In the Hours of Darkness, by Edna O'Brien

EDNA O’BRIEN, by Glòria Torner

She is one of the most representative contemporary authors in Ireland as a novelist, playwright, children’s and youth literature, memoirist, scriptwriter, poet and short-story writer.

 

BIOGRAPHY

Josephine Edna O’Brien was born in 1930, in Tuamgraney, County Clare, a small rural village in the west of Ireland. The youngest of four children, she grew up in the atmosphere of Irish National Catholicism of the 1940s, marked by an alcoholic father, who was a farmer, and a strict mother in religious practice who considered writing “a path of perdition”.

After finishing primary school in her village, she was educated at the Convent of Sisters of Mercy, a boarding school in Galway.  In her 20s, she went to university in Dublin where she graduated in Pharmacy in 1950 and where she worked briefly as an apothecary. In 1952, against her parents’ wishes, she married the writer Ernest Gebler, with whom she had two children. They settled in London, where O’Brien turned to writing as a full-time occupation. Ten years later, in 1962, she escaped from a loveless marriage and moved to the desolate suburban London where, at least, she felt free to write.

Her life has been divided between England, where she has lived for more than 50 years and where she writes, and Ireland, where her writing comes from and where it endlessly returns, exploring her home country from a more detached perspective.

Edna O’Brien has publicly acknowledged that James Joyce’s works, especially A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, were her main inspiration and led her to devote to literature for the rest of her life.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, written when she was 30, was published in 1961.  It is the history of two girls who live in a backward and repressive country, especially in rural areas of Ireland. They grow up in their strict homes, attend a convent school from which they are expelled and travel to Dublin and London in search of imaginary opportunities, love and sex. This book was considered a scandal in her country and she was labelled an enemy of Ireland. Her family felt humiliated by this book. It was the first instalment of a trilogy, written in autobiographical style, completed with The Lonely Girl, later published as Girl with Green Eyes, and Girls in the Married Bliss. Now, these two books are set in London, and there the protagonists become disillusioned with marriage and men in general.

She has written more than twenty works of fiction where the main themes are Ireland and women. Some of them are: The High Road, Down by the River, In the Forest, The Light of Evening, The Little Red Chairs, and the last one, written in 2019, Girl, which was inspired by the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by members of Boko Haram.

Other notable works include a dramatic work about Virginia Woolf, two important biographies, of James Joyce and Lord Byron, and an autobiographical essay called Mother Ireland.

She also has published nine short story collections where their setting varies, although Ireland appears in several of them. One of them is From Mrs Reinhard and Other Stories, where In the Hours of Darkness is included.

 

 

SUMMARY

The story opens when the protagonist, Lena, a middle-aged divorced woman, is going on her way from London to Cambridge. She is accompanying her son, Iain, who is about to start his university studies. Along the way, she draws a parallelism between her memories of her loneliness feeling of a day in the rural land surrounding Sydney in Australia, where she had been before, and this present situation. She describes the English landscape with these words: “devoid of houses and tillage”, “depopulated land”.

When they are already approaching Cambridge, Iain observes the university complex with optimism, but Lena, who is imagining the general atmosphere of study, is intrigued and frightened. She would like to be in her hotel bedroom reading the novels of Jane Austen, her favourite writer. She reflects on the future that awaits her: she will remain alone because Iain is the youngest child, the last one who lived with her. The pessimism and the loneliness for her future begins now, with these words, “bereft of her children”.

Arriving at the hotel in Cambridge, Lena observes things she didn’t expect: the hotel is near to a car park, ruined, with a lot of bars and a general confusion and noise, a “big ramshackle place”. When the porter, who takes Lena to her room, loses his way, she gets dismayed.  She also dislikes her single room because it isn’t a familiar looking room and the furnishing represents everything she hates. At that moment, she would like to be at home, and she pronounces the sentence “Bad place to die”.

Then, wanting a cup of tea, Lena goes to the lobby where there are other guests. Her new impression is more negative than the previous ones. There is a lot of confusion in the lobby, full of shopping bags that prevent a fluid passage. 

Later, in the College, she thinks she is watching a scene not of academic life, but of a commercial life, and the people there don’t look like scholars or academics, they look like salesmen or tradesmen. After a while, Lena, her son, a young professor, two first course students and their host meet to have dinner. Lena says the meat is “lovely”, even though it is not true, and all the dinner is not very successful. The conversation turns to a professor with peculiar and strange habits, or about the reasons why the students are expelled before the end of the course; but Lena, however, is not listening because she is concentrated on the beauty of the evening outside. Although the dinner has started early, their host is the first to leave. Then Lena goes to the host’s bedroom, where she has left her coat before. There he starts talking about the reasons why he has never married. She gets frightened when she looks at a violent image: a painting of a wolf with a man’s eyes hanging on the wall.  At that moment, she impulsively kisses the host.

