The Swans of Fifth Avenue
Melanie Benjamin, 2016
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345528698
Summary
A triumphant new novel about New York’s “Swans” of the 1950s—and the scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.
Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley.
Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends—the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill.
By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a prestigious husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman—a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.
Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan’s elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe’s powerful circle.
Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls "True Heart," Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller—even when the stories aren’t his to tell.
Truman’s fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he’ll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years.
The Swans of Fifth Avenue will seduce and startle readers as it opens the door onto one of America’s most sumptuous eras. (From the publisher.)
Read Vanity Fair article.
Author Bio
• Aka—Melanie Hauser
• Birth—November 24. 1962
• Where—Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
• Education—Indiana University (Purdue University at Indianapolis)
• Currently—lives near Chicago, Illinois
Melanie Benjamin is the pen name of American writer, Melanie Hauser (nee Miller). Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Melanie is one of three children. Her brother Michael Miller is a published non-fiction author and musician. Melanie attended Indiana University—Purdue University at Indianapolis then married Dennis Hauser in 1988; they presently reside in the Chicago, Illinois area with their two sons.
Early writing
As Melanie Hauser, she published short stories in the In Posse Review and The Adirondack Review. Her short story "Prodigy on Ice" won the 2001 "Now Hear This" short story competition that was part of a WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) program called Stories on Stage, where short stories were performed and broadcast.
When Melanie sold her first of two contemporary novels, she had to add Lynne to her name (Melanie Lynne Hauser) to distinguish her from the published sports journalist Melanie Hauser.
The first of Melanie's contemporary novels, Confessions of Super Mom was published in 2005; the sequel Super Mom Saves the World came out in 2007. In addition to her two contemporary novels, Melanie also contributed an essay to the anthology IT'S A BOY and maintained a popular mom blog called The Refrigerator Door.
Fictional biographies
Under the pen name Melanie Benjamin (a combination of her first name and her son's first name), she shifted genres to historical fiction. Her third novel, Alice I Have Been, was inspired by Alice Liddell Hargreaves's life (the real-life Alice of Alice in Wonderland). Published in 2010, Alice I Have Been was a national bestseller and reached the extended list of The New York Times Best Seller list.
In 2011, Benjamin fictionalized another historical female. Her novel The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb focuses on the life of Lavinia Warren Bump, a proportionate dwarf featured in P.T. Barnum's shows.
Her third fictionalized biography, The Aviator's Wife, was released in 2013 and centers on Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of famed aviator, Charles Lindberg.
The Swans of Manhattan, published in 2016, revolves around the Truman Capot-Babe Paley friendship and the glitterati of Manhattan during the 1950s and '60s. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/14/2016.)
Book Reviews
This moving fictionalization brings the whole cast of characters back to vivid life. Gossipy and fun, it’s also a nuanced look at the beauty and cruelty of a rarefied, bygone world.
People
Benjamin’s fact-based narrative captures the era’s juiciest scandals and wildest extravagances, but...the novel’s themes are sober ones: the double-edged power of telling our stories, the ways we test and punish those we love, and the psychic cost of life lived by the mantra "appearance matters most."
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) When a desperate Capote betrays his swans by publishing their darkest secrets, friendships crumble and hearts break.... Benjamin convincingly portrays a large cast of colorful historical figures while crafting a compelling, gossipy narrative with rich emotional depth. Highly recommended. —Mara Bandy, Champaign P.L., IL
Library Journal
Class, cliques, and cattiness converge in this New York fable based on the lives of Truman Capote and his greatest fan, Babe Paley.... Elegant Babe's thoughts, if not her lips, are unsealed at last.... [Readers get] a chance to judge whether a swan's muteness can be more interesting than her gripe.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Swans all have very complicated relationships with one another—perhaps most notably, Slim and Pamela were both married to the same man. What ties these women together, despite their differences and the sometimes competitive nature of their friendships?
2. Truman is embraced wholeheartedly by the swans when he first appears on the New York social scene. What do you think draws them to him?
3. Discuss Babe's marriage with Bill. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses?
4. What do you think of Truman's relationship with fame? At times, he seems willing to sacrifice almost anything (love, his health, and his friendships) in pursuit of the limelight. How does that serve him, ultimately?
