We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

This month's meeting is in Billingshurst on Tuesday, and this month's book is one of the Booker Prize short-listed titles for 2013. I really enjoyed the fresh, vibrant voice, vivid descriptions and child-like detachment from the terrible atrocities being lived through by the novel's 10-year-old narrator, Darling.
Here are some questions for discussion:

What did you enjoy and/or find surprising about the style and tone of the narrative voice?

Bulawayo has revealed that Darling was based on a child in a photograph sitting on the rubble that was his bulldozed home after the Zimbabwean government carried out Operation Murambatsvina. How realistic do you find her portrayal?

How did the descriptions of the children's games inform the story?

How compelling did you find the episodic nature of the plot? Which episodes and characters stood out?

How are the female African characters portrayed?

Bulawayo is one of a number of African writers who have been accused of 'performing Africa'; that is to imbue writing with images and symbols which evoke pity and fear, not in the tragic and cathartic Aristotelean sense, but a 'CNN Western-media-coverage, poverty-porn representation. With allusions to genocide, political brutality, female circumcision, starvation, AIDS, is the novel guilty of this charge?

In what ways was America depicted as worse than the regime from which Darling has fled. Is this a successful representation of the illusionary nature of the American Dream?

How successfully is the 'immigrant story' explored?

What is the significance of the ending?

March by Geraldine Brooks

This is our second book by Geraldine Brooks; the first, People of the Book from way back in October 2010 was a popular choice, so it was with eager anticipation that I began reading this one. It is far too long since I last read 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott, the novel which provides the protagonist in March, Mr March, the father, so I have had a dip in to that too. I'm not entirely sure it was necessary since the book was an enjoyable stand-alone read, but it was a nice prompt to do so.

I particularly enjoyed the exposure of flaws in the character of Mr March, in spite of his generally good intentions, and this is something that I think is also there in Alcott's orginal. We meet this month in Horsham, and here are the discussion questions:

1.Throughout the novel, March and Marmee, although devoted to one another, seem to misunderstand each other quite a bit and often do not tell each other the complete truth. Discuss examples of where this happens and how things may have turned out differently, for better or worse, had they been completely honest. Are there times when it is best not to tell our loved ones the truth?

2.The causes of the American Civil War were multiple and overlapping. What was your opinion of the war when you first came to the novel, and has it changed at all since reading March?

3.March's relationships with both Marmee and Grace are pivotal in his life. Discuss the differences between these two relationships and how they help to shape March, his worldview, and his future. What other people and events were pivotal in shaping March's beliefs?

4.Do you think it was the right decision for March to have supported, financially or morally, the northern abolitionist John Brown? Brown's tactics were controversial, but did the ends justify the means?

5."If war can ever be said to be just, then this war is so; it is action for a moral cause, with the most rigorous of intellectual underpinnings. And yet everywhere I turn, I see injustice done in the waging of it," says March (p. 65). Do you think that March still believes the war is just by the end of the novel? Why or why not?

6.What is your opinion of March's enlisting? Should he have stayed home with his family? How do we decide when to put our principles ahead of our personal obligations?

7.When Marmee is speaking of her husband's enlisting in the army, she makes a very eloquent statement: "A sacrifice such as his is called noble by the world. But the world will not help me put back together what war has broken apart" (p. 210). Do her words have resonance in today's world? How are the people who fight our wars today perceived? Do you think we pay enough attention to the families of those in the military? Have our opinions been influenced at all by the inclusion of women in the military?

8.The war raged on for several years after March's return home. How do you imagine he spent those remaining years of the war? How do you think his relationship with Marmee changed? How might it have stayed the same?

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

Tonight's meeting takes place in Brighton.  Thank you to our host for searching out the questions!

Some beautiful writing, with a sense of impending doom right from the outset, even in the depiction of such a lovely world.  Complex representations of race and gender sit amidst compelling characterisation.  Ugwe was an extremely sympathetic character from the outset, in spite of his later actions; his emotions and motivations are so clearly depicted.

