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Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance Written by Matthew Kneale | Nan A. Talese | Hardcover | March 2005 | $22.00 | 978-0-385-51407-1 (0-385-51407-7) About this Reader's Guide In his gripping new work, Matthew Kneale, author of the award-winning English Passengers, takes us on a journey around today's uncertain world. We follow a smugly well-intentioned English family who leave their tour group in China to travel alone, and collide with the ruthless side of the country, slowly becoming complicit in its violence; a ploddingly respectable London lawyer who chances upon a stash of cocaine and discovers it offers the wealth and status he hungers for; a devoted housewife in the American Mid-west who finds herself strangely compelled to betray her husband and family; as well as other extraordinary characters and circumstances. Painful, moving and wickedly funny, the book gains momentum until it reveals our world to us in a new way. Reader's Guide 1. In the narrative Stone did you see the Winter family as evil, or as victims, or neither? 2. What crimes, large and small, did you feel were committed in the narratives Weight, Taste, Metal, and Numbers? 3. How, if at all, does the narrative Sunlight connect with the subject matter of the other stories? 4. Which story would you say most has echoes of the narrative Seasons? 5. How would you describe Jim’s story in the narrative Numbers? Is this a tale one of awakening, disillusionment or survival and triumph? Why? 6. What connects the narratives Pills, Metal and Taste? 7. How, if at all, does the narrative Sound connect with the subject matter of the other stories. 8. Did your feelings about the narrative Powder become changed on reading the narrative that follows, Leaves? How? 9. In all these narratives, which characters — if any — did you sympathize with? 10. In all these narratives, which characters — if any — did you wholly condemn? |
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