, World War II ends the same way it did in reality. Jack’s memoirs are delivered by his daughter, Angela, to Stuart Gratton. JOE SAWYER, twin brother of Jack Sawyer, is a conscientious objector to World War II. After meeting Rudolf Hess at the 1936 Olympics, in which he and his brother won a medal, Joe begins working toward a peace agreement between Germany and the United States. He marries Bridget, a Jew he and his brother rescued from under Nazi rule, which, along with his political stance, estranges him from his brother. In Jack’s reality, Joe dies in the Blitz. In Joe’s reality, World War II ends with an armistice between England and Germany in 1941.
later by their alternating realities, each existing in a reality in which his brother has died. Yet, they are confused with each other, despite their dramatically different positions. Each is referred to, at times, as J. L. Sawyer, as they share
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initials. Churchill, in one of his books in the alternate reality, refers to Sawyer as both conscientious objector and RAF pilot, not realizing there are two men of the same name. The brothers together rescue a Jewish woman; although Joe marries her, it is Jack who fathers her children. In addition, Churchill, Hess, and Hitler are said to employ body doubles, and in some versions, it is the double who takes on the role that history dictates was performed by the true leader. In an essay for Extrapolation, Nick Hubble notes the theme of separation as relevant both to The Separation and Priest’s previous work. “Another constant theme in Priest’s work, the desire of his characters to escape from the fictions in which they are contained, has become increasingly combined with the desire to become whole again. . . . Where The Separation breaks new ground is in its linking of the pain of doubling and separation with history. History is always virtual. History is always mythic. History always empties the meaning out of people and leaves them as empty shells” (Hubble).
W Style Priest makes use of diary entries, documents, and letters in The Separation, using a partially epistolary (or toldthrough-letters) style. The book opens with historian Stuart Gratton, who is intending to write a biography of J. L. Sawyer, whom he believes to be a single individual. He receives a bundle that includes the memoirs of Jack Sawyer, but the Jack Sawyer of an alternate reality, where World War II was fought until Germany was defeated. The next section of the novel is told through Jack’s memoirs and other extracts. Gratton returns in the center of the book, not yet having read the memoir the audience has just completed. The extracts of personal writings that follow are from Joe’s perspective, describing the reality with which Gratton is familiar. Though Priest is not using a traditional unreliable narrator, or a narrator who intentionally distorts the truth for the reader, the writings of the Sawyers share qualities with unreliable narration. The brothers describe different realities, making it difficult to identify what really happened in either world. In addition, the brothers both experience injuries that leave them coming in and out of consciousness, and each time they wake, their world seems to have changed in some way. Because reality is not static for either brother, the truth is hard to nail down, much as it would be were either brother intentionally bending the story to suit his needs. Recognized as a science fiction writer from early in his career, Priest bends the boundaries of that genre, using few identifiable tropes of science fiction in The Separation. The novel fits firmly into the alternate history subgenre, but even then, Priest is not bound by normal conventions, using both a realistic setting and an alternate history setting in the same book. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Separation
While his brother Joe joins the British Red Cross, Jack Sawyer joins the Royal Air Force and becomes a bomber pilot. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
W Critical Reception When Priest began submitting his novel for publication, he was told by publishers in New York that the work was “unpublishable” (Priest). Initially published in Britain with a small print run and little marketing, The Separation was selected for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction Award the year it was published. Dissatisfied with how it had been brought to market, Priest bought back the rights to the book and resold it to a different publisher (“Priest Double”). After its success in Britain, France, and Spain, where it sold well (Priest), the novel was released by a small press in the United States, where it earned a positive critical reception. Noting that The Separation “trumps” Priest’s popular award-winning novel The Prestige in use of doubles,
Elizabeth Hand calls The Separation “exquisite” and states that the novel “begs for repeated readings to appreciate the cold brilliance and execution of its intricate plot fully.” Writing in the London Independent, Roz Kaveney comments on the narrative style and notes that “much of the book consists of letters, journals and memoirs which contradict each other and yet have equal authority on the page.” Kaveney also compliments Priest’s familiarity with the debates surrounding different aspects of World War II, and comments that the dual realities of The Separation feature “an impressive set of imagined places and times.” Vanessa Bush of Booklist notes the way the characters seem to lose their sense of reality over the course of the narrative, as well as pointing out the theme of war in the novel: “Priest offers a masterful look at how war affects individuals as well as an exploration of personal identity.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on July 14, 1943 in Cheadle, England, Christopher Priest began work with a career at an accounting firm. His writing career, however, developed from his fascination with science fiction; by 1962 he was a member of the British Science Fiction Association. His first short story sold in 1965, and in 1968, he became a full-time writer. As early as 1969, he was a critic of the science fiction scene, which he discussed in a regular column in Speculation; he discussed the British New Wave movement, of which he was considered a part, in an essay for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction nearly ten years later. A 1969 short story, “The Interrogator,” became the basis for his first novel, Indoctrinaire, published in 1970. Though not so prolific as some writers, Priest has published continuously since his first novel, with awardwinning titles such as The Prestige and The Extremes coming out in the 1990s, and The Separation being released in 2002. Priest was a guest of honor at Worldcon 2005.
Burelbach, Frederick M. “Christopher Priest.” British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers since 1960. Ed. Darren Harris-Fain. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 261. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2002. Print. “Christopher Priest.” St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Web. 23 July 2010. Hand, Elizabeth. “Things That Never Happen.” Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Mar. 2003: 38+. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Hubble, Nick. “Virtual Histories and Counterfactual Myths: Christopher Priest’s The Separation.” Extrapolation 48.3 (2007): 450+. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Priest, Christopher. “The Condition of Brit—Forty Years on the Atlantic Shore.” Guest of Honor Speech. Interaction: Worldcon 2005, Glasgow, Scotland. Reproduced in Ansible 218 Supplement. Ed. Dave Langford. Sept. 2005. Web. 23 July 2010. “Priest Double for New Home Gollancz.” Bookseller (2003): 6. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bruscino, Tom. “Stephen Ambrose: Lumped In with Brokaw and Spielberg.” History News Network. 8 June 2004. Web. 27 July 2010.
Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Butler, Andrew M., ed. Christopher Priest: The Interaction. London: Science Fiction Foundation, 2005. Print. This collection of essays covers Priest’s career, from his first novel through The Separation. The individual essays tend toward scholarly analysis. An interview with Priest is also included. Gevers, Nick. “The Separation.” Locus 49.501 (2002), pp. 27-30. Print. In this review of The Separation, Gevers posits that in an alternate reality where science fiction and fantasy novels are better respected, Priest’s work would be a contender for mainstream awards. Mabbott, Alastair. “If Hess Had Called the Shots.” Herald [Glasgow] 20 Dec. 2003: 7. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 23 July 2010. Review of The Separation that discusses the publication history of the novel, as well as offering a critical viewpoint. “The Separation.” Publishers Weekly 252.41 (2005): 45. General OneFile. Web. 23 July 2010. Offers an overview of the novel, as well as praise for Priest’s writing. Gale Resources
Red Cross officials issue a call to duty. In The Separation, Joe Sawyer is a pacifist who joins the British Red Cross during World War II. ª Bettmann/Corbis
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“Christopher Priest.” Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2003. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills: Gale. Web. 23 July 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Separation Open Web Sources
Grim Grin Studios is Priest’s own imprint. It offers first publication titles by Priest, as well as editions of his books that have gone out of print. http://www. christopher-priest.co.uk/grimgrinmain.htm On his Home Page, Priest links to reviews and resources for understanding his work. A timeline shows events in his life as they correspond with his writings. http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk Locus Magazine interviewed Priest in 2006. Excerpts from that interview are posted on the magazine’s Web site. http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/ 06Priest.html For Further Reading
Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War (An Abridgement of the Six Volumes of the Second World War). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print. A Nobel-winning work, Churchill’s memoirs provide the political leader’s own thoughts on the events of his time. In The Separation, Churchill’s memoirs,
published under a different title, are the catalyst sparking Stuart Gratton’s research into J. L. Sawyer. Priest, Christopher. The Prestige. London: Touchstone, 1995. Print. Another of Priest’s novels that makes use of doubles, The Prestige is a tale of rival magicians who have discovered different ways of performing the same trick. Like The Separation, this novel offers a fictional version of an historical figure—Nikola Tesla. Robinson, Kim Stanley. Years of Rice and Salt. New York: Bantam, 2002. Print. Published in the same year as The Separation, Years of Rice and Salt also spins a tale of an alternate reality, where most of the European population is wiped out during the Black Plague so that the West never rises to power. Robinson’s characters are reincarnated in different eras from 1405 to 2002. Ruddick, Nicholas. Christopher Priest. Mercer: Starmont House, 1990. Print. Presents a critical overview of Priest’s work up through 1989.
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Alana Abbott
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Shadow Family By Miyuki Miyabe
W Introduction Miyuki Miyabe is best known for her award-winning novels that use elements of science fiction, manga, anime, and mystery. In Shadow Family—originally published in Japanese under the title R. P. G.—two seemingly unrelated murder victims are found to have had an affair. Further, it is revealed that the middle-aged male victim played the role of father in an online cyberfamily while regularly betraying his wife and real-life family. Detectives working on the case suspect the man’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Kazumi, of the murder. The bulk of the novel takes place in the interrogation room of the police department, where investigators have set up a reenactment of the interactions between the cyberfamily to test the suspected killer. Detectives Chikako Ishizu and Etsuro Takegami finally break the case as they observe Kazumi’s response to the police interrogation of members of her father’s cyberfamily. Critics have pointed out that Shadow Family is less a detective story than a commentary on the state of the family, and especially of women, during Japan’s Lost Decade of the 1990s.
W Literary and Historical Context
In Japan the years from 1991 to 2000—when Shadow Family takes place—are known as the Lost Decade. Prior to that, through the 1980s, Japan reached worldwide economic dominance, thanks largely to its automotive and electronics industries. Then, in 1991, the Japanese economy collapsed. Unemployment, which had been holding at about 2 percent, rose to a historical high of 5.5 percent. Young people who came of age during the Lost Decade are known as the Lost Generation because of the disappearance of reliable employment until at least 2003, when the Japanese recession began to ease. But
even then, millions of Japanese in their twenties, thirties, and forties, who had been contract or temporary workers for years, lacked the skills prospective employers wanted. New social trends developed as a result, with many Japanese remaining in their parents’ homes well into middle age. The marriage rate dropped substantially, while suicide rates went up. At the same time, expectations remained high for workers, with the Japanese work ethic dictating that employees spend fifteen hours a day on the job. When the country’s Equal Employment Opportunity Act was passed in 1985, opening the door for women to enter the workplace, many female workers hoped to be on equal footing with men. Instead, the demands of the workplace, coupled with the traditional expectations of marriage and motherhood, forced many young women to forgo marriage altogether as they focused on furthering their careers in an extremely competitive economy. Consequently, the birth rate began to drop alongside the marriage rate. Despite the increasing demand for highly qualified workers, a lingering sexism continued to block women’s advancement in the workplace.
W Themes The events in Shadow Family play out against the backdrop of widespread unemployment and hopelessness in a culture known for valuing honor and appearances. The resulting emotional disconnect leads to a most extreme act: a daughter murders her father based on the rage she feels knowing that he would rather be with his virtual family than his real one, and knowing that, as a female child, she is bound by tradition to be dependent upon him. Yet the “shadow family” is composed of people who are equally despondent. Reviewing the book for the New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio describes them as “unattached, deeply unhappy people eager to express their yearnings for an idealized family life no longer possible in the fractured social structure of modern-day Japan.” Stasio
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Shadow Family
goes on to note that “the loving cyberfamily was drawn together through their mutual admiration for a movie, American Beauty, about an ideal family that sustains itself on illusions that bring it to a crashing, violent end.” Celeste Loughman points out in her review in World Literature Today that Shadow Family is less a crime story than an examination of fractured family relations in contemporary Japan, focusing particularly on Japanese women: “Today Japanese women routinely assert their independence and freedom of choice by selecting careers over marriage and frequently rejecting or walking away from traditional roles and relationships. This is the environment that shaped the attitudes of Miyabe’s . . . women, whose behavior is the exercise of individual rights gone berserk. Kazumi’s obsession to be strong, free, and independent overwhelms and distorts her.”
W Style Shadow Family is written in a documentary style from the point of view of a disinterested observer of the police proceedings. With most of the action taking place inside the interrogation room, the novel has an intense, claustrophobic quality. Critics generally praise Juliet Winters Carpenter’s translation into English.
MAJOR CHARACTERS CHIKAKU ISHIZU is Takegami’s former partner and the other detective on the case. ETSURO TAKEGAMI is a low-level police detective who solves the murder. KARUE TOKORODA is Ryosuke Tokoroda’s long-suffering wife. KAZUMI is the bitter, alienated daughter of the murdered man, Ryosuke Tokoroda. NAKAO IMAI is the second murder victim and mistress of Ryosuke Tokoroda. RYOSUKE TOKORODA is a middle-aged man known for extramarital dalliances. At the time of his death, he is having an affair with Nakao Imai, a college student who worked part time at his company.
W Critical Reception Miyabe is better known in Japan for her novel Brave Story, which spawned a variety of adaptations, and in the United
As detectives investigate the murders in Shadow Family, they find that the victims are both members of the same online cyberfamily. ª Mikael Karlsson/Alamy
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Shadow Family
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Miyuki Miyabe was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1960. She began publishing novels at the age of twenty-three and has won many prestigious literary awards in Japan. Her novel Brave Story, first serialized in Japanese newspapers in 2001, has been adapted into a manga series, an animated film, and several video games.
States for the English translation of All She Was Worth, but critics overall embraced Shadow Family’s authentic depiction of Japanese police procedure and the themes evoked by the story of Tokoroda’s alternate family. Richard Lipez of the Washington Post commented, “The semi-documentary style that Miyabe sometimes employs doesn’t gel right away, and the initial cascade of Japanese names is hard to sort out for those of us inexperienced with Japanese culture. But patience pays off, for Shadow Family blossoms into both a suspenseful murder mystery and an astute running commentary on the parallel cyberworld inside which millions of people now spend so much of their time.” Other critics concurred with this assessment, including Marilyn Stasio, who commented that the novel’s “slow start bogged down by official procedures,” eventually develops into a “theatrically constructed plot . . . swirling with naked emotions.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Lipez, Richard. “Murders Most Foul, from Cyberspace to Franco’s Spain.” Washington Post 27 Feb. 2005. Web. HighBeam Research, 9 Oct. 2010. Loughman, Celeste. Rev. of Shadow Family, by Miyuki Miyabe. World Literature Today 1 Sept. 2005. Web. HighBeam Research, 9 Oct. 2010. Stasio, Marilyn. “Dead and Bloated.” New York Times Book Review 6 Feb. 2005. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. For Further Reading
Fackler, Martin. “Career Women in Japan Find a Blocked Path.” New York Times 6 Aug. 2007. Web. 9 Oct. 2010. Discusses the difficulties Japanese women have had entering and remaining in the workforce following passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.
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A tape outline denotes where a murder victim has fallen. Miyabe’s Shadow Family concerns two victims who were part of an online cyberfamily. ª Andrew Paterson/Alamy
Holloway, Susan D. Women and Family in Contemporary Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Discusses the evolution of the family and the role of women in postwar Japan. Wood, Christopher. The Bubble Economy: Japan’s Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the ’80s and the Dramatic Bust of the ’90s. Farmington: Solstice Publishing, 2005. Print. Examines the dynamics of the Japanese economy in the 1980s and the causes of the crash of 1991. Nancy Dziedzic
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Shadow of the Wind By Carlos Ruiz Zafón
W Introduction The Shadow of the Wind (2004) is the English title of a novel originally published in Spain as La sombra del viento (2001). A best seller in several countries, it is the first work of adult fiction by author Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The lengthy novel might be described as a postmodern version of the gothic novel, because it uses elements of tragic romance, supernatural horror, and a mysterious quest and combines them with a metafictional aspect that includes a book-within-a-book device and extensive patterns of literary allusion. Part of the book’s popularity derives from its atmospheric setting in Barcelona, Spain, where the action unfolds both before and after World War II. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books (a repository of volumes waiting for their true owners) is one center of the novel’s mysteries and also figures in Ruiz Zafón’s later prequel, The Angel’s Game (2009). The Shadow of the Wind is credited with contributing to the increasing popularity of literature in translation, and Lucia Graves has drawn praise for her English rendering of the novel.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Shadow of the Wind takes place in two different times. The story of Julián Carax (author of a book found by Daniel Sempere in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books) takes place before World War II, in the period leading up to the Spanish Civil War. The story of Daniel’s quest to discover Julián’s fate unfolds after World War II, beginning in 1945 when Daniel is ten and continues a few years later in the 1950s. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) divided the loyalties of the country between the Fascist-influenced “nationalist” government of Francisco Franco and the Communist-influenced
“republican” forces opposing Franco. The aftermath of this bloody conflict affects the characters and events of The Shadow of the Wind. The novel is set in Barcelona, where the native Catalonian culture was suppressed by the Franco government after the civil war. Following World War II the city was also changed by rapid industrialization. The Shadow of the Wind is in many respects a postmodern novel, featuring intricate, overlapping plots and an emphasis on puzzles, wordplay, and literary allusion. Ruiz Zafón’s writing has been compared to an array of postmodern authors, including Umberto Eco, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Dirda). Critics such as Benedicte Page have noted that The Shadow of the Wind also contains traditional elements that reflect the influence of Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Wilkie Collins.
W Themes The Shadow of the Wind can be viewed as a book composed of different layers, each with its own set of themes. On one level, it is a coming-of-age novel, in which Daniel grows from an innocent child to a knowing adult. Along the way he is initiated into several aspects of romantic love, and he discovers his own courage and determination as he seeks to learn the truth about Julián. On another level, the novel is a psychological tragedy, in which Julián loses the woman he loves and becomes obsessed with self-destruction through the eradication of his own work. A third level is the revenge tale of Fumero, whose envy of Julián leads to a life of viciousness and violence. All three levels are woven together through connections to the history and landscape of Barcelona and the parallels between Daniel’s quest to understand the past and Julián’s quest to destroy it. The thematic polarity of good and evil runs throughout the book. Greed, envy, and bitterness drive
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The Shadow of the Wind
MAJOR CHARACTERS JULIÁN CARAX is an author who falls in love with Penelope, the daughter of his patron, Don Ricardo Aldaya. Aldaya, who turns out to be Julián’s father also, banishes Julián and allows Penelope to die in childbirth. The embittered Julián sets out on a tragic path of self-destruction. LIAN COUBERT is the name taken by the devil in Julián’s novel. The disfigured Julián uses the name after he begins the quest to burn all his own books. FRANCISCO JAVIER FUMERO is a schoolmate of Julián’s who also loves Penelope and becomes enraged by his envy of Julián. He later becomes a sadistic government agent and pursues Julián to the end of the novel. FERMIN ROMERO DE TORRES was on the losing side in the civil war. After being tortured by Fumero, Fermin has been reduced to the life of a beggar. He is taken in by the Semperes and becomes Daniel’s companion on the quest for Julián. DANIEL SEMPERE, the protagonist, is the son of a Barcelona bookseller. After selecting Julián’s novel (also titled The Shadow of the Wind) from the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Daniel learns that all other copies of the book have been destroyed. Daniel becomes determined to discover the true story of Julián and his fate.
references—both direct and allusive—add consistency to the novel’s style.
W Critical Reception Critical response to The Shadow of the Wind has been divided. Most reviewers have been enthusiastic about the novel. Kirkus Reviews calls it “absolutely marvelous,” Booklist praises its “rich, lavish storytelling,” and Library Journal characterizes it as a “meticulously crafted mosaic” in which “books assume a life of their own as the author subtly plays with intertextual references.” In a favorable review for the Washington Post, Michael Dirda concludes that “anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up The Shadow of the Wind.” Some critics have been less impressed, however. Perhaps the strongest dissenting voice is Jennie Yabroff, whose review in the San Francisco Chronicle calls the novel a “tiring, meandering tale” and a “tepid potboiler.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer also found the work unsatisfactory, noting that “the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of paraliterature or the Hollywood version of a great 19thcentury novel.” The original version of The Shadow of the Wind won a number of literary awards in Spain. The English version was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and won several smaller awards, such as the Borders Original Voices Award and the Joseph-Beth and DavisKidd Booksellers Fiction Award.
many characters to evil, but in the end it seems that good survives, as Daniel avoids the tragic fate of Julián.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W Style
Dirda, Michael. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Washington Post 25 Apr. 2004: BW15. Print.
Ruiz Zafón has said that he set out to combine several different styles in The Shadow of the Wind, including aspects of mystery, romance, saga, comedy of manners, and gothic novel (Benedicte Page 24). To unite these varied aspects, he creates a double narrative: one driven by Julián’s tragic fall, the other by Daniel’s quest for knowledge. As Daniel follows each fragmentary clue, we learn more about both men. Ruiz Zafón keeps the reader engaged by continually complicating and extending the plot and introducing a varied cast of characters, all of whom have their own stories. Although the novel is very long, skillful pacing keeps it energized, with cliffhanger endings for some chapters balancing long excursions elsewhere. The novel is also unified by its atmospheric setting and Ruiz Zafón’s ability to combine the fantastic elements of the story with underlying realities of history and politics. His postwar Barcelona evokes not only the ruined castles of classic gothic fiction but also the bleak ambience of a dictatorship. In addition, recurring literary
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Works Cited
Graff, Keir. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Booklist 1 Mar. 2004: 1102. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Olszweski, Lawrence. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Library Journal 1 Feb. 2004: 126. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Page, Benedicte. “Barcelona Gothic: Carlos Ruiz Zafón Has Become a Spanish Literary Sensation after the Release of His First Book for Adults.” Bookseller 2 Jan. 2004: 24. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Kirkus Reviews 1 Mar. 2004: 200. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Publishers Weekly 16 Feb. 2004: 148. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Shadow of the Wind
Yabroff, Jennie. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. San Francisco Chronicle 18 Apr. 2004: M-3. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Carr, Raymond. “Goodies and Baddies Galore.” Spectator 7 Aug. 2004: 33. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Carr’s entertaining discussion describes his reservations about the novel along with his general appreciation of it. He notes Ruiz Zafón’s ability to “create stunning set-pieces and bring to life a host of eccentric figures.” Eder, Richard. “In the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” New York Times Book Review 25 Apr. 2004: 6. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. This enthusiastic review offers an overview of the novel, observations about Ruiz Zafón’s writing, and a
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in 1964 in Barcelona, where he lived for almost thirty years. He took an early interest in literature and wrote a six-hundred-page science fiction novel at the age of thirteen. After working for some time in advertising and publishing two successful books for young adults, Ruiz Zafón moved to Los Angeles in 1994 to work as a screenwriter. Following his success with The Shadow of the Wind, Ruiz Zafón returned to Barcelona, where he wrote his second adult novel, The Angel’s Game. Published in Spanish in 2008 and in English translation in 2009, it is a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind and revisits both the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop. In addition to writing, Ruiz Zafón also composes music.
In The Shadow of the Wind, Daniel Sempere finds a book called The Shadow of the Wind on the shelves in an old bookstore. ª David Kilpatrick/ Alamy
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The Shadow of the Wind
discussion of thematic highlights. Eder comments on the relevance of comparisons between The Shadow of the Wind and the writing of Gabriel García Márquez, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges. Kerrigan, Michael. “Under the Dictator.” Guardian [London]. Guardian News and Media Limited, 26 June 2004. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. This generally positive review considers the novel in its political and historical contexts. Kerrigan also notes some strengths and weaknesses in Ruiz Zafón’s narrative style. Ramblado, Cinta. “The Shadow of the Dissident: Reflections on Francoism in Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind.” Clues 26:3 (2008): 70-85. Print. Ramblado argues that The Shadow of the Wind explores Spain’s political history in an oblique but interesting manner through its evocations of the city of Barcelona and particular facets of the characters encountered in the protagonist’s quest. Riemer, Andrew. Rev. of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media, 3 July 2004. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. In this mixed review, Riemer considers reasons that The Shadow of the Wind attracted such an enthusiastic audience and concludes that some of the novel’s weaknesses may also be clues to its success. Gale Resources
“Carlos Ruiz Zafón.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. “Lucia Graves.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
Ruiz Zafón’s Web site offers music he wrote to accompany The Shadow of the Wind, as well as a Google Maps tour of sites mentioned in it. http://www.carlosruizzafon. co.uk/shadowofthewind.html The Web magazine Three Monkeys Online published Steve Porter’s interview with Ruiz Zafón in October 2008. http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/ carlos_ruiz_zafon_shadow_of_the_wind.htm
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Great Buildings offers discussion and pictures of the Sagrada Família, the famed cathedral designed by expressionist architect Antoni Gaudí. Perhaps the most famous site in Barcelona, Sagrada Família exemplifies the eerie grandeur that permeates The Shadow of the Wind. http://www.greatbuildings. com/buildings/Sagrada_Familia.html An overview of the novel at LiteratureReview.com provides a very clear and detailed exposition of the varied plots and characters that make up The Shadow of the Wind. http://www.literatureview.com/ moxie/fiction/shadow-of-the-wind.shtml For Further Reading
Davis, J. Madison. “The Mysterious Popularity of the Arcane.” World Literature Today 80.3 (2006): 28-29. Print. This article considers the recent development of a fiction subgenre that is densely packed with obscure facts and ideas. The Shadow of the Wind is among the titles mentioned. Herzberger, David K. Narrating the Past: Fiction and Historiography in Postwar Spain. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Print. This thoughtful study illuminates the intersection of fiction, history, and memory in twentieth-century Spanish literature. It provides a helpful background for understanding contemporary works by Ruiz Zafón and others. Hughes, Robert. Barcelona. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print. This survey of Catalonian cultural history by art critic Hughes is considered a classic introduction to the city and the region. Pérez-Reverte, Arturo. The Club Dumas. Trans. Sonia Soto. New York: Harcourt, 1996. Print. Another richly imagined Spanish thriller about books, The Club Dumas is referenced in The Shadow of the Wind. Ruiz Zafón, Carlos. The Angel’s Game. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Print. Serving as a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind, this novel also mentions the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The story is set in preWorld War II Barcelona and follows a young writer into a world of dark mystery. Cynthia Giles
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Shag Incident By Stephanie Johnson
W Introduction The Shag Incident is a novel told by the weaving together of six recurring parts. One part is dated 1985 and pertains to the abduction of Howard Shag, a famous member of the All Blacks rugby team and successful novelist. Shag was kidnapped and tortured by a group of militant lesbian feminists who wrongly believed he was guilty of rape. The trauma from this experience drove Shag into extreme self-protective seclusion for twenty-five years, until at the age of seventy he decided to hire a young woman to write his biography. The other five recurring parts pertain to events that occur in 2005, These events are told from the point of view of five characters: Jasper Brunnel, a man incarcerated for drug-trafficking and child pornography; Lena Calonna, Jasper’s lesbian mother; Richard Brunnel, Jasper’s alcoholic father; Franca Todisco, a psychiatrist who interviews Jasper and indirectly through him learns important information about her own past; and Melody Argyle, a young PhD whom Shag hires as his biographer. The catalyst for the interlinking narrative lines is the long-suppressed 1985 crime. In the present year, 2005, the five key narrators interact in convoluted and highly coincidental ways that lead to exposing the truth about the crime, what prompted it, and who perpetrated it. Published in 2002, The Shag Incident won the 2003 Montana Deutz Medal for fiction.
W Literary and Historical Context
To explore the literary context for The Shag Incident, it is useful to note the development in the 1970s and 1980s of feminist theory and women’s studies. The first wave of the women’s liberation movement, which occurred in the early twentieth century, worked to end legalized inequalities
between the sexes and to extend the franchise to women. In the 1960s and 1970s, the second wave of the women’s liberation movement sought to transform people’s thinking about sex roles, about gender-specific responsibilities in family life, and about reproductive rights. Out of the second movement arose various theoretical and philosophical studies that added another approach to critical theory and affected legal cases. By the 1980s, feminist ideology began to incorporate the perspectives of lesbians and to be influenced by notable lesbians. In The Shag Incident lesbian separatists use the word wimmin to refer to themselves, seeing heterosexual women as linked to and subservient to men, hence the spelling of the word, which seems to them to be derivative. When Melody falls in love with Godfrey she is immediately conscious of how the idea of romantic love between the sexes is handled in women’s studies programs. Thinking of the theoretical position taken in such programs, Melody rehearses: “Romantic love was an archaism, a leg-iron” (182). A more specific literary context for the novel is identified in Émile Durkheim’s 1897 work Suicide, in which the sociologist explains the several types of suicide. Franca’s research into patterns of suicide among prisoners stems from Durkheim’s idea that anomic suicides occur most among prisoners who see themselves as choiceless. The historical context for The Shag Incident centers on a notorious crime that occurred in 1984. In February 1984, a lecturer at Auckland University, Mervyn Thompson, was abducted and left bound to a tree in an Auckland park with a sign on him that labeled him a rapist. It was widely believed that the abduction had been perpetrated by a feminist campus group, persuaded by the accusations of one of Thompson’s students regarding sexual abuse. Thompson denied the charges, admitting he had an affair with the student but that their sexual relationship was consensual. The crime remained in Auckland news for some time and adversely affected Thompson’s career. Author Stephanie Johnson uses this event as the 1985 starting place for her novel about Howard Shag.
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The Shag Incident
MAJOR CHARACTERS MELODY ARGYLE, one of the narrators, is the biographer of Howard Shag. JASPER BRUNNEL, one of the narrators, also known as Jasper Colonna and Jasper Shag, is imprisoned for drugtrafficking. As a prepubescent boy he was attached to Shag and then brutally rejected by him because of a misunderstanding. RICHARD BRUNNEL, one of the narrators and the father of Jasper Brunnel, is a journalist and alcoholic. LENA CALONNA, one of the narrators, is Jasper’s mother, who leaves her son for lesbian Scottie Terrier. FRANCA TADISCO, a third-person point-of-view character, is a psychiatrist specializing in suicide among prisoners who interviews Jasper Brunnel. GODFREY TERRIER is the brother of Scottie and love interest of Melody Argyle. MICHAELA THOMPSON-BOYD, wealthy love interest of Richard, is the sister of Johnny Boswell and the one who pays for Jasper’s legal defense. HOWARD SHAG, now age seventy, is a former star rugby player and famous novelist who became reclusive after his 1985 abduction and torture.
W Themes
Portrait of Stephanie Johnson, author of The Shag Incident. Sandra Mu/Getty Images
At the center of The Shag Incident is the idea of retribution. The novel explores various ways in which people seek revenge and punish criminals. The initial focus of the novel is immediately on the abduction of Howard Shag and how his kidnappers torture him. It describes the humiliation he suffers in being the victim. Next to this central event is the incarceration of Jasper Brunnel, and his narrative, which describes the difficulties he faced as a child. In a sense Jasper’s story explains what leads a person into criminal activity. Finally, how a criminal is identified and punished is explored. Because a man calls himself Howard Shag, Franca assumes that he the man who raped her. That assumption leads to the attack on Shag, who is unconnected to the original crime. In this sense, the novel examines the harm that can occur when people reach the wrong conclusions about a criminal or falsely accuse an innocent person.
W Style The handling of point of view is an important feature of Johnson’s style in this novel. Four narrators speak in the first person: Jasper, Melody, Richard, and Lena. Franca’s
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story is told in limited third-person from her perspective. The 1985 crime and its aftermath is narrated in thirdperson. Another aspect of the style is the way in which separate narrative lines or story lines are woven together. When Jasper inquires about who hired Mr. Lamb as his attorney, Mr. Lamb avoids answering: “Let’s just say I’m a friend of a friend of a friend.” Jasper remarks that then he said something about “six degrees of separation” (227). Considering the reliance on coincidence and the revelation of letters at key moments, readers may conclude that Johnson tests the limits of plausibility. Characters show up, see one another on streets, write letters, and discover personal mail with a frequency that stretches verisimilitude. Another noted aspect of the plot design is the way Johnson withholds information in order to build suspense or provides misinformation in order to invite her readers to come to incorrect conclusions. Two examples include the multiple last names given for Jasper and the suggestion that he may be Maori when he is actually Italian and English. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Shag Incident
W Critical Reception Though The Shag Incident won the 2003 Montana Deutz Medal for fiction, the novel made relatively little splash among reviewers. In general, critics have noted the darkly satirical nature of the book, and elements of irony and dry humor. The New Zealand Council author page on Stephanie Johnson quotes the judges’ panel for this award as stating that the book is “clearly by a writer at the peak of her powers . . . she is fully deserving of the recognition of excellence that this award bestows.” Virginia Winder’s review in the Daily News stood alone in its critical assessment of Johnson’s 2002 novel. Calling the book “compelling,” Winder described the plot has having a criss-cross net pattern: “This is the framework of Stephanie Johnson’s disturbing novel about cause and effect, about how the actions of one person can damage so many lives.” When the reader discovers the role each character plays, Winder remarked, “the impact is like a fist in your face.” What fuels that in-your-face impact, according to Winder is the disturbing subject matter, the worst of which is pedophilia: “Johnson’s take on a young man’s sexual liaisons with pubescent boys is the nastiest whack—and the bravest. The author tells it from different points of view, including the ‘predator.’” Winder’s conclusion couches a warning: Johnson “simply takes her people to the limit of a possible crime, teeters on the edge then pushes them into hell, leaving us, the readers to ponder the fine lines of right and wrong, yes and no. It can be exhausting, and yet fulfilling.” In addition to the review by Winder were two other responses to the novel. An anonymous review in Southland Times stated that the novel was definitely not funny: “Although trumpeted as wickedly funny, there’s really little that amuses about this novel.” This review turned defensive in its conclusion: “Woven through the unravelling of a mysterious 20-year-old incident is the story of a boy raised among militant lesbians and the reasons why he became involved in drug trafficking. Perhaps you need to be a woman to appreciate Johnson’s view of life in Auckland and Sydney.” The second review was written by the brother of the man who was the victim [Mervyn Thompson] in the 1985 crime that was allegedly the catalyst for the novel. Andy Thompson believes that the novel exploits and perpetuates aspersions against his late brother Mervyn and bitterly objected to the portrayal of Shag in the book. Thompson wrote: “Mervyn was a philanderer and hopeless flirt of legendary status but all the other allegations are the champagne-rewarded fancies of fiction writers.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
“Johnson, Stephanie.” www.bookcouncil.org.nz. New Zealand Book Council, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. Thompson, Andy. “Mervyn Thompson.” The Press, 22 Aug. 2003. Print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in 1961, in Auckland, New Zealand, Stephanie Johnson obtained her BA from University of Canterbury in 1982 and a diploma in drama from the University of Auckland. Johnson began publishing in the late 1980s and produced various works, including poetry, plays, and novels. She was the cofounder and creative director of the Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival from 1999 to 2001 and again in 2003. The Shag Incident won the 2003 Montana New Zealand Deutz Medal for fiction. As of 2010, Johnson lived in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband and children.
