Bittersweet
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, 2014
Crown Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804138567
Summary
Suspenseful and cinematic, Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider’s hunger to belong.
On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it’s the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour.
Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she’s ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.
But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact—and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family’s dark secrets and make Ev's world her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Raised—in Senegal, West Africa, and Vermont, USA
• Education—B.A., Vassar College
• Awards—Crazyhorse Fiction Prize; Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is an American author who spent part of her early years in Senegal, West Africa, with her two academic parents who were conducting ethnographic research. The family returned to American, living in Vermont. She spent her childhood summers on Lake Champlain, a setting similar to Bittersweet's lake Winloch. Miranda graduated from Vassar with a degree in English and went on to New York to work for the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y.
She is the author of three novels, including The Effects of Light (2005), Set Me Free (2007, winner of 2007 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best book of fiction by an American woman), and Bittersweet (2014). A recipient of the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, she lives and writes in Brooklyn and Vermont. (Bio compiled by LitLovers.)
Book Reviews
A fairy tale aspect—of the Grimm, not the Disney variety—pervades the novel, which artfully builds an increasing sense of menace.... Like a Downton-in-Vermont, Bittersweet takes swift, implausible plot turns, and its family secrets flow like a bottomless magnum of champagne, but Beverly-Whittemore succeeds in shining a light into the dark, brutal flaws of the human heart.
Margo Raab - New York Times Book Review
Mesmerizing gothic thriller…Bittersweet is worth savoring—it unfolds like a long summer day, leisurely revealing the dark.
Lisa Kay Greissinger - People
What begins a little like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep quickly warps into a sickly addictive thriller…think ABC’s Revenge when it was good, only more scandalous…. With books like Bittersweet to stuff in beach bags, it’s beginning to feel a lot more like summer.
Stephan Lee - Entertainment Weekly
The theme of paradise lost courses through this coming-of-age tale tinged with mystery—Beverly-Whittemore’s solid, if not particularly inspired, third novel.... As the increasingly tragic story unfolds, the taste left in the reader’s mouth is more likely to be sour than bittersweet.
Publishers Weekly
Beverly-Whittemore captures both the idyllic beauty of a Vermont summer and its dark shadows …gothic tangles wind the plot more and more tightly.… A suspenseful tale of corruption and bad behavior among wealthy New Englanders. Readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring dark secrets that affect generations will find much that appeals here.
Library Journal
Takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface....its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end.
BookPage
Suspenseful and intriguing, filled with characters who both fit the blue-blood mold and break the stereotypes we all associate with the upper class. Her short chapters, with their cliff-hanger endings, will keep readers turning pages late into the night.
Booklist
(Starred review.) As a young woman struggles to read Paradise Lost, she faces her own temptation. Is she brave enough to choose good over evil? ... As she uncovers evidence of dastardly deeds—some deliciously improbable—Mabel comes face to face with her own secrets. Beverly-Whittemore has crafted a page-turner riddled with stubborn clues, a twisty plot and beguiling characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Mabel is the narrator of Bittersweet, but she tells the story from a point in the future, the summer depicted in chapter sixty. Why do you think I chose to tell the story this way? How would the story have been different if it had been told by someone besides Mabel, or told by Mabel while she was experiencing the events?
2. At the beginning of Bittersweet, Mabel longs to be part of the Winslows’ inner circle. Have you ever wanted to be part of an inner circle? Did you get “in”? Once you were “in,” was it everything you dreamed it would be? Does becoming a Winslow turn out to be everything Mabel dreamed it would be?
3. In chapter nineteen, Galway says, “Thing about this family is, you stick around long enough and remember what you hear, you can piece together the truth about just about anyone.” In what ways do secrets work as a currency for the Winslows? How have the circumstances of Mabel’s childhood prepared her for this way of being? Does Mabel’s curious nature—and her drive to uncover secrets—help or hurt her desire to become a Winslow? How do different characters—Ev, Indo, Lu, Birch—play on her hunger for knowledge to try to get what they want?
4. On the whole, do you believe Mabel acts with bravery or cowardice? How about in the following moments: when she agrees to report to Birch on Ev’s behavior (chapter twenty-two); when she pushes Masha for final proof of John’s paternity (chapter forty-one); when she tells John who his father is; when she reveals John’s paternity to Ev (chapter forty-seven); when she agrees to keep Birch’s secret in exchange for Lu’s freedom (chapter fifty-nine); when she returns to Winloch for good (chapter sixty)?
5. Why do Ev and Mabel become so close? Do they use each other, or is one of them always in power? Does the power dynamic between them shift? When and why? Have you ever had a friendship that reminds you of Ev and Mabel’s? Are you still friends with that person?
6. Why do Ev and John fall in love? Do you think John ever had an inkling of his paternity? Was it wrong for Ev to keep his paternity a secret? Should Mabel have told him who his father was? Do you believe Ev was ever pregnant? How does Ev’s justification of their incestuous marriage belie deeper truths about the Winslows’ moral universe?
7. Why do Mabel and Galway fall in love? At the end of the book, she explains that she has come to forgive Galway for not telling her what was on the back of the van Gogh; would you be able to forgive such an omission? Would you be able to accept the fact that Galway’s activism has been funded by his parents? Are Mabel and Galway a good match?
8. How would you compare Ev and Mabel’s friendship to Lu and Mabel’s? In what ways are the Winslow girls a product of their family? How do their attributes mirror those of the women in the generation above them—Indo, Tilde, and CeCe? Are the women in this family close? Why or why not?
9. The end of the book brings the revelation that Tilde has actually been trying to protect the Winslows all along. Did this make you reevaluate Tilde’s actions in earlier parts of the book, for example, when she reprimands cousin Hannah for being naked on the rocks (chapter thirty-two)? Are there any blind spots in Tilde’s plan of protection?
10. In their last conversation, Indo calls Mabel greedy (chapter forty-eight). Is this an accurate word to describe Mabel? Is being greedy an insult in Indo’s eyes? Who else might be called greedy in this book, and in what ways?
11. Birch is very charismatic and holds great power, but he might best be described as sociopathic. Is this aspect of his character a benefit or detriment to him and/or the Winslows? Do you think sociopathic tendencies can be useful for people in positions of power? Were Athol to have come to power, would he have acted like his father?
12. Do you believe it’s a curse or privilege to be born into the kind of money and privilege that the Winslows possess?
13. For much of Bittersweet, Mabel is reading Paradise Lost. Why do you think I made this the book Mabel was reading during her summer at Winloch? What themes do the two books share? What about Winloch makes it especially suited for a tale like Mabel’s? How does the natural world contribute to what occurs during Mabel’s summer at Winloch?
14. The end of Bittersweet—set at some point in the future—finds Mabel and Galway married with children, Birch dead, Tilde in charge, Athol miserable, Ev isolated, and Lu a scientist. What do you think has happened in the intervening years? Have Mabel and Ev gone back to college? Is Mabel in touch with her parents? How (and where) is Daniel? And what happens after this final Midsummer Night’s Feast—where do the Winslows go from here?
15. Does Bittersweet have a happy ending? Mabel has become a Winslow—is that a good thing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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