Claire of the Sea Light – April CC Book Club Selection

SouthJerseyChessMom · March 18, 2014, 11:21pm

^ great link
“In addition to last year’s Beautiful Ruins, previous One Book selections include State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (2012), Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2011), Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2010), The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester (2009), Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (2008), A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind (2007), and Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian (2006).”

ignatius · March 19, 2014, 2:05pm

Well, I started the book Sunday morning and finished last night (Tuesday). I did not read continually for the three days either. The book just flows. If you haven’t started it yet but plan to do so, no worries. It seems I started it and then, lo and behold, I’d finished.

Mary13 · March 19, 2014, 2:27pm

^ I think Claire of the Sea Light was a really good choice after The Luminaries because it’s a totally different reading experience. That’s not a criticism of our previous selection – I’m just enjoying the change of pace. Procrastinators will have no trouble joining us for this round. :)

ignatius · March 19, 2014, 3:25pm

Mary: I just noticed your inquiry regarding author Sarah Addison Allen. I love her books. I own all of them. I’m less certain about recommending them to your mom. The author touches on darker issues, such as abuse or infidelity - though The Help and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society books do also, so never mind. Each SAA book contains more than a little magical realism. For example, the apple tree in Garden Spells plays favorites and has been known to throw its apples at the unwary. All that said, the books end on a happy note and are different than anything else I read. I recommend them highly to most everyone but I’m just not sure about your mom. I … think … my mother would have liked them. For my mother, the question mark would have been whether she could “handle” the magical realism.

Mary13 · March 19, 2014, 10:05pm

Thanks, ignatius. We’ll definitely give Sarah Addison Allen a try.

My mom can handle some darkness in her reading, but she prefers the lighter fare. There’s a certain irony there, since as a child of the Depression, a young adult during World War II, and a woman who has buried both her parents, all her siblings and her husband, she’s actually lived through a lot more darkness than many people. I guess at a certain point in life “enough is enough” and reading becomes a way to imagine joyful events rather than re-live tragic ones. That’s my armchair analysis anyway.

ignatius · March 19, 2014, 10:47pm

^^^ Well, then I recommend starting with Garden Spells followed by The Peach Keeper. Claire in Garden Spells makes a brief appearance in The Peach Keeper. Anyway, if I had to pick my favorites of Sarah Addison Allen’s books it would be those two (though I’ve liked them all). Caraid is also a Sarah Addison Allen fan - maybe she’ll pop in to give her opinion.

Caraid · March 20, 2014, 11:58am

Yes, I am a Sarah Addison Allen fan! I agree that Garden Spells and The Peach Keeper are the top two, but I enjoyed her other books as well. Susanna Kearsley is another author I would recommend for your mom, if she is okay with a little bit of time travel and spirits from the past. Kearsley’s books are easy to read and always have happy endings. I liked, in no particular order, Mariana, Rose Garden, Winter Sea, and Shadowy Horses.

I read A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I liked it. I was completely unable to predict the ending. I might have written a different ending, but the author neglected to ask my opinion. If this book happens to come up as a book suggestion for anyone’s home book club, I think it would be a good story for discussion.

Mary13 · March 21, 2014, 12:17am

Thanks, Caraid. I should feel guilty about sidetracking the thread…but I don’t! So many good ideas—and not just for my mom. I’m been known to harbor a weakness for the happy ending myself. :)

Tiredofsnow · March 21, 2014, 12:32am

My recommendation may be too late, Mary, but the Alexander McCall Smith books are lovely. He was actually here in Perth last night, but I didn’t get to see him. I did see Bill Bryson on Wednesday night, though!!

ignatius · March 21, 2014, 1:52pm

^^^ I’ve read two Bill Bryson books: A Walk in the Woods and In a Sunburned Country and laughed out loud in both. I’d think he is a great speaker. Jealous!!!

My husband has his latest book One Summer: America 1927 on his desk now. We gave him the The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid for Christmas a couple of years ago. It’s about growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s.

