BIOGRAPHY
She was born in 1942 in Scarborough, a tourist resort on the East coast in the North of England, where we have to suppose our story is situated. When she was sixteen, her family moved to Coventry, where her father worked in a car factory.
He got a degree of English at the King's College in London.
She got married; her husband died, and she got married again, and they went to live in Stratford-upon-Avon. She had two daughters. Later, she left him and went to live with a Barbara Machin.
She founded her own publishing company.
She wrote mainly ghost stories, as The Woman in Black, (adapted as a play and still on the stage in London) and crime novels, but also stories like the one we’re reading, or, for example, a novel set in the WWI, Strange Meeting, or Mrs de Winter (1999), a sequel to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. She explores the childhood cruelty in the short story The Badness Within Him, and in the novel The King of the Castle (it won the Somerset Maughan Award). She has edited several anthologies of short stories, including two volumes of The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories.
Hill's prose flirts at times with a romantic image of an aristocratic England and a sentimental vision of the country before (or during) the war and imperial decline.
SUMMARY
Esme is a 5o year old woman who, as an only daughter, has had to take care during eleven years of her bedridden mother. Now her mother is dead, and a free future, open to all sort of possibilities, lays open in front of her. Nevertheless, her mother’s voice recurrently goes on admonishing her inside her head. But one day, a curious stranger comes to her door looking for a room to rent, although she had not even though about it. Of a sudden, she decides to rent him her mother’s room. Are they going to get on well? Would he be a trustworthy guest?
QUESTIONS
Do a bit of research and tell us what kind of TV programmes were “Morecombe and Wise” and “Black and White minstrels”. And who was Doctor Crippen (10, 11)?
What TV programmes used to see the old generation. And the new? Do young people watch TV?
How long are people in mourning? What do people do to show they are mourning (e.g. clothes)?
“An argument sharpen the mind”. What does this saying imply? Who were the sophists?
Talking about the will: what is your opinion about the government’s taxes on properties given in a will?
We usually see British or American funerals in movies. What are the differences between these and the funerals we celebrate here?
“You will feel the real shock later.” What do you think is the reason for this?
Esme tends to do the same things her mother did, although she hated these things in her mother. Did you find yourself in a similar situation, and if you did, what do you think it’s the cause?
Why “Park Close could be a “comfortable” address?
In the story, there is a blatant ellipsis: the moment before Mr Curry holds a pickle with his fork. Can you explain what happened in this ellipsis?
“To stay young, you have to be constantly surprised.” How can one be constantly surprised?
Where is Mr Curry from? How do you know?
What is the meaning of “sound of wind and limb”?
“I am the kind of person who needs to give service.” Is an altruist person better than an egoist one? Don’t they do what they do for their own pleasure? What do you think about this?
“One is never old to learn, Mr Curry” What can people learn when they are old?
The story has an ending, but I think it could go on. Can you imagine a new ending?
VOCABULARY