1. Ugwu is only thirteen when he begins working as a houseboy for Odenigbo, but he is one of the most intelligent and observant characters in the novel. How well does Ugwu manage the transition from village life to the intellectual and privileged world of his employers? How does his presence throughout affect the reader’s experience of the story?

 

2. About her attraction to Odenigbo, Olanna thinks, “The intensity had not abated after two years, nor had her awe at his self-assured eccentricities and his fierce moralities” [p. 36]. What is attractive about Odenigbo? How does Adichie poke fun at certain aspects of his character? How does the war change him?  

 

3. Adichie touches very lightly on a connection between the Holocaust and the Biafran situation [p. 62]; why does she not stress this parallel more strongly? Why are the Igbo massacred by the Hausa? What tribal resentments and rivalries are expressed in the Nigerian-Biafran war? In what ways does the novel make clear that these rivalries have been intensified by British interference?

 

4. Consider the conversation between Olanna and Kainene on pp. 130-131. What are the sources of the distance and distrust between the two sisters, and how is the rift finally overcome? What is the effect of the disappearance of Kainene on the ending of the story?

 

5. Discuss the ways in which Adichie reveals the differences in social class among her characters. What are the different cultural assumptions—about themselves and others—made by educated Africans like Odenigbo, nouveau riche Africans like Olanna’s parents, uneducated Africans like Odenigbo’s mother, and British expatriates like Richard’s ex-girlfriend Susan?

 

6. Excerpts from a book called The World Was Silent When We Died appear on pp. 103, 146, 195, 256, 296, 324, 470, and 541. Who is writing this book? What does it tell us? Why is it inserted into the story in parts? 

 

7. Adichie breaks the chronological sequence of her story so that she can delay the revelation that Baby is not Olanna’s child and that Olanna had a brief liaison with Richard. What are the effects of this delay, and of these revelations, on your reading experience?

 

8. Susan Grenville-Pitts is a stereotype of the colonial occupier with her assertion that “It’s quite extraordinaryÉ how these people can’t control their hatred of each other.... Civilization teaches you control” [p. 194]. Richard, on the other hand, wants to be African, learns to speak Igbo, and says “we” when he speaks of Biafra. What sort of person is Richard? How do you explain his desires?

 

9. Adichie makes a point of displaying Olanna’s middle-class frame of mind: she is disgusted at the cockroach eggs in her cousins’ house reluctant to let Baby mix with village children because they have lice, and so on. How is her privileged outlook changed by the war?

 

10. The poet Okeoma, in praise of the new Biafra, wrote, “If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise” [p. 219]. Does Adichie seem to represent the Biafran secession as a doomed exercise in political naivete —  or as a desperate bid for survival on the part of a besieged ethnic group? Given the history of Nigeria and Britain’s support during the war, is the defeat of Biafra a foregone conclusion?

 

11. The sisters’ relationship is damaged further when Olanna seduces Richard [p. 293]. Why does Olanna do this? If she is taking revenge upon Odenigbo for his infidelity, why does she choose Richard? What does Kainene mean when she bitterly calls Olanna “the good one” [p. 318]?

 

12. How does being witnesses to violent death change people in the story—Olanna, Kainene, Odenigbo, Ugwu? How does Adichie handle descriptions of scenes of violence, death, and famine?

 

13. What goes through Ugwu’s mind as he participates in the rape of the bar girl [p. 457]? How does he feel about it later, when he learns that his sister was also gang-raped [pp. 497, 526]?

 

14. The novel is structured in part around two love stories, between Olanna and Odenigbo and between Kainene and Richard.  It is “really a story of love,” Adichie has said (Financial Times, September 9, 2006). How does Adichie handle romantic and sexual love? Why are these love plots so important to a novel about a war?

 

15. The story begins as Ugwu’s aunty describes to Ugwu his new employer: “Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair” [p. 3]. It ends with Ugwu’s dedication of his book: “For Master, my good man” [p. 541]. Consider how Ugwu’s relation to his master has changed throughout the course of the story.