5. Why do you think Truman published "La Cote Basque, 1965"? What point was he making about (or to) the story's subjects?
6. Truman and Babe were both heavily influenced by their mothers. In what ways were their childhood experiences similar? In what ways were they different?
7. Babe and her sisters were raised for successful marriages. Did they live up to their mother's hopes?
8. Pick three words to describe Truman and Babe's friendship. Or, pick one word to describe Truman, one to describe Babe, and one to describe their friendship.
9. Do you think Babe forgave Truman, in the end?
10. There are a number of stories told throughout the novel. What are some of the stories that you tell—about yourself or about others? In what ways do stories shape our experiences?
11. Who was your favorite character? Why?
12. Who surprised you the most? Why?
13. Aging is a prominent theme throughout the novel, as the opulent 50s come to an end and a new generation of socialites supplants the glamorous Swans. What did you think of that? How do you feel about getting older?
14. Discuss the significance of memory in this novel. In what ways do we distort our memories? What, if anything, is the significance of this?
15. Can you think of a woman who is the modern equivalent of Babe Paley and her circle of friends?
16. Babe always presents a very carefully composed face to the world. Only occasionally do we see that mask slip. Discuss those moments. Who is the real Babe, beneath the makeup and jewels?
17. How has the role of women in society shifted from the 1960s to today?
18. If you have read any of Melanie Benjamin's previous books, compare and contrast this work with her earlier novels. Is this story a departure? If so, in what ways? If not, how is it in keeping with her other writing?
(Questions from the author's website. Reproduced with permission.)
What She Knew
Gilly Macmillan, 2015
HarperCollins
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062413864
Summary
[A] mother’s search for her missing son, weaving a taut psychological thriller as gripping and skillful as The Girl on the Train and The Guilty One.
In a heartbeat, everything changes…
Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.
Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone.
As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion.
As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that nothing is quite as she imagined it to be, not even her own judgment. And the greatest dangers may lie not in the anonymous strangers of every parent’s nightmares, but behind the familiar smiles of those she trusts the most.
Where is Ben? The clock is ticking... (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Swindon, Wiltshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Bristol University; M.A., Courtald Institute of Art
• Currently—lives in Bristol
Gilly Macmillan grew up in Swindon, Wiltshire and also lived in Northern California in her late teens. She studied History of Art at Bristol University and then at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
She worked at The Burlington Magazine and the Hayward Gallery before starting a family, and since then has done some lecturing in "A" Level photography.
Gilly lives in Bristol, UK with her husband and three children and now writes full time. She’s currently working on her third novel (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
here's a depressing sameness to mysteries about missing children. A detective is bound to become obsessed with the case, one of the frantic parents is sure to come under suspicion, and there's only a 50-50 chance the child will be found alive. The British writer Gilly Macmillan introduces some smart variations on the theme in her debut mystery, What She Knew.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
A terrific debut.
Reader's Digest
A very clever, tautly plotted page turned from a terrific new writer.
Good Housekeeping
Heart-in-the-mouth excitement from the start of this electrifyingly good debut…an absolute firecracker of a thriller that convinces and captivates from the word go. A must read.
Sunday Mirror (UK)
One of the brightest debuts I have read this year - a visceral, emotionally charged story….heart-wrenchingly well told and expertly constructed, this deserves to stay on the bestseller list until Christmas.
Daily Mail (UK)
Macmillan’s magnificent debut delves into the emotional destruction wrought by Ben’s disappearance. No one is unaffected, and she draws out every inch of trauma suffered by all as they search for the boy. It’s a tour de force as the reader discovers on each page (Top Pick of December 2015).
Romatic Times Review
British author Macmillan alternates between two narrators in her haunting first novel: Rachel Finch, a grieving mother whose eight-year-old son, Ben, disappears...and Det. Insp. James “Jim” Clemo, who tirelessly searches to find Ben.... Readers will have a tough time putting this one down.
Publishers Weekly
Macmillan peppers her debut with subtle red herrings and a variety of potential suspects, ratcheting up the tension slowly but oh so deliciously.
