SPL Reads!

WOW. On the Thursday of our last meeting, I came into work and had sat down at my desk to check my email and get my bearings, when I received this in my inbox:

Dear Anne,

I saw about a month or more that Avid Readers were going to read Unburnable, and meant to get in touch before to let you know that HarperCollins has some great reading guides they’d be happy to send you, and also thank you for making it a “pick” (especially following Atonement, one of my all-time favorites). But then it was back to school with the kids, etc etc. I went online just now to see when you’ll meet — tomorrow!

Sorry…

But thanks again, I’d love to get feedback on what the group thought — good, bad, and ugly. And if it’s not too late, if the room is suitable for a call-in, I’d be happy to do one.

Best,

Marie-Elena

I was somewhat stunned, but immediately checked with our assistant director to make sure a phone call would be possible, and sent the following response:

Dear Marie-Elena,

Oh wow! Thank you so much for the email! I just got to work, and so I apologize for the late response. We would absolutely LOVE it if you might be able to call us tonight (although I certainly understand if time and the crazy business of life do not permit it). We’ll have a phone in our meeting room. If you’re able to call us around 7:00 Central Time at 479-750-8180, just identify yourself as the author of our book club pick (!!!) and the person working the front desk can transfer you to our room. I would really relish the chance to talk to you about your work, and I’m sure the group would, too! I would also love to hear more about your work in Africa described on your website! Thank you thank you thank you for your email – this absolutely made my morning! (I’m also sorry for the gratuitous exclamation points). If you are unable to call us, I’ll certainly pass the group’s thoughts along as soon as I can.

Once again, thank you,

Anne

Notice how severely my professionalism deteriorated into fan girl worship there… Anyway, I received a response very quickly:

Hey Anne,

So glad I caught you. I’m actually in Antigua, which is for the moment on Eastern, so it’ll be 8 my time (I think!!). That’ll work fine for me. I use a Vonage phone for long distance, which is great when the internet is up as I can make unlimited calls to the US, but it’s got a little glitch at the moment and can only receive calls. So could you call me on instead xxx-xxx-xxxx? And because this is the Third World, a power cut or the internet going down (like it did this morning) would mean you can’t get through, so here is a land line which is the back up: xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Also, just want to make sure that the group would have had a chance to have a full discussion before I get involved, because I find that the author’s presence is very inhibiting for those who want to do an honest critique — and let’s face it, trashing the author and second-guessing her real motives, whether it is really autobiographical even if she says it’s not — those things are the fun part of the discussion, aren’t they? So I would just be there for the burning questions at the end, right? BTW I love exclamation points and I love the photo of you on the blog. Speak soon, Marie-Elena

How can you not love an author who wants to be sure you have adequate time to trash talk her first novel (we couldn’t come up with any trash talk, incidentally)? I sent her another email with a few questions that I had about Unburnable, so that we’d have a starting place:

That sounds great! We’ll give you a call around 7 here, 8 there – that’ll give us a half hour to talk a little bit and figure out what questions we have to ask. I know a few questions I’m likely to ask, just to give you a little warning:

1. Could you talk a little about your experience living and working in West Africa and its relationship to the book? It seemed to me that a disconnect between an individual and his/her cultural heritage was one of the largest central problems presented in Unburnable, and I was wondering how much of your awareness of that difficulty came from personal experience. In the Island Where interview [PDF document], you said “It seemed to me that there had been a big gap in my understanding of myself as an Antiguan and as a Black person, and that seeing the origins of some of our physical, cultural, and spiritual manifestations had begun to close that gap. Not just seeing them, but understanding the original meaning.” That sounded very thematically similar to Lillian returning home in search of herself and her heritage (I’m not accusing you of autobiography, swear!), and I would be interested to know whether you felt a conscious connection to the character through that.

2. The gender issues in Unburnable are fantastically complicated – I’m sure that the Coke bottle scene probably comes up every time you speak to a group, and I was really struck by it, as I’m sure all of your readers are. There are some wonderfully empowered female characters here – Matilda, of course, leading an entire village, is an obvious example. But Iris, too, takes charge of her life in a way that ultimately ruins her. Her confrontation with Cecil goes against all social norms, and while it’s a fairly deranged action, it also demonstrates that Iris fully intends to be master of her own fate. And the rape scene, also, takes a highly sexual violent act and takes it out of the hands of men, placing it in a completely shocking female context. Throughout the book, there are women participating in activities (often violent ones) that we traditionally associate with their male counterparts, and I would like to know if that was an intentional subversive move on your part, showing the reader a really visceral portrait of women who control their own lives, sexuality, vengeance, and ultimately deaths…

3. Which brings me to the end of the book. I’ll admit that right after I read the last sentence, I nearly started screaming. However, after I thought about it a little while, it started growing on me. Then I read your thoughts on the Q and A page, and decided I really liked the ending. I’m personally choosing to believe that she did jump (my right as a reader!), and that the decision was a (albeit grisly) act of self-empowerment. I also got a vague sense that Matilda, Iris, and Lillian were all women too far ahead of their time, possessed of a strength that the worlds in which they lived rejected. And all of them, most obviously Matilda and Lillian, sought death as a means of connecting with something larger and more powerful. This isn’t really a question, I guess I’d just like to know if I’m far off the mark.

4. A silly question from a would-be writer: exactly how satisfying does it feel to see your name on a shelf?

5. I nearly laughed out loud when I read on your site that you set out to write a commercially viable book, and wound up with something so completely different. Do you feel like setting the bar at that lower level (sorry for sounding like a lit snob) gave you permission to write the completely unfluffy book that wound up coming out? Do you think that if you had sat down to begin thinking to yourself, “I shall write a layered, complex portrait of the Dominican way of life and infuse it with elements of magical realism, murder mystery, and sexual politics, bringing everything together in a deeply personal yet socially aware fashion” you would have had such startling results?