After dinner, Lena and her son stay for a while outside, walking on the street. They part at her hotel, where Lena says good night to Iain. They decide to visit the town the following morning because they know the time to separate is approaching.

This first descriptive part of the story, the adventure of moving house, has become a desolate experience with a dark atmosphere. She has imagined a better introduction for her son, but now everything seems to work against her, and this second part will be like a nightmare.

Lena goes to her room, but instead of the quiet room she has booked, she begins to hear loud noises and discovers there is a party going on. She leaves her hotel to find a place to sleep in her son’s, but when she gets to the College, she sees a young man wearing a small motorcyclist’s leather jacket coming towards her; at first, she doesn’t recognize him, but then she realizes that he is Iain; he’s going “in search of adventure”. They talk and joke for a time, and they say good night again.

She goes back to her noisy hotel, and the manager asks her if she would like another hotel; she decides to move to another one, but this second new hotel is worse than the first one. She finds the porter with an aggressive Dalmatian dog; he leads her to a room where another woman is sleeping, and both are annoyed by the mistake. At last, she arrives to an empty room very similar to the one she has just left.  It’s impossible for Lena to relax and sleep, although she decides to take sleeping pills. Waiting till morning in this room, she spots a notice above the mirror with an amusing comment, and, after that, she sits in a chair and waits for a moment. Finally, she decides to spend the night in the armchair.

Curious and surrealist ending of the story!

 

Two remarks

The importance of the title: “Darkness” means in a literal level “at night”, but in a symbolic level it means “difficult period”. There are also some symbolic images like “the wolf with a man’s eyes”, “a drunken woman holding up a broken silver shoe”, or “the Dalmatian dog”.  

As the story is written in autobiographical style and the narrator uses the Lena’s point of view along all the story, the events and feelings of past, the feelings and facts of present and the thoughts of future of Lena are present all around the story.

 

QUESTIONS

-Why does the narrator think of Jane Austen?

-The narrator feels sad because she’s leaving her son at the University. Do you think

her son feels the same?

-When you travel, what do you prefer, renting an apartment or staying in a hotel? Tell us your reasons why.

-Did you ever have a full English breakfast? How did you like it?

-How would you like to be greeted in a new place, as for instance, job, school, club…?

-In your view, why did the narrator kiss the College host?

-Did you have a bad experience with pranks at school / work? In your opinion, do they have to be forbidden?

-What are the advantages of studying in a boarding school?

-What do you need to sleep comfortably? What do you do if you can’t sleep? Do you take any pills?

-What is the relation between the title and the story?

 

VOCABULARY

tillage, tawny, bleached, predicament, bereft, props, toddler, lobby, ramshackle, buxom, spatters, spurned, china, freshmen, sorted ... out, johns, touch and go, cockerel, seed, sherbet, grouse, tackle, game, demurred, sprouts, raspberry chantilly, frayed paisley, cruise, forborne, knit up the ravelled, laced, rusticated 

Writers talk about Edna O'Brien 

The Little Governess, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY 

This story deals with the naivety of a young woman and the lechery of a dirty old man who makes profit of her inexperience.

The protagonist, who has no name and so thus her innocence is highlighted, is a just graduated governess who travels from a British town to Munich to work as a tutor for a German family. She has never been abroad and, because of her ingenuousness, we can suppose she has neither been out nor away very often, and, as in the story there isn’t any mention of her family, we can think she has to be an orphan or an illegitimate daughter who has been raised in an institution and then sent to a boarding school, a case that wasn’t unusual in Great Britain in the 19^th century and at the beginning of the 20^th century.

The lady from the Governess Bureau who has found her a position in Augsburg, near Munich, gives her a lot of cautions to survive from all the dangers she is going to encounter during her trip. Perhaps this is the reason why the girl is afraid of everything and everybody. She is so afraid that she tends to behave clumsily to people she suspects they want to swindle or take advantage of her; but then, these people who have to serve her are even ruder.

On the ferry which crosses the English Channel, she accommodates in the cabin for women only and there she feels safe and happy. But when she arrives in France and has to take the train, the porter, or the station master, treats the poor girl very coarsely, and, when she doesn’t want to give him the tip, or pay the price he asks for, he takes his revenge leading a man to her carriage for Ladies Only and even stripping off the restrictive sign that would have protected her from male company.

