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The Waiting Hours
LIBRAIRIE CARCAJOU
The Waiting Hours
From Librairie Carcajou
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THE WAITING HOURS
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) Which character did you find most intriguing and why? How do they change or grow over the course of the novel?
2) At the dispatch centre, Tamara is present and in control, but in her off-hours, she is riddled with anxieties and compulsions. What methods does she use to cope with these impulses? Do you feel that her story ends with a sense of hope?
3) Choose a particularly moving image or scene from the book and explore what it contributes to the themes of the novel. Why does it speak to you?
4) Hassan’s tragic past is a burden that often threatens to overwhelm him. Discuss his journey throughout the novel and the development of his relationship with Tamara.
5) Kate’s strained relationship with her mother and her brother is complicated and at times deeply troubling. Explore the breakdown of her family’s bonds and the ways in which Kate chooses to deal with the situation.
6) In their stressful professions, each of the characters must rely on their senses to quickly and accurately assess potentially life or death situations. Choose a character and examine a relevant scene where he or she reads the environment for threats. How does the author use specific language and imagery to construct that scene?
7) As Hassan escorts Tamara to the street-side memorial shrine for Devon, he reflects on the tragic bombing that destroyed his life in Baghdad. Discuss this powerful scene and the poem that Hassan recites.
8) Mike’s story follows an increasingly dark and violent trajectory. What are your thoughts about the choices he makes and the repercussions that they have? Do you feel that he deserves sympathy from the reader?
9) Discuss the role that music plays in Tamara’s life, and the bittersweet way it forges a connection between her and Devon. How does that bond save a life?
10) Even though he can’t drive a patrol car, work a dispatch board or stitch a wound, Zeus performs an important, albeit furry, role in saving lives. Examine the way he saves not only the lost and injured, but Kate, as well.
AUTHOR Q&A
1) The Waiting Hours is an insightful and emotional look into the professional and personal lives of those who protect, rescue and heal others. What inspired you write about these characters?
I borrowed a car that had a scanner. It was a gorgeous, summer day and as I drove into the city, I could hear a constant chatter of emergencies. It unsettled me that all those stories were happening around me unseen. I was also going through intense personal loss, crisis, and a sense of helplessness. And I started to wonder about the cost of the accumulation of seeing the worst. Then I wondered about resiliency and the strength to keep going, and how we protect ourselves—good and bad. How we save ourselves. I was also in a time when the world was starting to teeter and there was a growing creep of global anxiety and tension. An overwhelming 24-7 news exposure to calamity, both natural and man-made. And then the Boston bombing happened and Wally Lamb tweeted “Love wins. Love wins. Love wins.” And I wondered if this could be true. And I started to write.
2) Your debut novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, was an award-winning international success. How did the challenges and rewards of your first novel contribute to this one? How did your craft grow between the two projects?
With my first book, I wasn’t prepared to be in the spotlight and have myself and my work so exposed. I think back to events and remember the taste of fear and nervousness. Maybe that never passes. But my enduring memories are of those who came to speak to me or write me, who shared their stories and truths. It was very humbling that my words could open something in others to share themselves. Travelling the world with the book also had a profound impact. Encountering new ideas, meeting authors and readers, seeing new worlds, listening, absorbing, being part of a larger storytelling and view of stories made me look harder at my work. I started to listen for the world’s heartbeat and look for the connectedness, frailty, atrocity, and beauty of us. We are a confounding species.
3) There is an intimate attention to detail in the depiction of the working lives of a city police officer, an emergency dispatch operator and a nurse who also works with a search and rescue dog. What sort of research into these vocations did you do in preparation for the novel?
I spent at least a year researching. I read as many first-person accounts as I could. For all of my characters, I was very fortunate to be invited into communities that aren’t mine. I did police ride-alongs, sat-in with 911 call-takers, watched in ERs and hospitals, and tagged along with Search and Rescue teams during training sessions. I also met with individuals for one-on-one interviews when I thought I was ready to ask the deeper character questions and had enough knowledge not to waste their time. In later drafts, I gave each character section to professionals to read and tell me what I got wrong. And I had my dog, Annie, who I ran agility with for many years, who taught me so much about myself and her remarkable abilities. It was always my fault when we erred on course. The same as in writing.
