Topics
for Discussion
1. Landscape plays an important role in each story, as a mnemonic
device, as a reflection of the narrator’s state of mind,
as a catalyst for insight and change. Discuss how landscape
is used as a literary device, particularly in “Taken for
Delirium” and “The Distance to Delphi.”
2. The evolving relationship of the narrator with her father,
her sons, and her husbands provides one of the links between
the stories in this collection. Discuss the parallels in these
male familial relationships and compare them with the role that
women — mothers, sisters, and friends — play in
the narrative.
3. Although this is the story of one woman’s life, it
is rich in universals. How does the author accomplish this?
To what extent is this a book about the times and place as much
as the author’s particular experience?
4. Dreams and visions figure prominently in several stories,
especially “King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West”
and “Song of the Japanese White-eye.” What purpose
do they serve?
5. The collection takes its title from the first story, but
the lion also appears in later stories. What is the significance
of the lion in each story? In the collection?
6. The structure of the book is episodic: this is not the full
story of a woman’s life from age 7 to 47, but rather,
it sets in high relief distinct moments in a life. How does
this structure mirror the themes of the book? How does the author
help the reader make the leap from story to story without filling
in all the gaps?
7. The collection contains elements of magic realism, a style
associated largely with Latin American writers. Discuss this,
taking into consideration the lush writing style, the prevalence
of myth and symbol, and the surreal interplay of real and dream
worlds, especially in the final story, “The Day of the
Dead.”
The author comments:
On writing from life
Writers are often told to, “Write
what you know,” but in writing these stories from my
life, I was writing in order to know. Why did these particular
moments haunt me? What did they mean to me then, and why couldn’t
I stop thinking of them now? After spending years with The
Convict Lover, struggling to understand the motivations and
responses of people whose lives were far different from mine
— a man in a penitentiary and a young woman in the age
of Social Gospel — I felt the urge to subject the remembered
fragments of my own past to the same scrutiny.
On memory and reality
There is, I think, a human instinct toward myth. Unconsciously
we edit our memories to create a narrative line that makes
sense of the disparate events of our lives. Many people experience
the same event, but each remembers it differently. In memory,
as in fiction, there is only one point of view, though it
is never entirely fixed. Memory reshapes the past, while evolving
memory shapes the present. It is this fluidity that infuses
memory with such a deep, significant reality.
On story and memoir
I grew up with the impression that becoming
“mature” was a gradual process of becoming steadily
wiser, more accomplished. But I’ve discovered that life
does not resemble Darwin’s evolution so much as Stephen
Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium: moments
of epiphany separated by plateaus of just carrying on. This,
at least, is how we remember what has transpired — as
a series of events, which become the stories we tell our families,
our friends, and ourselves, eventually becoming the story
of our life.
On Landscape
My travels are not unusual. We are an
astonishingly mobile generation. Like our grandparents, we
still associate ourselves with “place” but the
relationship has changed, from a strong affiliation with one
setting to an appreciation of landscape as shifting backdrop.
As deraciné, as rootless, as we may feel at times,
the places we call home continue to define us, not necessarily
in the traditional CanLit sense of man-against-nature, but
as a source and repository of personal meaning.
On creative nonfiction
Prose literature is not a coin imprinted
with fiction on one side, nonfiction on the other. It is a
continuum where invention and actual event mingle in varying
proportions. In the middle ground known as creative nonfiction
— where event is shaped with devices traditional to
fiction — categorization can be difficult, especially
when event is recalled through memory. The key lies in how
a writer fills the gaps. Fiction writers invent the ties that
bind, nonfiction writers must be content to speculate or let
the reader leap. But whether the story revolves around actual
or invented people and events, all writers aspire to universal
truth.
Similar books to read and compare:
Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
Jo Ann Beard, The Boys of My Youth
Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother
Elizabth Hay, Snow in Havana