However, the man in her carriage is old, extremely old, she believes; but he seems a very polite and respectable gentleman from Germany; we even know he has been a civil servant, and eventually our governess imagines that a man like him could have been her grandfather.

The little governess destination is a hotel in Munich where her employer, a wife’s doctor, is going to pick her up at six in the evening, and, as the train is arriving in the morning, the kind old man suggests her that would be interesting for her to pay a visit to the beautiful city, and he offers her to be her cicerone. The young woman has some doubts, but eventually accepts.

At the hotel, the girl again behaves clumsily, this time with the waiter, when she doesn’t want to tip him. Moreover, this waiter suspects there is an illicit relationship between her and the old man.

So the girl and the old man go round Munich to see the sights. The man is perhaps a little bit too attentive because he buys her some sausages, pays for her lunch, offers his umbrella and his arm when it’s raining…

When it’s time (and even late) to go back to the hotel to meet her employer, the old man insists her to show his little flat, telling her that she doesn’t have to worry because there is a housekeeper. But when she goes in, there’s nobody in his bachelor’s house; there he offers her some wine and asks her to give him a kiss; and, as she denies it, he assaults her and tries to steal a kiss in the mouth, and really he gets it. The girl defends herself, gets free and runs away from the flat. Now she has discovered the old man’s true nature.

In the street, she asks a policeman for a tram to the station, where her hotel is, but she doesn’t say anything about the assault. On the tram, although everybody can see she is in trouble, nobody offers to help her. In the end, she gets to the hotel and asks for the lady that had to come to pick her up. But the girl has arrived too late, and the lady, being tired of waiting, has gone away.

And now the waiter has had his revenge, because he has told the lady that the girl had gone with a suspicious man. Moreover, he doesn’t tell the girl if the woman is going to come back to pick her up the next day, so the governess is in a big trouble: she doesn’t know if the lady is going to keep the position for her. What is she going to do now?

 

As you can see, this story is very different from the others we have read by Katherine Mansfield: there is a continuum and a crescendo in the narrative, and we foresee that a disgrace is going to fall down upon the girl. We can see the famous cliché about appearances being deceptive. We can also find a kind of morality in the story: don’t trust anybody because they can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In fact, this story is a Mansfield version of the Red Riding Hood, the famous tale for children. However, the primitive tale ended badly, like Mansfield’s, very differently from the modern versions whose intention is entertaining children without frightening them. So, the question will be: what kind of truths must we tell our children: the real cruel ones or the sweet and perhaps false ones?

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you agree with people who don’t want to take their children to a public school? Do you think it’s better a public education than a private one?

-“It’s better to mistrust people at first sight than to trust them.” Is it your opinion too? Why?

-Do you have a point of view about these “ladies’ compartments”? Do you think they are necessary to protect women?

-The way she treated the porter (and the waiter at the hotel), was it a bit haughty?

-Are her fears for real, or only fancies of an inexpert woman?

-“Most old men were so horrid.” According to you, is this most young people’s opinion?

-When and why does she start to trust the old man?

-“She felt she had known him for years.” When do you say this about a new acquittance?

-“His hand shook, and the wine spilled over the tray.” What happened exactly to the old man in his flat?

-Why the tram was “full of old men with twitching knees”, according to what the little governess saw?

-Is this a moral story? What is its morality?

 

VOCABULARY

porter, rub up, tucked up, pink-sprigged, pounced, cinders, flicking, spick and span, doddery, tangerines, pouted, dimpled, attar, cupped, swooped 

AUDIOBOOK

REVIEW

ANALYSIS

Little Red Riding Hood, by Roald Dahl

Freeway (a cinema version of the tale)

Susanna and the Elders

Feuille d'Album, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Núria Lecina

The title is the same as Chopin’s musical composition that remembers love in spring, when new flowers and leaves begin to grown. This piece was dedicated to the countess Szeremtieff.
The text is narrated in the third person by an unknown narrator. In some moments, another narrator takes part with some question or comment. There are a lot of changes in the narration. The text it’s full of descriptions of the main character, other people and places or atmosphere.

Ian is the main character. He is a young painter who lives alone in Paris, in a typical French building in a top flat in front of Senna’s River. The description that Katherine writes shows us different aspects of the boy, sometimes contradictory.

