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.
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