Booklist
The requisite family secrets come to light, though Macmillan gets credit for some truly clever red herrings. While there's little new ground broken, the missing child scenario, when done reasonably well, as it is here, is a reliable hook, and with Macmillan's taut pacing, this is an engaging debut.
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 MYSTERY QUESTIONS
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for What She Knew...then take off on your own:
1. How does the novel's title, What She Knew, relate to the narrative? What is it's significance to the work?
2. What do you think of Rachel? What kind of mother is she? How does she evolve throughout the course of the novel? And what about Rachel's sister, Nicky, who seems to know more than she lets on?
3. Talk about DI Jim Clemo. In what way does his voice serve as a counterpoint to Rachel's? His involvement in the case is professional, but how does it affect him? Also talk about DC Emma Zhang, whom Clemo recommends, perhaps unwisely, as Family Liaison Officer.
4. What role does social media play in the novel? Do you think the online reaction is realistic?
5. Almost every reviewer refers to the book as a page-turner. Did you experience it that way? What creates the book's intensity?
6. Macmillan told Huffington Post that she wrote three different endings to the book: one too pat and easy, the second too dark, and the third, "a more truthful conclusion than the other two." What do you think of the ending? Is it satisfying? Want to take a stab at what the other two might have been like (Macmillan has not said, by the way)?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Vegetarian
Han Kang, 2007 (Engl.Trans., Deborah Smith, 2015)
Crown/Archetype
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101906118
Summary
Winner, 2016 Man Booker International Prize
A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul.
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life.
But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home.
As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 27, 1970
• Where—Kwangju, South Korea
• Education—Yonsei University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Seoul
Han Kang is a South Korean poet, novelist, and short story writer. The daughter of novelist Han Seung-won, she was born in Kwangju but moved, at the age of 10, to Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University and participated in the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the U.S.
Han published her first poems in 1993. Her first novel, Black Year, a mystery about a missing woman, was released in 1998. Around that time, she was introduced to a line from the Korean poet Yi Sang: "I believe that humans should be plants," a line which she interpreted as a defensece against the violence of the colonial period.
The line became an inspiration for "The Fruit of My Woman," Han's short story about a woman who actually turns into a plant. The woman and her husband had had a distant relationship, but once she becomes a plant he puts her in a pot and tends to her lovingly. Han said she wanted to deepen the story, which eventually became The Vegetarian, published in 2007 (English translation, 2015).
(Apparently, she wrote two of the three sections of The Vegetarian by hand: repetitive keyboard strokes had damaged her wrist.)
Han's other Korean novels include, Baby Buddha (a novella, 1999), Your Cold Hand (2002), Breath Fighting (2010), and Greek Lessons (2011).
Baby Buddha and The Vegetarian have been made into films. The latter was one of 14 films, out of 1,000 submissions, to be part of the North American Film Fest's "World Narrative Competition."
Awards
1995 - Hankook Ilbo Excellent Writer's Award for Baby Buddha
1999 - Korean Novel Award
2000 - Today's Young Artist Award (Literature), Ministry of Culture and Tourism
2005 - Yi Sang Literary Award Grand Prize for Mongolian Mark
2010 - Dong-ni Literary Award for Breath Fighting
2014 - Manhae Literary Award
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/9/2016.)
Book Reviews
All the trigger warnings on earth cannot prepare a reader for the traumas of [The Vegetarian]…there is no end to the horrors that rattle in and out of this ferocious, magnificently death-affirming novel…. Han's glorious treatments of agency, personal choice, submission and subversion find form in the parable. There is something about short literary forms—this novel is under 200 pages—in which the allegorical and the violent gain special potency from their small packages.
Porochista Khakpour - New York Times Book Reivew
Kang’s subject and tone owe much to Kafka,... delivering the surreal in a calm, almost deadpan way.... [F]or the most part, what makes The Vegetarian appealing is the controlled voice. Whether Yeong-hye is doing something as relatively normal as refusing sweet and sour pork or as outlandish as catching and eating a live bird while naked in a public garden, the voice stays coolly reportorial.... It’s easy to imagine that in a society as restrictive as Kang’s South Korea, this novel could seem especially daring. For Western readers, what’s more shocking is the unapologetic sexism against which the heroine rebels...