We read that at first glance he seems an interesting man, elegant, clever and handsome. In spite of that, we read that he also is an impossible man, unbearably heavy and especially shy, very shy. He has difficulties to achieve a normal social relationship, and his relationships with women who are interested in him always end badly. Ian doesn’t answer to the kindnesses of these women. He hides inside his shell, like a tortoise. He closes and disappears.

He lives in his own world; he has an introvert life with his own routines. He is excessively tidy with home things. He thinks about his economy and the way to organize his savings. All in his life has to follow some pattern to be right. For instance, in front of his bed, there is a notice with this advice: GET UP AT ONCE.

One afternoon he was in the window having a snack when he saw a girl in the building across the way in front of him. The girl went out to the balcony with a flower’s pot. She was a bit odd in her clothes and maybe in the way she spoke to another person. He didn’t know who spoke to her. Perhaps somebody she lived with?

At this moment Ian understood that she was the only person he really wanted to meet. She appeared to be the same age as him. He fell in love with her just at that moment. He began to imagine things about her life and also how his life would be like with her. But the girl did not notice the presence of someone watching her. She carried on his routines.

From this day, he felt a change in his life: he had a challenge and this was to get as fast as he could a new pattern of behaviour to order his routines and actions: NOT TO LOOK AT HER AND NOT TO THINK ABOUT HER UNTIL THE PAINTING IS FINISHED.

Ian wanted to meet the girl, but he hadn’t any idea of what to do. He didn’t have experience in this matter. His shyness drowned him. Every day he observed the girl, every time he had more and more desire to meet her. One day he discovered that every Thursday she went out with a basket, probably shopping. One Thursday, when the girl left home, Ian decided to act. He went down to the street and followed her. He saw more and more clearly that they were soulmates.

She seemed lonely, serious. Then he saw the opportunity. She entered a shop and bought an egg, only one. The same that he would have chosen. When the girl came out, he went into the store and bought the same. Quickly he followed her, and when she arrived to her building and entered the lobby, he went in behind her and said:

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I think you dropped this”, and he showed her the egg.

And he handed her his own egg!!!

That scene seems taken from a basic manual to begin relationships. Maybe the object isn’t the most appropriate, but I hope everything will work very well with them.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

As in Chopin’s composition, Ian finds love, and it appears suddenly, like leaves (feuilles) and flowers in Spring. In this short story, Katherine Mansfield presents the awakening of the love in a young man. One man that, in spite of his difficulty with relationships, has the same emotions and feelings as the other people.

In my opinion, Ian suffers some dysfunction in social abilities. He constantly needs rules for his actions, he always needs order around him. It seems he is afraid in front of new situations; this is, from my point of view, the reason why he doesn’t answer people and hides like a tortoise. Maybe he suffers from some minor autistic disorder.

QUESTIONS

-Why does he say “you nearly screamed” when the boy was in your studio?

-Who was the person “who started to give him a mother’s tender care”?

-When do you know that someone is an artist?

-What kind of pictures do you imagine Ian French painted?

-How do you imagine the family’s girl and the girl’s character?

-Why did he give her an egg at the end of the story? What does the egg symbolize?

-What is the meaning of the title?

 

VOCABULARY

rousing, stony, rag-time, Broken Doll, fishy, ladling, booths, awning, still life, spangle, peppered, daffodils, draper's, dairy

 ANALYSIS

ANOTHER ANALYSIS

MEANING OF THE TITLE

Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK 

SUMMARY, by Paquita Gómez

When the cold arrives and the new Season starts, Miss Brill usually goes out every Sunday evening to listen to the band playing songs and to see the performance they usually make. This is her pleasure routine for every week at the same time.

But last Sunday, she decided to take her appreciated fur and put it around her neck.

It is a treasure for her, and she keeps it in a box when she doesn’t use it.

She has some feelings about it. For this reason, she takes it on her lap and strokes it.

When she is out, sitting and watching the band, she is also looking the people around her she notices the clothes they are wearing and, if they are talking, she pretends to listen to the music, but she normally wants to guess the conversation and the lives of the people.

Miss Brill always goes alone. However, she would like to talk to people who are next to her, but in this case, they don’t look forward to talk. She feels exciting contemplating people and imagining about them.

Some Sundays there is a surprise waiting for her when she comes back home, but today she isn’t going to have the usual treat.

She lives in a dark room like a cupboard.
As usual, she puts the fur into the box without looking inside. But suddenly, she thought she heard something crying.

QUESTIONS

What is exactly a fur? What do you think about using animal fur for clothes?

Do you like observing people passing by? Do you have a personal story about it?

