Veronica
by Nicholas Christopher
List Price: $12.50
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0380806576
Publisher: HarperCollins
On a snowy night in February--at the improbable corner in lower Manhattan
where Waverly Place intersects itself--a photographer named Leo meets
Veronica, the beautiful, enigmatic daughter of an illusionist who has
been swallowed up in time. Veronica is looking for an appetite, a savior.
And she is soon leading Leo into a dangerous labyrinth of delights that
winds beneath and beyond a luminously transformed city of underground
streams, dragonpoints, and mystically altered time. At the frozen apex
of an extraordinary winter, Veronica has enticed Leo into a wonderful,
terrible world...and away from his ordinary life forever.
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1. VERONICA is full of supernatural
events, but in your opinion are the characters themselves supernatural
beings? Or are some human and some supernatural?
2. What kind of person is
Veronica, the title character? She is clearly romantic and compelling,
but is she a sympathetic, or even a "good," character? Her original intention
was to send the innocent Leo into the same eternal purgatory in which
her father was living. Was this a ruthless intention, or was it forgivable,
since her goal was to save her father?
3. Do you find it surprising
that Leo goes along so readily with Veronica and Clement's plans for him?
What does this acquiescence say about his character?
4. Nicholas Christopher has
chosen the names of his characters carefully; most of them signify something
appropriate to the characters. What do the names Albin White, Wolfgang
Tod, Otto, Starwood, Felicity, Alta and Leo suggest? What about Veronica
and Viola?
5. Leo and Veronica are linked
by a yearning for their lost parents. How do Leo's feelings for his mother
manifest themselves in the narrative? In what way does Veronica resemble,
and even come to represent, Leo's mother? How do Veronica's feelings for
her own mother enter into the story?
6. What is the Fourth Dimension,
as described by Veronica and experienced by Leo? Have you read any other
books in which time travel is described? How do Christopher's descriptions
compare with them?
7. If you have read the Tibetan
Book of the Dead, consider the ways in which it has influenced VERONICA.
What elements of the novel refer to that book? Who is the Tibetan character
who appears throughout Leo's time travels? What is the significance of
the snowy Tibetan scenes Leo observes through mirrors?
8. Whom do you think the
old woman and the two children that Leo sees occasionally are? What is
their relationship to the action and to the other characters?
9. Several characters in
the novel, including Sir Walter Ralegh, have white eyes "like marble statues."
What do these characters have in common? Can you think of a reason why
Ralegh's eyes change color as he is dying? What is the significance of
the fact that Veronica (like all her family members) has one blue and
one green eye?
10. There are many images
of snow, ice and icebergs in the novel for example on pages 1, 60-61,
105, 266-267, 311, 351 and 370-371. Remi Sing's painting show is called
"Ice Floes;" Leo once worked as an icebreaker on the North Sea; Wolfgang
Tod's hand is as cold as ice. What does the author mean to convey with
these images? Which characters are associated with snow and ice?
11. What does the emblem
of intersecting triangles signify, and in what places does Leo observe
it? What other emblems are repeated in the novel?
12. Some of the novel's characters
have wings for example, the mysterious children Leo sees in the park (p.
129-130), Walter Ralegh (p. 136-137) and Albin White (pp. 269-270). Why
do you think these wings are artificially attached and do not grow directly
out of the back? Does the author imply that these characters are actually
angels? What significance does Angel's Cafe have?
13. Who is Dr. Xenon? Is
he a real doctor, or is he part of the supernatural structure that Veronica
gives Leo's life? Why does he vanish without a trace?
14. How many images of black
holes can you find in the novel? What do black holes mean to Leo? At what
other points in the novel does Christopher use images of deep space, and
why?
15. Christopher often uses
the color green. What atmosphere does he intend to convey by the use of
this color? How does it contrast with the snowy and icy white often depicted
in the novel?
16. Which religious and mystical
traditions have influenced VERONICA? Can you find elements of Christian
theology and imagery along with others? Do you find this combination of
different traditions an effective one?
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"Hip, sexy...superbly lyrical...A novel which anything can happen."—The New York Times Book Review
"Black and white magic, time travel, the choicer arcana of Tibetan Buddhism,
and a titanic struggle to the death at the top of the Empire State Building...Satisfying
as the storytelling is, though, the deeper pleasures here stem from the
author's imaginative and idiosyncratic scholarship, by means of which
the uncanny is made to seems commonplace and the commonplace unfathomable."
—The New Yorker
"The hard-boiled detective novel meets the Tibetan Book of the Dead...Veronica is a dramatic literary
achievement unlike anything else in contemporary American fiction."
—Edward Hirsch, National Book
Critics' Circle Award-winning author of Earthly Measures
