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Overview
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year old man, vaguely recollected by the locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his bookkeeping than his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out—a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts? Or do they hold a significance at once more prosaic and far more sinister?
Though the solution to this last case may be beyond even the reach of the once famed sleuth, the true story of the boy and his parrot is subtly revealed to the reader in a wrenching resolution to this brilliant homage. The Final Solution is a work from a master story-teller at the height of his powers.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060777104 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2005 |
| Series: | P.S. Series |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Sales rank: | 498,035 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.36(d) |
About the Author
Hometown:
Berkeley, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
May 24, 1963Place of Birth:
Washington, D.C.Education:
B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.F.A., University of California at IrvineWebsite:
http://www.michaelchabon.com/Read an Excerpt
The Final Solution
A Story of Detection
Chapter One
A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks. His gait was dreamy and he swung a daisy as he went. With each step the boy dragged his toes in the rail bed, as if measuring out his journey with careful ruled marks of his shoetops in the gravel. It was midsummer, and there was something about the black hair and pale face of the boy against the green unfurling flag of the downs beyond, the rolling white eye of the daisy, the knobby knees in their short pants, the self-important air of the handsome gray parrot with its savage red tail feather, that charmed the old man as he watched them go by. Charmed him, or aroused his sense -- a faculty at one time renowned throughout Europe-- of promising anomaly.
The old man lowered the latest number of The British Bee Journal to the rug of Shetland wool that was spread across his own knobby but far from charming knees, and brought the long bones of his face closer to the windowpane. The tracks -- a spur of the Brighton-Eastbourne line, electrified in the late twenties with the consolidation of the Southern Railway routes -- ran along an embankment a hundred yards to the north of the cottage, between the concrete posts of a wire fence. It was ancient glass the old man peered through, rich with ripples and bubbles that twisted and toyed with the world outside. Yet even through this distorting pane it seemed to the old man that he had never before glimpsed two beings more intimate in their parsimonious sharing of a sunny summer afternoon than these.
He was struck, as well, by their apparent silence. It seemed probable to him that in any given grouping of an African gray parrot -- a notoriously prolix species -- and a boy of nine or ten, at any given moment, one or the other of them ought to be talking. Here was another anomaly. As for what it promised, this the old man -- though he had once made his fortune and his reputation through a long and brilliant series of extrapolations from unlikely groupings of facts -- could not, could never, have begun to foretell.
As he came nearly in line with the old man's window, some one hundred yards away, the boy stopped. He turned his narrow back to the old man as if he could feel the latter's gaze upon him. The parrot glanced first to the east, then to the west, with a strangely furtive air. The boy was up to something. A hunching of the shoulders, an anticipatory flexing of the knees. It was some mysterious business -- distant in time but deeply familiar -- yes --
-- the toothless clockwork engaged; the unstrung Steinway sounded: the conductor rail.
Even on a sultry afternoon like this one, when cold and damp did not trouble the hinges of his skeleton, it could be a lengthy undertaking, done properly, to rise from his chair, negotiate the shifting piles of ancient-bachelor clutter -- newspapers both cheap and of quality, trousers, bottles of salve and liver pills, learned annals and quarterlies, plates of crumbs -- that made treacherous the crossing of his parlor, and open his front door to the world. Indeed the daunting prospect of the journey from armchair to doorstep was among the reasons for his lack of commerce with the world, on the rare occasions when the world, gingerly taking hold of the brass door-knocker wrought in the hostile form of a giant Apis dorsata, came calling. Nine visitors out of ten he would sit, listening to the bemused mutterings and fumblings at the door, reminding himself that there were few now living for whom he would willingly risk catching the toe of his slipper in the hearth rug and spilling the scant remainder of his life across the cold stone floor. But as the boy with the parrot on his shoulder prepared to link his own modest puddle of electrons to the torrent of them being pumped along the conductor, or third, rail from the Southern Railway power plant on the Ouse outside of Lewes, the old man hoisted himself from his chair with such unaccustomed alacrity that the bones of his left hip produced a disturbing scrape. Lap rug and journal slid to the floor.
He wavered a moment, groping already for the door latch, though he still had to cross the entire room to reach it. His failing arterial system labored to supply his suddenly skybound brain with useful blood. His ears rang and his knees ached and his feet were plagued with stinging. He lurched, with a haste that struck him as positively giddy, toward the door, and jerked it open, somehow injuring, as he did so, the nail of his right forefinger.
"You, boy!" he called, and even to his own ears his voice sounded querulous, wheezy, even a touch demented. "Stop that at once!"
The boy turned. With one hand he clutched at the fly of his trousers. With the other he cast aside the daisy. The parrot sidestepped across the boy's shoulders to the back of his head, as if taking shelter there.