Winder, Virginia. “Read and Be Very Disturbed.” Rev. of The Shag Incident, by Stephanie Johnson. Daily News, 5 Oct. 2002. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Book Awards Dish Up Surprise Winners.” Waikato Times, 23 July 2003. Print. Reports on Johnson’s winning the Deutz Medal for Fiction. “Stranger than Fiction Story Fascinates.” Rev. of The Shag Incident, by Stephanie Johnson. Southland Times 7 Sept. 2002. Print. High Beam Research. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. Gale Resources
“Stephanie Johnson.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Document URL http://go.galegroup .com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1000160402&v= 2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
New Zealand Book Council, available at http:// www.bookcouncil.org.nz, provides information on Stephanie Johnson and brief descriptions of her books. The entry on Johnson that appears in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (1998) is included on this page. For Further Reading
Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. New York: Random House, 1987. Print. A novel about female bonding in which the burial of a body part occurs, handled quite differently than the placenta burial in Johnson’s novel. Johnson, Stephanie. Belief. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. Story about a New Zealander who was abused as a child and as an adult has a spiritual awakening and travels to the United States to pursue it, leaving his wife and children behind.
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Smith, Philippa Mein. A Concise History of New Zealand. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print. Covering from the earliest times to 2003, including the making of the nation in the 1930s and 1940s. Temple, Peter. Truth. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Print. Follows work and private life of head of homicide Stephen Villani as he investigates crime in Melbourne, Australia.
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Vaggioli, Domenico Felice. The Maori: A History of the Earliest Inhabitants of New Zealand. Trans. John Crockett. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. Print. Translation of late-nineteenth century Benedictine monk’s respected study, including Maori life, customs, and art. Melodie Monahan
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Shalimar the Clown By Salman Rushdie
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Shalimar the Clown (2005) opens in Los Angeles with the brutal murder of a former American diplomat, Max Ophuls, in front of his privileged daughter, India. The novel then flashes back to the Kashmiri village of Pachigam years before, when a sweet young man named Shalimar performed a popular high-wire act that earned him the nickname Shalimar the Clown. Shalimar, a Muslim, falls in love with a beautiful Hindu girl, Boonyi, and despite concerns over their different religious backgrounds, the two young people are allowed to marry. However, Boonyi becomes restless and when Max, a Jewish American diplomat, comes to the village, she flees to Delhi with him. Although Max is married, the two embark on a brief love affair in the city that results in an illegitimate daughter, India. Shalimar, crushed by his wife’s betrayal, vows revenge, which culminates in his coldhearted assassination of Max decades later. Critics have viewed Shalimar the Clown as the story of how Kashmir, a once harmonious and tolerant paradise, was ripped apart by the vicious politics of the subcontinent, setting Muslims against Hindus and Indians against Pakistanis. As Christopher Hitchens maintains in his review, “This is a highly serious novel, on an extremely serious subject, by a deeply serious man. It is not necessary to assimilate all the details of the conflict in Kashmir in order to read it. Nor is it necessary to favor one or another solution . . . Rather than seek for anything as trite as a ‘message,’ I should guess that Rushdie is telling us, No more Macondos. No more Shangri-las, if it comes to that. Gone is the time when anywhere was exotic or magical or mythical, or even remote.”
Context
Much of Shalimar the Clown is set in Kashmir, a region located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent and bordered by India in the southeast; Pakistan in the southwest; and China in the north. Today, Kashmir is divided into regions that are controlled by different countries: Jammu and Kashmir are administered by India; Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir are Pakistanadministered; and Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract are administered by China. In its early history, Kashmir was one of the major centers of Sanskrit scholarship and a Buddhist seat of learning. In the fourteenth century, Islam became the dominant religion of the people in the region, but Muslims and Hindus usually lived in harmony, often praying at the same shrines and to the same local saints. In the early nineteenth century, the Sikh army deposed the valley’s Muslim rulers. Between 1820 and 1858 the Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu was established, which brought together a range of disparate ethnicities and religions in one state, including Tibetan Buddhists, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. In 1847 Kashmir became part of the British Empire When the British relinquished control over India in 1947, the country was divided into the independent states of India and Pakistan. Known as the Partition of India, the event tore apart families and communities, causing the displacement of 12.5 million people and the deaths of close to one million people because of brutal sectarian violence. In addition, the newly independent states of India and Pakistan immediately began to fight over Kashmir. In 1947 the Indo-Pakistani War broke out. Also known as the First Kashmir War, it was the first of four wars between the two countries for control of Kashmir. Critic Christopher Hitchens traces the effects of the struggle on the Kashmiri people and underscores their
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Shalimar the Clown
MAJOR CHARACTERS BOONYI KAUL is India’s mother and the former lover of both Shalimar and Max. As a young woman, she falls in love with Shalimar; despite their different religions (she is Hindu and he is Muslim), their relationship is accepted by the community and they marry. When she leaves Shalimar for Max, Shalimar sets out on a path of violence and retribution. SHALIMAR NOMAN is a ruthless assassin and Islamic radical. Once a sweet and generous young man, his life takes a irrevocable turn when his beloved wife, Boonyi, leaves him for another man. He then devotes his life to seeking revenge and is drawn to Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist groups. INDIA OPHULS is a documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She dreams about her beloved mother, Boonyi. When she sees her father killed in front of her eyes, she discovers firsthand the violence that has ripped apart Kashmir and tries to become a force for peace. MAX OPHULS is a former American diplomat living a privileged life in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Years before, in Kashmir, he had fallen in love with a beautiful Hindu girl, Boonyi, who bore him a lovely daughter, India. Max is eventually killed by Shalimar in broad daylight.
implications in Rushdie’s novel. “Generally pacific and staunchly nonsectarian for many generations, the Kashmiris found themselves under assault by a divide-and-rule policy that made the most of confessional differences,” he states. “The Pakistanis stressed Islam for obvious reasons, while the Indian authorities sometimes exploited Muslim strains in order to isolate the secular nationalists. We see this cynicism through the increasingly bleary eye of the newly promoted General Kachhwaha, whose mandate expands to fit the nickname of his ‘base’ at ‘Elasticnagar,’ and who becomes less and less choosy about his methods. And we feel it through the lives of the villagers, who find poisonous distrust and sectarianism undoing the friendships of generations. Soon enough the mirthless robots of al-Qaeda are at work, symbolized by a mullah made out of scrap iron.”
W Themes Revenge is a central theme in Shalimar the Clown. After his wife leaves him for Max, Shalimar devotes his life to wreaking vengeance on the couple—even as it takes years and many personal sacrifices. As Laura Miller observes in her review of the novel, “Revenge is an ancient and powerful engine of narrative, and once Rushdie gets
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around to starting it up, it carries the novel along to an expected but nevertheless harrowing climax of ghastly violence.” Critics note that Shalimar’s quest for revenge also illuminates the political and religious tragedies of the modern world. In her review, Natasha Walters examines the “grand symbolism” of the act: “So the resentful Muslim, in revenge for what he sees as the corruption wreaked by the west, is being used by greater political forces to try to cut down the American Jew; leaving in his wake a confused individual, neither western or eastern, who is nevertheless determined to understand and to survive.” A sense of loss permeates the novel, particularly as Rushdie describes the Kashmir that existed before ethnic and religious turmoil turned it upside down. Miller maintains that “if Rushdie cannot make you see and smell and feel the loveliness of life in Kashmir, he does, finally, make a commanding story of its loss. It is a place where the frontiers between the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ had ‘grown smudged and blurred,’ but it will be dragged into the sectarian brutality of the 20th century all the same.” Christopher Hitchens identifies the central theme of the novel as the tragic decline of Kashmiri life. “[T]ragedy, both in the Attic sense of the fatal flaw and in the Hegelian sense of a conflict of rights, is to be the master theme. At one point Rushdie gives what is in effect a short modern history of the Kashmiri conflict. He does so by telling the story ‘straight,’ as it were, but interleaving Max Ophuls, as the American ambassador to New Delhi, into the factual record. It is breathtakingly well done, like a pentimento beneath the figures of John Kenneth Galbraith and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and it helps to illustrate the degeneration of Kashmiri life and Kashmiri ethics.”
W Style In examining the narrative style of Shalimar the Clown, critics often focus on Rushdie’s signature use of language. As Laura Miller remarks in her New York Times review, “cascading clauses are a Rushdie trademark; they can be taken as a manifestation of abundant imagination or as a symptom of poor writerly discipline, depending on the reader’s tastes. It’s hard, though, to see them as anything but laziness when they’re misapplied.” Miller offers an example from the text: “‘The decentered promiscuous sprawl of this giant invertebrate blob, this jellyfish of concrete and light, made it the true democratic city of the future,’ is a fancy about Los Angeles that’s grievously out of touch with the vacuum-sealed lives of the city’s affluent.” Miller also singles out another stylistic flaw in the novel. “Rushdie has no gift for pastoralism and he evokes the fabled natural beauties of Kashmir as if he were a man who knew them primarily through the medium of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Shalimar the Clown
Parts of the novel Shalimar the Clown take place in a Kashmiri village, similar to the one pictured here. Ronald Sumners/Shutterstock.com
embroidery motifs. For the creation of such a descriptionmad writer, Rushdie’s Pachigam remains stubbornly hazy: How big is it? How developed? How many rooms do the houses have and what are they made of? Do they have electricity? Are the roads paved? Your guess, even if you haven’t read the book, is as good as mine.” In his review, John Updike differs from Miller in his assessment of Rushdie’s Kashmir. “The best parts of the novel are undoubtedly those set in Kashmir; Shalimar and Boonyi’s youth and family background are realised with humour and sensual detail,” he contends. “And the destruction of Kashmir is the true heart of this book. When dealing with that tragedy Rushdie’s style is genuinely passionate; this is a paean of love to a destroyed homeland. By contrast, when Rushdie journeys into the past of Max Ophuls the tale becomes coldly decorative.” Updike does find Rushdie’s use of language overwhelming at some points. “His novels pour by in a sparkling, voracious onrush, each wave topped with foam, each paragraph luxurious and delicious, but the net effect perilously close to stultification,” he concludes. “His prose hops with dropped names, compulsive puns, learned allusions, winks at the reader, and repeated bows to popular culture. His plots proceed by verbal connection and elaboration as much as by character interaction.”
W Critical Reception Reviews of Shalimar the Clown were mixed. Critics could not agree on the central theme of the book, and others contended that the overwhelming weight of Rushdie’s prose was unwelcome in some passages. Laura Miller criticizes the character development of one of the key characters in the novel, Shalimar. “It must be said that despite the author’s efforts to foreshadow it, Shalimar’s transformation doesn’t make much sense,” she maintains. “As a rule, Rushdie’s characters lack a plausible inner life; instead they have bizarre quirks, unusual looks or magical powers, like the figures in a fable.” Miller then speculates on the reasons for the superficiality of the characters in the book. “Perhaps this thinness results from Rushdie’s being essentially a comic writer, directed to less congenial themes by history or ambition, a commedia dell’arte player cast in a tragedy,” she argues. “The invention of grand or profound characters doesn’t come naturally to him, which may be why he feels compelled to wrap Max and India in the tinsel of cool. Yet, in his defense, the communal violence that ravages Kashmir is a thing that beggars psychology and prompts Rushdie’s characters to think about the influence of planets and repeating cycles of creation and destruction.”
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Shalimar the Clown
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Salman Rushdie was born June 19, 1947, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, into a middle-class Muslim family. As a young student, he attended the Cathedral Boys’ High School. He was then sent to Rugby School in England, a prestigious private boarding school. He attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he received his MA with honors in 1968. He tried a stint as an actor in experimental theater, then worked as a freelance advertising copywriter. In 1975 Rushdie published his first novel, Grimus. The critical and commercial success of his 1981 novel Midnight’s Children allowed him to become a full-time writer. Midnight’s Children was awarded the celebrated Man Booker Prize. In 1988 his most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published. The outcry from some Muslim leaders over the content of the novel forced him into hiding. During his exile, Rushdie continued to write and publish. In the mid-1990s his situation improved, and he was able to come out of hiding. In 2007 Rushdie was conferred the British honor of Knight Bachelor, which grants him the title of “Sir.” He lives in New York City.
Walters also suggests an autobiographical reading of the novel. “Although Rushdie has complained that people read his novels as being partly autobiographical, in fact that is the reading that gives this book most resonance,” she argues. “Because if we read the last pages as being about India/Kashmir, they are hopelessly unaffecting, but if we see them as Rushdie’s song both of sadness and of hope for himself and his world, then they have more power to move us.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Hitchens, Christopher. “Hobbes in the Himalayans.” Atlantic Sept. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Miller, Laura. “Shalimar the Clown: An Assassin Prepares.” New York Times Book Review 23 Oct. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Updike, John. “Paradises Lost.” New Yorker, 5 Sept. 2003. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Walters, Natasha. “The Children of Paradise.” Guardian [London] 3 Sept. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources
In his review, John Updike underscores Rushdie’s attraction to celebrity and maintains that the novel suffers for it. “Rushdie himself well knows, after all, what a cumbersome handicap celebrity can become, and his seeming insistence on extreme glamour for his characters limits his room for maneuver within fiction’s curious democracy,” he observes. Updike does praise the novel’s sense of anxiety and tension. “Rushdie in his Manhattan retreat is no longer a Third World writer but a bard of the grim one world we all, in a state of some dread, inhabit,” he asserts. “The novel’s concluding pages conjure up the sensations of the hunter and the hunted wonderfully well, with, uncharacteristically, understatement, the mark of authority.” Natasha Walters unfavorably compares Shalimar the Clown to an earlier work, Midnight’s Children. “Rushdie has previously made his characters’ fates mirror the fates of nations: Midnight’s Children brilliantly wove the conceit of the child born at the moment of India’s independence, entangling his desires and disappointments with those of India itself,” she states in her Guardian review. “But that was a humane novel in which the parallels to wider stories never weighed down the characters. The characters in Shalimar the Clown, by contrast, are almost crushed by the freight of nations that they carry around on their shoulders. If you’re prepared to take this novel as an impassioned lecture on the roots of violence and the awful fate of Kashmir, it can work powerfully. But lose sight of the lecture, and you are left with an increasingly absurd plot and a style that is more and more mannered.”
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Hardy, Justine. “Fall of the Tightrope Walker.” Sunday Times [London] 27 Aug. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Stresses that Shalimar the Clown is fiction, and should not be regarded as an accurate history of the Kashmir conflict. Saadi, Suhayl. “Storm in the Valley of Death.” Independent [London] 9 Sept. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Contends that although the story hits a few false notes, Shalimar the Clown is one of Rushdie’s best novels to date. Upchurch, Michael. “Shalimar: Ethnic Strife Shapes Lives in Rushdie’s Painful, Beautiful Saga.” Seattle Times, 4 Sept. 2005. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Deems Shalimar the Clown “a masterpiece—a beautiful, painful, terrifying book, both fantastical and harshly realistic, filled with complex and memorable characters, and completely unpredictable in its blend of political thriller, folktale, melodrama, reportage and even science fiction.” Gale Resources
“Salman Rushdie.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 192. Print. “Salman Rushdie.” Literature Criticism Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 272. Print. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“Salman Rushdie.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. Also covered in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 323. Print. Open Web Sources
Salman Rushdie’s official website offers information on Rushdie’s books, upcoming events, and recent media appearances, including video of TV interviews and speeches. http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/ features/salmanrushdie/ Information on the Indian Himalayas can be found at Indiasite.com. The site discusses geographical attractions and offers pictures of the majestic mountain range. http://www.indiasite.com/land/himalayas. html The official website of Indian-controlled Kashmir traces the history and culture of Jammu and Kashmir, tourist attractions in the regions, and recent news. http:// jammukashmir.nic.in The official website for Azad Jammu and Kashmir offers a range of information about Pakistan-administered Kashmir, including the region’s history, culture, attractions, recent news, and a picture galley. http:// ajk.gov.pk/ For Further Reading
Print. A study of the Kashmir conflict, tracing the roots of the problem and offering possible solutions. Guha, Ramachandra. India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. New York: Ecco, 2007. Print. A history of the political, cultural, and social history of India after the death of Mohandas Gandhi. The book offers biographical sketches on major political figures of the era. Hardy, Justine. In the Valley of Mist: One Family in a Changing World. New York: Free Press, 2009. Print. Charts the experience of one family to explore the turbulent story of modern-day Kashmir. Hardy draws on her twenty years of reporting in the region to fill in historical and cultural context to offer a comprehensive view of what has happened in Kashmir during that time. Jamal, Arif. Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2009. Print. Jamal is one of Pakistan’s leading reporters, and in this book he provides a thorough and compelling history of India and Pakistan’s fight over Kashmir. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. New York: Knopf, 1981. Print. Rushdie chronicles the story of two infants switched at birth in India at the stroke of India’s independence day.
Bose, Sumantra. Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
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Margaret Haerens
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Shanghai Dancing By Brian Castro
W Introduction Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing is a fictionalized autobiographical account of the author’s life. The story begins when the protagonist, Antonio Castro, leaves his family in Australia and returns to China, where he was born and spent his youth. The subsequent narrative combines stories from the past and present together, relaying tales of family history as well as Castro’s ruminations about his personal journey toward self-understanding. The juxtaposition of time frames is accomplished in part through Castro’s use of metaphors pertaining to dancing. The text mirrors a complex series of movements through memory and existence as Castro details fragments of his family’s ancestral history, contemplates the more recent past, and meshes these recollections and family legends with his current journey through China. In this manner, the author considers the resonance of the past and its impact on one’s present existence, using the contrast to explore the complexities of family relationships.
W Literary and Historical Context
In Shanghai Dancing, Castro explores a variety of settings, reaching back centuries in some anecdotes, and discussing events in his family’s history that occurred throughout Europe and Asia. The narrator’s travels through modern-day China form the backbone of the narrative, however. The People’s Republic of China is a communist state, ruled in 2010 by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Although the Chinese government continues to function under the principles of communism (a philosophy rooted in collective governance and ownership), beginning in the late-twentieth century, the Chinese government began encouraging
capitalism, or free enterprise, to stimulate economic development in the country. As a result, a growing and prosperous middle class has developed in China, and its continued economic well-being has been encouraged by the Chinese government, according to such analysts as the BBC’s Tim Luard. In a 2004 article for BBC News, Luard maintains that while the Chinese Communist Party “still brooks no opposition,” it nevertheless encourages “private enterprise, private property, and almost anything else that will help make China richer and stronger—and keep the party in power.” At the same time, critics of the Chinese government note that despite the economic shift, a corresponding change in the government’s stance on personal freedoms and political democracy has not occurred. In an article for the online journal In These Times, philosopher and scholar Slavoj Žižek argues that an analysis of China’s approach to capitalism reveals that there is little hope for similar advancements in terms of political democracy. The China that Castro depicts in Shanghai Dancing reflects these tensions. For example, the prosperity enjoyed by some of Castro’s relatives is fragile in many ways, and Castro’s recollections of China’s past reveal deep scars left by war and revolution.
W Themes Castro explores the way the related notions of the past, of ancestral history, and of memory intertwine with themes of family relationships and personal identity in Shanghai Dancing. For the narrator Antonio Castro, a person’s family plays an integral role in helping define one’s current identity. The novel reflects the narrator’s efforts to explore the nature of that role. His personal past, and the history of his family, draw him from his life and family in Australia in an almost magnetic fashion. However, although Antonio is aware of the power of this attraction, its essence eludes him, and his own purpose in life seems unclear. Gathering information from living family members and their associates about the dead, and visiting
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significant places from his own and his family’s past, Antonio’s quest helps him understand his family and eventually, his own self. For Antonio, however, the greater understanding such investigations yield are not necessarily transformative experiences. He is pulled restlessly from place to place, following various trails throughout China and Europe, in actuality and also in memory. His moments of discovery appear to be their own reward, and the journey—or the dance, as Castro’s extended metaphor goes—is meaningful as a series of such moments, rather than as a definite path toward a specific destination. Identity, as explored by Castro and as he demonstrates through Antonio’s experiences, exists as a culmination of one’s past, and one’s family’s collective past, into the current moment.
W Style In Shanghai Dancing, Castro experiments with traditional narrative forms, eschewing a linear narrative in favor of a style that juxtaposes the past and the present. Furthermore the author’s prose has been described as dense and experimental. Examples include sections of italicized text interspersed within the narrative and blocks of prose tangentially related to the events that are currently being described. Castro’s juxtapositions of these italicized blocks with the rest of the narrative underscore the often jarring, blurred, and confused nature of recollections and familial myths and legends. The frequent switches between the past and present emphasize the narrator’s perceptions about the impact of the past on the present, while also highlighting his sense of confusion as he attempts to piece together forgotten events and people in his family’s recent and historical past. Castro’s use of the dance metaphor for this interplay between past and present is extended throughout the novel and serves as a leitmotif for the author’s understanding of this relationship between past and present as an experience to be explored, deciphered, and appreciated.
W Critical Reception A winner of the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, Castro’s Shanghai Dancing has been well-received by critics. Alison Broinowski, in a 2003 review of Castro’s novel for Australian Book Review, examines Castro’s style, pointing out the similarities between Shanghai Dancing and his other works, especially in the manner “he interweaves language and uses ethnic hybridity to send up race-based assumptions.” The critic further maintains that while Castro’s prose is “demanding” and “tangled,” it serves the aims of irony and parody, allowing readers to “hear all the resonances” between the lives of the narrator and his extended family. Like Broinowski, Sue Bond, in a
MAJOR CHARACTERS ARNALDO CASTRO is Antonio’s father, and a good portion of the novel is centered on Antonio’s recollections of Arnaldo. Arnaldo is depicted as a womanizer and a difficult man. Arnaldo’s life in China, when Antonio was young, is presented alongside Arnaldo’s later decline and death in Australia. ANTONIO CASTRO is the protagonist of the novel. Driven by a need to explore his personal history and the extended history of his family, Antonio leaves Australia, and arrives in China to begin tracing various paths of his family’s existence there. His excursions through memory and his physical traipsing through various locales lead him toward new knowledge and more questions about his family’s past. CLAVDIA ENGEL is Antonio’s lover. She attempts to aid Antonio in his search for his personal and familial identity. CHAIM LEVE is Antonio’s great-grandfather. Antonio traces Chaim’s emigration from England to America and then to Shanghai. DORA SIDDLE is Antonio’s grandmother. In exploring his ancestral history, Antonio returns to Dora’s birthplace in England. Her journey to China and her subsequent marriage to Virgil Wing are also recounted. JASMINE XIXIU WING is Antonio’s mother. Antonio’s memories of his mother are largely filtered through his father’s conversations about her. Antonio also describes her predominantly in terms of her relationship with his father. Her former strength is contrasted with her mental and physical deterioration in Australia. VIRGIL WING is Antonio’s grandfather. His personal history as a plastic surgeon and his marriage to Dora Siddle become the focus of Antonio’s investigations for a time. WILLY WING is Antonio’s Uncle Willy. Packing a weapon, he collects rent from his tenants and lives well in a home Antonio calls the Maison d’Or. Periodically, Willy takes Antonio with him when he collects rent, and he later allows Antonio to stay at his house while he is away. Antonio uses this location as a home base, returning there from his travels to research and write. CARMEN WOO is a former lover of Antonio’s who frequently crops up in his memories. She forged his name on a marriage certificate in order to aid in her departure from China. Carmen left China for Paris to pursue a career in modeling.
2003 review of Shanghai Dancing for the Asian Review of Books, finds that this novel reflects Castro’s body of work in many ways. Bond states that Castro’s work “is concerned with identity and racial prejudice, language and wordplay,
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erotics, dissociation and disorientation.” The critic goes on to discuss Castro’s mingling of humor “including crazy punning and slapstick scenes,” with a pervasive sense of melancholy. The genre Castro employs in Shanghai Dancing, the fictional autobiography, is also a topic of debate among critics. In a 2010 analysis of Castro’s use of this genre, Jacinta van den Berg, writing for Australian Humanities Review, states that this “uncertain status of autobiography has long been a feature of Castro’s writing.” The critic undertakes an examination of the novel in which Castro’s concern with identity is explored within the context of Antonio’s parallel search in Shanghai Dancing. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bond, Sue. Rev. of Shanghai Dancing, by Brian Castro. Asian Review of Books. 2003. http://www.asianre viewofbooks.com. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Brennan, Bernadette. “Brian Castro.” Australian Writers, 1975-2000. Ed. Selina Samuels. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 325. Print. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Nov. 2010.
Broinowski, Alison. “No Promised Land.” Australian Book Review May 2003: 44. Print. Flinders Academic Commons, Flinders University. http://www.d-space. flnders.edu.au. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Castro, Brian. Shanghai Dancing. Artarmon, New South Wales, Australia: Giramondo, 2003. Print. “China.” The World Factbook. http://www.cia.gov. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Luard, Tim. “China’s Middle Class Revolution.” BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. van den Berg, Jacinta. “‘Truth Is Not the Seduction’: Brian Castro’s Autobiographical Space.” Australian Humanities Review 49 Nov. 2010. http://www. australianhumanitiesreview.org. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Žižek, Slavoj. “China’s Valley of Tears.” In These Times. http://www.inthesetimes.com. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Brennan, Bernadette. “Lines of Exposure: Shanghai Dancing.” Brian Castro’s Fiction: The Seductive Play of Language. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2008. 147-74. Print. Brennan explores Castro’s themes of history
An aerial shot of Shanghai, China. In Shanghai Dancing, a young man returns home to his native China and recalls his family’s history. ª Pallava Bagla/Corbis
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and familial identity, and examines his use of metaphor in Shanghai Dancing. ———. “Point Counterpoint.” Adelaide Review. 2004. adelaidereview.com. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Brennan discusses Castro’s experimental, nonlinear narrative techniques in Shanghai Dancing and in Castro’s other works. Ley, James. Rev. of Shanghai Dancing, by Brian Castro. Sidney Morning Herald 29 Mar. 2003. smh.com.au. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Ley offers a favorable assessment of Castro’s novel, finding it to be a challenging, postmodern exploration of identity and memory. Gale Resources
“Brian Castro.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit, Gale: 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Open Web Sources
Brian Castro’s personal website provides biographical and detailed bibliographical information on Castro’s works and on reviews of Castro’s writings. http:// lythrumpress.com.au/castro/ The BBC News website offers an overview of modern Chinese history in “China Timeline.” http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1288392.stm The history of Chinese immigrants in Australia is explored in the Chinese Museum Web site sponsored by the Museum of Chinese Australian History. http://www.chinesemuseum.com.au/history.html For Further Reading
Castro, Brian. The Garden Book. Artarmon, New South Wales, Australia: Giramondo, 2005. Print. A novel featuring fragmented narration set in the Dandenong mountain ranges of Australia during the 1930s and 1940s featuring an abused Chinese Australian poet. Fenby, Jonathan. Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present. New York: Ecco Press, 2008. Print. In this acclaimed resource, Fenby
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in Hong Kong on January 16, 1950, Brian Castro is the son of Alberto Castro, a descendant of Spanish, Portuguese, and English merchants, and Jessie Maria Castro, the daughter of English and Chinese parents. In 1961 Brian Castro was sent to Australia to attend boarding school. He later attended Oakhill College and then St. Joseph’s College, from which he graduated in 1967. After completing his secondary education, Castro went on to attend the University of Sydney, graduating in 1972 with bachelor’s degree in education. A year later, he won Sydney University’s short story competition with the story “Estrellita.” Castro worked throughout the 1970s as a secondary schoolteacher in Australia as well as in France. In 1976 he received his master’s degree. That same year he married Josephine Mary Gardiner; the couple later divorced, in 1995. Castro wrote a number of short stories and essays in the 1970s and early 1980s. He published his first novel, Birds of Passage, in 1983, followed by several others in the 1990s. During these years, Castro served as a writing fellow at the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He married Maryanne Elizabeth Dever in 1997. His award-winning novel, Shanghai Dancing, was published in 2003, followed two years later by The Garden Book, a historical novel set in the 1930s and 1940s.
traces the political, cultural, social, and economic history of China. Fitzgerald, John. Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007. Print. Fitzgerald explores the White Australia Policy—legislation that prohibited nonwhite immigration to Australia from 1901 through 1973—from the perspective of Chinese Australians.
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Catherine Dominic
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Sharp Objects By Gillian Flynn
W Introduction Sharp Objects (2006) is a literary mystery novel relating the story of Camille Preaker, a Chicago newspaper reporter who is sent to her small hometown in Missouri to cover the murder of two girls. While conducting her own investigation Camille reenters the life of Wind Gap, her hometown, and must deal with her emotionally distant mother and a precocious teenage half-sister, who leads a vicious clique of girls. Camille must also contend with her memories of a dead sister and her own history of self-injury, or “cutting.” Sharp Objects has been critically acclaimed for its careful character development and its sensitive treatment of important social themes such as the pressures of teenage life, the tyranny of female cliques, and self-mutilating practice known as “cutting.” The book was the first to receive two Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards (the New Blood Dagger and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger) in the same year (2007).
W Literary and Historical Context
Sharp Objects is set in present-day Missouri. Despite the small-town environment, Gillian Flynn’s characters bear the marks of the social scourges of the times in which they live, from methamphetamine abuse (which Camille suspects is the cause of the bad acne she observes on several teenage boys) to the general availability of Ecstasy (which is given to Camille by her thirteen-year-old halfsister, Amma). Both drugs were widely available in the American Midwest in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Camille asserts that “Missouri is the second-most addicted state in the Union.” Another, less-visible blight of the period in which the novel is set is the self-injury that scarred Camille. Commonly known as cutting, the practice gained widespread attention with the rise of Web sites that
glorified it and the admission by a number of high-profile celebrities that in their past they had engaged in cutting. Cutting is most prevalent in teenage girls, but it also affects young men. Some people, like Flynn’s fictional Camille, continue to cut themselves well into adulthood. Whereas Camille used cutting to deal with unpleasant feelings, her mother, Adora, fulfilled a desperate need for attention by poisoning her middle daughter, Marian, which resulted in the girl’s death. Adora was found to have Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MBP), a disorder in which a parent or caregiver of a child, to gain sympathy or attention, fabricates a story about the child’s being ill or may deliberately make the child sick. The term Munchausen syndrome was coined by Dr. Richard Asher in 1951 to describe self-induced illness. He used the name of Karl von Munchausen (1720–1797), a German baron who traveled widely and became known for telling tall tales about his adventures. In Sharp Objects Camille learns about MBP from Beverly Van Lumm, the pediatric nurse who had cared for Camille’s sister Marian. Beverly alludes to the fairy-tale-like strangeness of MBP by describing it as being “like something out of Brothers Grimm” and comparing a mother who engages in such abuse to a “wicked fairy queen.” Beverly tells Camille that MBP has been becoming an increasingly well-known and even “popular” disease, the way anorexia had been in the 1980s.
W Themes Sharp Objects plumbs the depths of female cruelty and violence. Reuniting with her former high school girlfriends, Camille finds herself transported back to the hateful world of adolescent cliques as the women hurl barbs at one another. The book’s horrific violence, uncommon even for a mystery novel, is depicted in various ways, from Camille’s self-injuries to the simmering cruelty of Wind Gap’s teenage girls. Indeed, much of the novel’s disturbing atmosphere derives from the fact that it is the youngest women who are the most violent.
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Ann Nash bites and kills her neighbors’ bird; Natalie Keene stabs a classmate in the eyes with a pair of scissors; and Amma murders her rivals and subsequently tiles the floor of her dollhouse with their teeth. Flynn underscores the characters’ capacity for violence through their involvement with the local pigproduction plant, which employs most of the town’s blue-collar workers. Although she is the owner of the plant, Adora disassociates her pristine life from the brutality and filth of her business and thereby shows her unfeeling nature. When Camille follows her half-sister, Amma, to the plant, she is overwhelmed by the horrible smells and sounds associated with it. In a clear indictment of factory farming, she describes in gruesome detail what happens at the plant, from the female pigs that are tied down and forced to nurse litter after litter of piglets to the barbarity of the slaughter itself. By contrast to Camille’s revulsion, Amma’s keen interest in the slaughtering process marks her as a dark and sinister character. The plant also highlights the disparity between Wind Gap’s wealthy elite and the workers who suffer in the intolerable conditions of the meat-production industry.
W Style Although Sharp Objects has won awards as a mystery novel, critics have noted that the work blends literary subgenres. Writing in the London Times, Marcel Berlins describes the novel as “a combination of straightforward detection, psychological frightener and American South gothic.” Southern gothic literature uses traditional elements of gothic fiction, such as unexplained or supernatural events, in service of a commentary about the life and social issues of the American South. The subgenre is commonly associated with such writers as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Welty. In Flynn’s hands, dark, gothic elements reveal a brutal undercurrent in “proper” Southern women and the class inequalities that divide small towns. In his Washington Post review, Patrick Anderson lauds Flynn’s style, stating that “sometimes she dips her pen in acid, sometimes she is lyrical, but always she chooses her words deftly.” The novel is narrated in the first person by Camille, whose speech is generally casual and conversational and often contains slang and incomplete sentences such as “A belly. A smell. Cigarettes and old coffee. My editor, esteemed, weary Frank Curry, rocking back in his cracked Hushpuppies.” At times, however, Camille’s language is highly poetic. Her direct narration is interrupted only by the insertion of the more formal text of the newspaper articles that she writes about the crimes.
W Critical Reception Sharp Objects, Flynn’s first novel, has drawn praise from critics and readers alike. The work has been widely
MAJOR CHARACTERS JOHN KEENE is the brother of the murdered Natalie Keene and a prime suspect in the murder. NATALIE KEENE, the second girl murdered in Wind Gap, was a social misfit who was known to bite people. Her wealthy family relocated to Wind Gap after she stabbed a classmate in the eyes with scissors. ANN MARIE NASH is the first girl who was murdered in Wind Gap. Like Natalie Keene she was a social misfit known to bite others. Unlike Natalie, she was from a working-class family. ADORA PREAKER is the cold and self-centered mother of Camille, Marian, and Amma. She admits that she does not love Camille and is devoted to Amma. At the end of the novel, Camille discovers that Adora caused the death of Marian. AMMA PREAKER is Camille’s much younger sister, the daughter of Camille’s mother and stepfather. At thirteen, Amma is the leader of a group of popular but cruel teenage girls. At the end of the novel, she is revealed to have murdered Ann and Natalie, whom she saw as rivals for her mother’s affection. CAMILLE PREAKER is a Chicago reporter who returns to her hometown to cover a story about the murder of two local girls. A recovering “cutter,” she is haunted by memories of her insecure and sexually promiscuous youth. RICHARD WILLIS is a Kansas City detective who assists in the investigation of the murders in Wind Gap. He becomes Camille’s love interest but leaves her after he sees the scars from her self-injury.
acclaimed for its intriguing characters, complex plot, and dark atmosphere. In her review of the novel in the Guardian, Joanna Hines asserts that “Gillian Flynn’s prose fizzes with colour and tension, and the cast of characters in Wind Gap are monstrous but horribly credible. Dark, edgy and extremely readable, Sharp Objects is a brilliant debut.” Emma Rodgers of the Daily Telegraph also emphasizes Flynn’s skill at developing her characters, saying, “She is a fine crafter of character, which is the novel’s greatest strength.” Many critics have also admired Flynn’s portrayal of the dark side of small-town life. Carla McKay’s review in the Daily Mail, for example, notes that “Flynn brilliantly depicts the lurking malice and secrets of a small community,” and Anderson writes that “To loathe one’s home town is a venerable literary tradition, but I can’t think of another novel that has painted a more scathing, over-the-top portrait of small-town America.” Other
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Sharp Objects BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gillian Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1971. She received a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from the University of Kansas, then took a job writing for a trade magazine. After earning a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, she worked at Entertainment Weekly as a film and television critic. Sharp Objects, her first novel, exhibits the same dark humor that made her a favorite with readers of her magazine work. The critical success of the novel helped to establish Flynn as an important young literary mystery writer, and she left Entertainment Weekly to become a full-time novelist. Her second novel, Dark Places (2009), was short-listed for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award.
Works Cited
Anderson, Patrick. “There’s No Place (Thankfully) Like Home.” Washington Post 23 Oct. 2006: C03. Print. Berlins, Marcel. “Shaft of Wit in Psychological Gloom.” Times [London] 28 July 2007: 12. Print. Flynn, Gillian. Sharp Objects. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2006. Print. Hines, Joanna. Rev. of Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. Guardian [London] 22 Dec. 2007: 14. Print. McKay, Carla. “Murder Most Cosmopolitan.” Daily Mail [London] 19 Jan. 2007: 60. Print. Rogers, Emma. “Books.” Daily Telegraph [Australia] 6 Jan. 2007: 21. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
commentators have focused on the way Flynn depicts the far-reaching consequences of dark family secrets. Such is the case with the Publishers Weekly review, which notes that “Flynn gives new meaning to the term ‘dysfunctional family’ in her chilling debut thriller.”
Connolly, Paul. “Dark Debut Is Quite Stunning; Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.” Evening Standard [London] 9 Jan. 2007: 26. Print. Praises Sharp Objects as a debut novel and predicts that Flynn’s talent will develop further with time.
A photograph depicting family strife. In the novel Sharp Objects, reporter Camille Preaker must deal with unresolved issues from her dysfunctional childhood. ejwhite/Shutterstock.com
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Sharp Objects
In the novel Sharp Objects, Camille Preaker is a reporter who returns to her hometown to investigate the murder of two young girls and must then deal with her own past as a cutter. ª Ocean/Corbis
Ephron, Hallie. “Hitting One Out of the Park the First Time at Bat.” Writer 120.8 (2007): 19-23. Print. Discusses Sharp Objects in the context of several other highly successful first novels. McNicol, Nancy. Rev. of Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. Library Journal 1 Aug. 2006: 68. Gives a favorable review that compares Flynn’s novel to the works of noted writer Shirley Jackson. Rev. of Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. Kirkus Reviews 15 July 2006: 690. Provides an overview of the novel and
praises Flynn for her witty insight into an often brutal world where young girls struggle to find their identities as young women. Turnbull, Sue. “Honest Women Mix Violence with Black Humour.” Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 2009: 33. Print. Explores the depiction of female violence in Sharp Objects and Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places (2009). Wilkinson, Joanne. Rev. of Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. Booklist 1 Aug. 2006: 49+. Lauds the book’s sharp and cynical style with a positive review.
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Sharp Objects Gale Resources
“Gillian Flynn.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site provides biographical information, excerpts, and overviews of Flynn’s novels (including Sharp Objects). http://gillian-flynn.com The online magazine Bookslut offers an interview of Gillian Flynn in which the author discusses the interests that inspired Sharp Objects, as well as her work at Entertainment Weekly and her plans for subsequent novels. http://www.bookslut.com/ features/2007_04_010895.php For Further Reading
Flynn, Gillian. Dark Places. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2009. Print. Flynn’s follow-up novel to Sharp Objects is the story of a woman who investigates the decades-old massacre of her family, of which she was the only survivor.
This autobiographical account tells the story of a woman whose childhood was destroyed by her mother’s Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Hine, Thomas. The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager. New York: Bard, 1999. Print. Hine traces the roles and representations of teenagers in American culture over three centuries. King, Stephen. Carrie. Harden City: Doubleday, 1974. Print. Carrie is a classic horror story depicting teenage life by Stephen King. Simmons, Rachel. Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. New York: Harcourt, 2002. Print. Drawing on her study of several hundred girls and their experiences, Simmons addresses acts of aggression in girls from multiple socioeconomic and ethnic groups. Vega, Vanessa. Comes the Darkness, Comes the Light: A Memoir of Cutting, Healing, and Hope. New York: AMACOM, 2007. Print. This memoir deals with the author’s decades-long struggle with self-injury.
Gregory, Julie. Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood. New York: Bantam Books, 2003. Print.
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Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Silence of the Grave By Arnaldur Indriðason
W Introduction
W Literary and Historical
Silence of the Grave (2001; original title, Grafarþögn) is the second installment in Arnaldur Indriðason’s series of crime novels, the Reykjavík Murder Mysteries, featuring the melancholy police inspector Erlendur Sveinsson. Its English translation received the British Crime Writers’ Association 2005 Gold Dagger award for best crime novel of the year and the original Icelandic version received the 2003 Glass Key award for Nordic crime fiction. Summoned to a construction site on the periphery of Reykjavík after a human skeleton is unearthed, Erlendur launches into an investigation of what appears to be a longforgotten murder. As the mystery of the skeleton and how it came to be buried in a shallow grave unfolds, flashbacks relate events that transpired in the same location some sixty years prior. They detail the story of a brutally abused wife sequestered along with her three children by a profoundly cruel husband. Meanwhile, Erlendur receives an inexplicable telephone cry for help from his estranged daughter, prompting him to delve into Reykjavík’s seedy underground to save her. Along the way, the detective is confronted with the agonizing realities of his broken family and failed personal life: a drug-addicted daughter lying in a coma, an ex-wife who detests him, and a wayward son, all of whom he abandoned years before. Combining these threads, Silence of the Grave reveals a stark portrait of life in contemporary Iceland as Indriðason explores the lingering emotional pain caused by domestic violence, abuse, and neglect. At the center of this, detective Erlendur embodies the quintessence of the noirstyle antihero—an alienated figure searching for elusive answers in a modern culture of moral decay and social fragmentation.
Context
With its multiple narratives and timeframes shifting between the present day and World War II period, Silence of the Grave situates itself on the boundaries of massive social upheaval in Icelandic society. Neutral at the start of the war, Iceland found itself occupied by British troops shortly after Germany invaded Denmark in April 1940. By 1941 American forces had replaced the British and remained there under an agreement with the Icelandic government until the Allied victory. Iceland, now a member of the triumphant “west,” would thereafter experience the benefits of rapid increases in technology and the accumulation of wealth that would transform it into one of the world’s most affluent societies. At the same time, postwar Iceland also witnessed large-scale emigration of its largely peasant population from the country to the city, the partial fragmentation of the nuclear family through a rise in divorce rates, as well as increasing awareness and incidence of social problems such as domestic violence, sexual promiscuity, and the use of illicit drugs. These factors are all reflected in Indriðason’s dark and gritty—if somewhat exaggerated—fictional depiction of modernday Reykjavík, a rapidly expanding city where moral corruption, drug use, violence, and crime are commonplace. Silence of the Grave reflects many of these changes by commenting on a perceived decay of traditional culture through its presentation of Erlendur and his strained relationship to his family. Divorced, an absent father to his two children, and cut off from any meaningful social interaction not related to his professional life, Erlendur fits the role of the postmodern antihero—a protagonist who walks the line between eliciting reader pity and sympathy due to his social alienation, lack of heroic qualities, and inability to resolve his own personal problems.
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Silence of the Grave
MAJOR CHARACTERS ELÍBORG is a Reykjavík policewoman who assists Erlendur in solving the unidentified bones case. A capable woman in her forties, she is a foil to the hardboiled Erlendur and the selfabsorbed Sigurdur Óli.
MIKKELÍNA is the enigmatic “woman in green” seen near a stand of red currant bushes alongside the crime scene. Disabled from the age of three, she is described as “crooked.”
ELSA is a well-to-do elderly woman who lives in a chalet near the shallow grave where the mysterious skeleton was discovered.
SIGURDUR ÓLI is a Reykjavík detective on Erlendur’s investigative team. He is thirty-five years old, brash, modern, and somewhat arrogant. He suffers from personal insecurities related to his lately sex-obsessed live-in girlfriend.
EVA LIND is Erlendur’s young adult daughter. A socially disaffected drug addict, she suffers a miscarriage and subsequently falls into a coma. She remains hospitalized in this state for the duration of the novel, speaking only in brief flashbacks that reveal her strained relationship with her father. GRÍMUR is a working-class laborer and a brutally abusive husband and father. Briefly imprisoned for theft from a nearby Allied military base, he is stabbed and killed by his eldest son, Símon, after his release. HALLDÓRA is Erlendur’s estranged ex-wife. She despises her exhusband, addressing him as “loser” or something equally unkind when she can bring herself to speak with him. MARGRÉT is a poor and long-suffering woman who grew up without parents or siblings. She marries the extraordinarily physically and psychologically abusive Grímur, who keeps her and her three children in a constant state of fear.
W Themes As a work of detective fiction, Silence of the Grave first and foremost explores themes related to this genre, focusing on the detective’s efforts to solve a crime. Erlendur is also uniquely driven, however, by his personal obsession to settle missing persons cases, even if they are decades old. Thus, one of the central concerns of Silence of the Grave is its exploration of the haunting power of the past and of the emotional ties that bind it to the present. Erlendur’s relentless search for clues that might establish the identity of the skeleton parallels his compulsive struggle to understand what went wrong with his own life some twenty years ago. Preoccupied with personal regret at having entered into a loveless marriage and fathering two children with whom he has little or no contact, Erlendur seems to instinctively realize that he and they are also missing persons. A secondary theme in the novel, domestic abuse, is underscored in the extremely troubled marriage of Margrét and Grímur. Depicted through a series of flashbacks to wartime Reykjavík, this relationship illustrates the abuser’s efforts to maintain complete control
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SKARPHÉDINN is an archaeologist called in to support Erlendur with the investigation of the Bones Mystery, as the media has dubbed the case. His methodical perfectionism in unearthing the skeletal remains ensures that the forensic side of the assignment moves at a snail’s pace. ERLENDUR SVEINSSON is a detective with the Reykjavík police. In his fifties, divorced, with two estranged children, the gloomy Erlendur is haunted by regret for having abandoned his family twenty years before. Originally from the country, Erlendur feels alienated and out of place in the city, living a solitary existence there. DAVE WELCH is an American soldier stationed outside Reykjavík during World War II. He befriends Margrét, recognizing that she is the victim of domestic violence, and passes a pleasant summer with her and her children while her husband, Grímur, serves his prison sentence.
over his wife through the use of threats, intimidation, denigration, and physical violence. Eventually, his broken victim comes to accept that suffering is simply her lot in life, and even becomes complicit in her abuse. Only after experiencing the possibility of receiving affection and respect from another human being—in this case the American G.I. Dave Welch, with whom she has a fleeting romance—does Margrét realize that she must no longer unnecessarily forfeit her life to fear and pain.
W Style Silence of the Grave is an example of a specific subgenre of detective or crime fiction, the police procedural. It follows detective Erlendur and his team as they identify the facts of the case, gather forensic evidence, interview suspects, and attempt to reconstruct events until the mystery has been solved. In a typical police procedural, the reader is presented with several seemingly unrelated cases, with the effect of diverting his or her attention from the crucial facts by dramatizing false leads (so-called red herrings), alternative suspects, or tangential stories. Indriðason manipulates TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Silence of the Grave
this basic formula in Silence of the Grave by carefully constructing the novel via a series of temporal flashbacks. Erlendur remembers conversations with his daughter and recalls stories from his past, which he relates to her while she is comatose. Meanwhile, as archaeologists slowly exhume the unidentified skeleton, Indriðason recounts the stories of Benjamín Knudsen and his fiancée (a red herring), and of the abused wife, Margrét, and Grímur, as he leads the reader inexorably toward a discovery of the facts of the murder. Silence of the Grave also owes a stylistic debt to the hardboiled detective novel of the 1920s and 1930s, featuring a fast-paced, spare, and dialogue-centered style, without long, involved descriptive passages. Its bleak and fatalistic atmosphere also references these qualities of noir fiction (noir being the French word for “black”), although its characters are meant to be very realistic, with plausible internal lives. Erlendur can thus be understood as a postmodern version of the conventional hardboiled detective, inhabiting a world where crime, violence, and sex are portrayed without sentimentality. But whereas the stereotypical noir detective is unrelentingly tough and emotionally unassailable, Erlendur is defined by his internal emotional turmoil and persistent family problems.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arnaldur Indriðason, or simply Arnaldur as he is known in a land that eschews family names for patronymics, may be remembered as the writer who granted respectability to the once denigrated genre of detective fiction in his native Iceland. Born on January 8, 1961, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Indriðason’s invention of the stoic, gloomy, and alienated Erlendur traces a line from the bleak landscapes of Icelandic saga through the hardboiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler and the postmodern skepticism of Henning Mankell’s antiheroic inspector, Kurt Wallander. Using tight, succinct prose, genuinely-inflected dialogue, and characters that almost demand to be accepted as authentic, living beings, Indriðason focuses on the universal themes of searching for personal identity and the struggle to maintain humane values in the modern world.
W Critical Reception First published in the United States and Great Britain in 2005, Silence of the Grave was met with very favorable reviews. Summarizing such overall appreciation,
In Silence of the Grave, police inspector Erlendur Sveinsson finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation after a human skeleton is discovered. TRINACRIA PHOTO/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Silence of the Grave
Oline H. Cogdill observed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “Arnaldur has created a novel that will appeal to a wide range of mystery readers. Hard-boiled fans will appreciate his tough approach while those who prefer more character-driven novels will be intrigued by how the novel thrives on an emotional investment and little overt violence.” Critics are also drawn to the technical strengths of the work. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio commented on Indriðason’s application of his “austere style to a crime of such emotional breadth and sociological complexity that it acquires the sweep and consequence of epic storytelling.” Reviewer Larry Gandle applauded Indriðason’s mastery of detective narrative, praising the writer’s ability to convey a story that is at once subtle, compelling, and strikingly simple, while characterizing the writer’s “intertwining of the modern tale and the old” in his Tampa Tribune review as “clever and ingenious.” The critic concludes that Indriðason “has combined the modern British-style detective novel (minus the complexity) with the psychological suspense novel to create one of the finest novels of the year.” Despite a high level of overall admiration for the work, not all reviewers were entirely positive toward its construction. An unsigned critic writing for the Sunday Star-Times pointed out that, “this isn’t a novel that makes you desperate to turn its pages. There’s a perfunctory flavour to the way the plot is revealed, and the red herrings seem dutiful rather than probable and organic.” Others singled out what they perceived as the work’s thematic brilliance in exposing the dark and troubling rifts hidden beneath the easy superficialities of modern life. Reviewer Christina Koning noted that with “great deftness, the author creates a picture of a society riven by hypocrisy, where a blind eye is turned to misery, and where even the most respectable turn out to have shameful secrets.” Finally, Indriðason’s gloomy Erlendur has been frequently compared to another famous Nordic detective, Swedish author Henning Mankell’s well-known Inspector Kurt Wallander. The same anonymous critic for the Sunday Star-Times underscored major points of similarity by observing, “As well as a disastrous personal life, these two share a despairing view that the world is running down, and that ordinary human decency is less and less present in an age of urban sprawl and moral decay.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cogdill, Oline H. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 8 Nov. 2006. Print. Gandle, Larry. “Icelandic Detective Digs into Past to Solve Murder.” Tampa Tribune 3 Dec. 2006: 7. Print.
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Koning, Christina. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Times [London] 20 May 2006: 17. Print. “Old Norse Fatalism Steals the Show.” Sunday Star-Times [New Zealand] Independent Newspapers Limited 14 Aug. 2005. HighBeam Research. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Stasio, Marilyn. “Bones of Contention.” New York Times Book Review 22 Oct. 2006: 27. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Berlins, Marcel “Cold as the Grave.” Times [London] 3 Dec. 2005: 5. Print. Supports the Crime Writers’ Association award of Silence of the Grave as the best crime novel of 2005, and remarks on Erlendur’s absorbing confrontation with his own personal demons while solving a long-forgotten crime. Bowler, Matt. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Nelson Mail 3 Jan. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Admires Indriðason’s creation of mood and atmosphere, fully fleshed-out characters, and suspenseful, gripping storylines. Ott, Bill. Review of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Booklist 1 Oct. 2006: 41. Print. Stresses the author’s narrative juxtaposition of Erlendur’s familial turmoil and the forgotten case of missing persons he wishes to solve, while additionally commenting on the novel’s theme of haunting pain from the past that lingers into the present. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Economist 16 Dec. 2006. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. Appreciates Indriðason’s unique take on Reykjavík as a bleak, claustrophobic city, and approves of his adept writing style, while finding the novel’s ending somewhat predictable. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Kirkus Reviews 1 Aug. 2006: 756. Print. Praises the psychological depth and perceptiveness that characterize Indriðason’s second Erlendur novel in English translation, then enumerates its key narrative highlights and moments of emotional significance. Rev. of Silence of the Grave, by Arnaldur Indriðason. Publishers Weekly 253.26 (2006): 34. Print. Strongly laudatory review that particularly approves of the novel’s unexpected and gratifying conclusion, compelling characterizations, and clever, vivid storytelling technique. Wroe, Nicholas. “Northern Exposure.” Guardian [London] 17 June 2006: 11. Print. Review of Silence of the Grave combined with an interview in which the author discusses his themes, his reasons for taking up writing relatively late in life, thoughts on crime fiction and the figure of Erlendur, and future prospects for the gloomy detective from Reykjavík. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Silence of the Grave Gale Resources
“Arnaldur Indridason.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Web. 4 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Crime Writers’ Association, at www.thecwa.co.uk, is an esteemed organization of British crime novelists noted for their annual awards in the detective, mystery, and crime fiction genres. The World Health Organisation Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against Women 2005, at http://www.who.int, offers an extensive look at the worldwide problem of domestic violence against women, recognizing it as a widespread issue that calls for a concerted public health response. For Further Reading
Indriðason, Arnaldur. Arctic Chill. London: Harvill Secker, 2008. Print. Another installment in the Reykjavík Murder Mysteries, the novel raises issues related to immigration and pedophilia after a stabbed Thai-Icelandic boy is found frozen in snow. ———. The Draining Lake. London: Harvell Secker, 2007. Print. The discovery of a body in an Icelandic lake leads to a case for Erlendur that harkens back to Cold War ideological struggles and Stasi surveillance in the former communist East Germany.
readers in a story that begins with the mysterious murder of an elderly man and leads to a decades-old rape case. The novel plays upon the famously low crime rate in Reykjavík and the potential abuse of the project to decode the DNA of the genetically homogeneous Icelandic population. ———. Voices. London: Harvill Press, 2006. Print. The voices referred to in the title of the third in the Reykjavík Murder Mysteries series refer not only to those that echo from Erlendur’s past and present, but also to resonating tongues in the mind of a mad woman, which follow the detective in his investigation of a former choirboy’s murder. Mankell, Henning. Sidetracked. New York: New Press: 1999. Print. Detective novel featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander by the renowned and influential Swedish writer. Adaptations
Jar City. Dir. Baltasar Kormákur. Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir. Blueeyes Productions, 2006. Film. Although no adaptations of Silence of the Grave exist at the time of publication, Arnaldur’s first novel to achieve international notoriety, Jar City, was made into a film in 2006 and features such characters as Erlendur, Eva Lind, Elíborg, and Sigurdur Óli.
———. Jar City. London: Harvill Press, 2004. Print. Introduces detective Erlendur to English-speaking
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Sean McCready
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Silent Joe By T. Jefferson Parker
W Introduction Set in present-day Orange County, California, Silent Joe (2001) is the ninth novel by the noted mystery writer T. Jefferson Parker. The book tells the story of Joe Trona, who as a young child was permanently disfigured when his father poured acid in his face. Adopted by an influential politician named Will Trona, Joe grows up to be a reserved young man who works as a prison guard and serves as his adoptive father’s right-hand man. When Will is murdered, Joe sets out to solve the case. In so doing, however, he is forced to confront his mentor’s imperfections and must finally come to terms with the abuse that disfigured him. Upon publication, Silent Joe, which features a notably slower pace than some of the author’s previous works, was widely praised for its psychological insights and its detailed development of Joe’s complex character. In 2001 the Mystery Writers of America awarded the book the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Novel.
W Literary and Historical Context
Silent Joe is set in Orange County, California. The second-most populous county in California, it is known for its affluence and for its upscale planned communities. In the novel Joe’s adoptive parents live in a beautiful home in a wealthy section of Orange County, but Joe notes that even their home is “a tear-down by the new standards of the neighborhood.” In the course of his investigation into his adoptive father’s murder, Joe visits the palatial home of the televangelist Reverend Alter, as well as the billionaire developer Jack Blazak’s estate, which boasts a reflecting pool, a helipad, and a vineyard. While Orange County has become famous for its wealthy residents, most of whom are white, the
county is also home to a large Vietnamese population, which at an estimated 200,000 people is one of the largest Vietnamese communities outside Vietnam. The county’s Little Saigon is famous for its restaurants and shopping destinations, including the two-story Asian Garden Mall. While most of the Vietnamese residents of Orange County are law-abiding citizens, several Vietnamese gangs are also active in the area. In the novel Joe develops a relationship with Sammy Nguyen, a Vietnamese gang leader held in the jail in which Joe works. Through Sammy, Joe gains insight into the rival gang that killed his father. In addition, he visits the Little Saigon nightclub where the men who planned his father’s murder met with gang members. The political structure of Orange County also plays an important role in Parker’s novel. The county, a conservative stronghold, is governed by a five-member board of supervisors. These members are elected officials who are led by a county executive. In the novel, Will Trona is one of the county’s supervisors. The position affords him a great deal of power, which he uses to his advantage, funneling funds to his pet causes, having affairs with the many beautiful women drawn to his power, and collecting information that he uses against his rivals.
W Themes Filial loyalty is one of the central themes of Parker’s novel. Joe, who spent much of his early life in a children’s home, bonded almost instantly with Will and Mary Ann Trona, who rescued him from institutional life and offered him a life of affluence and love. Joe repeatedly describes how honored he felt to be the son of such kindhearted people. He tells an interviewer, for example, that what he is most proud of is “that Will and Mary Ann Trona would take me.” Nevertheless, Joe is forced to come to terms with the grief that Will caused his loved ones. Reflecting on why he never told his mother what he knew of his father’s secrets, Joe explains that “I never told her because I loved
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Silent Joe
Will and I loved her and I loved doing what he needed me to do.” Joe’s sense of obligation to his father and his father’s causes continues even after Will’s death reveals that many of the good works he carried out were made possible by violations of trust and abuses of power. This fine line between right and wrong is also thematically central to the novel. Will is depicted as a man who works to do what he believes is right, but intoxicated by power, he crosses the line into lawlessness. When he finds out, for example, that one of his fellow supervisors is being paid to vote for a development deal that Will opposes, he taps the man’s phone and blackmails the man into voting against the deal. He also intercepts one of the man’s payouts, donating it to a local community action group. This Robin Hood-like behavior also dominates Will’s relationship with the Reverend Alter. After photographing the televangelist with his arm around a prostitute, Will blackmails Alter into donating $10,000 a month to the local children’s home where Joe spent his early years. Joe appreciates the good effects that such actions can have on the community and thus struggles with right and wrong as he figures out how to carry out his father’s legacy. At the end of the novel, he is poised to continue Will’s good works without violating the law.
MAJOR CHARACTERS THE REVEREND DANIEL ALTER is a powerful televangelist whom Will was blackmailing. Although Alter does not actively participate in the conspiracy to kill Will, he is present when it is planned. ALEX BLAZAK is the mentally unstable son of Jack. While he is initially believed to have kidnapped his younger sister, it is later revealed that she came to him for protection after videotaping her father’s abuse of their maid. JACK BLAZAK is a successful developer whose interests Will opposed. His participation in the plot to kill Will was motivated by a desire to stop Will from leaking the tape showing him severely beating the maid he had impregnated. At the end of the novel, he is in jail awaiting trial. SAVANNAH BLAZAK is Jack’s preteen daughter. While on the run with her older brother, she comes to trust Joe. After Joe discovers the truth behind her “kidnapping,” he follows through on his father’s plan to place her in protective custody. At the end of the novel, she is reunited with her mother. JUNE DAUER is a radio host who interviews Joe and becomes his love interest.
W Style Firmly entrenched in the detective fiction and suspense genres, Silent Joe has often been likened to the works of such better-known writers as Michael Connelly and Jonathan Kellerman, who are recognized for developing psychological suspense in their works. Parker creates intrigue and suspense not only through the crime narrative that drives the plot of the novel but also through the story of Joe’s childhood, which is revealed gradually over numerous chapters and which is not fully resolved until the novel’s final pages. To this end the book’s early chapters are peppered with small revelations (“Will’s my father, kind of”) that create interest but leave the reader with more questions than answers. The novel is narrated in the first person by Joe. This point of view allows Parker to develop most fully the complex psychology of his unique character. “Silent Joe,” as his adoptive mother affectionately refers to him, has a narrative voice that is honest and sincere but also restrained. His thoughts on the trajectory of his life, for example, are reduced to a series of choppy sentences that begin with the man who disfigured him: “Thor. What happened. Pain. Memory. Surgery. Hillview. Other kids. Will and Mary Ann. School. Being known as ‘The Acid Baby.’ Baseball. College. Sheriff’s Department. Working the jail.” Joe’s reticence, his “silence,” reflects the abuse he suffered as a child and his resulting desire to deflect attention. At other times, however, he confesses embarrassing events in his life (hiring models just so he could stare at their beautiful faces, fearing touch, and failing
JOE TRONA is the adopted son of Will Trona. He works as a sheriff’s department prison guard and moonlights as Will’s right-hand man. He eventually discovers that Will’s murder was arranged by a group of business colleagues and alleged friends. He also discovers that the man who disfigured him as an infant did so upon learning that he was not Joe’s father. Instead, Joe learns, Will is his biological father. MARY ANN TRONA is Joe’s adoptive mother. The wife of Will, she has looked the other way during his many extramarital affairs but suffers deeply because of them. WILL TRONA is Joe’s adoptive father. A high-powered government official in Orange County, he has far-reaching connections. After Will is murdered, Joe discovers that his beloved adoptive father was involved in a number of shady dealings, leveraging the information he collected about his friends and colleagues for large donations to his favorite charities and political favors.
with women) with a naive transparency that contributes to the complex psychological portrait that has been widely praised by reviewers.
W Critical Reception When it was published in 2001, Silent Joe received widespread praise from both fans of detective fiction and
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Silent Joe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR T. Jefferson Parker was born in Los Angeles, California, on December 26, 1953. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, in 1976 with a BA in English. While launching his career as a novelist, he worked as a reporter for Orange County newspapers, such as the Newport Ensign and the Daily Planet. His first novel, Laguna Heat, was published in 1985. More novels quickly followed, and Parker began to develop a reputation as a talented writer of mysteries and thrillers. He became known for his fast-paced plots and for his penchant for Orange County settings. The award-winning Silent Joe, his ninth novel, helped to bring Parker to wider attention as a writer. He has continued to publish successful novels, including the Edgar Award-winning California Girl (2004).
book reviewers. In addition to the Edgar Award, the book won a Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best Mystery/Thriller and was nominated for an International
Association of Crime Writers’ Dashiell Hammett Award, a prize given to the best work of literary detective fiction each year. While some commentators have faulted the novel for staying too close to such themes as governmental abuses of power and big business corruption, which dominate Parker’s earlier works, most have ultimately praised it for bringing new life and a new perspective to these issues. Indeed, the work, which moves at a slower pace than many of the author’s earlier volumes, surprised many reviewers with its attention to personal struggle and its emotionally charged story line. Mike Ripley, reviewing the novel for the Birmingham Post, comments that the book is “smoothly written, occasionally very poignant and ultimately very satisfying.” Much of the praise for Parker’s novel has centered on its depiction of the interior struggles of its troubled protagonist. Reviewing the novel in the St. Petersburg Times, for example, Kiki Olson writes that “more than a mystery, Silent Joe is an artfully articulated psychological drama.” Gerald Kaufman echoes this idea, noting in the Scotsman that “this is a novel of character, and the most fascinating character is Joe himself.” The attention paid to the development of Joe’s character has led some commentators to predict that he will be featured in future novels. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Kaufman, Gerald. “Reviews: The Evidence Gatherers.” Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Scotsman 5 Jan. 2002: 8. Print. Olson, Kiki. “Mysteries.” Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. St. Petersburg (Florida) Times 8 Apr. 2008: 4D. Print. Parker, T. Jefferson. Silent Joe. New York: Hyperion, 2001. Print. Ripley, Mike. “Mike Ripley’s Crime Files—Ruthless World of the Crook.” Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Birmingham Post 26 Jan. 2002: 53. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Gillespie, Mike. Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Ottawa Citizen 29 Apr. 2001: C13. Print. Likens Parker to Michael Connelly and Stephen King and predicts that the novel will increase Parker’s fame. Heller, Jean. “Thrillers.” St. Petersburg (Florida) Times 20 May 2001: 4D. Print. Describes the novel as softer but more satisfying than the author’s previous works. In the novel Silent Joe, prison guard Joe Trona searches for his adoptive father’s killer. Pictured here is a police officer from Orange County, where the novel is set. ª Mark Savage/Corbis
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Kreiner, Judith. Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Washington Times 20 May 2001: B8. Print. Focuses on the novel’s psychological strengths. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Silent Joe
Lukowsky, Wes. Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Booklist 15 Feb. 2001: 1085. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Offers a brief overview of the novel’s plot. Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Publishers Weekly 19 Mar. 2001: 78. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Lauds the work as the author’s most ambitious to date, praising it for its complex story line. Stankowski, Rebecca House. Rev. of Silent Joe, by T. Jefferson Parker. Library Journal 1 Mar. 2001: 132. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Praises the work’s character development and its carefully constructed plot. Gale Resources
“T. Jefferson Parker.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2010. Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site offers an overview of his published works, a brief biography, a schedule of appearances, and an FAQ section in which Parker provides insight into his writing process. http:// www.tjeffersonparker.com/ The Barnes and Noble Web site features a brief biographical sketch of Parker and an interview in which he discusses his favorite books. http://www.bn.com/
how he came to be a writer. http://wiredforbooks .org/tjeffersonparker/ For Further Reading
Cox, Stephen D. The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. Print. Cox’s nonfiction volume offers a sociological history of America’s prisons, providing additional insight into the prison world described in Silent Joe. Kellerman, Jonathan. Over the Edge: An Alex Delaware Novel. New York: Atheneum, 1987. Print. Parker has frequently been compared to Kellerman, the author of this psychological thriller. Kling, Robert, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster. Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. Print. This volume of nonfiction traces the history of Orange County, California—the setting of Silent Joe—since the 1940s. Parker, T. Jefferson. California Girl. New York: William Morrow, 2004. Print. Set in California during the 1960s, Parker’s Edgar Award-winning thriller chronicles the relationships among four brothers and their connections to a murdered woman. Rose-Ackerman, Susan. Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. Rose-Ackerman’s text provides an extensive examination of the political and economic impacts of government corruption.
Wired for Books provides an audio interview with Parker from 1988 in which the author discusses
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Sirena Selena By Mayra Santos-Febres
W Introduction Originally published in Spanish as Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000), Sirena Selena (trans. Stephen Lytle, 2001) by Mayra Santos-Febres is the story of Sirenito, a fifteen-yearold Puerto Rican boy who finds himself on the streets after the death of the grandmother who raised him. Sirenito’s effeminate looks and beautiful voice draw the attention of the ambitious drag queen and cabaret owner Martha Divine, who transforms him into “Sirena Selena.” Because Selena is too young to work in Puerto Rico, Martha takes him to the Dominican Republic, hoping to land a series of lucrative performances. Selena, however, catches the eye of a powerful Dominican businessman and is caught up in a whirlwind of desire, ambition, and manipulation. In painting a portrait of Selena’s world, the novel explores imbalances of power between rich and poor, men and women, and heterosexuals and homosexuals. The original Spanish version of the book won the best novel prize from the PEN Club of Puerto Rico and was a finalist for the 2001 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, and the subsequent English translation has been met with widespread critical acclaim.
W Literary and Historical Context
The stage name of the novel’s young protagonist is drawn from Greek mythology. According to myth, the sirens were hideous bird-women who used their beautiful voices to lure sailors to their island, where they would wreck on the rocky coast and die. In the novel, “Sirena” Selena, like the mythological sirens, uses her voice to lure men and opportunities. Moreover, like the bird-women, he is not what he at first appears to be. As Debra A. Castillo points out in the Latin American Literary Review, “[W]e are
never allowed to forget that her seductive body is a bifurcated and monstrous one, that her compelling voice leads sailors to their doom.” For, despite the soft features, makeup, and women’s clothing, Selena is anatomically male. Her allure to Hugo, who is desperately trying to escape his homosexual desires, is fatal, costing him his pride as well as his family. Also contextually important to Santos-Febres’s novel is Latin American bolero music. The bolero tradition referenced by the book originated in Cuba in the latter part of the nineteenth century and quickly spread throughout Latin America, becoming an important part of the region’s musical heritage. Music in this genre generally addresses themes such as lost or unrequited love. In the novel, Martha first discovers Selena, numbed by cocaine and scavenging for cans, singing a bolero tune that was a favorite of his grandmother’s: “He sang it with his whole voice, as if he were going to die when he finished, he sang it to feel his misery.” Martha recognizes the power of the young man’s voice and envisions an act in which, transformed into “Sirena Selena,” he will sing his bolero music in drag. For Selena, the music brings both peace and influence, quieting his mind when he is troubled and later helping him attract the wealthy Hugo. He also uses it as a retreat from the world, singing it quietly while having sex with Hugo.
W Themes Reviewing the novel for the New York Times, Jana Giles notes that “Santos-Febres examines questions of sexuality and power but does not lead her characters into a utopia: it’s still all about who’s got the money and who’s on top.” As Giles suggests, power is ultimately the central theme of the book—the single point to which issues of sexuality, gender, and social class can all be reduced. Each of the characters is struggling with power in one way or another. For Selena, the battle is economic. After being rescued from the streets, he works to ensure that he will never
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again be homeless, even though it means manipulating his benefactors. Although Selena’s behavior seems cold and calculating, Santos-Febres presents his choices with sympathy, depicting the instability and peril of street life. Unlike Selena, Martha has achieved relative financial success, but she remains painfully aware that her status as a transsexual leaves her vulnerable. As she seeks out the financial break that will allow her to complete the transformation from male to female, she lives in fear of being singled out and assaulted. Even the novel’s wealthy characters are seen to wrestle with powerlessness. Hugo’s wife, Solange, has a beautiful home and luxurious possessions but ultimately lacks control in her marriage. Despite her best efforts, she is unable to keep her husband away from Selena and the public humiliation she fears it will bring on her family. Even Hugo, who has wealth and prestige, is rendered powerless by his attraction to young men. Although he has the money to buy Selena’s affections, he cannot make her feel for him what he feels for her, and he is destroyed when he realizes that she has robbed and left him. At the end of the book, no character is left unscathed, and all ostensibly continue their struggles for power and acceptance.
