The Country Girls, by Edna O'Brien

Obituary

BIOGRAPHY & SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

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.

She has died recently, in London, on July 27th, 2024, at the age of 93.

THE COUNTRY GIRLS

Following the plot of the book, it’s easy to divide this novel in three parts.

First part and first chapter. Last day of the school.

Edna O’Brien writes in first person, remembering her real life when she was fourteen years old, the story of Cait and Baba, two young Irish country girls. They live in a rural area of Ireland, (County Clare), a backward and repressive country. They grow up in their strict homes and they spend their childhood together, going to the same school.

Edna O’Brien presents the following characters:

Cathleen, “Kate” or “Cait” (in Irish) Brady, the protagonist. She is a charming and naïve narrator girl who describes only one day of her life in this first chapter.

And the other ones in order of appearance:

The father’s absence. Cait begins to talk about the figure of her father with coldness, with some insinuations: “The old reason”, “He had not come here”. We will understand later her father drinks too much, has a terrible temper, and a tendency to go on benders and then returning home to beat his wife.

Deep love for her mother, called Mama in the story. Cait says, “She was the best mama in the world”. What happens to her mother along the story? There is a premonition when Cait pronounces these sentences: “She straightened the cap on my head and kissed me three or four times”.

They are the poor Brady family.

 

Bridge, “Baba” Brennan, Cait’s best friend, is the novel’s deuteragonist. Despite being opposites in most respects, because Cait is dreamy and kindly romantic, and Baba is a lying and jealous girl who wants to dominate many times Cait’s behaviour, they are sometimes allies, and sometimes enemies. She is the daughter of the rich couple Brennan.

Baba’s parents would appear frequently throughout the story.

Hickey, he is the underpaid farm labourer who preserves the family’s fields and animals, and keeps the place going. Cait says “I love him”, but later she changes the word “love” saying “what I really meant was that I was fond of him”.

Jack Holland, owner of the local grocery store who claims loving Cait and says that he wants to marry her. We know he has always been attracted to Cathleen’s mother, but now he is showing his love to Cathleen.

Miss Moriarty, the teacher. As it is the last day of school, Cait and Baba are going to say goodbye to her, and Cait brings her a bunch of lilacs.

The only one character that doesn’t appear in this first chapter is Mr Gentleman, (her real name is de Maurier), a rich French lawyer, much older than Cait. He lives in a nearby manor house with his wife and several children. He has a very important role in the novel. Cait feels attracted to Mr Gentleman, and she imagines her future life with him. Mr Gentleman will be her protector and...

If you read the book, you will know about the relationship between Cait and Mr Gentleman.

Edna O’Brien also describes the rural landscapes of green meadows and wild flowers of Ireland. We are in the poor Brady’s farm, near County Limerick, where fields must be ploughed with effort, and we’re going to discover the daily habits and the atmosphere of Cait’s home when she gets up in the morning and has her breakfast. She describes an Irish village with many small details as the names of trees, flowers, birds…

At the end of this first part, Cait, rushing home to tell her mama she’s won a scholarship to go to a convent school, something very significative happens...

Second part. The oppressive forces of the religious education.

Cait and Baba attend a convent school. They discover that life in the convent is terrible: only prayers, hours of study, and punishments. Cait feels very sorry and sad, but she shines academically. Baba gets into trouble because she hates this school so much, that on several occasions she considers running away. And according to a plan that the manipulator Baba develops, they are both expelled. Their life will change.

Third part. From repression to freedom.

After their expulsion, they move together to Dublin. Baba is sent to a secretarial college and will follow her studies, but Cait will work in a grocery store. They will go to London in search of imaginary opportunities, love and sex in the big city. They struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship. At the end of this part, the two girls are 18 years old. And someone who appears along the story clams to find “his country girl” but…

Do you imagine how the book could finish? A happy new life in Dublin, London or another place? Or a sad ending?

SOME REMARKS

I hope to encourage you reading this sensitive book because I think:

Events, people, feelings, emotions and landscape are very well described.

It’s a realistic portrait of Irish people.

