The Heaven Tree Trilogy is our summer selection for our boxed lunch book club.  We are discussing one part of the trilogy during each of the summer months.  Set in Medieval England on the border of Wales, the story is a complete departure from anything we’ve done so far in our book club.   Kings and lords, thirteenth century politics and tales of passion, love and honor are all intertwined.

I first read this book about four years ago and I can’t believe how it has completely taken me in again, even though I already know what is going to happen.  Good books are like good movies that way.  When you watch/read them again, you are rooting and hoping for something other than that which you already know is coming.  The inevitable.  If the story were to unfold in any other way, it just would not be the same.

Edmund will allow himself to fall into the hands of the White Witch.

Macbeth will murder Macduff’s family.

Juliet will not wake up before Romeo kills himself.

Anne will refuse to marry Gilbert when he first proposes.

Pollyanna will fall out of the tree.

And Harry Talvace will be true to his word whatever the cost.

Questions for Discussion:

(don’t read if you are still needing to finish the book as there are “spoilers” in the questions!)

1. Early in the novel, the relationship between Harry and his father is strained as Harry becomes old enough to be trained in the running of the estate.  Why do think this is?  Do you see any way the  story between father and son could have ended differently?

2. After Harry and Adam have run from their home and into the safety of the abbey, Harry is discussing their situation with Hugh de Lacy, the abbot, who says to him (p.70),

Harry, for God’s sake and for your own, bend that neck of yours before life bend it for you or tear your head from your shoulders.  It is not possible to live as you want to live; every man must give way sooner of later, kings, popes, all who live yield some step backwards on occasion to remain upright and draw breath.  Learn humility, while there’s yet time, before life teach you with harsher beatings than ever you suffered yet.

Would you have sided with Hugh de Lacy or Harry at this point in the story?  Why?

3. Right after this encounter with the abbot, Harry, though discouraged, finds himself delighting in the world in spite of himself.  “The world was busy and beautiful and diverse, no less now that the abbot had failed him; and for the life of him he could not help delighting in it.”

What makes this possible?

5. You want too much.  Men, and countries, and causes fail you because you expect too much of them.  Benedetta to Isambard (170)

She says this just before she agrees to go to Parfois with him as his mistress.  Why do you think she decides to go?

6. Why do you think Harry is able to bind himself to Isambard so easily after having broken away from his childhood on an estate?  (The incident with John the Fletcher and the dog (pp181-2)  seems more harsh than any of Sir Eudo’s dealings with his villeins.)

7. One day at Parfois, Benedetta and Harry are talking about Prince Llewelyn’s bowing to King John.  Benedetta defends the prince’s dignity in this action. There is a certain kind of pride that both Harry and Isambard share, an unwillingness to bow or humble oneself to another.  When Harry challenges Benedetta on this same kind of humbling, she says “The pride of a woman must be a different kind of pride.” (p. 216)  What does she mean by this?

8. What is the heaven tree?

9. Do you think that Isambard ever loved Benedetta?  Explain.

10. Isambard says to Harry soon after his marriage to Gillies, (p.252),

“To have all!” The voice labored with astonishment and despair.  “To have everything there is in life, even that last and greatest of all!  What right has one man to so much?  Where is God’s justice?”

Are there people in life who really have it all?  Is Harry a Medieval Ferris Bueller?  What is your response to people like Harry?

11. Gilleis experiences classic pregnant joy (p. 299) when she realizes that she is going to have a baby.  Can you relate a time you were “filled to overflowing” in this way?

12.  This quote on p. 316 in some ways sums up the entire book.  At what point, if any, did you see that this was the course Harry’s life would have to take?

From Adam’s hand to Owen’s head, there was no inconsistency and no chance stroke.  The deliberate assumption of responsibility, the affirmation and the challenge, had to be repeated over and over, because the world was still as it had been, and he was still as he had been, and as he would be to his death. Once he had set his own judgment against the world’s judgment, the end was implicit in the beginning.  Somewhere at the bottom of his heart he had always known that the last choice he made in the teeth of power and privilege and law must be mortal, and that nonetheless he neither could nor would turn aside from making it.

So he had no just complaint against God or man, and he would prefer none.  He had what he had chosen, he had never been one to haggle about the price.

13. Why doesn’t Harry take longer to finish his work when he knows what the end of his work will bring?

14. In the end, who do you think lost the most?  Would you have changed anything about the story?

The post Book Discussion Guide: The Heaven Tree appeared first on Alison Chino.