 

16. How is it fitting that Ugwu, and not Richard, should be the one who writes the story of the war and his people?

 

17. In a recent interview Adichie said, “My family tells me that I must be old. This is a book I had to write because it’s my way of looking at this history that defines me and making sense of it.” (She recently turned twenty-nine, and based parts of the story on her family’s experiences during that time and also on a great deal of reading.) “I didn’t want to just write about events,” Adichie said. “I wanted to put a human face on them” (New York Times, September 23, 2006). Why is it remarkable that a woman so young could write a novel of this scope and depth?

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

This month's book is Arthur & George by Julian Barnes, and, as the book was handed out at the end of last month's meeting, we all seemed to know something about it: it was on the Booker Prize shortlist; one of the characters was famous, the other not; it was a historical novel.  It was a little while, I have to confess, before I quite realised which character was the notorious one - although in  a sense, both were in their day.  I had no idea about the 'Great Wyrley Outrages', but found the dual parallel narratives compelling, and the moment at which the two stories collide (the first chapter entitled Arther & George) intriguing.  The central protagonists were rounded, appealingly flawed, and engaging and I enjoyed the conceit of bringing 'real' characters to life in this way.  Like The Sense of an Ending however, this novel didn't seem to have one, or not a satisfactory one, at any rate. Perhaps that is the inevitability of being in the hands of such a masterful storyteller: the conclusion will necessarily prove disappointing. 

Our meeting takes place in Worthing, and here are this month's questions for discussion:

1.    One of the first things we learn about George is that "For a start, he lacks imagination". George is deeply attached to the facts, while early in life Arthur discovers the "essential connection between narrative and reward" . How does this temperamental difference determine their approaches to life? Does Barnes use Arthur and George to explore the very different attractions of truth telling and storytelling?

2.    To what degree do George's parents try to overlook or deny the social difficulties their mixed marriage has produced for themselves and their children? Are they admirable in their determination to ignore the racial prejudice to which they are subjected?

3.    Critic Peter Kemp has commented on Julian Barnes's interest in fiction that "openly colonises actuality—especially the lives of creative prodigies" (London Times, 26 June 2005). In Arthur & George, the details we read about Arthur's life are largely true. While the story of George Edalji is an obscure chapter of Doyle's life, its details as presented here are also based on the historical record. What is the effect, for the reader, when an author blurs the line between fiction and biography, or fiction and history?

4.    From early on in a life shaped by stories, Arthur has identified with tales of knights: "If life was a chivalric quest, then he had rescued the fair Touie, he had conquered the city, and been rewarded with gold. . . . What did a knight errant do when he came home to a wife and two children in South Norwood?" (60). Is it common to find characters like Arthur in our own day? How have the ideas of masculinity changed between Edwardian times and the present?

5.    George has trouble believing that he was a victim of race prejudice (235). Why is this difficult for him to believe? Is it difficult for him to imagine that others don't see him as he sees himself? Does George's misfortune seem to be juxtaposed ironically with his family's firm belief in the Christian faith?

6.    Inspector Campbell tells Captain Anson that the man who did the mutilations would be someone who was "accustomed to handling animals" (84); this assumption would clearly rule out George. Yet George is pursued as the single suspect. Campbell also notes that Sergeant Upton is neither intelligent nor competent at his job (86). What motivates Campbell as he examines George's clothing and his knife, and proceeds to have George arrested (102–7)?

7.    George's arrest for committing "the Great Wyrley Outrages" (153) causes a sensation in England just a few years following the sensational killing spree of Jack the Ripper that sold millions of newspapers throughout England. Are the newspapers, and the public appetite for sensational stories, partly responsible for the crime against George Edalji?

8.    For nine years, Arthur carries on a chaste love affair with Jean Leckie. Yet he feels miserable after the death of his wife Touie, particularly when he learns from his daughter Mary that Touie assumed that Arthur would remarry (215–17). Why is Arthur thrown into "the great Grimpen Mire" by his freedom to marry Jean (220)? Why does he believe that "if Touie knew, then he was destroyed" (267)? Has he, as he fears, behaved dishonourably to both women? What does the dilemma do to his sense of personal honour?

