Dietland
Sarai Walker, 2015
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544704831
Summary
The diet revolution is here. And it’s armed.
Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse.
With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girls’ magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Only then can her true life as a thin person finally begin.
But when Plum notices she’s being followed by a mysterious woman in colorful tights and combat boots, she finds herself falling down a rabbit hole into the world of Calliope House, a community of women who live life on their own terms. Reluctant but intrigued, Plum agrees to a series of challenges that force her to deal with the real costs of becoming “beautiful.”
At the same time, a dangerous guerilla group begins to terrorize a world that mistreats women, and as Plum grapples with her own personal struggles, she becomes entangled in a sinister plot. The consequences are explosive.
Part coming-of-age story, part revenge fantasy, Dietland is a bold, original, and funny debut novel that takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality, and our weight loss obsession—from the inside out, and with fists flying. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Rasied—States of Utah and California, USA
• Education—M.A., Bennington College; Ph.D., University of London
• Currently—lives in New York City area
Sarai Walker received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Bennington College. As a magazine writer, her articles appeared in national publications, including Seventeen and Mademoiselle. She subsequently served as an editor and writer for Our Bodies, Ourselves, before moving to London and then Paris to complete a Ph.D. She currently lives in the New York City area. Dietland is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
In her words:
First things first: My first name is pronounced sa-RAY, not Sarah or sa-RYE or Sari or Sherry or Sarie or Sierra.
I'm a writer and part-time English professor living in the New York City area.
I grew up in California and Utah. Fun fact: In high school, my short story “Pink Champagne” won first place in Sassy magazines’s fiction contest.
I moved to NYC to attend college and began writing for women's and teen magazines such as Mademoiselle and Seventeen. [At Seventeen, I liked to look up Sylvia Plath’s articles in the archives.] I moved to London for a year, earned a master’s degree in English, then moved back to NYC and continued writing for magazines and living the glamorous life of an office temp in the publishing industry.
In my late twenties, I moved to Boston to do other things, including working as a writer at Harvard and then working as a writer and editor on the 2005 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. During this time, I also earned an M.F.A. in creative writing and literature from Bennington College.
In my early thirties, I sold almost all of my belongings and moved to London to complete a Ph.D. in English at the University of London. I actually lived in Bloomsbury during much of my time in London. Yes, Bloomsbury. I now have a fancy title and a lot of student loans. During my Ph.D., I spent periods of time living in Paris, and used to speak French pretty well, but now I’ve lost most of it. I wrote most of Dietland while living in Europe.
My Ph.D. research focused on normative femininity of the body; the fat female body; consciousness-raising and the "personal is political" in feminist practice and as a literary aesthetic; American second-wave feminist history and fiction; "chick lit"; critical theory, particularly Michel Foucault. I read a lot of amazing books during my Ph.D., but if I had to choose the one that influenced me the most, I’d choose this one.
I’ve recently begun work on my second novel. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Walker’s first novel leaves chick lit in the pixie dust, treading the rougher terrain of radical critique and shadowy conspiracies — territory closer to Rachel Kushner than Helen Fielding
New York Magazine
If Amy Schumer turned her subversive feminist sketches into a novel, dark on the inside but coated with a glossy, palatable sheen, it would probably look a lot like Dietland—a thrilling, incendiary manifesto disguised as a beach read...It’s a giddy revenge fantasy that will shake up your thinking and burrow under your skin, no matter its size. (Grade A.)
Entertainment Weekly
I've never dropped anyone out of a helicopter. But Dietland resonated with the part of me that wants, just once, to deck a street harasser. At the very least, I wish an incurable itch upon everyone who has catcalled me on the street. I wish food poisoning and public embarrassment on everyone I've heard make a rape joke. I wish toothache and headlice and too-small shoes upon every stranger who has told me to smile. Which is to say, sometimes I forget I'm angry, but I am. Dietland is a complicated, thoughtful, and powerful expression of that same anger.
Annalisa Quinn - NPR.org
Plum Kettle, a ghostwriter for a popular teen mag, is lured into a subversive sisterhood in this riotous first novel. Finally, the feminist murder mystery/makeover story we’ve been waiting for.
Oprah Magazine
[Ms. Walker's] writing can spit with venom, at the rigid expectations of women’s weight and sexuality...As a social commentary, Dietland is no shrill tirade. Ms. Walker captures the misery of failing to fit in, to fit into the right clothes, to fit in with the right people and their expectations.