Our Boxed Lunch Book Club meets tomorrow from 12-1.  This month we are discussing Carol Shields novel, Small Ceremonies (1976), which is about a biographer named Judith who collects details about people and events.  Interestingly, in the novel, Judith is writing a biography about Canadian pioneer Susanna Moodie and in the same year that this novel was published, Carol Shields also published a biography of Susanna Moodie.  That detail was so fascinating to me, especially since we are discussing a book that is largely about making story from minutiae.

So here are the questions:

Opening Questions: (These are for everyone to discuss as while coming in, finding a spot, eating…before the more formal discussion begins.)

At the end of the book (p. 181), Judith declares herself what we now know her to be: a watcher.  She says that watching events as an outsider enlarges her.  Do you consider yourself to be a watcher?  If so, describe this characteristic in yourself.  If not, what opposite or contrary word would you use to describe yourself?

What are your small ceremonies?  What are the things that you do every day (every week, every month) that might only be noticeable to someone like Judith?  Which ones are intentional?  Which are mindlessly routine?

Questions for Discussion:

On p. 3, Judith says that September is the real beginning of the year. Why do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Stories (p.52): It’s the arrangement of events which makes the stories.  It’s throwing away, compressing, underlining.  Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking, sleeping; our lives are steamed and shaped into stories.

Susanna Moodie (p.53) and a red hard-covered book by Kipling that Richard is reading are two things mentioned by Judith that make up the landscape of the Gill home, at least in this particular season.  What objects or topics are part of the current fabric of your home right now?

Why then can’t I shut out the wool? Let’s talk about the incident of the wool.  Can you relate to Judith’s response  to Martin’s project? …he’s developed a soft spot on the brain.  …but what can be done with a man who makes a fool of himself? (p.89)  What does the development of this project tell you about Judith and Martin’s relationship?  How does it play itself out throughout the novel?

Judith and her friend, Nancy Krantz, discuss occasional little surprises on p.116-7.  Nancy tells her peach story, which reminds Judith of some stationary given to her by a stranger.  Can you think of a similar surprising incident in which you have been in just a few minutes blessed with a gracious detail that was…so completely unasked for (Nancy’s words)?

Salutations:  Judith concentrates on what people call one another, both in her writing (Could anyone love a man she called by his surname? p.54) and in her life (Is he caught in that slot of growth where Mommy is too childish, Mother too severe and foreign? p.94)  What do the people in your house call you?  Do you think much about these names?  What might a biographer like Judith say about the names you call one another?

The power of the casual curse (p.49): Judith talks about how a person takes on a characteristic simply because we say they have it.  She several examples: They call their daughter Meredith a geologist because she collects rocks as a young child.  She, herself, has become wry because Furlong called her so.  Where in your life do you see this occur?

When Judith reads her completed novel manuscript with the stolen plot, she says that she understands why artists sometimes destroy their work, an act she had until now thought inexcusably theatrical.  Can you remember a time when you had the desire to obliterate something that was shameful, infantile, degrading (p.74)?  Have you ever shredded a canvas or destroyed a manuscript?

Judith’s illness in January:  She states (p.93): I have never in my life been so ill.  I can hardly believe I am suffering from something as ubiquitous as flu, and it seems preposterous that I can be this ill and still not require hospitalization. Have you ever felt this way?  Was your experience of a long or debilitating illness similar to Judith’s?  Describe.

Always the biographer, Judith manages to describe characters’ personalities for us in one succinct paragraph.  She does this with Furlong (p.19), Meredith’s friend Gwendolyn (p.41) and Polly Stanley (p.129).  Do you tend to sum people up in this way?  Are these accurate or fair portrayals?  Why or why not?  How might Judith sum you up?

Judith finds one of Susanna Moodie’s novels to be very helpful in her research because Susanna wrote her own story in the fictional character Flora. (p.155) Since Carol Shields was also a biographer of Susanna Moodie, one might wonder if this is a clue to the reader that she is doing the same thing.  Writing her own story in this novel.  A story within a story within a story.  If you were to write a fictional version of yourself, what would you look like?  How might you improve yourself?

Toward the end of the book (pp.110-111 and pp.124-125), Judith describes her disappointment with Susanna in her later life.  She says that she has lost her vision.  No longer destitute, she has grown cranky. Why do you think Judith feels let down by Susanna?

In this novel of details, were there descriptions of people, places or events that stood out to in particular that you can share?  (Feel free to read a portion you marked.)  Her mother’s letter and unsympathetic impulses made me laugh because they might have been describing me exactly: Even our childhood illness were begrudged us. (p. 95)  To what character did you relate most?