W Style Sirena Selena is written in the third person, with its focus shifting among the title character, Martha, Hugo, Solange, and the young Leocadio. The changing narrative point of view helps to underscore the parallels between the lives of Selena and Leocadio, as the two share similar pasts and, the end of the novel suggests, similar futures. It also, however, highlights the seemingly insurmountable rifts between characters such as Hugo and Solange, Hugo and Selena, and Selena and Martha, as the reader realizes that the characters constantly manipulate and misunderstand each other. In addition to switching among the experiences and perspectives of its characters, the original Spanish version of the novel also shifted between languages, including a chapter written entirely in English. While there is no way for Lytle’s translation to capture the effect of this abrupt change in language, the English version does incorporate a number of Spanish words and phrases. The novel culminates in Selena’s performance at Hugo’s party, and Santos-Febres underscores the importance of the event in several notable ways. Selena has carefully engineered his entrance down Hugo’s staircase to produce the greatest possible effect on his audience. In order to accentuate the power of Selena’s slow and captivating descent, the author arranges her words visually as stair steps on the page. She also makes use of dramatic, poetic language to describe the scene: “Flame at her toe, flame at the dry ice that is the foam that navigates toward the neckline of her white sequined dress, swimming, lost, like a fallen girl but immaculate, a
MAJOR CHARACTERS LEOCADIO is a young Dominican boy whose impoverished mother has entrusted him to a woman who takes in abandoned young boys. He eventually goes to work at a hotel alongside one of his adoptive brothers. He possesses a quality that draws the attention of those around him, and at the end of the book Martha has identified him as her next protégé, although the two have not yet met. MARTHA DIVINE (ALSO KNOWN AS MARTHA FIOL) is a transsexual who owns a cabaret in San Juan. She takes in Selena after she finds him on the streets and recognizes his potential as a performer. Martha hopes he will bring in the income she needs to pay for the surgeries that will finally make her biologically female. After she takes Selena to the Dominican Republic, hoping for their big break, her star abandons her. Always on the lookout for an opportunity, Martha goes into business with a hotel owner, arranging to put on drag shows in his hotel bar. As the novel concludes, she has her eye on her next protégé, a young boy who works in the hotel. HUGO GRAUBEL III is a wealthy businessman who is uncomfortable with his own sexuality. Although he is married and has several children, he cannot get over his attraction to effeminate young men. After he meets Selena through a business connection, he hires the young man to perform at his home so that he can seduce him. Although the two eventually develop a relationship, Selena does not return Hugo’s feelings and eventually robs him before disappearing in search of the next opportunity. SOLANGE GRAUBEL is Hugo’s wife. Married when she was just fifteen, Solange has developed into a confident wife and mother and has saved money in case her husband ever leaves her. After she is mortified by her husband’s public infatuation with Selena, she takes her children and leaves. SIRENA SELENA is a fifteen-year-old male prostitute whose given name is Sirenito. He is a talented singer whose presence has a captivating effect on many of the men he meets. Seeking a way out of poverty, he learns to use his voice and his looks to advance his own interests. By the end of the novel, he has abandoned both his mentor, Martha, and his patron, Hugo, and is looking for his next opportunity.
marvel of purity.” Such lines, which stand out visually or stylistically, emphasize the importance of the moment described.
W Critical Reception Sirena Selena has been well received by English-speaking readers and reviewers. Publishers Weekly praises it for its
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Sirena Selena
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mayra Santos-Febres was born in Puerto Rico in 1966. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico before enrolling in graduate school at Cornell University, where she earned a PhD in literature in 1991. That same year, she published her first collection of poetry, Anamú y Manigua. A second collection, El orden escapade, followed later that year, garnering the first prize in poetry from Tríptico Review. In 1994 Santos-Febres’s short story collection Pez de Vidrio (1995; translated as Urban Oracles: Stories, 1997) won the Letras de Oro Prize. These works helped establish Santos-Febres’s reputation as an important figure in Hispanic literature, and she has become known for giving a voice to the underprivileged and the socially ostracized. Sirena Selena is Santos-Febres’s first novel; in 2002 she followed up on its success with Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (translated as Any Wednesday I’m Yours, 2005). Santos-Febres is a professor of literature at the University of Puerto Rico and has held visiting professorships at both Cornell University and Harvard University.
“array of vibrant narrators [that] animate the plot twists,” going on to note that “[d]eep purple prose strikes just the right campy, melancholy note as Santos-Febres illuminates the essence of these unforgettable, fiery femmes with moving pathos.” Barbara Mujica, reviewing the novel for Americas, says that “Santos-Febres has written a sensitive, insightful book, devoid of the caricatures that often plague books on transvestitism.” Many scholars and commentators have focused on the role of drag in the novel. Castillo, for example, notes that performing in drag gives Selena power, not just over men such as Hugo but also over his jealous wife, Solange. Castillo suggests that Selena is “a perfect and fabulous and monstrous presence who can easily out-woman Solange woman-to-woman precisely because she is not a woman at all.” Although most reviews have been positive, some critics have pointed to weaknesses in the work. In her otherwise positive review of the novel, for example, Giles notes that it “loses some of its originality when it evokes the more commonplace stereotypes of gay culture or the Latin American telenovela.” Rebecca Stuhr’s Library Journal review is even less positive, suggesting that the
Photo of Mayra Santos-Febres, with microphone, author of Sirena Selena, at a celebration in Puerto Rico. ª THAIS LLORCA/epa/Corbis
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book contains “few evocative images and no sense of place” before concluding that “[p]ortions of this novel might have contributed to several good short stories, but this work does not succeed as a novel.”
Gale Resources
“Mayra Santos-Febres.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Open Web Sources
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Castillo, Debra A. “She Sings Boleros: Santos-Febres’ Sirena Selena.” Latin American Literary Review 29.57 (2001): 13-25. Print. Giles, Jana. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra SantosFebres. New York Times 20 Aug. 2000: 17. Print. Mujica, Barbara. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra SantosFebres. Americas Mar. 2001: 60. Print. Santos-Febres, Mayra. Sirena Selena. Trans. Stephen Lytle. New York: Picador, 2001. Print. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra Santos-Febres. Publishers Weekly 3 July 2000: 46. Print. Stuhr, Rebecca. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra SantosFebres. Library Journal 15 June 2000: 118. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Gabiola, Irune del Río. “A Queer Way of Family Life: Narratives of Time and Space in Mayra SantosFebres’s Sirena Selena vestida de pena.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 11 (2007): 77-95. Print. A scholarly essay that examines how the original Spanish version of the novel revises traditional notions of family. Leber, Michele. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra SantosFebres. Booklist 1 June 2000: 1808. Focuses on the sadness that exists beneath the novel’s humor. Lopez, Adriana. Rev. of Sirena Selena, by Mayra SantosFebres. Library Journal 1 June 2001: S31. A brief review that praises the novel’s humor and charm. Morell, Hortensia R. “Tuning in to Boleros in Sirena Selena vestida de pena: A Character’s Flawed Defense Mechanism.” Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture. Ed. Jorge Febles. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2006. 15-25. Print. A scholarly article that explores the role of music in the original Spanish version of the novel. Rodriguez, Juana Maria. “Translating Queer Caribbean Localities in Sirena Selena vestida de pena.” MELUS 34.3 (2009): 205+. A scholarly essay that examines the original Spanish version of the text.
The National Geographic World Music Web site offers an overview of bolero music that provides context for Sirena Selena. http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic .com/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/bolero_ 694/en_US The Web site of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation offers a brief biography of Santos-Febres. http://www.gf.org/fellows/16676-mayra-santosfebres The Web site of Macmillan Publishing offers an overview of the novel, including review excerpts and brief biographies of the author and translator. http://us. macmillan.com/sirenaselena For Further Reading
Ayala, César J., and Rafael Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007. Print. This nonfiction volume provides a history of Puerto Rico that offers insight into the world inhabited by Martha and Selena. Gregory, Steven. The Devil behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Berkeley: U of California P, 2007. Print. This work of nonfiction explores the changes that globalization has brought to the Dominican Republic, where much of Sirena Selena is set. Manuel, Peter, Kenneth Bilby, and Michael Largey. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1995. Print. This work analyzes the musical traditions of the Caribbean, offering insight into the music that is so important to Selena. Santos-Febres, Mayra. Any Wednesday I’m Yours. Trans. James Graham. New York: Riverhead, 2005. Print. Santos-Febres’s second novel tells the story of a former journalist who takes a job at a motel where he becomes involved in a murder investigation. Underwood, Lisa. The Drag Queen Anthology: The Absolutely Fabulous but Flawless Customary World of Female Impersonators. New York: Harrington Park, 2004. Print. This collection of essays explores the world of drag, considering its history, symbolism, and political implications.
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Sixty Lights By Gail Jones
W Introduction Sixty Lights (2004) is the story of an unconventional Victorian woman named Lucy Strange. Orphaned as children in Australia, Lucy and her brother, Thomas, are sent to live with their uncle in Great Britain. After the uncle is ruined financially, Lucy and Thomas must find work in London. Later, Lucy travels to India to meet her uncle’s friend Isaac Newton, a repressed homosexual who takes her in despite the fact that she is pregnant with the child of a married man she met on the voyage from England. Isaac and Lucy develop a friendship, and Lucy learns the art of photography, which appeals to her desire to capture and convey her observations and experiences. Photography provides Lucy with a purpose as she embraces motherhood and faces tuberculosis and her own mortality. The novel also relies on photography for its organizational structure, with each chapter offering a snapshot of a different moment in the characters’ lives. Critics have praised Sixty Lights for its unconventional narrative structure and its innovative use of photography as a theme and structuring metaphor. The novel won a number of literary awards in Australia, including the Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal and The Age Book of the Year Award in 2005.
W Literary and Historical Context
Sixty Lights is set in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period during which the British Empire controlled vast territory, including Canada, Australia, large parts of Africa, and India. The focus of much of Great Britain’s colonial attention, India was first ruled by the East India Company, but in 1858 the British Crown began to govern the colony directly. Throughout the
1860s and 1870s, Britain worked to solidify control of India, and in 1878 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli declared Queen Victoria “Empress of India.” Lucy’s experiences in India during the 1860s invoke sympathy for the colonized, and when she returns to England, she is shocked by the negative depiction of Indian people in British culture. Thomas makes his living running a magic lantern show, a forerunner of film in which slides are projected on a wall, and Lucy is horrified when one of these shows depicts Indian people as savages to be conquered. Sixty Lights also draws heavily on photography, which was still in its infancy during the period in which the novel takes place. The first permanent photographs were taken in the mid-1820s by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. After his death Niépce’s work was carried on by his partner, Louis Daguerre, who created the daguerreotype, a photograph on copper plate. Over time photographic processes were simplified, decreasing the extended exposure time required for the earliest photographs and making photography more practical and affordable. In the novel Lucy is first exposed to photography as a young woman, while working in a London factory that produces photographic paper using albumen, or egg white. Later, her study of photography in India makes her feel like “a woman of the future.” As her death approaches, she finds solace in her photography, which she describes as “another form of love.”
W Themes Sixty Lights takes as its central theme the drive to preserve stories, memories, and experiences. Even before she discovers photography, Lucy is overcome with the desire to record her impressions of the world. After the death of her mother, Honoria, Lucy looks back fondly on a story that her mother had told her about the Flying Dutchman and feels the weight of being the only conduit of Honoria’s story—“a repertoire of exasperating desire, of
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Sixty Lights
hokum, memory, nonsense and tell-tale that she has siphoned into herself as a stream of chill water.” Later, in London, Lucy’s desire to create a record of her experiences results in a diary of what she calls “Special Things Seen,” which includes entries such as “The blind woman,” “Three hyacinths,” and “The glass sheep.” After discovering photography, she reflects that her understanding of the process “made sense of her book of Special Things Seen: somehow—was it possible?—she had always been a photographer.” The language of vivid experiences and photography pervades the scene of Lucy’s death: “Special things seen, and memories, and photographic prints, all converged to this quiet, private point. . . . She was still anticipating images. She was still anticipating, more than anything, an abyss of light.” Lucy is not the only character to be moved by the desire to capture and convey experience. Before his suicide, Lucy’s father wishes he had told his wife the memorable stories of his childhood. In India, Isaac harbors two secrets—his onetime love for Lucy’s Uncle Neville and the fact that he was once reduced to tears by an operatic performance of The Flying Dutchman. Unlike Lucy’s father, who was never able to share his most profound memories, Isaac finds some peace in sharing his secrets with Lucy.
W Style Sixty Lights includes numerous references to the literature of the period in which it is set. While making the trip from Melbourne to Geelong, Australia, during which she meets her future husband, the coach’s driver, Lucy’s mother imagines that she is Jane Eyre, the plain but imaginative protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel. She later finds that marriage, even to her kind and passive husband, Arthur, leaves her feeling more like Bertha, the mentally ill first wife of Jane’s beloved Rochester. Lucy frequently finds herself thinking about Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-1861), which is being published a serial while Lucy and Thomas are in London with their uncle. In terms of its narrative structure, however, Sixty Lights works against the traditional structure of the Victorian novels it references. The story begins with a pregnant Lucy, who explains that she will be dead in two years. Several pages later, the novel goes back in time to Lucy’s childhood, before shifting back even further to describe the circumstances under which Lucy’s parents met and the incidents in the lives of Arthur’s and Honoria’s parents. Many commentators have noted that the nonlinear structure of Gail Jones’s novel can be attributed to its governing image of the photograph. In an article in Antipodes, for example, Katherine J. Mulcrone discusses the photographic aspects of the novel, suggesting that “Jones does not follow strict chronological order, but uses the motif of photography to explore the effect of
MAJOR CHARACTERS NEVILLE BRADY is Honoria Strange’s brother. He takes in his niece and nephew, Lucy and Thomas, after the passing of Honoria and her husband. Neville is later dismissed from his job for embezzlement and dies in an accident just before Lucy returns to England from India. MOLLY MINCHIN is the midwife who delivered Honoria’s children. She briefly takes care of Lucy and Thomas after the death of their parents. At the end of the novel, Lucy and Molly are reunited in London, where they become close friends. Molly dies soon after Lucy. ISAAC NEWTON is Uncle Neville’s friend. Despite having once been in love with Neville, he asks his friend to help him find a wife and anticipates Lucy’s arrival as a possible future bride. Though disappointed when Lucy arrives pregnant, Isaac soon makes Lucy his confidante and later pays for her to study photography. He also allows her to take his name so that she can return to England as a respectable widow. ARTHUR STRANGE is the father of Lucy and Thomas and the husband of Honoria. When his wife and newborn die from complications at birth, he retreats into a depressed stupor, committing suicide several weeks later. HONORIA STRANGE is the mother of Lucy and Thomas and the wife of Arthur. Before her marriage she enjoyed imagining she was Charlotte Brontë’s character Jane Eyre. LUCY STRANGE is the younger of Arthur and Honoria’s two children. After her parents’ deaths, she and her brother are taken in by their uncle. Lucy later works in a factory in London and then travels to India to meet her uncle’s friend Isaac. During the trip she has an affair with a married man that leaves her pregnant. Despite the pregnancy, she is welcomed into Isaac’s home, and the two establish a lasting friendship. The photographic skills Lucy learns in India bring her great joy as she settles with Thomas and his new wife in England, where she raises her daughter and prepares for her own death from tuberculosis. Before she dies she falls in love with a young artist named Jacob Webb. THOMAS STRANGE is Lucy’s older brother. Following the death of their parents, the two siblings share an extremely close bond. He embraces his work at a magic lantern show in London and marries a young woman named Violet Weller. At the end of the novel, he and his wife are raising Lucy’s daughter.
seeing the world through essentially disconnected images.” If the images that the novel represents are disconnected, reviewers have noted that they are also quite powerful. In his Sydney Morning Herald review of the novel, James Lay writes, “What makes the novel work is
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gail Jones was born in Harvey, Western Australia, in 1955. She attended the University of Western Australia, earning a PhD in 1995. After completing her degree, Jones began a career as an academic, teaching creative writing, cultural studies, and literary theory at the University of Western Australia. She had already begun establishing herself as a writer, with her academic interests informing her work. Her first book, the short story collection The House of Breathing (1992), won a number of Australian literary prizes. She followed up with a second collection, Fetish Lives (1997), before turning to novel writing. Her first novel, Black Mirror (2003), was nominated for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award in 2003, but Sixty Lights proved to be her breakthrough novel, garnering nominations for prestigious international literary awards including the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her subsequent novels, including Dreams of Speaking (2006) and Sorry (2007), have been well reviewed.
Jones’s command of imagery. It is her greatest strength as a writer. Her fiction is densely textured. She is particularly adept at patterning her narrative with subtle recurring gestures and visual motifs, so that each repetition adds another layer of meaning.”
W Critical Reception Sixty Lights, Jones’s second novel, is generally considered her breakthrough text. In addition to winning the ALS Gold Medal and The Age Book of the Year Award, the novel was nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Reviewing Sixty Lights for the Sunday Mail, Lucy Clarke notes that the novel’s premise “sounds lofty, but in Jones’s hands it is not pretentious or difficult: along with all the deep meaning and symbolism she still tells a wonderful, gentle, refined story.” James Bradley writes in the Age that “the power of Jones’ refracting images is cumulative and there is an intelligence and honesty to her writing that brings the characters powerfully to life. Its meanings—and they are many—are prismatic in their
In the book Sixty Lights, Lucy takes up a new hobby as a photographer. ª INTERFOTO/Alamy
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Sixty Lights BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Boddy, Kasia. “A Visionary Victorian.” Daily Telegraph [London] 18 Sept. 2004: 9. Print. Bradley, James. “Humanity in Focus through a Camera Lens.” Age [Melbourne] 21 Aug. 2004: 4. Print. Clarke, Lucy. “Love and Emotion Drive Life So Bright.” Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Sunday Mail [Adelaide] 15 Aug. 2004: 90. Print. Fitzgerald, Michael. “Lost in Black and White.” Time International 21 May 2007, South Pacific ed.: 61. General OneFile. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. Jones, Gail. Sixty Lights. London: Harvill, 2004. Print. Lay, James. “Celluloid Path to Enlightenment.” Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Sydney Morning Herald 4 Sept. 2004: 10. Print. Mulcrone, Katherine J. Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Antipodes 19.2 (2005): 223. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
“Dark Lights.” Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. South China Morning Post 5 Sept. 2004: 9. Print. Offers an extended reading of the novel as well as context from an interview with the author.
Portrait of Gail Jones, author of Sixty Lights. Gaye Gerard/Getty Images
possibilities, its human dimensions deeply and perhaps unexpectedly affecting.” Many commentators have focused their attention on the novel’s investment in photography as a metaphor. Mulcrone lauds the novel as “a celebration of images and moments, which Jones deftly weaves together to explore not just Lucy Strange, but the frontier of photography.” Discussing the novel in Time International, Michael Fitzgerald praises it for “etching the story of Lucy Strange in sixty short-chapter ‘exposures’ with the vividness of an exploding flashbulb.” Not all reviews of the novel have been wholly positive. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, for example, Kasia Boddy comments that “it seems that the main point of all this photographical apparatus is to flatter readers by demonstrating that what they’ve got in their hands is a literary novel with a carefully thought-out symbolic underpinning. Some may find the underpinning altogether too insistent.” The idea that the novel is too heavy-handed in its cultural and literary references has been noted by other reviewers as well.
England, Katharine. “A Shining Light.” Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Advertiser [Adelaide] 18 Sept. 2004: S11. Print. A favorable review that explores the novel’s interest in photography as well as topics such as philosophy, literature, and religion. Keenan, Catherine. “Twists Turn Dreams into Nightmare.” Sun Herald [Sydney] 29 Jan. 2006: 66. Print. Compares Jones’s novel Dreams of Speaking to Sixty Lights. Pavey, Ruth. Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Independent [London] 21 Sept. 2004: 29. Print. Suggests that at times Jones’s repeated cultural references impede the reader’s experience of the novel. “Writing in Light: Insights in a Flash.” Rev. of Sixty Lights, by Gail Jones. Canberra Times 21 Aug. 2004: 9. Print. A review that explores the novel’s investment in photography as well as its subversion of traditional Victorian narrative structures. Gale Resources
“Gail Jones.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. “Overview: Great Expectations.” Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
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“Overview: Jane Eyre.” Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Open Web Sources
The Australian Broadcasting Company’s Web site presents a transcript of an interview with Gail Jones in which she discusses Sixty Lights and its narrative structure. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/ stories/s1330197.htm The Web site Culture Wars offers an online review of the novel that praises the work but describes it as only partially successful in its attempt to re-create the Victorian world. http://www.culturewars.org.uk/ 2004-02/sixty.htm The Web site for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, for which Sixty Lights was nominated in 2006, provides a brief review of the novel and a short biography of Jones. http://www .impacdublinaward.ie/2006/Titles/Jones.htm January Magazine online provides an interview with Gail Jones in which the author discusses Australia, cinema, and her writings, including Sixty Lights. http:// januarymagazine.com/profiles/gailjones.html The Victorian Web is an online source for information about the Victorian era. Its many articles provide useful background to Jones’s novel. http://www. victorianweb.org/
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For Further Reading
Flanders, Judith. The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed. London: HarperCollins, 2003. Print. This work of nonfiction uses letters, diaries, and Victorian novels to construct a portrait of the life of women during the period in which Sixty Lights is set. Jones, Gail. Sorry. North Sydney: NSW Vintage Books, 2007. Print. Jones’s third novel tells the story of a young woman who struggles with her parents’ loveless relationship and her father’s acts of brutality toward Aboriginal women. Lukitsh, Joanne. Julia Margaret Cameron. New York: Phaidon, 2001. Print. This biography explores the life of the Victorian photographer whom many have speculated provided the inspiration for Lucy Strange. Peers, Douglas M. India under Colonial Rule: 17001885. New York: Pearson Education, 2006. Print. This nonfiction work examines life in India under British rule, providing context for Lucy Strange’s experiences there. Seiberling, Grace. Amateurs, Photography, and the MidVictorian Imagination. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. Print. Seiberling’s work of nonfiction explores the work of thirty-three amateur photographers in Victorian England. Greta Gard
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Skim By Mariko Tamaki
W Introduction Skim (2008) is a graphic novel that traces the life of its title character, a chubby Japanese Canadian high school student struggling to negotiate school cliques, shifting friendships, and her parents’ divorce. The text is written as a series of diary entries and carefully replicates the ideas, experiences, and language of teenage life during the early 1990s. Skim pours out her feelings about her friends and school, her interest in Wicca, and her attraction to her English teacher, Ms. Archer. Skim grew out of a twenty-four-page comic that Mariko Tamaki created in collaboration with her cousin Jillian Tamaki, an illustrator, in 2005. The work has been praised for its honest examination of the struggles of teenage life, particularly the often-confusing experiences of sexual desire and the need to find acceptance. The novel’s illustrations have been praised for their artistic technique and for the ways in which they complement and enhance the written narrative. The book garnered the 2008 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award.
W Literary and Historical Context
Skim follows in the tradition of graphic novels that depict the experiences of teenage life, told from the perspective of those who do not quite fit in with their peers. The work has been frequently compared to Craig Thompson’s 2003 graphic novel, Blankets, which details the story of a teenage boy struggling to assimilate at school, and Daniel Clowes’s 1998 work, Ghost World, which depicts the adventures of two socially awkward teenage girls. Like the characters in Thompson’s and Clowes’s texts, Skim sees herself as an outsider and is constantly working to define her place in the world. Skim’s protagonist attributes her outsider status, at least in part, to her Japanese Canadian heritage. While the
novel’s setting of Toronto has one of the largest populations of Japanese ancestry in Canada, Japanese Canadians make up a small percentage of the city’s population. In the novel Skim remembers a painful incident from her childhood in which she and her friend Hien (a girl of Vietnamese descent) were ostracized and humiliated at a birthday party when the other girls (all of them white) chased them out before the party was over, screaming “Air Raid!” Although it is never directly stated, the girls’ cruel taunt seems to invoke historical incidents of Western military aggression against Asian peoples— most notably the World War II fire bombings of Tokyo, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the widespread airstrikes of the Korean and Vietnam wars. In conflating the histories of these countries, the white girls deny the important cultural differences between Asian peoples, identifying Skim and Hien generically as outsiders and even as enemies. The book also draws on the Wiccan religion, in which Skim and her friend Lisa dabble. Although the exact origins of the religion are unknown, it is believed to have originated in Great Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century. Wiccans, sometimes known as witches, worship two gods—one male and one female. Many Wiccans practice magic, usually as part of rituals. Skim’s exploration of the religion has mixed results. She attends the meeting of a coven, which also turns out to be an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and trips over the altar she has constructed, breaking her arm. Then, after even the spells in her Wicca book cannot bring Ms. Archer back to the school, she concludes that “Witchcraft = total crap.”
W Themes The adolescent struggle for peer acceptance is the dominant theme of Skim. In one of her diary entries, Skim comments that “there are a lot of ways to be marked,” explaining that she is “marked to some degree (biologically) as a weirdo for life.” She soon discovers,
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MAJOR CHARACTERS LISA is Skim’s best friend, from whom she grows apart as the novel progresses. MS. ARCHER is Skim’s English and drama teacher, known for her crazy clothing and often outlandish comments. Skim develops a crush on Ms. Archer, and the two eventually share a kiss before Ms. Archer leaves her post at the school. KIMBERLY KEIKO “SKIM” CAMERON is the main character of the graphic novel. An overweight girl of Japanese Canadian descent, she struggles to fit in at school and to deal with the emotional weight of her parents’ divorce. KATIE MATHEWS is one of Skim’s popular classmates. Katie’s ex-boyfriend commits suicide, which causes her to become the object of much sympathy and speculation. After she slips and falls off her roof, breaking both of her arms, many of her peers believe she has attempted suicide. Although Katie is at first subjected to Skim’s derision, the two girls eventually bond over their broken arms and teenage angst. JOHN REDDEAR is Katie’s former boyfriend. The narrative implies that John killed himself, at least in part, because he was unable to come to terms with his homosexuality. His suicide sets off a flurry of activity among Katie’s friends, who launch the Girls Celebrate Life (GCL) group in response.
however, that most of her peers are battling similar insecurities. At first Skim and Lisa unite against the more popular girls at school, whom they see as boring and shallow (at one point Skim writes, “My school = goldfish tank of stupid”). Later, however, Skim learns she has a lot more in common with the well-liked Katie Mathews than she ever could have predicted. Katie feels trapped in her friendship with the officious Julie Peters, and it is revealed that Katie’s former boyfriend, the popular, volleyballplaying John Reddear, was “secretly suffering from depression” and “in love with a boy who was on the St. Michael’s second-string volleyball team.” John’s suicide sheds further light on Skim’s struggles with her same-sex desire for her teacher. Although she pours out her love for Ms. Archer in her diary, she hides her emotions from Lisa. When her friend asks her about the relationship, she responds defensively, asking, “What, I’m some giant lesbo because I’m getting extra help after class?” In the end her heartbreaking crush helps her to relate to Katie and to understand, to some degree, what might have motivated John’s suicide: “No one knows if the boy from the volleyball team loved John back.”
W Style Skim is a graphic novel, a hybrid form in which both the illustrations and the printed text are crucial to the
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storyline. Although graphic novels have existed since at least the early 1970s, the genre has continued to evolve over time. Many of these novels share the visual style of comic books, yet they are generally distinct in that they are intended as discrete, stand-alone stories rather than episodes in an ongoing series. In reviewing Skim for the New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Spires notes that “graphic novels, by the nature of their form, often use as little text as possible; the dialogue is sometimes hardly more than a serviceable vehicle to drive the action. In ‘Skim,’ however, the spare dialogue is just right, capturing the cynical and biting way that Skim and her classmates tend to talk to one another.” Jillian Tamaki’s illustrations offer important contributions to the storyline, characterization, and atmosphere of Skim. Claire E. Gross praises the artwork in her review for the Horn Book Magazine, commenting that “dark space and perspective are used to great effect, grafting emotion onto every scene, and the simplest details of body language—Kim’s creased brow and hunched shoulders; Ms. Archer’s serene, vaguely secretive countenance; a new, wounded friend’s pinched mouth and suspicious eyes— project fully developed personalities.” The artwork is so strong, in fact, that in reviewing the book for the Sunday Age, Frances Atkinson suggests that “Jillian Tamaki’s drawings are fantastic: lyrical and expressive, they often convey emotions more powerfully than Mariko’s words.”
W Critical Reception When it was published in 2008, Skim was met with widespread critical acclaim of the sort generally reserved for works outside of the graphic novel genre. In addition to winning the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award, the work was honored with an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel and was the first graphic novel ever nominated for the prestigious Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Children’s Literature. Many commentators have been impressed by Tamaki’s skill in accurately representing the emotions and experiences of a teenager navigating the social pressures of school and social life. Reviewing Skim for the Irish Times, Katherine Farmar observes that “the authors have resisted the temptation to make [Skim] preternaturally knowing or precociously self-aware. Rather, she is an utterly believable teenager, with all of the selfabsorption, self-deception, and inarticulacy that entails.” While Tamaki is careful in her re-creation of a teenager’s consciousness and language, she nonetheless manages, as several reviewers have pointed out, to convey a message that transcends her characters and their adolescent preoccupations. For example, a Toronto Star review describes Tamaki as being “adept at blending colloquialisms and sharp observations into something profound,” while Gross remarks that “the free-flowing combination of dialogue, internal narration, and diary TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Skim
entries is unfussy and immediate, and the delicately lined art alternately expands and contradicts the prose to achieve layers of meaning, tone, and irony.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Andrew, Suzanne Alyssa. “Hell Is Grade 10 in Private School.” Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Toronto Star 4 May 2008: n. pag. Thestar.com. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. Web. 26 Aug. 2010. Atkinson, Frances. Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Sunday Age [Melbourne] 19 Apr. 2009: 21. Print. Farmar, Katherine. “Capturing the Complexity of Kim’s World.” Irish Times 18 July 2009: 10. Print. Gross, Claire E. Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Horn Book Magazine 84.4 (2008): 459+. Print. Spires, Elizabeth. “‘Always a Little Depressed.’” New York Times Book Review 9 Nov. 2008: 37(L). Print. Tamaki, Mariko. Skim. Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2008. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mariko Tamaki was born in Toronto around 1976. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from McGill University and began writing for literary magazines before enrolling at York University to earn a master’s degree in women’s studies. Her first work of fiction, the novella Cover Me, was published in 2000. Two works of creative nonfiction, True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice (2002) and Fake ID (2005), soon followed. Long drawn to the graphic novel format, Tamaki completed her second graphic novel, Emiko Superstar, which draws on her love of performance, shortly after the release of Skim. In between writing projects she is active with several performance troupes and briefly pursued a PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto. She currently teaches English in Toronto.
and brief biographical information. http://www. marikotamaki.com/ Jillian Tamaki’s official Web site offers a short biography along with examples of her illustrations. http:// jilliantamaki.com/
Baxter, Gisèle M. “The School Life.” Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Canadian Literature 203 (2009): 133-34. Print. Compares Skim to two contemporaneous novels about teenage girls and their school experiences.
McGilligan Books provides a brief biography of Mariko Tamaki on its Web site. http://www .mcgilliganbooks.com/authors/mariko_tamaki.htm
Galuschak, George. Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Kliatt May 2008: 31+. Print. Offers a brief overview of the novel’s plot and praises its attention to detail.
Howard, Michael. Modern Wicca: A History from Gerald Gardner to the Present. Woodbury: Llewellyn, 2010. Print. A historical overview of the Wiccan religion.
Inabnitt, David. Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. School Library Journal 54.5 (2008): 160. Print. Describes Skim as somewhat lacking in originality but praises its realistic dialogue and accurate depiction of teenage identity crises.
Simmons, Rachel. Odd Girl Speaks Out: Girls Write about Bullies, Cliques, Popularity, and Jealousy. Orlando: Harcourt, 2004. Print. A collection of writings by young women mediated by the commentary of political scientist Rachel Simmons.
Ma, Susan. Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Canadian Children’s Book News Spring 2008: 37. Lauds Tamaki’s realistic portrayal of teenage life.
Tamaki, Jillian. Gilded Lilies. Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2006. Print. A collection of artwork by the illustrator of Skim.
Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2008. Recommends Skim for its portrait of suburban teen angst.
Tamaki, Mariko. Emiko Superstar. New York: Minx, 2008. Print. Tamaki’s second graphic novel, chronicling the struggles of a geeky Japanese Canadian girl who finds fame as a performer by exploiting her employer’s diary.
Rev. of Skim, by Mariko Tamaki. Publishers Weekly 4 Feb. 2008: 44. Print. Praises the illustrations (by Jillian Tamaki) more than the story line. Gale Resources
“Mariko Tamaki.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009.
For Further Reading
Thompson, Craig. Blankets. Marietta: Top Shelf, 2003. Print. A graphic novel about friendship, fitting in, and growing up that commentators have frequently compared to Skim. Greta Gard
Open Web Sources
The author’s official Web site features overviews of her published work as well as a blog, links, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Slap By Christos Tsiolkas
W Introduction In The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas (pronounced CHOLE-kiss), a man slaps an obnoxious three-year-old at a barbeque, polarizing friends and family who each recognize that Hugo is bratty and undisciplined but that it is still no excuse to hit a child. The incident leads to a pointless court hearing, as well as a midlife crisis, domestic violence, infidelity, falling in love, a suicide attempt, and the breakup of a decades-long friendship. The Slap is a novel about family, multiculturalism, and middle-class values—but is much grittier than the PG-rated prime time family programming themes suggest. The characters of Tsiolkas’s novel struggle with narcissism and selfrighteousness while drugs, alcohol, sex, and vulgar slang create a realistic, if dark, milieu illustrating contemporary Australian suburbia. For all its darkness, The Slap is a lighter and more uplifting story than Tsiolkas’s previous novels, Loaded (1995), The Jesus Man (1999), and Dead Europe (2006). Published in Australia in 2008, The Slap won the prestigious Commonwealth Prize. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation announced in the fall of 2009 that The Slap would be made into an eight-part miniseries (Aus. Broadcasting Corp.).
W Literary and Historical Context
Convicts deported from Great Britain infamously founded the modern nation of Australia beginning in the eighteenth century. Tsiolkas’s characters are themselves first- and second-generation immigrants from Greece, Serbia, England, and India, and their multiethnic background is not accidental to the story. Following World War II and fears of a Japanese invasion—termed “populate or perish”—Australians in government created assisted migration programs to attract people to move to
their country. The focus of this immigration program was Great Britain, but people all over the world, especially Europe, Africa, and Asia, were attracted by the promise of a new life (Ten Pound). The year 1969 was a peak year for immigration to Australia with over eighty thousand arrivals. As of 2010, one-fourth of Australians citizens were born overseas (Fact Sheet). The postwar immigrant program has been reviled by historians for its racism in favor of white applicants; nevertheless, people of many different nationalities settled in Australia during this time, often taking on menial and hard labor employment. For example, Manolis and Koula, parents to Hector, both worked in a factory when they first arrived. Since the postwar period, the children and grandchildren of these immigrants have risen into the middle class, a topic in The Slap: Hector, son of Manolis and Koula, is a civil servant, and his cousin Harry is the prosperous owner of a chain of automobile repair shops.
