Unseen Translation, by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson at the Wikipedia: click here

Kate Atkinson website

Unseen Translation: review

Not the End of the World at the Wikipedia: click here

Not the End of the World (The Guardian): review

Kate Atkison and detective Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs)

Case Stories (trailer)

Presentation, by Dolors Rossell

Kate Atkinson was born the 20^th of December 1951 in York, the setting for several of her books. An avid reader from childhood, she studied English literature at the University of Dundee in Scotland, gaining her master's degree in 1974. She remained at Dundee to study postmodern American fiction for a doctorate. Though she was denied the degree because she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage, her studies of the postmodern stylistic elements of American writers influenced her later work.
Throughout the late 1970s and for much of the ’80s, Atkinson held various jobs, from home help to legal secretary and teacher, few of which enabled her to make use of her literary interests.
In 1981–82, however, she took up short-story writing, finding the brief narrative form an effective outlet for her creative energy.
Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year and went on to be a Sunday Time bestseller. Since then, she has published another five novels, one play, and one collection of short stories. Her work is often celebrated for its wit, wisdom and subtle characterisation, the surprising twists and complicated plots, and often eccentric characters.
Atkinson has criticised the media's coverage of her work – when she won the Whitbread award, for example, it was the fact that she was a "single mother" who lived outside London that received the most attention.
Atkinson now lives in Edinburgh
 
UNSEEN TRANSLATION
Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories mostly set in Scotland, and is an experiment in magic realism  (a style of fiction and literary genre that paints a realistic view of the modern world while also adding magical elements, often deals with the blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality).  The collection was first published in 2002.
It contains 12 loosely connected stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness. A world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality. Each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.
Unseen Translation-summary:
Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a glamour model Romney Wright, a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. His father is the lead singer of the rock band Boak. Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed. Arthur's father is on tour in Germany and Missy is to take Arthur to visit him.
 
Reviews:
“Following the considerable success of her novels, what a pleasure it is to find Atkinson luxuriating in her original genre. Let’s hope she enjoys her return to it so much that many such inspired collections follow.”
I'm willing to bet that Kate Atkinson didn't colour inside the lines when she was a little girl. She's a born subversive, and her charming, alarming, crazy quilt fiction catches the reader off-balance.
The narratives are neither clearly connected nor totally distinct (Atkinson doesn't do anything conventionally). Occasionally she recycles characters:
Usually I prefer my "magical" and my "realism" well separated, like carrots and peas on a dinner plate. But Atkinson is so adept and her narrative voice so persuasive that after a while I began to enjoy the sudden shifts from ordinary life to fairy tale, from anxiety to horror, from a bad day to the end of the world.

Unseen Translation

(some helpful images)

QUESTIONS

What do you think it’s the relation between the title and the story?
Talk about the characters in the story
    Missy
    Arthur
    Arthur’s mother
    Arthur’s father
    Otto
What do you know about these mythological beings?
    Artemis
    Athene
    Aphrodite
    Meander
    Echo
    Pan
    Nymph
John Berger, in his book Ways of Seeing, says museums and galleries are modern churches because when you enter them you have to show respect, keep silence and touch nothing. In the story they say that museums are soporific. What are your experiences with museums?
What do you know about these places?:
    Natural History Museum
    National Gallery
    British Museum
    V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Missy said that a bit of stoicism is good. What is stoicism?
Explain the scene at the newsagents.
Tell us about the different ideas they have to name the girl just born.
What books do they buy for their flight to Munich?
What happened at the Bayerisher Hof?
What did Missy and Arthur do in Munich?
After Munich, where did they want to go?
How does the story end?
 
“The list of worse is endless. That’s not grammatical, by the way.” What isn’t grammatical?
 
“Fell in love with the master who had a mad wife in the attic and who became hideously disfigured in a fire?” What does it refer to?

 VOCABULARY

stags, avian, window shopping, tidal, stroll, smorgasbord, spoilt, mar, trouble-shooter, NHS, SAS, grating, stage school, tabloid, stuck (stick), Camelot, whorl, wanker, bet, elbowed, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, held off (hold off –the rain), hauling (haul), love-rat, cocoon, skim-read, as high as a kite, dawdle, china, porcelain, round-the-clock, kraut, sated, shot, nonchalant, primeval, scuffed, queue /kiú/, coiling (coil), tannoy 

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing

George Gissing at the Wikipedia: click here

George Gissing, The Guardian: click here

Fleet-Footed Hester: review

Fleet-Footed Hester: summary

George Gissing on feminism: click here

Presentation, by Argemir Gonzàlez

Biography

George Robert Gissing was born on 22nd November 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He died on 28th December 1903 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France). He was the eldest of five children of Thomas Waller Gissing, who ran a chemist's shop, and Margaret.

