MAY THEME READ Dislocated Women DISCUSSION ONLY

Since May is fast approaching, I’m starting the discussion thread for our theme read, “Dislocated Women.” If you need a book suggestion for this topic or would like to make suggestions, please go to the original thread and reserve this one for discussion only.

What does it mean to be a dislocated woman? To me, it suggests a woman who is somehow out of her element and who finds herself faced with the task of making significant choices and changes, either in herself or in her surroundings, in order to fit, thrive, and/or survive. (Another option, of course, would be the avoidance of change.)

It might be useful to consider a definition of the verb “dislocate” from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: to put out of place; 2: to force a change in the usual status, relationship, or order of; to disrupt.

As avaland suggested on the original thread, dislocation, by definition, could be voluntary or involuntary. For example, one woman might choose to emigrate to be with the man she loves; another might find herself committed to an asylum. In either case, one can imagine both positive and negative consequences.

Some possible questions to consider:

What are the various ways in which women are dislocated?

Is the experience of dislocation more common for women than for men? Are their means of coping with dislocation different?

Is it possible to adjust to the experience of dislocation without losing a sense of oneself?

How do a woman’s responses to voluntary dislocation compare to those of a woman who is involuntarily dislocated?

What are the consequences of the experience of dislocation? What may be learned or gained? What may be lost?

How might a woman’s age or ethnicity affect the experience of dislocation?

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Please feel free to add discussion questions as your responses to the theme and the book that you have chosen.

Just posting to move this thread up so that it will be more visible. I will be back soon to post my comments on The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

I read The Ha-ha by Jennifer Dawson. It's not easy to answer these questions without giving away too much of the plot, but I'll do my best - sorry if any of this is too elliptical.

The central character of The Ha-ha is a young woman who has never really felt as if she belongs to the world. She feels this most keenly in her inability to chat and flirt along with her fellow undergraduates - and a sense that people are expecting her to present a certain image, but one that she doesn't understand.

She also has visions of jungles and wildebeest in the middle of parties and tutorials, which make her laugh at inappropriate moments. But these are more symptoms of her sense that she is not really part of the world around her. "I wanted the knack of existing. I did not know the rules."

When the book begins, she is in a mental institution for her "schizophrenia". She makes a friend - probably the first close friend she's ever had - in Alisdair, who is in the institution for 'nervous exhaustion' (and impotence). He coaxes her out of herself, praising her disconnection to the world as more "real" than the artificial social games that most people play. But he is still amazed that she has never felt indignant or angry. Finally, he introduces her to passion, which is the first thing that has ever made her feel "real" - although this is also a risky route for her.

According to the author's afterword, this was one of the first books to examine the question of using the definition of 'madness' as a means of social control. This sort of dislocation was more common for women, historically, and they had fewer means of coping with it - the key problem being that they could not vouch for their own sanity if they were being socially disruptive. Josephine ultimately has to make a choice between trying to fit in, or of striving to be true to herself.

I found out after reading the book that Dawson had herself spent time as a patient in a mental institution, as well as subsequently working in one. Her other novels are also about mental illness and social attitudes to it.

Great review Wandering_star. I put that on my tbr list.

Hi I am new to Library Thing, but am feeling right at home here. I am a novice writer with a big feeling for the female voice, but I do appreciate the struggle for men as well. I have a soft heart, but can be rather tough. My anger issues are often never well thought out, although they motivate me, to help many other people in my boat. People who wish to write, but are refused the access into schools, due to financial constraints. My mom who is no longer here had wanted to write. But mom being a realist understood other more determined points, like making living. Unlike her daughter, who undecided made a conscious choice to write, to uphold her torch up high and burn anyone with it's intensity for veracity. I have many authors that are strong in the memoir area, and others that just tell great stories pertaining to the trials and tribulations of the femine voice and life. I have appreciated some very special voices that I feel have been trusted one would be Erica Jong, "The Adventures of Fanny HackAbout Jones", another would be, "The Women of Brewster Street" by author Gloria Naylor, another would be "At Home In The World" by Joyce Maynard, and one "The Falls" by Joyce Carol Oates. I also love to read Hemingway, for the voice of what I will call true to the male. Also another favorite is "The Great Gatsby" by F.Scott Fitzgerald. I can devour all of these great reads, and continue to be entwined with these great voices in literature and the often painful stories they weave, that is so ingrained choice, chance and challenge. No two people are the same, and so each individual has his side, so I consider myself to be quite fair so my approach to writing is to be as impartial as possible, just don't cross my characters, otherwise there'll be trouble, isn't that the always the main idea? By the way a little humor never hurt either.

