Эндрю Миллер: Oxygen

12. What do you think is the root of Ella’s compulsive theft? Is it related to her relationship with her parents? What function does she serve in the novel? Why does she return the poison pill to Alec, and why does she do it using the magic cups?

13. Miller leaves a great deal of his characters’ pasts unexplained; often he hints at past conflicts or events—for example, the details of Alec’s nervous breakdown—without fully explaining them. Why and how do you think Miller chooses to leave these important gaps for the reader to fill in? Does it make the novel more or less powerful?

ANDREW MILLER’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the International IMPAC Award. He was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award for his novel Oxygen. He lives in Brighton, England.

Copyright © Andrew Miller 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

All characters in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First published in England by Hodder and Stoughton.

From Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by David Young.

Copyright © 1978 by W. W. Norton & Inc.

Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Miller, Andrew, 1961–

Oxygen/Andrew Miller.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-15-100721-7

ISBN 0-15-602740-2 (pbk.)

1. Terminally ill parents—Fiction. 2. Hungarians—France—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. Paris (France)—Fiction. 5. Translators—Fiction. 6. Dramatists—Fiction. 7. England—Fiction. 8. Actors—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.13564 099 2002

823'.914—dc21 2001051459

eISBN 978-0-544-12799-9

v1.1112