Synopses & Reviews
The individuals that make up the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club--if you include auxiliary members and hangers-on--add up to twelve. The number is reduced to ten if you exclude the two narrators (which seems unkind though they would be the first to admit they have little effect on the action) and marked up to thirteen if you include the hexapod, a small six-legged AI device designed to scuttle away from the light and into the shadows. There are a bunch of them, however you tally it, and they're all just trying to read a book. --SEAN DIXON
The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club loves to bring to life tableaux from the books they read. But when they begin to enact the Epic of Gilgamesh in the early days of the Iraq War, the book begins to enact their lives instead, sending the Cabalists across the globe in search of a wise man who will hopefully have all the answers. Cross-dressing Aline becomes obsessed with the Baghdad Blogger, Missy with the ticking of her biological clock, Romy with Emmy, and Emmy with the creator of the fitzbot, an ambulatory artificial-intelligence experiment. At the center of it all is Runner Coghill and her little brother Neil, who are still mourning the death of their sister and who brought to the group the ten priceless cuneiform Gilgamesh tablets of seemingly ancient origin.
The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is an offbeat rites-of-passage novel whose characters live out literature with ferocity and passion. It is a funny, quixotic debut that will hold you to its heart, following along with a group of friends who find a family of sorts within their book club, who learn to cope with love, and the lack of it, loss, and the lackof that, and with growing up in a world that is falling apart around them.
Synopsis
The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club loves to bring to life tableaux from the books they read. But when they begin to enact the Epic of Gilgamesh in the early days of the Iraq War, the book begins to enact their lives instead, sending the Cabalists across the globe in search of a wise man who will hopefully have all the answers. Cross-dressing Aline becomes obsessed with the Baghdad Blogger, Missy with the ticking of her biological clock, Romy with Emmy, and Emmy with the creator of the fitzbot, an ambulatory artificial-intelligence experiment. At the center of it all is Runner Coghill and her little brother Neil, who are still mourning the death of their sister and who brought to the group the ten priceless cuneiform Gilgamesh tablets of seemingly ancient origin.
The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is an offbeat rites-of-passage novel whose characters live out literature with ferocity and passion. It is a funny, quixotic debut that will hold you to its heart, following along with a group of friends who find a family of sorts within their book club, who learn to cope with love, and the lack of it, loss, and the lack of that, and with growing up in a world that is falling apart around them.
Synopsis
The girls of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Womens Book Club are at a crossroads. One of their founding members is dead, theyve made a few unfortunate compromises to their membership, some of them arent getting any younger, and theyve been stuck on a single weepy tome for six long months. Resident maverick Runner Coghill decides to shake things up by introducing a cherished family heirloom to the group — ten pristine stone tablets, carved in cuneiform, telling the oldest story in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Because their new book is written in an ancient language, the group must take the unprecedented step of allowing Runner to translate the whole story for them. But Runners narration is not of a common vein. Before they know it, the Cabalists have been thrust out to sea, on a journey in search of answers that extends halfway across the world to the war-torn land of this oldest storys birth.
The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is an offbeat rites-of-passage novel whose characters live out literature with ferocity and passion. It is a funny, quixotic debut that follows the members of a shallow, squabbling, time-wasting, protracted-adolescent book club as they find themselves transformed through the alchemy of the storytellers art.
About the Author
Sean DixonSean Dixon is a writer and actor. His work has been published in The Globe and Mail, This Magazine, Canadian Theatre Review, and Brick, A Literary Journal. Coach House Books published Dixons play collection, AWOL, and his young adult novel, The Feathered Cloak, was published by Key Porter. He lives and plays banjo in Toronto.
Reading Group Guide
1. Runner and Neil “wondered how a piece of text written six thousand years ago could speak so eloquently to them about their loss and grief, until eventually they stopped wondering and accepted that it was so.” How does the modern interpretation of ancient texts help them and the members of the Lacuna Cabal Book Club deal with Rubys death and their own lives?
2. Coby had been traumatized as a teenager by reading a book “in which the male protagonist, unable to perform, had been thrown out of his paramours apartment” (page 93), and Dumuzi secretly reads Chinese poetry and cares about the ninth-century poet Yu-Xuanji in a way that mystifies him (page 97). Emmy is so heartbroken about a breakup that she loses her love of literature (page 24), while Runner insists that the discussion of books can change the world (page 159). What do these experiences of the Lacuna Cabal members say about the power and limits of literature? Do you believe reading can change lives?
3. Sexuality plays a big role in the lives of the members: Runners lack of it, Cobys initiation by Emmy, Romys feelings for Emmy, Missys attempts to get pregnant, Annas forays into prostitution, Dumuzis desire for Anna. What do you think about the complications and some of the resolutions of their experiences?
4. Why does the group break their cardinal rule of having no male members (except for Neil who was not a true member but “present to the membership” (page 29). How do the men deal with their second-class status?
5. Romy agrees to play Humbaba, tempted to experience violence and annihilation, but regrets it. After the struggle and Romys traumatic loss of her hair, Dumuzi asks, if a woman invented this task, then why should a woman get the short end of the stick? (page 151) What are some other examples of self-destructiveness on the part of the female members of the club?
6. How do the group dynamics work in the Lacuna Cabal Book Club? What are the different ways that Runner and the other members react to Missys wielding of her power as the founder and head of the group? How do you understand Missys increasing self-awareness and understanding of her desire for power by the end of the book?
7. Even though Aline is a cross-dresser struggling with illusion and reality, it is he who looks at violence and masculinity and tries to bring attention to the war in Iraq. What do his conflicts illustrate? How does recalling the “old secret feelings of beautiful androgyny” effect Aline? (page 178)
8. Aline suggests the group read a blog next: “I move that if we embrace the past then we must also embrace the future. I move that if we accept books of stone then we should be able to propose blogs…a relevant blog” (pages 62—63). This book refers to many different forms of writing, from the ancient texts to childrens books, plays, e-mail, and blogs. How do you relate to these formats? Do you agree or disagree with Aline?
9. Neil tries to keep his sister Runner from courting death, but she lives out the myth of the sisters who were “so close as to be almost the same person” (page 183) and rejoins her sister Ruby. How does the Baghdad Blogger act as the wise man and use the Inanna myth to reinterpret Neils destiny for him as himself, Neil Coghill the Real McCoghill?
10. Coby is first described as seeming “barely human” (page 71), attached only to his artificial intelligence project, which was supposed to be designed to become “intelligent through exploration and a sense of touch” (page 70). However, Coby programs his fitzbot to seek cover and comfort in the shadows and avoid humans. He has a breakdown when he thinks the fitzbot is stolen, but once he gets involved with Emmy he forgets about it. How do you think Coby finally works out his feelings for Emmy and his work with the fitzbot, body and mind?
11. Each character seems to have his or her own self-made myth. Describe how they see themselves. Do these perceptions change by the end of the novel? How do you see these characters?
12. Humor and wit is all-pervasive in this book. Do you think it merges well with the difficult and sad events that take place?
13. The final message to Gilgamesh and to Neil is the same: The best way to honor the dead is to live the best life you can. Do you believe that this is a universal truth that provides us with the strength to accept our mortality?