Next month we will meet on May 28th for lunch and discuss Secret Language by Monica Wood.  We welcome anyone to join us!

The post Book Discussion Guide: Small Ceremonies appeared first on Alison Chino.

Here’s the book discussion guide I used for our boxed lunch book club back in February The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima.

1. Love at first sight.

Here’s a quote from Chapter 2 (p.13) right after Shinji has seen Hatsue for the first time.

Shinji always went to sleep easily, but last night he had the strange experience of lying long awake.  Unable to remember a day of sickness in his life, the boy had lain wondering, afraid this might be what people meant by sick.

Is this being in love?  Why or why not?

Can you share a similar sleepless night experience?

Here’s another description of Shinji “in love?”

Ch. 3, p.21-22

Shinji was not at all given to brooding about things, but this one name, like a tantalizing puzzle, kept harassing his thoughts.  At the mere sound of the name his cheeks flushed and his heart pounded.  It was a strange feeling to sit there motionless and feel within himself these physical changes that, until now, he had experienced only during heavy labor.

He put the palm of his hand against his cheek to feel it.  The hot flesh felt like that of some complete stranger.  It was a blow to his pride to realize the existence of things within himself that he had never so much as suspected, and rising anger made his cheeks even more flaming hot.

Again, true love?

2. Discussion of Mishima’s descriptive writing:

Here is a description of Shinji’s boss in chapter 2 (p.14)

Jukichi Oyama, master fisherman, owner of the Taihei-maru, had a face like leather well-tanned by the sea winds.  The grimy wrinkles on his hands were mixed indistinguishably with old fishing scars, all burned by the sun down into their deepest creases.  He was a man who seldom laughed, but was always in calm good spirits, and even the loud voice he used when giving commands on the boat was never used in anger.

I love this description of Jukichi.  To me, he is the strong, sure male in Shinji’s life.  What kind of influence do you think he has on Shinji?

Are there other descriptions that stood out to you in Mishima’s writing?

Here’s another one I loved.

Ch. 2, p. 17

Lunchtime came.  Jukichi dressed the flatheads on the engine-room hatch and cut them into slices.  They divided the raw slices onto the lids of their aluminum lunchboxes and poured soy sauce over them from a small bottle.  Then they took up the boxes, filled with a mixture of boiled rice and barley and, stuffed into one corner, a few slices of pickled radish.  The boat they entrusted to the gentle swell.

I can smell the sea.

3. From Ch. 2, p. 19

Surrounded though he was by the vast ocean, Shinji did not especially burn with impossible dreams of great adventure across the seas.  His fisherman’s conception of the sea was close to that of the farmer for his land.  The sea was the place where he earned his living, a rippling field where, instead of waving heads of rice or wheat, the white and formless harvest of waves was forever swaying above the unrelieved blueness of a sensitive and yielding soil.

Even so, when that day’s fishing was almost done, the sight of a white freighter sailing against the evening clouds on the horizon filled the boy’s heart with strange emotions.  From far away the world came pressing in upon him with a hugeness he had never before apprehended.  The realization of this unknown world came to him like distant thunder, now pealing from afar, now dying away to nothingness.

What was your view of the wider world at the age of 18?

4. Chapter four is when Shinji and Hatsue have a chance meeting at the observation tower.  It is a totally innocent and precious meeting, and when Shinji tells Hatsue his name but asks her not to tell anyone that he helped her find her way for fear of gossip…

Ch. 4, p. 32

Thus their well-founded fear of the village’s love of gossip changed what was but an innocent meeting into a thing of secrecy between the two of them.

What was the effect of Shinji and Hatsue’s having “a secret” between them?

5. From Ch. 5, p. 33

Until now the boy had been leading a peaceful, contented existence, poor though he was, but from this time on he became tormented with unrest and lost in thought, falling prey to the feeling that there was nothing about him that could possibly appeal to Hatsue.  He was so healthy that he had never had any sickness other than the measles.  He could swim the circumference of Uta-jima as many as five times without stopping.  And he was sure he would have to yield to no one in any test of physical strength.  But he could not believe that any of these qualities could possibly touch Hatsue’s heart.

Can you relate to this experience of having a peaceful, contented existence turn into a time of torment?  Share about that.

6. Chiyoko

In Ch.8, p. 79, when Chiyoko is home from Tokyo, we get a glimpse of how she is different from the islanders.

