Valeria’s Last Stand
by Marc Fitten

List Price: $24.00
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781596916203
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Valeria has a long list of things she disapproves of. Whistling, tropical fruit, free-market capitalism, and the mayor of her Hungarian village top that list. And Valeria especially doesn’t believe in love past a certain age. Until she bumps into the potter, a widower with white hair and a thick mustache. Suddenly Valeria, the village’s least popular senior citizen, finds herself awash in an unfamiliar feeling: desire.

The potter is equally surprised to respond to Valeria’s overtures; he was enjoying a casual affair with Ibolya, the proprietress of the village’s only tavern. But Valeria inspires the potter to reinvent himself as an artist: he makes her the most beautiful pottery the village has ever seen, then moves on to bigger, less fragile projects. Ibolya tries to break up this unlikely love affair by enlisting an itinerant chimney sweep to distract Valeria. But Ibolya doesn’t count on the chimney sweep’s violent tendencies. The villagers will never be the same after the powerful forces of modern capitalism and old-fashioned sexual desire sweep through town.

top of the page

1. Valeria’s Last Stand opens with an epigraph by Milan Kundera: “The great matters of nations cannot make us forget the modest matters of the heart.” How does this quotation comment on the story that follows?

2. “Valeria never whistled,” the first chapter declares (3). Why does Valeria disapprove of whistling? What does she associate with this small musical act? When does she finally begin to whistle herself, and why?

3. Zivatar, the name of Valeria’s village, means “thunderstorm” in Hungarian. How does this name suit the village? What “storms” have bypassed Zivatar in the past? What kinds of turbulence are taking place now?

4. Many of the novel’s characters are named by their jobs, such as the mayor, the potter, and the chimney sweep. Why do these characters remain unnamed? Near the end of the novel, after the mayor’s infidelity, we learn, “For the record, the mayor’s young wife was named Klara” (199). Why does the mayor’s wife gain a first name at this point of the novel?

5. Discuss Valeria’s social standing. Why do the women of the village despise her? Why do the old men of the town call her a “firework” (16)? How do the village’s attitudes toward Valeria change over the course of the novel?

6. Describe the initial attraction between Valeria and the potter. Which of the potter’s qualities does Valeria find attractive? Which traits eventually bother her? Why is the potter drawn to such an unlikely lover?

7. The mayor is characterized as a “driven opportunist” (43). Why is he the “most dangerous of individuals” (43)? Does he prove dangerous by the end of the novel? Why or why not?

8. The chimney sweep is first introduced through the history of his bicycle. What does the bicycle reveal about the chimney sweep’s personality and history?

9. The potter says of Ibolya and Valeria, “One’s a volcano, the other is an ocean. It’s a difficult choice to make” (99). What are Ibolya’s volcanic qualities? How is Valeria oceanic? Why is it Valeria who inspires the potter artistically, and not Ibolya?

10. Imagine if Valeria, the potter, Ibolya, and the chimney sweep were in their twenties instead of their fifties and sixties. How would their affairs be different if they were forty years younger?

11. Valeria’s Last Stand features a colorful array of secondary characters, from the scheming mayor to the potter’s clueless apprentice to the lovelorn Ferenc. Which smaller character is the most interesting and vibrant?

12. Consider the potter’s evolution from craftsman to artist. What are the stages of his transition? What leads him to declare, “I’m not a potter anymore” (189)? Why is he still called “the potter” to the last page of the novel, if this is so? What might the potter’s future be like, after the grave injuries to his hands?

13. Valeria’s Last Stand is a novel of great changes, individual and collective. Which character evolves the most over the course of the novel? Who changes the least? At the end of the story, “Valeria was the only one who felt hopeful about the changes” (256). What accounts for Valeria’s optimism and the villagers’ dark view of the future?

14. The mayor senses a kindred spirit in the potter; he believes they are both “Men who know what they want and how to go after it—whether it’s train stations, hotels, fountains, or women” (147). Why does the potter object to this comparison? How are the potter and the mayor alike, and how are they different?

15. Discuss the differences between the older generation and the younger generation of the village. Why has the older generation stayed in Zivatar, while the youngsters “embraced the anonymity of globalism” (137)? What does the future hold for this tiny village?

Suggested reading
Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook; Jeanne Harris, Chocolat; Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances; Muriel Barbury, The Elegance of the Hedgehog; Alessandro Baricco, Silk; Kate Maloy, Every Last Cuckoo; Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.

top of the page

"Fitten populates his fairy tale of a novel with bitter-coated sugarplums of characters; they will definitely win a place in your heart, even as they’d never stoop to asking for one. In a Hungarian village so small as to be nearly outside of history—the Germans, the Soviets, the capitalists, no one bothers to stop in this hamlet—these sprites still manage to cheat, love, hate, drink, and make pottery for one another with a level of passion we’re more accustomed to associating with the very engines of expanding or decaying empires. A beautiful debut."

— Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances

"A thoughtful, skillfully drawn portrait of one woman, one village, and one country."

— Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

"Marc Fitten’s excellent new novel has much to recommend it --- wisdom, warmth, humor --- but it is his creation of the title character herself that is his and the novel’s most remarkable achievement. Valeria is every bit as sensual and irrepressible as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, and she will linger in any reader’s mind long after the last page is turned."

— Ron Rash, author of Serena

"Valeria is aging and, by all accounts, not gracefully. Having left middle-age behind and any hopes (if she ever had such hopes) at ending her spinsterhood, she is feared for her vicious tongue and abrupt ways. But Valeria, it turns out, is a woman who inspires. I loved her from her first maniacal rant against anyone so fey and foolish as to openly whistle in public. Valeria counters the incursions of modern day capitalism with daily doses of vitriol and invective, shaming her neighbors for their laziness and lack of pride. But at 68, Valeria finds her softer side and, because of her, two men are inspired to try to make more of their lives. Valeria’s Last Stand reads like a medieval tale set in modern times or perhaps a tongue-in-cheek soap opera set in a village that time has passed by. If I have any complaint it is that the author spends too much time on the machinations and intentions of the floozy tavern owner, Ibolya, and the wandering chimney sweep who sets out to woo Valeria. What I wanted was more of Valeria’s internal musings and to discover the source of Valeria’s diffident charm."

— Laura Hansen, Bookin’ It