Q: Chapter XXIII

Paul Cannot Find the Rock People

Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer, although Anne, amid all her vacation joys, was haunted by a sense of "something gone which should be there." She would not admit, even in her inmost reflections, that this was caused by Gilbert's absence. But when she had to walk home alone from prayer meetings and A.V.I.S. pow-wows, while Diana and Fred, and many other gay couples, loitered along the dusky, starlit country roads, there was a queer, lonely ache in her heart which she could not explain away. Gilbert did not even write to her, as she thought he might have done. She knew he wrote to Diana occasionally, but she would not inquire about him; and Diana, supposing that Anne heard from him, volunteered no information. Gilbert's mother, who was a gay, frank, light-hearted lady, but not overburdened with tact, had a very embarrassing habit of asking Anne, always in a painfully distinct voice and always in the presence of a crowd, if she had heard from Gilbert lately. Poor Anne could only blush horribly and murmur, "not very lately," which was taken by all, Mrs. Blythe included, to be merely a maidenly evasion.

Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June; and, when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving, Paul and Charlotta the Fourth came "home" for July and August.

Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.

1. Anne
2. Gilbert
3. Letters.
4. summer
5. Anne
6. Priscilla
7. Yes.
8. No.
9. Avonlea
10. Echo Lodge
11. July
12. August
13. Paul
14. Gilbert

Numbered questions:
1. Who was on vacation?
2. And who was one her mind?
3. What would he send Diana and not Anne?
4. During what season was the vacation?
5. And who arrived first?
6. Who came in June?
7. Was it fun?
8. Were the Irvings there at the same time?
9. At what location were they?
10. Where?
11. When did the Irvings arrive?
12. And what other month?
13. Who else joined them?
14. Who was Diana's beau/husband?

When Marilynne Robinson published her first novel, Housekeeping, in 1980, she was unknown in the literary world. But an early review in The New York Times ensured that the book would be noticed. "It's as if, in writing it, she broke through the ordinary human condition with all its dissatisfactions, and achieved a kind of transfiguration ," wrote Anatole Broyard, with an enthusiasm and amazement that was shared by many critics and readers. The book became a classic, and Robinson was recognized as one of the outstanding American writers of our time. Yet it would be more than twenty years before she wrote another novel.

During the period, Robinson devoted herself to writing nonfiction. Her essays and book reviews appeared in Harper's and The New York Times Book Review, and in 1989 she published Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution, criticizing severely the environmental and public health dangers caused by the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in England--and the political and moral corruption . In 1998, Robinson published a collection of her critical and theological writings, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, which featured reassessments of such figures as Charles Darwin, John Calvin, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Aside from a single short story--"Connie Bronson," published in The Paris Review in 1986--it wasn't until 2004 that she returned to fiction with the novel Gilead, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, Home, came out this fall.

Her novels could be described as celebrations of the human--the characters in them are unforgettable creations. Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her sister Lucille, who are cared for by their eccentric Aunt Sylvie after their mother commits suicide. Robinson writes a lot about how each of the three is changed by their new life together. Gilead is an even more close exploration of personality: the book centres on John Ames, a seventy-seven-year-old pastor who is writing an account of his life and his family history to leave to his young son after he dies. Home borrows characters from Gilead but centers on Ames's friend Reverend Robert Boughton and his troubled son Jack. Robinson returned to the same territory as Gilead because, she said, "after I write a novel or a story, I miss the characters--I feel like losing some close friends." What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. Which book by Robinson is about Ruth and her sister Lucille?
2. When was it written?
3. How many years passed before she wrote another novel?
4. What did she write in between?
5. What did she publish in 1989?
6. And where did some of her essays and book reviews show up?
7. What did she publish in 1998?
8. What figures did it reassess?
9. What single short story did she write?
10. What did Anatole Broyard say about Housekeeping?
11. Who published Connie Bronson?
12. In what year?
13. When did Robinson start writing fiction again?
14. What was the name of the novel she wrote then?
15. When does her novel, Home, come out?
16. What happens to Ruth and Lucille's mother in Housekeeping?
17. Who takes care of them then?
18. What does the book Gilead center on?
19. How old is Ames?
20. Who is he writing his book for?
Answer:
1. Housekeeping.
2. 1980.
3. More than twenty.
4. Nonfiction.
5. Mother Country: Britain.
6. Harper's and The New York Times Book Review
7. The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought,
8. Charles Darwin and John Calvin.
9. Connie Bronson
10. "It's as if, in writing it, she broke through the ordinary human condition with all its dissatisfactions, and achieved a kind of transfiguration
11. The Paris Review.
12. 1986
13. 2004
14. Gilead.
15. This fall.
16. She commits suicide.
17. Their Aunt Sylvie.
18. John Ames.
19. 77.
20. His son.