Dido's Lament, by Tessa Hadley

Dido's Lament, on The New Yorker (text, and audio, read by the author)

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

Lynette was 30 years old, she was tall, with brown freckly skin; she was original and eager, and she was wearing a wool coat that she had found in a charity shop.

It was winter at 5 pm, after work, when she went into John Lewis store to buy some things she needed. Leaving the stores and heading to the corridors and subway platforms, a man making his way through the crowd hit her, causing great pain in her ankle, so she decided to follow him to demand an apology, but, when she touched him, she realized that it was Toby, her ex-husband whom she had left 9 years ago, possibly because he wasn’t her type. Toby was glad to see her, and Lynette saw that Toby had changed: he has gone from being shy with the air of a country boy to seeing himself as a mundane and prosperous man. Currently, he had created a new production company that brought him a good income.

She had failed in the attempt to being a singer since her voice did not meet the conditions. Now, she had a temporary job at the BBC: in short, things were not going very well for her.

Toby told her that he had married Jaz, and they had two daughters and that he and his wife were very happy. Lynette lied when she said that she had a good boyfriend.

The bars were full of people, so Toby invited her to his house in Queen’s Park because his wife and his daughters had gone to her sister’s house. The house was located in a good area, the exterior appearance of the house was perfect and, inside, it was spacious with an old and modern decoration, and beautiful functional furniture. She realized that what the house contained was Toby’s liking.

Toby thought that he had done well to take Lynette home since in a bar he would have fallen into a flirtation under Lynette’s control, while, in his family’s house, everything was more transparent.

Before leaving, Lynette wrote her phone number on a blackboard. When Toby was left alone at home, he erased the phone number because he did not want to put everything together, family, work and home to maintain a relationship with Lynette. Lynette went to a bar near Toby’s house and saw that she had left the cheap clothes she had bought at John Lewis in Toby’s home.

She thought that Toby would call her, or maybe not. Lynette came to the conclusion that it was better to be free and, if she wasn’t, it was necessary.

QUESTIONS

-Bearing in mind Lynette’s physical appearance, what can you say about her personality?

-Do you think Toby didn’t notice he struck somebody going into the tube?

-The way you see it, what are Lynette’s reasons to follow obstinately the man who struck her?

-In your opinion, did he know somebody was following him?

-Can you always justify someone’s unconsciousness / abstraction?

-What do you think were the reasons for their divorce? Was one of them guiltier than the other?

-Did Toby prosper more than Lynette because of their divorce?

-Her having ancestors from Sierra Leone, does it have any relevance for her personality, for her divorce, for the story?

-She says she isn’t of the marrying kind nor the mothering kind. Don’t you think these situations come from chances rather from our will?

-Why did she lie about having a boyfriend and about meeting some friends of her?

-According to you, why did he invite her to his house, and why did she accept?

-To your mind, why didn’t she tell him about his clashing her in the tube?

-“She was afraid that his loving kindness might enclose her too entirely, like a sheath.” When can love and tenderness be scary?

-She was also afraid of his subordination. Why?

-“Men always run their women together into a continuum.” What does this sentence mean?

-Why does she think “Toby had opted for an easy, chummier life”?

-What is the author’s purpose when she mentions the car accident?

-Do you think that Lynette, when she wanted the divorce, resorted to the old cliché of not being free to give herself to work completely?

-What do you know about Dido’s Lament and about Dido and Aeneas?

-What do you imagine is the relation between the title and the story?

-Can you explain why she gave him her telephone number? And why did he erase it immediately?

-She forgot a bag in Toby’s house and Toby hid it to prevent his wife to see it. Did he still have any feelings for Lynette? What’s his relation with Jaz like?

-Do you think the story has an open ending, or it’s definitely finished?

 

VOCABULARY

John Lewis, fuming, funnelling, tartan, branded, hem, forging, trudging, tearing, Oyster card, escalator, filled out, wizened, dilapidated, smug, temp, temping, Sierra Leone, wincing, thrumming, children's teatime, devious, earnest, taking in, scuffed, rocking horse, goaded, barley sugar, simpering, chummier, juggernaut, ruddy, russet, guesting, accretions, Calpol, ranting, chalkboard

Dido's Lament, from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell

First on the Scene, by Graham Swift

 SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma

Frame from Jindabyne

This is Terry’s story. Terry is an old man suffering from Parkinson’s. He and his wife Lynne used to take the train almost every week and, after an hour’s journey, they would arrive at a quiet place, where they liked to walk and enjoy the beautiful views.