6. The character of Teddy really interested me – his obsession with acceptance by the Black community, combined with his ladder-climbing and painfully shallow relationships added up into a character that was not particularly likeable at first. However, he wound up emerging as a very sympathetic character, although an occasionally misguided one. What was your goal with his characterization?

7. I’m sure you’ve read the criticism that Lillian herself seemed like a bit of a flat character. I had a funny experience with her – she frustrated me quite a bit until she and Teddy returned home, and it gradually dawned on me that she had been a perfectly written example of textbook post-traumatic shock, and all of a sudden she made perfect sense. I especially liked the ambiguity on the subject of her mental health – was she insane or empowered? I liked that it was never clearly defined as one or the other. This is more of a hats off than a question, I guess.

8. The role of religion in the book – particularly Catholicism. Anything you want to say about it. I know absolutely nothing about Obeah practices, but I have studied a little bit about Voodoo and Santeria. That bizarre ability of Catholicism to blend with polytheistic traditions really fascinates me. So really, anything you would like to share with us.

9. Sex in this book. I was wondering what role you envisioned sex playing – very rarely are there any scenes depicting the traditional flower-petal-laden, discrete-camera-angle scenes of Hollywood. Particularly in Teddy and Lillian’s relationship, the division between love and violence becomes almost completely eradicated (he almost knocks her off a cliff, for god’s sake, and then remembers it as “the **** of his life”). Thoughts?

Ack, ok, I need to go set up. Hopefully something in there will give us a place to start (and I’m sorry it’s getting to you an hour before our meeting…). Once again, thank you so much for doing this – I’ve been looking forward to this all day!

-Anne

Needless to say, I spent all day Thursday bouncing off the walls and perhaps driving my coworkers insane. When the group arrived at 6:30, the day got even better! One of our members had been to Dominica to visit her son, who had worked there with the Peace Corps, and she had brought pictures and souvenirs. She had actually attended a Carnival festival, the Caribbean tradition of which features prominently in Unburnable. It was great to actually see the island and the traditional costumes John describes. For those readers who couldn’t be with us on Thursday, you might look at this Dominican tourism site to get a sense of what a beautiful part of the world this is. There’s also a photo gallery from Carnival 2005. I now fully intend to lobby for an Avid Readers field trip to Dominica after all of this…

We were all itching to talk about Unburnable. The book traces the history of three generations of Caribbean women – Matilda, a suspected witch, hanged for mass murder, her daughter Iris, a beautiful woman undone by her own passion, and finally, Iris’s daughter Lilian, who is returning to the island for the first time to confront her misunderstood heritage and to make peace with a past that has caused deep psychological damage. As a group, we found ourselves most drawn to Matilda and Iris’s narratives, and more than a little perplexed by the ambiguous ending. We spent some time making sure we understood the fate of Matilda’s village and Matilda’s role as magistrate, and we also discussed the importance of familial female relationships in the book.

Then we picked up the phone and called the author! I am now thoroughly convinced that this is the absolute best way to run a book club. Marie-Elena John was a warm, funny, gracious phone guest, and answered all of our questions at length. The issue of autobiography has come up several times with Unburnable in the press, and John assures us that the book is a complete work of fiction.

However, she did give us some insight into the book’s relationship to her life, describing elements from real life situations that had been reworked into the fictional events of her novel. She made an important distinction between writing autobiography and drawing from life to enrich her fictional universe. She also spoke about her original intentions for the book, which were much wider than the finished product. I was fascinated to learn that the original draft had included scenes of Lillian’s study-abroad program in Africa. African tradition plays a large role in the action and setting of Unburnable, as does the importance of a sense of one’s heritage. Though all of the Africa scenes were later cut from the book, we could definitely understand how they nevertheless were able to inform the rest of the novel with a sense of original tradition and cultural legacy.

We also discussed one of the most panic-inducing aspects of writing – what happens when your mother reads your work! (Mom, are you out there?). Marie-Elena gave us a very funny (and affectionate) account of her experience in this field. This led to a discussion of what it was like to write from a different perspective, particularly in relation to the sensitive subject of race. She acknowledged that as a West Indian, she found herself somewhat restricted from writing openly about the African-American community, even though it was a community that she had lived and participated in for quite some time. She also discussed the difficulties writing from those with a cultural perspective of race very different from her own, notably in the character of Lillian’s aunt and her perceptions of African-American culture.

Marie-Elena John also gave us a sneak peak into her new novel, which we’re all eager to read. It will be set in Africa, and I don’t want to give away details without the author’s explicit permission, but it sounds very exciting!

Overall, it was a wonderful meeting, and we are extremely grateful to Marie-Elena for speaking with us and for being so gracious and friendly. I very sincerely hope that we’ll be able to arrange similar events in the future, and thanks to everyone for coming! If you haven’t had the chance to read Unburnable, we highly recommend that you do so. If the culture of the Caribbean piqued your interest, you might also try Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Marie-Elena John’s Web Site

Text of New York Times Article About Women’s Inheritance Rights in Africa

Next month on November the 1st, we’ll be discussing Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and the inimitable Brad Carter will be replacing me as your organizer and blogger. To get a head start, take a look at this reading guide from readinggroupguides.com. You may also be interested in a little more circus history, or this list of circus-related articles from historybuff.com. Happy reading!