A Doubter's Almanac
Ethan Canin, 2016
Random House
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068265
Summary
In this mesmerizing novel, Ethan Canin, bestselling author of America America and The Palace Thief, explores the nature of genius, rivalry, ambition, and love among multiple generations of a gifted family.
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent.
But with his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley he realizes the extent, and the risks, of his singular gifts.
California in the seventies is a seduction, opening Milo’s eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there—and the rival he meets alongside her—will haunt him for the rest of his life.
For Milo’s brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.
Spanning seven decades as it moves from California to Princeton to the Midwest to New York, A Doubter’s Almanac tells the story of a family as it explores the way ambition lives alongside destructiveness, obsession alongside torment, love alongside grief. It is a story of how the flame of genius both lights and scorches every generation it touches.
Graced by stunning prose and brilliant storytelling, A Doubter’s Almanac is a surprising, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel, a major work by a writer who has been hailed as "the most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 19, 1960
• Where—Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Raised—San Francisco, California
• Education—B.A., Stanford; M.F.A., University of Iowa; M.D., Harvard
• Currently—lives in Iowa City, Iowa, and San Francisco
Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan while his parents were vacationing from Iowa City, where his father, Stuart Canin, taught violin at the University of Iowa. He and his family moved around the midwestern and northeastern United States, and eventually settled in San Francisco, California where he attended Town School and later graduated from San Francisco University High School. He attended Stanford University and earned an undergraduate degree in English. Returning to the University of Iowa, Canin entered the Iowa Writers' Workshop, receiving an MFA in 1984 and went on to attend Harvard Medical School where he earned an M.D. in 1991.
Beginning his medical practice with a residency at the University of California San Francisco, he pursued both medicine and writing for several years, leaving medicine in 1998 to join the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he still teaches. He is a co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/22/2016.)
Book Reviews
Mathematicians, like rich people, are different from you and me. Just how different is the subject of Ethan Canin’s remarkable novel.Milo Andret is a certified genius, a rare math talent in a field flush with talent. But his brilliance—a gift and a curse—becomes an obsession, alienating him from anyone who ventures near. Worse, it has a devastating impact on his wife and children. READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Math made beautiful.... Ethan Canin writes with such luxuriant beauty and tender sympathy that even victims of Algebra II will follow his calculations of the heart with rapt comprehension.
Washington Post
A blazingly intelligent novel.
Los Angeles Times
[Canin] is at the top of his form, fluent, immersive, confident. You might not know where he’s taking you, but the characters are so vivid, Hans’s voice rendered so precisely, that it’s impossible not to trust in the story.... "It was as though the numerals had been expressly fabricated, like more-perfect words, to elucidate the details of creation," Canin writes of Milo’s passion for math, though he might as well be referring to his novel, in which the delicate networks of emotion and connection that make up a family are illuminated, as if by magic, via his prose.
Slate
Canin’s hugely anticipated tale of male genius and its destructive power is a fine-grained portrait of a troubled mathematician and the emotional footprint he leaves behind.
Vogue
(Starred review.) [S]tunning assurance and elegant, resonant prose.... Fascinating in its character portrayal and psychological insights.... Canin’s accomplishments are many, not least of which is his...superb storytelling that makes this novel a tremendous literary achievement.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] compelling family saga that follows troubled math genius Milo Andret from birth to death.... Verdict: A moving, spiritual journey, this poetic novel clocks in at well over 500 pages but begs to be read in one sitting...it's tough to keep a dry eye through this one. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Epic...thoroughly absorbing...a nuanced, heartbreaking portrait of a tortured mathematician.... Canin, in translucent prose, elucidates the way a mathematician sees the world and humanity’s own insignificance within it. A harrowing, poignant read about the blessing and curse of genius.
Booklist
This complex portrait of a troubled math genius and the effect his gift has on those close to him combines a strong narrative and bumper crop of themes.... Canin then switches to the voice of Milo's son, Hans.... Mean Dad was the motherlode, and it's not clear that Canin's easing of the darkness makes for a better novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Forgotten Room
Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, 2016
Penguin Publising Group
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451474629
Summary
Three bestselling authors come together in a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century.
1945:
When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?
In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?
