A Gathering Light
In Brief Based on a real-life murder which shocked turn-of-the-century America, A Gathering Light is the story of the coming of age of a strong, selfless heroine. Mattie is torn between her familial responsibilities, her desire to be a writer, and the excitement of a first romance. Her dilemmas and choices are quietly reflected in the life of a young woman found drowned in a lake, a woman whom Mattie gets to know only through a bundle of letters left in her possession. The tale of the drowned girl merges with Mattie’s own story, giving her the courage to define her own future.
In Detail Inspired by the infamous case of the People vs. Chester Gillette (the basis for Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy and the classic 1950 movie A Place in the Sun), Jennifer Donnelly reinvents the story of the murder of Grace Brown, finding in it a different, warmer light.
It is July 1906, and seventeen-year-old Mattie Gokey is spending her first summer away from home. She is working the busy holiday season in an Adirondacks hotel, earning the money her family needs to maintain its run-down farm, and saving up to set up home with her fiancé. When a young woman is found drowned in the nearby lake, Mattie finds herself in possession of a secret that may prove impossible to keep: the day before, the woman gave her a bundle of letters which Mattie promised to burn.
As the local men search for the woman’s partner and suspicions grow as to the circumstances of her death, Mattie recounts the previous four months of her own life: her attempts to care for her younger sisters and her sullen, violent father in the wake of her mother’s death; her struggle to turn her love of literature into a college career, with the support of an inspirational teacher and a headstrong friend who shares her ambition, but with neither the funds nor the freedom to leave for New York; her
www.bloomsbury.com/jenniferdonnelly 1 WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM increasing realisation that her small farming town is built on the interdependence of broken families and the secrets they fail to hide; and her precipitous engagement to the first boy to show an interest in her, her handsome neighbour Royal, whose determination to work the land would have her settle in the North Woods for ever.
As her tale unfolds, Mattie begins to read Grace Brown’s letters and comes to see her own life reflected in that of the drowned young woman. Their stories merge, and in their common ground Mattie finds the strength to make sure that, finally, both her own voice and Grace’s will be heard.
About the Author Jennifer Donnelly lives in Brooklyn and Callicoon with her husband and daughter. She grew up in New York State, in Lewis and Westchester Counties, and attended the University of Rochester, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in English Literature and European History. Jennifer lived in England as a college student and returned after she graduated. There, she developed a lifelong love of London and its people. She credits London, the East End in particular, as the inspiration behind her desire to become a writer.
Before becoming a novelist, Jennifer worked as an antiques dealer, reporter and copywriter.
A Gathering Light has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and selected for Richard and Judy’s Summer Reads in the UK. In the US it has won the Borders Original Voices prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Discussion 1. What did you think of the use of Mattie’s words of the day as chapter headings? To what extent do you think the author has played on the parallels between these headings and the action?
2. We know that Mattie works at the Glenmore in the novel’s second paragraph, more than twenty pages before her pa refuses her request to go there for the summer. We also find out that she’s engaged to Royal on page 46, before we have even met him. Why might the author have chosen this presentation over a more linear chronology? What other effects does it have?
www.bloomsbury.com/jenniferdonnelly 2 WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM 3. Mattie tells us her sisters’ ages when she introduces them; it is not until page 59 that we find out she is sixteen. Why might Mattie and/or the author have left us guessing for so long? Were you surprised when she revealed her age? What might have made her seem younger, or older?
4. ‘…a few acres as a wedding gift from your pa, Mattie, and Royal’s pa, too, would round it out nicely’ (page 325). How accurate is Martha’s reading of Royal’s ulterior motives? Do you believe there are other reasons for his courting of Mattie? If so, are they any worthier? How would you explain Mattie’s attraction to Royal? Does her falling for him make her a more or a less likeable — or admirable — character?
5. ‘I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but … it is a worse thing to let a promise break you’ (page 374). Is this always true? Mattie’s promises to her mamma and Grace shortly before their deaths are the most prominent examples, but many other promises are made in the novel. Some (such as Uncle Fifty’s promise to Mattie, and Chester’s to Grace) are more explicit than others (such as Pa’s promises to himself, his wife and his father-in-law); some are broken and others are kept. How do these compare with Mattie’s dilemmas, and her resolution of them?
6. ‘And if the many sayings of the wise / Teach of submission I will not submit…’ In what ways is this epigram fitting to A Gathering Light? It is tempting to re-read these lines in Mattie’s voice; how might they also apply to the book’s other characters? Does the verse colour your reaction to what follows?
7. ‘Dey be French girls, Michel. Dey be Gautiers … not Gokey. Ba jeez, what da hell is Gokey?’ (page 155). Is Uncle Fifty right: should the family have maintained their French identity? Or do you agree with Pa, and his settling for an easier life? How might other characters have treated the same question — Weaver, for instance, or Miss Wilcox? How does Pa’s decision to change his name compare with everything else we know about him? In which other situations has he seemed to give in? And when has he been more stubborn?