"Why, do you imagine, is there a fence?" the old man said, aware that the barrier fences had not been maintained since the war began and were in poor condition for ten miles in either direction. "For pity's sake, you'd be fried like a smelt!" As he hobbled across his dooryard toward the boy on the tracks, he took no note of the savage pounding of his heart. Or rather he noted it with anxiety and then covered the anxiety with a hard remark. "One can only imagine the stench."
Flower discarded, valuables restored with a zip to their lodging, the boy stood motionless. He held out to the old man a face as wan and empty as the bottom of a beggar's tin cup ...
The Final SolutionA Story of Detection. Copyright © by Michael Chabon. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
There was nothing remarkable, nothing at all,
about the crooked X that death had scrawled in the dust of Hallows Lane.
What is remarkable, observes a retired detective recruited to help authorities solve a brutal murder behind the town vicarage, is the event that sparked the crime -- the arrival of a mute Jewish boy who escaped Nazi Germany with his exotic African gray parrot. More interested in the pattern of beekeeping than that of the world around him, the once-famous English detective is nudged from self-imposed isolation by his curiosity and, more importantly, by his compassion. For what brings the cynical old man out of retirement isn't the death of a stranger, but, rather, the related disappearance of Bruno -- a parrot that rattles off mysterious chains of numbers in German. With his beloved companion gone, Linus Steinman is a boy lost in the silence of loneliness.
Making tracks to find the missing bird, the 89-year-old detective (a character the author chooses not to name) quickly starts to link together the elements of the case. There is the suspect Reggie Panicker, the minister's angry son who was found with the business card of an exotic bird dealer; the victim Mr. Shane, a lodger at the vicarage; Mr. Parkins, another lodger who had meticulously recorded Bruno's numerical songs; Mr. and Mrs. Panicker, the minister and his wife, who have taken in the broken-spirited Linus, someone who mirrors their own stifled marriage; Mr. Kalb, the handsome gentleman from the Aid Committee who oversees Linus' case; and Linus himself, a "shadow of a boy, stealing through the house, the village, the world."
As the mystery of the murder unravels and the symbolic numbers start to add up, readers will feel privileged to discover the unspeakable secret within The Final Solution -- a secret that is shared only between the boy and his bird ... a truth that eludes even the greatest of detectives.
Discussion Questions
- "For the first time in a very many years, he felt the old vexation, the mingled impatience and pleasure at the world's beautiful refusal to yield up its mysteries without a fight" (page 8). Why do you think the arrival of Linus and his parrot awakens the old man's curiosity and passion for detective work?
- Discuss the title, The Final Solution, and its dual meaning in the story.
- "Then he reached into the old conjuror's pocket ... and took out his glass. It was brass and tortoise shell, and bore around its bezel an affectionate inscription from the sole great friend of his life" (page 29). What meaning does this hold for the readers? What else did you find mysterious about our detective?
- "When he heard the old man's name, something flickered, a dim memory, in the eyes of Mr. Kalb" (page 37). "Years and years ago his name -- itself redolent now of the fustian and rectitude of that vanished era -- had adorned the newspapers and police gazettes ... " (page 43). Why do you think the author avoids telling us the name of the 'old man'? Do you think it is an effective technique? Why or why not?
- What significance or clues, if any, did you find in the illustrations on pages 7, 34, 76, 89, and 130?
- " ... his shame was compounded by the intimate knowledge that Richard Shane's brutal murder in the road behind the vicarage had echoed, in outline and particulars, the secret trend of his own darkest imaginings" (page 94). What are Mr. Panicker's 'darkest imaginings'? Why do you think he is so tortured? How is his marriage used in the book?
- "He was, by irremediable nature, a man who looked at things, even when, as now, clearly they terrified him" (page 99). What things do you think terrifies the old man? Be the detective here and piece together what you know about the old man's life.
- " ... he was confronted by not simply the continued existence of the city but, amid the smoking piles of brick and jagged windowpanes, by the irrepressible, inhuman force of its expansion" (page 101). Destruction versus hope is a common struggle in war accounts. What do you think makes Chabon's approach to this struggle unique?
- Consider the character of the detective: "It would please him well enough to amount to no more in the end than a single great organ of detection, reaching into blankness for a clue" (page 83). "I doubt very much ... if we shall ever learn what significance, if any, those numbers may hold" (page 129). If this is the detective's last case, do you believe he is a success even though he fails to find answers in Bruno's mysterious set of numbers? Why or why not?
- The African gray parrot, the old man's bees, and the many references to trains give The Final Solution a rich population of symbols and motifs. Discuss how each contributes to the narrative.
- What meaning is hidden in the train song? To whom, and how, is this book an homage? How did you feel when you read the last sentence in The Final Solution?
- Consider the theme of detection, discovering the true character of something or someone, within the novella and the detective's conclusion "that it was the insoluble problems -- the false leads and the cold cases -- that reflected the true nature of things" (page 131). Do you agree with this? Why or why not? What other themes did you find in the novella?
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. He has received wide critical acclaim for his previous books, including Wonder Boys, Werewolves in their Youth, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and A Model World. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.
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