What kind of people sat down there to listen to the band?

What do you think their “special seat” was?

Did you read aloud stories for your children? Can you tell us one? Have you ever read aloud for other people?

How does the narrator inform us about what was the time in the story?

On page 227, at the beginning, “A beautiful woman came along and dropped her bunch of flowers […] if they’d been poisoned”. Can you imagine and tell us the story behind these sentences?

At the end, why does the writer say “something was crying” instead of “she was crying”?

 

VOCABULARY

conductor, rooster, "flutey", staggerer, paired, stiff, flicked ... away, pattered, part, yacht, mug, whiting, treat, dashing, necklet

Wikipedia

The Canary, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK

ANOTHER AUDIOBOOK (with text)

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

In this very short story, a woman explains she has had a canary for some time, at home, a canary that sang in an incredibly beautiful way. She could not describe enough how lovely the bird’s songs were, she assumed that those bird’s sounds were like full songs.
Even the passers-by stopped at the gate to listen to that marvellous singing.

The woman describes what that small pet meant for her and the communication that existed between them. We readers don’t know much about the lady. We don’t know her name, or where she lives. We understand that she has no relatives or friends living with her, no husband.

She has a house with a garden, to which she dedicates some time every day.

It seems that three young men (maybe guests?) go every evening for supper, the lady prepares it for them. They perhaps spend a while reading in the dining-room, but never have a conversation with her. Moreover, she was called “the Scarecrow”, but she didn’t mind.

The lady believed that every person should love something in this live, it doesn’t matter a lot what it was. For instance, she cared about the flowers in her garden. Or she loved the evening star, shining to her in the back yard, after sunset.

Until one day, when a bird’s seller arrived to the house and showed her that canary in a tiny cage, the bird gave a faint tweet, and she clearly knew that one was her canary; she thought “there you are, my darling”.

After the canary arrived to share the lady’s life, she forgot flowers and the star. Every moment of the day, bird and woman established a routine of communication and understanding. It was lovely company what the bird signified, the small animal seemed to recognize his owner feelings, and comforted her in case of trouble. 

The lady knew that, for a person who never kept birds, all that was difficult to accept. It’s normally considered that cats and dogs can offer that sort of comprehension, not birds, but she could affirm those ideas were untrue.

We readers can imagine the sad end of the story; naturally the little bird died. And after the descriptions we have read, it is easy to imagine the lady’s sadness. She would never ever have another pet, something died in her, although she had a cheerful mode. A different, new sorrow, hid deep inside, stayed there, hurting at any moment.

Perhaps the same kind of deep sorrow was the reason for the canary singing? Has it had the same pain?

Are birds in a cage singing for their freedom?

QUESTIONS

-What can be the meaning of the three dots at the beginning of (almost) each paragraph?

-Do / did you have a bird pet? Tell us about it.

-Do you talk to your pets? How do you talk to them?

-What is the evening star? Can you identify stars and planets in the sky? Do you believe that planets and stars determine or influence our lives?

-A goldfinch is a kind of bird. What do you know about the novel The Goldfinch?

-And what about plants? Do you like tending them? Do you talk to them? Have you heard of “embracing trees”? Have you ever tried it? Do you think plants have feelings?

-Who do you think is the woman in the story? And the three men? What is the relation between them?

-Can you explain the last sentence: “But isn’t it extraordinary that under his sweet, joyful little singing it was just this -sadness?- Ah, what is it? -that I heard?”

 

VOCABULARY

verandah, goldfinches, gum tree, regular, chickweed, showing off

Lawrence of Arabia, by Graham Swift

Old Harry Rocks at Studland

SUMMARY, by Adriana Cruz 

This fragment makes us reflect on situations and moments in life that are marked and that we leave our marks. It starts with Hettie who is in the guest bedroom looking at the painting on the wall and thinking how graceful death can be. From then on, several reports of her wedding and honeymoon, then the gratitude for her sister-in-law having received her at Christmas and how they felt more like sisters and all the protection she gave her.

They say that no matter how much we prepare for death, we are never prepared. No one knows the date or the weather. 

Her husband Roy had died just before Christmas. She left the hospital, took a bus and didn’t understand why all this was going on, she didn’t want to accept it. She just wanted Roy to be with her. Then, inside the bus, she sees Peter O’Toole all over the newspapers. He, too, had died. She didn’t see the actor, but Lawrence of Arabia in his white robe, it was as if he had died again. 

