Light Between Oceans ~ Review

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS
By M. L. Stedman
345 pages. Scribner. $25.

Tom is the lighthouse keeper on a tiny chunk of rock, nearly 100 miles off the Australian coast. Population: Tom and his wife, Isabel. The year is 1926. She’s grieving over a recent stillbirth that followed two miscarriages when they discover a healthy newborn who’s just washed up on shore in a boat; other things onboard include a woman’s sweater and a dead body the couple presume to be the father. While Isabel sees the hand of God at work, readers might notice instead the creak of plot gear. But just past this debut novel’s initial clunkiness lies an all-too-believable snarl of human emotion. Because, of course, they keep the baby. And, of course, the child’s mother is not dead. Ms. Stedman builds a solid case for all sides — or, at least, makes everyone’s motives understandable. She does occasionally dip into the melodrama pot; Isabel at one point screams, “Don’t take my baby away!” It’s a moving tale, regardless. Prepare to weep. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/books/new-books-by-m-l-stedman-yvvette-edwards-and-more.html?_r=0 

The Light Between Oceans’ is an absorbing, mesmerizing indie choice 

Independent booksellers love to promote new authors when they deliver a good story. And M.L. Stedman has written just the kind of book that we love to start a buzz about.

Stedman, born and raised in Australia, has indeed delivered a good story, full of great character development and suspense. Many independent booksellers across the country feel the same way and have voiced their support for the book, causing Indiebound to pick “The Light Between Oceans” as its No. 1 choice for August. Indiebound is a program developed by the American Booksellers Association to promote independent businesses of all kinds.

They produce a nice pamphlet every month with the newest book picks from indies across the nation. You can pick up those pamphlets at our store. We have a round table in the middle of the store that always sports the latest indiebound choices. You can also go to to www.indiebound.org to see the current list, read interesting book news and even become a part of the indiebound community.

“The Light Between Oceans” is the touching story of a young man, certainly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder before post-traumatic stress disorder had a name. Tom has been on the Western Front and has been forever changed by the experience. When he returns to Australia, he takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a very remote island off the western coast. He finds himself particularly suited to the isolated life there. He enjoys the daily record keeping and maintenance of equipment that gives his life structure while giving him a sense of fulfillment in knowing he is doing his job so that others will stay safe.

The only people Tom ever sees are the men who bring supplies once per season and those friends he visits every other year when he has shore leave. When he meets a spirited young woman, Isabel, on one of those leaves, he soon marries her and takes her to Janus. She is a delightful companion and lover, thriving on making a home for them. She roams about naming all the coves and crannys, dreaming of the day when children’s voices would be heard on the island.

Though she yearns for a child, she suffers the trauma of two miscarriages and a stillbirth over several years with no one but Tom there to help her. The experiences she has cause a different kind of PTSD for her. Grandually, both Tom and Isabel become somewhat desperate people, growing sad and distant from each other. When a “miracle” finally occurs and a child comes into their lives, they must justify Lucy’s existence, bury some secrets and face the consequences, which are very far-reaching.

• “The Light Between Oceans” by M.L. Stedman will be published in August by Scribner. It retails for $25.

• Susan Richmond owns Inklings Bookshop. She and other Inklings staffers review books in this space each month.

http://www.yakimaherald.com/photosandvideos/latestphotos/102413-8/indiebound-book-oceans-tom-booksellers-independent-stedman-august-australia-become 

 

Light Between Oceans ~ Readers' Guide

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the novel’s title, The Light Between Oceans. Why do you think the author selected this title? What do you visualize when you hear or read The Light Between Oceans?

2. The novel is rich with detailed descriptions of the ocean, the sky, and the wild landscape of Janus Rock. Is there a particular passage or scene that stood out to you? What role does the natural world play in Tom and Isabel’s life?

3. “The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm—the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.” (page 110) Discuss the impact of living in seclusion on both Tom and Isabel. Why do you think each of them is drawn to live on Janus Rock? Do you think, in the moments when we are unobserved, we are different people?

4. When Isabel tries to get Tom to open up about his family, he responds: “I’ll tell you if you really want. It’s just I’d rather not. Sometimes it’s good to leave the past in the past.”(pages 44-45) Do you think it is possible to leave the past in the past? What do you think of Tom’s opinion that it’s a “pity” that we’re a product of our family’s past? What does this tell you about his character? Discuss the impact of family history on Tom, Isabel, Hannah, and Frank.

5. Tom is haunted by what he witnessed—and what he did—during his enlistment in World War I. The narrator reflects that he’s not “one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels….But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then.” (page 10) How do you think Tom’s experiences as a soldier impact his decisions throughout the novel? What other outside elements, like the war, influences the narrative?