The book talks about the discovering of sex without any taboo. This frank treatment of sex and the sharp critique of Irish society in the post-World War II period was considered scandalous at the time in Ireland. But I have not found the obscenities they cite in some references.

Tender and sad book!

QUESTIONS

-What are the meaning of these expressions (page 6, lines 22), “A nun you are in my eye”, “the Kerry Order”, “two heads in one pillow”?

-In your view, using an alarm clock, is it a natural way of waking up? Timetables, are they a better way of organizing our lives, or they're only another way to control us?

-People usually reserve the best plates, tablecloth, cutlery... for visitors. What do you think it's the reason for this? Is it also your habit?

-Aren't you angry when you see an oppressed person happy with their way of life? What would you say to this person?

-In the story there's no much hygiene. In your opinion, does our society exaggerate with cleanness?

-Do you have a kind of talisman you put under your pillow (to sleep better, to have sweet dreams, to not snore...)?

-In your opinion, what is the best way to become your teacher's favourite?

-What is your point of view about religious education? Is it necessary to teach religion in the schools?

-What is the meaning of the last sentence, the maxim "Weep and you weep alone"? Is it true, or it's only an old wives' saying?

VOCABULARY

ankle socks, dew, hedge, canned sweets, turf house, beamed up, pullet, chicken run, he did his water, flag, flush, clippers, range, sharp, stingy, bog, simmering, paling, boulders, meal, moping, pick your steps, blackbird, fudge, sprees, bout

The Fishing-boat Picture, by Alan Sillitoe

BIOGRAPHY

Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham in 1928 to a working-class family. His father was an illiterate, couldn’t keep a job for long, and was usually violent. His mother worked in factories and, for a short time, as a prostitute. They had, besides Alan, four more children. They often moved house because they couldn’t pay the rent.
Alan left school at fourteen because he failed the entrance exam for the grammar school (the secondary school at the time). He worked in the factories of the county for four years, and then he joined the RAF, although he didn’t serve in the WWII because he was too young. But he did serve as a wireless operator in the war against the rebel communists in Malaya.
When he got back, he discovered he had TB. While in the hospital, he read a lot, but with no judgement nor model, and decided he wanted to be a writer.  He got together with the poet Ruth Fainlight (whom she married ten years later). Then, with a pension from the government, he travelled to France and Spain to try to get over his disease. When he lived in Majorca, he met Robert Graves, who helped him in his career as a writer. Thus, he started writing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1958. The novel is about the Saturday night-life of a factory worker who gets involved in a booze competition and in a love affair with is mate’s wife, and then, the next morning, the hangover shows him the reality of life.
His other famous novel is The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, published in 1959. It's about the life in a Borstal, a youth detention centre.
In 1968, he was invited to visit the USSR as a working-class writer, but there he denounced the human rights abuses in the communist system, surprising this way the soviet authorities. But, on the other hand, he always supported Israel in front of Palestinian movements.
He belongs, although he doesn’t like being classified like this, to the “angry young men” of the 50s in the UK, a group of artists and intellectual people who rejected the middle-class morals of the post-war Great Britain. He avoided all literary awards, although he accepted honorary doctorates from some universities.
He had two children from his wife.
Alan Sillitoe died in 2010 in London, of cancer. He was 82.
 
SUMMARY

This is a working-class story: the characters are working people, simple, with poor entertainment and poor ambitions, and it typically ends sadly.
Our hero is Harry, a postman who takes his life easily and doesn’t get emotional for anything. His only hobby is reading, mostly books about geography. When he gets a steady position in the post office, he says yes to get married to Kathy, a girl four years older than he.
For six years, they live happily together, although with a lot of rows, sometimes a bit violent. Then, after these six years, they had a silly argument: Kathy throws his book to the fire, he hits her, and she goes away for good. But afterwards he discovers that she had been cheating on him, at least for a year, with a housepainter across the street.
He isn’t sad or angry with Kathy’s departure, and he gets used to living alone, and feels, if not happier, more comfortable. He goes on doing his rounds and reading his books without any of the usually ups and downs of the life.
After six years more, his wife appears again out of the blue. She says she was around there and thought it was worth paying him a visit. Nevertheless, neither of them is excited about this sudden meeting; perhaps they only feel a bit of nostalgia. They sit and have a chat, all the time keeping the distance, but without any resentment. Kathy shows some interest in a picture of a fishing boat hanging on the wall, the last of a collection of pictures her brother gave them as a wedding present, and Harry decides to give her the picture, although at the beginning she declines the offer. They used to say the picture was the last of the fleet.

