Novel Study Sales Pitches

Purpose: Choice = more interest/ownership Connections/Echoes/Cross-Pollination Challenge Coverage: Nationality Gender Time period Style ***Warnings brutality

Connections Speculative Fiction “[Humanity’s] worst appetites and weaknesses--- and [humanity’s] ultimately exhilarating spirit” Haunting

Connections Satire: irony, juvenalian, multiple targets Dystopian or “Ustopian”? "Ustopia is a word I made up by combining utopia and dystopia – the imagined perfect society and the opposite – because, in my view, each contains a latent version of the other” - Atwood The rest I will leave up to you…

1984 – George Orwell Dystopian Society Impact: Big Brother Thought Police thoughtcrime 2+2=5 The third purpose of satire Politics, power, freedom, control, deception, surveillance, propaganda, war, media, love, history, rebellion, despair

1984 – George Orwell “People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.” “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”

The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood Controversy Dystopian – response to Orwell? Atwood: Among the most honoured authors of fiction in recent history Divides her time between Toronto and Pelee Island! First person P.O.V. Sexism, Media, Control, Power, Surveillance, Purpose, Fundamentalism, Social Class, Perseverance, Rebellion

The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood “There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why there is no glass…and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s the other escapes….”

Blindness – Jose Saramago Nobel Prize for Literature (1998) Frightening/Fascinating concept Narrative style (structure, our role) Allegory Opportunism, Disaster, Violence, Brutality, Power, Control, Redemption, Guilt, Civilization or a lack of it, Despair, Sexism, Survival, Barbarity, Selflessness, Compassion

Blindness – Jose Saramago “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.” “What meaning do tears have when the world has lost all meaning” “Animals are like people, they get used to everything in the end.”

Cloud Atlas– David Mitchell 6 different stories nested inside each other (like Matryoshka Dolls?) 6 different styles Puzzle (eg) Sixsmith Shortlisted for Booker Prize Dystopian – past and present Creativity, history, war, aging, control, fate, legacy, love, racism, belief, corporations, “predacity”

Cloud Atlas– David Mitchell "A half-read book is a half-finished love affair“ “Everywhere he observed that casual brutality lighter races show the darker“ “Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.

Your Criteria… What do you look for in a book that you are choosing for a novel study in class? Think about who you are as a reader