Black Glass - Karen Joy Fowler
Stories (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
KORTE INHOUD
1. Sundry genres commingle in Fowler's short fictions; identify them. What is the function of each one? How does her approach call into question traditional notions of fiction? Do you regard the blending of genres as distinctly contemporary or time-honored? 2. One motif of the collected short stories is the seemingly ineluctable misreadings and discord that persist between the sexes. How does Fowler's handling of this theme differ from story to story? What questions or issues surface repeatedly in addressing the topic? Why does this topic lie so close to the heart of most fiction? 3. Lady Mary Wortley Motagu suggested that satire should 'like a polished razor keen, wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.' Which stories in Black Glass read as satires? What about the subject is illuminated or obscured through the satirizing? Does the satire function simply as entertainment or as moral or ethical provocation? 4. What is lost or gained when Fowler abandons realism? 5. The narrator of 'The Brew' says that...