Gloria47, welcome to LT! By way of introduction, this group discusses books by and about women. We welcome anyone who wishes to participate in the discussions as noted by the various thread titles. This particular thread is a discussion only thread for a group theme read, the theme being 'dislocated women.' A message like the one you have written is perhaps more appropriate posted on the thread called "The Girlybooks Message Board". If you search the groups you may also find a writers' group...and there's bound to be lots of places to talk about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but here we choose to focus on the works of female authors.

Hope this helps.

btw, I read The Outlander by Gil Adamson for this. Will write about it real soon . . . (no touchstone apparently)

I chose to read The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. However, I may be reading a second theme book as this one doesn't entirely fit the topic. It is a collection of short stories that appeared from the jacket to focus on immigration, but not all of them do. So for this post, I will concentrate on the stunning opening story, "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter." Please note, there are some spoilers below.

Mrs. Dutta, a middle-aged Indian widow, has come to San Francisco to live with her son, daughter-in-law, and their two children. As the story opens, she is lying in bed, resisting getting up at her usual early hour because she has been told it's too early and her "noise" wakes the rest of the family. This is just one of the adjustments she has to make. She thinks of a letter that recently arrived from her friend, Mrs. Basu, full of news from home and asking, "Are you happy in America?"

That's a difficult question to answer. Mrs. Dutta is proud of her family and does her best to help out. She cooks her Indian specialties every night, cleans up the leftovers, and instead of insisting that a clothesline be hung (her daughter-in-law complained that "we just don't do that here"), she dries her clothes (which she has washed in the bathtub) on the fence and removes them before Shyamoli comes home from work. She writes to Mrs. Basu, "I'm fitting in so well here, you'd never guess that I came only two months back. I've found new ways of doing things, of solving problems creatively. You would be most proud if you saw me."

But there are constant complaints from her daughter-in-law (not directly to Mrs. Dutta but overheard as Shyamoli chastizes her husband for not getting his mother in line) about the grease in the kitchen and the smell of grease in their clothes, the weight everyone has been packing on, the "perfectly good food" thrown away, and, most devastatingly, the neighbor's complaint about the clothes hung on her fence. This last faux pas sends Shyamoli into near hysterics. Mrs. Dutta, composing her letter in her head, 'writes': Women need to be strong, not to react to every little thing."

So, in part, this is obviously a story of an older woman having to give up old customs for new. But it soon becomes clear that not only is the adjustment difficult for her, she is making adjustment more difficult for her son and his family. Instead of contributing and showing gratitude, all her efforts are only making life worse for them. Shyamoli's devastation at the neighbor's complaint--repeated twice, "like I didn't understand English, like I was an idiot"--reveals that she, too, struggles against a sense of dislocation. "All these year I've been so careful not to give these Americans a chance to say something like this, and now . . . " And Sagar, Mrs. Dutta's son, is equally torn between a tradition that puts respect for one's parents equal to or above loyalty to one's spouse, and the American family structure that expects the opposite.

At the end of the story, Mrs. Dutta starts her letter anew: "I cannot answer your question about whether I am happy, for I am no longer sure what happiness is. All I know is that it isn't what I thought it would be. It isn't about being needed. It isn't about being with family either. It has something to do with love, I still think this, but in a different way than I believed earlier, a way I don't have the words to explain. Perhaps we can figure it out together, two old women drinking cha in your downstairs flat (for I do hope you will rent it to me on my return) . . . If I'm lucky--and perhaps, in spite of all that has happened, I am--the happiness will be in the figuring out."

The consequences of dislocation have been hard on Mrs. Dutta. She has caused strife where she only intended love, and her difficulties adjusting to American life seem to have stirred up painful memories for her now-Americanized family. But there are also more positive consequences: she has learned that the bonds of place and culture may be stronger than those of family, that friendship freely given may be more powerful than familial duty, and that one never fully knows oneself.