6. Janus Rock is named for Janus, the Roman God of doorways, “always looking both ways, torn between two ways of seeing things.” (page 65) How does this knowledge impact your reading of The Light Between Oceans? Who is “torn between two ways of seeing things”?

7. Discuss the theme of opposites in The Light Between Oceans—darkness and light; safety and danger; land and water; truth and lies. How do these opposing forces shape your reading?

8. When Isabel brings Tom the map of Janus, complete with new names for all the locations on the island, Tom has an interesting reaction: “Janus did not belong to him: he belonged to it, like he’d heard the natives thought of the land. His job was just to take care of it.” (page 62) Discuss the difference in Tom’s point of view compared to Isabel’s. Does this difference in opinion foreshadow future events? How does it relate to their conflicting opinions of what to do with Lucy?

9. Did you sense that the silver rattle might turn out to play a pivotal role in the story?

10. Tom believes that rules are vital, that they are what keep a man from becoming a savage. Do you agree with him?

11. Which characters won your sympathy and why? Did this change over the course of the novel? Did your notion of what was best or right shift in the course of your reading?

12. Tom and Isabel’s deception impacts the lives of everyone around them. What did you think of the other characters’ reactions when they discover the truth about Lucy? Consider Hannah, Gwen, Septimus, Isabel’s parents, Ralph, Bluey.

13. Discuss Hannah’s reunion with Grace. Do you think she had fair expectations? Did you agree with Dr. Sumpton’s advice to Hannah about completely cutting Lucy off from Isabel and Tom?

14. M.L. Stedman makes it clear that there is no one perfect answer to the question of who should raise Grace/Lucy. She seems to undermine all notions of absolutes. It is clear that she will not dismiss all Germans as evil either. There is Hannah’s husband, ripe for persecution, and yet he is utterly innocent. Discuss the places in the novel where easy certainty turns out to be wrong.

15. Were you surprised by Isabel’s final decision to admit her role in the choice to keep Lucy—freeing Tom, but losing her child forever? Why or why not? What would you have done?

16. What did you think of the conclusion of the novel? What emotions did you feel at the story’s end? Did it turn out as you expected? Were you satisfied?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

source: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8859-light-between-oceans-stedman?start=3

Ru - Reading Group Guide

In Brief

These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation about Ru, an autobiographical novel based on the author’s real-life experience as a Vietnamese émigré and how she found both her way—and her voice—after immigrating to Quebec.

Details

For discussion

1.  The novel’s title, Ru, has different meanings in both the author’s native and adoptive languages: in Vietnamese, ru is a lullaby; in French, a stream. How do these two different meanings play out during the course of the book?
2. Thúy has chosen to tell her story in short vignettes, often linked by subject rather than chronology. What do you think her reasoning might be for choosing this form over a more traditional narrative arc?
3. The narrator reveals in the first pages of Ru that her name is a variation of her mother’s, that she was supposed to be her mother’s extension and sequel, but that this role ended when she was ten years old (2). Why and how does her relationship to her mother change?
4. The narrator describes herself in childhood as being her cousin Sao Mai’s “shadow” (18). What does she mean? What are some of the other times in her life when she feels like a shadow?
5. About the Communist child inspectors living in her family’s home, the narrator writes: “We no longer knew if they were enemies or victims, if we loved or hated them, if we feared or pitied them. And they no longer knew if they had freed us from the Americans, or, on the contrary, if we had freed them from the jungle of Vietnam” (32). How does the narrator’s up-is-down-and-down-is-up war experience continue to color her views toward her homeland and its people throughout the course of her life?
6. Constant movement is one of Ru’s themes. At one point, the narrator writes, “I never leave a place with more than one suitcase . . . Nothing else can become truly mine” (100). Why do you think she believes this? Do you think it is true for her?
7. In, Vietnamese, the narrator tells us, there are different words for different ways of loving (96). But the narrator says it is her children who define for her what it means simply “to love” (102).  How do you think her love for her children is different from what she feels for her parents, relatives, or lovers?
8. The narrator describes an incident at restaurant school in Hanoi when a waiter reminded her that she “no longer had the right to declare that [she] was Vietnamese because [she] no longer had their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears” (78). The narrator seems to believe he was right; do you?
9. Music appears throughout the book in various forms and situations: the music the narrator’s father plays on the piano to corrupt the child inspectors; the Fame theme song Johanne teaches her to sing; the music her middle-aged mother dances to in her weekly dance classes; the melodies the strolling merchants sing while advertising their basket wares. What is music’s importance in Ru?
10. The American Dream plays an integral role in the narrator’s life and her search for meaning, and she references it often during the novel. What is her version of the American Dream? Do you think she attains it?
11. The narrator speaks of the Vietnamese women permanently hunched by the weight of their grief (39). To what extent do you think she identifies with those women ?
12. Many aspects of this novel are clearly autobiographical, but the author classifies it as fiction. Why do you think Thúy chose to write the book she did, rather than a straight memoir?