Chiyoko began to long for Tokyo.  She longed for the Tokyo where, even on such a stormy day, the automobiles went back and forth as usual, the elevators went up and down, and the streetcars bustled along.  There in the city almost all nature had been put into uniform, and the little power of nature that remained was an enemy.  Here on the island, however, the islanders enthusiastically entered into an alliance with nature and gave it their full support.

Explain to which view of nature you relate to more, the islanders’ or Chiyoko’s .

Ch. 11, p. 117

She feels badly about hurting Shinji and wants to make peace before she leaves, even though he doesn’t even know that she has done something to hurt him.  So instead of apologizing she ends up asking him if he thinks her face is ugly.

Shinji’s answer was immediate.  Being in a hurry, he escaped a situation in which too slow an answer would have cut into the girl’s heart.

“What makes you say that?  You’re pretty,” he said, one hand on the stern and one foot already beginning the leap that would carry him into the boat.  “You’re pretty.”

As everyone knew, Shinji was incapable of flattery.  Now, pressed for time, he had simply given a felicitous answer to her urgent question.

The boat began to move.  He waved back to her cheerfully from the boat as it pulled away.

And it was a happy girl who was left standing at the water’s edge.

Why do you think the author included this scene?  What do you think is Chiyoko’s purpose in the story?

7. In Ch. 9, The idiot Yasuo has become obsessed with “possessing” Hatuse and basically the gods protect Hatsue through a hornet.

Then, in chapter 10, Yasuo, having failed in his goal of raping Hatsue, proceeds to spread rumors about her and Shinji instead that eventually reach Hatsue’s father.

What do you think is the purpose of Yasuo’s character.  Is he real to you?  Have you met someone like him?

In general, are the characters in The Sound of Waves real to you?  Why or why not?

8. After everyone knows everything, Shinji is on the boat with his boss and friend reading the letter from Hatsue.  His boss chides him about it all, but Shinji…

Ch. 11, p.112

Shinji…he was not sensitive and easily wounded the way a city-bred boy is during the time of his first love, and to Shinji the old man’s raillery was actually soothing and comforting rather than upsetting.  The gentle waves that rocked their boat also calmed his heart, and now that he had told the whole story he was at peace; this place of toil had become for him a place of matchless rest.

This is why men go fishing, eh?

What do the men in your life do today that mirrors being out on a fishing boat?

Do you have a place of toil that can be a place of matchless rest when you are weary?  What is it?

9. Shinji’s mother:

Ch. 12

Shinji’s mother feels the weight of her son’s unhappiness (can we all relate to this?) and so she goes to visit Hatsue’s father, but he won’t see her.

p. 129

The mother could not bring herself to tell her son about this fiasco of hers.  Looking for a scapegoat, she turned her spite against Hatsue and said such bad things about her that, instead of having helped her son, she had a quarrel with him.

And further on p. 129

Thus in came about that because she had tried to do a good deed and had failed, the mother became lonelier than ever.

Can you tell about a time that your very best intentions for helping your child turned into a quarrel instead?

Why do these encounters tend to go so wrong?

Does anything good come of the mother’s failed “good deed?”

10. Ch 14

Shinji and Yasuo are both assigned to Hatsue’s father’s boat.

What do you think about this plan?  (Terukichi’s motives are revealed to us later in Ch. 15 when he tells the Mistress Lighthouse Keeper his real reasons for putting Shinji and Yasuo on his boat together.)

Do you wish that our own marriages and those of our children were still decided by great feats of strength and courage?

What do you think about Terukichi’s declaration in Ch 15, p. 175    that

“if he’s got get-up-and-go, he’s a real man.”

How would you describe a real man?

The post Book Discussion Guide: Sound of Waves appeared first on Alison Chino.

Tomorrow is our Boxed Lunch Book Club at church, and I have been working on quotes and questions for our time together.  I am looking forward to chatting over lunch about the spring stories in Phyllis Tickle’s Wisdom in the Waiting. Here’s the discussion guide.

Book Club Discussion Guide for Phyllis Tickle’s Wisdom in the Waiting or the previous edition of this book, Final Sanity.

Feel free to answer questions from the discussion guide in the comment section, especially if you were hoping you could make it tomorrow, but find yourself in another town skiing, seeing a concert or throwing a party!

1. The first chapter of this book weaves together the story of Rebecca’s lost quilt and Sam Jr.’s palm frond.  Can you share a similar memory of either you or your child losing a precious “blankie” or stuffed friend?  Can anyone share past experience with palm fronds?