What she demonstrates at the end, comparing the physical aspects between the two men (who didn’t have any resemblance) is the acceptance of him. Saying that it was just as his younger brother was before, just as Nelson Mandela was too, would change nothing because he is gone too.

QUESTIONS

What do you know about Peter O'Toole and Lawrence of Arabia? (Do some research, please.)

And about Nelson Mandela? (Do some research, please.)

Can you give us some information about Studland and the Scilly Isles?

We couldn’t choose a day to be born, and we won’t be able to choose a day to die. All our life is between two random dates: all our life, is it a product of the chance, or can we really conduct our lives?

What do you think about these couple that wanted to have a baby the 1^st of January 2000 / 2001, that is, the beginning of the 21^st Century?

What do you know about Harold Wilson? (Do some research, please.)

Would you feel better if you die in company of famous people? And in a big accident, with a lot of casualties? Or with someone you loved (suicide by love)?

“Peter O’Toole suddenly came along? And what girl wouldn’t? In her dreams.” Who were your favourite actors/actresses, your idols? Why?

How do you feel when a global event stifles your personal event?

Why do you think the story is in the second person?

 

VOCABULARY

rallies, crows, crones, crumple-faced, tinsel, cracker, amenity, squinty, peek-a-boo

People Are Life, by Graham Swift

Crisis in Six Scenes, by Woody Allen

PEOPLE ARE LIFE, by Aurora Ledesma

 Vangeli, a Greek Cypriot barber, is cutting the hair of an elderly customer. It’s the last customer of the day for him, and he is quite tired when the working day is over.  The customer confesses that is mother has just died. He had lived with his parents all his life and feels a bit abandoned now.

The barber senses that the man’s reflection in the mirror reveals more than his speech. Vangeli tries to sympathise but wants to know what is the full message. He asks himself, What is he telling me? That he is all alone in the world?

The barber offers the consolation that is apparently expected of him with phrases like:

“Well it had to happen”, “Sooner or later”, “Eighty – Three’s not a bad age”, “But you have friends”, “If you have people to see and talk to, then you have friends”, “If you have people, you have life”.

The talkative barber narrator dispenses bits of wisdom like the story title to the customers who want a little philosophy with their hair-cut.

The protagonist is just as lonely and friendless as his customer. His mother and father died years ago in Cyprus. His English wife Irene died too, just three years ago. They’d been split up for years. He has two grown-up boys also who are both in computers and are embarrassed by their father who’s just been a barber all his life. Despite his loneliness and his problems, he says nothing to his customers. He knows how to listen to the sorrows of the others but he has no one to tell his own. At the end of the day, what he likes most is to get home and have a beer.

When he finishes serving his customers, he pats them on the shoulder and tells them.

-“ Thank you for the tip, and now go and live your life”.

  

Some reflections

The story makes us reflect on the true childhood friends with whom we shared everything, our homes, games, worries, sorrows and joys, friends with whom we spent all our time together and later in adulthood we wonder, where are the real friends now? Maybe, like the barbershop customer, we only have people with whom to share anecdotes in a café. Even the protagonist Vangeli, who, after a lifetime in England, doesn’t know the names of his customers and is surprised by some English reactions, doesn’t have real friends.

QUESTIONS

Can you make a summary of the narrator’s life?

“People are life” versus misanthropy / loneliness. What are the benefits and the shortcomings of one kind of attitude versus another?

“The last costumer is different”. Do you think people treat costumers differently according to the time of the day? For the barber, why the last one is different?

Different kinds of friendship: people to whom you say hello, people who you meet, mates at work, friends… How can you define true friendship? Is a real friend “someone you can talk to”?

Is a barber a kind of psychologist, philosopher, confessor (he didn’t know his costumers’ names)? And the hairdresser?

What do you think of this type of communication?: The barber looks at the man who is talking to through the mirror. Is it similar to the communications through mobiles or computers?

Do you think there is a relation between the way you wear your hair and your personality? And what about your hair’s shape, colour…?

“We are in each other’s lives: that’s having friends”: do you think is it a good definition? Why?

What do you know about Cyprus? History, politics…

Did the costumer really need a haircut? How do you know? Do you go to the hairdresser if you have to go to a funeral?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ jobs? Are there “low” jobs or only “low paid jobs”? Who usually does the “low paid jobs” nowadays?

“It’s how the English are.” What are English people like? Is it all clichés?

Do you think is it easy to become a barber?

What differences can you find between a barber and a women’s hairdresser?

 

VOCABULARY

snipped, hefty, tough, crinkly, clippers, split up, gabble away, regular, flick