Mary: I do think your mother might really enjoy these books. My mother - who did not read much nonfiction - read every one of Bryson’s books. In fact, she was the one who recommended him to me.

*I’m still pondering Sarah Addison Allen books for your mother: some non-explicit sex in them. I don’t know if that will bother your mom or not. I’m not discouraging you here, just being careful. I love Allen’s books and recommend them to one and all - quick reads and ones I read more than once.

**Oh, I wanted to add another suggestion: Cheaper by the Dozen.

Mary13 · March 22, 2014, 2:17am

Never too late. I checked out The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and will get some Bill Bryson next. Whatever she doesn’t read, I’ll be glad to try myself.

The woman had seven children and was pregnant on-and-off for most of a decade, so…I’m thinking that as long as it’s not Fifty Shades of Grey, she can handle it. ;)

Also – love Cheaper by the Dozen. At one point or another over the years, I’ve threatened all four of my daughters with “the convent with the 12 foot wall, near Albany.”

Lipsha · March 28, 2014, 11:59pm

If she likes “older” works, I would strongly recommend Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, which has a bit of sadness because it’s largely about elderly folks living in Maine in the 1890s but has two wonderful elderly heroines. I also wonder if she would like to read, or even better, listen to Nora Ephron. They might be too urban chic but they are hilarious; listening to them made me feel as if I had a best friend sharing her life with me. They are essays, not fiction, with titles such as “I Hate My Neck.”

NJTheatreMOM · March 29, 2014, 2:26am

I adored The Country of the Pointed Firs when I read it years ago, but my memory of it is a little hazy now, so I wasn’t sure whether if might be too sad. I should go back and read it again!

Mary13 · April 1, 2014, 1:51pm

^ Thank you , Lipsha! I’ll look into those books. My mom’s first selection from the potpourri that I offered her was The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. She just finished it and gave it a thumbs up, so spread the word to your 92 year old friends. :)

It’s April 1st – I’ll be back shortly with discussion questions!

Mary13 · April 1, 2014, 2:18pm

Welcome to April and our discussion of Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat.

Here are some discussion questions to peruse:

The opening chapter of Claire of the Sea Light moves backward chronologically through each of Claire’s birthdays, ultimately returning to the present day of the narrative. How does this structure contribute to the book’s sense of time overall, and to its weaving of past and present as more characters are introduced?

