Elizabeth Hay is the author of two highly
acclaimed, bestselling novels. Her first novel,
A Student of
Weather (2000), won the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for
Fiction and the TORGI Award, and was a finalist for The Giller
Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader's
Choice Award at The Word on the Street. Her most recent novel,
Garbo Laughs (2003), won the Ottawa Book Award and was
shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. She is also the
author of
Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989);
The
Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992);
Captivity Tales:
Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and
Small
Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor
General's Award, the Trillium Award, and the Rogers Communications
Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Her stories have been anthologized in
Best Canadian Stories,
The Journey Prize
Anthology, and
The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian
Women, edited by Rosemary Sullivan. She has won a National
Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction and a Western Magazine Award
for Fiction. In 2002, she received the prestigious Marian Engel
Award.
Elizabeth Hay lives in Ottawa.
1. After reading Small Change, discuss the role that
the epigraphs from Noel Coward and Toni Morrison play in acting as
road maps through the terrain that Small Change explores.
You might want to discuss, for example, whether the epigraph from
Noel Coward is or is not an adequate description of Beth. The quote
from Toni Morrison seems to suggest that a degree of play-acting is
necessary to create the right kind of impression in conducting our
relationships. Discuss the search for a balance between honesty and
self-protection in the friendships portrayed in the book.
2. Look at the stories that focus on Beth''s intense friendship
with Maureen, including "The Friend" and "Cézanne in a Soft Hat,"
and compare them with stories that chronicle other friendships -
with Carol in "The Fight," Leonard in "Sayonara," and Leah in
"Purge Me with Hyssop" - and compare the differences in Beth''s
connections with each of these characters. What does Beth expect
from friendship? How aware is she of her own failings as a
friend?
3. Beth''s friendship with Maureen is the most fully described
of her adult friendships, but her attitudes to friendship grow out
of her own childhood experiences. Compare the Maureen stories with
Beth''s recounting of her daughter''s difficult friendship with
Joyce in "Hand Games."
4. One of Beth''s issues with Maureen is her passivity -
Maureen, for example, stays with her painter husband, Danny, even
after he is clearly unfaithful to her and, even more disturbing,
risks her own life by sleeping with him after she suspects he is
HIV-positive. What does Beth see in herself that makes her react so
strongly to Maureen''s passivity? What does she learn about
passivity? And about herself?
5. Hay''s fictions have a very visual feel to them and she has
commented in interviews that she''s a great admirer of the Canadian
painter David Milne. In "Cézanne and the Soft Hat," she examines
the landscapes of the French Post-Impressionist painter in
describing the breakdown of his friendship with writer Emile Zola.
Look at how Hay describes landscape in this story and discuss the
connections that she makes between the detachment of the painter
and the detachment of the writer.
6. Beth is a writer who clearly is reworking episodes in her own
life into her fiction. Hay said in an interview in the Ottawa
Citizen that the "starting points for these stories are
autobiographical, and the course they take is fictional." Does the
absence of disguise - of an obvious fictional cover - make the
stories more compelling?
7. In "Makeup," Beth describes herself as "an emotional bag lady
dragging along old friendships, old failings, old makeup and using
them to keep myself warm in a shabby sort of way." Does this
gathering to herself of old sorrows make her a more or less
appealing character?
8. Small Change is structured as a series of linked
stories, beginning with the Maureen stories and returning to
Maureen in the end. How does the circular and overlapping structure
of the book contribute to the underlying theme of friendship
revisited.
9. Beth suggests in "Cézanne in a Soft Hat" that men''s
friendships with other men are less inclined to be so emotionally
fraught as are friendships between women. "They don''t brood so
luxuriously about friendships gone wrong." Discuss.
10. In the stories "January Through March" and "Several Losses,"
Beth looks at the patterns that exist in her friendships and
compares them to the seasons. At the end of "Several Losses," Beth
asks herself what she has learned and replies, "That I have arrived
at middle distance in middle age with not necessarily fewer friends
or better friends, but with an overwhelming desire for peaceful
friends. And that all of this is temporary, and yet always the
same." Discuss the kind of release Beth finds in viewing her
friendships and herself as part of the shifting fabric of the
physical world.
11. In "A Personal Letter" a character says, "Children don''t
appreciate what we come to value so much as adults: consistency in
our relationships." Discuss the undercurrent of longing for
something more fulfilling among the characters in these
stories.
12. The Malahat Review''s Robert Finley wrote about
Small Change that "Hay brings together in her fourth book
the revelatory power of narrative, the analytical possibilities of
the personal essay and memoir, the investigative discipline of
journalism, and the sudden illumination of lyric, and as a result
she seems able to pick up everything - everything said, and most of
what is only whispered in a gesture or a look between friends."
Discuss how you see Hay using different literary genres to explore
the concept of friendship.
13. Compare Hay''s idea of friendship with that of other
writers. You might want to look at Alice Munro''s short story
collection Friend of My Youth, for example.
14. Discuss the style of Hay''s writing. It has been described
as both poetic and economical in its attention to the details of
emotion and landscape. Is it part of a writer''s job to find words
for things that are difficult to talk about?