Gissing was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield, where he was a diligent and enthusiastic student. His serious interest in books began at the age of ten when he read The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Gissing's father died when he was 12 years old, and he and his brothers were sent to the Lindow Grove School at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where he was a solitary student who studied hard. In 1872, after an exceptional performance in the Oxford Local Examinations, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College, forerunner of the University of Manchester. There he continued his intense studies, and won many prizes, including the Poem Prize in 1873 and the Shakespeare scholarship in 1875.

His academic career ended in disgrace when he ran short of money and stole from his fellow students. The college hired a detective to investigate the thefts and Gissing was prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in Belle Vue Gaol, Manchester, in 1876.

In Manchester, he also began a relationship with Marianne "Nell" Harrison, a prostitute, afterwards his wife.

He travelled to the USA with Marianne Harrison in 1876 but lived in poverty and returned the following year then he worked as a teacher. He began to publish in 1880 but without success until 1891 when he published New Grub Street, a novel about literary bohemian life. That novel and The Odd Women are considered his best works.

His style follows the style of Dickens and Gaskell on social content. In 1898 published his study Charles Dickens: A Critical Study.

Critical review

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing, is the story of a young woman, immature and capricious, and of a not so young man, of weak character and jealous despite being physically strong.

Fleet-Footed Hester is a story, in my opinion, lineal, plain and not credible, halfway between Victorian morals and a reflection about the female condition.

The end is disappointing. The young and free Hester saves her lover John Rayner doing what she can do best (that is, running), but only to deliver herself to a jealous, impoverished, alcoholised man with whom she never will have what she likes most: running races.

The message of George Gissing is clear: the woman must sacrifice her freedom because it is the reason for the disgrace and misery of a man. 

QUESTIONS

What is Private Eye?
What is Grub Street?
 
Talk about the characters: appearance, personality, job...
John
Hester
Albert
Mrs Heffron
Hester’s father. (He was “married without leave”. What does it mean?)
 
What was John’s opinion about Hester’s first job? What kind of occupation did he want for her?
What was John’s opinion about Hester running races?
John and Hester’s different kind of love: what are these two kinds?
Tell us John and Hester first quarrel.
Tell us John and Hester second quarrel.
How did Hester change after the second quarrel?
How did John change along the two years when didn’t see Hester?
Explain Albert and Hester’s courtship and their breaking up.
Last but one Hester’s race.
Mrs Heffron and Hester’s last meeting.
What was Hester’s proposal when she met John at the station?
What does the last sentence (“the red rift of the eastern sky broadened into day”) mean? What does it symbolize?

 

THEME TO DEBATE

I think that Gissing’s story is useful to debate some topics about feminism, moreover when he wrote a novel about the situation of the women in Victorian (or puritan and traditionalist) society.

So, what do you thing about woman and hobbies (sports, DIY, etc.). Don’t you think that there is a vindication, from women, to do “men” hobbies, but not the other way round?

For the only reason of being a woman, you are discriminated? (E.g. I’m thinking about Mrs Thatcher)

What is your opinion about positive discrimination (that is: in equal conditions, to give preference to a member of a minority or to a member of an unfavoured group)?

Do you think men can /must be involved in the debate about women issues?

VOCABULARY

wiry, foreman, stay, paper-chase, woo, plight one’s troth, stinted, bearing, ploughboy, wages, wrath, pickles, fit of temper, comely, shun, lithe, thew, measure one’s length on the pavement, toss, copper, stich, bale, traps

CLERIHEWS

As you could see on the brief introduction before the story, they mention a kind of poem called clerihew. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who was a humorous English writer. It's a comical biographical poem very easy to create.The first line has to contain the name of the person you're telling something about. It has to have four lines of any meter you like, and with the rhyme structure AABB, so they are useful to learn how to pronounce some words, though sometimes the rhymes can be forced. Here you have some exemples:

Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”

***

It was a weakness of Voltaire’s
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

***

Dante Alighieri
Seldom troubled a dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.

***

Daniel Defoe
Lived a long time ago.
He had nothing to do, so
He wrote Robinson Crusoe.

***

Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionately fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some,
When writing something gruesome.

***

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote ‘Principles of Economy.’

***

The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.

G. K. Chesterton

The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey

(Labby was an English journalist.)

***

Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Is now a buried one.
He was not a Goth, much less a Vandal,
As he proved by writing The School for Scandal.

***

Solomon
You can scarcely write less than a column on.
His very song
Was long.

***

The Spanish people think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

W. H. Auden

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, “I am She!”

***

John Milton
Never stayed in a Hilton
Hotel,
Which was just as well.

***

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase ‘financial sharks,’
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

***

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.

***

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.

***

Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled,
When into the Café Royal walked Bosie
Wearing a tea-cosy.

***

Thomas Hardy
Was never tardy
When summoned to fulfill
The Immanent Will.

***

William Blake
Found Newton hard to take,
And was not enormously taken
With Francis Bacon.

***

Henry Taylor

Alexander Graham Bell
has shuffled off this mobile cell.
He’s not talking any more
But he has a lot to answer for.

***

John Dryden
wasn’t the sort you’d confide in;
there was no limit to the secrets he’d tell
in lyrics set to music by Henry Purcell.

***

William Wordsworth
considered four-and-twenty birds worth
a walk as far as the banks of the Wye.
There are some things money just can’t buy. 

 George Szirtes

e e cummings’
unpublished hummings
will shortly be published in a book –
just l(oo)k

***
Rene Magritte
liked his rum neat
and would never think of adding Cola.
He’d sooner eat his bowler.

***

Pierre-August Renoir
simply adored Film Noir
and kept nagging at Jean
“Make your old dad a Film Noir! Aw, go on!”

***

Claude Monet
resisted all forms of donné.
When someone suggested he should paint the cathedral at Rheims,
he replied, “In your dreams!”

***

George Braque
decided to pickle a shark
as a kind of tableau,
but then left it to Pablo.

***

J M W Turner
liked a nice little earner
and was untroubled by greed,
painting Rain, Steam AND Speed.

Mark Granier 

Trump
was always at home on the stump,
while the White House, unfortunately,
is more of a tree.

Derek Mahon

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Is still read today;
While other Victorian novels degenerate in the attic,
Its reputation remains static.

***

“Strange Meeting”

Wilfred Owen
And Elizabeth Bowen
Never met;
And yet… 

Sex Lives of Poets by Dick Davis

Did Shakespeare get more joy
From a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy?
Whatever: he liked the nice surprises
Engendered by disguises.

***

Alexander Pope
Hadn’t a hope
With Lady Mary Wortley Montague:
“When it comes to inches,” she said, “you certainly want a few.”

***

When it comes to Christina Rossetti
And a sex life  . . . well, not to get petty
There wasn’t any, or at least none that was visible.
This clerihew’s sad, not risible.

Michael Curl

There’s no disputin’
that Grigori Rasputin
had more will to power
than Schopenhauer.

Dean W. Zimmerman

Jesus Christ
Was sliced and diced,
And punched with holes
To save our souls.

Paul Ingram

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hardly ever went out to dine.
Be the menu never so abundant,
He found “green leafy lettuce salad” tautological and redundant.

Paul Horgan

Luchino Visconti
Saw ‘The Full Monty’
Which he thought was vile,
Bar Robert Carlyle.

Ian Duhig

 ‘Ingmar’,
said his wife, ‘I wish you would sing more,
not just sit there playing chess against Death and being glum’.
But Ingmar kept shtum.

Katy Evans-Bush

Cary Grant
loved his aunt.
When he was alone,
He would try her eau de cologne.

Desirée's Baby, by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin at the Wikipedia

Kate Chopin was an American writer of short stories, although her most famous work was the novel The Awakening (1899). This novel was banished because it was too adavanced for her time: the critics couldn't bear the feminist behaviour of her characters nor her treatment of the female sexuality or infidelity (remember she lived in the South of the USA, where they say people are more tradicionalist and can (or could) speak French). So most of people considered her writings offensive and they were forgotten until in the 1970s, when she was rediscovered for this feminist attitude, and, from then on, her novel and short stories have been republished several times.

Chopin had a hard life because of the successive loss of her husband, her business, and her mother. A friend of Chopin's, a doctor, suggested her to start writing, believing that it could be a good thereapy for her, and thus also to give way to her enormous energy.

Her short stories follow the topics and the style of the French writer Guy de Maupassant. He was a realistic or naturalistic writer, a bit pessimistic and with a good taste for life ironies.

More short stories by Kate Chopin (I recommend to read them: they're very short!):

The Storm

The Story of an Hour 

Kate Chopin at the Library: here! 

SOME QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU WITH THE READING:

At the beginning of the story, what do we know about the heroine?

How was the girl like?

Why did Madame Valmonde want the girl?

What was the way for all the Aubignys to fall in love?

Who was Armand?

What did L'Abri look like?

What does "cochon du lait" mean?

What was Desirée's baby like?

How do you know Armand was happy with the baby?

What signs foretold the disaster?

So, at the end, who was the person with black blood in their veins?

SOME VOCABULARY

toddling age = age when children start to walk

stray = wander and get lost

child of the flesh = child of one's own, not adopted

corbeille = bouquet of flowers

scamp = lazy and mischievous

layette = set of clothes for a newborn

 

 plantation

 

 

 

 

  stubble

 cabin

fan (verb)

reeds

willow