Shipwreck
by Louis Begley
List Price: $13.95
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0345464095
Publisher: Ballantine Books
A mesmerizing novel of deception and betrayal from the acclaimed author of Wartime Lies and About Schmidt.
John North, a prize-winning American writer, is suddenly beset by dark suspicions about the real value of his work. Over endless hours and bottles of whiskey consumed in a mysterious café called L'Entre Deux Mondes, he recounts, in counterpoint to his doubts, the one story he has never told before, perhaps the only important one he will ever tell. North's chosen interlocutor-who could be his doppelgänger-is transfixed by the revelations and becomes the narrator of North's tale.
North has always been faithful to his wife, Lydia, but when one of his novels achieves a special success, he allows himself a dalliance with Léa, a starstruck young journalist. Coolly planning to make sure that his life with Lydia will not be disturbed, North is taken off guard when Léa becomes obsessed with him and he with her elaborate erotic games. As the hypnotic and serpentine confession unfurls, we gradually discover the extraordinary lengths to which North has gone to indulge a powerful desire for self-destruction.
Shipwreck is a daring parable of the contradictory impulses that can rend a single soul-narcissism and self-loathing, refinement and lust.
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1. John North has been faithful to his wife. Why does he suddenly turn adulterer?
2. Considering John North's obsession with Léa, are you skeptical of his love for his wife?
3. May North's resentment of Lydia's family provide a motive for his betrayal of Lydia? Or does North obsess about Léa because he has decided that his own work is without value?
4. From what you know of John North's parents, can you imagine his upbringing? How has it affected his character?
5. John North will not accompany Lydia to Japan. Why? What is the effect on his marriage?
6. Will John North and Lydia live happily forever after?
7. Despite his conviction that his novels are without literary merit, North works with great concentration on his subsequent novel, Loss. Does this give the lie to his self-deprecation?
8. Throughout the book, there are foreshadowings. John North tells a story from Daniel Deronda: Gwendolyn does not throw the rope to the drowning Grandcourt, deliberately withholding
it. "I cannot tell you the resonance of this scene within me." In another place, he tells Léa that if Lydia finds out, "I believe I will kill you" --- and "I will kill you if you come near Lydia." Did you expect something like the conclusion?
9. "I had fallen in love," says John North after his first erotic encounter with Léa. Is he in love?
10. John North has no friends to play squash with. Does he have friends?
11. After John North abandons Léa to the sea, he rolls the dice on his own drowning. Is his gamble in character?
12. Is Léa dead?
13. Will Bunny Frank's "obituary envy" alter John North's feelings about the Frank family?
14. John North tells his listener, in the novel's last line, "You know more about me now than anyone else alive." Does this sentence in effect end the novel?
15. Imagine the rest of John North's life.
16. As a little boy evading Nazis in Poland, Louis Begley had to think ahead, planning every move. His prose style has been called lapidary. Can we associate this quality with the watchfulness and deliberation that he had to practice as a child?
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"Fascinating . . . Absolutely riveting . . . The suspense . . . swells like a tsunami . . . A first-rate read."
—Joyce Cohen, People (three stars out of four)
"Mesmerizing . . . Hypnotic . . . Intensely readable and even soul-shaking . . . Shipwreck is at once a classic, even Jamesian novel of character and a highly erotic, very grown-up modern thriller-in other words, another triumph for Louis Begley."
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World
"Begley is a major talent . . . He is totally in command here, and we can only marvel at his portraiture . . . Shipwreck is a novel of skill, insight, and authority."
—Roger Harris, Sunday Star-Ledger (Newark)
"Dazzling . . . So enthralling that the temptation is to let a thousand glowing adjectives bloom . . . Will pin readers to their chair right up to the final page . . . The ending is a tour de force."
—Mameve Medwed, Boston Globe
"Compellingly and compulsively told . . . [North's] obsessive self-awareness, like a mirror, catches our attention and holds it fast."
—Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times