Suggested reading 
Rhea Tregebov, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell; Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation; Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Anthony Shadid, House of Stone; William Saroyan, My Name Is Aram; Robert Trando, Letters of a Vietnamese Émigré; John Bul Dau, God Grew Tired of Us; Lac Su, I Love You’s Are for White People; Sopheap Ly, M.D., No Dream Beyond My Reach; Chanrithy Him, When Broken Glass Floats; Juliet Lac, Blossoms on the Wind; Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace; Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves of Heaven

SOURCE: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ru-9781608198986/

Reviews on Ru, by Kim Thuy

National Post: HERE

Globe & Mail: HERE

The Independent (UK): HERE

Little Bee: do you like these questions better?

From Shmoop:

Little Bee (The Other Hand) Questions

1. Would you machete-chop off one of your fingers if you were in Sarah or Andrew's place? Why or why not?
2. Do you know anyone who has experienced anything like Little Bee's flight to a new place? If so, how does that experience compare with Little Bee's? If not, has reading Little Bee changed your perspective in any way?
3. What political arguments does the novel make?
4. Which character's political opinions are most or least like your own?
5. Why does Little Bee wish she was money?
6. Have you ever experienced detention (yes, school detention counts)? If so, did the experience change you, or not? How does detention change Little Bee?
7. Why does Little Bee want to prove to the readers "that the color of [her] life is gray" (1.36)? Does she manage to prove it?
8. Do you think Little Bee will ever stop imagining ways to kill herself?
9. Is Little Bee a reliable narrator? Is Sarah? What would the story look like if Charlie were the one narrating?
10. Why do readers react so strongly to Sarah? Why don't some readers like her very much? How do you feel about her?
11. Is this novel destined to be a classic, or not? Why?
12. What do you think happens to the characters at the end of the novel? Do you like that the ending is open, or wish the loose ends were more neatly tied up?

Little Bee: discussion questions

Questions for Discussion

1. “Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive” (p. 9). For Little Bee and other asylum seekers, the story of their life thus far is often all they have. What happens to the characters that carry their stories with them, both physically and mentally? What happens when we try to forget our past? How much control over their own stories do the characters in the book seem to have?

2. Little Bee tells the reader, “We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived” (p. 9). Which characters in the story are left with physical scars? Emotional scars? Do they embrace them as beautiful? Do you have any scars you’ve come to embrace? Did you feel more connected to Little Bee as a narrator after this pact?

3. Little Bee strives to learn the Queen’s English in order to survive in the detention center. How does her grasp of the language compare with Charlie’s? How does the way each of these two characters handle the English language help to characterize them?

4. How did it affect your reading experience to have two narrators? Did you trust one woman more than the other? Did you prefer the voice of one above the other?

5. Little Bee credits a small bottle of nail polish for “saving her life” while she was in the detention center (p. 7). Is there any object or act that helps you feel alive and beautiful, even when everything else seems to be falling apart?

6. Of the English language Little Bee says, “Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air” (p. 12). What do you think she means by this? Can you think of any examples of English words that defend themselves? Why is language so important to Little Bee?

7. Little Bee says of horror films, “Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it” (p. 45). Do you agree? Was reading this novel in any way a dose of horror for you? How did it help you reflect on the presence or lack of horror in your own life?

8. Little Bee figures out the best way to kill herself in any given situation, just in case “the men come suddenly.” How do these plans help Little Bee reclaim some power? Were you disturbed by this, or were you able to find the humor in some of the scenarios she imagines?

9. What does Udo changing her name to Little Bee symbolize for you? How does her new name offer her protection? Do you think the name suits her?

10. “To have an affair, I began to realize, was a relatively minor transgression. But to really escape from Andrew, to really become myself, I had to go the whole way and fall in love” (p. 161-162). Do you agree with Sarah that an affair is a minor transgression? How did falling in love with someone else help Sarah become herself? What role did Andrew play in perpetuating Sarah’s extramarital affair?

11. When Little Bee finds that Andrew has hanged himself she thinks, “Of course I must save him, whatever it costs me, because he is a human being.” And then she thinks, “Of course I must save myself, because I am a human being too” (p. 194). How do the characters in the story decide when to put themselves first and when to offer charity? Is one human life ever more valuable than another? What if one of the lives in question is your own?

From the author's website . . .

Q & A from the author. I think this is really worth reading. Click HERE

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