Economist
At 300 lbs., Plum Kettle lives for the days when gastric bypass will help her shed her extra girth—until she's challenged to shed her misery instead. Witty and wise.
People
Sarai Walker deftly marries body insecurities and humor in her satirical debut. At 300 pounds, Plum declares a diet fail and concedes to weight-loss surgery. But when she meets a radical feminist, she begins to try on confidence for size.
US Weekly
[Dietland’s] message resonates…It’s vanishingly rare to see a novel that looks like the much-maligned "chick lit"—and sometimes reads like it—so gleefully censorious of rape culture… If you’ve lived in this culture—if you’ve ever been a young woman who is trying to eat so little or eat so much that she disappears…you may take some cold comfort from Dietland, and its opportunities for vicarious revenge.
Guardian (UK)
In a confident, daring first novel, Sarai Walker mixes satire and mystery as she holds a magnifying glass over Western culture's objectification of the female gender. The result is combustion of enormously entertaining and thought-provoking proportion...Walker's brazen approach to Dietland carries a strength that will ignite readers' passionate responses. The novel is unflinchingly blunt, depicting raw emotion and uncomfortable realities. Walker writes beautifully, with natural dialogue and powerful characters. Her first-rate entrance into fiction is sure to spark the conversation she--and Plum--feel their audience needs to have."
Shelf Awareness
(Starred review.) Plum Kettle likes living under the radar—pretty hard to do when you're 300 pounds or so.... But someone's onto her—someone who pushes back against Plum's efforts to be invisible, who anonymously leaves Plum a book that challenges all she's ever thought to be true about women and weight loss. —Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY
Library Journal
Through her protagonist, debut novelist Walker gives a plaintive yet powerful voice to anyone who has struggled with body image, feelings of marginalization, and sexual manipulation. Her robust satire also vibrantly redefines what it means to be a woman in contemporary society.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Hilarious, surreal, and bracingly original, Walker's ambitious debut avoids moralistic traps to achieve something rarer: a genuinely subversive novel that's also serious fun.... Part Fight Club, part feminist manifesto, an offbeat and genre-bending novel that aims high—and delivers.
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 talking points to start a discussion for Dietland:
1. In an NPR interview, Sarai Walker said that fat bodies are "politicized bodies."
I don't mean political in terms of a political party; I mean structures of power—certain people having power and privilege. And so Plum comes to realize that her fat body, the mistreatment she receives because of it, is a political issue.
What exactly does Walker mean? Do thin people have more prestige than fat people; are fat people less empowered? Do you agree with her?
2. How does Plum allow her body size to determine her identity? Is that common for most of us, men as well as women? Consider this statement by the author, in same the NPR interview:
I think young girls are taught from a very young age—there's a lot of emphasis placed on "You look pretty," "You look cute." ... [A] tremendous amount of your value and your worth as a person is how you look.... [I]f we just look at our culture—we look at advertisements, we look at magazines, TV shows, movies—I mean that's really what's in our face all the time.
3. Talk about the ways in which Plum changes by the novel's end?
4. Do you consider Dietland a feminist novel? Is it a serious novel? Why or why not? Is Walker's message: "accept your body size and move on"? Or is it something, well, more subversive? Does humor make a difference in the book's seriousness (or lack of it)?
5. Other than appearance and body size, what else does Walker's satire take aim at in this book?
6. What part, if any, of Dietland resonates with you personally?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen*, 2015
Grove / Atlantic
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802124944
Summary
Winner, 2016 Pulitizer Prize
Winner, 2016 Edgar Award
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country.
The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.
A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today. (From the publisher.)
*Pronounced "when" with a slight "ng" at the onset.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam
• Raised—Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; San Jose, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize; Edgar Award (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Viet Than Nguyen (Pronounced "when" with a slight "ng" at the onset.) was born in Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam. He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family and was initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, one of four such camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, he moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until 1978.
Seeking better economic opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, San Jose had not yet been transformed by the Silicon Valley economy, and was in many ways a rough place to live, at least in the downtown area where Viet’s parents worked. He commemorates this time in his short story “The War Years” (TriQuarterly 135/136, 2009).
Education and teaching
Viet attended St. Patrick School and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. After high school, he briefly attended UC Riverside and UCLA before settling on UC Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in English.
After getting his degree, Viet moved to Los Angeles for a teaching position at the University of Southern California, and has been there ever since.
Writing
Viet's short fiction has been published in Manoa, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Chicago Tribune, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
He has written a collection of short stories and an academic book called Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, which is the critical bookend to a creative project whose fictional bookend is The Sympathizer (2015). Nothing Ever Dies examines how the so-called Vietnam War has been remembered by many countries and people, from the US to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea, across literature, film, art, museums, memorials, and monuments.
Name
People not familiar with Vietnamese culture sometimes have a hard time pronouncing Viet's surname. The Anglicization of Nguyen leads to further issues. Is it pronounced Noo-yen? Or Win? It’s never pronounced Ne-goo-yen. The Win version is closer to the Vietnamese and seems to be the favored choice for Vietnamese Americans.
Recognition
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Winner of the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2015-2016 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (Adult Fiction)
Finalist for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award
Finalist for the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
Named a Best Book of the Year on more than twenty lists, including the New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post
(Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The great achievement of The Sympathizer is that it gives the Vietnamese a voice and demands that we pay attention. Until now, it's been largely a one-sided conversation—or at least that's how it seems in American popular culture…[where] we've heard about the Vietnam War mostly from the point of view of American soldiers, American politicians and American journalists. We've never had a story quite like this one before…[Nguyen] has a great deal to say and a knowing, playful, deeply intelligent voice. His novel is a spy thriller, a philosophical exploration, a coming-of-age tale, the story of what it's like to be an immigrant, to be part-Asian, to be the illegitimate child of a forbidden liaison. It's about being forced to hide yourself under so many layers that you're not sure who you are…There are so many passages to admire. Mr. Nguyen is a master of the telling ironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22-style absurdities…[Nguyen] undercuts horror with humor and then swings it back around.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times
[R]emarkable…Nguyen…brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light. But this tragicomic novel reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate more universal themes: the eternal misconceptions and misunderstandings between East and West, and the moral dilemma faced by people forced to choose not between right and wrong, but right and right. The nameless protagonist-narrator, a memorable character despite his anonymity, is an Americanized Vietnamese with a divided heart and mind. Nguyen's skill in portraying this sort of ambivalent personality compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene and le Carré.
Philip Caputo - New York Times Book Review
[A] dark and exciting debut novel.... The Sympathizer starts with the fall of Saigon in 1975, depicting the corrupt jockeying for places on the departing planes. It’s a frenzied, abrasive, attention-grabbing overture.... Excoriating ironies abound.... Black humor seeps through these pages.
Wall Street Journal
Extraordinary.... Surely a new classic of war fiction.... [Nguyen] has wrapped a cerebral thriller around a desperate expat story that confronts the existential dilemmas of our age... Laced with insight on the ways nonwhite people are rendered invisible in the propaganda that passes for our pop culture.... I haven’t read anything since Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably how a patient tyrant, unmoored from all humane constraint, can reduce a man’s mind to liquid.
Washington Post
Stunned, amazed, impressed. [The Sympathizer is] so skillfully and brilliantly executed that I cannot believe this is a first novel. (I should add jealous to my emotions.) Upends our notions of the Vietnam novel.
Chicago Tribune
The Sympathizer reads as part literary historical fiction, part espionage thriller and part satire. American perceptions of Asians serve as some of the book’s most deliciously tart commentary.... Nguyen knows of what he writes.
Los Angeles Times
Sparkling and audacious.... Unique and startling.... Nguyen’s prose is often like a feverish, frenzied dream, a profuse and lively stream of images sparking off the page.... Nguyen can be wickedly funny.... [His] narrator has an incisive take on Asian-American history and what it means to be a nonwhite American...this remarkable, rollicking read by a Vietnamese immigrant heralds an exciting new voice in American literature
Seattle Times
Welcome a unique new voice to the literary chorus.... [The Sympathizer] is, among other things, a character-driven thriller, a political satire, and a biting historical account of colonization and revolution. It dazzles on all fronts.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The novel’s best parts are painful, hilarious exposures of white tone-deafness...[the] satire is delicious.
New Yorker
A dark, funny—and Vietnamese—look at the Vietnam War.... The novel is rife with insight and criticism—and importantly...the perspective of a Vietnamese person during and after the war.
All Things Considered, NPR
This debut is a page-turner (read: everybody will finish) that makes you reconsider the Vietnam War (read: everyone will have an opinion).... Nguyen’s darkly comic novel offers a point of view about American culture that we’ve rarely seen.
