The narrator of this novel is herself a writer, a young and dazzling journalist in the first half of the book, and a successful, middle-aged romance writer in the second half, the older voice often interrupting the younger one in the form of footnotes. How does her writerly voice change over the course of her career? Her self-image and self-representation? What features or traits bridge the two periods of her life?
Explain your reactions to the central romance—referred to at one point as “the bargain”—in this book between Mabs and B. How do their roles, lifestyle, and feelings for each other surprise or confirm your notions of romance and relationships? Inasmuch as this is a love story, what kind of love story is it?
Mabs is a twin. How does she feel about her twinned status? Where else in the novel does the doppelganger or replication motif emerge, and how do these iterations reflect upon Mabs’ situation and identity?
About midway through the novel (82), B tells Mabs, “We are who we are by the accident of a moment.” To what extent does this prove true, in the book and experience more generally?
When Mabs first sees B, her reaction is, “It was a frog prince.” How apt is this impression? In what ways is he “princely” and in what ways “froggy”? How does he stand up to our notions of a romantic leading man? What other fairy tale images or elements are at work in the novel?
What does Mabs’ experience at Night and Day reveal about the magazine business and society in early 20th-century London? What are the concerns of the journalists there? How does Dickinson’s depiction of this milieu jive with our ideas about journalism today?
In a footnote, the older Mabs reflects upon the difficulties of writers “to bring the odour of period to life,” lamenting that most people’s “real sense of their time is as unrecapturable as the momentary pose of a child” (17). How do the language, behaviors, conventions, and assumptions of the characters, as well as static details such as details of clothing and decor, evoke the two periods in which this story is set? What was happening culturally and politically in England in the early 1950s and the early 1980s that might color the circumstances of Mabs’ story?
What attitudes toward race, gender, and class are at work in this novel?
Mabs makes frequent references to the “piggy” features she shares with Jane. How are ideas of female beauty and attractiveness presented, subverted, or confirmed in this novel? How does Mabs regard her own value as a woman? What kind of woman is she and how would she fare in our own “post-feminist” time?
There is much talk of the mixed blessings of inheritances, particularly in regard to the two estates B and Mabs stand to inherit. Together with the houses, what does an inheritance consist of as Mabs considers it? How do the possibilities or inevitabilities of these inheritances affect the action of the story?
About the Author
Peter Dickinson was born in Zambia and educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. After graduation, he joined the staff of the British humor magazine Punch where he worked for seventeen years, leaving as assistant editor. At forty he began a, career as a mystery writer and has written more than fifty books. His first two novels were awarded the British Crime Writers Association’s Golden Dagger Award. His mysteries include Hindsight, The Last Houseparty, A Summer in the Twenties, The Lively Dead, King and Joker, and The Poison Oracle, and his books for children and young adults include Emma Tupper’s Diary, Kin, Eva, The Dancing Bear, and The Seventh Raven. He lives in England and is married to the novelist Robin McKinley. Find out more at peterdickinson.com.
Peter Dickinson titles available from Small Beer Press
THE POISON ORACLE
“Intelligent, elegantly written . . . a thoroughly enjoyable read.”
—Sunday Times.
“I have no idea if any of this talk and action is authentic, and I don’t care. Either way it’s marvellous.”—Rex Stout
EARTH AND AIR: TALES OF ELEMENTAL CREATURES
“Mining folklore for ideas is routine in modern fantasy, but not many can add the surprising twists and novel logic that Peter Dickinson does. These are beautiful stories, deft, satisfying, unexpected. They deserve to become classics of the genre.”—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal, Best Fiction of 2012
EMMA TUPPER’S DIARY
“Fish out of water Emma must spend the summer in Scotland with cousins she’s never met. It’s the sort of family where everyone is whip-smart, conversations are fast and fascinating, and statements of fact are rarely truthful. All of which makes for one extremely suspenseful and surprisingly thought-provoking adventure.”—Gwenyth Swain (author of Chig and the Second Spread)
Recent and forthcoming short story collections and novels from Small Beer Press for independently minded readers:
Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters: Stories
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
“Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales”—Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
Alan DeNiro, Tyrannia and Other Renditions
Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories
“An exceptionally versatile author.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Trafalgar (trans. Amalia Gladhart)
“I found it delightful. Thought-provoking. Impressive. Brilliant.”—Liz Bourke, Tor.com
Elizabeth Hand, Errantry: Stories
“Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers Weekly
Generation Loss: a Cass Neary novel
“Postpunk attitude and dark mystery.” —George Pelecanos
Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
“Thought-provoking . . . emotionally wrenching stories.”—Publishers Weekly, Best Books of the Year
Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin: Vol. 1: Where on Earth; Vol. 2: Outer Space, Inner Lands
Ursula K. Le Guin’s stories have shaped the way many readers see the world. By giving voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaking truth to power—all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor—she has proven herself a truly great writer. This two-volume selection—as selected and organized by the author—contains almost forty stories and both volumes include new introductions by Le Guin.
“She is the reigning queen of . . . but immediately we come to a difficulty, for what is the fitting name of her kingdom? Or, in view of her abiding concern with the ambiguities of gender, her queendom, or perhaps—considering how she likes to mix and match—her quinkdom? Or may she more properly be said to have not one such realm, but two?”—Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books