4) In addition to your work as a novelist and poet, you are also an accomplished independent filmmaker, with a number of shorts and the feature The Disappeared. How do you balance the isolated and interior life of a writer with the outgoing and collaborative demands of a film director? Would you ever consider adapting your own works into film?
Ha, I don’t think I balance that whiplash of private and public very well. Either medium takes four or five years. Because I work in long forms, after completing a novel I am so hungry to be in the world. Away from the slog of word by word. I want to fill up, collaborate, make a film, and have a creative team materialize my vision. Glorious! But then when I’m finished the intense, exhausting run of a film, I want to retreat to the stillness of words and not leave the property because now I need to be inside myself.
I never thought I would want to repeat a work through adaption, but I have considered it for this novel. Visual storytelling would demand such a different approach. It’s intriguing. Though, I don’t think I’d want to stay with it for the long run, as other stories call. But it would be a great experience to help bring it up. Maybe shoot an episode? Oh-oh, it appears my answer is, maybe.
5) While writing the novel, which character’s voice spoke to you the most clearly?
This is a tough question. I don’t know if I can choose. At some point in the writing, their voices become equal in my head. They’re alive for me. I remember the order they arrived: Tamara, Hassan, Mike, Kate, followed by all those around them. I had to listen for Kate the longest. However, once I know their voices they arrive whole for me. The character I always returned to, when I needed to step outside of other heads, was Zeus. He was my touchstone.
QUOTES
1) Tamara’s voice was calm, her register soothing. She coaxed the caller to stay with her. Stay connected. Stay alive.
2) Zeus’s ears pricked back. If she moved a finger, he would sit up. He was studying her for the slightest tell. She had taught him to watch her eyes. But really, he had taught her that she could speak with her eyes and he would follow her wherever she looked.
3) She looked down at the pages at her feet. Each fragment was a story’s ending, only the ending. The last sentence. Each ending was punctuated with a taped yellow pill. Her brother’s medication.
4) Her head felt lighter and her neck longer. She raised her chin and her cheekbones sharpened. She ran her hands over the short crop of her hair. Water trickled over her shoulders. She didn’t feel the slightest urge to avert her eyes from the woman in the mirror. She was simply curious about who this woman was. She smiled, and the woman smiled back.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) Which character did you find most intriguing and why? How do they change or grow over the course of the novel?
2) At the dispatch centre, Tamara is present and in control, but in her off-hours, she is riddled with anxieties and compulsions. What methods does she use to cope with these impulses? Do you feel that her story ends with a sense of hope?
3) Choose a particularly moving image or scene from the book and explore what it contributes to the themes of the novel. Why does it speak to you?
4) Hassan’s tragic past is a burden that often threatens to overwhelm him. Discuss his journey throughout the novel and the development of his relationship with Tamara.
5) Kate’s strained relationship with her mother and her brother is complicated and at times deeply troubling. Explore the breakdown of her family’s bonds and the ways in which Kate chooses to deal with the situation.
6) In their stressful professions, each of the characters must rely on their senses to quickly and accurately assess potentially life or death situations. Choose a character and examine a relevant scene where he or she reads the environment for threats. How does the author use specific language and imagery to construct that scene?
7) As Hassan escorts Tamara to the street-side memorial shrine for Devon, he reflects on the tragic bombing that destroyed his life in Baghdad. Discuss this powerful scene and the poem that Hassan recites.
8) Mike’s story follows an increasingly dark and violent trajectory. What are your thoughts about the choices he makes and the repercussions that they have? Do you feel that he deserves sympathy from the reader?
9) Discuss the role that music plays in Tamara’s life, and the bittersweet way it forges a connection between her and Devon. How does that bond save a life?
10) Even though he can’t drive a patrol car, work a dispatch board or stitch a wound, Zeus performs an important, albeit furry, role in saving lives. Examine the way he saves not only the lost and injured, but Kate, as well.
AUTHOR Q&A
1) The Waiting Hours is an insightful and emotional look into the professional and personal lives of those who protect, rescue and heal others. What inspired you write about these characters?