Lisa Zeidner - Washington Post
It takes a gifted storyteller to get you feeling ill at ease in your own body. Yet Han Kang often set me squirming with her first novel in English, at once claustrophobic and transcendent… Yeong-hye’s compulsions feel more like a force of nature… A sea like that, rippling with unknowable shadow, looks all but impossible to navigate—but I’d let Han Kang take the helm any time.
Chicago Tribune
Dark dreams, simmering tensions, chilling violence…This South Korean novel is a feast…It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colors and disturbing questions…Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience… [It] will be hard to beat.
Guardian (UK)
This is an odd and enthralling novel; its story filled with nihilism but lyricism too, its writing understated even in its most fevered, violent moments. It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it.
Arifa Akbar - Independent (UK)
This short novel is one of the most startling I have read… Exciting and imaginative…The author reveals how nature, sex and art crash through this polite society…It is the women who are killed for daring to establish their own identity. The narrative makes it clear it is the crushing pressure of Korean etiquette which murders them…[A] disturbing book.
Julia Pascal - Independent (UK)
Shocking...The writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice grip...The Vegetarian quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance that is similar to the work of the gifted Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa in its devastating study of psychological pain...The Vegetarian is more than a cautionary tale about the brutal treatment of women: it is a meditation on suffering and grief. It is about escape and how a dreamer takes flight. Most of all, it is about the emptiness and rage of discovering there is nothing to be done when all hope and comfort fails....A work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality.
Irish Times (UK)
The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the mysteries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han’s achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence.
Joanna Walsh - New Statesman (UK)
[A] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose… What is ultimately most troubling about Yeong-hye’s post-human fantasies is that they appear to be a reasonable alternative to the world of repression and denial in which everyone around her exists.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
A complex, terrifying look at how seemingly simple decisions can affect multiple lives...In a world where women’s bodies are constantly under scrutiny, the protagonist’s desire to disappear inside of herself feels scarily familiar.
VanityFair.com
Indebted to Kafka, this story of a South Korean woman's radical transformation, which begins after she forsakes meat, will have you reading with your hand over your mouth in shock.
Oprah Magazine
The Vegetarian is the first—there will be more, let’s hope—of Han Kang’s novels to arrive in the United States…The style is realistic and psychological, and denies us the comfort that might be wrung from a fairy tale or a myth of metamorphosis. We all like to read about girls swapping their fish tails for legs or their unwrinkled arms for branches, but—at the risk of stating the obvious—a person cannot become a potted bit of green foodstuff. That Yeong-hye seems not to know this makes her dangerous, and doomed.
Harper’s
The Vegetarian is incredibly fresh and gripping, due in large part to the unforgettable narrative structure... Han Kang has created a multi-leveled, well-crafted story that does what all great stories do: immediately connects the unique situation within these pages to the often painful experience of living.
Rumpus
You may think you know where Han's English-language debut novel is going, but you have no idea.... This is a horror story in its depiction of the unknowability of others.... It's also a decidedly literary story for its exploration of despair, inner unrest, and the pain of coming to understand yourself....ingenious, upsetting, and unforgettable. —Gabe Habash, Deputy Reviews Ed.
Publishers Weekly
[A] spare, spectacular novel, in which a multigenerational, seemingly traditional Seoul family implodes. Yeong-hye, the youngest of three adult children...stop[s] eating meat; eventually, she eschews everything but water.... Family dysfunction amid cultural suffocation is presented with elegant precision, transforming readers[un]able to turn away. —Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
Yeong-hye's...decision [not to eat meat] is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste.... [D]etails that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.... [M]esmerizing...and deeply disturbing.
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 Vegetarian...then take off on your own:
1. What is the relationship between Yeong-hye, "the most ordinary woman in the world," and her husband, Mr. Cheong. Why is her refusal to eat meat, so shocking to him?
2. The novel is structured in a tryptic format, with each section narrated by a family member who reacts to and interacts with Yeong-hye. As the three narrators confront her deepening madness, each also comes face to face with his/her own desires. What do they each come to understand about themselves and what they want from life? In what way are they transformed?