W Themes Family comes before all else in The Slap, a fact that inevitably causes strife between friends and extended family after Hugo is slapped and people begin to take sides. Family, which forms the basic social unit in modern society, is equated with home, safety, and comfort. Affection and shared history create a sympathetic feeling that fosters loyalty between family members. Family loyalty takes on a decidedly Old World, clannish cast with Hector and Manolis immediately siding with Harry, who is brutish and unlikable, while Aisha stubbornly stands up to her husband and in-laws on behalf of her old friend Rosie, who is like a sister to her. Personal responsibility is another important theme in Tsiolkas’s novel. People who exhibit a high degree of personal responsibility are seen as successful, engaged, and compassionate, whereas people who do not are often considered selfish and degenerate. Each character in The Slap struggles with personal responsibility, from
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The Slap
Anouk, who quietly terminates an unwanted pregnancy; to Hector, who chooses to end an affair before it begins; to Rosie, who will not discipline the son she adores; and to Richie, who overdoses on pills in a moment of adolescent despair.
W Style Tsiolkas organized his novel into eight large chapters, with each chapter presenting a different person’s point of view. The different points of view—varying by gender, age, and ethnicity but all middle class—present disparate perspectives on the repercussions of Harry’s slapping Hugo. In The Slap, via this format, Tsiolkas also illustrates the diverse face of the Australian middle class in the early twenty-first century. The different points of view do not only break down into demographic details; over the course of The Slap, the reader is given a close examination of the tribulations of middle-class family life, including parenting, fidelity, careers, and friendship.
W Critical Reception Tsiolkas was already a prominent name in Australian contemporary fiction when The Slap was published in Australia in 2008. The Slap, his fifth book, was generally well received by critics and audiences, winning Australia’s top literary award, the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book, in 2009. The Slap was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2010. Gerard Windsor of the Sydney Morning Herald described The Slap as “a highbrow soapie with a split personality,” praising the novel as a departure from Tsiolkas’s earlier, grimmer works: “The Slap is a strikingly tender book.” Rebecca Starford, writing in Antipodes, and Ellen Wernecke of A.V. Club found his treatment of the eight points of view uneven, particularly in his treatment of Rosie, who gets little sympathy or understanding. Starford also found The Slap to be lacking the youthful passion of his previous books. Neel Mukherjee, in his Telegraph review, glossed over the rough spots, writing, “A book of such wide scope cannot be without its flaws. . . . But these are only murmurs against a genuinely important, edgy, urgent book that hunts big game.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS AISHA, a veterinarian, is Hector’s wife and is caught between obligation to her family and her friendship with Rosie. ANOUK is a successful television writer and an old friend of Aisha’s and Rosie’s. CONNIE is a teenage girl who works for Aisha at the veterinary clinic and is best friends with Richie. GARY, an alcoholic and failed artist, is Rosie’s husband and Hugo’s father. HARRY, Hector’s cousin, is a well-to-do business owner, who is selfish, violent, and vain. HECTOR is a narcissistic middle-aged civil servant with little selfcontrol. HUGO, son of Rosie and Gary, is a lonely three-year-old boy who is still nursing and is poorly socialized. MANOLIS, Hector’s father, is an elderly Greek Australian who is in the twilight of his life. RICHIE, Connie’s best friend, is a teenager coming to terms with his homosexuality. ROSIE, mother of Hugo, is lonely and self-righteous.
Starford, Rebecca. “Fading Irate Energy.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Antipodes 22.2 (2008): 171-72. Print. “Ten Pound Poms.” museumvictoria.com.au. Immigration Museum. Web. 8 Aug. 2010. Tsiolkas, Christos. The Slap. New York: Penguin, 2010. Print. Wernecke, Ellen. “The Slap.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. AVClub.com. A.V. Club 13 May 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. Windsor, Gerard. “When the Smoke Clears.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. SMH.com.au. Sydney Morning Herald 1 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 July 2010.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Additional Resources
Works Cited
Criticism and Reviews
“Fact Sheet 2—Key Facts in Immigration.” www.immi. gov.au. Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Web. 8 Aug. 2010.
Johnstone, Doug. “The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas Tuskar.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Independent.co.uk. Independent 16 May 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. Applauds Tsiolkas’s tone and unsentimental writing style.
Mukherjee, Neel. “The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas: Review.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph 6 June 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. “The Slap to Hit TV Screens.” www.abc.net.au. Australian Broadcasting Corp. 14 Oct. 2009. Web. 8 Aug. 2010.
Love, Barbara. “Tsiolkas, Christos. The Slap.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Library Journal 15 Apr. 2010: 77. Print. Praises the novel for complexity despite its unlikable characters.
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The Slap
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Christos Tsiolkas was born in 1965 in Melbourne, Australia. His parents, both Greek, settled in Australia before he was born. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with an arts degree in 1987 and published his first novel, Loaded, in 1995. His second novel, The Jesus Man, followed in 1999, and his third, Dead Europe, in 2006. The Slap, published in Australia in 2008, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2009 and was a semifinalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Tsiolkas, who also works as a screenwriter, is known for his hard-hitting writing style and his willingness to address difficult topics—such as politics, ethnicity, and sex. As of 2010, Tsiolkas lived in Melbourne.
Shone, Tom. “Novel of the Year? Get Ready for The Slap.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. TimesOnline.co.uk. Sunday Times 9 May 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. Reveals how the author was inspired by a child who was slapped by his mother at a family barbeque.
Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Publishers Weekly 1 Feb. 2010: 31-32. Print. Applauds Tsiolkas’s illustration of the complex perspectives involved in his novel. Villalon, Oscar. “The Slap: A Novel by Christos Tsiolkas.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. LATimes.com. Los Angeles Times 2 May 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. Commends the author’s sensitive treatment of difficult themes. Weeks, Brigitte. “Book Review: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. WashingtonPost.com. Washington Post 27 Apr. 2010. Web. 28 July 2010. Gives a glowing review that praises Tsiolkas’s interpretation of suburban Australia. Wilkinson, Joanne. “The Slap.” Rev. of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Booklist 15 Mar. 2010: 24. Print. Presents a positive review, calling the book energetic but one-sided. Open Web Sources
Christos Tsiolkas was interviewed by Diane Rehm on her WAMU/National Public Radio show, the Diane Rehm Show, in the spring of 2010 when the
The Slap tells the story of what happens when a man slaps a child who is misbehaving at a barbeque. Paul Viant
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U.S. edition of The Slap was published. In the hourlong interview, which is available as a transcript or streaming audio, Tsiolkas reads from his novel, answers listener questions, and gives his perspective on his novel. Available at http://thedianerehmshow.org/ shows/2010-04-26/christos-tsiolkas-slap-penguin Tsiolkas published an essay about his grandparents in the Sydney Morning Herald, highlighting several experiences that have echoes in his novel, The Slap. It is available at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/ society-and-culture/in-praise-of-greek-grandmas20100721-10khs.html Fotis Kapetopoulos interviewed Tsiolkas for Bookslut following his Commonwealth Prize win. Tsiolkas discusses the multicultural face of the middle class in Melbourne and the despicable natures of his characters. Available at http://www.bookslut.com/ features/2009_09_015115.php
Print. A historic perspective of the changing composition of Australian society since the postwar immigration boom. Perrotta, Tom. Little Children: A Novel. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. 2006. Print. A dark comedy about suburbia focusing on seven characters and their relationship to children. Somerville, Paul. “Getting Out of It: Sydney Journalist Paul Somerville Quizzes Melbourne Novelist Christos Tsiolkas on Sex, Drugs and Politics. (Interview).” Meanjin 61.2 (2002): 195-203. Print. Tsiolkas eloquently shares his controversial opinions on openly discussing topics not usually considered appropriate for children. Tsiolkas, Christos. Dead Europe. Sydney: Vintage Australia, 2005. Print. Traverses extremely dark territory of anti-Semitism past and present in Europe through the experiences of Greek Australian Isaac.
For Further Reading
MacLeod, Celeste Lipow. Multiethnic Australia: Its History and Future. Jefferson: McFarland, 2006.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Carol Ullmann
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The Small Boat of Great Sorrows By Dan Fesperman
W Introduction The Small Boat of Great Sorrows is Dan Fesperman’s second novel about Bosnian homicide detective Vlado Petric. Petric is making a new life for himself and his family in Berlin when the International War Crimes Tribunal asks him to go to Bosnia and help capture both a war criminal from the recent Bosnian war and a Croatian Nazi collaborator from World War II. Once back in Sarajevo, Petric and his American partner are drawn into a “wilderness of mirrors” in which everyone has secrets to hide, including Petric himself. The Small Boat of Great Sorrows has been praised for its tightly woven plot and vivid evocation of Bosnia in the years after the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. A longtime foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, Fesperman takes subjects from the headlines and gives them a human face. As Timothy B. Peters describes it in the New York Times, Fesperman makes “the reader see the people behind movements or ideologies as human, even when they do inhuman things.” The Small Boat of Great Sorrows won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller from the British Crime Writers’ Association in 2003.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Small Boat of Great Sorrows is set in 1998, three years after the end of the Yugoslavian civil wars. Nationalist tensions began to surface in Yugoslavia shortly after the death of the country’s ruler, Josip Tito, in 1980. Croatia was the first of the six Yugoslavian provinces to declare its independence, in 1991. When Bosnia followed Croatia’s example in 1992, the result was a bloody civil war. For three years, Bosnian Serbs and Croats, with military support from Serbia and Croatia, fought to partition the
province along ethnic lines. Muslim Bosniaks, the only Bosnian ethnic group with no outside “homeland,” suffered expulsion and massacre at the hands of the Serbs in the name of ethnic cleansing. Serbian forces besieged Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) finally intervened in 1995, bombing Serbian positions in Bosnia in August and September. On December 14, 1995, the Dayton Accords created the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. International peacekeeping forces were stationed in the country to supervise implementation of the accords. In its earliest incarnations, the spy novel was a staple of pulp fiction: a simple adventure story in which the hero fights to save his (or her) country from disaster. The heroes were pure-hearted, the bad guys were villainous, and the value of the goal was clear. Over the course of the twentieth century, the spy novel became a respected literary genre in the hands of artists such as Graham Greene and John le Carré. Describing this transformation in the New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Mahler explained, “The secret was in the shading. The protagonist, usually a brooding loner, needed flaws, the antagonist needed nuance, and everyone in between needed to be as opaque as possible.” In Fesperman’s novels, the sense of moral ambiguity comes less from the characters than from the setting. Petric is “the last honest man in the Balkans.” The gangster he is tracking down is as one-dimensional as any villain in a James Bond film. Fesperman’s Bosnia, on the other hand, provides all the shading that any spy novel needs, marked by what Mahler describes as “divided loyalties and uncomfortable overlapping layers of violent history.”
W Themes In The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, history is never over, and the present is always rooted in the past. Fesperman
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hints at this central theme with the novel’s title, which is drawn from Peter Petrovic Njegos’s poem “The Mountain Wreath.” Written in 1847 in the style of Serbian folk epics, the poem is about the Serbian defeat at Kosovo in 1389. It concerns the ethnic hatreds that have been an element of Balkan politics for generations and have led to repeated atrocities from the thirteenth century to the present. Fesperman presents his theme in a less oblique way in the opening scene of the novel, in which Petric digs up a World War II bunker with his backhoe. Digging up part of the past is such a common experience in the reconstruction of Berlin that the city employs “an expert in naming and classifying every hibernation chamber where men in gray had once hunkered down for defeat.” Construction workers are ordered to report any discovery so that the experts can decide how to proceed. This time, Petric and his work partner decide to investigate the find before they report it. As the novel unfolds, Petric continues delving into the past, both his country’s and his own, with deadly results.
W Style In an interview with Eve Tan Gee in Crime Time, an online magazine issued by British publisher Oldcastle Books, Fesperman describes his approach to writing about violence in terms that could apply to his writing as a whole: “What I look to convey is the speed, the immediacy, the gut level sensations of sight and sound and feel, and also that fast-forward sensibility that results when your adrenaline kicks into overdrive.” Fesperman brings his journalistic pedigree to bear in his fiction, delivering his story with the economy, precision, and authority of hard-nosed reportage. Complicated issues of Bosnian history and politics are laid out with clarity and a light hand. As Richard McComb observes in the Birmingham Post, “His first-hand experience of war reporting and exhaustive research shine through this novel, from the intrigue within the intelligence agencies to his startling invocations of dark city scenes and Bosnian valleys suffused with the smell of resinous pine trees.” The most striking element of Fesperman’s style is what Christian Jennings describes, in a Daily Mail review of his first novel, Lie in the Dark (1999), as his “journalistic ability to recreate a sense of place, and describe what it looks, feels and sounds like in an environment which most people will never visit.”
W Critical Reception Fesperman is often compared to such esteemed thriller writers as Frederick Forsyth, Alan Furst, and Robert Wilson, both for his use of exotic settings and for what
MAJOR CHARACTERS MARKO ANDRIC is a Serbian general and one of the men believed to be responsible for the 1995 massacre of seven thousand Yugoslavian Muslims at Srebrenica. The French have agreed to arrest Andric if the Americans detain a Croatian suspect in return. PERO MATEK is a Croatian war criminal from World War II who supervised the concentration camp at Jasenovic, the Balkan equivalent of Auschwitz. After the war, Matek escaped with the help of a group of Croatian priests in Italy, making off with two crates of gold from the Croatian state bank. Now he is back in Bosnia, where he is a local thug and privateer “making money from hardship and corruption.” VLADO PETRIC is a former Bosnian homicide detective. At the end of Fesperman’s first novel, Petric fled Sarajevo after investigating widespread corruption in the besieged city. When The Small Boat of Great Sorrows opens, he has made a safe, if dull, life for himself as a construction worker in Berlin, but he misses the hills of Bosnia and the chance to use his investigative skills. When the International War Crimes Tribunal asks him to help capture a war criminal in Bosnia, he has mixed feelings but accepts. CALVIN PINE is a former assistant U.S. district attorney who grew tired of prosecuting small-time drug offenses and now works as an investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal.
David Killick, writing in the Press, calls his ability to mix “historical authenticity with good old-fashioned action and adventure.” The Small Boat of Great Sorrows is consistently praised as an intelligent thriller anchored by a solid grasp of the tensions beneath the Bosnian war. According to Publishers Weekly, “This tight, intelligent thriller . . . chillingly describes a world in which justice is always a negotiation between highly compromised alternatives, and history burdens every player—except for the executioners.” Charles Mitchell of the Spectator calls the book a “well-paced tale of deceit, manipulation, and double crossing.” Kirkus Reviews affirms that Fesperman “brilliantly recreates Cold War chill in post-Bosnian Europe.” Offering a rare negative comment on the novel, Mahler charges that its literary value is hampered by the “unimpeachable” virtue of its protagonist and, more generally, a “lack of moral ambiguity and psychological subtlety.” Still, he concludes, a somewhat stereotypical cast of characters “doesn’t slow the momentum of this impeccably plotted and ably written book.”
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The Small Boat of Great Sorrows BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dan Fesperman was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He studied journalism and history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also developed an interest in the novels of Graham Greene. Fesperman spent more than twenty years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, most notably for the Baltimore Sun. He covered the Gulf War from Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, served as the Sun’s European bureau chief in Berlin during the Bosnian war, and reported from Pakistan and Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. While stationed in Berlin, Fesperman made a dozen trips to Bosnia between 1993 and 1996, experiencing the effect of war on the region firsthand. In 1994 he began his first novel, Lie in the Dark, the story of a Bosnian policeman investigating murder and corruption during the siege of Sarajevo. In 2007 Fesperman left journalism to become a full-time novelist.
Works Cited
Fesperman, Dan. “Dan Fesperman Cuts the Mustard.” Interview by Eve Tan Gee. Crime Time. Oldcastle Books 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. ———. The Small Boat of Great Sorrows. New York: Knopf, 2003. Print. Jennings, Christian. “Murder in Death City.” Rev. of Lie in the Dark, by Dan Fesperman. Daily Mail [London] 20 Aug. 1999: 54. Print. Killick, David. “Crackling with Tension.” Press [Christchurch] 12 June 2004: n. pag. HighBeam Research. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. Mahler, Jonathan. “The Collaborators.” Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. New York Times Book Review 28 Sept. 2003: 17. General OneFile. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. McComb, Richard. Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. Birmingham Post [England] 6 Sept. 2003: 53. Print.
Dan Fesperman, author of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, attends the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. ª Katy Winn/Corbis
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Mitchell, Charles. “Sins of the Fathers.” Spectator 14 Feb. 2004: 37. General OneFile. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Peters, Timothy B. “The Missing Thriller.” New York Times. New York Times 2 Feb. 2004. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. Kirkus Reviews 15 July 2003: 925. General OneFile. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. Publishers Weekly 250.25 (2003): 44. General OneFile. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Cole, Paul. Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. Sunday Mercury [Birmingham] 18 Apr. 2004: n. pag. HighBeam Research. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. This review concludes that The Small Boat of Great Sorrows avoids the typical clichés of Balkan thrillers. Fesperman, Dan. Interview by Ayo Onatade. Shots. Shots Collective July 2004. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Onatade conducted this interview with Fesperman at the 2004 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. ———. Interview by Linda Wertheimer. Weekend Edition Sunday. National Public Radio 5 Oct. 2003. General OneFile. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Fesperman discusses the themes of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows. Mantell, Suzanne. “Dan Fesperman.” Publishers Weekly 246.2 (1999): 42. General OneFile. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. In this article about Lie in the Dark, Fesperman talks about his experience of Bosnia during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Petit, Chris. “Mirrors and Lies.” Rev. of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, by Dan Fesperman. Guardian [London] 4 Oct. 2003: 29. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. This review focuses on the relationship between the atrocities committed in the Balkans during World War II and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
Weinman, Sarah. “Battle Fatigue.” January Magazine Oct. 2003. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. Weinman considers the role of Yugoslavian history in Fesperman’s novels. Gale Resources
“Dan Fesperman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Open Web Sources
Dan Fesperman’s personal Web site includes a brief biography and links to interviews. http://www. danfesperman.com/ BBC History’s Yugoslavia 1918-2003 provides a useful introduction to the Yugoslavian civil wars in the 1990s. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/ wwone/yugoslavia_01.shtml For Further Reading
Aaron, Mark, and John Loftus. Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Print. Fesperman acknowledges his debt to Aaron and Loftus for one of the key subplots in The Small Boat of Great Sorrows: the escape of Ustasha war criminals through Italy under the protection of the Catholic Church. Cawelti, John G., and Bruce C. Rosenberg. The Spy Story. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print. This book presents the history and structural analysis of the spy novel. Fesperman, Dan. Lie in the Dark. New York: SOHO, 1999. Print. In this novel, Fesperman’s first, he introduces Vlado Petric as a homicide detective in besieged Sarajevo. Furst, Alan. Spies of the Balkans. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. This Balkan thriller was written by an author Fesperman is often compared to. Malcolm, Noel. A Short History of Bosnia. New York: New York UP, 1996. Print. Malcolm provides an introduction to Bosnian history, updated through the siege of Sarajevo.
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Pamela Toler
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Small Island By Andrea Levy
W Introduction Small Island (2004) is a historical novel by Andrea Levy that describes the experiences of two couples: Queenie and Bernard Bligh, who are British, and Hortense and Gilbert Joseph, who are Jamaican. The story takes place in Britain in 1948, with flashbacks providing insights into the characters’ pasts. The Josephs are newlyweds who move to the United Kingdom after World War II hoping to find a better life in the “mother country.” They take a room in the home of Queenie, whose husband has not yet returned from the war. When Bernard finally comes back, he is not pleased to find the Jamaican couple in his home. The four main characters narrate the story, with each chapter assigned to one of the protagonists. The novel examines the challenges that Britons faced after the war, as well as the difficulties of migration, colonialism, racism, and cultural conflict faced by West Indian immigrants. In writing Small Island, Levy drew on her Jamaican heritage and the experiences of her parents as immigrants in postwar Britain. Well received by critics, Small Island was the first novel to win both the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in the same year (2004).
W Literary and Historical Context
On June 22, 1948, the year in which Small Island is set, the SS Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury in the United Kingdom. The ship had stopped in Jamaica to collect servicemen who had served in the armed forces during World War II. Other West Indians joined them, and the Windrush’s 492 passengers represented the first large group of immigrants from the Caribbean to arrive in the United Kingdom after the war. Housing was scarce, and
the newcomers often clashed with British natives. Although many of the West Indians declared that they intended to stay in the United Kingdom only briefly, most settled permanently and were eventually dubbed the “Windrush generation.” Like many of the historical West Indian immigrants, the Jamaican characters in Small Island find life in the “mother country” more difficult than they expected. Their education and skills are not valued in the white British culture, and they experience racism and intolerance firsthand. Small Island is part of a larger group of works that address the African Caribbean experience in the United Kingdom, including the hardships faced by postwar immigrants and the continuing challenges of the country’s multicultural society. A number of publishing houses specializing in African Caribbean studies have advanced the works of African Caribbean British poets and novelists. Such writers as Zadie Smith, Fred D’Aguiar, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Victor Headley have achieved literary acclaim for writings that incorporate elements of their Caribbean heritage.
W Themes The title Small Island refers to the two islands, Jamaica and Britain, that together form the setting of Levy’s novel. It also reflects the novel’s themes of isolation and the need to belong. Gilbert and Hortense travel from Jamaica to England expecting a better life; instead, they find themselves outcasts and victims of racial discrimination. Gilbert is able to find only low-wage work, and Hortense, trained as a teacher in Jamaica, is unable to teach because of her race. The Jamaicans are isolated by language as well, because Londoners are unable to understand their accents. Gilbert wonders why the England he knows does not know him. In addition to the pain of national alienation, the novel is pervaded by racial tension. The characters’ efforts to provide for themselves and survive in an inhospitable environment
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Small Island
illustrate both the challenges of a new, multicultural society and the wider struggle among Britons to adapt and survive after a brutal war. Levy’s novel is also concerned with family difficulties, as they relate to both the nuclear family and the “family” of the British Empire. Gilbert and Hortense expect England to be welcoming, with educated inhabitants who will appreciate their sophistication. Instead, they meet poorly schooled Britons who treat them as outsiders rather than as equals in the British colonial family. Moreover, Hortense and Gilbert are ill-suited as a married couple, as are Queenie and Bernard. Both couples married for the sake of opportunity, and they struggle in their relationships.
W Style Small Island is narrated in the first person in the distinct voices of the four main characters, Queenie, Hortense, Gilbert, and Bernard. In lieu of chapter titles, Levy identifies each chapter with a number and the narrator’s name. Each character narrates roughly the same number of chapters. In addition to events that take place in 1948, the novel includes flashback scenes in which the characters’ memories are interwoven with their experiences in the present. The continual movement between past and present provides a context for the characters and their worldviews, their expectations and disappointments. Levy labels sections of the novel “Before” or “1948” to aid the reader in navigating the shifts in time and place. Critics have recognized Levy’s expertise with language and her ability to capture distinct voices—both English and Caribbean—in a way in which other British writers have perhaps fallen short. Mike Phillips, in his review in the Guardian, notes that instead of giving her characters a generic British or Caribbean dialect, Levy “creates a style which reproduces the rhythm and content of her characters’ speech.” She avoids the gimmicks of punctuation and spelling that some writers have used to represent variations in dialect; yet she is able to capture the difficulty that her British and Jamaican characters sometimes face in their attempts to communicate with one another. Using realist conventions, Levy raises cultural awareness. In her review for the Independent, Marianne Brace describes Levy’s writing in Small Island as “rigorous.” Critics have admired the author’s ability to achieve balance in her writing style by weaving humorous elements into her sometimes depressing tale.
W Critical Reception Small Island was the first of Levy’s works to be published in the United States, where it has garnered largely favorable reviews. Critics have appreciated Levy’s thorough research and attention to historical detail. A Kirkus
MAJOR CHARACTERS BERNARD BLIGH is a bank clerk and the husband of Queenie Buxton Bligh. When the novel begins, he has been discharged from the Royal Air Force for two years, but he has not returned home, and his whereabouts are a mystery. He finally comes back and finds that Queenie has opened their home to boarders. VICTORIA “QUEENIE” BUXTON BLIGH is the white British landlady of Gilbert and Hortense Joseph. The only daughter of a butcher, Queenie is an unrefined, working-class woman who has taken in lodgers after the war in an effort to support herself and her ailing father-in-law. GILBERT JOSEPH is a Jamaican man who served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. After the war is over, he returns to Britain on the Empire Windrush and becomes a boarder in the house of Queenie Bligh. Before leaving Jamaica, Gilbert married Hortense Roberts, who agreed to pay his passage to England if he would promise to allow her to join him there when he was settled. HORTENSE ROBERTS JOSEPH is a Jamaican schoolteacher. After joining Gilbert in England, she discovers that her teaching credentials will not be recognized and that her expectations of the “mother country” are grossly inflated. Even though she is educated, she has difficulty making herself understood because of her accent.
reviewer characterizes the novel as “an enthralling tour de force that animates a chapter in the history of empire.” Levy spent more than four years researching the novel in order to be able to convey what she called, in an interview with Jasper Gerard of the Sunday Times, the “deep historical connection” that many West Indians felt with Britain, as well as the tone of the British reception of colonial immigrants. Fatema Ahmed, writing for the New York Times Book Review, argues that Levy’s “greatest achievement” in the novel is “to convey how English racism was all the more heartbreaking for its colonial victims because it involved the crushing of their ideals.” Mike Phillips observes that Levy’s “reliance on historical fact” affords the writer “a distance which allows her to be both dispassionate and compassionate.” According to Marianne Brace, this distance, in turn, enables Levy to develop characters with an “even-handedness” that transcends color and class. Reviewers have commented that the novel’s shifts in time and place, as well as the changes in narrator, make for an engaging and sometimes difficult read. Penny Perrick, reviewing the novel for the Sunday Times, notes that each scene is “rich in implication, entrancing and disturbing at the same time,” and describes the work as the “literary equivalent of a switchback ride.”
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Small Island BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in London, Andrea Levy is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants who were among the first West Indians to settle in the United Kingdom following World War II. Her father arrived in the United Kingdom aboard the SS Empire Windrush in 1948, and her mother followed several months later. Levy’s parents suffered the challenges of many West Indian immigrants of the time: poor housing options, low-wage employment, and racial discrimination. The experiences of her parents as well as her own upbringing in British society inform Levy’s writings. Her works chronicle the struggles of immigrants and the challenges that their children often face in defining their identities, understanding and appreciating their heritage, and coping with a sometimes hostile environment.
In addition to the 2004 Orange Prize and Whitbread Award, in 2005 Small Island earned the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and the “Orange of Oranges” Prize. It was also named the Commonwealth Best Book for the Eurasia Region in 2005.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Fatema. “Postcolonials.” Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. New York Times Book Review 3 Apr. 2005: 17. Print. Brace, Marianne. “Small Island by Andrea Levy: Please Miss, I Went to Africa When It Came to Wembley . . . ” Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Independent [London]. Independent Print Ltd 25 Jan. 2004. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Gerard, Jasper. “Interview: Jasper Gerard Meets Andrea Levy: Every Inch an Englishwoman.” Sunday Times [London]. Times Newspapers Limited 13 June 2004. Web. 25 July 2010. Perrick, Penny. Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Sunday Times [London]. Times Newspapers Limited 29 Feb. 2004. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Phillips, Mike. “Roots Manoeuvre: Mike Phillips Salutes Andrea Levy’s Honest Narrative, Small Island.” Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Guardian [London] 14 Feb. 2004: 26. Print. Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Kirkus Reviews 15 Feb. 2005: 192. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010.
Picture of Andrea Levy, author of Small Island. ª Jeff Morgan 08 / Alamy
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Small Island Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Albritton, Laura. Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Harvard Review 29 (2005): 235+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010. A positive review that examines the characters’ sense of self and their cultural flaws and ideals. Lang, Anouk. “‘Enthralling but at the Same Time Disturbing’: Challenging the Readers of Small Island.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 44.2 (2009): 123-40. Print. Literary criticism that examines point of view in the narrative, the novel’s treatment of race, and its reception in Great Britain. Moses, Nicole. “Colorific.” January Magazine. January Magazine Sept. 2004. Web. 25 July 2010. An informative review that lauds Levy’s style in developing the structure and themes of the novel. Moses also notes the balance between humor and negativity in the novel. Sandhu, Sukhdev. “A New England: Sukhdev Sandhu Reviews Small Island, by Andrea Levy.” Telegraph.co. uk. Daily Telegraph [London] 24 Feb. 2004. Web. 25 July 2010. Thoughtful, positive review that acknowledges Levy’s research and draws parallels with Andrew Salkey’s 1976 novel, Come Home, Malcolm Heartland. Rev. of Small Island, by Andrea Levy. Publishers Weekly 7 Mar. 2005: 50. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 July 2010. Favorable review that praises the plot and unusual structure of the novel. Woodcock, Bruce. “Small Island, Crossing Cultures.” Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing 54 (2008): 50-55. Print. Examines the novel’s treatment of Jamaican immigrants, racism, and the British Empire. Gale Resources
“Andrea Levy.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Lima, Maria Helena. “Andrea Levy.” Twenty-firstCentury “Black” British Writers. Ed. R. Victoria Arana. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 347. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 July 2010. Open Web Sources
Andrea Levy’s official Web site offers biographical information, reviews, and extracts from the author’s novels. http://www.andrealevy.co.uk/
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Web site features a World Book Club program podcast in which Andrea Levy discusses Small Island with a studio audience. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ wbc In an interview with Richard Maurer for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program Masterpiece, Andrea Levy answers questions about the history, the characters, and the film adaptation of Small Island. http://www.pbs.org/wbgh/masterpiece/smallisland/ levy.html For the BBC Web site feature “British History In-Depth,” the author and historian Mike Phillips provides a historical overview of the SS Empire Windrush’s 1948 voyage from the Caribbean to Tilbury. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ modern/windrush_01.shtml For Further Reading
Lamming, George. The Emigrants. London: M. Joseph, 1954. Print. Lamming’s 1954 novel traces the story of emigrants from Barbados and their struggle to assimilate in the United Kingdom. Levy, Andrea. Every Light in the House Burnin’. London: Headline, 1994. Print. Levy’s first published novel, Every Light in the House Burnin’, is a tribute to her parents. The semiautobiographical book catalogs the challenges that the family faced in a postwar British society that was predominantly white. Salkey, Andrew. Come Home, Malcolm Heartland. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Print. A novel in which a Jamaican lawyer living in England returns to his homeland. Selvon, Samuel. The Lonely Londoners. London: Allan Wingate, 1956. Print. Selvon’s novel concerns West Indians who immigrated to Britain following World War II. Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000. Print. Smith’s debut novel describes contemporary multicultural London, telling the story of three ethnically diverse families whose lives intertwine. Adaptations
Small Island. Dir. John Alexander. Perf. Naomie Harris, David Oyelowo, Ruth Wilson, Benedict Cumberbatch. 2 episodes. Ruby Television/BBC One. 6 and 13 Dec. 2009. Television. The two-part BBC miniseries aired in the United States in April 2010 as part of the PBS Masterpiece Classic collection.
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Snow By Orhan Pamuk
W Introduction In Orhan Pamuk’s Snow (2004), Ka, a Turkish poet, returns home to his native Turkey after twelve years of living in political exile in Germany. He uses the occasion of his mother’s funeral to look into the growing scandal of young women committing suicide in reaction to the banning of headscarves and to see his lost love, Ipek. He arrives in the throes of a heavy snowfall and an imminent political coup, driven by the tension between Western secularization and political Islam, much like the one that drove him from Turkey over a decade earlier. Sporting a black wool Euro-styled coat and green notebook in which he hopes to write poems after a long spell of writer’s block, Ka poses as a journalist interested in covering the recent suicides of girls who refused to observe a government ban on headscarves. His previous reputation makes him the target of the local police and the political Islamists, who are led by the charismatic and nihilist Blue. As Ka juggles the various factions that threaten his own search for poetry and God, he believes that happiness is at last within his grasp when Ipek agrees to leave with him for Germany. Set against a number of intriguing subplots involving Kurdish separatists, political Islamists, idealistic students, and secular government officials, Ka develops a strange relationship with Blue, even as he discovers that both Ipek and her sister, Kadife, are in love with him. He also becomes complicit in an activist play by a leftist theater group that culminates in the on-stage murder of its founder and lead actor, Sunay Zaim, as well as the death of a young man named Necip, who fears Ka is a Western spy.
W Literary and Historical Context
The modern Turkish state emerged out of the secularist ideals championed by Mustafa Kemal, called Ataturk. In
his book, Crescent and Star: Turkey between Two Worlds, Stephen Kinzer explains the crisis that fueled Ataturk’s vision for a Western democracy and continues to threaten its potential in realizing that goal. Situated on the threshold where East meets West, Kars is a microcosm of the political, religious, and philosophical energies that relentlessly plague the social classes of Turkey’s diverse population. Pamuk’s choice of Germany as the adopted home of Ka’s political exile is not lost on astute observers. Like Germany, Turkey’s turbulent past was party to an infamous display of genocide; however, unlike Germany, which embraced its role in the Holocaust, Turkey is conflicted regarding its acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide. If Turkey is determined to reconcile secularism with political Islam, as Orhan implies, following Germany’s cathartic lead can only help. The freedom of expression, typified by Ka’s poetic pursuits and even those of the Kemalist National Theatre, must include a national reckoning of history. Pamuk’s contribution to the historical crisis that casts a shadow over the arts in general, and literature in particular, is Ka’s sketch of a snowflake that summarizes the competing forces at work in Turkey’s quest for a national identity. In his view, three axes represent reason, memory, and imagination. Reason represents the West; memory, the Kemalists, who long for Ottoman greatness; and imagination, the Islamic traditions held by the faithful.
W Themes The major theme of Snow concerns the toll both Western enlightenment and political Islam exact from the forgotten residents of a provincial border town in northeastern Turkey. Ka arrives in the middle of a historical snowfall and reflects on the white silence that stifles the conflicts all around him. The military police, in collusion with the press, want to suppress any publication of articles
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describing the young women who are committing suicide as a protest against the government ban on headscarves. Kadife, the sister of Ipek, with whom Ka is in love, is the secret leader of the headscarf girls and the mistress of the Islamic terrorist Blue. Ka is perceived as an atheist because of his Western affiliations; therefore, his involvement with anyone is seen as suspicious. He is the witness to and, to some degree, a catalyst for a coup in the making. Another theme concerns the collision of modernity with tradition. On the pretense of reporting on the rash of suicides of young women who oppose the headscarf ban, Ka is forced to defend his own issues of faith as a Turk. This situation coincides with his sudden inspiration to write a series of poems that imply God is connected with his poetry. The idealistic young men such as Necip and Fazil, themselves aspiring writers and poets, admire and condemn Ka for his betrayal of his Islamic roots. They accuse him of sharing the Western perception that poor people must be ignorant as well. The theme of striving for personal happiness in the midst of disillusionment and death is also an important theme in the novel. When Ipek seems willing to return his love and join him in Germany, it makes Ka happy for the first time in his life. His joy is further advanced by a succession of poems he writes, so much so that the violence following the National Theatre’s presentation of a political play, in which Kadife shoots Sunay Zaim on stage, has little effect on him. Even as he seems to have betrayed Blue’s hiding place to the police moments before he plans to meet Ipek at the train station, Ka can think of nothing else but his happiness, until it is apparent that Ipek has changed her mind.