Because of his illness, he could not drive, and his wife didn’t know how to drive, so the train was ideal for them. In this way, they were able to discover wonderful landscapes that otherwise they would not have known.

When Lynne died, Terry continued going on these walks, taking the same train at the same times. He needed the countryside. On these walks, he did not feel lonely, on the contrary, he imagined that his wife was walking beside him. There was a semi-secret place, where he used to rest with Lynne and have a picnic. One day he thought he should stop there, but he was surprised to see that, this time, the place was occupied. He saw that there was a red patch of clothing. As he approached, he saw that it was a T-shirt worn by a woman in her 20s. She was alone, immobile and dead. She gave the impression that she had been there for some time. It was 10 o’clock of a warm Sunday morning. He stood still and looked at her for a while. There was nobody else there, he was the first on the scene. He was angry to be there alone. Everything had been violently interrupted, his walk, the conversation with his wife. It would be impossible to go this way without her again. His first thought was not to say anything to anyone. He would have to explain the situation and answer questions carefully, because he was there. He thought he could have taken another path, he could have taken another train, or perhaps someone else could have found the girl’s body.

Being the first on the scene could bring him complications, and he would be under suspicion. A young girl, a widower and trembling pensioner, everything seemed to blame him. He was tempted to turn back, return by another road and reach the main road. He even came close to shouting for Lynne, so that she would be his witness, but he knew he couldn’t do that. Then he realized what was his duty. He looked for the mobile phone, which he always carried in case of emergency or difficulty, and made a call. A voice was heard on the other side. He didn’t know how to begin to describe the situation, nor the exact place where he was. It was a terrible thing to be here and now.

 

SOME REFLEXIONS

The short narration is structured around the feelings and thoughts of a man who has just found the lifeless body of a woman. His thoughts make him feel fearful and question whether he should report the discovery or not. Finally, he does his duty and calls.

Reading the short story made me reflect on several themes. On the one hand, it is important to keep our daily routines, despite age and health problems. It is essential at this age to keep ourselves active and lead a healthy life to maintain our social relations and avoid isolation. On the other hand, I also believe that, in certain circumstances, the sense of responsibility is inescapable, and, like our protagonist, we must do our duty.

About the title “First on the scene”, I think he is not only the first one who discovered the girl’s body: being first on the scene gives him a sense of importance which he has never felt before.

QUESTIONS

Which do you prefer, drive or going by public transport? Why?

Do you have a driving licence? What is your opinion about the Spanish driving test?

What do you know about Parkinson’s disease?

Do you have a special place for walking? Why is this place important for you?

“This is as good as it gets”. What is its meaning? Can you tell us some situations in which you’d say this saying?

Have you seen Short Cuts or Jindabyne?

Is it good to talk out loud alone? Why do you think so? Do you do it sometimes?

Do you feel that sometimes something (a book, a place, a film, a piece of music, even a person) you always liked it’s been desecrated? Do you have a personal anecdote? What will you do then?

When do you know something, it’s impossible not to know it anymore. What can you do if you want to forget something?

What is the author’s narrative purpose when he makes an old man, a recent widower, to find a dead young woman?

What do you suppose had happened to the girl? Invent your own story: Was she murdered? By whom and why? Had she had an accident? Why was she there, walking alone? Did she commit suicide?

Are the police going to suspect him, or question him?

Do you have to feel guilty (or responsible) when some accident has happened next to you?

Do you think he’ll go by the same path again?

 

VOCABULARY

handy, miffed, go, tug, woodpecker, kestrel, primroses, moss, ferns, bramble, encroached, glaring, keenly, unmarked, incidental, peered, plights, stumbled, predicament, alibi, pinpoint

Was She the Only One?, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

The first sentence we read, “was she the only one?” is the repetition of the title, and it appears twice more in this initial paragraph. And with this humdrum question, the writer is introducing to us the memories of an elderly woman, Lily Hobbs, who remembers her complex relationship with her first husband, Albert Tanner, and, one year later, her different second marriage with Duncan Ross and their two daughters, Joyce and Margaret.