2. Here’s a quote from chapter 2,

All of us who arrive at spiritual maturity do so by moving through a progression of faiths and comprehensions.  In much the same way, all of us who now walk had first to move through a fairly unoriginal progression of motor skills before we arrived at our walking.  In effect, what the spiritual process leaves most of us with is a veritable pantheon of early gods and codes, discarded in our maturity, but essential to our growth–gods and understandings, that led us to Easter in the first place.

How has this progression of faith played out in your own life?

3. Concerning Beelzebub on The Farm in Lucy, the author writes,

Old Beelzebub’s smoke and of Sam’s smudges, which granted the children the grace of unstudied knowing and a direct but mysterious connection with seasons and solstice.  Stonehenge and Beelzebub became portals for them, just as the original Stonehenge and tales of Beelzebub had been for the ancients.  And just as a closet had, once upon a time, been for me.

What knowledge do you have from portals of your childhood?

4. Quote from chapter 3:

Like all parents of many children, Sam and I have spent our fair share of time hiding in the bathrooms of our various houses.  Some of my most credible thoughts certainly, have come in those midnight tubs when everyone and everything, including the last of the hot water, had gone away for the day.

What were your hiding places when your children were young?  Or what are they now?

5. Religion keeps earth time in Final Sanity, Ch. 6.

I can remember many summers now; it is the singular advantage of years that one can do so.  And I remember that once summer comes, I spend it wallowing in the easiness of it–the excess of its fruits and vegetables, the companionship of summer’s constant sounds as the hum of the insects and of the rototillers give way in the evening to the croaking of frogs and the raucousness of the katydids.  I remember also how I would begin early, in that green time of Ordinary Time, to dread the stillness of the coming cold, to fear the weariness of winter menus, the bitterness of breaking open pond water for thirsty cattle, and the packing of lunches–interminable lunches–for reluctant children on their way to school.

But now, years later, it is Lent once again, and for one more snow I can luxuriate in the isolation of the cold, attend laconically to who I am, what I value, and why I’m here.  Religion has always kept earth time.  Liturgy only gives sanction to what the heart already knows.

What are your special sentiments towards spring, summer, fall and winter?

How does religion keep time in your life?

6. In the chapter entitled, On Just Such A Morning, Phyllis Tickle writes:

It was all too much for me, and I was at last seduced.  I went out into the farmyard, adding, as I went, its frolic to my prayers.  Of these things, too, worship is made.

Think of a time being in nature inspired you to worship your Creator.

Similarly, the author says in the chapter, Dance of the Fireflies

And, alone on this first night of the fireflies and caught in the whirlwind of their lights, I know that Job’s story is true.  Mine eye seeth thee and I repent before such grandeur.

Before what grandeur do you repent?

7. Of her heirloom hyacinths, she says,

So Great-grandmother’s hyacinths bloom in dozens of yards each spring, making a chain of connection across the southern United States and nearly two hundred years.

What serves the same purpose of the hyacinths in your family?

8. On spring and faith,

The spring comes so quietly in the country–so without announcement–that I walk into it morning after morning without knowing until abruptly, on some perfectly ordinary day, I think, It’s warm! And realize that I have already been jacketless and easy in my kingdom for several such mornings.  Faith is a bit like that, I suspect, quiet and without announcement till it, too, seeps into our clothing and our decisions and only at the last into our consciousness, till it, too, cuts us loose form chores and clothes and the awkwardness of ice underfoot.

How is your faith like spring?

9. In chapter 14, the author recounts how her mind conceived death and heaven as a child,

What had me by the hair of my spiritual head, on that Lent, was that I could not find any way out of existence that was acceptable, that did not, with its awesome pallor, suck the joy out of the young days I had in hand.

What are your earliest memories/impressions of death and resurrection?

Can you think of other spiritual understandings that you had as a young child that might be silly to you now?

In later life I would regard the distress of those moments and of that Lent in general as the labor pains of the soul, which always precede new instruction and new stages of union.

What do you regard in your life as “labor pains of the soul?”

Afterward, being eleven, I walked, rather than ran, out to the hallway at the end of the narthex.  The Christ in the window was still pale, but I could have sworn, in that late November light, that he winked at me from his place above the landing.  Whether he did or not really doesn’t matter, of course.  What matters is that at eleven I thought he did, and it was the beginning of a long and consuming relationship between the two of us.

What marked the beginning of your relationship with Jesus?

10. How has reading these stories enhanced your Lenten season?

Do you have your own spring memories to share?

See other discussion guides from our book club.

The post Book Discussion Guide: Wisdom In The Waiting appeared first on Alison Chino.