– Racial prejudice is a major theme running through the novel. How do the white Americans view the Japanese and what is the basis for their views? How do the Japanese-Americans view the white islanders? Hostile attitudes towards the Japanese have been exacerbated by the war and yet there are many Germans, including Carl, who continue to be accepted in the community. Why do you think the two races are treated differently?
– On San Piedro ‘the silent-toiling, autonomous gill-netter became the collective image of the good man’ (page 33). Carl
epitomises these qualities but to what extent can they also be applied to Kabuo? Which other ‘good’ men in the book do not fit this ‘collective image’?
– How similar are Carl and Kabuo? Could they be described as friends, enemies or something else? What difference has the war made to their lives and to their feelings for each other? How have other characters in the book been changed by their experiences during the war?
– On page 179 Hatsue thinks of herself as ‘she was of this place and she was not of this place’. What conflicts do Hatsue and Kabuo face as second-generation immigrants?
– Ishmael lives his life at a distance from everyone else on San Piedro. How different is he from the other islanders? What are the factors that have brought about his solitude?
– Ishmael has it in his power to change the course of the trial for some time before he chooses to do so. Why does he finally hand over Philip Milholland’s notes? Why has he held back for so long?
– Remembering his father, Ishmael calls to mind Arthur’s description of the way in which people who lived on San Piedro ‘held their breath and walked with care, and this made them who they were inside, constricted and small, good neighbours’ (page 385). What has led the people of San Piedro to behave in this way? How well does this description
fit the principal characters in the book? Why do you think Guterson chose to set the novel on an island?
– The novel ends with Ishmael coming to an understanding that ‘accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart’ (page 404). What do you understand by this statement? To what extent do you agree with it?
The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind
East of the Mountains
Our Lady of the Forest
The Other
Island Madness
by Tim Binding
A Passage to India
by E. M. Forster
Stones From the River
by Ursula Hegi
The Raven
by Peter Landesman
Remembering Babylon
by David Malouf
The Bird Artist
by Howard Norman
Children’s book
Zlateh the Goat and other Stories,
by Isaac Bashevis Singer. There’s an edition that came out in 1966 with pictures by Maurice Sendak, and these pictures make a wonderful addition to the stories, of which there are seven. There are the elders wrinkling their foreheads and tugging at their beards for seven days and nights, trying to make out the meaning of the incidents described in ‘The First Shlemiel’. And there is the moment in the title story when Zlateh says her one word, ‘Maaaa’, and means, ‘We must accept all that God gives us – heat, cold, hunger, satisfaction, light, darkness.’ In his foreword, Singer tells us that ‘in stories time does not vanish’. These stories bear that out.
Classic
Leo Tolstoy’s
The Death of Ivan Ilych,
which is so spare and cleanly written, and so haunting, that I read it regularly as an antidote to myself. This is the sort of book where on every page you think, ‘This is the truth, this cannot be turned away from, this is what I feel, this is life.’ It hurts to read it, but on the other hand, it’s undeniably and exquisitely beautiful.
Contemporary book
Margaret Atwood’s
The Blind Assassin,
for its fine but unpretentious prose, its narrative complexity, and its people. I love both the mood and the sensibility of this book. The novel within the novel within the novel pushed ‘reality’ aside for me, except that I couldn’t help imagining, on every page, how ecstatic Atwood must have felt writing them.
Top 10
Complete Poems of Robert Frost
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
translated by Garma C. C. Chang
The Death of Ivan Ilych
by Leo Tolstoy
A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
by Shantideva
100 Poems from the Chinese
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Metamorphoses
by Ovid
Seven Collected Works
by Basho
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
by C. G. Jung
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
The Dead
by James Joyce
Also available by David Guterson
When he is diagnosed as having terminal cancer, Ben Givens leaves his home in Seattle and heads east with his Winchester and hunting dogs in tow, not intending to return. It is to be a final journey past snow-covered mountains to a place of canyons and orchards on the verge of the Columbia River, where he had entered the world and has decided to now leave it. But what transpires is anything but the journey he anticipates.
David Guterson’s celebrated and involving prose unravels the mysteries and reveals the power of the human spirit even as it ebbs, in this moving drama set against an unforgettable landscape.
‘Suffused with moments of sorrowful beauty: that some simple joy lies therein, and that it is ultimately life-affirming, is part of its own mystery’
The Times
‘East of the Mountains,
like
Snow Falling on Cedars,
is characterised by a rhapsodic evocation of place, firmly grounded in Guterson’s love of his native landscape’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A lyrical account of love, both physical and spiritual’
Marie Claire
ISBN: 978 0 7475 4508 8 / Paperback / £6.99
Seattle, 1972: Neil Countryman and John William Barry, two teenage boys from very different backgrounds, are at the start of an 800m race. Their lives collide for the first time, and so begins an extraordinary friendship.
As they grow older Neil follows the conventional route of the American dream, but the eccentric, fiercely intelligent John William makes radically different choices, dropping out of college and moving deep into the woods. Convinced it is the only way to live without hypocrisy, John William enlists Neil to help him disappear completely, drawing his oldest friend into a web of secrets and agonising responsibility, deceit and tragedy – one that will finally break open with an unexpected, life-altering revelation.
‘Remarkable … a highly significant contribution to American literature’
Giles Foden, author of
The Last King of Scotland
‘Guterson’s books keep getting better … A moving portrait of male friendship’
New York Times
ISBN: 978 0 7475 9620 2 / Paperback/ £7.99
Order your copy:
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