3. Talk about the way in which the author positions Yeong-Hye's vegetarianism—as a feminist choice and revolt against patriarchy. Are there another way to look at it?
4.The book is suffused with a mix of sex and violence. Do you find the physicality disturbing, shocking, repulsive, or something else? Why is there so much sex and brutality in this work; what might its purpose be?
5. What are your feelings about vegetarianism? Do you know vegetarians, or are you yourself one? What are the reason for eschewing meat? Is it a matter health, morality, religion, or basic distaste? If you are a meat eater, do you sometimes feel like the dinner acquaintance in the novel, who comments: "I'd hate to share a meal with someone who considers eating meat repulsive, just because that's how they themselves personally feel....don't you agree?"
6. Trace the stages of Yeong-hye's state of mind. Talk about her thoughts and the language which reflects them—as the passages range from journal-like entries to disconnected, abstract, almost impressionistic images.
7. The novel ends on an ambiguous note. What do you envision as the outcome? What do you think happens to Yeong-hye?
8. What is this book about anyway?
(Questions by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Mr. Splitfoot
Samantha Hunt, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544526709
Summary
A contemporary gothic, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.
Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant.
After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who—or what— has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?
In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole.
A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural and vice versa. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Pound Ridge, New York, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
• Awards—Bard Fiction Prize; National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award
• Currently—lives in upstate New York
Samantha Hunt is an American novelist, essayist and short-story writer. Her father was an editor, and her mother a painter. The youngest of six siblings, she grew up in a house built in 1765—haunted not in the traditional sense, but so stuffed with books, good and bad, that it "haunted" Hunt all the same.
She moved first to Vermont in 1989 where she studied literature, printmaking, and geology. A later move took her to North Carolina where she earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. In 1999 she headed to New York City to work on her writing, supporting herself with a odd jobs, including a stint in an envelope factory.
Writing
Hunt's novels include The Seas (2004), The Invention of Everything Else (2008), and Mr. Splitfoot (2016). She won the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award and was a finalist for the Orange Prize.
Hunt's short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's, A Public Space, Cabinet, Esquire, Believer, Blind Spot, Harper’s Bazaar, Village Voice, Seed Magazine, Tin House, New York Magazine, on the radio program This American Life and in a number of anthologies including Trampoline edited by Kelly Link. Hunt’s play, The Difference Engine, a story about the life of Charles Babbage, was produced by the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/9/2016).)
Book Reviews
I've dog-eared so many pages in honor of vivid prose that my…copy of Mr. Splitfoot curls up with fattened corners. Hunt renders as ornate and magical the tired landscape of Troy and upstate New York—and I say this as a native of that area, with high regard for its quiddities…Hunt's depiction of the seedy terrain of human relations is just as terrific…The novel moves not just in two time frames, told through two voices, a first-person narrator and a third- , but also…in the fourth dimension, stamping itself upon the reading mind. Hypnotic and glowing, Mr. Splitfoot insists on its own ghostly presence.
Gregory Maguire - New York Times Book Review
Samantha Hunt is one of the most inventive novelists working today, and Mr. Splitfoot features her usual imaginative flair…Ms. Hunt is a graceful, sometimes poetic writer who knows how to build suspense.
John Williams - New York Times
The historical and the fantastical entwine like snakes in Samantha Hunt’s fiction...Turned around and around in these woods, you won’t always know where you are, but there’s a rare pleasure in this blend of romance and phantoms.
Washington Post
Mr. Splitfoot [is] at once an intriguing mystery with clues, suspense, enigmas galore, and an exhilarating, witty, poignant paean to the unexplainable, the unsolvable, the irreducibly mysterious...[Hunt's] epistemological and ethical rigor are complemented by a lovely respect for what remains uncategorizable, unable to be mastered or explained away.
Boston Globe
[A] quirky, mysterious novel...Hunt has conjured an unusual and engaging story...Hunt’s aim is not to be believable, but to play with the unanswerable questions and mysteries that underlie life. The emotional connections between Hunt’s key characters are authentic, as is the unusual world she creates at Love of Christ!, and her writing is lively and funny. At times it felt like both Cora and I were on a wild goose chase, trailing Ruth wherever she went, but I gladly followed, eager to reach the surprising conclusion of this enigmatic journey.
Dallas Morning News
[A] wild ride. If you're all about magical realists like Kelly Link, this is one title you'll need to pick up, because Samantha Hunt's third novel takes the banal and rockets it into the fantastic (and the fantastically wonderful). I don't want to divulge too much about this one because I'd rather you read it yourself, but I will say that if you love dual narrative structures or complicated timelines, this is an especially good pick for your must-read list.
Bustle
(Starred review.) [A]a nod to the mid-19th-century legend of the Fox sisters, mediums who conjured up a devilish spirit they called Mr. Splitfoot in order to separate the gullible from their money. The book deftly straddles the slippery line between fantasy and reality in a story that’s both gripping and wonderfully mystifying.... This spellbinder is storytelling at its best.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This genre-defying page-turner shows off the talent of the up-and-coming Hunt. The narrative alternates between the present and the past.... The plot is a sort of puzzle, revealing the connections among all people and the constant echoes of the past in the present.... [A] ghost story, but it's also a road-trip narrative, a mystery, and a coming-of-age story, told with lyrical language. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Library Journal
You’ll want to savor every fiendish bit of this book...a gothic tale that’s both deliciously creepy and emotionally satisfying, combining supernatural intrigue and thematic weight…. Hunt’s confidence in her story propels the book from page one.... Mr. Splitfoot is about the divide between the natural and the supernatural, between faith and reason, and in the hands of a storyteller like Hunt…the novel becomes something truly special.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Foster children, abandoned houses, and craters left by meteorites weave together a strange and frightening ghost story.... At times, the novel's murky obscurity may be vexing...but the...potent imagery keep the pages turning. A truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion.
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 Mr. Splitfoot...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the Love of Christ! Foster Home, Farm, and Mission and the "Father" who runs it. Did those kind of places exist in the 19th century? It might be interesting to do a bit of research into the treatment of orphans prior to the mid- to late-20th century in order to ascertain the degree to which the Love of Chirst! represented the norm (Obviously, Samantha's representation is a parody, but even parodies are based on some semblance of reality.)
m. How would you describe Nat and Ruth's relationship? What does it mean that they call themselves sisters?
2. Ruth says that every story is a ghost story. What does she mean? Samantha Hunt has said elsewhere that "To think about 'haunted' is not necessarily a bad thing: to think about our dead in a different way. To use them in some way." How is her thinking reflected in Mr. Splitfoot?
m. What's in a name, especially the name of Mr. Splitfoot? What does the name conjure up in the imagination? For Ruth, "Mr. Splitfoot is a two that is sometimes a one, mothers and their children, Nat and Ruth, life and death." What does she mean?
m. What do you think about Mr. Bell? Think, too, about his name: the notion of the clarity of a ringing bell. He's a con man, a survivor. How else would you describe him?
m. Cora describes herself as shallow, willing to accept easy answers. How does her journey change her?
m. This is also a book about motherhood. Cora says that people are continually telling her the difficult parts of being a mother, but she's beginning to realize that a mother has to be brave, even fierce. How does this book explore motherhood? What kind of mothers are in this book: good, bad, dead, even nuns. In what ways is the absence of maternal love and guidance felt by the characters? What kind of mother do you think will Cora be?
m. What about the "ghost activist," Sheresa, who always looks out for dead people. What role does she play in the book?
m. Talk about the humor in this book, indeed, some of it is downright silly: for instance, there's the Society for Confusing Literature and the Real Lies" and the mash-up at the event on the Erie Canal with Captain Ahab, Huck Finn, Lord Nelson and a German U-boat. What else do you find funny?
m. At times the events in the book seem completely random and unrelated. How do they eventually come together to form a whole fabric of significance?
m. Mr. Splitfoot explores the boundaries between present and past, life and death, the natural and supernatural. How does the novel blur those boundaries? Where do you place the boundaries? Are the boundaries fluid...or fixed and impermeable?
m. Do a little research about Lily Dale in New York State, and the manner in which it's past and present-day spiritualism informs this novel.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist
Sunil Yapa, 2016
Little, Brown and Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316386531
Summary
An electrifying debut novel set amid the heated conflict of Seattle's 1999 WTO protests.