The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Karen White
... pursued a degree in business and graduated cum laude with a BS in Management from Tulane University. Ten years later, after leaving the business world, she fulfilled her dream of becoming a writer and wrote her first book. In the Shadow of the Moon was published in August, 2000. Her books have since been nominated for numerous national contests including the SIBA (Southeastern Booksellers Alliance) Fiction Book of the Year, and has twice won the National Readers’ Choice Award
Karen hails from a long line of Southerners but spent most of her growing up years in London, England and is a graduate of the American School in London. When not writing, she spends her time reading, scrapbooking, playing piano, and avoiding cooking. She currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two children, and two spoiled Havanese dogs.
Beatriz Williams
... is a graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia. She spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons.
She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. (From the author's website.)
Lauren Willig
... is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association's annual list of the best genre fiction.
After graduating from Yale University, she embarked on a PhD in English History at Harvard before leaving academia to acquire a JD at Harvard Law while authoring her "Pink Carnation" series of Napoleonic-set novels. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Three's a charm as New York Times best-selling authors White (A Long Time Gone), Beatriz Williams (A Hundred Summers), and Lauren Willig (the "Pink Carnation" series) join forces to craft a...mystery linking three generations of women...to one gracious room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Library Journal
Strong female characters, swoon-worthy romance, and red herrings abound in this marvelous genre blend of romance, historical fiction, and family saga.
Booklist
This sumptuous, suspenseful and heart-wrenching story will keep you up all night...Readers will be utterly enthralled.
Romance Times Reviews
With all three stories taking place in the same location, the novel is filled with both coincidences and parallels, the past finding ways to repeat itself until it reaches a satisfying conclusion. Even with three authors, the story is seamless, and the transitions between narrators are smooth....a compelling and emotionally worthwhile novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these Litlovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Forgotten Room...then take off on your own:
1. Kate, Olive and Lucy have different personalities, but they also have some common traits. Talk about how the women differ and the ways in which they're similar.
2. Of the three entwined stories that make up The Forgetting Room, which character(s) were you most drawn to? Which character's story held your interest more than the others? Or were they all equally compelling?
4. What was your experience reading the novel? Did the alternating chapters hold together seamlessly or did you find the shifts jarring?
5. A central concern in the novel, is the power of love, whether appropriate or not. Trace the paths of love in this book. Discuss how love has consequences beyond the two people involved and their time.
6. Lies and secrets are also a major theme in The Forgotten Room: the way they ripple, like a pebble thrown into a pond, through time and across generations. How were the characters affected by the many secrets eventually uncovered in the book. What responsibilities for truth and openness do all of us have to the generations that follow us?
7. As the mystery unraveled itself during the course of the novel, were there any points where you felt you had the answers to the riddles? If so, were your predictions born out...or were you wrong?
(We'll add the publishers' questions when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, feel free to use LitLovers with attribution. Thanks.)
Moonlight Over Paris
Jennifer Robson, 2016
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062389824
Summary
An aristocratic young woman leaves the sheltered world of London to find adventure, passion, and independence in 1920s Paris from the author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over.
Spring, 1924
Recovering from a broken wartime engagement and a serious illness that left her near death, Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr vows that for once she will live life on her own terms.
Breaking free from the stifling social constraints of the aristocratic society in which she was raised, she travels to France to stay with her free spirited aunt. For one year, she will simply be Miss Parr. She will explore the picturesque streets of Paris, meet people who know nothing of her past—and pursue her dream of becoming an artist.
A few years after the Great War’s end, the City of Light is a bohemian paradise teeming with actors, painters, writers, and a lively coterie of American expatriates who welcome Helena into their romantic and exciting circle. Among them is Sam Howard, an irascible and infuriatingly honest correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.
Dangerously attractive and deeply scarred by the horror and carnage of the war, Sam is unlike any man she has ever encountered. He calls her Ellie, sees her as no one has before, and offers her a glimpse of a future that is both irresistible and impossible.
As Paris rises phoenix-like from the ashes of the Great War, so too does Helena. Though she’s shed her old self, she’s still uncertain of what she will become and where she belongs. But is she strong enough to completely let go of the past and follow her heart, no matter where it leads her?