Every 25^th of June, Lily remembers her first love. She got married when she was eighteen years old. Her happiness was short-lived because Albert had to leave home to go to war. At that moment, she kept his new white shirt, the last one her husband had worn before leaving home, without washing it. She hung it in the wardrobe as an object of blind adoration. Lily caressed, smelled and put on this “sacred shirt” that reminded her of a magical memory of him with desperate romanticism. Now this shirt means love.

During the war, Albert wrote some letters to Rose, but, when months went by, he wrote her less. After a while, she knew that her husband had had his first leave, but it was cancelled. The shirt is still without washing. And now the shirt also means fidelity.

A few months passed, and then Alfred returned home for fifteen days, but he wasn’t the same man. She was waiting for love, but he didn’t touch her. He was a cold and strange man who didn’t look like a soldier, but a salesman, or almost a criminal. She doubted whether he has injured or is still healthy. Then he explained to her that he was suffering from shell shock, and he has to report to a doctor to evaluate his illness.

This is the moment that Lily hesitates about washing the shirt, but she decides not to do it. At home, Albert, who is very angry seeing the shirt in a poor condition, orders her to wash it because he believes that his wife has had an affair. This climax of suspicion and disturb is increasing in a huge aggressivity. Lily thinks that, perhaps, he is preparing his desertion. Anyway, she washes it, and she thinks that, by doing so, he will calm down and will love her again. The shirt means crisis.

One day, Lily proposes him a plan to go on a boat to Marlow on Sunday. It would be a nice excursion because Lily wants to make love. Lily tells him she wants him to wear the shirt during the trip, and he does it. They were very happy, the weather is fine and they enjoyed being together. Now the shirt means sexual desire.

But suddenly he has a change of mood: he says he wants to go back because he must return to the war. This is the second time the shirt remains hanging in the wardrobe, but now it’s no longer a fetish object. It means sadness.

Later, Lily decides to throw it to the fire. Burning the shirt means heartbreak, poignancy, desperation and hate.

Two days later, Lily receives a telegram telling her that her husband, Albert Tanner, has died “of wounds”, on the 25^th of June, ending the short marriage between Lily and Albert, like an elegy about how the war wasted lives and blasted hopes.

Following the story, she also remembers her second life. Three months later, Lily is going to Reading because of a job as a maid. On the train, she met Duncan. It was a lucky meeting because in him, she finds her new husband, the man who gives her love and sex.

But now she goes on remembering and thinking about the relationship between her sad past, Albert, and her real present, Duncan, who satisfies her desires.

At the end of the story, the first interrogative sentence becomes an affirmative one: that closes the story with this maxim.

 

SOME QUESTIONS AND REMARKS

After reading this sad and melancholic story, there are some questions in my mind:

Is the first marriage a real one, or it is only loneliness? Has she had sexual pleasure only in the second marriage?

Is “Albert” his name before leaving home, and “Bert” after going to war? I don’t know.

The story doesn’t follow any linear order from the beginning to the end. The writer wants to mix memories, sometimes in direct dialogue in third person between, sentences in second person to her second husband, and also with narrative and descriptive writing; and with the adding of “voice-over”, it becomes a complex text.
Finally, the story, “was she the only one”, is a reflexion about how a war can change a man.

TOPICS TO DEBATE

-Is it a film cliché, smelling our beloved clothes in order to remember them? Do you believe pheromones really affect humans?

-What do you know about shell shock? Have you seen the film Benediction or Regeneration or Johnny Got his Gun or Colonel Redl??

-Bert was a little fastidious: do you think his character made him prone to shell shock? Do you think some illnesses are psychosomatic?

-What do you think about military service? Has it to be obligatory?

-What implications does the word “appetites” have when meaning a woman’s sexual desire? Can shell shock cancel sexual desire?

-Did she really wish Albert went back to the front? What was harder for her: her husband’s shell-shock or her husband being in the trenches?

-Do you approve of desertion or shirking?

-What can you tell us about the beginning of the WWI?

-Why do you think he had become a corporal so quickly?

-“Wear this shirt for me” meant for Lily “let’s make love”. Do you remember other expressions from literature meaning “let’s make love”?