Some days later, he sees the picture in a pawnshop window; a bit surprised, he buys it and hangs it at the same place, again with any kind of rancour.
Kathy keeps paying him short visits, and all the time their meetings are cold and distant. Initially, neither of them mentions again the picture. Now and then, the postman gives her money and cigarettes, although he only smokes a pipe.
Asked about the housepainter, Kathy tells him he died a long time ago of lead-poisoning. Now, she says, she lives alone in a small flat and has different jobs.
In the end, she asks again for the fishing-boat picture, and he gives it to her again. Afterwards, he finds it again in the window of the same pawnshop, but this time he doesn’t rebuy it.
One day, a lorry runs over her, killing her. The postman goes to the hospital, and there they give him her belongings, and with them there is the fishing-boat picture, broken and dirty with blood. In the cemetery, besides her relatives, there comes a stranger. Harry finds him again in her place, collecting his things: he had been living with Kathy all these six years.
At home again, he thinks he could have kept their pictures and also kept Kathy, and feels that his life had been a waste of time.
At the end, he wonders about the meaning of life, of his life: is it worth living one’s life?
 
QUESTIONS

-What is your advice for a dating couple in order to know each other better and help them to decide on living (or not) together?
-What is better for a couple: a lot of love, or a lot of peace?
-Why do you think the protagonist liked living alone after his wife ran away?
-According to your opinion, why the wife didn’t ask him money?
-What does the picture symbolize for the couple along the story?
-Do you think that, for some people, unhappiness is a kind of happiness?

VOCABULARY

mash-lad, cheeky-daft, ruffled, down payment, hire purchase, prising, rammel, duck, allus, daft, nowt, bleddy dead ‘ead, clocked, skipped off, confined, on the dole, knocking on, clubfoot, rounds, draughts, fag-end, aerials, scooting, in the clock of the walk way, sarky, rouge, wireless, bob, hit it off, in the lurch, dresser, fag, five-packet, dished, wry, triplet, out of pop, doddering skinflint, mildewed, feyther, chinning, measly, scuttle, nippy, got the sack, mystified, blackout, shrapnel, picture house, bloke, sexton, potty, booze, pitted, knight

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (film)

Obituary in The Guardian

Life of Ma Parker, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma.

Ma Parker lived a hard life. She left Stratford-on-Avon at the age of sixteen and started to work as a kitchen-maid with a cruel woman, the cook, who would not let her read her letters from home and threw them away. She also worked as a “help” in a doctor’s house. After two years, she got married to a baker. This was also a very painful experience. She had thirteen children, seven of them died very early. Her husband also died and left Ma Parker to raise the remaining six children all by herself. When they started going to school, her sister-in-law came to her house, to take care of them. One day, her sister-in-law had an accident and injured her spine, and Ma Parker had to look after this woman who behaved and cried like another baby.

Two of her children, Maudie and Alice, left her and fell into bad ways. Her two other sons went to live in another country, and young Jim joined the army and left for India. Her youngest daughter, Ethel, got married to a worthless, little waiter who soon died, leaving behind a newly born son, Lennie, to be taken care of by Ma Parker.

The story begins when Ma Parker arrives at her work as a maid in the house of a literary gentleman. She had buried her loving Lennie, who was the only ray of light in her sad life, the previous day. After opening the door, the gentleman asks her about her grandson. She informs him that he had passed away the day before. He enquires about the funeral, but Ma Parker doesn’t say anything about it and walks to the kitchen to do her work. After changing her clothes, she puts on her apron in preparation for her duties. While she is cleaning the pile of dishes in the kitchen, she remembers her small grandson persuading her to hand over a cent. She recalls Lennie’s tribulations. He had had a chest infection that he seemed not to be able to get rid of. Even though she has suffered a lot in her life, she has never complained and never broken down, but now, the day after Lennie’s burial, she is overcome and finally wants to cry.