Artfully capturing the Lost Generation and their enchanting city, Moonlight Over Paris is the spellbinding story of one young woman’s journey to find herself, and claim the life—and love—she truly wants. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 5, 1970
• Where—Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Western Ontario; Ph.D., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada
Jennifer Robson is a Canadian writer and former journalist living in Toronto, Canada. She has written three books—Moonlight Over Paris (2016), After the War is Over (2015), and Somewhere in France (2013)—all novels that use as their starting point, or background setting, Europe's Great War.
Perhaps it was her father, noted historian Stuart Robson, who passed on his love of history to Jennifer, a "lifelong history geek," as she refers to herself. In fact, it was her father from whom she first learned of the Great War, (1914-1918, which Americans refer to as World War I). Later she served as an official guide at the Canadian National Memorial at Vimy Ridge, France, one of the war's major battle sites.
Jennifer studied French literature and modern history as an undergraduate at King’s College at the University of Western Ontario, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where she earned her doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford, she was both a Commonwealth Scholar and a Doctoral Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Before turning to full-time writing, Jennifer spent time as an editor. She and her husband have three children, a sheepdog and cat, and live in Toronto. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The vibrant whirl of the Paris art community is the ideal setting for this novel of healing and growth. Robson’s lovely prose allows the reader to savor the atmosphere of the Lost Generation, as well as the personal struggles of her characters.
Romantic Times Reviews
Rather than the sizzling and multilayered story that early chapters hint will unfurl, the novel offers a linear account of a year in the life of a likable yet uninspiring protagonist who interacts with similarly benign and tepid characters. Helena's friends at art school all reveal potential complexity, yet none are explored or developed.... [A] slow-moving plot...[for] a promising idea.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Other cities in Europe—for instance Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Vienna or London—are arguably just as beautiful and historic as Paris. Why, then, are we so drawn to the City of Lights? And what is it about Paris in the 1920s that we find so particularly fascinating?
2. Did you enjoy encountering real-life figures in the pages of Moonlight Over Paris? Is it possible to portray such iconic figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway with any degree of accuracy? Or has their fame obscured the real men behind the legends?
3. This novel is set six years after the end of World War I, but even still the characters and Paris itself are affected by those years. How do we see this with our characters? What do we see of this in the city itself?
4. Would a year in Paris, with all the freedom that Helena enjoys, have been possible for most women in that era? Or was it the case that her family’s wealth and status made it more easily achievable for her?
5. If you were able to read the story of one of the other fictional characters in the book, whose would it be? Etienne’s? Aunt Agnes’s? Another of the secondary figures?
6. Music, visual art and the written word play a big role in this story. Why do you think that Paris became such an epicenter for artistic expression during this time? Do you think the aftermath of the war played any part in this?
(Questions from the author's website.)
After the War Is Over
Jennifer Robson, 2015
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062334633
Summary
A tale of class, love, and freedom—in which a young woman must fnd her place in a world forever changed.
After four years as a military nurse, Charlotte Brown is ready to leave behind the devastation of the Great War. The daughter of a vicar, she has always been determined to dedicate her life to helping others.
Moving to busy Liverpool, she throws herself into her work with those most in need, only tearing herself away for the lively dinners she enjoys with the women at her boardinghouse.
Just as Charlotte begins to settle into her new circumstances, two messages arrive that will change her life. One is from a radical young newspaper editor who offers her a chance to speak out for those who cannot. The other pulls her back to her past, and to a man she has tried, and failed, to forget.
Edward Neville-Ashford, her former employer and the brother of Charlotte's dearest friend, is now the new Earl of Cumberland—and a shadow of the man he once was. Yet under his battle wounds and haunted eyes Charlotte sees glimpses of the charming boy who long ago claimed her foolish heart. She wants to help him, but dare she risk her future for a man who can never be hers?
As Britain seethes with unrest and postwar euphoria fattens into bitter disappointment, Charlotte must confront long-held insecurities to fnd her true voice...and the courage to decide if the life she has created is the one she truly wants. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 5, 1970
• Where—Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
• Education—B.A., University of Western Ontario; Ph.D., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada
Jennifer Robson is a Canadian writer and former journalist living in Toronto, Canada. She has written three books—Moonlight Over Paris (2016), After the War is Over (2015), and Somewhere in France (2013)—all novels that use as their starting point, or background setting, Europe's Great War.