-“Hello, Lily. Can I come in?” was a very formal greeting and Lily felt it immediately. Can we discover other people mood only for the words they have chosen? Do you know any example?

-What is now “the height of sexiness”? What does “sexiness” depend on?

-Do you think our sweat smell differently according to our feelings / mood? They say animals are scared when they are going to die and that this fear corrupts their flesh, so we are eating corrupted meat all the time. What do you think about it?

-“He wanted to go back and be really dead”: was it the true reason?

-Why did she think the “intelligence” was hers?

-For children, do you prefer having boys or girls? In some countries there’s a preference for girls, and in some other for boys? Do you know why?

 

VOCABULARY

stud, ripe, fussy, leave, shell shock, measles, MO, lent, fabric, sheer, skulking, bellowed, private, mangle, break down, tub, fumblingly, thwarted, coaxing, tit-for-tat, willow, swan, put-upon, jetty, oars, loll, reeking, flustered, intelligence, cope, swathe, morsel, decoy

 

The Son, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

Kosta Alexopoulos is a Greek, born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor, he lives in Camden, England, with his wife Anna and their son Adoni.

They are all expatriated, the family had to abandon their country, and, after thirty-five years, Kosta remembers the facts that obliged them to move out from Greece and reflects about their life, and he mostly concentrates in his relationship with Adoni.

When Kosta was a baby, his parents had to go with him to a French refugee ship: the Turks were burning Smyrna, killing as many persons as they could.

Later on, there was another war in Athens, the Germans killed Kosta’s mother, and he decided to chop off his mother fingers in order to exchange the big rings she had on her hand. Not the moment for feelings, there was hunger time.

The Germans also killed Kosta’s father.

With the country destroyed and no nice future to come, Greek men looked for wives and set out to New York or England, hoping they would open a restaurant, make money and eventually go back to Greece.

Therefore, after many years working, Kosta opened his own restaurant in Caledonian Road, a place totally different from the sunny and noisy places he loved, where he would never go back: he thinks “you are made for one soil, but life send you to another, and then you can’t budge”.

The three members of the family work at the restaurant: Anna, Kosta and Adoni.

Adoni doesn’t meet at all the connotation of his name. As a matter of fact, Adoni was born in Athens, in 1944, in Melianos' family, neighbours of Anna’s family. The real boy’s father died in Poland; the mother died giving him birth.

The baby was taken in by Anna’s family, and she proposed Kosta adopting him when they married. Kosta accepted, imagining that later the true son he desired would arrive, but he didn’t know Anna was not fertile.

The years passed by, and the couple never find the moment to explain Adoni his origins. There was always an excuse to postpone that essential explanation. They even began to cheat themselves that the boy was their real son.  

Kosta considers that Adoni didn’t grow in a satisfactory way, because he wasn’t good at school, reserved, he didn’t look for girls, didn’t go out at night, didn’t have his own wishes or opinions.

When Adoni was eighteen, he started working at the restaurant. He was efficient in that job, he worked hard, although he moved like a great bear between the tables and didn’t show any charm. When Kosta introduced Adoni to the customers, they look surprised at that absurd name.

Kosta always plays the role of a proud Greek restaurant owner; always pretends he was Zorba the Greek. 

They have a life of routine and permanent work, they live on top of the restaurant, no entertainments, holidays or comfort, their only dedication was their business, each one their duties.

Anna wasn’t a beautiful woman either, she put on weight and seemed a huge milk pastry when lying on bed. But she does properly all what’s needed for the work, a “great work horse” in Kosta’s opinion.

Kosta expected one day Adoni will be like the son he would have liked, and he moved between deception and acceptance, between hope and guilt. Sometimes he wept.

Moreover, Kosta started to be paranoid, imagining Adoni could discover by himself he had no real parents.

Surprisingly, when Adoni was already thirty-three, he started to go out at night, awakening happy expectations on his father that he would finally meet girls! But what he really did was going to the library and visiting a group of old expatriate Greeks, facts that make grow the fear of his father that he was playing the detective.

When summer arrived, Adoni asked, for the first time in his life, to go on holidays. He was thirty-five….

And he had decided to visit Greece, a very terrifying idea for Kosta, who had to accept to let him go and find out where he came from. Anna felt less worried, considering they would go through it all, that life and routine would continue as always.

