Where oh where are our leaders? Phaaaaat? Geeeeeek?
Have either of you come up with a schedule yet? :helpme
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Where oh where are our leaders? Phaaaaat? Geeeeeek?
Have either of you come up with a schedule yet? :helpme
Don't look at me! I'm just sitting here kicking back with a couple of beers (actually, it's coffee) while phat works up a sweat organizing the reading schedule :lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Jewelsy
I hope I'm not overstepping here but there are 10 chapters of about 30 or so pages each - Should we just divide up into 3 weeks with the 4th week for overall discussion?
Week 1 - Chapters 1-3 or pgs 1- 113
Week 2 - Chapters 4-7 or pgs 114-219
Week 3 - Chapters 8-10 or pgs 220-310
Week 4 overall discussion
I don't think you're overstepping, PGM...that sounds good to me. Geek...we need an executive decision here. :lol
My apologies. I had my copy, cut it up (so to speak) into reading sections, cleaned up my home office...and lost it. :lol
My vote is that we go with PGM35's schedule (and thanks, PGM35) so we can get started.
And, yes, I've located my copy again. What it was doing in my laptop attache, I'll never know. :shrug
Chapter 1 (Pearl's Story)
I found an interesting dichotomy in Pearl, a very good representation of how we view ourselves and how we're viewed by others.
On the one hand is strong, dignified, confident Pearl, a woman not afraid to marry late in life, a decade after most of her contemporaries were already married, a woman who raised three children in the midst of the Depression(?) with little or no help from a partner. Like many of literature's "great" women, Pearl seemed to live by the mantra "do what you have to do," an admirable quality and a quality that seemed to help her survive the departure of her husband and the responsibility for her children's upbringing. Witness her willingness to take a job as a shopkeeper and to keep performing that job for meager wages. Witness her ability to repair her homes.
On the other hand, as the chapter progressed, we learn of Pearl's--and I hate to apply a modern, Oprah-like sensibility here--unresolved anger, an anger that manifested itself in the way she beat her children. There also seemed to be (again, Oprah terminology) an emotional distance from her children, that as much as she loved them, she didn't seem to like them very much. Perhaps they reminded her of the failure of her marriage; perhaps they were a constant reminder of her lost girlhood, the lost promises of youth.
Most comical of all to me, though, and maybe this wasn't meant to be comical, was Pearl's obsessive-compulsiveness: her unwillingness to leave the house because she feared she hadn't turned off the oven. :lol I can't help it. Suffering some mild OCD myself, I find OCD in others funny. :lol
I haven't progressed beyond the first chapter, but now that I've located my copy, I'll dive back in. As I understand PGM35's schedule, this novel, up until page 113, is fair game for discussion, spoilers be damned. :) (And I have a sneaking suspicion that the archery accident wasn't so much an accident after all, but we shall see. ;))
That sounds like a great reading schedule, PGM35. Thanks. Can't wait to start reading!
Phew! I'm glad that I wasn't the only one scratching her head, wondering about the reading schedule! Thanks to all that are doing the Behind the Scenes work on this....reading begins NOW! :lol
I think it's interesting that phat mentions OCD, because I think that what Pearl is mainly OCD about is her children. I think that misplaced anger towards the kids is rage that they cannot understand her overwhelming love for them...the irony being that the angrier she is with them, the more they draw away from her. It's a common theme, but Tyler focuses more on what motivates the abuser (Pearl) than how it affects the victims, Pearl's children. Notice that Tyler begins the book by talking about Pearl's desire for more than one child being motivated by fear of something happening to one, and having nothing left. I think it's a brilliant way to describe the pure selfishness of motherhood, along with the blinding love and devotion that mothers feel for their children.
What do you all think about Ezra? Is he too good to be true? (One side comment - Tyler's fiction often has an "Ezra" in the story as a main character, a slightly befuddled man who seem more emotionally *female* than a typical male - please forgive my generalization but I can't think of any other way to put it).
Any thoughts so far?