9.    Why is the real perpetrator of the animal killings never identified? In a Sherlock Holmes story the criminal is always caught and convicted, but Doyle gets no such satisfaction with this real world case. How disturbing is the fact that Edalji is never truly vindicated and never compensated for the injustice he suffered? Does Barnes's fictional enlargement of George Edalji's life act as a kind of compensation?

10. Arthur & George presents a world that seems less evolved than our own in its assumptions about race and human nature, and justice and evidence, as well as in its examples of human innocence and idealism. Does this world seem so remote in time as to be, in a sense, unbelievable? Or might American readers recognise a similar situation in a story like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, or more recent news stories about racial injustice?

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

Ostensibly a novel about the sexual revolution, based around the pursuit of an elusive sexual encounter one summer in Italy, and told from the perspective of a fifty-something male and his twenty-year old alter-ego, this initially seemed an odd choice for our book group.  Beneath the veneer of sexual liberation, however, the novel is also exploring ideas about youth and ageing, and the inevitability of loss.

The late Richard Griffiths is reported to have said, "Everybody my age should be issued with a 2lb fresh salmon. If you see someone young, beautiful and happy, you should slap them as hard as you can with it. When they ask, 'Why did you do that?’, you say, 'Because, you lucky young bastard, you don’t know how fortunate you are.’ And they don’t...” And that, in essence, seems also to be Amis's perspective, though he creates a complex narrative structure and series of transient relationships to make essentially that same point.

Here are the proposed questions for discussion:

1. The title of the novel is based on a quotation by Alexander Herzen: 
   "The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that what the departing world leaves behind it is not an heir but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass."  
   How does the title work in the context of the novel?
2. How sympathetic a protagonist is Keith Nearing?
3. What is the effect of his status as Literature student (and critic and poet)? 
4. 'Nobody better understands the cosmic joke that is humanity.' How far do you agree?  Is this a comedy?
5. What do the settings of London and Italy contribute respectively to the success of the novel?
6. How are the female characters portrayed? Are they archetypal?
7. "Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself," Kingsley Amis complained of his son's early works.  Can the same be said of The Pregnant Widow? How successful is the narrative style and structure? Were you convinced by the narrative voice? 
8. What does the novel have to say about feminism?
9. Amis originally conceived The Pregnant Widow as a novel about the sexual revolution and about Islam. How important are the Muslim characters?

Happy reading!

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I'm looking forward to Monday's meeting in Crawley to discuss The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, primarily because I didn't really get much sense of an ending from it.  A thoroughly compelling narrator, though.   Here are the discussion questions:

1.       What does the title mean?

2.       The novel opens with a handful of water-related images. What is the significance of each? How does Barnes use water as a metaphor?

3.       The phrase "Eros and Thanatos," or sex and death, comes up repeatedly in the novel. What did you take it to mean?

4.       At school, Adrian says, "we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us" (p. 13). How does this apply to Tony's narration?

5.       Did Tony love Veronica? How did his weekend with her family change their relationship?

6.       When Mrs. Ford told Tony, "Don't let Veronica get away with too much" (p. 31), what did she mean? Why was this one sentence so important?

7.       Veronica accuses Tony of being cowardly, while Tony considers himself peaceable. Whose assessment is more accurate?

8.       What is the metaphor of the Severn Bore? Why does Tony's recollection of Veronica's presence change?

9.       Why did Tony warn Adrian that Veronica "had suffered damage a long way back?" (p. 46). What made him suspect such a thing? Do you think he truly believed it?

10.    In addition to Adrian's earlier statement about history, Barnes offers other theories: Adrian also says, "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation" (p. 18), and Tony says, "History isn't the lies of the victors... It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated" (p. 61). Which of these competing notions do you think is most accurate? Which did Tony come to believe?

11.    Discuss the character Margaret. What role does she play in Tony's story?

12.    Why does Mrs. Ford make her bequest to Tony, after so many years? And why does Veronica characterize the £500 as "blood money"?

13.    After rereading the letter he sent to Adrian and Veronica, Tony claims to feel remorse. Do you believe him? What do his subsequent actions tell us?

14.    When Veronica refuses to turn over the diary to Tony, why doesn't he give up? Why does he continue to needle her for it?