8. ‘My heart suddenly turned traitor on me, and I wanted to take Miss Wilcox by the arm … and tell her to leave my pa alone’ (page 166). Do you ever share Mattie’s pity for her father? If so, when and why? Does sympathy for Pa affect your opinion as to whether Lawton should have left home? Or Mattie? www.bloomsbury.com/jenniferdonnelly 3 WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM
9. ‘I took hold of the angel’s head and snapped it off. And then I snapped one wing off, and then the other. I broke his arms off, too, and then I asked him how serene he was feeling now’ (page 184). Did Mattie’s act of vandalism surprise you in any way? How out of character would it have seemed to the others if they had been watching her — to Miss Wilcox, or Pa, or Weaver, or Lou, or Royal, or her mamma?
10. ‘I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two’ (page 107). There are few God-fearing references to the Bible or the Church in A Gathering Light. For someone who is superstitious enough to fear sharpening knives after dark and to fret about the ghosts of broken promises, Mattie shows little concern for divine retribution in her destruction of Aunt Josie’s angel; and for a young woman whose mother has recently died, she takes little comfort from traditional Christian teaching about the afterlife. How does this compare with the treatment of religion in other fiction set in a similar time and place? Does God’s relative absence say as much about the families and their hardships as it does about Mattie’s narration? What things could be said to take His place in the lives of the characters?
11. ‘I see Barney’s blind eyes turned up to mine. And the poor dead robin at my mother’s grave’ (page 380). Are these the details you would have expected Mattie to pick out when saying goodbye to her life in the North Woods? What is the significance of the dead robin (first mentioned on page 211)? In what other ways do animals play a part in the novel?
12. In the Author’s Note (page 381), Jennifer Donnelly explains that Grace Brown was her inspiration for A Gathering Light, and makes it clear that her letters contained a full, rounded character. Why, then, is Mattie the novel’s protagonist, rather than Grace? What insight does the creation of Mattie give into the author’s personal response to Grace’s story, and her agenda in its fictionalisation?
13. ‘How exactly do you stand up like a man when you’re a girl?’ (page 33). How different are the difficulties confronting young women in the North Woods in 1906 from those faced by the men? And how different are the prospects of black men and women from those of the white people around them? How well do you feel the author has dealt with these issues? And how much have things changed in the time between the novel’s setting and its publication?
www.bloomsbury.com/jenniferdonnelly 4 WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM 14. It is clear from the book’s end matter and from interviews with Jennifer Donnelly that research is extremely important to her writing. How successful is she at managing the relationship between historical detail and fiction, and avoiding its potential constraints? Does it affect your reading of the novel to know that it has been so thoroughly researched? Would your feelings about its subject be in any way different if, say, Grace Brown’s murder were not fact but were as much a product of the author’s imagination as Mattie’s story?
15. Many different authors, novels and poems are referenced in the novel. Does Mattie make you want to read any of these which you haven’t? How does it affect your reading when she mentions books you do know? On page 265, she quotes ‘A Country Burial’ in its entirety. Although the relevance of Emily Dickinson to this point of the story is made clear later in the chapter, it is less obvious why this particular poem is apposite. Why might the author have chosen this one from the ‘nearly eighteen hundred’ Dickinson is said to have written?
16. Mattie’s reading inspires her to write creatively; in what ways might A Gathering Light inspire its readers? Though her own writing is often mentioned, we are never given details about Mattie’s stories. What do you think they are like? How might they differ from A Gathering Light? How would you describe Mattie as a narrator? Were there times when you felt you knew things of which she was unaware?
17. ‘You’re too interested in what Blueberry Finn and Oliver Dickens and all the rest of them made- up people are doing to see what’s going on right around you’ (page 330). Is there any truth in Royal’s accusation? Does Mattie’s reading sometimes blind her to her surroundings? Or could it be said rather to improve her insight and understanding?
18. 'For I am good at telling myself lies’ (page 1); ‘…a word in your dictionary for when people know the truth but pretend they don’t’ (page 336). What do you think of Weaver’s temperament, and his relentlessness in saying things that may be better left unsaid? Would you like him as a friend? Do you agree that Mattie is good at telling herself lies? Both she and Grace are said to practise ‘abusion’; how and why do they manage to pretend not to know the truth? Can the same be said of any other characters in the novel?
www.bloomsbury.com/jenniferdonnelly 5 WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM 19. ‘…there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths’ (page 201). Do you agree with Mattie’s distinction? Into which category would A Gathering Light fall, and why? Can a novel be at once true and escapist — is it possible to tell a story and the truth at the same time?
20. ‘I didn’t believe in happy endings. Not in stories or real life’ (page 366); ‘… freedom is like Sloan’s Liniment, always promising more than it delivers’ (page 33). Does A Gathering Light have a happy ending? How fully will the freedom attained by some of the characters deliver them happiness? Not everyone is left with as clear a direction as Mattie, Weaver and Emmie. What, for instance, do you think will happen to Lou, or Royal, or Mrs Loomis, or Abby, or Pa?
21. A Gathering Light was originally published in the USA as A Northern Light, and was renamed in the UK to avoid confusion with Philip Pullman’s UK publications. To which things could the ‘light’ of the two titles refer? Which title do you prefer, and why?
Further Reading Fiction I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Little Women by Louisa May Alcott To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Winter by John Marsden Witch Child by Celia Rees Background See pages 387—9 for Jennifer Donnelly’s sources and suggestions Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906 by Joseph W. Brownell and Patricia W. Enos An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser A transcript of the trial of Chester Gillette is also available on the web: ://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/gillette.htm Other Books Humble Pie (2002) — a picture book The Tea Rose (2002) — a novel
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