I borrowed a car that had a scanner. It was a gorgeous, summer day and as I drove into the city, I could hear a constant chatter of emergencies. It unsettled me that all those stories were happening around me unseen. I was also going through intense personal loss, crisis, and a sense of helplessness. And I started to wonder about the cost of the accumulation of seeing the worst. Then I wondered about resiliency and the strength to keep going, and how we protect ourselves—good and bad. How we save ourselves. I was also in a time when the world was starting to teeter and there was a growing creep of global anxiety and tension. An overwhelming 24-7 news exposure to calamity, both natural and man-made. And then the Boston bombing happened and Wally Lamb tweeted “Love wins. Love wins. Love wins.” And I wondered if this could be true. And I started to write.
2) Your debut novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, was an award-winning international success. How did the challenges and rewards of your first novel contribute to this one? How did your craft grow between the two projects?
With my first book, I wasn’t prepared to be in the spotlight and have myself and my work so exposed. I think back to events and remember the taste of fear and nervousness. Maybe that never passes. But my enduring memories are of those who came to speak to me or write me, who shared their stories and truths. It was very humbling that my words could open something in others to share themselves. Travelling the world with the book also had a profound impact. Encountering new ideas, meeting authors and readers, seeing new worlds, listening, absorbing, being part of a larger storytelling and view of stories made me look harder at my work. I started to listen for the world’s heartbeat and look for the connectedness, frailty, atrocity, and beauty of us. We are a confounding species.
3) There is an intimate attention to detail in the depiction of the working lives of a city police officer, an emergency dispatch operator and a nurse who also works with a search and rescue dog. What sort of research into these vocations did you do in preparation for the novel?
I spent at least a year researching. I read as many first-person accounts as I could. For all of my characters, I was very fortunate to be invited into communities that aren’t mine. I did police ride-alongs, sat-in with 911 call-takers, watched in ERs and hospitals, and tagged along with Search and Rescue teams during training sessions. I also met with individuals for one-on-one interviews when I thought I was ready to ask the deeper character questions and had enough knowledge not to waste their time. In later drafts, I gave each character section to professionals to read and tell me what I got wrong. And I had my dog, Annie, who I ran agility with for many years, who taught me so much about myself and her remarkable abilities. It was always my fault when we erred on course. The same as in writing.
4) In addition to your work as a novelist and poet, you are also an accomplished independent filmmaker, with a number of shorts and the feature The Disappeared. How do you balance the isolated and interior life of a writer with the outgoing and collaborative demands of a film director? Would you ever consider adapting your own works into film?
Ha, I don’t think I balance that whiplash of private and public very well. Either medium takes four or five years. Because I work in long forms, after completing a novel I am so hungry to be in the world. Away from the slog of word by word. I want to fill up, collaborate, make a film, and have a creative team materialize my vision. Glorious! But then when I’m finished the intense, exhausting run of a film, I want to retreat to the stillness of words and not leave the property because now I need to be inside myself.
I never thought I would want to repeat a work through adaption, but I have considered it for this novel. Visual storytelling would demand such a different approach. It’s intriguing. Though, I don’t think I’d want to stay with it for the long run, as other stories call. But it would be a great experience to help bring it up. Maybe shoot an episode? Oh-oh, it appears my answer is, maybe.
5) While writing the novel, which character’s voice spoke to you the most clearly?
This is a tough question. I don’t know if I can choose. At some point in the writing, their voices become equal in my head. They’re alive for me. I remember the order they arrived: Tamara, Hassan, Mike, Kate, followed by all those around them. I had to listen for Kate the longest. However, once I know their voices they arrive whole for me. The character I always returned to, when I needed to step outside of other heads, was Zeus. He was my touchstone.
QUOTES
1) Tamara’s voice was calm, her register soothing. She coaxed the caller to stay with her. Stay connected. Stay alive.
2) Zeus’s ears pricked back. If she moved a finger, he would sit up. He was studying her for the slightest tell. She had taught him to watch her eyes. But really, he had taught her that she could speak with her eyes and he would follow her wherever she looked.
3) She looked down at the pages at her feet. Each fragment was a story’s ending, only the ending. The last sentence. Each ending was punctuated with a taped yellow pill. Her brother’s medication.
4) Her head felt lighter and her neck longer. She raised her chin and her cheekbones sharpened. She ran her hands over the short crop of her hair. Water trickled over her shoulders. She didn’t feel the slightest urge to avert her eyes from the woman in the mirror. She was simply curious about who this woman was. She smiled, and the woman smiled back.
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