W Style Snow is a third-person novel whose omniscient narrator is introduced on the penultimate page of the book. Pamuk’s tone is reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, in terms of existentialism, and, like the ambiguous K of The Castle, Pamuk’s Ka is similarly detached from reality. With poetic irony, Pamuk weaves elements of fable and melodrama into the weightier issues of poverty, dispossession, and the struggle between secularism and political Islam, but the dialogue and narrative remain understated. The title identifies the most prominent metaphor of the novel. Pamuk constantly reflects on the snow in all of its activities, falling, layering, and piling. Ka stays at the Snow Palace Hotel and devises a diagram of a snowflake that defines the totality of his life, from beginning to end. The metaphor extends to the name of the city, Kars, in which the story unfolds, as the Turkish word for “snow.” Pamuk uses the play, My Fatherland or My Head Scarf, as a story within a story. It provides the climax
MAJOR CHARACTERS KERIM ALAKUSOGLU, the main protagonist known as Ka, is a Turkish poet living in political exile in Germany. SERDAR BEY is the publisher of the Border City News. He thinks Ka is writing a story about the headscarf suicides. TURGUT BEY is Ipek and Kadife’s father. He owns the Snow Palace Hotel and is a communist. BLUE is a political Islamist who agitates the Turkish youth to rebellion. He is a charismatic nihilist who initiates secret contact with Ka. Z DEMIRKOL is a brutal military police official. FAZIL, Necip’s best friend, survives the rebellion at the National Theatre. He marries Kadife after she is released from prison for the death of Sunay Zaim. They have a son together. IPEK HANIM is an uncommonly beautiful woman for whom Ka has carried a torch. She is recently divorced from Muhtar and agrees to marry Ka, though she is still in love with Blue. KADIFE HANIM is Ipek’s sister and leader of the headscarf girls. She is also the lover of Blue. MUHTAR, Ka’s former colleague and once-fellow poet, is running for mayor as an Islamist and wants to remarry Ipek. He was previously an avowed atheist. NECIP is a young follower of Blue who is in love with Kadife and dreams of becoming a science fiction writer. When he touches someone’s forehead, he can read that person’s thoughts. SUNAY ZAIM, a cultural bureaucrat and director of the National Theatre, uses his acting and production skills to stage plays as a rally cry to secularists. He is shot and killed by Kadife during the presentation of My Fatherland or My Head Scarf.
of the novel when revolution breaks out in the theater after everyone realizes, including Kadife, that the pistol she has used to shoot Sunay Zaim was loaded with real bullets. As the military ruthlessly quells the audience, Necip, the young man who introduces Ka to Blue and who is in love with Kadife, is killed with a shot through his eye. The play reflects the tensions within the Kars community and the casualties those tensions claim.
W Critical Reception Snow was well received by most critics and generously reviewed owing to its timely subject. In her review in the New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood cheered
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Orhan Pamuk was born June 7, 1952, in Turkey. He first attended Istanbul Technical College before graduating from Robert College and later from the University of Istanbul, Institute of Journalism, in 1976. He is a novelist, essayist, short story writer, and lecturer. Winner of numerous awards, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2003, all for My Name Is Red and the Prix Medicis, 2005, for Snow, and the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, Pamuk was considered to be one of the most important Turkish writers living in the early 2000s.
Pamuk for “narrating his country into being,” adding it is “not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times.” Laurance Wieder described the novel as a “picaresque political adventure interwoven with a love story and punctuated by odd incident and peculiar violence.” He also praised it for the homage it pays to Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev.
Similarly, a review in Publishers Weekly praised Orhan’s Snow as an “enigmatically beautiful novel.” In his review in the New Statesman, Julian Evans called Snow the embodiment of the concept of the national novel and particularly European. He applauded Pamuk for exposing Turkey’s crisis of European secularism and political Islam by addressing its ambiguities that are “profound and frequently brilliant.” Others qualified their praise. In his review in Harper’s Magazine, John Leonard concluded that Pamuk’s style and the novel’s structure are affected by a dearth of master writers from Albert Camus to Salman Rushdie. Nevertheless, he pronounced, “From the Golden Horn, with a wicked grin, the political novel makes a triumphant return.” John Updike took into consideration the translation in his review in the New Yorker and wondered if the novel read better in Turkish. Ultimately, he credited Pamuk for producing “a major work so frankly troubled and provocatively bemused and, against the grain of the author’s usual antiquarian bent, entirely contemporary in its setting and subjects.” Updike stated that doing so required “the courage that art sometimes visits upon even its most detached practitioners.”
Kumbet Mosque in Kars, Turkey. Ka, the main character in Snow, witnesses the ongoing religious and political discord in his native Turkey when he returns home. ª Paul Carstairs/Alamy
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Wieder, Laurance. “Preemptive Prophecy: In the Turkish City of Kars, Schoolgirls Forced to Abandon Their Headscarves Are Killing Themselves.” Books & Culture 10.6 (2004): 36. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Aleman, Tina. “Pamuk, Orhan. Snow.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Commonweal 133.21 (2006): 22. Print. Praises Pamuk for the book’s insights into Turkey’s struggle regarding secular and religious life. Berman, Marshall. “Orhan Pamuk and Modernist Liberalism.” Dissent 56.2 (2009): 113-18. Print. Views Pamuk’s novel as an affirmation of modernist liberalism, itself a hybrid philosophy in response to Turkey’s ongoing crisis of political and historical denial. Coury, David N. “Turkey and the West in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Critique 50.4 (2009): 340-49. Print. Questions Pamuk’s real intentions, which he sees emerging in the novel’s main theme of East versus West. De Falbe, John. “Rather Cold Turkey.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Spectator 295.9170 (2004): 46. Print. Judges the novel is a “gripping political thriller,” for its ambitious treatment of controversial subjects.
Portrait of Orhan Pamuk, author of Snow. ª vario images GmbH & Co.KG / Alamy
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. “Headscarves to Die For.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. New York Times Book Review 15 Aug. 2004. Print. Evans, Julian. “Veiled Hatred.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. New Statesman 133.4687 (2004): 53. Print. Kinzer, Stephen. Crescent and Star: Turkey between Two Worlds. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Print. Leonard, John. “New Books.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Harper’s Magazine 309.1851 (2004): 75. Print. Pamuk, Orhan. Snow. Trans. Maureen Freely. New York: Vintage International, 2005. Print.
Hitchens, Christopher. “Mind the Gap: Turkey Is Everyone’s Idea of a ‘Successful’ Modern Muslim State. A New Novel Will Make You Think Twice.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Atlantic 294.3 (2004): 188. Print. Takes Pamuk and his novel to task, by applying literary criticism of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Kloszewski, Marc. “Snow.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Library Journal 129.12 (2004): 73. Print. Writes that Snow gives a closer look at the complex subject of religion and the passions that arise from its followers. “Pamuk, Orhan. Snow.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Kirkus Reviews 72.11 (2004): 512. Print. Declares that Snow provides a complex view of Turkey, which may advance readers’ understanding. Wilkinson, Joanne. “Pamuk, Orhan. Snow.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Booklist 100.19-20 (2004): 1704. Print. Suggests that Pamuk’s novel will be best appreciated by readers who already have some knowledge of Islam.
Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Publishers Weekly 251.29 (2004): 144. Print.
“A Wintry Tale from Turkey.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. Bookseller 9 Jan. 2004: 33. Print. Identifies the novel’s concern with the political side of Islam.
Updike, John. “Anatolian Arabesques.” Rev. of Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. New Yorker 80.24 (2004): 98. Print.
Wyatt, Neal. “Turkish Delights: The Varieties of Turkey’s Literature.” Library Journal 132.2
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(2007): 108. Print. Cites Pamuk’s relevance as a major Turkish writer alongside Yas¸ ar Kemal. Includes brief references to Pamuk’s other novels. Gale Resources
“Orhan Pamuk.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. Document URL http://go. galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE% 7CH1000114534&v=2.1&u=itsbtrial&it=r& p=LitRC&sw=w Open Web Sources
The Orhan Pamuk Home Page, at http:// www.orhanpamuk.net, includes a biography and comprehensive information on the author’s books, awards, reviews, and photos. For Further Reading
Akcan, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Picador Press, 2007. Print. Written by Turkish intellectual, chronicling the 1915 genocide of one million Armenians, which Turkey denies.
France’s position on the ban as having origins in French history. Itzkowitz, Norman. Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Print. Tracks the history of the Ottoman Empire from the collapse of Byzantium to its confrontation with Europe in the late eighteenth century. Libbrecht, Kenneth. The Secret Life of a Snowflake: An Up-Close Look at the Art and Science of Snowflakes. McGregor: Voyageur Press, 2010. Print. Uses microphotography to create stunning photographs of snowflakes. Appropriate for younger readers. Mango, Andrew. Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Woodstock: Overlook, 2002. Print. Presents the comprehensive biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as the father of the modern Turkish state. Schall, Ekkehard. The Craft of Theatre: Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre. Trans. Jack Davis. London: Methuen Drama, 2009. Print. Autobiographical account of famous German actor familiar with the work of Bertold Brecht.
Bowen, John R. Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print. Tracks the hot debate and
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Soldiers of Salamis By Javier Cercas
W Introduction Originally published in Spanish as Soldados de Salamina (2001), Soldiers of Salamis (2003) by Javier Cercas is a fictionalized account of events that occurred near the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Narrated by a journalist who shares his name and certain life experiences with the book’s author, the work blends history and autobiography with fiction to create what the narrator describes as a “true tale.” The book was translated into English by Anne McLean. The novel opens with Cercas’s discovery of a story about Rafael Sánchez Mazas, a Falangist ideologist (a sympathizer with right-wing fascism and the party of General Francisco Franco) who escaped a firing squad only to be spotted, but spared, by an unknown soldier. Intrigued by the tale, Cercas sets out to investigate its accuracy. As he researches the events of 1939, Cercas eventually develops a new understanding of war and heroism. He also comes to terms with his writing career, which had been put on hold after the lackluster reception of his early novels. Addressing issues of war and justice, as well as the relationship between history and fiction, the novel was an instant international success. Soldiers of Salamis was made into an awardwinning Spanish film in 2003 and won an Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2004).
W Literary and Historical Context
Although Soldiers of Salamis is set in twentieth-century Spain, it takes its title from a battle fought between Greece and Persia in 480 BCE. The legendary battle, in which an outnumbered Greek fleet managed to deflect a Persian invasion, was the subject of numerous Greek
writers, including the historian Herodotus and the philosopher Plato. Today many historians believe that the decisive battle prevented the destruction of Greek society and subsequently allowed Western culture to flourish. In the novel Cercas learns that Sánchez Mazas has planned to write a memoir of his wartime experiences, to be titled Soldiers of Salamis in an invocation of his own perceived heroism. Cercas adopts this title for his own book, and it is also the title given to the section of the novel that outlines Sánchez Mazas’s story. The Battle of Salamis offers a central metaphor for Cercas’s novel, but the Spanish Civil War provides its backdrop. The war began with a military coup d’état against the unpopular president Manuel Azaña. This coup was only partially successful, however, leaving Spain in the divided control of warring factions: the leftist Republican loyalists and the conservative Nationalists. Both sides committed numerous atrocities, including the slaughter of civilians as well as enemy sympathizers. Soldiers of Salamis focuses on the final months of the war, by which point the Nationalist forces, under the leadership of the fascist Francisco Franco, were nearing victory. The mass execution described in the novel took place on January 30, 1939, as Republican forces anticipated the arrival of Franco’s troops. The war ended with Franco’s victory on April 1 of that same year.
W Themes As Cercas’s repeated emphasis on the warriors of Greece makes clear, heroism is one of the central themes of Soldiers of Salamis. Although it is an implicit theme throughout the work, heroism becomes an overt focus toward the end, when Cercas discusses it with Roberto Bolaño, a successful writer whom he interviews for the newspaper. Although he finds the man’s answers useful for his article, it is not until he meets an old soldier named Miralles that Cercas truly understands the nature of heroism. He goes to great lengths to track down Miralles
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MAJOR CHARACTERS CONCHI, the narrator’s girlfriend, is a fortune-teller for a local television station, where she works under the stage name Jasmine. Conchi is enamored with the fact that Cercas is a writer. She encourages him not to give up on his novel and helps him track down Miralles. MIGUEL AGUIRRE is a historian who contacts Cercas after he publishes a brief article about the failed execution of Sánchez Mazas. He puts Cercas in touch with Jaume Figueras. ROBERTO BOLAÑO is a historical figure, a Chilean writer known for both poetry and prose. In the novel Cercas interviews him for a newspaper story. Bolaño’s story about an old soldier named Miralles leads Cercas to believe that the man may have been the anonymous soldier who spared Sánchez Mazas’s life. JAVIER CERCAS is a fictionalized version of the book’s author. In the novel Cercas is a journalist who has abandoned his dreams of becoming a successful novelist after several failed efforts. His chance encounter with the story of Sánchez Mazas puts him on the path to regaining his sense of himself as a writer. JAUME FIGUERAS is the son of Pedro Figueras, one of the “forest friends” who helped Sánchez Mazas after he escaped the firing squad. Although Jaume’s father has died, he puts Cercas in touch with the two living forest friends. ANTONI MIRALLES is an elderly man who had fought with Republican forces during the war. Cercas comes to believe that he is the unknown soldier who allowed Sánchez Mazas to escape. Cercas bases this belief on the fact that Miralles was known to be in the area at the time of the execution and that Bolaño had once observed him dance a paso doble to “Sighing for Spain,” something the young soldier had been seen to do in the days prior to the execution. Although this theory is never confirmed, Cercas eventually realizes that it does not matter. RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ MAZAS is the historical figure whose life experiences intrigue the narrator. A poet and a novelist, Sánchez Mazas became a high-level Falangist and served briefly in Franco’s cabinet. The novel’s second section chronicles his life and war experiences.
after he hears about the man from Bolaño and comes to suspect that Miralles is the militiaman who allowed Sánchez Mazas to escape. After his experiences in Spain, Miralles survived the refugee camps of France and went on to fight with the French army in World War II, eventually losing all of his companions in battle. He refuses to think of himself as a hero and admits that he thinks every day about his dead companions, whose
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heroism is untold and whose memories will die with him. “Heroes are only heroes when they die or get killed,” he tells Cercas. “The real heroes are born out of war and die in war. There are no living heroes, young man.” Miralles’s story, Cercas realizes, is what has been missing from the “true tale” he has been writing, and it provides a counterpoint to the story of Sánchez Mazas. While the latter’s adventures are presented with some sympathy, his status as a hero is called into question. Instead, as Boyd Tonkin points out in the Independent, Sánchez Mazas is revealed to have “exploited his adventure: the single slice of danger in a pampered life.” Indeed, Sánchez Mazas’s equation of himself with the soldiers of the famed Battle of Salamis rings completely false by the end of the novel as it becomes clear that such men as Miralles and his dead companions are the true “soldiers of Salamis” to whom Cercas’s book refers.
W Style Soldiers of Salamis is divided into three sections. The first outlines the narrator’s developing interest in the story of Sánchez Mazas, the second recounts Sánchez Mazas’s life and war experiences, and the third chronicles the narrator’s search for Miralles and his discussions with the old soldier. Cercas employs a hybrid form, which a Kirkus reviewer describes as a “strange and intriguing amalgam of epic, elegy, and mystery.” The work brings together elements of historical fact and fiction and includes Cercas’s initial newspaper article about Sánchez Mazas, as well as excerpts from the journal that the Falangist kept while hiding in the forest. The narrator insists that his burgeoning work is not a novel but a “true tale.” He explains to his girlfriend, Conchi, that the work will be “like a novel” except that “instead of being all lies, it’s all true.” He continues to discuss this concept of a true tale throughout the novel. Toward the end, his fellow novelist Bolaño suggests that “all good tales are true tales, at least for those who read them, which is all that counts.” This notion of “true” fuels Cercas’s ultimate realization that it does not really matter whether Miralles was the mysterious militiaman because his story is valuable. The novel is a work of metafiction, a type of writing that exposes its own constructedness as a piece of fiction. Although there are several common metafictional strategies, Soldiers of Salamis follows in the tradition of novels in which the protagonist is writing a novel. Well-known works in this vein include James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-1915) and John Irving’s The World According to Garp (1978). Like these novels, Cercas’s book repeatedly reflects on the work of the novelist. Several times, for example, Cercas comments that “nothing irritates a writer who doesn’t write as much as being asked about what he’s writing,” and the novel’s final resolution is ultimately as much about the young TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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writer finding his way back to writing as it is about discovering the truth of Sánchez Mazas’s story.
W Critical Reception When Soldiers of Salamis was published in Spain in 2001, it was met with overwhelming praise from both readers and critics. Reviewing the work for World Literature Today, Rosa Julia Bird describes it as “a compelling and provocative novel” that offers “a profound analysis of the intricacies of writing and being a writer.” It quickly became a best seller and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. Critical acclaim continued to build with the publication of the English translation in 2003. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Miranda France notes that “the last third of the book, in which Cercas meets the man who may have been Sanchez Mazas’s saviour, is particularly moving and well-told,” while Allan Massie, in a review of the book for the Scotsman, calls Soldiers of Salamis “a truly wonderful, magnificent novel. It is understanding, intelligent, compassionate. It makes [Ernest] Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, admittedly one of his poorer books, look like play-acting.” While not all reviews of the novel were entirely positive, most criticism was secondary to praise. A review
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Javier Cercas was born in 1962 in Ibahernando, Cáceres, Spain. Like his fictional counterpart, Cercas began his career as a novelist with relatively little success. His first novel, El móvil (1987; The motive), was largely ignored by critics. With the publication of Soldados de Salamina in 2001, the author garnered international attention. He followed up on this success with the critically acclaimed La velocidad de la luz (2005), which was translated into English as The Speed of Light (2006). In addition to writing novels, Cercas holds a post at the University of Girona, Spain, as a professor of Spanish literature and taught for two years at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He regularly contributes articles to the Spanish newspaper El País.
in Publishers Weekly, for example, acknowledges that Cercas’s “thematic conclusions are powerful and humane enough to compensate for a narrative voice that is often speculative or long-winded.” Writing in the Age, Kerryn Goldsworthy observes that “Cercas comes across as a depressed, depressing and solipsistic sexist” and that
Photo of Javier Cercas, author of Soldiers of Salamis. ª Jordi Salas/Alamy TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“women readers, in particular, are likely to find the author/narrator Cercas essentially unlikeable and therefore to care less than they otherwise might whether his quest is successful or not.” Goldsworthy nevertheless concludes that the novel is saved by its portrait of heroism and its historical intrigue. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bird, Rosa Julia. Rev. of Soldados de Salamina, by Javier Cercas. World Literature Today 76.2 (2002): 235+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2010. Cercas, Javier. Soldiers of Salamis. Trans. Anne McLean. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Print. France, Miranda. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Daily Telegraph [London] 3 May 2003: 9. Print. Goldsworthy, Kerryn. “Civilities of a Civil War, Seen through Spanish Eyes.” Age [Melbourne] 25 Oct. 2003: 3. Print. Massie, Allan. “Soldiers of Salamis: Miracle from the Forest.” Scotsman 3 May 2003: 7. Print. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Kirkus Reviews 1 Jan. 2004: 5. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Publishers Weekly 19 Jan. 2004: 54. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Tonkin, Boyd. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Independent [London] 14 June 2003: 24. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Caistor, Nick. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Guardian [London] 21 June 2003: 28. Print. Situates the novel in a tradition of revisionist accounts of the Spanish Civil War, and praises the author’s emphasis on the importance of individual experience. Hegarty, Shane. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Irish Times 22 Dec. 2003: 10. Print. Credits Cercas with inspiring renewed interest in the Spanish Civil War. Hertner, Philip. “The Spanish Prisoner.” St. Petersburg Times [Florida] 8 Feb. 2004: 5P. Print. Offers an overview of the novel’s plot, and praises its attempts to reinterpret traditional beliefs about history. Hopkinson, Amanda. Rev. of Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas. Observer 13 July 2003: 14. Print. Explores, in a favorable review, the novel’s blending of fact and fiction. Tonkin, Boyd. “Search for the Hero.” Independent [London] 23 Apr. 2004: 24. Print. Praises Cercas’s
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treatment of memory and courage as well as his humor, and lauds Anne McLean for the strength of her translation. Wimmer, Natasha. “Parallel Paths.” New York Times Book Review 3 June 2007: 55(L). Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Compares Soldiers of Salamis to Cercas’s later novel The Speed of Light (trans. Anne McLean, 2006). Gale Resources
“Javier Cercas.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. Open Web Sources
The Web site of the Berlin Internationales Literaturfestival includes a biography of Cercas with emphasis on his literary career and texts. http://www .literaturfestival.com/participants/authors/2004/ javier-cercas The online magazine Words without Borders features a conversation between Cercas and David Trueba, the director of the film adaptation of Soldiers of Salamis, in which the two discuss the story as well as their inspirations. http://wordswithoutborders.org/ article/from-conversations-about-soldiers-of-salamis/ For Further Reading
Carr, Raymond. Spain: A History. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print. Carr’s nonfiction work chronicles the history of Spain from prehistory to the present day. Cercas, Javier. The Speed of Light. Trans. Anne McLean. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. Print. Like Soldiers of Salamis, Cercas’s earlier novel The Speed of Light (originally published as La velocidad de la luz, 2005) explores the aftermath of war, although this work focuses on Vietnam. Hodges, Gabrielle Ashford. Franco: A Concise Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Print. This biography traces the fascist dictator’s rise to power in Spain, his remarkable longevity as a leader, and the influences that shaped him. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge. London: Harper, 2006. Print. This volume of nonfiction examines the rise of Francisco Franco, the history of the war itself, and its connections to World War II. Strauss, Barry. The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece—and Western Civilization. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Print. This nonfiction work explores the 480 BCE battle between Greece and Persia from which Cercas’s novel takes its title. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Soldiers of Salamis Adaptations
Soldados de Salamina. Dir. David Trueba. Perf. Ariadna Gil and Ramón Fontserè. Lolafilms/Fernando Trueba PC Production, 2003. Film. The Spanish film adaptation of Cercas’s novel replaces the book’s male
narrator with a female protagonist. It was nominated for eight Goya Awards, winning for Best Cinematography.
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Solo By Rana Dasgupta
W Introduction Rana Dasgupta’s second novel, Solo, chronicles the life of a one-hundred-year-old Bulgarian man, Ulrich, blinded and confined to a cramped apartment over a bus station in the capital city of Sofia. As Ulrich’s life is traced through the turbulent twentieth century, it is profoundly informed by the changing political and social events that affected his home country of Bulgaria during that time, including the country’s flirtation with fascism, the rise of communism, widespread oppression, and the fall of the Soviet bloc. In the second half of the book, however, Ulrich’s repressed energy and expression is sublimated into a series of wild daydreams that incorporate three characters who experience the chaos of the democratic and capitalist revolution, including globalization, the influx of organized crime, and the excitement and dislocation of a rapidly changing culture. Solo was published to critical acclaim, receiving the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize in 2009. As Nigel Krauth asserts in his review of the novel, “What a delight to read a fiction writer fully astute about life, love, culture and politics, catching in his cross-hairs ideologies, sciences, personal relationships, the terrors of ageing, the madness of music, organised crime, family tragedies—even the novel genre itself—examining them with dazzling clarity.”
W Literary and Historical Context
Dasgupta has revealed in interviews that Solo sprang from his interest in Bulgarian folk music. Intrigued, he began to research the country’s peculiar history and decided to set the novel in postcommunist Bulgaria. He made two trips to Bulgaria to research his book through extensive interviews with Bulgarian citizens in their sixties and seventies.
During the twentieth century, Bulgaria was buffeted by numerous political and social forces. In 1912 it allied itself with Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro to attack Macedonia and Thrace and divide it between them. Conflict between the allies broke out, however, and Serbia and Greece defeated Bulgaria in 1913. This was known as the Balkan Wars. Bulgaria allied with the Germans and Austria-Hungary during World War I. Constant war and the losses incurred in World War I led to severe economic hardships for Bulgarians, and dissatisfaction soon led to political upheaval. Bulgarian’s elected governments were overthrown in 1923 and 1934. During World War II, Bulgaria tried to remain neutral but eventually was drawn into an alliance with Axis (i.e., Nazi) forces. From 1943 to 1989 Bulgaria was ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party. Religious expression was suppressed, peasant rebellions were crushed, labor camps were built, and a massive industrialization campaign was launched at the expense of workers and the environment. By 1989 calls for reform and the fall of the Soviet bloc emboldened the opposition to demand political change. In 1990 free elections were held in Bulgaria. Economic reforms were implemented and the shift toward capitalism resulted in massive unemployment, economic stratification, and voter outrage. Many Bulgarians migrated to other countries to find work. Statistics show that the transition to a free market economy did not create economic growth nor improve the quality of life of ordinary citizens.
W Themes In interviews Dasgupta has identified the central theme of Solo as music. One of Ulrich’s passions is music—as his father crushed his musical ambitions at an early age, Ulrich’s disappointment echoes his home country’s repression under fascism and communism. In the “Daydreams” section of the novel, Boris is raised by gypsy musicians who instill in him a burning love for the violin,
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which he later parlays into a wildly successful music career. Whereas Ulrich was never able to fulfill his musical dreams, his doppelganger, Boris, is able to succeed on a large scale. As John Sutherland notes in his review of the novel, “Dasgupta explains that Solo’s theme is music—the ways in which, out of group harmony, single voices can emerge. If there is hope in the world, it lies not in European union but in that shattered violin, and the dream it represented for Ulrich.” Memory and imagination are also key themes of the novel. As Ulrich is trapped by his physical limitations, he sets his mind free to review his life and the people and events that profoundly influenced it. In the second half of the novel, he uses his imagination to completely break free of his own experience and inject himself and his characters into the turbulence of the postcommunist era, where gangsters and hustlers rule. Other recurring themes are the nature of failure and our ability to form connections with others. As Sarah Bancroft argues, “This novel’s sombre message is that we all go ‘solo,’ whether through a life lived ‘too long,’ like Ulrich’s, or through one cut short. But, as Boris’s violin-playing also shows, solos can be moments of exquisite definition, points at which a person comes into his or her own.”
MAJOR CHARACTERS BORIS is one of the three young people envisioned by Ulrich in part two of Solo. Raised by gypsy musicians, Boris later becomes a musical sensation. Critics consider Boris partdoppelganger, part-son to Ulrich. IRAKLI is one of the three young people imagined by Ulrich in part two of Solo. He is a poet who has a hard time adjusting to the postcommunist era. KHATUNA is one of the three young people envisioned by Ulrich in part two of Solo. She is determined to escape the poverty and misery of Sofia by becoming the girlfriend of a mobster. ULRICH is the one-hundred-year-old protagonist of Solo. Now blind, he lives in a crumbling flat in Sofia, Bulgaria, with neighbors who take care of him. As the story flashes black to his early life, we find that his security, ambitions, and dreams were thwarted by his father and the constant political upheaval and governmental policies in Bulgaria throughout the twentieth century. As a result, he learned to retreat into a fantasy life where he could dream without interference. Limited by physical infirmity and extreme old age, he is well served by this tendency.
W Style Solo is divided into two distinct halves. Part One, “Life,” is a recollection of Ulrich’s life in Bulgaria. As reviewer Kapka Kassabova observed about the first section of the novel, “Ulrich’s personality is unremarkable, he is an everyman. The first chapters seem emotionally remote, with stilted dialogue, but the story gathers momentum and begins to flower in unexpected ways.” Sarah Bancroft echoes Kassabova’s assessment of “Life,” contending that by recounting Ulrich’s life, Dasgupta “sets himself the challenge of holding the reader’s attention and sympathy. Much is strangely muted, as if the events and characters sit behind a drab net curtain.” Nigel Krauth regards “Life” to be an allegory of the twentieth century. “Life is the sad story of an individual who starts out with great passions, hopes and prospects, gets involved with great ideas and possibilities, but loses contact with them all. As you read you feel this isn’t only a portrait of Ulrich; it’s a portrait of the 20th century.” The second half of Solo is titled “Daydreams” and portrays the workings of Ulrich’s imagination. He brings in three new characters (Boris, Khatuna, and Irakli) whose connections to Ulrich are ambiguous and complex. In this section, action moves from rural Bulgaria to a gangsterdominated Georgia and finally to New York City. In his review of Solo, Nigel Krauth argues that at first “Daydreams” seems alien and completely disconnected from “Life.” “But then you start getting weird echoes from the first half of the book,” Krauth maintains. “Single words, minor character traits, uncanny incident parallels. You
continue to read because finding the echoes and parallels becomes an addiction. With some of these echoes you can go back and identify them; with others, you pore through previous pages in futile search. It really is an enactment of trying to solve the universal puzzle of why we are where we are and what it all means.” Kala Krishnan Ramesh finds the second half more fluid and vivid. “With Solo, Rana Dasgupta again demonstrates an unusual flair for the short story; for, though Solo is a novel, it is really the selfcontained, story-like chapters of the second half of the book that are remarkable. In the latter part, the writing frees itself from an uneasy heavy-handedness that slows down and mars the book’s first part.”
W Critical Reception Solo is considered one of the best British novels published in 2009. It received both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize as well as the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Critics were intrigued by Dasgupta’s experimental form—dividing the novel into two distinct halves with wildly varied styles and tone. Most favored the second half, “Daydreams,” over the first section, finding the first section dull, stilted, and unappealing. In his Sunday Times review, however, Trevor Lewis argued that “Daydreams” is “an ambitious and audacious authorial shunt worthy of David Mitchell, but it also feels artfully affected and clumsily manufactured compared with the novel’s first
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rana Dasgupta was born on November 5, 1971, in Canterbury, England. He grew up in Cambridge and went to school at Balliol College, Oxford. He then went on to study at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence, France, and at the University of Wisconsin. After graduation, he began to work in public relations, taking jobs in London and New York City. His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled, was published in 2005 to critical acclaim and was short-listed for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Solo, Dasgupta’s second novel, was published in 2009. It was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize that same year. He has contributed essays, reviews, and fiction to many periodicals, including Granta, Missouri Review, New Statesman, and The National. He lives in Delhi, India.
honed clearer and purer, the voice of someone who can spin such tales that we are, at least for the moment, transported out of ourselves into another world of enchanting characters, whose lives are wild flashes on the page: Khatuna, Irakli, Boris, Ulrich and so many more,” Ramesh states. Another reviewer, Kapka Kassabova, deems Solo an insightful and touching story of the life of an ordinary man: his thwarted ambition, his relationships, his failures, his regrets, and his daydreams and memories at the end of his life. “Solo is mannered in its strangeness, but utterly unforgettable in its humanity,” Kassabova contends. “It hums the inner and outer melodies of a life lived solo, until it becomes a discordant symphony of the human condition. This lifts it from a freak show to the kind of “philharmonic” novel that reminds us why we will always need to tell the extraordinary stories of people’s ordinary lives.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
part. Nevertheless, for as long as the spell remains unbroken, it is worth every second.” Reviewer Kala Krishnan Ramesh traces Dasgupta’s narrative maturation from his first novel, Tokyo Cancelled, to Solo. “This is the voice we heard in Tokyo Cancelled, but
Bancroft, Sarah. Review of Solo, by Rana Dasgupta. Observer (28 Mar. 2010). Web. 22 July 2010. Kassabova, Kapka. “Strange Music of the Human Sphere.” Guardian (28 Mar. 2009). www.guardian .co.uk. Web. 22 July 2010.
A police officer directs traffic in the city of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria and the setting of author Rana Dasgupta’s Solo. Nickolay Stanev/ Shutterstock.com
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and the reaction to Dasgupta’s experimental style in the novel. “100 Years of Love, Loss.” Financial Express 1 Mar. 2009. General OneFile. Web. 22 July 2010. Favorable review of Solo. Pisharoty, Sangeeta Barooah. “Solo and Striking.” Hindu (24 Mar. 2010). Web. 22 July 2010. Elucidates the origins of Solo and Dasgupta’s growing fame as a novelist. Gale Resources
“Rana Dasgupta.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 July 2010. Print. Open Web Sources
A comprehensive history of Bulgaria can be found on the Bulgarian Embassy website, which also provides information on current political and policy issues. Rana Dasgupta’s personal website features his recent essays, stories, poems, meditations, and interviews, as well as many of his photographs. It also offers the reader a chance to read his commentary and notes on a range of subjects—from his own work to recent events and popular culture. The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt website offers biographical information on Dasgupta as well as a profile of Solo. Photograph of Rana Dasgupta, author of Solo. JOHN MACDOUGALL/ AFP/Getty Images
Krauth, Nigel. “Addictive Puzzle of Life’s Meaning.” Australian 31 Jan. 2009. www.theaustralian.com. Web. 22 July 2010. Lewis, Trevor. Review of Solo, by Rana Dasgupta. Sunday Times [London] 10 May 2009. http:// entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. Web. 22 July 2010. Ramesh, Kala Krishnan. “A Flair for the Unusual.” Hindu 4 Oct. 2009. General OneFile. Web. 22 July 2010. Sutherland, John. Financial Times 28 Mar. 2009: 16. General OneFile. Web. 22 July 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Basu, Anjana. “Journeys of the Soul.” Statesman [India] 5 July 2009. General OneFile. Web. 22 July 2010. Calls Solo “a journey of the soul, an exploration of grief.” Lea, Richard. “Rana Dasgupta: Taking the Novel Seriously.” Guardian (30 Oct. 2009). Web. 21 July 2010. Discusses the inspiration for Solo
For Further Reading
Crampton, R. J. A Concise History of Bulgaria. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print. Traces Bulgaria’s history from ancient times to 2004. Dasgupta, Rana. Tokyo Cancelled. New York: Black Cat, 2005. Print. Dasgupta’s first novel has been called a modern-day Canterbury Tales. The book chronicles the stories of thirteen passengers stuck overnight in an airport. Drakulic, Slavenka. How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed. London: Hutchinson, 1992. Print. A collection of essays that reflect on what life was like in communist Croatia. Kaplan, Robert D. Balkan Ghosts: A Journal through History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Print. A political travelogue that examines the conflicts and ethnic clashes that have informed Balkan history. Kassabova, Kapka. Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Print. A bittersweet memoir of growing up in Bulgaria during the communist era written by the well-regarded novelist, poet, and travel writer.
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Margaret Haerens
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Someone to Run With By David Grossman
W Introduction Someone to Run With (2004) is a novel by the Israeli writer David Grossman. Originally published in Hebrew as Mishehu la-Ruts Ito (2000), the book was translated into English by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz. In the opening chapter, sixteen-year-old Assaf is sent on a quest by his boss at Jerusalem’s City Hall to find the owner of a stray dog. The dog soon leads Assaf to a church, where Assaf learns the identities of the dog, Dinka, and her owner, Tamar, from the building’s sole inhabitant, a nun named Theodora. Tamar has disappeared, and Theodora fears she is in trouble. Meanwhile, Tamar, a talented young singer, has joined a group of street performers in an effort to help her heroinaddicted brother, Shai, whose dealer is the group’s “manager,” Pesach Bet Ha Levi. Tamar’s plan to hide Shai from Pesach in a lonely cave succeeds, but Dinka gets lost during their escape. Accompanied by Dinka, Assaf diligently pursues Tamar, whom he finds at last in the cave. Tamar and Assaf grow close as they help Shai through his heroin withdrawal. At the end of the novel, Shai returns to his parents, and Assaf and Tamar are finally alone together. Someone to Run With won the 2001 Sapir Prize.