The fortnight finished, Kosta went to the airport, and when he met Adoni, tried to find out every evidence that he already knew, he waited his son to say it, to let it out. Instead, Adoni commented about Athens, full of tourists and no decent meal to be found in the city centre.

Arrived at the restaurant, the family work the whole day as every day until the night, when the frightening moment arrived. Adoni explained, his face hardened to stone, that he found an old man, Elias, who knew the past of the families. That man revealed Adoni his true surname was Melianos, not Alexopoulos, his real father died in the war and his real mother died when Adoni was born.

Elias told another unexpected news: Kosta’s parents were killed by the Turks, and their neighbours, the Alexopoulos, were the ones that took Kosta to the refugee ship.

As Kosta had once said: We are born in confusion, and that’s how we live.

I think this story is an example of some damages of wars, not always considered.
We always think about the destruction, the dead people, the hunger, and other terrible sufferings. But we don’t frequently think about the orphan little babies, or children, deprived of their parents, who grow with other families or in public institutions. Besides, wars produce expats who must abandon their countries, to live abroad feeling the loss of their homeland.

QUESTIONS

-What do you think of anthropophagy? Would you do /accept it in case of extreme necessity? Do you know cases about it?

-Who was Adonis in the Greek Mythology?

-After a war between two countries, according to your opinion, when or how can them stop their mutual rancour?

-When, or why, would emigrants go back to their native country? Do you know people who have gone back?

-What do you know about the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922)? And about the great fire of Smyrna?

-For adopted children, what is the best moment to tell them they are adopted?

-If you were an adopted child, would you like to know who were your biological parents and why you were given to adoption?

-Why do you think the narrator has made Adoni bashful, silent, secretive and “chaste and sober as a monk”?

-“We Greek are like that”: do you have an adjective to define different nations?

-From your point of view, is it a good idea to encourage your children to look for a partner? What is the best way to encourage them?

-What kind of club do you imagine “Neo Elleniko” can be?

-What is the reference to “King Oedipus asking fool questions”?

-Have you read Zorba the Greek or seen the film?

-Hasn’t Kosta to be happy because he didn’t chop off his mother’s fingers? Why do you imagine he’s angry?

 

VOCABULARY

barter, snap-shots, pile, beads, budge, lopping off, (was) none the wiser, kid, stunted, swop, podgy, snigger, drooping, blancmange, winds, dolt, skewering, qualms, gave her notice, mousy, worked it out, forestalled, nightingale, fogies, lollop, Customs, spit it out, nudging at his lips, cue, tilting 

Cecilia Awakened, by Tessa Hadley

San Miniato al Monte

SUMMARY AND IDEAS

This is another story about a singular girl: the intellectual, clever, plain, rejected by her schoolmates, shy girl, and her getting free of this secluded scholar life.

Cecilia, a 15-year-old girl, is the only daughter of an elderly couple, a librarian (Ken, the husband) and a historical novels' writer (Angela, the wife). This couple brought up their daughter in their likes, habits and culture, rather apart from ordinary or not so cultivated people. But while a child, Cecilia has liked this kind of life (reading thick books, going to the museums…), although for her mates and even for her teachers she has been a bit of a smart-arse or too goody-goody.

The story is situated mostly in the family stay in Italy, where they spend a week holiday, although it goes backwards, and forwards again. In this trip, Cecilia awakens to her adolescence when he sees how absurd it’s that she’s still sleeping in the same room as her parents, she doesn’t dress as a teenager and she does cultural tourism. Now she’s abroad, she feels deep inside her that she’s a kind of weirdo, she sees that they are a nuisance for the local people and notices the contrast between herself and the local girls.

She spends all the week in Florence sulking, although she doesn’t oppose openly to her parents’ opinions and proposals. But the last day of her stay, she has an epiphany, a moment of revelation when they go and see a church away from the most touristic and crowded places. There she likes the building and its pictures, and she sees clearly what a pest is the tourism. After the moment of calm bliss, a monk chides them for being there when local people are meeting to say a prayer, and she doesn’t want to be there any more because she thinks the monk is right; so she asks her parents to go back to the hotel alone. She has awakened, she wants to break free from her family and from her childhood.

