Q3 Outside Reading #6

Mike has driven past to the little town on the coast that he visited with Miranda and where he thought he saw Anna. Because it's the very early morning, he doesn't go to Anna's house just yet. Instead he flashes back to his past again. Chris was scared of what he was doing. The new group he was part of was planning an assasssination and Chris wasn't comfortable with that. He took the money that was supposed to be used to get more weapons and ran away with it. Before he did though, Chris stopped to talk with Miles. "And then I told him. The names of the members of our group. The addresses of our safe houses. I gave him what details I had of the next action. I told him where to find our cache of arms" (Kunzru 255). After spilling his secret, which he knew Miles would share with the government, Chris took off and became Mike Framer. He traveled all around Europe and found out through the papers that Sean was dead and the rest of his group was arrested. Anna was the only one who got away, but she was later found killed at a protest.
Back in the present, Mike is being hounded by Miles. Pat Ellis refused to oblige to Miles' demands and instead spilled what she knew about Mike. Miles tells Mike that if he would just do one interview about his true past, then he could smuggle him out of the country to start over. Mike wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He finally knocked on Anna's door and found out that it really wasn't Anna, that she'd been dead this whole time. Right then he knew he wanted to come clean, and not just to the interviewer, but to Miranda too. "Miranda picks up on the third ring. It's me. Oh, God. MIke?Where are you? Chris, I tell her. My name's Chris" (Kunzru 277). THe sotry ends there, with Mike telling Miranda about his past.

Q3 Outside Reading #5

Now that Sean is out of prison, things are really starting to pick up. They are starting to use bombs to prove their political points. In order to finance the bomb making, they've taken to stealing high end cars and selling them. Chris and his friends wanted to take it slowly so as to not hurt someone, but then Nixon announced that he was sending troops to Cambodia. Chris and his friends were against the killings so they started bombing places that were associated with it. With the bombing they left notes saying why they did it. "A BOMB TO HALT THE MONEY MACHINE. Nixon invades Cambodia. More blood on his hands. Bankers and arms companies pull the levers" (183). They took care that people weren't around when the bomb went off because it was against their politics to kill people. They bombed many places but the media didn't mention it. Then they decided that for the media to cover, they had to bomb somewhere known. Chris and Anna went to the restaurant called Top-of-the-Tower, a very fancy upper class restaurant. The media didn't know who bombed it, but they now started covering the other bombings, which is what they wanted in the first place.

In the present, Miles took Mike to meet Pat.  Miles wants for someone, whether it's Mike Pat or Anna to tell him about what happened back then so he can become famous by writing about it. At first, Pat didn't recognize Mike, or as she would know him, Chris. "Then she made the connection. I could see it happen, the loss of traction, the sudden skid on the ice" (205). Miles could blackmail Pat because she was trying to work in the government, he could blackmail Mike by threatening to tell his family and he wants to hear Anna's story because she was one of the leaders. After seeing Pat, Mike drives to go see Anna. He wants to know all about why she's alive when she was suppose to be dead. 

Q3 Outside Reading #4

We're in the present (the flashbacks have been confusing so I thought I'd clarify that) and Mike gets the call from Miles. Miles pays for Mike to go to London and they visit Patty Ellis' speech. Back in the day, Patty was part of Mike's revolution group. Although she wasn't a main part of the group, she was helpful because she was a lawyer. Mike recalls, "She's not someone I can trust" ( Kunzru 166). Patty is now working with the government and Mike suspects Miles took him to her speech to jog is memory, which it does.

We're in a flashback and we see how Chris' revolutionary group is changing. They've always had the same goal, which is making the government see how they were wrong and that there was a need for social change. The difference is that his group is tired of waiting around for change and they are resorting to violence to get noticed. Mike says, "The night after that, we drove to Chelmsford, then Colchester, setting fire to a recruitment office and a Territorial Army storage depot" (Kunzru 174). They heard of a group of Facists that were meeting at a club and CHris' group resorted to violence again to prove their point. "We aimed bricks and dugup cobbles at the windows. Soon orange smoke was billowing out of the pub and chocking men were staggering out to be met by a rain of blows", Chris explains (Kunzru 155).

Q3 Outside Reading #3

Mike is still running away from his home with Sam and Miranda. He is trying to reach Anna and talk about everything that happened before the police find him to bring him home. While on his trip he flashes back to his past again. Chris (Mike) becomes good friends with a guy named Sean. Through a series of events, including drug use, Chris is kicked out of the place he is staying and moves in with Sean. Sean's building doesn't really have permanent residents, people just come and go. Then we find out that Anna is staying there. The goal of everyone in the apartment building is to raise political awareness. "We'd feed a few people and make a political point: it would e an example of practical redistribution, a condemnation of consumer society", Chris recalls (Kunzru 105). Kunzru writes, "A second large antiwar demonstration was planned"(131). 

Chris' personal life was very complicated (we're still in the flashback). He was deeply in love with Anna, but she was involved with two other guys already. Just to spite her he started sleeping with some random girl. Then to add to all this, his past, which he would like to forget, catches up with him. His brother, Brian, shows up at the apartment building, causing disrupt. "At that point Brian almost lost control. I had to step between them"(Kunzru 128). Brian was a well to do man, someone who had enough power to make a political change, but did nothing which is why all of Chris' friends hate him. Brian comes with the news that their mother died. Chris goes to the cremation and is rejected by his father. Right then he turns his back on his brother and his father, leaving behind all that's left of his family.