W Literary and Historical Context
Much of Grossman’s writing, both fiction and nonfiction, directly involves the ongoing political strife in Israel and the Middle East. Someone to Run With is one of his least overtly political works. Wars, suicide bombings, and the everpresent threat of violence nevertheless shape the story in significant ways. As Ron Charles observes in the Christian Science Monitor, “the complexity of Israeli society reverberates under every page.” It is a society on the alert for people
carrying explosives onto buses or into markets. As Tamar delivers supplies to the cave where she plans to help Shai through his heroin withdrawal, she hopes that her burden will not provoke the “disturbing thought” of “why it was that a girl going for a little afternoon outing in a valley so close to the city was carrying such a heavy backpack.” Even the metaphors Grossman uses serve as subtle reminders that the story takes place in a country that has been beset by violence since its founding in 1948 and where military service is compulsory. When he finds himself in socially awkward situations, Assaf “[feels] like someone who had to turn a tank around inside a room.” As she prepares to extricate Shai from life on the streets, Tamar wonders whether “a person . . . [who] decided to enclose himself in armor, seal up and protect his soul . . . in order to be able to execute a difficult mission” will be able, when the mission is over, “to be himself, to go back to exactly the same person he was beforehand?” Such images would be unexpected in a novel about adolescents in Canada, for instance, but in a novel about growing up in Israel, they ring true.
W Themes At the core of Grossman’s novel is Assaf’s search for Tamar. Assaf’s real quest involves more than this search, however. As the story progresses, his true objective becomes a meaningful connection with Tamar. A sense of connectedness is clearly missing from his relationships with such current friends as Roi, whom he has known since kindergarten: “Assaf looked at the halo in his eyes, the thin golden halo of mockery that surrounded his pupils, and thought, sadly, that over the years their friendship had become something else.” Later, when he reads Tamar’s diary, where she records her blackest feelings of self-doubt, he is amazed to recognize a kindred spirit: “Assaf was all of a sudden . . . hovering in the space of the universe, like a lonely human snowflake, desperate for assurance that somewhere in that empty space hovered another like it, named Tamar.” For her
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part, Tamar is desperately trying to salvage a bond with a brother she envies, does not understand, and even hates. Both Assaf and Tamar see that selfishness prevails in the world around them and question the value of attempting to overcome their own egoism. Assaf’s friends Roi and Dafi are preoccupied with appearing superior to everyone around them, and Tamar is forced to listen to her brother’s hectoring arguments that “ultimately, every person acts only according to his absolute selfishness.” By pushing past their own fears and the cynicism of others, however, Assaf and Tamar are finally able to connect with each other through compassion and love.
W Style Written in the third person, Someone to Run With has a narrative structure that evokes the uncertainty characteristic of both a quest and adolescence itself. In the opening sentence, the reader witnesses a generic event: “A dog runs through the streets, a boy runs after it.” Not until the third paragraph is the boy identified as Assaf. His thoughts at that moment, which might be expected to provide some clue to explain his chasing the dog, have nothing to do with the dog. Indeed, they are so intimately linked to prior, undisclosed events that they only heighten the reader’s bafflement. Over the next several pages, however, Assaf’s connection with the dog is clarified. A flashback to his daydreaming before meeting it reveals the sources of his anxious thoughts about his social life and his family. Thus, a pattern is established in the narrative, one that will persist until Assaf’s and Tamar’s paths finally cross. The reader, like Assaf, is thrust into a confusing new world, where knowledge accrues painfully slowly and direct answers are few. The only way forward is to step bravely into the unknown. As some critics have noted, the novel contains elements of a fairy tale. Assaf, charged with returning the dog to its owner, soon finds himself on a mission to help a young woman in danger. Throughout his quest, the wise spirits of Theodora, Rhino, and Tamar’s friend Leah intervene to provide clues, advice, succor, and food. Rhino and the police show up just in time to save Tamar, Shai, and Assaf from being brutalized by a vengeful Pesach. Finally, the closing paragraph describes Assaf and Tamar in a modern “happily ever after” scene: “They walked along the side of the road, then down the valley, helping each other at the rough places, finding excuses to touch, to hold each other. They hardly spoke. Tamar noticed that she had never met a person she felt so comfortable being silent with.”
W Critical Reception Someone to Run With has enjoyed generally favorable reviews, though some critics have pointed out that
MAJOR CHARACTERS ASSAF is charged with finding the owner of a lost dog by his boss at Jerusalem’s City Hall. He endures physical hardships as he searches for Tamar, whose identity and whereabouts he slowly pieces together. When he finally finds Tamar, the two of them work together to help her brother overcome his heroin addiction, and they fall in love in the process. RHINO is the ex-boyfriend of Assaf’s sister Reli. Assaf likes and admires Rhino, who cannot understand why Reli has left him for an American. In return, Rhino watches over Assaf and calls the police when Assaf disappears in the course of his search for Tamar. THEODORA is a Greek Orthodox nun who has not set foot outside the pilgrims’ shelter where she lives for fifty years. She is a friend of Tamar, and Dinka, the lost dog, leads Assaf straight to Theodora, who alerts Assaf to the possibility that Tamar is in danger. PESACH BET HA LEVI is the “manager” of the group of street performers that Tamar infiltrates in order to save her brother. Pesach uses drug addiction and the threat of physical violence to bind his performers to him. He and his thugs hunt down Shai and Tamar after their escape, but Rhino and the police arrive just in time. SHAI COHEN is Tamar’s brother, a talented guitarist and a heroin addict bound to the street performers’ “manager,” Pesach. After Tamar gets him safely away from Pesach, Shai endures the horrors of heroin withdrawal and is reunited with his family. TAMAR COHEN is a talented singer who joins a group of street performers in order to execute her desperate plan to rescue her brother, Shai, from heroin addiction and a life on the streets. She succeeds in escaping with Shai but loses Dinka, her dog, who eventually helps Assaf find Tamar.
coincidences and clichés mar the story’s realism. A commentator for Kirkus Reviews, for example, writes, “This is a consistently absorbing tale, even when much of it strains credibility.” Observing that Assaf’s search for Tamar has the features of a “knightly quest,” a Publishers Weekly reviewer notes that the “plot is both pleasingly familiar and made new through immersion in the details of Israeli life.” Claire Messud, however, suggests in the New York Times Book Review that Grossman’s “attempt to straddle realism and romantic archetype” is undermined by “elements of adolescent fantasy” in the story. Calling it “a curious novel, an uneasy hybrid,” she contends that Someone to Run With “engages us with the means and effects of its storytelling more intently than with its depiction of any actual world.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Grossman was born on January 25, 1954, in Jerusalem, Israel. As a child he participated in a radio quiz show, which led to regular work as a radio actor and interviewer. After completing his military service in the early 1970s, Grossman attended Hebrew University, where he earned a BA in theater and philosophy. He continued working in radio until 1988. In 1983 he published his first novel, Khiyukh hagedi (The Smile of the Lamb, 1990), which examines the conflicted personal lives of four individuals over the course of two days during the Six-Day War (1967). Subsequent works also explored individuals’ attempts to sort out personal difficulties against the backdrop of political tension and violence in Israel. In addition to his novels, Grossman has published two works of nonfiction about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Yellow Wind (1988) and Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel (1993). He has also written numerous children’s books.
The melodramatic aspects of its plot and the angst of its teenage protagonists have prompted some reviewers to consider Someone to Run With more appropriate for a
younger audience. In her review for Booklist, for example, Hazel Rochman describes the novel as “prime YA fiction about teen outsiders with dark secrets on an urban journey.” Others, however, have argued that the book has much to offer older readers as well. Despite its “calculated contrivances of plot and character,” writes Robert Alter in the New Republic, “the novel . . . conveys certain unblinking perceptions of things askew in the order of existence, of fears that even a happy ending will not exorcise.” And Ron Charles asserts that “the searching questions that Tamar and Assaf ask themselves about their purpose in life and their responsibilities to others aren’t childish or naive. Adults need to keep asking those questions, and young people need to be reassured that they’re not asking them alone.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Alter, Robert. “Teen Anguish.” Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. New Republic 26 Jan. 2004. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Charles, Ron. “A Young Man’s Dogged Devotion.” Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Christian Science Monitor 13 Jan. 2004: 15. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals). Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
The skyline of Jerusalem, Israel, which is the setting of Someone to Run With. ª Ricki Rosen/CORBIS SABA
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Guardian News and Media Ltd 20 Apr. 2003. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. A positive review that highlights the author’s insights into the challenges of adolescence. Farah, Christopher. Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Salon.com. Salon Media Group, Inc. 5 Feb. 2004. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Argues that Grossman is able to move beyond stereotypes and clichés to make his characters believable and their story engrossing. Henderson, David W. Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Library Journal Jan. 2004: 156. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Commends the novel as a serious work appropriate for young adult readers. Perrick, Penny. “Jerusalem’s Lost Children.” Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Sunday Times [London] 13 Apr. 2003: 46. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Praises the novel for its “braininess” and excitement. Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. New Yorker. Condé Nast Digital 16 Feb. 2004. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. A brief review that savors the suspense Grossman builds into Assaf’s search for Tamar, as well as the author’s sympathy for his characters. Gale Resources
Portrait of David Grossman, author of Someone to Run With. ª Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis
Grossman, David. Someone to Run With. Trans. Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print. Messud, Claire. “Street News.” Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. New York Times Book Review 8 Feb. 2004: 30. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Rochman, Hazel. Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Booklist 1 Dec. 2003: 645. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Kirkus Reviews 15 Oct. 2003: 1241. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
Abramovich, Dvir. “David Grossman.” Holocaust Novelists. Ed. Efraim Sicher. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 299. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. “David Grossman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. “David Grossman.” Contemporary Literary CriticismSelect. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. Open Web Sources
On the Web site Charlie Rose, the online home of interviewer Charlie Rose’s PBS show, Salman Rushdie hosts a discussion with fellow authors David Grossman and Gioconda Belli on the writing process and the use of language. http://www.charlierose.com/ view/interview/436
Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Publishers Weekly 6 Oct. 2003: 56. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010.
The University of California Television Web site features an hour-long video of Grossman reading from and discussing Writing in the Dark (2008), a collection of essays on literature and politics. http://www.uctv.tv/ search-details.aspx?showID=15421
Additional Resources
For Further Reading
Criticism and Reviews
Grossman, David. Interview. “David Grossman: The Art of Fiction No. 194.” Paris Review Fall 2007. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. In this lengthy interview, Grossman
Adams, Tim. “Follow That Dog.” Rev. of Someone to Run With, by David Grossman. Guardian [London]. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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talks about his family’s background, his youth and education, his early work in radio, his books and journalism, and his life as a writer. ———. To the End of the Land: A Novel. Trans. Jessica Cohen. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print. This novel examines the lives of an Israeli woman and the three men closest to her within the context of almost constant armed conflict. ———. The Yellow Wind. Trans. Haim Watzman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. Print. Grossman’s groundbreaking account of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is considered one of his finest works and offers insight into the political and moral considerations that inform his fiction. ———. The Zig Zag Kid. Trans. Betsy Rosenberg. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. Print. Grossman’s coming-of-age novel is about kids who do not quite fit the roles society expects them to fill.
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Handelzalts, Michael. “David Grossman: His Books Reflect a Highly Moralistic View of Israeli Society.” Publishers Weekly 14 Dec. 1990: 50+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. In this interview, Grossman discusses his books, his writing process, and his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Adaptations
Someone to Run With. Dir. Oded Davidoff. Perf. Bar Belfer, Yonatan Bar-Or, and Yuval Mendelson. B&K Film Productions/JCS Productions, 2006. Film. This adaptation of Grossman’s novel received a special grand jury mention at the World Cinema Competition during the 2007 Miami International Film Festival. Janet Moredock
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Song of Time By Ian R. MacLeod
W Introduction Song of Time (2008), by Ian R. MacLeod, is a science fiction novel set in the late twenty-first century that chronicles the life of Roushana Maitland, a world-renowned concert violinist. Roushana is around one hundred years old and is preparing for the end of her life. Like many other wealthy persons of the day, Roushana is implanted with a device that will record her memories and personality in a digital matrix, in essence allowing her to exist beyond physical death in a “virtual” afterlife. During a walk along the beach near her home in Cornwall, England, she discovers a young man who has nearly drowned in the surf. She rescues the young man, who has no memory of his own identity, and over the course of the novel, she recounts the memories of her life to him. The book explores the concepts of identity, truth, memory, and death. The semiapocalyptic story takes place against a backdrop of terrorism and nuclear war. MacLeod’s fifth novel, Song of Time received the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2009).
W Literary and Historical Context
In Song of Time Ian R. MacLeod employs a near-future setting—the late twenty-first century—and builds upon the fears and concerns of early twenty-first-century readers, such as nuclear war, terrorism, and climate change. The novel anticipates possible technological advancements in such fields as warfare, bioterrorism, and medicine. In the novel’s present India and Pakistan have been engaged in nuclear war, a plausible outcome given the tenuous and volatile nature of current international relations. Terrorism, another issue on the minds of MacLeod’s readers, also figures prominently in the novel. The protagonist’s brother is killed by a manufactured plague designed to promote intolerance
to food among Caucasians. MacLeod also envisions the possible catastrophic effects of global warming, including extreme weather phenomena, such as severe storms and flooding. Imagining a future that allows individuals to cheat death by passing into a sort of digital matrix (a futuristic version of the Internet, perhaps), MacLeod plays on readers’ willingness to believe that almost anything is technologically possible given enough time for research and development. The novel also draws on the past in its descriptions of classical music. The protagonist is a classical violinist, and the book refers to the works of such musical greats as Igor Stravinsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Frédéric Chopin. In addition, MacLeod incorporates elements from his own life, using his birthplace (near Birmingham, England) as the setting of the protagonist’s childhood.
W Themes Song of Time offers an in-depth exploration of the nature of memory and of the quest for personal identity. When Roushana decides to have a device implanted to record her memories and experiences, she is directed to choose those memories that make up the core of her personality. Roushana observes, “But you can’t bring back everything, can you? And how can I ever be sure that the way I think things happened was how they really did?” Her comments reflect the subjective nature of memory and of individuals’ tendency to color recollections to block out pain or enhance happiness. Juxtaposed with Roushana’s detailed descriptions of her life is the young man Adam’s lack of memory. When Roushana finds Adam battered and nearly drowned on the beach, he has no recollection of who he is. In fact, Roushana gives him the name Adam to help him begin to reestablish a sense of identity. The novel, then, not only catalogs Roushana’s past but also details her quest to define her core personality as well as to discover who Adam truly is.
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Song of Time
MAJOR CHARACTERS ADAM is an amnesiac who nearly drowns in the surf near Roushana Maitland’s home in Cornwall, England. Roushana discovers him and takes him in, giving him the name Adam because he does not know who he is. CHRISTOS is an itinerant salesman in Paris who peddles bottled water as well as fundamentalist end-times theology. LEO is Roushana’s brother and a gifted musician. The hero of Roushana’s childhood, he inspires his sister to pursue a career as a violinist. Leo dies in his teens as a result of an artificial plague developed by terrorists. ROUSHANA MAITLAND, the protagonist of the novel, is a world-class concert violinist. An aged woman near death, she narrates the story, reflecting on the memories and experiences of her life as she recounts them to Adam. CLAUDE VAUDIN is a flamboyant and renowned conductor who becomes Roushana’s husband and the love of her life. Roushana never stops mourning him after his death.
Closely related to the notions of memory and personal identity is a new view of death and the afterlife. Roushana lives in a time in which technological advancements have made death less absolute. The device that allows her to record her memories is intended to preserve her personality and to permit her to enter into a virtual afterlife. The author asks readers to consider the implications of being able to avoid death, of creating a story that conceivably has no end.
W Style Although Song of Time is generally categorized as science fiction, the novel does not fit neatly into the genre, and it is often more broadly described as speculative fiction, a term that reflects the book’s departure from traditional science fiction novels. Indeed, reviewers have observed that removing the science fiction elements from the novel would not significantly alter the basic story. While the futuristic setting lingers in the background, the first-person narrative focuses on universal and timeless struggles related to family, love, loss, pursuit of identity, and anticipation of death. In Torque Control (the blog of the editorial staff of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association), Niall Harrison argues that “this teasing gives MacLeod’s future history a sense of depth and solidity.” To develop his story, MacLeod uses flashbacks that span a century, revealing bit by bit the experiences that have shaped the protagonist’s life. He uses a layering effect, blending memories of the distant past with those of later events, interspersed with scenes from the present. In her
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Song of Time, set in the late twenty-first century, focuses on revered violinist Roushana Maitland as she prepares to enter the afterlife. Maitland discovers a nearly drowned amnesiac in the surf near her home. Jaroslaw Grudzinski/Shutterstock.com
review of Song of Time posted on the author’s Web site, Helena Bowles observes that “MacLeod’s evocation of the future is done with an amazingly skilful and light touch.” According to Bowles, MacLeod avoids burdening the reader with detailed technical descriptions, offering only “hints and sketches of future technology and society.” Writing in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, S. W. Theaker hails MacLeod’s descriptions of the protagonist’s memories as “careful, detailed and highly emotional.” His work is also often appreciated for its striking imagery and insightful comparisons. While some critics have suggested that MacLeod’s writing is at times uneven, most admire the reflective, sometimes quiet nature of his prose. Paul Billinger, chair of the judges for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is quoted on the Clarke Award Web site as calling the novel “rich and subtle.”
W Critical Reception In addition to the Clarke Award, Song of Time garnered a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Song of Time
Fiction Novel (2009). Nevertheless, critics’ reception of Song of Time has been mixed, with some reviewers appreciating the personal nature of the work and the human qualities of the protagonist and others questioning the novel’s plausibility or structure. S. W. Theaker, in a positive review in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, notes that the novel is a “welcome departure” from traditional science fiction that features stories about “people taking on a rotten society and changing it.” Song of Time, Theaker argues, “is more about the way people get on with life despite the way things change.” In a review posted on the author’s Web site, Helena Bowles observes that the protagonist’s “memories are ripe with the sheer physicality of being human. . . . Everything has a vivid sensory existence.” Both Theaker and Bowles praise the author’s ability to appeal to the reader on a personal level, with Theaker pointing out that MacLeod poses questions without “forc[ing] the reader into agreeing with his answers.” Some critics, on the other hand, fault Song of Time for what they perceive as flaws in the narrative. For example, in his review for Strange Horizons, Adam Roberts suggests that the future Paris of the novel is “a notional 21st-century but actually 1920s Paris with a few hightech props” and that the Parisian scenes in particular “make the suspension of disbelief harder than it otherwise might be.” Niall Harrison, writing on the blog Torque Control, views the flashbacks as the most “compelling” aspect of the book but notes that, while the “presenttense episodes that punctuate these reminiscences keep the novel moving,” they “seem as though they will not move beyond mere functionality.” The treatment of music in the novel has also stimulated interest among critics. Most acknowledge that writing about music is an especially difficult challenge, but reviewers disagree as to the extent of the author’s success in doing so. Harrison notes that while in many ways the novel is “inspirational . . . in its appreciation of ‘high’ culture,” he argues that MacLeod “falters” in “describing music directly.” Roberts agrees, arguing that the author’s descriptions of great works give the reader no sense of how a “masterpiece is or sounds.” Theaker, on the other hand, acknowledging that “writing about music is notoriously difficult,” says that “MacLeod does a marvelous job of it here.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Bowles, Helena. “Song of Time: An Appreciation by Helena Bowles.” Ian R. MacLeod’s official Web site. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Harrison, Niall. “Two Reviews.” Rev. of The Quiet War, by Paul McAuley, and Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod. Torque Control 17 Oct. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. “Ian R. MacLeod Wins ACCA 2009.” Arthur C. Clarke Award Web site. 29 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Aug. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ian R. MacLeod was born on August 6, 1956, in Solihull, near Birmingham, in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom. In Song of Time MacLeod uses Birmingham as the setting for the protagonist’s childhood. During his teens the author became interested in science fiction, reading avidly and sampling a wide variety of science fiction literature. His first attempt at novel writing came when he was fifteen. After studying law, MacLeod became a civil servant. While he was working in government service, he began selling his short stories to science fiction magazines. His first novel, The Great Wheel, was published in 1997 and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. In 1990 MacLeod traded his civil service job for a career as a writer and a stay-at-home father. He has published more than thirty short stories and five novels. Both his short stories and his novels have garnered prestigious awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, two Campbell Awards, and several Sturgeon Awards. MacLeod also teaches English and creative writing.
MacLeod, Ian R. Song of Time. Hornsea: PS Publishing, 2008. Print. Roberts, Adam. Rev. of Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod. Strange Horizons 1 Dec. 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Theaker, S. W. Rev. of Song of Time, by Ian R. Macleod. Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction 26 (Dec. 2008): 77-78. Print. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Flood, Allison. “Arthur C. Clarke Award Goes to Ian R MacLeod’s Song of Time.” Guardian [London] 30 Apr. 2009. Print. Discusses Song of Time in relation to other science fiction novels published about the same time. Haslam, Alan. Rev. of Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod. Magill Book Reviews. Magill on Literature Plus. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Provides an overview of the novel. Miller, Faren. Rev. of Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod. Locus Aug. 2008. Print. Explores the novel’s melodramatic qualities and rich tone. Olson, Ray. Rev. of Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod. Booklist 1 July 2008: 50. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. Praises the author’s ability to tell a personal story in the context of broader historical events. Gale Resources
“Ian R. MacLeod.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Aug. 2010.
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Ian R. MacLeod’s official Web site provides a brief biography, excerpts from the author’s works, interviews, and reviews. http://www.ianrmacleod.com/ SF Site features an in-depth 2004 interview titled “Twenty Questions with Ian R. MacLeod,” in which the author discusses his influences and his philosophy about writing science fiction. http://www.sfsite. com/08a/im181.htm For Further Reading
Bear, Greg. Blood Music. New York: Arbor House, 1985. Print. A near-future novel in which a biotechnologist creates simple biological computers.
Jones, Diana Wynne. Fire and Hemlock. New York: Greenwillow, 1984. Print. A young adult novel featuring a female protagonist who struggles to untangle memories from her childhood. MacLeod, Ian R. The Great Wheel. New York: Harcourt, 1997. Print. MacLeod’s debut novel, set in a bleak future in which human beings are served by sophisticated machines. McAuley, Paul. The Quiet War. London: Gollancz, 2008. Print. A novel in which characters try to repair the damaged ecosystem of twenty-third-century Earth. Harrabeth Haidusek
Brooke, Keith. The Accord. Nottingham: Solaris, 2009. Print. A novel concerning a virtual reality that is populated by digital recordings of people’s souls.
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The Spare Room By Helen Garner
W Introduction In 2008 Helen Garner published The Spare Room, her fourth novel, after a sixteen-year hiatus from fiction writing. This is a story of a Melbourne woman in her sixties who agrees to let a friend from Sydney stay in her spare room for three weeks while her friend receives cancer treatments. What ensues is a study of the role of a caregiver for a woman who is very ill and in denial of the inevitable, a study of the physical and emotional hardships endured by caregivers, especially when the invalid is delusional. Through this novel, readers gain insight into female friendships, the challenges of facing death both for the dying person and those supporting that person, and the questionable efficacy of some alternative medicine practices. Garner developed the story from her own experience in nursing her friend Jenya Osborne during her final illness. The novel won the Victorian Premier’s Award, the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the Barbara Jefferis Award, and the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Fiction Book.
W Literary and Historical Context
The worst side of alternative medicine is presented in The Spare Room. While there are an alarming number of quack cures available, the term alternative medicine covers a number of legitimate practices. Anything outside mainstream, Western medicine is considered alternative, even such areas as chiropractic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, herbalism, and acupuncture. Some alternatives are grouped under the classification of “complementary” medicine, which refers to interventions used in conjunction with conventional treatments such as aroma or massage therapy. Together, the standard term is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
The dividing line between conventional and alternative or complementary medicines is whether or not there is verifiable, scientific evidence of the safety and effectiveness of a treatment. Consequently, sometimes a method is first considered alternative, but once scientific investigation proves its value and establishes a record of success, the method becomes mainstream. Some methods, however, such as vitamin C therapy, have been disproved by science. Alternative medicine is more prevalent in developed countries where as much as half the population feels confident enough in their own educated judgment to get a diagnosis from traditional medicine and then seek an alternative if it seems a more holistic or natural approach. Those who cannot afford standard care and drugs may also turn to less costly alternatives. Up to one-third of cancer patients seek some form of CAM. A growing number of physicians practice “integrative” medicine, which combines orthodox methods with attention to prevention and lifestyle changes. Over one-fourth of hospitals in the United States offer CAM, and many medical colleges offer courses in CAM. Unfortunately, the nature and broad range of alternative medicines makes government regulation difficult, leaving room for the unscrupulous to prey upon the gullible with phony claims.
W Themes The themes of The Spare Room pertain to friendship and facing death, and the two are intertwined because facing death is a challenge both for the one dying and for supportive family and friends surrounding the dying person. No one lives in isolation, and each person’s death affects others, perhaps profoundly. Among the opening pages of the book is a quotation from Elizabeth Jolley that sets up the themes: “It is a privilege to prepare the place where someone else will sleep.” This privilege turns into an unexpected,
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The Spare Room
MAJOR CHARACTERS HELEN, the caregiver in the story, is a practical, stable person in her sixties. She is willing to perform the manual tasks of nursing her friend Nicola but is not prepared for the emotional trauma of having a dying person in her house. IRIS is Nicola’s niece and the person who cares for Nicola before and after her visit to Helen. She also recognizes Nicola’s denial and that her treatments are quackery. NICOLA is dying but will not accept that fact. Wealthy, charming, generous, and imperious, she is a free spirit who believes in alternative medicines and has no clue what she asks of others.
maddening burden for Helen because of Nicola’s refusal to face her terminal status and her failure to realize the emotional and physical cost to Helen of her visit. The limits of friendship and mercy are tested when compassion is met with bossy demands and unrealistic expectations. The privilege for Helen also extends apparently to
having been chosen as the one to tell Nicola that she is going to die. It is an honored role, but a huge responsibility—a lot to ask of a friend. The themes are also represented by the title of the novel. A spare room is one that is kept for purposes of hospitality, but guests are not supposed to overstay their welcome or consume the lives of their hosts. A spare room is also akin to a compartment in the mind, a mental space, to which a person can retreat to preserve selfhood, but pain is infectious and crosses all lines Helen might have drawn to protect herself from the fright of facing death. The Spare Room is about confronting the truth for both Helen and Nicola, the social condition of death and the trauma for the caregiver who copes with a sick person.
W Style Garner is noted for her reserved language and her realism. Her tone is typically unsentimental, but in The Spare Room her tone includes anger and guilt since her character, Helen, expresses Garner’s own feelings about caring for a dying friend. Garner is often criticized for writing novels that are so autobiographical as to be practically nonfiction. This correlation results from
An elderly woman allows a friend to stay in her spare bedroom for a few weeks while she undergoes cancer treatments in The Spare Room. ª Tom Sibley/Corbis
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The Spare Room
Garner’s admitted practice of using her fiction to work out emotional problems and make sense of her real-life experiences. The Spare Room is Garner’s way of sharing with her readers the trauma, the coping mechanisms, the acceptance, and the ties of friendship that she experienced when she nursed a friend with a terminal illness. Realism was, therefore, a given. The minimalist prose gives the impression of a light touch, but it is coupled with unflinching honesty. It is also highlighted by humor, the simple joys of domestic life (such as the visits from Helen’s granddaughter), and, despite the absence of much visual detail, acutely accurate depictions of feelings. Garner creates psychological portraits of her characters that make them believable and intriguing. Foreshadowing is an important stylistic technique in this novel. For example, Helen tries to put up a mirror in the guest room, but it falls and shatters. This event foreshadows her inability to get Nicola to look at reality. In addition, the reader learns that Helen had previously saved Nicola from some frauds offering a cure through alternative medicine, which foreshadows the phony treatments that Nicola endures and Helen later questions.
W Critical Reception Many critics agree that Garner’s writing style, if nothing else, makes the book a worthwhile read. As Andrew Lawless stated, in a review for Three Monkeys Online, the novel’s interesting subject is enhanced by “the rhythm of the writing, which manages to push and pull the reader through the very troubled waters in which it sails, comforting and scolding in equal measure.” This rhythm, Lawless added, matches the journey of confrontations and accommodations that Helen and Nicola make on their way to an understanding. Further, as stated in Reading Matters: “The carefully measured prose, stripped of unnecessary clutter, serves to remove the claustrophobia of such a dark storyline, imbuing it with a lighthearted touch.” Although Garner is often criticized for writing memoirs but calling them fiction, a review by Michael Arditti, in the Daily Mail, interpreted her technique as writing that “exudes the raw authenticity of lived experience” and concluded that “It’s readiness to confront painful realities, both emotional and physical, make this a wise and affecting book.” Penny Perrick, in a review published by the Sunday Times, also noted how real-life experience is successfully conveyed in The Spare Room: “Its embattled characters are so real that by the last page you feel not just that you have read a magnificent novel but that you have experienced life itself.” Common adjectives used to describe Garner’s language in The Spare Room are witty, simple, terse, and painfully honest—a combination, according to Kirkus Reviews, that results in a “wise, oddly uplifting novel . . . an understated triumph.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born November 7, 1942, in Geelong, Australia, Helen Garner earned a BA from the University of Melbourne then taught high school from 1966 to 1972 when, in a widely publicized case, she was fired for teaching an impromptu sex-education class. She married Bill Garner in 1968 but divorced him in 1971 and was married thereafter to Jean-Jacques Portail and Murray Bail but, as of 2010, was no longer married. Her daughter Alice, a writer, actor, and musician, was born in 1969. Garner has written novels (Monkey Grip, 1977; The Children’s Bach, 1984; and Cosmo Cosmolino, 1992), screenplays, short stories (three published collections), and nonfiction (The First Stone, 1995; The Feel of Steel, 2001; and Joe Cinque’s Consolation, 2004). As of 2010, Garner worked as a journalist and lived in Melbourne, Australia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Arditti, Michael. “New Fiction.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Daily Mail, 11 July 2008: 65. Print. Garner, Helen. The Spare Room. New York: Holt, 2008. Print. “Garner, Helen: The Spare Room.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2008. Print. Lawless, Andrew. “The Spare Room—Helen Garner.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. threemonkeysonline.com. Three Monkeys Online, n.d. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Perrick, Penny. “The Spare Room by Helen Garner.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. timesonline.co.uk. Sunday Times 6 July 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. “The Spare Room by Helen Garner.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. readingmatters.net. Reading Matters July 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Davies, Stevie. “The Spare Room, by Helen Garner.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. independent.co.uk. Independent 18 July 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. A review that focuses on the conflict between Helen and Nicola, the tender moments, and lessons learned. Fox, Bette-Lee. “Garner, Helen. The Spare Room.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Library Journal 133.19 (2008): 60. Print. A brief review looking at what is important in life.
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Laing, Olivia. “A Passionate End to a Bohemian Rhapsody.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. guardian.co.uk. Observer 6 July 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2010. Discusses Helen being called to duties beyond the straightforward, Nicola’s terror of dying, and Garner’s writing style.
For Further Reading
Manguel, Alberto. “No Denying It.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Spectator 307.9386 (2008): 35. Print. Explores Nicola’s struggle against death and how it involves Helen.
Barnes, Julian. Nothing to Be Frightened Of. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print. A witty meditation on how this novelist’s parents and various philosophers and writers faced death.
Schillinger, Liesl. “A Visit from Death.” Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. New York Times Book Review 15 Feb. 2008: 12(L). Print. Reviews the novel in terms of the questions it raises about the limits of mercy.
Cline, Sally. Lifting the Taboo: Women, Death, and Dying. New York: New York UP, 1997. Print. Examines how women react differently to death than men, women’s caregiver roles, and status as widows, among a variety of cultures.
Rev. of The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Publishers Weekly 255.45 (2008): 30. Print. Briefly summarizes the story and concludes that the narrative becomes tiresome with symptoms, bickering, and platitudes.
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Vintage, 2007. Print. The author’s memoir of dealing with grief and the end of a forty-year marriage in a year when her husband died and her child was seriously ill.
Open Web Sources
Tate Publishing provides an online review publication called the Quarterly Conversation that has an article on The Spare Room at http://quarterlyconversation. com/the-spare-room-by-helen-garner-review A video of an interview with Helen Garner about The Spare Room is accessible from Fora.tv and the ABC (Australia) at http://fora.tv/2008/05/24/Helen_ Garner_on_Writing_and_The_Spare_Room
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Appleton, Michael. Good End: End-of-Life Concerns and Conversations about Hospice and Palliative Care. Bel Air: Hats Off Books, 2005. Print. Advice from a physician with expertise on end-of-life issues for patients and their families.
Garner, Helen. Monkey Grip. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. Print. Garner’s first novel about a teacher who falls in love with a junkie in 1970s Melbourne. ———. Postcards from Surfers. London: Bloomsbury, 1989. Print. A collection of Garner’s short stories, including her highly acclaimed novella The Children’s Bach. Lois Kerschen
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Sparks: An Urban Fairytale By Lawrence Marvit
W Introduction Sparks: An Urban Fairytale is an alternative fairy tale about post-high school Jo who has exceptional mechanical skills and works at an auto repair shop near the projects apartment she shares with her abusive, alcoholic father who is a policeman and her stay-at-home, tranquilizeraddicted mother. The story follows Jo through a series of weeks in which she tries to develop a social life with so-called friends, who for different reasons are not worthy of her, and young men, who are only interested in sex. Pushed by her father to catch a husband and ignored by her near-comatose mother, Jo finds her only pleasure in working with Rick, her fellow mechanic, and their boss, and tinkering on her not-yet-working car, Trigger. Apart from the little boy Jimmie, Jo has no real friends. In a moment of discouragement and loneliness, she throws together a humanoid figure from spare car parts, attaches a battery, and with a mysterious stroke of lightning, the figure is animated. Jimmie dubs him Sir Galahad, and Jo brings flashcards and books and begins teaching Galahad language. Through a series of mishaps with people her own age and with the wealthy self-centered Mark Spalding, Jo finds herself increasingly frustrated in her social life and increasingly comforted by the friendly, intellectual companionship of her mechanical man. When her father in a drunken stupor attempts to sexually abuse her in the night, Jo fights back, and Galahad calls in the police as backup. Just in the nick of time, Jo escapes in her car with Sir Galahad, but they do not ride off into the sunset. Rather, in a climax reminiscent of Thelma and Louise, they avoid a police barricade by driving off a bridge into the river. Jo swims to safety, but Galahad remains in the submerged car. In an epilogue in which readers learn the fate of each of the characters, Jo is shown alone, musing about life’s
endless questions as she sets up her telescope to search the night sky. Nominated for an Eisner Award in 2000, Sparks: An Urban Fairytale is dedicated to the memory of Maurice Noble (1911-2001), animated background cartoon artist for Warner Brothers under whom Lawrence Marvit trained, and Albert Reinhardt, who with others, including David L. Marvit, developed motion-controlled handheld devices, patented in 2007.