Suddenly, she puts on her jacket and her hat and walks out absent-mindedly, lost in thought. She is unaware of her destination. She really wants to cry. It becomes difficult for her to postpone it any longer. She couldn’t cry anywhere, not at home or on a park bench. She couldn’t cry in the gentleman’s flat. She couldn’t find any location where she could be alone and cry. There is nowhere for Ma Parker to cry. It starts to rain, and she has nowhere to go. The rain can mask her tears, and she no longer has to hide and find a place to cry.

 

SOME REFLECTIONS

The story mixes the past with the present. The past is not a separate entity. Another literary device that Mansfield employs is interior monologue like “Why must it all have happened to me?” The most important, themes are social position and isolation. On the one hand, we see the literary gentleman who does not seem to understand how hard Ma Parker’s life is. He accuses her of stealing and discredits her as “a hag”; on the other hand, we have Ma Parker, a poor, uneducated woman. She pities the poor young gentleman for having no one to look after him.

QUESTIONS

-What are the things we have to say in a funeral? Do we have to tell only how nice the dead person was, or you can also talk their dark side?

-Why do you think the literary gentleman doesn’t have a name?

-In the paragraph “The result looked like a gigantic dustbin. […] or dark stains like tea.” There is a mixture of ideas: the dirty room next to the sad-looking sky. What is the relation between these two pictures?

-The literary man makes a “product called Life”. When do you think literature is Life?

-Katherine Mansfield died of consumption. What do you know about consumption and literature? Can you give us more examples of writers?

-What is the meaning of this sentence: “Then young Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with her”?

-Do you trust in the remedies appeared in newspapers? Do you have any anecdote?

-What kind of invalid are you: patient, angry, worried…?

-What would have to be the master’s attitude in front of an ill servant?

-What deeds do you consider that you have to do in private: crying, laughing, coughing…, but also brushing one’s teeth…?

 

VOCABULARY

parding, huskily, hobbled, marmalade, twinge, squashed, deadened, pail, roller towel, hag, area railings, chimley, range, beedles, sold up, loaves, chock-a-block, putting it on, bottils, postal order, stifled, counterpane, fitting by, as like as not

AUDIOBOOK

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

SUMMARY

WOMAN WORK, by Maya Angelou

Pictures, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Alícia Usart

Miss Ada Moss was a successful contralto singer in her old days, but currently she has no work, and she is hoping for someone to hire her. Her living arrangement is in a room. Being in debt, her landlady is enraged to her, and today she has let her know that she will not stand it. So Miss Moss decides to go out and try her luck.
The first step for her was to attend ABC, but the local wasn’t open yet, so she changed her mind and went to Kig and Kadgit’s, but it wasn’t open either: she had forgotten that it was Saturday. So finally she thought about going to Beit and Bithems, a lively place where there were plenty of people she knew, waiting for someone who may give them news about jobs. In the end, a man appeared and told them to come again on Monday, because today wasn’t a good day for jobs.
At the North-East Film Company there was a crowd all the way up the stairs; they had been there waiting for hours. It has been a call for attractive girls, but when the typist appears, she tells everybody that the call is over.
She set off for the Bitter Orange Company, where they gave her a form with plenty of requests she could not answer. All is over, she thought while sitting in one of the benches of the Square Gardens, from where she saw the “Café de Madrid” and made the decision to go there that night.
There was little light in the café; a stout gentleman approached her, and five minutes later they were leaving the café together.

QUESTIONS

-Give us some information about the Bloomsbury Group.

-Have you ever known a bankrupt person? How can they recover from their situation?

-Why didn't Ada Moss go to the police when the landlady took her letter? (Secrecy of correspondence is a fundamental legal principle.)

-What are the most difficult jobs where to find a vacancy?

-What jobs would you do as a last resource, and what jobs you will never do?

-According to your opinion, why isn’t there a pause between offices in the narration?

-Why do you think the narrator says "typist" and not "secretary", or "clerk", for example?