Cariola, thanks for that review! It sounds like a great book of stories.

I read The Outlander by Toronto author Gil Adamson which has a double dislocation. It's been a while since I finished so I hope I have the details correct, and I hope not to include any major spoilers!

Mary Boulton is a 19 year old on the run in the wilds of Western Canada after killing her husband. She is being pursued by her two brothers-in-law described as "massive redheads so close in appearance they might be twins".Mary is forced further and further from civilization by their menacing pursuit. In her retreat she meets a variety of eclectic characters, some helpful, some not.

Mary is dislocated twofold. First, she married badly. She was brought up by a stern grandmother and a distant father, a former minister with some priviledge. Somewhat educated and used to a softer life, she marries a man who unexpectedly takes her with him to homestead land in the frontier. Mary is ill-equipped to deal with frontier life but begins to learn rudimentary skills. (this is hard to write without spoilers!).

After she kills her husband, she flees so therefore voluntarily dislocated herself once again. She again is ill-equipped to survive alone and on the run. She soon finds herself starving in the mountains after her stolen horse is scared off by wolves.

It's tough to answer broad questions about dislocation from one book, however, Mary does lose a sense of self, certainly partially (at least) through marriage. The dislocation is complete as she becomes a murderess, a widow and a wanted woman. However, she is young, willing to learn, and willing to use what few resources she seems to possess. And she is extremely lucky. In the process of survival, of making choices, of adapting to change...etc, she redefines who she is.

Comparing this story of dislocation with others I have read, say, The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta which involves a young Nigerian woman leaving her rural family village for an arranged marriage and urban life, so much depends on the circumstances the character suffers in the story. Nnu Ego (means "no ego) cannot get ahead, despite being resourceful because of the incredible stranglehold of poverty. She has so few choices in her society. Nnu Ego stuggles to maintain her sense of who she is and to adapt the traditional values she has been brought up to a changed world.

Mary Boulton is out in the frontier where, to some extent, where the 'rules' can be bent or broken.

Here's a portion of an interview with author Theodora Goss, which made me think of this thread topic of 'displacement'. She left Hungary at age five, lived in Italy and Belgium before immigrating to the US at age seven.

There's a story behind my name. When I was born, my father's last name was Muszbek, my mother's Kovacs. When my mother left Hungary she took back her maiden name, and my brother and I took it as well. Then, when we came to the US, my mother took a French name: Melez. So I started out as Dora Muszbek, then became Dor Kovacs, then Dora Melez. When I married Kendrick Goss, I thought, 'None of the names I've had in my life have been with me long enough to feel as though they belong to me, so I'm goingto take my husband's name because at least that's been around a long time.' It's from German, and means "Goth." I have some German ancestry, so I feel more connection with that name than any of those others. So it's not only that I have this sense of physical displacement ---I'm not even sure who I am. Talk about misplaced, displaced, lost identities.

May 2008 Locus Magazine.

The book that I read for this theme was The Victorian Chaise-Longue, a 1953 novella by Marghanita Laski. The “dislocated woman” in this story suffers a loss of identity.

Melanie (Melly) Langdon is an upper-class woman living in London in the early 1950s. For fourteen months, she has been confined to her bedroom, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. Following her doctor’s orders, she has had no physical contact with her 7-month-old son. In an attempt to make Melly feel better about her situation, her doctor allows her to move to the Victorian chaise-longue in the drawing-room so that she can enjoy a change of scenery. She falls asleep on the chaise-longue. When she wakes up, she is still on the chaise-longue but has been transported back to the year 1864 and into the body of another, much more seriously ill invalid, Milly Baines.

Understandably panicked, Melly tries to make sense of the situation. At first she assumes she’s dreaming, but soon discovers that she’s able to touch the objects and people she’s seeing. She becomes more terrified, theorizing that she has been kidnapped by deranged people who are acting out some elaborate charade. Melly decides to escape, but finds that Milly’s body is too weak to leave the chaise-longue. After cautiously questioning the strangers around her, Melly realizes that they aren’t acting and that she really is experiencing another person’s life in 1864.

Once she determines that what she’s seeing is real, she thinks of possible explanations for her situation. Is she remembering a past life? Or has God sent her back in time? If so, is it meant as punishment or as some sort of test? She hopes that by discovering the answer, she’ll find the way back to her own life.

