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Foreign Correspondence

2018/01/07 11:11:32瀏覽670｜回應0｜推薦1

Writer:

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks grew up in Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the mideast, Africa and the Balkans. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her second novel, March. Her novels Caleb’s Crossing and People of the Book were New York Times best sellers. Her first novel, Year of Wonders is an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages and currently optioned for a major motion picture starring Andrew Lincoln.(R.4)

Story:

As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world. (R.3)

Like Geraldine Brooks mentioned in this book: ”Throughout her childhood in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s(turbulent almost everywhere but Australia, it seemed to a young Brooks),she corresponded with pen pals around the world. More than twenty years later, Brooks is surprised to find that her father has saved those letters. After reading them, she wonders what became of those childhood correspondents, and she decides to find out. Traveling from Maplewood, New Jersey, Nazareth,Israel, to St.Martin de la Brasque, France, to a New York City nightclub, Brooks tracks down her pen pals, While doing so, she hears stories that cross latitudes and include tales of conscription, anorexia nervosa, peace, security, death, provincialism, and family.

Highlights vs self- reflection:

1.p.154:…I understand why Australia felt remote to her...To Israelis, world news was like oxygen…but for me, Sydney felt much more globally connected than most American cities. The United States can afford to be insular. It’s so big that what happens elsewhere hardly ever matters much.

2.p.155:Sydney people listed 271 places of birth outside Australia, or 86 more places than have seats in the United Nations. More than a quarter of the population still speaks a language other than English at home. Israel now is the only country whose population is more culturally diverse, measured by inhabitants’ countries of origin.

3.p.172: they aren’t out wielding a placard or writing an op-ed or even all the ready with a fully formed opinion if stopped on a street corner.

But it may be in the quiet center, among the bankers of Netanya and the carpenters of Nazareth, that the real history of a place is written after all. As another carpenter form Nazareth observed a long time ago, it is the meek who shall inherit the earth

4.p.184:I was hungry for the wide world, and yet my letters had found their way to theis narrow sliver of provincial village life.

5.p.186:For the first time, it occurred to me that my childhood had offered the best of both alternatives: the stability of a secure and reliable real world, and the infinite adventure of the invented one inhabited by my pen pals-those helpless cipers on whom I had projected the fantasies of my imaginary life.

6.p.197:The twelve-year-old who tap-dance at the breakfast table now had a dance floor of her very own.

7.p.96:It is a great thing, at seventeen, to learn that it’s possible to change the world.

8.p.206:Scientist have discovered that all human beings have a “happiness set point”-that just as our bodies have a preset weight to which they will tend to return after diet or binge, our minds are preprogrammed at a certain level of contentment.”

9.p.207:I wish I could tell my father that I’m glad I knew him as settled, predictable Lawrie Brookds and not as wild,young Bob Cutter, I know I am much luckier to have been born to the forty-eight-year-old who was soon to giv up the triumphs of fame and applause.

10.p.207:He often said that if it hadn’t been for meeting my mother he would have been dead in his fifties.

11.p.140:”She was going to be you..Joannie wasn’t going to be me. But I’m grateful for the ways in which my life has allowed me to be her.

Golden Sentence:

1.p.198:I left her there, being fabulous, and began the journey home to a place where the last lights in town had probably gone out hours ago.

2.p.209:Futility”Was it for this the clay grew tall? Oh, what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth’s sleep at all?”

3.p.161:To be a witness to the extremity of human behavior, you have to pay the price of admission…of all that a man has, his house, his wife, his children.

Conclusion:

1.p.206”A life’s great moments, lived between the baguette and beurre(bread and butter)

2.p.206”My pen pals were extensions of those childhood games.”

3.p.76:”I love the new world that these people opened up for me. And yet the fact that they had come to Australia devalued them in my eyes…To me, the banal certainty of three meals on the table, a steady job and stable politics seemed a pallid swap. My pen pals were still out there, amid the danger and the culture. So it was to them that I continued to look for my lifeline to the world.”

4. Our set point for happiness is based on our genetics and conditioning. While we may have emotional ups and downs throughout our lives, these are temporary. No matter what life throws at us, over time, our happiness bounces back to the same set point.(R.20) Happy is a wonderful germ passed on from our parents. It’s the most precious thing we need to treasure.

5. p.209:Futility”Was it for this the clay grew tall? Oh, what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth’s sleep at all?” Everything is futile, only love of family and friendship is not futile.

Foreign Correspondence Summery and Questions by Florence Peng:

Dear All,

About the book -

This is a compelling, wonderful memoir written by the Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks (we read "Caleb's Crossing written by her before).

As an adolescent in suburban Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks began a life-long fascination with other cultures and people across the world. To quench her curiosity and expand her horizons, she corresponded with pen-pals in the Middle East, Europe and America. Then, twenty years later, after Brooks had worked as a reporter for the The Sydney Morning Herald,, had completed a masters in journalism on scholarship at Columbia University, and had married and worked as a foreign correspondent in war-torn zones for The Wall Street Journal, she set out to find her former pen-pals around the globe. We learn of Brooks' childhood experiences and emerging values, and her pals come alive for us as we read their stories of battles of anorexia, of surviving war and prejudices, of living in a provincial village, and of a route to fame.

In this book, Geraldine also shares with the readers things other than her pen-pals, including the relationship with her parents which definitely shapes her life and values, and the landscape plus culture of Australia, also the change of the latter.

Brooks is a vivid narrator. As she travels to the homes of her childhood pen pals, you're in the vehicle with her. You feel her anticipation as she nears each one, experience her hopes that they will re-connect, and that they will be happy to see her. Her telling is colorful and entertaining, yet not showy or flashy. It's a good mixture of honesty, delight and humor. I am quite sure you will enjoy the reading as much as I do.

About the Discussion -

At the end of the book, there is an attachment entitled "Readers Companion" which serves as a very good guide about the writer and the book. The part of Questions for Discussions which covers, I think, major ideas and points of the book (wouldn't it be wonderful if all publishers can do that for all books?), otherwise we can always explore following the flow of the discussions. Please pick up questions which you are interested in and highlight the paragraphs you feel noteworthy when doing the reading and bring them to the discussion.

Best regards and hope see you on January the 8th.

Consultant Clive’s opinion:

Related Reading:

1. Germaine Greer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer

2. Bluestocking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluestocking

3. Foreign Correspondence Book Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530.Foreign_Correspondence

4. Geraldine Brooks: http://geraldinebrooks.com/

5. John.F.Kennedy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

6. Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia

7. Netanya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netanya

8. Nazareth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth

9. Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior