Cartwheel
Jennifer duBois, 2013
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812985825
Summary
Cartwheel is a suspenseful and haunting novel of an American foreign exchange student arrested for murder, and a father trying to hold his family together.
When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters: the colorful buildings, the street food, the handsome, elusive man next door. Her studious roommate Katy is a bit of a bore, but Lily didn’t come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans.
Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s asking. As the case takes shape—revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her: the media, her family, the man who loves her and the man who seeks her conviction. With mordant wit and keen emotional insight, Cartwheel offers a prismatic investigation of the ways we decide what to see—and to believe—in one another and ourselves.
In Cartwheel, duBois delivers a novel of propulsive psychological suspense and rare moral nuance. No two readers will agree who Lily is and what happened to her roommate. Cartwheel will keep you guessing until the final page, and its questions about how well we really know ourselves will linger well beyond. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Where—Northampton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts Univeristy;
M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Texas
Jennifer duBois' writing has appeared in Playboy, The Wall Street Journal, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review, The Northwest Review, ZYZZYVA, FiveChapters and elsewhere. Her short story “Wolf” was listed as a Notable Story in Best American Short Stories 2012, and her short story “A Partial History of Lost Causes,” excerpted from her novel, was one of Narrative’s Top Five Stories of 2011-2012. She completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She currently teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University-San Marcos. (From the author's website.)
Dubois' first book, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was published in 2012; in 2013, she published Cartwheel.
Book Reviews
[T]he interests of Cartwheel are overwhelmingly literary. Events in the novel are not recounted as newsworthy in themselves, best delivered untouched; rather, DuBois wrings them for that which is universally (or at least culturally) meaningful. She uses the given story, in other words, as a thematic test case: How could a well-intentioned girl—a girl like your daughter or mine—end up looking so guilty of murder, leading millions to believe the charges? How does our American blitheness, the growing sexual confidence of (some of) our young women, the openness of speech and behavior, operate out of context? When is naïveté a kind of crime? And how is a parent implicated by a child who commits such a crime?…The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure—electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted. The novel is engrossing, and its portraiture hits delightfully and necessarily close to home.
Amity Gaige - New York Times Book Review
A convincing, compelling tale.... The story plays out in all its well-told complexity.
New York Daily News
Something more provocative, meaningful and suspenseful than the tabloids and social media could provide.... [DuBois] tells a great story.... The power of Cartwheel resides in duBois’ talent for understanding how the foreign world can illuminate the most deeply held secrets we keep from others, and ourselves.
Chicago Tribune
A smart, literary thriller [for] fans of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.
Huffington Post
[You’ll] break your own record of pages read per minute as you tear through this book.
Marie Claire
[A] gripping, gorgeously written novel.... The emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp it’s almost ruthless—a tabloid tragedy elevated to high art.
Entertainment Weekly
Taking themes that were “loosely inspired by the story of Amanda Knox,” Cartwheel follows American exchange student Lily Hayes, who has been accused of murdering her roommate.... While muddying the waters of right and wrong is almost always a valiant cause in literature, this novel reads more like an intellectual exercise in examining all the different angles rather than an emotional engagement with human beings.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [DuBois] does an excellent job of creating and maintaining a pervasive feeling of foreboding and suspense.... An acute psychological study of character that rises to the level of the philosophica.... Cartwheel is very much its own individual work of the author’s creative imagination.
Booklist
Attempts to cannibalize Amanda [Knox's] story....Lily herself is a not very interesting addition to those thousands of young Americans looking to spread their wings in an exotic locale. Readers are meant to presume her innocence while retaining a tiny sliver of doubt.... A tangled tale that leaves protagonist Lily, and the crime, unilluminated.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The first paragraph of Cartwheel ends with a chilling statement: “The things that go wrong are rarely the things you’ve thought to worry about.” Why do you think the author makes such a pronouncement at the beginning of the novel? What does she mean? Is this true in your life?
2. The story in Cartwheel is very much of our time. Lily’s case becomes an international sensation because of Facebook, blogs, and the way shocking news and information can travel around the world within minutes. Social media plays a big role in Cartwheel. Does this change your view of social media? How do you use social media to share details of your life? What about your family members?
3. Why do you think Jennifer duBois chose to tell the story from four points of view? How does that affect the experience of reading it?
4. At one point, Lily’s sister Anna says “everyone wants to love Lily,” and that she’s always played by different rules. Why does Anna think this?
5. Lily’s father, Andrew, believes “everything vile about your children was to some degree vile about yourself.” Is this a fair statement? Do Lily’s parents fail her, or is this parental guilt?
6. What impact does her sister’s ordeal have on Anna?
7. The title of the book comes from the cartwheel Lily turned between interrogation sessions. Why did the author choose this image as significant?
8. In what ways are Lily and Katy different? Why does Lily feel Katy’s life was “easy”? Is she being fair?
9. Have you, or someone you know, studied abroad? Do you think it benefits college students to visit other countries? Why do you think Lily wanted to study abroad? What was she looking for?
10. Eduardo, attorney for the prosecution, believes Lily is guilty but that she doesn’t understand why what she did was wrong. Do you agree?
11. Sebastien is an enigmatic character. What do you think Lily is attracted to about him? Where do you think his addiction for obscuring half-irony comes from? What consequences does it have for the unfolding of events?
12. The author uses ambiguity to tell this story. How does that affect your understanding of what happened? Which character do you trust the most?
13. Lily calls her family “repressed,” saying they never learned how to mourn their first child, the sister who died before Lily and Anna were born. Why does she say she and Anna were treated like “replacement children”?
14. Do you believe the whole story comes out at Lily’s trial?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)