April's reading is Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos. A first novel released in December 2004, that has been hearaled as a "powerful tale of familial warring, secrets and redemption" A story of a elderly woman who takes in a young woman with a broken heart, into her home full of valuable antiques.
Copies are available in front of the circulation desk for checkout or click the link above to hold a copy for yourself through our catalog. If you'd like to chime in about the book or have thoughts about the question below, post a comment to this blog.Questions to Ask:
1. How is Margaret portrayed in the beginning? Who is this woman who is entombed in a vast, carefully dusted house with her father's collection? An unlikely heroine, she is an old, peculiar recluse. How is her diagnosis an inciting force for change? Talk about her growing appreciation of the uncommonness of common things.
2. In the clamor of the first armload of plate crashing, Wanda "suddenly knew that she had found a home with someone who was as deeply aggrieved and crazy as she was. It was tremendously comforting" (p. 133). How does the Hughes house, truly a sanatorium, provide a haven and structure for these women to pass through madness to sanity?
3. Did you find conflicts between traditional values and newer ones? Where? Which characters grow larger or more sympathetic from being challenged by younger people? Does the converse hold?
4. How is the theme of the quest important in the book? Which characters commit themselves to seeking someone lost? What are the results? Who abandons the quest and why? Are there surprising rewards?
5. Talk about the title. To how many characters and things and ways of life does it pertain? What is meant by a "dissolution of borders" on page 269?
6. How is the star motif expanded in the book? Think about the star imagery from Margaret to l942 school children in Europe. (See page 282 for some of Margaret's own thoughts on the subject. And see page 290 for a further amplification of the symbol.)
7.What were the funniest parts of the book for you? Think of Irma, with her dry survivor wit as well as her bolder humor. Recall Maurice whose clumsiness is a boon in the Hughes house. And Margaret's outrageous mother. Talk about other moments of high or low comedy.
8. The china, both whole and in pieces, generates stories, such as the ice-fishing ninety-two-year-old Alta Fogle: "Maybe this is true. Maybe not. You can never be sure: all objects in the Hughes house have to have meaning, and if their past is not known, stories are invented" (p. 337). In Chapter Thirty-two, the narrator addresses the reader directly, as if one were M.J. Striker approaching the Hughes house. "Pay attention. Let your mind embrace metaphors. It's your first clue about what goes on here" (p. 337). How do these quotations help us understand multiple levels of the story? Is the making of mosaic art also a metaphor for writing stories, the novel, for instance?
(questions from Readinggroupguides.com)