On a rainy, cold day in November, young Victor—a nomadic, scrappy teenager who's run away from home—sets out to join the throng of WTO demonstrators determined to shut down the city.
From the proceeds of selling weed, he plans to buy a plane ticket and leave Seattle forever. But it quickly becomes clear that the history-making 50,000 anti-globalization protestoers—from anarchists to environmentalists to teamsters—are testing the patience of the police, and what started out as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence.
Over the course of one life-altering afternoon, the fates of seven people will change forever: foremost among them police Chief Bishop, the estranged father Victor hasn't seen in three years, two protesters struggling to stay true to their non-violent principles as the day descends into chaos, two police officers in the street, and the coolly elegant financial minister from Sri Lanka whose life, as well as his country's fate, hinges on getting through the angry crowd, out of jail, and to his meeting with the President of the United States.
When Chief Bishop reluctantly unleashes tear gas on the unsuspecting crowd, it seems his hopes for reconciliation with his son, as well as the future of his city, are in serious peril.
In this raw and breathtaking novel, Yapa marries a deep rage with a deep humanity. In doing so he casts an unflinching eye on the nature and limits of compassion, and the heartbreaking difference between what is right and what is possible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1980 ?
• Raised—State College, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.F.A., Hunter College
• Awards—Hyphen Asian American Short Story Contest
• Currently—lives in Woodstock, New York
Sunil Yapa is a Sri Lankan-American fiction writer and novelist. His debut novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was published in 2016.
Background
Yapa's father, originally from Sri Lanka, is a retired professor of Geography at Penn State University. His mother is an American from Montana. Most of Yapa's youth was spent in State College, the home of Penn State. He graduated from the university in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economic Geography (where he won the 2002 E.W. Miller Award for excellence in writing in the discipline). For the next several years, he attempted to follow his father's path in becoming an academic geographer, but eventually he heeded his own desire, which had always been to write fiction.
In 2008 he entered Hunter College in New York City and in 2010 earned his Master's in Fine Arts. At Hunter he studied with two-time Booker Prize winning novelist Peter Carey, Nathan Englander, Claire Messud and 2009 National Book Award winner Colum McCann.
During his MFA studies, Yapa received the Alumni Scholarship & Welfare Fund Fellowship in 2008-2010—a grant given only to one MFA fiction student once every three years. He was also selected—twice—as a Hertog Fellow, working as a research fellow and research assistant to novelist Ben Marcus and then Zadie Smith.
Yapa also received scholarships to numerous writing programs, including the Norman Mailer Writers' Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others.
From Fall 2009 to Spring 2010, he was a Fiction Intern for Esquire magazine.
Short Stories
Yapa won the 2010 Hyphen Asian American Short Story Contest for his short story, "Pilgrims (What is Lost and You Cannot Regain)." The story was published in the Fall 2010 issue of Hyphen, Issue No. 21.
Another short fiction piece appeared in Pindeldyboz: Stories that Defy Classification—"A Short Incident Involving a Boy, a Girl, Pigeons, and an Old Man with Advice."
Novel
Yapa's 2016 debut novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, was widely reviewed and praised. An excerpt from the novel won second prize (and first prize in fiction) in The Miriam Weinberg Richter Memorial Award, a Hunter College writing competition judged by 2009 Impac Dublin winner Michael Thomas. (Adapted from Wikipedia and a January, 2016, BookPage interview. Retrieved 2/8/2016.)
Book Reviews
A fantastic debut novel.... What is so enthralling about this novel is its syncopated riff of empathy as the perspective jumps around these participants—some peaceful, some violent, some determined, some incredulous... Yapa creates a fluid sense of the riot as it washes over the city. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist ultimately does for WTO protests what Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night did for the 1967 March on the Pentagon, gathering that confrontation in competing visions of what happened and what it meant.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
In this beautifully written, kaleidoscopically shifting novel.... Yapa penetrates to the human connections and disconnections at play between the lines of history in the era of the global village.
