Synopses & Reviews
When Rosa Lane, a promising young journalist, impulsively hits the send button on an email to her boss saying "I quit," so begins her pursuit of enlightenment in the jungles of cutthroat London. As she embarks upon her quest for a sense of purpose, she is deceived by her lover, surprised by her friends, turned out by her roommate, threatened by her bank manager, picked over by prospective employers, and tormented by all the bizarre expectations of the modern world. An erudite and darkly comic novel, brimming with lacerating wit and compassion, Inglorious is a truly engrossing character study of a woman walking the edge between self-destruction and self-discovery.
Review
"Honest, brilliant, arresting, and barefisted. Kavenna finds humor in the abyss, light in the dark, and ultimately exhilaration at the end of the tunnel."--André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name and Out of Egypt.
"Kavenna writes with elegance and flair, endowing Rosa with a graceful articulacy. . . . [She] also has a mordant way with social satire."--The New York Times Book Review
"Joanna Kavenna's first novel, Inglorious, is a trip worth taking. . . . It is the journey itself, not the destination, that makes this lovely and wrenching novel worth the ride."--Los Angeles Times
"[Kavenna's] understanding of the complexity of depression and her evocation of her heroine's bewilderment are precise, and Rosa, for all her misery, has an appealing and often funny voice."--The New Yorker
"[Kavenna] renders crisp, piercing prose."--Booklist
"If Franz Kafka had lived in the early 21st century and been female, English, and a bit cheekier, he might have produced a work like Joanna Kavenna's delightful debut novel. . . . Anyone who has ever had a less than positive view of his or her circumstances will revel in Kavenna's book."--The Baltimore Messenger
About the Author
JOANNA KAVENNA is the author of The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule. She has written for The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications.
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Rosa leave her job? Is it an unconscious act to force a confrontation with Liam? Is this the beginning of her downward spiral? Did it cause her decline, or vise versa?
2. Did Rosa stop loving Liam, or were her feelings for him the result of her mothers death? Did Rosa cause Liams disaffection by never praising him?
3. Was Rosa willfully blind to Liam and Graces affair? Did she deserve their treatment? Grace insisted Rosa and Liams relationship was over before she began her relationship with him. Was she justified in having the affair or was it a betrayal of her friendship with Rosa?
4. Rosa stays with several "friends" who she doesnt know very well. Why not go to her fathers? Why cant she ask him for help? Describe the ways in which Rosa and her father are alike and how they are different. She says her father never had any authority. What can you glean from the novel about her parents marriage?
5. Why does Rosa take up with Andreas? She says he lacks a sense of foreboding. Discuss her attraction to him.
6. Rosa often invokes philosophy and the works of Socrates, the Upanishads, Bacon, The Golden Bough, Proust, Vedas, and others. She calls herself "Jamesian," saying she only trusts experience. Does her preoccupation with philosophers feed her paralysis and inability to act? Is Rosa too cerebral?
7. Discuss the three parts of the novel: Retreat (from what), Quest (for what), Return (to what). Are they stages of grief?
8. Why does Rosa make endless lists? Why cant she accomplish anything on them?
9. What causes Rosas apathy? Why is she so willing to humiliate herself?
10. The author chooses to omit information about Rosas mother, who remains a shadow character. Is this meant as part of Rosas inability to accept her mothers death? Finally, as she rides the train to visit Judy and Will, Rosa is flooded with memories about her mother. Why does this come so late in novel?
11. Rosa eventually reveals how her mother died and realizes that her parents were actually happy. For the first time she admits how abandoned she feels. Speculate on the nature of the dynamic between Rosa and her parents.
12. On the train back from her visit to Will and Judy, Rosa contemplates her options: escape or retreat. Which will she choose? Rosa writes a letter to her mother apologizing for getting so distraught over her death. Will she be able to move on? What will happen to Rosa after the novel ends?