Melly struggles to communicate with the people around her. After her transformation, Melly discovers that she can express her thoughts only in Milly’s words, not in her own. She is limited not only by words that were in use in 1864, but also by Milly’s lack of experience and education. Milly lives in a strict, religious household and knows very little about the world. While Melly’s mind forms the words to describe her predicament, she is unable to say them because Milly is unfamiliar with those words. Consequently, Melly is unable to explain her situation properly or to ask for help. In turn, Melly has trouble understanding the people in Milly’s life. Because of their religious beliefs, they are so reserved and circumspect that Melly often misinterprets what they are saying.

As the story progresses, we learn that, in addition to their names, Melly and Milly have a lot in common. Both have been confined to their homes. They are treated like children by the people around them and have little control over their own lives. Both use their beauty and charm to get what they want (which isn’t much) from men. Neither has had much experience with the world outside their religious and social circles.

Immediately after her transformation, Melly is certain of her identity. As hours pass and her situation seems hopeless, she is no longer sure where Milly ends and she begins. She somehow know things about Milly’s past without being told. Images and emotions from Milly’s mind increasingly find their way into Melly’s. Over the course of the story, Melly’s persona gradually recedes and is dominated by Milly’s.

By the end of the story, Melly is entirely powerless. At the beginning of the story, Melly has lost her freedom and autonomy. After becoming trapped in Milly’s body, she loses her ability to move, her ability to communicate and, finally, what little remains of her identity.

What a scary, chilling story, superfancy!

It is. I read the whole thing in a few hours, which is unusual for me. I couldn't put it down.

It is one of the Persephones I would like to get.

Oh my, that sounds like quite a story. Chilling, indeed!

Having read several books on Tuberculosis this winter, I shudder just thinking of what medicine was back then compared to the early 50s (a cure had been found in the 40s but it took time for it to be affordable and available. My mother had TB in 1946) Sorry, that's off topic:-) But the cultural aspects of consumption (which included TB as well as any other similar 'wasting' diseases) is fascinating.

Certainly a very unnerving story and one that fits the theme so wonderfully!

I love that book--so creepy! Excellent reading and review, superfancy.

I read Balkan Express by Slavenka Drakulic, actually for the former Yugoslavia thread, but it fits just as well here.

This is a collection of essays, written in 1991 and 1992 as Croatia is drawn into war, about Drakulic's own experiences.

She is "dislocated" in two ways: one, that she finds (to her surprise and horror) that the war is affecting the way she thinks - the way that she reacts to people, the way she feels about 'her country'; and two, that she finds that she is increasingly perceived not as a woman, a writer, a feminist, a mother, or any of these things, but as 'a victim of war' and later, 'a refugee'.

Both of these are brought together in this passage, just after one of her new neighbours (in Slovenia) has found out that she has come from Croatia and sounds off about how much benefits refugees are getting from the Slovene state:

"I think I have never experienced such a terrible urge to distinguish myself from others, to show this man that I was an individual with a name and not an anonymous exile stealing his money. I started to explain to him that I was not what he thought I was, but then I stopped mid-sentence, my anger hanging in the air for the moment, then descending to the wet grass below. That dialogue on the bank of the river had nothing to do with us - him, a university professor from Ljubljana, me, a writer from Zagreb. It was the war speaking through our mouths, accusing us, reducing us to two opposing sides, forcing us to justify ourselves. I walked away. But his two sentences were enough to strip me of my individuality, the most precious property I had accumulated during the forty years of my life. I - no longer me - went to 'my home' that was not mine."

How does she cope/adjust? She struggles to maintain her humanity in the face of the horrors. She sometimes comes close to despair - but by the time she writes the preface of the book, she has regained her belief in "the power of words, the necessity of communication" - and that's what keeps her going.

One of the most remarkable things about this book, I think, is the sense that this could be happening to any of us - Slavenka Drakulic would have described herself as a modern European woman, without strong nationalistic attachments - and as such, her reactions are so recognisable. In most contemporary wars, especially where - as here - the lazy journalistic shorthand of 'primal enmity' is given as an explanation - you don't imagine the way that war erupts into and disturbs normal life. It reminded me a little of hearing about a Lebanese radio station which I was told "saved many lives during the {civil} war" by announcing, as if it was part of the traffic news, which junctions had snipers firing at people. That juxtaposition of the everyday and the completely abnormal is a little similar to this book.