<ol>
<li>What does it mean that Albert Vincent is both the town of Ville Rose’s undertaker and its mayor? How are these dual roles reflected in his relationship with Claire Narcis, Nozias’s wife and Claire’s mother, when she works for him preparing bodies for burial?</li>
<li>That Claire visits her mother’s grave on her birthdays brings poignantly to the fore the notion that life and death are intertwined. In what other ways does that happen in the book? Do ghosts—or chime—have a positive or negative influence over the living?</li>
<li>The sea both opens and closes the book, offering powerful images of its destructive and restorative force: the fisherman Caleb is drowned at the book’s beginning when “a wall of water rise(s) from the depths of the ocean, a giant blue-green tongue” (3), and at the book’s end, Max Junior is spat back from the sea that had “taken [him] this morning” (237). What roles does the sea play in the fates of all the characters in the book? What other myths, stories, and fables come to your mind by this book’s evocation of water?</li>
<li>At one point in the story, Nozias recalls another watery scene, when he and wife Claire Narcis went night fishing, and Claire slipped into the moonlit water to observe a school of shimmering fish. It is from this moment that their daughter, and Danticat’s book, get their name. How does this important memory shape your impression of Claire Narcis, including in what we learn about her by the book’s conclusion?</li>
<li>The relationships between parents and children take many forms in the book’s three main families. Claire and Nozias remain at the center, showing how both parent and child experience joy and fear, trust and wariness. How is this theme expanded upon by bonds between Max Sr. and Max Junior, Max. Junior and Pamaxime, Madame Gaëlle and Rose, and even Odile and Henri? In each of these, who, if any, suffers more: parent or child?</li>
<li>Madame Gaëlle’s story (“The Frogs,” 41) opens with a description of a sudden explosion of frogs that has plagued Ville Rose, which her husband Laurent explains “is surely a sign that something more terrible is going to happen” (44). The smell of the frogs’ corpses at first nauseates the pregnant Gaëlle, yet the act of putting a frog in her mouth seems to save her baby from risk. How does this miracle, along with the simultaneous death of Laurent, reflect the town’s mythic culture and one woman’s sense of her fate?</li>
<li>Much of the lyricism and power of Claire of the Sea Light derives from the descriptions of its Haitian setting: of the sea, the mountains, the flowers, the “sparkly feathers from angel wings” that Claire searches for after her waking dreams (236). Would the book work in any other place, either in the Caribbean or beyond? How might things change if so?</li>
<li>Although this is fiction, Danticat vividly evokes present-day Haitian culture and society, including its poverty (5), gangs, and restavèk children—the child-servitude that Nozias fears for Claire. How do these realities affect your reading of the book and the sense of authenticity of Claire’s story? Of Bernard’s?</li>
<li>The radio is a major form of communicating stories throughout the novel, and the radio station is a place where confessions and revelations are spoken, but also where betrayals, and even murder, occur. Why do you think Danticat chose to set so many key scenes at the radio station? Louise George is the host of a radio show called Di Mwen, which translates to “Tell Me.” Does honest speech come more naturally in this medium where the speaker’s face is hidden? In what ways is Danticat’s book in and of itself like a radio show?</li>
<li>Claire of the Sea Light is rich with secrets: of paternity, of sexual identity, of crimes, of lies that unfold in the course of the narrative. How do the multiple voices of the book help withhold the truth, yet also expose it at key moments? In what cases does not knowing the entire truth of a situation—such Nozias’s plan to have a vasectomy, Max Junior’s love for Bernard, and Albert Vincent’s for Claire Narcis—hurt or protect the person keeping the secret, and the person from whom the truth is kept?</li>
<li>Danticat chooses to tell her story through multiple voices and points of view, which provides the reader with a kaleidoscopic view of the past. How does this also affect the book’s presentation of memory, and of our ability to shape certain memories that may not be our own?</li>
<li>In the scene where Nozias leaves his goodbye letter for Claire with Madame Gaëlle, both characters seem to hesitate in their willingness to participate in Nozias’s decision to leave. How do their interactions in this moment reflect their unique understandings of their responsibilities, and also of death and the future? What makes Nozias turn to Gaëlle in particular, and what motivates Gaëlle to take in a new daughter after she’s lost her own? Is money the most important thing to have, in raising a child, in offering him or her security and love?</li>
<li>Although Claire Limyè Lanmè is the book’s fulcrum, her point of view does not appear until the final chapter. Does it seem that Claire accepts her fate and her father’s decision? How does placing those other stories before Claire’s affect your feelings about her in the final scene? What do you imagine will happen to Claire in the future?</li>
<li>The choice Nozias faces—whether or not to leave his child in the care of another—is one that many real parents in Haiti struggle with today. Does this knowledge change your understanding of the book, or your sympathies with Nozias? What would you do if you were in Nozias’s position?

</li>
</ol>

Mary13 · April 1, 2014, 2:23pm

As so often happens with me, the novel was not what I expected. I tend to take the short Amazon summaries too literally. In the same way that I thought Walter Moody was going to be the main protagonist of *The Luminaries<a href=“ha!”>/i</a>, I thought that Claire and/or her father would play major roles in Claire of the Sea Light, and that the search for the child would be the primary focus of the story. That wasn’t the case. However, I was not disappointed–I was drawn in by the portraits of the various inhabitants of Ville Rose.

Claire and her father Nozias made me think of Hushpuppy and Wink in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Both little girls live in poverty with a troubled father who loves his daughter, but also feels some desperation about what will become of her. In both settings–the Bathtub and Ville Rose–the little girl is often left to her own devices, but is known by the other residents, who keep half an eye on her. And in both stories, the little girl runs away (dealing with lost-mother issues), but ultimately realizes that she must return to her father and the tight-knit community that is an essential part of her being.