The ending is very peculiar because the narrator doesn’t tell us what she’s doing, but what her mother imagines she’s doing.

 

I think there are some interesting topics in this story. One of them it’s the beginning: as we can see, it isn’t unusual for Tessa Hadley to start the story in medias res; it’s a classical way (e.g. Odyssey) and it’s useful to attract the reader’s attention.

A resource we don’t find in this story is the weather to create some mood in the atmosphere: sadness, melancholy, action… Perhaps in Italy, the weather doesn’t change so often to give us a variety of moods.

We can see the story has some similarities with “A Card Trick”, because the star is also a weirdo shy intellectual girl that wants to get out of her cocoon. But in the present case, the girl is not the absolute protagonist: she shares this role with her mother. Angela had to fight her own mother, because she didn’t want to be a traditional woman, and now she feels that her daughter also wants to fight her because maybe she wants to be more like the other normal girls, so maybe every generation has to reject the previous one.

Another interesting question is the reason or the meaning of the characters’ names. Does Angela want to be a guardian of her daughter, as an angel? Saint Cecilia, besides being the musicians’ patroness, is (according to some sources) also the patron saint of blind people: was Cecilia blind (or voluntarily blind) to other girls, to the world, and now she can see it because of a miracle / epiphany?

And we have also some mysteries: why does the narrator focus our attention in Angela’s mother’s lipstick? What is the meaning of San Miniato martyrdom (he was beheaded, but then he carries his head on his trunk)? And what about St. Placidus being rescued from the water?

QUESTIONS

-What do you think are the features of rearing a child when he or she is the only child and with their parents a bit old?
-Did / do you do any collection? What do you collect? What for?
-Have you read Middlemarch? And what about Dickens novels? What can you tell us about them?

-Why do you think the writer had chosen such big physical changes in Cecilia’s puberty?

-Cecilia’s family liked the past and didn’t like the present. What do you prefer, and why, past, present of future? Is there an age for each preference?

-Is there a cliché in the story about what men and women see in museums?

-“Angela wasn’t a feminist, grateful to be liberated from the tyranny of pleasing.” What does it mean for you?

-The father is “getting early English books online.” Do you know what is Project Gutenberg?

-Do you think that some people are more attractive with a cup / cigarette in their hands?

-As you see it, is Signora Petricci correct in her opinion about Cecilia’s father? Or was it only a teenager’s imagination?

-Cecilia has a trick to get rid of a fear. Do you have one? Can you tell us?

-May you say that the writer has chosen the character’s names for any reason?

-What message could the sound of Petricci’s bracelet have sent to Cecilia?

-“She wasn’t beautiful.” When and why do we decide that a person is beautiful?

-According to your point of view, intellectual people are always shut out of the world?

-When you travel as a tourist, do you feel rejected? How much tourism is too much tourism?

-What do Abraham and Isaac symbolize in the story?

-What do you know about Caravaggio? And about San Miniato al Monte?

-What is for you the best way to learn to appreciate art, books and music?

-What are the meanings of these revelations for Cecilia: 1-San Miniato, 2-Vespers song, 3-the monk?

-Why does Angela remember her mother’s lipstick when Cecilia has gone to the hotel?

-Does San Placidus rescue have any meaning for the end of the story?

VOCABULARY

dummies, squalling, stinks, showed her off, finicky, wizened, fey, sprite, Poundworlds, identikit, dozed, jazzed it up, plotters, reëntering, harbouring, static, slacks, hooking, pull-out bed, swarthy, truckle, checked, derided, crop, scowling, swooning, unassailable, printouts, sweltering, reprieve, thawing, skeins, Verpers, doom, quailed, scourging, puny, foreboding, snooping, nub, stamped-out

A Card Trick, by Tessa Hadley

 SUMMARY

This is a capital story of the collection; with it, Tessa Hadley won the 2005 O. Henry award.

Gina, a 47-year-old scholar and writer, is revisiting Wing Lodge, the house where John Morrison, her favourite novelist, whose works she has deeply studied and about whom she has written a book, lived during the last and most productive years of his life.