I just finished an Early Review book, Sarah's Key, which also fits this topic. It is actually two stories intertwined, and both involve dislocated females. The first is Sarah, a ten-year old Jewish girl living in Paris in 1942. She and her parents are part of the Vel D'Hiv roundup, which was covered up by the government for decades; the French police voluntarily cooperated with the Nazis, bringing French Jews to the velodome from where they were transported to death camps. Sarah is separated first from her father, then from her mother, but her main concern is her little brother, Michel, whom she had locked in a secret cupboard for safety, promising to return for him. Her story is not only one of survival, but also of strength and devotion.

I don't want to give away too much, so I will leave it at saying that Sarah experiences two more dislocations, the first as she finds herself in a new family, the second, we learn, when she emigrates to the US in an effort to leave behind the horrors of what had happened to her family in France. For Sarah, clearly, "home" was the original family that was wrenched apart by hatred, and despite her efforts, she is never able to replace it.

The other story is that of Julia Jarmond, a journalist investigating the Vel d'Hiv incident who becomes obsessed with Sarah's story. An American who has lived in Paris for years and who married into a French family, Julia claims to feel at home there yet frequently mentions that people comment on the accent she thought she had lost and that her in-laws still refer to her as ''l'americaine." As she learns more about the story (and about the ways in which it directly touched her husband's family), she becomes increasingly disturbed by the French reserve, their desire to forget the past.

Again, I won't spoil the story; suffice it to say that Julia learns much about her husband, his family, her growing daughter, and herself as she pursues Sarah's story.

The first 2/3 of the book alternates rapidly between the two stories, devoting short chapters/sections of 2-4 pages to each. After the climactic moment in Sarah's story, the novel continues with Julia's personal dilemmas and her desire to know more about what happened to Sarah. Unfortunately, the quality drops off as Julia's story becomes predictable, full of cliches and impossible coincidences. The efforts to parallel the two stories never quite work, since the difficulties Julia faces pale in comparison to those that Sarah endured. Yet the ways in which the two characters cope with dislocation do contrast well. Sarah's survival initially depends on keeping her promise to her brother, but eventually her method of coping is to close herself off from her past and from those who love her; Julia copes with her dislocation in Paris and within her husband's family by focusing on her work, but eventually she opens her heart to others, learns even more about herself, and moves on to a new future.

#3 I just received a copy of The ha-ha and am looking forward to reading it.

For this challenge, I selected Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. FannyPrice already did an excellent job of covering this book in the March theme on social class, and elsewhere at LT, so I will try to be brief and not steal her ideas. I imagine that most people who are interested in this novel have some idea about its premise, and know the story of Jane Eyre. If it’s all new to you, there are spoilers here; it really couldn’t be avoided. However, Wide Sargasso Sea is not a book that one reads for story; it’s truly the journey that is important here.

I don’t think you could find a novel that covers the theme of dislocation any stronger than in WSS. Sadly, all of the dislocation is involuntary. The novel opens in Jamaica, where the child protagonist, Antoinette, lives with her recently widowed mother and a few former slaves. They are not welcome in any level of Jamaican society: her mother was from Martinique and considered unsuitable for her father, they have now lost their fortune, the English settlers call them “white niggers” and the former slaves called them “white cockroaches.” She later says, “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” Even Antoinette’s one playmate mistreats her. Without giving the story away, I will say that the family’s fortunes make a turn for the better, but Antoinette’s mother goes mad and abandons her, and she eventually ends up in a convent.

Part Two of the book takes place in Dominica, where Antoinette honeymoons with her new husband on her mother’s estate. It starts out rather positively, and Antoinette says, “The sky was dark blue through the dark green mango leaves, and I thought, ‘This is my place and this is where I belong and this is where I wish to stay’.” Unfortunately, things go wrong, and she later says to her husband, “But I loved this place and you have made it into a place I hate. I used to think that if everything else went out of my life I would still have this, and now you have spoilt it. It’s just somewhere else where I have been unhappy . . .”

