Paperback(REV)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Set in the Texas/Mexico border country in the years from 1944 to the present, The River Beyond the World is the story of two women on the edge of sexual, moral, political, and spiritual divides. Luisa Cantú is a girl from a Sierra Madre mountain village. After being impregnated in a fertility ritual of ancient origin, she leaves Mexico to work in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as a housemaid for Mrs. Eddie Hatch, a woman with a strong will and a narrow worldview. Their complex relationship—by turns mystical and pragmatic, serious and comic—reveals the many ways human beings can wound one another, the nature of love and sacrifice, and the possibility of forgiveness.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312169862 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 09/15/1997 |
| Edition description: | REV |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.68(d) |
About the Author
Reading Group Guide
Set in the Texas/Mexico border country, a desert made lush through human will, The River Beyond the World spans nearly half a century in the lives of two very different women and their families.
After leaving her Sierra Madre village, Lusia Cantú finds work in the Texas border town of Rio Paradiso as a housemaid for Eddie Hatch, a woman of strong opinions and a narrow worldview. The two women begin an intimate battle of wills as Eddie asserts her place of privilege while Luisa, subtly but stubbornly, risking the loss of the spiritual power she knew as a girl, tries to assert her own. By turns mystical and mannered, comical and deeply affecting, the story of these to women moves through decades of change, until their complex relationship reaches a painful moment in which each must decide what matters and what can be forgiven.
Discussion Questions:
1. The title of the novel, The River Beyond the World, holds many meanings. What do you think Peery had in mind with the phrase, "Beyond the World?" Is it a religious reference to heaven, or does she refer to something much more material?
2. So much of this book concerns entrances and exits, death being balanced by life. What other themes balance each other throughout the story?
3. What advantage, if any, does Luisa gain by being submissive to Eddie throughout their relationship? Is it merely a question of remaining morally superior, of rebelling, or does she gain something more deeply valuable?
4. Besides the Texas/Mexico border, what other lines and boundaries exist in the novel? How do they deepen one's understanding of character?
5. Luisa originally leaves Mexico after being impregnated in a fertility ritual. By remaining in the Hatch household, away from her own culture, does her life grow more or less fertile?
6. The novel is told from three pints of view, Antonia's, Eddie's, and Luisa's. How does this storytelling method enrich the experience of the novel? What do we as readers learn from hearing the differences in these three voices?
7. It could be argued that place acts as a character in this novel. What sort of character would that be -- benevolent, malicious, mercurial, male or female? What other novels can you think of that use place in the same way?
8. What role, if any, does Antonia play in her mother's redemption? Are there any parallels with her own mother's adolescence?
Janet Peery, in her own words:
On the Origins of her novel:
"On trips to the Rio Grande valley for family visits, I began to notice the way the cultures mixed or failed to mix . . . it fascinated me and I began to ask questions about how it could happen and how it would feel. And I later learned that if there is any identification between me and the Luisa character, it comes from the years that I spent as a housewife."
On her two main characters, Eddie and Lusia:
"A difficult narrative task was treating a character [Eddie] who was so insensibly thoughtless and mean, giving her some kind of measure of humanity, and then with Luisa, not making her too good, giving her subversive methods, helping her find a way to keep her ego intact."
On writing her first novel:
"It was six years of turmoil and joy . . . One thing that was difficult to me, coming up in writing short stories, was learning to luxuriate in moments. So I just put this thing together the way I did, and now I think, "OK next time, I'm just not going to be afraid."
On what it means to be human:
"I don't think any real explicitness exists in human encounters. We aim for it. But there is so much beneath the surface that makes things not what they seem to be . . . If I have a message, it's that it's hard to be human. We go about it in such complex and often bumbling ways."
About the Author:
Janet Peery is the author of Alligator Dance, (forthcoming from Picador USA), and her stories have been widely published. In addition to being a National Book Award finalist, she has received an NEA Fellowship, the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Whiting Foundation Writer's Award, and her stories have been twice cited in Best American Short Stories, and the Pushcart Prize XVI and XVII. Ms Peery holds a B.A. in speech pathology and audiology, and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Wichita State University. The short story, "Nosotros," which was the inspiration for her novel, received the Pushcart Prize XVI and the Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart Prize. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia.