vicki
07-01-2007, 06:10 AM
Hi, everybody!
The VBC discussion of The Beekeeper's Apprentice starts today. Please join us to talk about this first entry in the Mary Russell series, which is beloved by readers all over the world.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
---First in the Mary Russell series, published 1994
---Bantam paperback ISBN :0-553-57165-6 (for a signed or inscribed copy, contact crbkswat@sbcglobal.net
---For pictures of places in England and Wales where The Beekeeper’s Apprentice takes place, see this page (http://www.laurierking.com/beekeep_app.php).
The laurierking.com page for The Beekeeper's Apprentice:
Check it out here (http://laurierking.com/beekeep_app.php) for reviews, images, background information and the first two chapters of the book (http://laurierking.com/pdf/Beekeeper.pdf), ready for forwarding to your friends, family, book groups and reading buddies.
A special VBC introduction to The Beekeeper's Apprentice from LRK:
As A Grave Talent began with the question, What would a female Rembrandt look like? so The Beekeeper’s Apprentice began with the speculation, What if Sherlock Holmes had been a woman? And not just any woman, but a young, modern, twentieth century feminist of a woman? What if we took that brilliant, difficult mind and housed it in another person, another time, another set of interests?
And because two similar objects are more intriguing if they are arranged to set each other off, what if we paired this female Holmes with the original?
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is a coming-of age story, not just for young Mary Russell, but for the modern world. The horrors of the Great War changed England forever—as I mention on the web site’s Scholars Corner page (http://www.laurierking.com/scholars_corner.php), I began the book not knowing a great deal about World War I, but it did not take much research to find a peculiarly familiar flavor. My own coming-of-age was during the Sixties, and I found Mary Russell’s teens and Twenties eerily similar: the devastation of the Great War found an echo in my era’s Vietnam; women made huge strides in basic rights during both periods; their air flight presaged our moon shots; their growing dependence on the telephone found a parallel in the infancy of computers; both eras claimed previously unknown degrees of sexual freedom. Women of the two periods even looked the same: skinny, painted adolescents in brief skirts.
I’ve written a number of things about Mary Russell’s World (http://www.laurierking.com/mary_russells_world.php), and gathered most of them together on the page of that name on the web site.
And if you’d like to see some of the cover art The Beekeeper’s Apprentice has been graced (?) with over the years, (big strong Holmes, little girly Mary on red flock wallpaper…ookay) look at this page (http://www.laurierking.com/beekeepers_gallery.php).
Next month we’ll open up Holmes and Russell to the artistic impulses of LRK readers, and you can send us your ideas of what she, or they, look like.
Discussion questions:
1. Do you think it’s fair to base a book on the work of another writer? Laurie King calls the series not pastiches, but variations on a theme, since the main character is not Sherlock Holmes, but Mary Russell. Is The Beekeeper’s Apprenticejust fan fiction in hardcover? Should she have created a different setting for her strong female version of the Great Detective, and put Russell in, say, 1980 San Francisco instead?
2. There is a considerable age difference between Holmes and Russell, to the extent that she is little more than a child when they meet. Is it creepy to bring them together in a relationship that seems to be more than teacher/student?
3. In what ways does the War shape the book? Are the guns of the Somme merely background noise, or central? How much would the story change if set in, say, 1910, or 1920?
4. Russell and Holmes, though similar in many ways, yet differ profoundly in others. How does Russell’s sex influence her outlook and actions? How does her interest in theology reflect and affect those differences?
5. What does the book’s subtitle mean, beyond a reference to Holmes’ book on Beekeeping?
The VBC discussion of The Beekeeper's Apprentice starts today. Please join us to talk about this first entry in the Mary Russell series, which is beloved by readers all over the world.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
---First in the Mary Russell series, published 1994
---Bantam paperback ISBN :0-553-57165-6 (for a signed or inscribed copy, contact crbkswat@sbcglobal.net
---For pictures of places in England and Wales where The Beekeeper’s Apprentice takes place, see this page (http://www.laurierking.com/beekeep_app.php).
The laurierking.com page for The Beekeeper's Apprentice:
Check it out here (http://laurierking.com/beekeep_app.php) for reviews, images, background information and the first two chapters of the book (http://laurierking.com/pdf/Beekeeper.pdf), ready for forwarding to your friends, family, book groups and reading buddies.
A special VBC introduction to The Beekeeper's Apprentice from LRK:
As A Grave Talent began with the question, What would a female Rembrandt look like? so The Beekeeper’s Apprentice began with the speculation, What if Sherlock Holmes had been a woman? And not just any woman, but a young, modern, twentieth century feminist of a woman? What if we took that brilliant, difficult mind and housed it in another person, another time, another set of interests?
And because two similar objects are more intriguing if they are arranged to set each other off, what if we paired this female Holmes with the original?
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is a coming-of age story, not just for young Mary Russell, but for the modern world. The horrors of the Great War changed England forever—as I mention on the web site’s Scholars Corner page (http://www.laurierking.com/scholars_corner.php), I began the book not knowing a great deal about World War I, but it did not take much research to find a peculiarly familiar flavor. My own coming-of-age was during the Sixties, and I found Mary Russell’s teens and Twenties eerily similar: the devastation of the Great War found an echo in my era’s Vietnam; women made huge strides in basic rights during both periods; their air flight presaged our moon shots; their growing dependence on the telephone found a parallel in the infancy of computers; both eras claimed previously unknown degrees of sexual freedom. Women of the two periods even looked the same: skinny, painted adolescents in brief skirts.
I’ve written a number of things about Mary Russell’s World (http://www.laurierking.com/mary_russells_world.php), and gathered most of them together on the page of that name on the web site.
And if you’d like to see some of the cover art The Beekeeper’s Apprentice has been graced (?) with over the years, (big strong Holmes, little girly Mary on red flock wallpaper…ookay) look at this page (http://www.laurierking.com/beekeepers_gallery.php).
Next month we’ll open up Holmes and Russell to the artistic impulses of LRK readers, and you can send us your ideas of what she, or they, look like.
Discussion questions:
1. Do you think it’s fair to base a book on the work of another writer? Laurie King calls the series not pastiches, but variations on a theme, since the main character is not Sherlock Holmes, but Mary Russell. Is The Beekeeper’s Apprenticejust fan fiction in hardcover? Should she have created a different setting for her strong female version of the Great Detective, and put Russell in, say, 1980 San Francisco instead?
2. There is a considerable age difference between Holmes and Russell, to the extent that she is little more than a child when they meet. Is it creepy to bring them together in a relationship that seems to be more than teacher/student?
3. In what ways does the War shape the book? Are the guns of the Somme merely background noise, or central? How much would the story change if set in, say, 1910, or 1920?
4. Russell and Holmes, though similar in many ways, yet differ profoundly in others. How does Russell’s sex influence her outlook and actions? How does her interest in theology reflect and affect those differences?
5. What does the book’s subtitle mean, beyond a reference to Holmes’ book on Beekeeping?