By Part Three, she has lost everything: not just her money, but her Caribbean homes, both her first and last names, her liberty, and even her mind. She has lost her self in every conceivable way.

I haven't read "Wide Sargasso Sea," but it's been on my wish list for some time.

In "Jane Eyre," Antoinette is described as a Creole. I thought that meant she was French and Indian and that that was one of the reasons she had been rejected. Since one side of my family is French and Native American, maybe I interpreted it too personally. Did "Wide Sargasso Sea" clarify what Creole meant? Was there any suggestion that Antoinette was mixed race?

I have the Norton Critical Edition of Wide Sargasso Sea, which has tons of notes and extra information, including quite a bit on this exact subject. At the time Jane Eyre was written, the word Creole meant a European person who was born in the Caribbean. It was also used for the offspring of animals imported from Europe. The issue with Bertha being Creole in Jane Eyre is to show Rochester's belief that the tropics are a corrupting force to Europeans--the longer they stay there, the more they degenerate. In Wide Sargasso Sea it is very clear that Antoinette herself is fully European, although she does have mixed race relatives.

Since Jane Eyre the word Creole has evolved to mean what you have defined (it doesn't have to be French though, does it? I'm sure I've heard it used for part-Spanish and Portuguese people too. Doesn't it mean part-European? Not sure.) This issue was covered quite well in my edition, and I trust that Rhys knew what she was talking about, being a Caribbean-born European herself.

I read The Keep by Jennifer Egan, an Orange Prize shortlister, according to another group thread.

Some SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW; this is a difficult book to write about without giving things away.

The female protagonist teaches writing in a men's prison. The novel tracks back and forth between the teacher/prisoner relationship and the story the prisoner is writing.

Both teacher and prisoner are physically dislocated--not where they wish to be. And emotionally dislocated as well.

The prisoner's story is about a young man who played a hideous practical joke on his geeky cousin as a child.

The young man is summoned to a castle by his now fabulously rich and only slightly geeky cousin has purchased to turn into a kind of techno-free spa.

All seems apparently forgiven between the young man and his cousin, but it becomes clear that neither of them are models of mental stability, and both are fixated on the keep, at the center of the castle.

The novel, in a way, is a long play on the word "keep" and its myriad meanings--to preserve, to hold, to secrete, to hide, to save, to imprison, to continue.

The only exit from the keep, which is the center of both the prisoner's and the teacher's stories, is via a vertiginous spiral staircase. Or by falling out a window. Both exits have the ability to confuse and disorient. And do.

What happens at the end of the book seems clear enough on the surface. One of the characters has left the keep and the other has entered it.

But whether the characters are free of their own physical and psychological dislocation is much murkier. Dislocation seems to be reversed rather than remedied.

At heart, this book is not much more than a psychological thriller. The stories revolve around one another like that spiral staircase in the keep. It becomes dizzying in that eventually you're keeping (that word again!) several stories in your head at once. And the stories are so compelling that the style keeps (and again!) you from caring that there's not much substance.

For this discussion I read So Long a Letter, a novel by the Senegalese writer Mariama Ba. This story is told in the form of a letter written by Ramatoulaye to her childhood friend Aissatou. Both these women became displaced when their husbands chose to take second wives after many years of marriage. Ramatoulaye chose to remain married, while Aissatou divorced her husband and moved to the United States.

The two women, though raised in the same neighborhood with similar values and religious beliefs reacted much differently to their husbands' betrayal:

Aissatou-"I am stripping myself of your love, your name. Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I go my way."

Ramatoulaye-"From then on, my life changed. I had prepared myself for equal sharing, according to the precepts of Islam concerning polygamic life. I was left with empty hands."
" I was not divorced; I was abandoned: a fluttering leaf that no hand dares pick up."

While both women were romantically displaced by their husbands, they were not displaced by their children. After being abandoned by their spouses, they fought further displacement by raising their children as single parents. They were always able to find a feeling of home and happiness with their children.

A plug for My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain ought to be on this thread. O'Faolain died last week of lung cancer.

"My Dream" is a difficult book to read; the protagonist is not especially likeable, and the book starts as a string of anecdotes and memories that begin to gel about halfway in.