W Literary and Historical Context
The literary context for Sparks: An Urban Fairytale consists of fairy tales themselves, specifically Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Fairy tales have their beginning in oral folktales that go back centuries. These stories typically have far-off medieval or rural settings, have both idealized and aberrant characters, and involve magic or enchantment to move along an implausible plot that resolves happily with the good rewarded and evil punished, thus delivering a moral or lesson, especially designed to mold children’s behavior. In some ways, Sparks defines itself in opposition to these fairy tales; in other ways, it is belongs to the same genre they do. The historical context for Sparks: An Urban Fairytale lies in newspaper comic strips and the development of the comic book. The heyday of the syndicated newspaper comic strip, according to Tom Sturgeon in “Comics: A Brief Overview,” was from the 1920s through the 1940s, with Little Orphan Annie and Wash Tubbs gaining popularity. Domestic comic strips such as Blondie, Archie, and Dennis the Menace were popular through the following decades, and in the early 2000s, popular titles included Garfield and reruns of Peanuts, Blondie, For Better or For Worse, and Dilbert.
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Sparks: An Urban Fairytale
MAJOR CHARACTERS BOSSMAN owns and operates Jim Bo’s Gas and Service station, where Jo works. DAD is a disillusioned and depressed police officer who wastes his off time slumped in front of the television and drinking. SIR GALAHAD is the mechanical figure that is animated by a stroke of lightning and becomes Jo’s kindly companion. Sadly, he falls in love with Jo but discovers he is not her type. JANET, who is one year older than Jo, has a serious drinking problem. JIMMIE is the little neighbor boy with a big imagination, who tragically dies when he falls from the roof of the apartment building. JOSEPHINE, called Jo, is the protagonist, a tomboyish highschool graduate who works full time in an auto repair shop. MEREDITH, who had an abortion at sixteen, is a religious person who tries to help Jo wear makeup and high heels. MOM is addicted to tranquilizers. She married her husband because she was pregnant. RICK is the other mechanic at Jim Bo’s Gas and Service station, who often relies on Jo to figure out what is wrong with a car. SARAH was in Jo’s class freshman year and is aware of Jo’s attempt to commit suicide. MARK SPAULDING is the wealthy man who has casual sex with Jo, which momentarily she misinterprets as true love.
Comic books emerged in the 1930s when newspapers reissued popular strip cartoons to be sold separately on newsstands. Superman appeared in 1938, as the Great Depression waned and curiously at the same time that eugenics gained popularity in Europe and the United States. Superheroes gave way to monsters in the 1970s and space adventure with the Star Wars comics in the 1980s.
W Themes The central theme of Sparks: An Urban Fairytale lies in its subversion of conventional fairy tales about female sexual initiation and heterosexual coupling. Unlike such stories as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, Sparks affirms the ability of a female protagonist to act independently, to rescue others, to problem solve, and to find her own independent place in the world free of familial obligation and restraint. The movement toward self-actualization requires the Sparks protagonist to permanently leave her place of origin, her parents, her childhood peers, and come to function as a single adult. The conclusion of
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Cinderella, the happily-ever-after ending in marrying the prince, is achieved by a magical total makeover, which transforms the poor cinder girl into a princess. By contrast to this beauty-wins-the-day narrative, Sparks illustrates how dressing in a sexually provocative way (and smoking and drinking alcohol) in order to win the attention of the opposite sex is not the path to happily-ever-after but the staircase to fraternity gang rape. Sparks also affirms how a female can use her natural abilities and learning capacity to overcome familial, economic, and societal obstacles. The offspring of an alcoholic abusive father and a drug-addicted mother, Jo rebounds from a ninth-grade suicide attempt to graduate from high school and find her work milieu with two grease monkeys at a local auto repair shop. She satisfies her natural curiosity about physics and astronomy by reading library books and tinkers on an old car while fantasizing about riding out of this town and out of her unhappiness. Instead of being awakened to her sexual identity as Sleeping Beauty is with a kiss from her true love, Jo is sexually initiated and discarded by the wealthy Mark Spaulding. The true knight in shining armor is the tin man she makes herself from spare metal parts. She is comforted by his companionship after he mysteriously comes to life, but his transformation is not complete, and like the car he is totaled by the accident. The graphic novel deals with real-life and not-so-nice culture of urban teens, including superficial values, emphasis on appearance, and peer pressure to smoke, drink, and be promiscuous. It also shows how affluent people can exploit those who admire them. In these and other ways Sparks deconstructs the conventions of the fairy tale. But in other ways, this graphic novel is still a fairy tale. Jo is saved in the nick-of-time from her abusive father and the law, which is on his side, and she drives away (not quite into the sunset) but at least into another place where she can be on her own. The ending is not a confirmed happily-ever-after one; Marvit leaves it inconclusive, perhaps to allow for a sequel, perhaps because questions do not always have tidy answers.
W Style Sparks: An Urban Fairytale is a graphic novel, told in black-and-white cartoon art and written words. The words and the images work together to convey the story’s meaning. In many cases, the images show the reality the words mask. For example, the opening words announcing “a glorious kingdom” are written in the sky above a cityscape of blocklike tall buildings. The “castle” in this kingdom is the project apartment building, in which Jo’s obese father is depicted slumped and scowling at the television. The queen in this fairy tale has bags under her eyes and a world-weary face; she is first shown in the bathroom taking some pills and next at the kitchen table, oblivious to burning toast filling the room with smoke behind her. The princess Jo is getting ready to go to TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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Sparks: An Urban Fairytale
work, putting on mechanic’s work clothes and then running to get the burning toast out of the toaster. She leaves the apartment with a frown, as her father yells at her. Thus, the panels convey a sordid reality that lies beneath the fairy tale prose of the opening scenes.
W Critical Reception Sparks: An Urban Fairytale received enough recognition to be nominated for an Eisner Award as a Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, but as far as mainstream reviews go, its appearance went relatively unnoticed. That Paul Dini, Emmy award-winning producer of Batman Beyond and The New Batman/Superman Adventures, wrote the foreword indicates that people in the comics business recognized the value of Sparks. In that foreword, Dini described the work as “haunting and wistful,” the reverse of Pinocchio, in which “Jo the creator is the one that undertakes the spiritual journey toward humanity while guided by the empathy and growing love of her creation.” Dini concluded that “Marvit has created one of the great comic art heroines”: “Armed with nothing more than her imagination, a caring heart and a sorely tested belief in herself, Jo struggles to survive . . . in a hostile world.” True to fairy-tale form, Dini explained that Jo has “an ogre of a father, toads . . . as princes, and girl ‘friends’ that rival any storybook witch in pure malice.” Dini also praised Marvit for accomplishing artwork that “perfectly complements” the story. One online review was written by Johanna Draper Carlson, who holds an MA in popular culture and as of 2010 had been reviewing comics for more that fifteen years. Carlson stated that Sparks explores “the issue of surface appearance vs. authenticity.” She went on to describe “one of the standout sequences,” in which Galahad takes Jo to the art museum to determine what beauty is. The ultimate message, according to Carlson, is: “Dreams don’t come true without a lot of work and perhaps a lot of detours and pain along the way.” She also praised the artwork: “Marvit’s animation background is evident in his simplicity and confidence with his line. The character designs are elegant in their economy of detail— there’s just enough to capture the essentials. Jo, especially, has an emotional fragility in her face, shadowed under a work cap with a ponytail behind. Although the character types are familiar, they transcend cliché to become symbolic.” If the assessments of Dini and Carlson are representative of the reception among people in the comics business, then clearly Sparks is worthy of a much wider audience and readership than the paucity of mainstream reviews suggests. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Carlson, Johanna Draper. “Sparks: An Urban Fairytale.” Rev. of Sparks: An Urban Fairytale, by Lawrence
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lawrence Marvit was born in 1972 near Boston, Massachusetts. A lifelong reader of comics and high school dropout, Marvit began an apprenticeship as an illustrator in Hollywood at age fifteen. He attended California Institute of the Arts in 1990. He worked at Chuck Jones Studios, where he trained under Maurice Noble. Later, Marvit worked at several studios, including Disney and Warner Bros. His debut in the graphic novel, Sparks: An Urban Fairytale, was nominated for an Eisner Award as a Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition in 2000. He was the background and alien characters artist of Spaceman (2002), the science fiction comic. As of 2002, Marvit lived in Berkeley, California.
Marvit. comicsworthreading.com. Comics Worth Reading 12 Mar. 2006. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. Dini, Paul. Foreword. Sparks: An Urban Fairytale, by Lawrence Marvit. San Jose: SLG Publishing, 2002. Marvit, Lawrence. Sparks: An Urban Fairytale. San Jose: SLG Publishing, 2002. Print. Spurgeon, Tom. “Comics: A Brief Overview.” comicsreporter.com. Comics Reporter 9 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 Oct. 2004. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Maury, Laurel. “An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories.” Artforum 1 Dec. 2006. Print. Describes this new anthology, directs readers to other works in this genre, and affirms the popularity and growing mainstream attention of graphic fiction. Open Web Sources
Tom Spurgeon maintains an informative Web site called The Comics Reporter, at comicsreporter.com Johanna Draper Carlson maintains an informative Web site called Comics Worth Reading, at comicsworthreading.com. For Further Reading
Ball, David M., and Martha B. Kuhlman, eds. The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is a Way of Thinking. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2010. Print. A collection of essays on Ware’s work that includes topics such as comic ancestors, the legacy of art history, and the grammar of diagrams. Brunetti, Ivan, ed. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print. Contains work by seventy-five artists, spanning the twentieth century and including publications in the early 2000s, such as Art Spiegelman,
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Chris Ware, and Charles M. Schulz, with an excerpt from Maus presented along with later portraits of Germany and other works showing the century-long development of this art form. Coughlan, David. “Paul Auster’s City of Glass: The Graphic Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies 52.4 (2006): 832-54. Print. Examines the adaptation of Auster’s postmodern detective story City of Glass as a graphic novel, noting this adaptation as a source or illustration for future comics. Harvey, Robert C. The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996. Print. Explains the aesthetic principle concerning the interplay of verbal and visual parts and also analyzes related topics such as panel design and page layout. “New ‘Graphic Novel’ Category and ‘Innovator’s Award’ Join Finalist Line-Up for 30th Annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.” Business Wire 22 Feb. 2010. Print. Points out that LA Times Book Prizes will be awarded for works in the graphic novel category, making this prize, established in 1980, the first in the United States to acknowledge excellent cutting-edge work in this genre.
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Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2004. Print. Highly respected graphic memoir of growing up in Iran, beginning before and spanning the changes instituted by the Islamic revolution of 1979. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon-Random House, 1997. Print. Contains both Maus I and Maus II, an incomparable and terrifying fable of the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany depicted in terms of cats chasing mice, the first winner of a Pulitzer Prize for a graphic novel. Weeks, Linton. “Books That May Make Parents Blush; Fiction Aimed at Teens Features Grown-Up Themes.” Washington Post 11 Mar. 2001. Print. Warns of the raw language and adult material, including sexual situations, suicide, and drug abuse, that are featured in hardback novels aimed for young adult audience, citing cautions that can be applied to graphic fiction as well. Melodie Monahan
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Speed of Dark By Elizabeth Moon
W Introduction The Speed of Dark (2003), tells the story of an autistic computer programmer who must face the prospect of being cured of his condition. The novel won the Nebula Award in 2003 and was a finalist for the 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Lou Arrendale works at a large corporation specializing in bioinformatics, a science that uses statistics and computer science in the study of biological processes. Lou is part of Section A, a special unit of employees who have autism, which is a neural disorder that impairs verbal and nonverbal communication and leads to repetitive and fixed patterns of behavior. Peter Aldrin, who supervises Section A, is sensitive to his autistic employees’ needs, while the senior manager of the company, Mr. Crenshaw, underestimates their value and feels they are given too much special treatment. When new biological research discovers a cure for autism, Mr. Crenshaw pressures the employees of Section A to take the experimental drug, threatening them with termination if they refuse. Lou and the other autistics are forced to choose between remaining as they are or possibly having their personalities altered by taking the drug. Telling the story largely through Lou’s perspective, Elizabeth Moon demonstrates how the category of “normalcy” defines autistics negatively as “abnormal” or “sick.” She also critiques the conventional interpretation that autism is a disease, presenting it instead as a unique identity.
W Literary and Historical Context
The Speed of Dark presents a variation on a familiar science fiction scenario in which characters that appear to be disabled nevertheless possess special gifts that exceed the boundaries of human comprehension. One classic
example is British author Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (1936), which concerns a man who is born physically deformed but also possesses telepathic abilities. Odd John and other works like it, including American science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon’s More than Human (1953) and English author John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955), speculate that apparent abnormalities are actually misinterpreted forms of intelligence. In all three works gifted children are marginalized and treated as suspicious outsiders. Moon’s novel has much in common with these science fiction narratives, particularly in the way it renders the experience of an individual who sees the world through a unique and almost alien perspective. Indeed, like the mutants in Wyndham’s and Sturgeon’s novels, Lou is constantly perceived as not quite human and is defined by his apparent disability. The Speed of Dark is set some time in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, when scientists have developed an experimental drug that can apparently cure autism. This scenario is made plausible by the fact that several treatments for autism existed in 2003, the year Moon composed her novel. It is significant to note that contemporary medical literature typically cautions against using medical or chemical treatments for autism. According to Elizabeth K. Gerlach in Autism Treatment Guide, other forms of intervention, such behavioral management and psychological support services, are encouraged. Moon herself emphasizes the dangers of simply experimenting on autistics and demonstrates the ways in which listening to music and engaging in physical activity enables Lou and his colleagues to cope with their condition.
W Themes Employing the science fiction motif of the gifted/ differently abled individual, Moon explores the theme of fitting in and questions the distinctions between so-called normal and abnormal behavior. Lou’s behavior
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The Speed of Dark
MAJOR CHARACTERS PETER ALDRIN is the supervisor of Section A. While he sympathizes with his autistic employees, Peter is ultimately pressured by his superior, Mr. Crenshaw, to compose a report on a new autism study that will supposedly cure the condition. LOU ARRENDAL is an autistic computer programmer who works at a large corporation. He has a close-knit group of autistic friends as well as another circle of “normals” with whom he fences. His job is to find patterns in numbers, but Lou also succeeds in finding subtle patterns in human behavior. BAILEY, CAMERON, CHUY, DALE, ERIC, AND LINDA are autistic colleagues of Lou’s. MR. CRENSHAW, the senior manager of the corporation, is angry and frustrated that Peter’s autistic employees do not “fit in.” Obtuse and thoughtless, Mr. Crenshaw understands very little about Section A but is nevertheless convinced that the special attention given to the autistics is uneconomical. He sees the cure for autism as a way to make his employees “normal” and to justify taking away their special benefits, such as a gym that enables them to concentrate better. He is also unable to understand why anyone would want to stay “sick” or “damaged.” DON is a member of Lou’s fencing group. Unlike Marjory and Tom, Don is annoyed by Lou’s seemingly obsessive habits of punctuality and neatness and is jealous of Marjory’s fondness for Lou. DR. FORNUM is the psychiatrist who evaluates Lou four times a year. Unable or unwilling to perceive Lou’s intellectual abilities, the doctor treats Lou as though he is simpleminded and asks personal, invasive questions about his hobbies and sex life. While Dr. Fornum is a minor character, her insistence that Lou say, believe, and do the things that “everyone else” does influences the way he responds to most of the “normals” he encounters. JOE LEE is an autistic who has been given treatment to reverse the condition of autism. MARJORY SHAW is an attractive and kind woman who is part of Lou’s fencing group. TOM is the organizer of the fencing group and is sensitive to Lou’s autistic perspective. He helps him train for a fencing tournament.
patterns are characterized by tidiness, repetition, and an unusual fascination with mathematical puzzles, and he is aware that such preoccupations mark him as an autistic. Throughout his life Lou has been advised by parents and friends that if he acts normal, tries to fit in, and behaves politely, he will be accepted as “normal enough.” This
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strategy of acting normal allows him to survive, and his attempt to adapt to the world is aided by a few of his “normal” friends who are sensitive to his unique ideas on astronomy and math. For example, Lou postulates that if the speed of light is a quantifiable value, perhaps the “speed of dark” is quantifiable as well. He suggests that the dark is “where light hasn’t come yet.” This enigmatic concept signifies the ways in which autism itself is categorized as a disease or an absence rather than as an existence of unknown potential. Other “normals” like Mr. Crenshaw and Lou’s fencing partner, Don, do not follow these rules of conduct, and even violate them, by acting rudely to Lou, making jokes about him behind his back, and generally failing to accept him as a human being. Such behavior leads Lou to wonder if they have been taught correctly. He reflects on this irony: “I had to learn to say conventional things even when I did not feel them, because that is part of fitting in and learning to get along. Has anyone ever asked Mr. Crenshaw to fit in, to get along?” The violent and irrational behavior of other normal people he comes in contact with makes Lou fear the possibility of becoming normal as the result of taking the experimental drug. He asks himself whether the drug will actually help him or completely eradicate his identity. Over the course of the novel normalcy is revealed to be a social construct devised by humans who lack the ability to accept difference and diversity.
W Style The Speed of Dark is narrated primarily in the first person and the present tense. This point of view offers the reader direct access to the unique thoughts and perceptions of the protagonist, as he is experiencing them. For instance, Lou describes a meeting with his psychiatrist in the following way: “Dr. Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head not quite imperceptibly.” Writing for Poetics Today, Theo Damsteegt notes that such text heightens the reader’s awareness that the events being narrated come directly from the character’s mind. By creating such real-time immediacy in her narrative, Moon effectively portrays the rapid and continuous movement of time, as it is perceived by her autistic protagonist. By following Lou’s uninterrupted train of thought, the reader gains a sense of how complex patterns form in his head, such as when he becomes engrossed in his pattern analysis at work: “When the edges blur, I shake myself and sit back. It has been five hours and I didn’t notice.” Moon’s narrative strategy also enables readers to experience the process of Lou’s mind as he oscillates between bafflement and comprehension. At one point Lou fails to understand how his fencing opponent has managed to break through his parry. He then suddenly sees his opponent’s pattern and successfully blocks the maneuver. In such ways Moon effectively TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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The Speed of Dark
depicts the workings of an autistic mind, suggesting that autism is not so much a mental disability but rather a different way of perceiving data. On rare occasions Moon switches to the third-person past-tense narration in order to provide an outsider’s impression of Lou and to show the contrast between the normal and autistic perspective. Through Peter’s perspective, for example, the reader understands that he wants to help Lou and the other autistics, even though he never challenges Mr. Crenshaw’s order to give the Section A employees the autism drug. From Lou’s perspective, on the other hand, Peter’s failure to confront Mr. Crenshaw is a form of subservience. Rather than suggesting that Lou is somehow abnormal, Moon is actually showing how normal human behavior is difficult to understand, often makes no sense, and therefore needs modification.
W Critical Reception The Speed of Dark was generally acknowledged as a fine work of science fiction and as a unique contribution to the study of autism. Reviewers praised Moon’s intimate knowledge of autism and her sympathetic portrayal of the condition, adding that the novel should be
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on March 7, 1945, Elizabeth Moon grew up in McAllen, Texas, and graduated from McAllen High School in 1963. She received a BA in history from Rice University in 1968 and a BA in biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. She began writing stories and poems as a child and experimented with science fiction when she entered high school. It was not until she was in her forties that Moon began to publish novels. The fantasy work Sheepfarmer’s Daughter (1988) won the Compton Crook Award in 1989. In much of her fiction Moon incorporates her interests in science, weaving tales about the transformation of the human organism, the evolutionary development of the mind, and the cruelty with which humans treat those who are perceived as “different.”
commended for not sentimentalizing Lou’s different mental capacities. A handful of critics were especially impressed by the author’s ability to inhabit the mind of her protagonist and to present the autistic experience with a
In The Speed of Dark, a group of autistic workers at a pharmaceutical company must choose between taking a medication that may alter their personalities or keeping their lives as they are. Dennis Vrublevski/Shutterstock.com TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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fair degree of verisimilitude. Kirkus Reviews, for example, remarks that “Moon places the reader inside the world of an autistic and unflinchingly conveys the authenticity of his situation.” Writing for Booklist, Meredith Parets argues that “Moon is effective at putting the reader inside Lou’s mind, and it is both fascinating and painful to see the behavior and qualities of so-called normals through his eyes.” Critics have also commented on Moon’s engagement with the moral issues of experimentation on humans. According to Parets, the novel “asks whether we treat impairments of the brain at too great a cost.” Nancy C. Chaplin, writing for Kliatt, comments that “Moon moves confidently between technical description and ethical debate,” admiring the poetic subtlety with which the novel comments on such issues. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Chaplin, Nancy C. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Kliatt Sept. 2003: 58. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Damsteegt, Theo. “The Present Tense and Internal Focalization of Awareness.” Poetics Today 26.1 (2005): 39-78. Print. Gerlach, Elizabeth K. Autism Treatment Guide. Arlington: Future Horizons, 2003. Print. Moon, Elizabeth. The Speed of Dark. New York: Ballantine, 2003. Print. Parets, Meredith. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Booklist 1 Feb. 2003: 972. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Kirkus Reviews 1 Nov. 2002: 1559. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Additional Resources Criticism and Reviews
Blaschke, Jayme Lynn. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. SF Site 2003. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Discusses Moon’s carefully crafted prose, which effectively renders Lou’s perception of the world. Gunning, Margaret. “The Speed of ‘Normal.’” January Magazine Apr. 2003. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Considers how Lou is an affecting yet contradictory figure, because he is beyond normal intelligence and simultaneously beneath it to those who misinterpret his gifts. Hall, Melissa Mia. “Traveling at the Speed of Dark.” Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Publishers Weekly 16 Dec. 2002: 45. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Discusses the novel’s exploration of the concept of normalcy.
(2006). Web. 17 Aug. 2010. Commends—albeit in a somewhat mixed review—Moon’s handling of Lou’s internal struggle with the prospect of becoming “normal.” Seeman, Corey. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Library Journal Jan. 2003: 157. Book Review Index Plus. Web. 13 Aug. 2010. Notes that Lou’s difference from the normal people he encounters is reinforced by his fascination with the astronomical puzzle of the “speed of dark.” Open Web Sources
Moon’s official Web site, Moonscape, features biographical and bibliographical information, as well as links to the author’s essays and photos having to do with her various interests and hobbies. http://www .elizabethmoon.com/ The blog Biology in Science Fiction features a brief discussion of The Speed of Dark as well as links to other blogs and discussion forums devoted to the novel. http://sciencefictionbiology.blogspot.com/2009/ 04/elizabeth-moon-autism-and-speed-of-dark.html For Further Reading
Baron-Cohen, Simon. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge: MIT P, 1995. Print. Argues that humans automatically and unconsciously “mindread” by interpreting and predicting social behavior through regular communication. The essay also theorizes that autistic children suffer from “mindblindness” because their neural impairment does not allow them to properly interpret social behaviors. Dick, Philip K. Martian Time-Slip. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print. Explores the lives of several humans living on a terraformed Mars and focuses particularly on the relationship between an earnest repairman and a troubled autistic boy named Manfred Steiner. Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Vintage, 2004. Print. Concerns the adventures of Christopher Boone, an autistic fifteen-year-old math wiz who attempts to solve the heinous murder of his neighbor’s poodle. Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. New York: Harcourt, 1966. Print. Tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled man who undergoes an experimental treatment that triples his IQ. Schreibman, Laura Ellen. The Science and Fiction of Autism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005. Print. Offers a comprehensive description of autism, including the controversies that have surrounded scientists’ and doctors’ attempts to define the condition.
Perring, Christian. Rev. of The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. Metapsychology Online Review 10.3
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Adam Lawrence
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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“Spenser” Series By Robert B. Parker
W Introduction Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” series comprises over thirty hard-boiled detective novels published between 1973 and 2010 that feature the eponymous hero, a cultured, physically formidable, Boston-based private investigator, whose first name is never revealed. The first book in the series, The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), introduces the erudite and gruff private eye as he investigates the case of a medieval book that has been stolen from a local university and is being held for ransom. Throughout the series, Spenser’s main confidants are his longtime love interest, psychologist Susan Silverman, and Hawk, a street-smart thug whose connections to the criminal world prove to be both helpful and dangerous. Promised Land, the fourth Spenser novel, won the Edgar Award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America in 1976; in 2002 the organization gave Parker the Grand Master Award for his achievement in the genre. The Spenser novels were adapted for the television series Spenser: For Hire, which starred Robert Urich and ran from 1985 to 1988. Parker continued writing the successful series until his death in 2010.
W Literary and Historical Context
As hard-boiled detective novels, the Spenser books adhere to the conventions of the genre. People are frequently not who they seem to be, and Spenser’s investigations take him deep into a shadowy underworld fueled by lies, intrigue, and violence. The main difference between Spenser and his solitary, Spartan predecessors such as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade is the time in which he lives. The stylized, noir world of the 1940s and 1950s is a relic untouched by the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the sexual
revolution—all of which had changed American culture significantly by the time Spenser appeared in 1973. Spenser is an enlightened product of his generation; though in the same line of work as Marlowe and Spade, he is not the sullen misanthrope of years gone by. Instead, he calls for help when needed—something most hard-boiled detectives would be loathe to do. Spenser’s help is the intimidating Hawk, a no-nonsense African American hit man with unparalleled street smarts. Racial fraternization of this sort would have been highly unusual in the segregated world of the golden age detective novel. The women’s movement, which lobbied for greater equality between men and women, had gained steam by the early 1970s, and its success is reflected in Spenser’s enlightened attitudes about females. In the novels of Hammett and Chandler, women, when they are not merely superfluous, are usually temptresses adept in the practices of two-timing and backstabbing. The hard-boiled detective might be attracted to a woman, but he would never trust her. Spenser breaks this tradition by cultivating a long-term romance and friendship with his intellectual equal, Susan Silverman. As solitary as Spenser is, his ability to form meaningful personal relationships can be seen as the result of a social transition that put men and women on equal footing. Spenser, instead of seeing Susan as a “dame” or an impediment to his bachelor lifestyle, sees her as an asset, an intellectual and sexual companion who makes his life worth living. That said, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s has eroded the institution of marriage; Spenser and Susan never marry or even live together, and Susan steadfastly maintains her independence, going so far as to move across the country for the sake of her career. Thus, Parker’s modern take on the hard-boiled novel applies primarily to plot and not characterization.
W Themes Spenser’s moral code forms the thematic foundation of the series. As a detective involved with murderers and
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“Spenser” Series
MAJOR CHARACTERS SERGEANT FRANK BELSEN is a Boston law enforcement officer who has a warm relationship with Spenser and often helps him out with his cases. PAUL GIACOMIN is a delinquent teenager who becomes a surrogate son to Spenser. HAWK is introduced in the 1976 novel Promised Land. He is a mysterious African American mob assassin who lives outside the law. Spenser relies on his friendship and acumen for years, although their relationship stays strictly formal. LIEUTENANT MARTIN QUIRK of the Boston Police Department is a veteran detective, close to retirement in the early Spenser novels who neither appears to age nor retire as the series continues. He has a somewhat adversarial stance toward Spenser because he views him as intruding into police business. RUGAR is also known as the Gray Man. He shoots and nearly kills Spenser but later they work together on a few cases. SUSAN SILVERMAN is introduced in the 1974 novel God Save the Child. She is a psychologist and Spenser’s long-term romantic partner. SPENSER is a private investigator in Boston. He is a burly retired boxer, a Korean War vet, and former state trooper who knows how to fight. He is uncommonly well read for a detective and does not give up on a case, even when his life is threatened. He exhibits a moral code of right and wrong that often does not adhere to the law.
thugs whose job requires that he sometimes kill people, he has somehow managed to attain a sense of normalcy in his life by adhering to his moral compass. “Spenser inherits Marlowe’s toughness and his sense of himself as living outside the law,” wrote Christina Root in Clues, “both detectives inhabit bleak social landscapes and cynically question the social structures that encourage hypocrisy and deception. Parker is most interested in continuing the tradition of the hard-boiled detective’s living by a private moral code.” According to critic Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe, “Spenser’s code requires that he strive to protect the weak and to refrain from killing unless it is necessary for self-defense or to defend others.” “Parker once defined Spenser’s code as ‘a commitment to honorable behavior,’” wrote Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times Book Review, “in which ‘one’s goodness is tested in physical success and some kind of violent circumstance.’” The moral code is founded on what is right versus what is law, but it is not as black and white as it could be. “Spenser is mired in a post-Watergate, postNixon, post-Vietnam United States where accepted ideals
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of moral persuasion and right behavior are not as clear cut as in Hammett’s, Chandler’s and even [Ross] Macdonald’s day,” wrote Donald J. Grenier. “The result is the victorious detective as self-doubter, the winner who is no longer sure if he has played by the rule.” The evolution of Spenser’s moral code is depicted in Chasing the Bear (2009), a young adult novel about the detective’s teenage years. The future detective’s morality is shaped by his alcoholic father and his experience with racial injustice, both of which influence his “notion of manliness,” wrote Ian Chipman in Booklist. Years later Spenser helps the teenage delinquent Paul Giacomin straighten out his life over the course of several novels even though he has no official stake in the boy’s life. In Looking for Rachel Wallace (1987), Spenser embarks on what amounts to a “chivalric quest to restore a more essential American morality,” wrote Frederic Svoboda, though it requires putting his life on the line for a radical lesbian feminist who abhors nearly everything Spenser stands for. As he ages, however, Spenser’s moral code occupies less mental territory, according to Stasio, who wrote that in Cold Service (2005) “he still wrestles with his conscience, [but] he’s more driven by his fear of mortality than by the old issues of morality.”
W Style The language of the hard-boiled detective novel is characterized by terse dialogue and colorful but not verbose prose, and the Spenser series is no exception. “Parker tells his story with fine touches of cynical mood and wryly observed sketches of Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” wrote Richard Gid Powers in a review of Stardust (1990), concluding that “characters are lined out in brilliant shorthand.” Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times Book Review appreciated the novel Cold Service, which featured “dialogue [that] is precisionpolished like a fine tool,” and Bruce Weber, writing in the New York Times, characterized Parker’s language as a “blunt, masculine prose style that is often described as Hemingwayesque.” Jurek Martin of the Financial Times also noted how Parker’s “prose could be muscular and sparse in the manner of Hemingway, and [how] the dialogue, at its best, positively crackles.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked that “Parker makes producing snappy banter look easy.” Also like many detective novels, the Spenser series was written in first person; his viewpoint is always that of the reader, who comes to identify with him as they see the world through his eyes.
W Critical Reception The Spenser series is hailed for its “easy-going prose, tight plot-lines and vivid characters,” wrote Justin Warshaw in the Times Literary Supplement, and for its eponymous TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE
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hero, “a straightforward good guy, the cowboy in the white hat.” Spenser’s penchant for his particular brand of domestic bliss earned him the sobriquet of detective fiction’s first “feminist tough guy” from Frederic Svoboda, and Christina Root called him “one of the most politically enlightened and sensitive of contemporary private eyes,” even as he is the “spiritual descendant of the hard-boiled detective exemplified in Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer as well as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.” Donald J. Grenier appreciated Spenser as an “example of the educated man confronting the dregs of his society as American culture continues to decline.” Critics applauded the character of Hawk almost as much. Alexander Harrison, reviewing Small Vices (1997) in the Times Literary Supplement, summarized the enigmatic Hawk as “a man so frightening that even the dogs change their paths rather than sniff round him.” As the series became established, “Parker . . . exhibited growing independence from his predecessors,” wrote David Geherin in Sons of Sam Spade: The Private Eye Novel in the 70s, “confidently developing his own themes, character, and stylistic idiom.” Yet some critics felt several novels of the 1980s were not up to par with earlier tales. R. W. B. Lewis, writing in the New York Times, said that with the publication of the first ten novels, “it was clear that we were witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story,” but that A Catskill Eagle (1985) and Crimson Joy (1988) did not live up to those early standards. By the 1990s, though, most reviewers felt he was back on track. Stasio called Small Vices (1997) “apowerful piece about the defeat and reclamation of a hero,” and Connie Fletcher, reviewing The Professional (2009) in Booklist just months before the author’s death, echoed legions of critics in praising its “great plotting, clever dialogue, and Spenser’s mouthwatering cooking [which] all make for a fantastic time.” BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Chipman, Ian. Rev. of Chasing the Bear, by Robert B. Parker. Booklist 105.17 (1 May 2009): 38. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Fletcher, Connie. Rev. of The Professional, by Robert B. Parker. Booklist 105.22 (1 Aug. 2009): 9. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Geherin, David. Sons of Sam Spade: The Private Eye Novel in the 70s. New York: Ungar, 1980. 5-82. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert B. Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1932, and served in the U.S. Army in Korea before receiving his master’s degree from Boston University. He was a technical writer, an advertising executive, and an English professor before he published his first Spenser novel in 1973. Detective fiction was a natural fit; he wrote his doctoral thesis on the detective fiction of Chandler and Hammett. The success of the Spenser series allowed him to quit academia, of which he had a dim view, in 1979 to write full time. Parker married his childhood sweetheart, Joan Hall, in 1956; like the Susan Silverman character she inspired, she eventually became a psychologist. The couple had two sons and in later years collaborated on the screenplays for several Spenser television movies. Parker had much in common with his alter ego: both enjoyed cooking, literature, weightlifting, baseball, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of Boston. In addition to the Spenser novels, Parker wrote the Jesse Stone detective series, several westerns, and young adult novels. In 1989 Parker completed and published Poodle Springs, a Philip Marlowe story that was left unfinished by Raymond Chandler at the time of his death. Additionally, Parker was enlisted to write the sequel to Chandler’s most famous novel, The Big Sleep, titled Perchance to Dream, which was published in 1991. Parker died suddenly of a heart attack on January 18, 2010. He was seventy-seven. The Spenser novel Painted Ladies was published posthumously in October 2010.
Criticism. Vol. 283. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Martin, Jurek. “Writer Who Cases a Generous Eye over the Mean Streets.” Financial Times 6 Feb. 2010: 8. General OneFile. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Lewis, R. W. B. Rev. of Playmates, by Robert B. Parker. New York Times Book Review, nytimes.com 23 Apr. 1989. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. Powers, Richard Gid. “Hard-Boiled in Hollywood.” New York Times 8 July 1990. Print. Rev. of The Professional, by Robert B. Parker. Publishers Weekly 256.33 (17 Aug. 2009): 39. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Grenier, Donald J. “Robert B. Parker and the Jock of the Mean Streets.” Critique 26.1 (1984): 36-44. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Rippetoe, Rita Elizabeth. “Robert B. Parker: ‘This Was No Job for a Poet,’” in her Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard-Boiled Novel, 106-29. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Harrison, Alexander. Rev. of Small Vices, by Robert B. Parker. Times Literary Supplement 4983 (2 Oct. 1998): 24. Rpt. in Contemporary Literature
Root, Christina. “Silence of the Other: Women in Robert Parker’s Spenser Series.” Clues 19.1 (1998): 25-38. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
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Photo of Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser Series. ª David
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