Chicago Tribune
This furiously paced and contrapuntal literary tour-de-force makes use of multiple vantage points and benefits from a remarkably empathic sensibility on the part of its author.... With Yapa burrowing into the hearts of these characters, each distinct yet sufferers all, his already weighty story attains a level of profundity.
Miami Herald
Fast-paced and unflinching.... As these characters encounter one another in a fog of tear gas and pepper spray, Yapa vividly evokes rage and compassion. Underlying the novel, and at once reinforced and rejected, is the chief's mantra: "Care too much and the world will kill you cold.
Dallas Morning News
Yapa's novel is a much-needed and refreshing pivot point. His novel makes a case for the validity of all opinions in a conflict the better part of two decades old. This rare quality of his work is a practice that many could benefit from in current conflicts, foreign and domestic.
Denver Post
Sunil Yapa's voice and ambition leap off the page. Here is a writer to watch.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Fast-paced and unflinching.... As these characters encounter one another in a fog of tear gas and pepper spray, Yapa vividly evokes rage and compassion. Underlying the novel, and at once reinforced and rejected, is the chief's mantra: "Care too much and the world will kill you cold.
New Yorker
Yapa does a heroic job of journeying into the heart of this complex set of events, illustrating how they grow out of and impact the character's lives. And while the heart may be the size of a fist, here it paradoxically seems to encompass the whole world and all of its citizens, who pulse with its every beat.
Rumpus
[C]hilling.... Yapa shows great skill in...[building] a combustible environment, offering brief glimpses of the past to round out each character....[T]he author’s firm grasp of his story loosens a bit. But by the novel’s end, Yapa regains his stride.... [A] memorable, pulse-pounding literary experience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) In the years after Kent State and Rodney King but before the Black Lives Matter movement, the Battle of Seattle stands out as an example of poorly planned police response to public protest, and Yapa shines a blinding Maglite on the scene.... Yapa's writing is visceral and unsparing. Noteworthy, capital-I Important and a ripping read. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
[A] gripping debut.... Yapa is a skilled storyteller, revealing just enough about his characters and the direction of his plot to engage his readers, yet effectively building dramatic impact by withholding certain key details. In the style of Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, Yapa ties together seemingly disparate characters and narratives through a charged moment in history, showing how it still affects us all in different ways.
Booklist
Yapa's grasp of the pre-9/11 global diaspora is sound, and he's knowledgeable about the tactics that both protesters and law enforcement use against each other. But lacking much in the way of deep characterization...the novel is largely a parade of pat sentiments and facile contradictions.... The genre deserves a better revival effort than this.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Your Muscle Is the Size of a Fist … then take off on your own:
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist...and then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the characters. Do you see any "villains" or merely flawed individuals with complicated past? Which characters do you most sympathize with? Which ones are you least in sympathy with?
2. What are the individual, or personal, motivations for some of the protesters in attending the rally?
3. Discuss collective reasons for protesting the World Trade Organization meeting. What is the overall purpose of the protests?
4. In a BookPage interview, Yapa has said...
I...wanted readers to experience the politics and economics of IMF deals and World Bank loans, structural adjustments and austerity programs. All that stuff is very academic and kind of boring.
Does Yapa bring those esoteric, remote subjects to life in his book as he'd hoped to do? Does he put a human face on the issues?
5. At the heart of the protest, and the heart of the book, is the question, "what kind of a world do we want?" How do the characters attempt to answer that question? How do you answer it?
6. At what point does crowd psychology—the emotional impact of chanting, of linking arms, the exhilaration of togetherness—take over? What about the police, those charged with maintaining public order and safety? When does their fear and anger get out of hand? At what point do they overstep the bounds of rational behavior?
7. What does 19-year-old Victor learn about the power of belief in individual action? Can an individual make a difference?
8. Do you find the presence of Victor as the estranged stepson of Police Chief Bishop to be necessary to the development of the story...or does it feel like a gimmick?
9. Talk about the significance of the title. How does it relate to the storyline and characters?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)