Anyway, short synopsis: A writer voluntarily dislocates herself from Ireland when her pregnant mother lies dying of cancer, and her father refuses to allow treatment in order not to harm the baby.

Furious as the stubbornness of her father, she tells the neighbor lady she hates Ireland--the neighbor replies, "If the rest of us can stand it, I don't see why you can't."--and leaves

The frame for the book is the writer's attempt to explore a historical romance between a woman of the Anglo-Irish gentry and her estate manager during the Great Famine. It starts as a fluff piece, but her research reconnects her with Ireland. She doesn't exactly love the place at the end, but she accepts that she's inextricably part of it.

It's a very clear-eyed and unsentimental book, and if you're ambivalent about being Irish (and I really don't know too many Irish-Americans who aren't), is a quite refreshing read.

#27 I read about O'Faolain's death in TLS a few days ago. This one has been on my wish list for wahile. I enjoyed her earlier memoirs. Thanks for bringing this one to our attention.

Sorry this is a little late, but I thought I'd try to share some thoughts on Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall. I'm going to follow the questions a bit in an attempt to corral my thoughts slightly, although I still appear to have come up with quite a lot of *stuff*. :-s

What are the various ways in which women are dislocated?

This is a book that centres greatly on motherhood and how a lack of it or a failed one leads to one woman in particular's dislocation.

Is the experience of dislocation more common for women than for men? Are their means of coping with dislocation different?

The need for motherhood is not something that will be shared by many men! Obviously barrenness is something that has led to women being social outcasts for millenia. Although in principle women now can have other roles than being a mother and housewife, there is pressure both from within one's self and from society to be a parent. Being a woman of childbearing age who has had a hysterectomy is particularly hard.

I'm not so sure about the other dislocation at the start of the novel, the lack of their mother. Kitty feels it very strongly compared to her brothers, but that's possibly partly because they were older when she left. It's easy to imagine a girl being more upset by the loss of her mother than a boy though.

As for coping with her dislocations, the second she deals with by trying to find out as much about her mother as possible, trying to form a picture of her mother. The first dislocation, of losing her baby and her hysterectomy, is the trigger for the book and for the dislocation that really drives the plot: her dislocation from reality as she gets more and more depressed. I was very impressed by the way that Clare Morrall told the tale from Kitty's perspective. Kitty's thoughts as she became more and more depressed were very true to my experience of how one's thinking and behaviour gets less and less rational while still seeming perfectly reasonable inside one's head. It was certainly the most powerful aspect of the book from my perspective.

Is it possible to adjust to the experience of dislocation without losing a sense of oneself?

In Kitty's case, her depression is a result, at least partially, of her lost identity. Who is she if she can't be a mother? Who is she if she doesn't know the mother she came from? She clutches at foolish things in an attempt to give herself the identity she wants but they jar when she realises that things don't accord with the fantasy in her head.

How do a woman’s responses to voluntary dislocation compare to those of a woman who is involuntarily dislocated?

Kitty's dislocations are involuntary on all counts. Her depression is perhaps a response, at least in part, to the lack of control she feels over her life. There's only one that could be voluntary in this novel, the lack of children. Some women are totally uninterested in children, and for them I would imagine that not being a mother would be a relief and even empowering.

What are the consequences of the experience of dislocation? What may be learned or gained? What may be lost?

There is a glimmer of hope at the end of the novel that Kitty will be able to come to terms with all her dislocations, finding an identity that is grounded in reality and those who love her. Despite everything that she loses as a result of her depression (and has lost before the story begins), she hopefully can gain a greater understanding of herself and how she can live with her losses.

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That is a really nice analysus LizT, thanks. You made the book sound very interesting. When I looked it up another book came up on my TBR pile, A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. It is a YA book, but it sounds like there are may similarities.

yareader2, my daughter just read A Mango-Shaped Space and really, really enjoyed it.

yareader2: A Mango-Shaped Space sounds really interesting! Although in Astonishing Splashes of Colour, I didn't really feel like the synaesthesia aspect was particularly strong. It was very incidental, which I guess for mild synaesthetes it is (I never realised it was a bit odd that numbers have colours in my brain). A Mango-Shaped Space sounds like the dislocation is *because* of the synaesthesia, which sounds fascinating. Darnit, another one to add to the TBR pile :-)