Caraid · April 1, 2014, 4:36pm

The book surprised me. Like Mary, I was expecting more of Claire and Nozias and not all the smaller life stories of the different characters. I thought the way the book was written made the characters real. I liked seeing them through the perspective of others, as well as through themselves. Reading the different perspectives made me like the characters more. even the ones I didn’t like when I first saw them through another character’s eyes. I wanted more at the end. I wanted to know what happened to everyone’s lives in the future.

mathmom · April 1, 2014, 4:43pm

I too felt completely misled by the book jacket description, but in a good way, as I liked the book much more than I expected to. Beautifully written, the setting reminded me a lot of my childhood in East Africa. I don’t think it had to be set in Haiti, though I thought one of the more interesting tidbits, was the effects of the diaspora on Haiti and those who leave and those who come back.

All that said, I have never ever read a book before that made me want to chart out the order of events like this:
<a href=“xkcd: Movie Narrative Charts”>http://xkcd.com/657/</a> I’d be reading about Gaelle and thinking, “Okay, now Claire is negative three years old…”

ignatius · April 1, 2014, 6:22pm

^^^ I always enjoy a good xkcd. ;)

I too expected more of Claire and Nozias though I knew to expect “interlocking stories” thanks to the BookList review.

From an interview with Danticat:

</a>

Mary: I haven’t seen Beasts of the Southern Wild though it just so happens that the DVD waits for me at the library. The movie Bella came to mind though when Gaelle happens across Yves Moulin - the young man who accidentally caused her daughter’s death - in the bar. In Bella a young man - also a soccer player - kills a child in a car accident. Good movie if you haven’t seen it. Roger Ebert’s review: <a href=“Bella movie review & film summary (2007) | Roger Ebert”>http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bella-2007</a>

Things of interest or that I just liked in the book:

<ul>
<li>Creole vs. French: wi vs. oui</li>
<li>scattered details: Gaelle bringing the handmade baby items to Nozias when baby Claire is a day old only to find that Claire the mother had actually embroidered the item for Gaelle’s baby. Or the wreath on Rose’s tomb growing in size only to find later that the man who accidentally caused her death left the wreath with one white rose added each year.</li>
<li>the letter that Nozias gave to Gaelle to keep for Claire. It says so much while saying so little.</li>
<li>the (same) dress that Nozias has made for Claire each year.</li>
</ul>

I think that this book hits close to home for Danticat:

NJTheatreMOM · April 1, 2014, 8:23pm

When I first started reading Claire of the Sea Light, I loved it. Then, at around p. 84, right after Bernard’s death, when Danticat began writing about the more prosperous people of the town, I’m afraid she suddenly lost me.

When Danticat was writing about Claire and her mom and dad and the residents of Cité Pendu, I appreciated the gentle, charming lyricism of her writing. I also loved the descriptions of the town. In my opinion, almost all of that grace and lyricism fell away in the middle chapters of the book…although they returned in the final chapter about Claire.

This affected me so strongly that it was all I could do to get though the book. I kept putting it down and not wanting to pick it back up! In addition, I started having trouble keeping the characters straight. I was partly repelled and partly bored.

After I finally finished, I went through the book again and took notes. I found information that I had completely failed to absorb and retain properly…like the fact that Gaëlle was responsible for Bernard’s death. When I came across that on my second reading, I wrote a great big “UGH!” in my notes.

Other things I wrote “UGH!” about in my notes were the slapping at the school and the whole business of the radio show about Max, Jr. Blech, those episodes were so nasty and unpleasant. To me, the deaths in the book were extremely shocking, and on top of that, the tales of the privileged folk were &#%!@?! depressing.

I can’t help feeling that maybe Danticat likes poor people better than rich people and has trouble rendering rich characters as at all sympathetic. Very disappointing.

Claire of the Sea Light – April CC Book Club Selection

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