Perhaps it was her father, noted historian Stuart Robson, who passed on his love of history to Jennifer, a "lifelong history geek," as she refers to herself. In fact, it was her father from whom she first learned of the Great War, (1914-1918, which Americans refer to as World War I). Later she served as an official guide at the Canadian National Memorial at Vimy Ridge, France, one of the war's major battle sites.
Jennifer studied French literature and modern history as an undergraduate at King’s College at the University of Western Ontario, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where she earned her doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford, she was both a Commonwealth Scholar and a Doctoral Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Before turning to full-time writing, Jennifer spent time as an editor. She and her husband have three children, a sheepdog and cat, and live in Toronto. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[Robson] weaves historical detail into a tale of a former military nurse and the man she loves.... Charlotte is an admirable protagonist: a strong woman with compassion and a forthright nature, which is evenly matched with her desire to find love and happiness. [An] emotionally charged novel from the first page.
Publishers Weekly
Robson captures the atmosphere of post-WWI England beautifully, portraying the changing social and political climate, as well as the rebuilding of the country in the aftermath of the Great War. Calmly and compassionately rendered, realistic and romantic, After the War is Over is a wonderful testament to its survivors.
Romance Times Reviews
Discussion Questions
Although Charlotte is the Oxford-educated daughter of an upper-middle-class clergyman, she seems certain that there is a huge gulf in status between her and Edward. Do you feel that was truly the case? Or is this more a reflection of her own feelings of inadequacy?
Why do you think Charlotte is so devoted to her work? Do you admire her for her tenacity, or do you pity her for so obviously neglecting her personal happiness?
Do you agree with Charlotte’s decision to regard her friendship with John Ellis in a purely platonic fashion?
How do you think you would have coped with the difficulties of the post-war period? Would you have been able to set them aside, as does Norma, and concentrate on simply having fun? Or would you be more like Meg and Rosie, and find it impossible to forget?
What did you think of the inclusion of Eleanor Rathbone, a real-life historical figure, in the novel? Do you like it when writers blend history with fiction in this manner? Or do you prefer the characters in a novel to be entirely fictitious?
Were you surprised that it takes so long for Edward’s friends and family to realize that he needs help? Do you think this is typical of veterans who suffered from psychological trauma at that time?
Do you feel that the gains made by women during the war were entirely lost in the post-war period? Do you think the war helped to accelerate change in any measurable way?
If you could choose to be poor and happy in the Britain of 1919, or wealthy and unhappy, which would you choose? And why?
Do you feel that Edward will be able to maintain his sobriety? Or will his experiences during the war forever haunt him?
If you compare Charlotte’s actions during the war to Lilly’s, whose are most admirable? Which of the two women is most changed by her experiences?
(Questions from the author's website.)
The Improbability of Love
Hannah Rothschild, 2015 (2016, U.S.)
Knopf Doubleday
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101872574
Summary
Wickedly funny, this totally engaging, richly observed first novel by Hannah Rothschild is a tour de force. Its sweeping narrative and cast of wildly colorful characters takes you behind the scenes of a London auction house, into the secret operations of a powerful art dealer, to a flamboyant eighteenth-century-style dinner party, and into a modest living room in Berlin, among many other unexpected settings.
In The Improbability of Love we meet Annie McDee, thirty-one, who is working as a chef for two rather sinister art dealers. Recovering from the end of a long-term relationship, she is searching in a neglected secondhand shop for a birthday present for her unsuitable new lover.
Hidden behind a rubber plant on top of a file cabinet, a grimy painting catches her eye. After spending her meager savings on the picture, Annie prepares an elaborate birthday dinner for two, only to be stood up.
The painting becomes hers, and as it turns out, Annie has stumbled across a lost masterpiece by one of the most important French painters of the eighteenth century. But who painted this masterpiece is not clear at first.
Soon Annie finds herself pursued by interested parties who would do anything to possess her picture. For a gloomy, exiled Russian oligarch, an avaricious sheikha, a desperate auctioneer, and an unscrupulous dealer, among others, the painting embodies their greatest hopes and fears. In her search for the painting’s identity, Annie will unwittingly uncover some of the darkest secrets of European history—as well as the possibility of falling in love again.
