BKMT READING GUIDES
The Wonder Singer
by George Rabasa
Hardcover : 336 pages
0 club reading this now
0 members have read this book
Introduction
Mark Lockwood's life is a small one. He's made his living as a freelance writer, producing a series of little books for hire called How to Talk to Your Teen about . . . . But for the past few months he's been at work on a ghostwriting assignment beyond his dreams. To prepare her “autobiography”, he has been interviewing the internationally renowned diva, Mercè Casals. When the Señora dies suddenly-floating sizable in her elegant scented bath-she is suddenly a hot property and a celebrity biographer arrives to take over the writing of her book. But Lockwood realizes this is his one chance at greatness, and so he runs off with the interview tapes. Abetted by the beautiful but scrupulous Perla, the Señora's nurse, and by a female impersonator who considers himself the diva's greatest fan, Lockwood locks himself into his study, endlessly plays the tapes, and begins to craft his greatest book. Once the three conspirators rescue the Señora's husband from the home she put him in, Lockwood's sense of his own heart begins to expand beyond his considerable imagination. Moving by turns through the diva's lyrical account of her life and the frantic pace of Lockwood's notes from underground, The Wonder Singer portrays for us just what it can mean to live a beautiful life to its fullest.
Excerpt
The wrong people keep trying to get hold of Lockwood these days. They beep his pager and his cell phone, leave messages on his voice mail and on Perla's answering machine. Suddenly, he has a passel of writing assignments. No time, he says. I'm writing the story of my life. ...
view entire excerpt...
Discussion Questions
1. What was your immediate response to this novel? Is there anything in your personal experience that you could identify with in this novel? If so, how did that affect your response?2. How would you describe the tone and style of this novel? What did you enjoy most about the novel?
3. What about the Hollywood setting for Lockwood's story? Did it seem appropriate or enhance Mercè's story?
4. What themes did you find in this novel, and how did you arrive at them? For instance, this novel starts with a death. How would you describe Mercè's attitude about impending death and the loss of her voice? Are they inter-connected?
5. How do you interpret the scene between Pep Seval and Mercè after the battle of Barcelona?
6. How would you describe and/or analyze Mercè's character and the relationships with the men in her life? How did they reflect her strengths? Her flaws? Do you find her viewpoint about her professional behavior to be justified by the events in the narrative?
7. How would you describe the portrait(s) of marriage as presented in this novel? What parallels, and contrasts, did you find between Lockwood and Claire and Mercè and Nolan? How did these portraits interact with one another? What was your response to Nolan-as-marriage-counselor at the end of the novel?
8. How do you, personally, define friendship? How would you describe the friendships in this novel? Were there parallels between Mercè's account of her life and that of Lockwood's life as a writer? Do you think that Perla and Mercè's relationship was a friendship? What about Lockwood and Mercè? Then what about Lockwood/Nolan/Perla/Orson? Would you trade your own life for a life like Mercè's or Lockwood's?
9. What subjects in this novel, if any, made you want to learn more about them? Why?
10. “A meditation on Voice”: What do you think Rabasa means by that? How did you see that playing out in the novel?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
As a reader I'm often interested in the work habits and writing spaces of writers. When one of my readers asked about these things, I thought back to a recent, typical morning. George Rabasa Punches in at the Fiction Factory I'm late, I'm late! It's 9:13 and the brain is humming but the author is not writing. Not a good situation for the novel in progress (two years, four months, three weeks, four days, so far). Still, I just can't dive in. Like a good athlete I need a little warm-up - might strain a brain cell or two otherwise. So, I check e-mail (nothing much), news headlines (nothing much), calendar (nothing much there either). I take a look around the Fiction Factory, and I'm energized by the red walls (“cayenne,” actually), the Mexican rug with the huichol designs depicting the symbols for the eagle, corn, flowers, peyote. Packed bookshelves holding a lifetime of reading, and learning. This is where my masters live - Garcia Marquez, Updike, Lowry, Borges, DeLillo, Cervantes, and that's enough name dropping for now. There are pictures on the walls, some by friends. On the i-pod player, Perla Batalla sings Leonard Cohen. Before I know it, I'm staring at the screen, cursor blinking, words waiting to be arranged and rearranged. Commas achieving the importance of subatomic particles; take one out or put one in and the order of the universe has been altered. The new novel is about 90,000 words so far, but all I think about for the next hour or so is a sentence, a paragraph, a scene. It's one step at a time, without thinking too much about the finish line. Then I move on, at a snail's pace, to the next sentence. And so on… Finally, it's lunch time! My union contract with management specifies a decent time for lunch and reading and nap. Then a couple of hours of the afternoon shift. And it's time to meditate, run, wine, dinner, chocolate. Ah, a happy routine! While I'm often told I should get a life, I can't think of a better one.Book Club Recommendations
Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.
Book Club HQ to over 88,000+ book clubs and ready to welcome yours.
Get free weekly updates on top club picks, book giveaways, author events and more
