Turtle Valley is the fifth book to come from
talented Canadian author Gail Anderson-Dargatz, whose novels have
been published in several languages worldwide. Her first novel
The Cure For Death By Lightning met with terrific
acclaim and garnered her the UK's Betty Trask Award and a
nomination for Canada's Giller Prize.
A Recipe For
Bees soon followed with nominations for the Giller and the
IMPAC Dublin Award.
A Rhinestone Button was a
national bestseller in Canada and her first book,
The Miss
Hereford Stories, was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock
Memorial Medal for Humour.
Her style has been called "Margaret Laurence meets Gabriel García
Márquez" because her writing tends towards magic realism, but
Anderson-Dargatz says the ghosts and premonitions in her novels
arise from her family's stories of the Shuswap-Thompson area, which
she carefully transcribed. "My father passed on the rich stories
and legends about the region I grew up in, which he heard from the
interior Salish natives he worked with," she explains. "And my
mother told me tales of her own premonitions, and of ghosts,
eccentrics and dark deeds that haunted the area."
Anderson-Dargatz has recently moved home to British Columbia's
Shuswap-Thompson area, that landscape found in so much of her
writing. She is married to photographer Mitch Krupp, who took the
beautiful photos that are reproduced throughout
Turtle
Valley. Now at work on her next novel, she is an adjunct
professor in the creative writing optional-residency MFA program at
the University of British Columbia.
Of her inspiration for
Turtle Valley,
Anderson-Dargatz writes, "It all started back in 1998 when I helped
evacuate my parents from the Salmon Arm fire. Almost the whole city
was evacuated, in what was the largest peacetime evacuation in the
history of BC up to that time. It was both terrifying and visually
beautiful, as fire quite literally rained down on the Salmon River
Valley. Even as we went through it, I knew I would write of it
someday, and I did, in
Turtle Valley."
From the Hardcover edition.
1. Augusta''s story moves easily between the present and the
past, yet the whole story takes place in a single day -- the day of
a journey by train that is also Augusta and Karl''s 48th wedding
anniversary. How do the train and the anniversary serve to allow
for the novel''s movement in time? How does the train
metaphorically illuminate the story of their lives?
2. How important to Augusta are the communities in which she
lives? In what ways does the novel address the idea of "community"
and how our lives are affected and moulded by the communities we
are part of? You might consider the farming community, the town,
the seniors'' centre, even the bees.
3. Rose, Joy, Karl and Olaf all express their distaste for
Augusta''s tendency to be open with strangers. How does this trait
of Augusta''s clash with the expectations of others, and set her on
various courses in life? Consider the old man with his beautiful
garden as well; how does his secret behavior both irk and entice
Augusta?
4. Gail Anderson-Dargatz''s writing is acclaimed for how very
sensuous it often is. How are all five senses employed in A
Recipe for Bees? "[Augusta] had to believe God was a
sensualist who enjoyed a good tomato." (pg. 37) "The sense of smell
seems particularly pervasive: from flowers, hives." "They deduced
the type of flower the dancing bee had located by the scent of it
still lingering on its body." (pg. 39) Even Gabe, "When he handed
Augusta her tea -- had left the sweet maple-syrup scent of
foundation on the cup. She had inhaled the scent with every sip."
(pg. 21) How does this sensuality enrich the novel and our
appreciation of Augusta? Consider also a sixth-sense: Augusta''s
second sight. Is it a curse or an inexplicable, even annoying fact
of life, as Manny''s reactions would indicate? Or a gift, as
Reverend Lakeman thinks? (pg. 120) Why do you suppose Gail
Anderson-Dargatz chose to give her character this ability?
5. Compare Augusta''s relationship with Helen and Manny to
Joy''s with Augusta and Karl. Do you see Augusta as a "good"
mother? Consider the teddy bear scene (pg. 224). What do you
suppose accounts for Augusta''s behavior?
6. How does Augusta inhabit the places she lives? What does she
do to make them her own? She''s very comfortable out of doors, as
one would expect in a woman raised on a farm. When does she seem
happiest?
7. Flowers, bees, even Karl''s missing thumb perhaps, carry
symbolic weight in A Recipe for Bees. What are the
images that recur most often? In what contexts? And how are they
effective?
8. It may seem to the reader that Augusta dreams only of small
things. She is excited by the freedom of a weekly drive to
Kamloops, for example (pg. 126). Do these little things demonstrate
the same lack of imagination of which she accuses Karl? It was "as
if he didn''t understand that she, too, could be occupied by
pleasure." (pg. 208) Or does Gail Anderson-Dargatz show us that it
is the little things as much as the magic and the dreams that are
the stuff of which life is made?
9. There are moments of cruelty in the novel: when Manny kills a
horse (pg. 166); when Helen shoots a porcupine (pg. 169); when
Augusta hurls a kitten against a wall (pg. 197). Life and death are
portrayed as part of the ebb and flow of life on a farm, but in
these instances, the author seems to be suggesting that something
else is going on. Consider these events in the contexts in which
they appear.
10. The publisher''s jacket copy refers to the novel being in
part about "the life, death and resurrection of an extraordinary
marriage." How does Karl and Augusta''s marriage manage to
endure?
11. The narrator of A Recipe for Bees describes
farm marriages this way: "Husbands and wives were married to the
land as much as to each other. A different sort of love arose from
that kind of necessity; it wasn''t romantic or lustful, but it was
steady. It was a love they manufactured each day, so that they
could carry on." How do you think this kind of love is reflected,
or not, in the marriages of Karl and Augusta; Manny and Helen; Olaf
and Blenda?
12. The novel''s title comes from Virgil. How does the passage
quoted from Virgil (pg. 258 to 259) illuminate the novel''s central
concerns? Remember that a slaughter has had to take place in order
for the bees to come alive. Consider that fact in relation to the
story of Augusta and Karl.
13. While with her daughter, Augusta muses that she and Joy
could be taken for sisters, then she catches a glimpse of herself
reflected in a mirrored cabinet: "The tart red of her lipstick
couldn''t conceal the fact that she was a much older woman, neither
could the outrageous purple of her blouse, nor the brightly
patterned scarf she''s used to pull the hair from her face. All the
colour in the world wouldn''t rejuvenate the withered skin of her
neck...; her usefulness was all but over." (pg. 19 to 20). Although
no longer young, Augusta seems to have a sense of peace in her old
age. What do we learn about the inner life of an older woman
through Augusta?
14. Gail Anderson-Dargatz does not romanticize farm life, but
there''s a lot of romance in the novel. Consider how the romance is
sometimes connected to farm life, and at other times distinct from
it.
15. Were you moved by the novel? When? Did you ever laugh? When?
Remember the opening line: "''Have I told you the drone''s penis
snaps off during intercourse with the queen bee?'' asked Augusta."
How did you react to that opening and what does it tell you of the
wholehearted life of Augusta?