Q3 Outside Reading #2

We are once again in Mike's past. He goes into more detail about his childhood, his month in prison and what he did after that. Mike grew up with an older brother, a working father and a mentally unstable mother. He grew up during the debate over the atomic bomb that was released on Hiroshima. He joined a group when he was younger (still in high school) called CND. "Soon I was knocking on doors to tell people about the first strikes and secret NATO exercises, fallout and megatonnage..." was how Mike participated (Kunzru 55).When he was accepted to London School of Economics he joined the protesting and was arrested during a protest. After he got out of jail, he is kicked out of LSE and his roomates boot him out of the apartment.

Back in Mike's present, Miles hasn't given up on getting Mike to talk to him. Miles stops by the house one day and starts talking with Sam (Mike's step daughter) who's home from college. Miles starts to spill some of Mike's past, which Mike has refused to talk about. Miranda says, "Mike never talks about any of this. I had no idea he was so involved in that sixties milieu" (Kunzru 92). Miles doesn't tell that the truly bad things Mike has done, but he told enough to convince Mike to talk with him, as long as Miles would stop spilling his secrets.

Q3 Outside Reading #1

I'm reading the book My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru. We start off the book with the main character, Mike, about to turn 50. Even though it should be a festive day, he is worried and preoccupied with something else. "It's already over. All this- the house, my family, this ridiculous party- no longer exists" (Kunzru 2). For awhile we don't know what he's talking about, but it instead focuses on the present. Mike is married to Miranda and a stepfather to Sam, Miranda's daughter. Miranda owns a business and Mike is unemployed. He keeps repeating that it's all over and he has to run for it. Then the flashbacks start. He's remembering the time not that long ago when he went on a trip with his wife and ran into someone from his past.

In a little town in France he runs into Anna Addison. He met her back when he was twenty and protesting the Vietnam War. The only problem is that she is supposed to be dead. Anna doesn't recognize him and he returns home focused on his past. Then one day Miles finds him. Miles is also from his past and recognizes Mike right away- only Miles knows him as Chris Carver. "My name's Michael. You've made a mistake. Come off it Chris. I know we've all changed, but not that much" (Kunzru 28). It once again flashes back to the protest where Mike aka Chris is arrested and put into jail where he meets Miles, a journalist. Back in the present Miles wants to talk about what happened, but Mike refuses. We don't know what happened between them, or with Anna, but all we know is that Mike is afraid of his past.

Q2 Outside Reading #6

One of the few times Malachy is there for his children, he decides he wants Frank to become an altar boy. Angela doesn't think he'll be accepted, but Malachy takes him through the steps. "Every evening after tea I kneel for the Latin and he won't let me move till I'm perfect" (McCourt 148). Religion is a part of Frank's world, he goes to a Catholic school, got confirmed, but that was all just part of school. His father really wants him to become more involved in religion, which will make him a more rounded person. Although Frank does his best, he is rejected from the church. His mother basically blames it on Malachy. "Oh, no, they want the nice boys with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs" (McCourt 149). Angela is pointing out that if Malachy were a more caring father then Frank probably could have been an altar boy. If Malachy would keep a job, bring home the paycheck and provide for his family, his boys would have a better life.

Q2 Outside Reading # 5

School back in Frank's time was much more difficult. I'm not talking about the actual subjects but about how it was run. They were taught by priests and the priests resorted to violence to control the boys. "... Mr. Benson heard him and took him out to the hallway and knocked him around till he howled" (McCourt 121). Also, there was a hierarchy within the boys. Those who had less were beaten up by the boys who were more fortunate. "Now if I hear of one boy in this class jerring and sneering at McCourt or his brother over their shoes the stick will come out" (McCourt 106). The McCourts couldn't afford new shoes so their father tied pieces of tire to the bottom of their shoes.
The priests have very different styles of teaching than the teachers today. The priests make the boys repeat everything they same back to them to make sure they're listening. "What have we dont, boys? Bared our necks to the Protestant ax, sir. And? Mounted the scaffold singing, sir. As if? Embarking on a picnic, sir" (McCourt 122). The boys also have to show respect to their teacher by calling him sir, which is not done today. The teachers also have very low tolerance levels. "You're not here to be asknig questions... if I find any boy in this class asking questions I won't be responsible for what happens" (McCourt 118). Today students are suppose to ask questions but in Frank's time that could lead to punishment. That may be because of the different time periods but also because we're in a different country.

Q2 Outside Reading # 4

Once again, tragedy hits the McCourts. Both of Frankie's younger brothers, Oliver and Eugene, die. This hurts the McCourts in many ways. Obviously they are mourning the loss of two of their children/brothers. Also this means that they receive less money from the dole. It's true they have less mouths to feed but they still can't survive on what little money they have left over after paying rent. Living in the apartement when her twins died is haunting Angela. "She sees Eugene morning, noon and night. She sees him climbing the bed to look ou at the street for Oliver and sometimes she sees Oliver outside and Eugene inside, the two of them chatting away" (McCourt 91). Because Angela feels haunted by her sons she forces her family to move.
The move hurts the family a lot. First of all they are further away from Frankie's and Malachy's school. They have to walk a longer distance in the terrible weather which gets them sick. Another problem is that this new home costs more than the last one. They are still living on the charity money because Malachy (the father) can't find and keep a steady job. Another, less eminent problem, is that the toilet, which is by the whole lane which consists of seven houses, is located right outside the McCourts house. "These houses were built in the time of Queen Victoria herself and if this lavatory was ever cleaned it must have been done by someone in the middle of the night when no one was lookin'" (McCourt 92). To make matters even worse, the house leaks and they have to live in the upper room for the duration of winter, Malachy is still drinking away whatever money he can make, and Angela gives birth to another baby boy named Michael.