Irreverent, witty, bittersweet, The Improbability of Love draws an unforgettable portrait of the London art scene, but it is also an exuberant and unexpected journey through life’s highs and lows and the complexities of love and loss. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 22, 1962
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in England
Hannah Mary Rothschild is a British writer, philanthropist and documentary filmmaker. She is the eldest child of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and his wife Serena Dunn Rothschild. Through her father, she is a member of the Rothschild banking family.
She serves on the boards of various philanthropic trusts and museums. In 2015, she became chair of the London National Gallery's Board of Trustees—the first woman to hold the position. That same year, 2015, she published her first novel, The Improbability of Love, a satire set in the London art world.
Career
A documentary filmmaker, Rothschild's films include profiles of Frank Auerbach, Walter Sickert, R. B. Kitaj, as well as the BBC series Relative Values and The Great Picture Chase. She produced the fly-on-the-wall documentary, Mandelson: The Real PM? (2010), which concerns the UK's former Business Secretary Peter Mandelson in the run up to the 2010 general election.
Great Aunt
In 2008 Rothschild produced "The Jazz Baroness," a documentary for BBC's Storyville series and for HBO. The film is the story of her great-aunt Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, who rebelled against her family, becoming a jazz afficionado and patron, as well as a devoted follower of Thelonius Monk. The same year, Rothschild also produced a radio profile of her aunt "Nica" for BBC 4 Radio. In 2012, she published her aunt's biography—The Baroness: The Search for Nica the Rebellious Rothschild.
Philanthropy
Rothschild was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery in London in 2009 and later became the Gallery's liaison-trustee to the Tate Gallery in 2013. Six years later, in 2015, she become the first woman to chair the National Gallery's board when Mark Getty stepped down.
She is also a trustee of The Rothschild Foundation, a registered charity, whose activities include preserving Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire on behalf of its owner, the National Trust.
Rothschild was formerly a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery and the ICA. She was the co-founder of the charity Artists on Film.
Personal life
In 1994, she married William Lord Brookfield. The couple had three children but have since divorced. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/21/1016.)
Book Reviews
The book may on occasion be…over-the-top, even for a satire. But Ms. Rothschild writes with such exuberance and spins such a propulsive yarn that you happily accept these excesses as part of the package…. It helps that Ms. Rothschild…knows a great deal about art…. Her erudition—about restoration, authentication, art history in general—comes through on page after page, and it's one of the incidental pleasures of reading The Improbability of Love…Ms. Rothschild makes an impassioned case for art—as a companion to the lonely, as a restorative to those in pain—and leaves us with the unambiguous impression that it speaks with equal power to angels and demons.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times
The novel is a fast-paced imbroglio of skullduggery, dirty dealing, even murder, and finishes with a sort of James Bond flourish when the British security services finally intervene.
Lynn Barber - Sunday Times (UK)
[A] satire worthy of the pen of Evelyn Waugh. A real crowd pleaser.
Vanessa Berridge - Daily Express (UK)
Though this novel goes into the darkest of dark places, the overall tone is totally delicious; conspicuous consumption on this scale hasn’t been seen since the Eighties.
Kate Saunders- London Times (UK)
This richly satisfying debut novel features Nazi-looted treasure, Russian oligarchs and romance…an ingenious meditation on the true value of art.
Hephzibah Anderson - Mail on Sunday (UK)
[A] pacy satire of the art world.… Rothschild dishes up a salmagundi of unscrupulous dealers, desperate auctioneers and dodgy art experts, with a side-order of scheming Russian oligarchs. It’s on the money.
Jackie McGlone - Sunday Herald (UK)
[A] clever, funny, beguiling and wholly humane romance…Hannah Rothschild's first novel is a meditation on both great art and human passion, and as such reads like a confection concocted by Anita Brookner and Judith Krantz.… Part of the novel's charm is that its characters, rich or poor, are all a mixture of frailties.... Rothschild understands the dance between art and mammon.… Her imagined painting of a fête galante by the greatest artist of the Rococo is as scholarly, passionate and enticing as her portrait of the fabulously wealthy, largely philistine and possibly criminal, bunch that pursues it is not.