15.    What is Tony's opinion of himself? Of Adrian? How do both opinions change by the end of the novel?

16.    How does the revelation in the final pages change your understanding of Veronica's actions?

17.    Discuss the closing lines of the novel: "There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest" (p. 163).

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This month's meeting was in Billingshurst.

1. Our narrator goes through a lengthy (and frankly painful) description of the Custom’s House where he finds the actual Scarlet letter cloth and ‘unravels’ the story.  Is this frame device necessary?  Does it make an engaging start to the story?
2. What about the 3^rd person narrator?  How do you feel about him?  Is he self-conscious?  Does he create a tale you can engage with?
3. The text was published in 1850 but is set in Puritanical Boston between 1642 and 1649.  There are some very interesting colonial statements made.  Does this isolate readers outside of the US?
4. The text cannot be divorced from its Puritanical ideology.  Is that ideology so archaic that we can no longer engage with the narrative?
5. As a modern feminist, I have often struggled with this text.  Yet the text is about bringing a man to justice for his actions  (or at least torturing him for refusing to confess…).  Is the struggle again against the very ideology or the double standard through which women are judged?
6. To what extent are the characters merely stock players in a typical narrative format that develops no depth of feeling in the reader?
7. Can the reader feel any sympathy at all for Chillingworth?
8. The moralistic ending is to be expected; is it satisfying for a modern reader?
9. Does moralistic literature still find a place in modern fiction?

2012 Titles

2012 was another triumphant year for the South Down Book Worms.  Thank you to all who suggested titles, contributed to discussion, opened up their homes.  There were some surprise hits alongside a number of Booker prize winners in our eleven titles for the year. My stand out favourite was June's Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, which has made it on to my list of top ten books of all time!  I also really enjoyed Love and Summer in September.

January - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson

February - Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel

March - The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

April - Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen

May - Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

June - Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

July - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

August - SUMMER BREAK - NO MEETING

September - Love and Summer by William Trevor

October - A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

November - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

December - Possession by AS Byatt

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

Meetings have continued...even if the blogposts have not!  This month's meeting takes place in Horsham where we will be discussing Alan Hollinghurst's epic, generation-crossing novel, The Stranger's Child. This seems to me to be a novel about World War I, even though the narrative action spans 1913-2008 and no part is set during the war.

1. What is the significance of the title?
   
   
2. In what ways does World War I cast a shadow over the entire novel? Several characters are said to have had "a bad war". How has the war affected Dudley Valence and Leslie Keeping in particular?
   
   
3. Discuss the narrative structure and the interplay between the different parts of the novel. What important generational changes in English life does the novel trace?
   
   
4. What role does keeping secrets play in the The Stranger's Child? Why do so many characters feel compelled to lead secret lives?
   
   
5. "He was asking for memories, too young himself to know that memories were only memories of memories". In what ways does the novel suggest that memory, of both facts and feelings, is an extremely unreliable method of recovering the truth?
   
   
6. “What do you think, Ralph?" said George. "For or against the egregious grotesqueries of the Victorians?" How are divergent attitudes towards Victorianism, manifest in the discussions of architecture, explored in the novel?
   
   
7. How do English attitudes towards homosexuality change over the period the novel covers, from 1913 to 2008? Is it important that Cecil’s sexuality and the true recipient of his famous poem "Two Acres," be revealed?
   
   
8. The Stranger's Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. What are some of its funniest moments and most amusing observations?
   
   
9. What is the effect of mixing real and fictional characters?
   
   
10. Is Paul a sympathetic character? How does Paul's own secret past shed light on his motivations and tactics as a biographer?
    
    
11. In what ways does A Stranger's Child critique English manners and morals? In what ways might it be said to celebrate them - if at all?
    
    
12. What is Hollinghurst suggesting by bookending his novel with different readings of Tennyson?
    
    
13. What does the novel say about how literary reputations are created, preserved, revised? How does it compare with Possession in this?
    
    
14. Why do you think Hollinghurst ends the novel with Rob's unsuccessful attempt to recover Cecil's letters to Hewitt before they go up in smoke? Is this conclusion satisfying?