Synopses & Reviews
"These stories will last," said Raymond Carver of
Shiloh and Other Stories when it was first published, and almost two decades later this stunning fiction debut and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award has become a modern American classic. In Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason introduces us to her western Kentucky people and the lives they forge for themselves amid the ups and downs of contemporary American life, and she poignantly captures the growing pains of the New South in the lives of her characters as they come to terms with feminism, R-rated movies, and video games.
"Bobbie Ann Mason is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader," said Robert Towers in The New York Review of Books.
About the Author
"Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of a number of books, including the short-story collection Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail, the novel In Country, and a memoir, Clear Springs, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Kentucky.
Reading Group Guide
1. How does the authors rendering of the quotidian details of everyday life relate to some of the overall themes in the first story, “Shiloh?” Consider the last sentence in particular.
2. Discuss the relationships presented in “Shiloh.” What purpose does Mabel serve within the context of Norma Jean and Leroy? How does she relate to each of them separately? How do these associations compare to those in the rest of the stories?
3. How do Macks actions reflect his state of mind in the second story, “The Rookers?” What does his dialogue with the rest of the family say about him?
4. Bobbie Ann Mason chooses to tell the third story, “Detroit Skyline, 1949” from a childs point of view. Does this make the narrator unreliable, in any sense? What sort of angle does it lend to the seriousness of the topics-at-hand?
5. What sorts of different meanings can the title of the fourth story, “Offerings,” assume?
6. How does Louises struggle with her watermelon still life symbolize the other struggles occurring in the fifth story?
7. Why do you think Bobbie Ann Mason stresses brand names and pop culture references, like TV shows and personalities, in the sixth story, “Old Things?”
8. Analyze the following passage from the eighth story, “The Climber”: “As she drives home, Dolores feels confused, surprised that her sense of relief feels so peculiar. There is nothing momentous in what she has been through.”
9. What do animals represent in the ninth story?
10. How does religion play in to the tenth story, “The Retreat?” What do you think Georgeann means when she says, “I was happy when I was playing that game.”?
11. Why do you thing the author chose to relate the two stories, “Nancy Culpepper” and “Lying Doggo?” How does the perspective change from one story to the next?
12. What role do animals play in each of the stories? What role does childhood play?
13. Discuss the authors choice of tense in the stories, and how they relate to an intrinsic chronology.
14. How does Bobbie Ann Mason compare to other short-story writers? Lorrie Moore? Flannery OConnor? Raymond Carver?
1. How does the authors rendering of the quotidian details of everyday life relate to some of the overall themes in the first story, “Shiloh?” Consider the last sentence in particular.
2. Discuss the relationships presented in “Shiloh.” What purpose does Mabel serve within the context of Norma Jean and Leroy? How does she relate to each of them separately? How do these associations compare to those in the rest of the stories?
3. How do Macks actions reflect his state of mind in the second story, “The Rookers?” What does his dialogue with the rest of the family say about him?
4. Bobbie Ann Mason chooses to tell the third story, “Detroit Skyline, 1949” from a childs point of view. Does this make the narrator unreliable, in any sense? What sort of angle does it lend to the seriousness of the topics-at-hand?
5. What sorts of different meanings can the title of the fourth story, “Offerings,” assume?
6. How does Louises struggle with her watermelon still life symbolize the other struggles occurring in the fifth story?
7. Why do you think Bobbie Ann Mason stresses brand names and pop culture references, like TV shows and personalities, in the sixth story, “Old Things?”
8. Analyze the following passage from the eighth story, “The Climber”: “As she drives home, Dolores feels confused, surprised that her sense of relief feels so peculiar. There is nothing momentous in what she has been through.”
9. What do animals represent in the ninth story?
10. How does religion play in to the tenth story, “The Retreat?” What do you think Georgeann means when she says, “I was happy when I was playing that game.”?
11. Why do you thing the author chose to relate the two stories, “Nancy Culpepper” and “Lying Doggo?” How does the perspective change from one story to the next?
12. What role do animals play in each of the stories? What role does childhood play?
13. Discuss the authors choice of tense in the stories, and how they relate to an intrinsic chronology.
14. How does Bobbie Ann Mason compare to other short-story writers? Lorrie Moore? Flannery OConnor? Raymond Carver?