-What happened at the end of the story?

-Don't you think it isn't the first time she did it?

-Debate: Sex workers. Has prostitution to be illegal? Is it a good idea to penalize the costumers? What do you think of legal prostitution, like in Amsterdam? What do you know about sexual services for invalid people?

 

VOCABULARY

pageant, Stout, popped, eddication, Yours to hand, pounced, slit, safety-pin, crabs, sinking, charwoman, char, preened, part, sand-dancing, mite 

Sand-dance (video)

Waiting for the Robert E. Lee (Judy Garland)

Bloomsbury map

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

Fusilli, by Graham Swift

FUSILLI, by Aurora Ledesma

SUMMARY

The story begins with an unnamed man shopping in a British supermarket called Waitrose, two weeks before Christmas. While he is in the supermarket, he thinks about how he and his wife Jenny, had decided not to celebrate Christmas that year. They had also ignored Remembrance Day because of superstition. As he walks through the aisles, he remembers a call a month ago, from his son Doug, who was a soldier deployed to Afghanistan. The man was anxious to talk to his son. Doug advised his father to try the “fusilli” variety: “You should stick with dried” “Fresh is a scam”.

Now the man thinks that he and his wife will never eat fusilli again. It is revealed that Doug has died, and the call was the last time his father had heard his voice. Doug was in a mortuary in Swindon, waiting for the coroner’s decision. It was pretty clear now that they couldn’t have Doug before Christmas.

In the pasta aisle, while he is remembering the call, he sees a woman with two children. The woman is a bit stressed because her noisy children were screaming and out-of-control. He looks at the mother and thinks, “She doesn’t know how lucky she is”.

In the end of the story, he decides to buy the fusilli and puts it close to his chest. The pasta isn’t to eat, but it is some sort of memory for Doug.

 

ANALYSIS

In this story, the narrator goes between the present time and the past. The short narration is structured around the feelings and thoughts of a father who has just lost his son. Therefore, loss and grief are the most important themes. It shows us the difficult life of a father who is trying to accept the death of his son, who has been killed in the Afghanistan war. The man is also shown to suffer from multiple emotional conflicts. He wants to remember his son, but, at the same time, he is terrified of thinking about him. He also remembered when his son was a kid in the days when Christmas was coming, looking for a gift to give him. He also wondered if the toy gun he once gave Doug, as a Christmas gift, indicated that Doug would end up going to war. He constantly reconsiders his past actions and thinks he could have prevented his son becoming a soldier or even prevented his son’s death.

This story tells us what happens to the one left behind and how they deal with grief. His grief makes him question everything. Maybe, if he hadn’t been angry when his son called, his son wouldn’t have died.

 

The story deals with several themes, such as:

-The loss of a loved one and grief. Is it possible to become happy again after having lost a person you love as dearly as parents love their children?

-The meaning of wars in a distant country for families, no parents should live to see their son or daughter die. However, in times of war, young men and women, sometimes have to pay the heaviest price and sacrifice their lives to protect others.

-How superstitions influence us.

-The consumerism and all the products for sale a long time before the main holidays (Christmas, Halloween…)

QUESTIONS

What do you think about Christmas? Do you understand people who doesn’t celebrate it? What is your opinion about Bank holidays or days’ celebrations?

What do people do on Remembrance Day? When is it? Why there were “little boxes of poppies”?

What is it your method of shopping in a supermarket?

What can you say about Helmand?

What is your opinion about taking part in a foreign war like a soldier or like a Blue Helmet?

What kind of conversation can you have with a person that is in the middle of a war?

What do you think of giving toy weapons as a present for children?

“The kids were doing only what kids do”. How true is this sentence? (Boys will be boys)

When did you know that your children could give advice to you?

Why did the writer choose “Fusilli” for the title?

 

VOCABULARY

aisle, mince pies, poppies, supermarket run, dithering, scam, fads, splashing out, Waitrose, Tesco's, mortuary, traipsing, Mothercare, marauding, goat, brats, knobbly

TWO WORLD WAR I POEMS

In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae

Strange Meeting, by Wilfred Owen