Rare Stuff a Jewish-American ecofictional novel set in the mid-1990s primarily in Chicago and New York’s East Village but moving to glass houses under the sea, tells the story of Sidney Zimmerman, a slightly lost white-Jewish photographer working on an infinite series of portraits of interracial couples. After the sudden death of Sid’s father, the novelist and rare book librarian Aaron, Sid and her Black-Jewish Guadeloupean Melville scholar boyfriend André trace a series of wacky clues Aaron irritatingly left to lead them to the solution of the mysterious disappearance of Sid’s mother, a whale enthusiast named Dorothy, eighteen years earlier. Aaron also bequeathed them a manuscript, included as a novel-within-the-novel, set in an underwater universe sporting his wild ideas that his wife had been adopted by Yiddish speaking whales who try to save the planet.
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Fiction
Rare Stuff
September 1, 2021
Discussion Questions
Courtesy of Brett Ashley Kaplan
- What do the clues in the suitcase each represent?
- Why do you think Sid keeps breaking up with André?
- What do Sid and André learn about Aaron as they are looking for Dorothy?
- How do you think Sid’s personality was changed by having grown up with this mystery hanging over her?
- What do you think of Sid’s photography project? Have you seen a photography collection like hers?
- What did you expect Aaron’s manuscript, Slobgollion, to be like and how was it the same or different than your expectations?
- How important are the settings in this novel? Did you have a strong sense of place as you were reading?
- What did you think of the novel’s multiple narrators, multiple voices?
- If you’ve ever mourned anyone, does the way that Aaron keeps popping into Sid’s head resonate with you?
- If you had to pick based on the “book reviews” within the novel, which of Aaron Zimmerman’s books would you most like to read?
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