Amanda Craig - Independent (UK)
Mischievous, fun and on the money.… This debut novel from the new chair of the National Gallery is both a satire of the art world and a romance.
Sebastian Shakespeare - Tatler (UK)
Despite some plot holes, it’s rewarding to see Rebecca viciously come into her own once she divulges Memling’s dark secret. Additionally, Rothschild packs the narrative with vivid details, especially about art and food. The book is at its best when delving into the lives of the many people affected by the Watteau.
Publishers Weekly
The painting speaks! It also thinks, feels, complains, and narrates its own story—one that began 300 years ago.... [An] irresistible blend of art, mystery, and intrigue along the lines of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.… This compulsively readable, immensely enjoyable novel will deeply satisfy that craving. —Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal
An opulently detailed, suspensefully plotted, shrewdly witty novel of decadence, crimes ordinary and genocidal, and improbable love.… [Rothschild] is a dazzling omniscient narrator giving voice to an irresistible cast of reprobates and heroes. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
[T]he action moves through multiple, often nail-biting plot twists—yes, there are a few convenient coincidences, put across by the fast pace and vivid prose—toward a slightly hasty but nonetheless satisfying resolution. Smart, well-written, and thoroughly gripping.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The voice of The Improbability of Love shifts between sections. How does the oscillation between the removed third-person narrative and the "voice" of the painting contribute to the narrative progress? What does the painting’s voice reveal to readers? How would you characterize "him"?
2. The Improbability of Love provides readers with a glimpse into the high-stakes world of the art-buying market. How would you characterize the business? Discuss the tension between art for collectors (or capital gains) versus art for public consumption as explored within the novel.
3. How would you describe Annie’s personality in the beginning of The Improbability of Love? How does it shift over the course of the novel? When does she demonstrate the most self-confidence?
4. Deception and secrecy are found throughout the plotlines of The Improbability of Love. Which characters use deception to get ahead? Which people demonstrate the most authentic version of themselves to the world? Which secrets are most surprising?
5. Intrinsic to the discussion of the art market is the relationship between commerce and beauty. How is this relationship explored in the novel? For whom does art exist? What does the sudden public interest in The Improbability of Love assert about trendiness in art?
6. Viewing a painting is a highly subjective experience, informed both by emotion and intellect. What initially attracted Annie to The Improbability of Love? How does her perception of the painting change over the course of the novel?
7. Discuss the various players who are vying after the painting and their intentions behind purchasing it. Whose intentions—if any—are pure? Whose motivations are capitalistic?
8. The dinner party scenes within the novel describe a world of unfettered lavishness. How do these scenes contrast with Annie’s day-to-day life? Did you find any of the meals appealing? Discuss the concepts of "consumption" and "excess" as described throughout The Improbability of Love.
9. How would you characterize Annie’s relationship with her mother? What information about their shared history helped shape your understanding of Annie’s views on love?
10. The "voice" of the painting provides important historical and aesthetic context throughout the novel. Trace the history of ownership for The Improbability of Love. What struck you about the painting’s provenance? Why do you think the author chose to utilize this unique stylistic choice?
11. Discuss the role of Barty in the novel and his service of shaping the social elite. How is he received by his clients, particularly the Russian oligarch? What are his "rules" for making a grand entrance into high society?
12. Discuss the exclusivity of the art world in relation to class. How does the acquisition of art translate into power for various characters within the novel? Describe how Watteau’s impoverished history is contrasted with the multi-million-dollar frenzy surrounding his painting.
13. How does Annie’s view toward love change over the course of the novel? Describe her initial meetings with Jesse. When do her feelings toward him begin to shift?
14. Discuss Rebecca’s role in the art world and in her father’s business. How would you characterize her professional persona versus her personal one? When is she most powerful? Describe her moral dilemma when she finds out the truth about her father.
15. Memling’s life story is inspired by Nazi art thieves and the horrors of the Holocaust. Are there some parallels between Memling and historical figures?
16. How familiar were you with the art world before reading this novel? Did your perception of the business change or shift throughout the reading experience? Can you recall any particular works of art, exhibits, or performance pieces that elicited the same sort of frenzy described around Watteau’s work in the novel?
Questions issued by the publisher.)