There she remembers her holiday at her mother’s friend (or client), Mamie. Mamie has a glamorous family of three boys and a daughter. Although Mamie belongs to the high class, she and her children are natural, free and easy, frank, kind and welcoming; but they aren’t much into culture, literature and art, and haven’t gone to university, so their academic education is a bit limited; however, they aren’t silly and can have interesting conversations. In the other hand, Gina is very clever about these subjects, and she’s a very good student, but she’s socially clumsy and shy; moreover, she feels awkward in her body, because she’s tall and a bit plump.

There, in their house near the beach, she spent two weeks, but she didn’t go much to the beach, neither did she take part in their open-air entertainments; instead, she pretended to study to prepare her exams and spent most of the time alone in her room; but, when the family is away, she roams the house searching and prying and making herself comfortable with food, drink, cigarettes and lying on the sofa.

One day, believing she was alone at home, she discovers that Josh, the less glamorous of the brothers is at home. She had some feelings for him. Gina doesn’t know what to do and spends a lot of time shut in her room.

But the last day of her holiday there, she feels a lot more confident. One of the sons is in London, Mamie and two other children have gone to see some friends, and Tom is staying at home building houses of cards; as he cannot finish a difficult one, Gina offers to show him a card trick. The boy is astonished and enraptured at the trick. For Gina, this meeting is a kind of symbolic sexual encounter.

The next day, she went back home and never again met anybody of Mamie’s family. Afterward she will know that Mamie got divorced and, after some time, she died, and one of her sons also died drowned; so perhaps a glamorous family has also their misfortunes.

But now, as she remembers this fortnight in a coastal village, she isn’t that awkward 18-year-old girl any more: she’s a tall woman, perhaps not beautiful, but “statuesque”, who has had some success in her field and feels confident with her life and her body. In John Morrison’s house she gets emotional when she sees a manuscript with a scene that has been erased in the published book: a middle-aged woman, daughter of the man just dead in bed, declares her love to the doctor who has taken care of him until the last moment; the doctor, who is married, feels disgusted and, amazed, rejects her.

The end of the story is a bit mysterious. Something (and insect, the lady guide) calls her attention, and the memories of that holiday come back to her, and she regrets that isolate life of hers when she could cheat someone to be her friend. Maybe, as she’s now a public person, she can play tricks no more to anyone.

QUESTIONS

-Why Gina’s appearance is important for the plot?

-What is Wing Lodge? (Compare to Lamb House). Have you ever visited a house of a famous person? Do you like visiting museums? Somebody said museums were like churches: do you agree?

-What can you say about Mamie and her family?

-Is a friendship between people of very different social classes possible? Why do you think so?

-Do you follow a diet? For your health or for your body shape / weight? Do / did you trust your diet?

-What are A levels and S levels?

-Is it usual that rich people don’t go to university? Do you think everybody should go?

-Do you know who were Walter Gropius, Conrad, Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, Mansfield, Pound?

-What kind of books do you imagine John Morrison wrote?

-What different talents (from the protagonist) did Mamie’s children have?

-Do you feel curiosity about how authors write? (I mean technical aspects: computer, pen, with music…) Do you know any singular case?

-What does “a Spartan boy carrying the fox under his shirt” refer to?

-What are “Honey” and “19”?

-Can you describe Tom?

-What do you know about “Derek and the Dominoes”?

-What good memories do you have about your holidays?

-“It was her mother fault”. What do you think of your parents’ responsibilities for our successes and failures?

-“It feels more sympathetic”. What can this mean when talking about a pack of cards?

-What do you think it’s the best way to break the ice in an embarrassing situation? For instance: “Charming day, isn’t it?” “Pray, don’t talk about the weather. Whenever people talk about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.”

-Do you know an easy card trick?

-What is it the meaning of the card trick for Gina’s maturing?

-How did Gina change over the years?

-What kind of novel was “Winter’s Day”?

-What books did made you cry?

-At the end, who is the victim in this sentence: so that your victim wouldn’t be able to put a card down wrong?

 

VOCABULARY

clothes-wise, Laura Ashley dress, pinafore, hair slide, toppling, glass-topped wicker table, raid, S level, awe, duffers, retakes, disingenuous, pushbike, wetsuit, fitting, sundial, gnarled, conkers, sparely, ferreting, off-handedness, frowsty, herbs, scuttled, fry-up, double declutching, sec, loo, tipsily, estate hands, drawn out (coffee), till, entropy, takeover, longhand, overspill, floundering