Oprah.com
(Starred review.) [A]stonishing....a lively, wry first-person narrator called the Captain...[navigates] the fall of Saigon.... [As] Vietnamese exiles settle uncomfortably in an America....the Captain is forced to incriminate others.... Nguyen’s novel enlivens debate about history and human nature....poignant, often mirthful....
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Ultimately a meditation on war, political movements, America's imperialist role, the CIA, torture, loyalty, and one's personal identity, this is a powerful, thought-provoking work. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Nguyen’s cross-grained protagonist exposes the hidden costs in both countries of America’s tragic Asian misadventure. Nguyen’s probing literary art illuminates how Americans failed in their political and military attempt to remake Vietnam—but then succeeded spectacularly in shrouding their failure in Hollywood distortions. Compelling—and profoundly unsettling.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A closely written novel of after-the-war Vietnam, when all that was solid melted into air. As Graham Greene and Robert Stone have taught us, on the streets of Saigon, nothing is as it seems.... Both chilling and funny, and a worthy addition to the library of first-rate novels about the Vietnam War.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll include publisher questions if they're made available. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to kick start a discussion for The Sympathizer:
1. What does the narrator mean when he tells us, "I am a man of two minds"? How does this statement reverberate throughout the book?
2. Comparisons of this work have been made to Joseph Heller's Catch-22, an absurdist take on World War II. Nguyen includes similar satire in The Sympathizer. One such example is this statement::
It was a smashingly successful cease-fire, for in the last two years only 150,000 soldiers had died. Imagine how many would have died without a truce!
Can you find other examples where the author employs similar satiric wit? What affect does such a stylistic device have on your reading? Does the black humor lessen the horror of the war, or draw more attention to it?
3. Talk about the conclusion of the book, which many describe as shattering. Was it so for you? How has the narrator been changed by his experiences? What has he come to learn about himself, his culpability, his identify, the war, America and Vietnam?
4. The narrator says that the war in Vietnam "was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors." What does he mean by that? What do you know (or remember) about the war—and how did you come to know it? How does point of view, who does the telling, alter one's understanding of history?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution Thanks.)
An Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir, 2015
Penguin Young Readers
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781595148032
Summary
An Ember in the Ashes, is the first book in an exhilarating fantasy adventure series about the power of hope in the face of oppression.
Debut novelist Sabaa Tahir tells the thrilling, heart-wrenching story of two unforgettable characters willing to sacrifice everything for the chance to write their own destinies.
In a world inspired by ancient Rome and defined by brutality, seventeen-year old Laia has grown up with one rule for survival: Never challenge the Empire.
But when Laia’s brother Darin is arrested for treason, she leaves behind everything she knows, risking her life to try and save him. She enlists help from the rebels whose extensive underground network may lead to Darin. Their help comes with a price, though. Laia must infiltrate the Empire’s greatest military academy as a spy.
Elias is the Empire’s finest soldier—and its most unwilling one. Since childhood, he has trained to become one of the Masks, deadly fighters who ravage and destroy in the name of the Empire. But Elias is secretly planning a dangerous escape from the very tyranny he has sworn to enforce.
Thrown together by chance and united by their hatred of the Empire, Laia and Elias will soon discover that their fates are intertwined—and that their choices may change the destiny of the entire Empire. (From the publisher.)
This is the first book in the series. The second is A Torch Against the Night.
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—London, England (UK)
• Raised—Mojave Desert, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Los Angeles
• Currently—lives in Bay Area of San Francisco, California
Sabaa Tahir was born in London, England, but raised in a small outpost in California's Mojave Desert. She is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants who own a small 18-room motel at a U.S. military base. Growing up, Tahir was an outcast among her peers—the butt of bullying and taunts that she and her family should "go back to where they came from." That childhood experience of exclusion had a profound affect on Tahir's worldview.
Tahir left the desert at 17 to attend the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and after graduation took a job as a copy editor at the Washington Post. It was while working at the Post that she came across a news item that inspired her to write. A group of Pakistani women in the Indian-occupied region of Kashmir had lost all the men in their families. Husbands, sons, and fathers—all were taken away by the occupying forces; they disappeared without a clue as to where they were being held or what was happening to them.
That's the world we live in, Tahir realized. There was nothing she could do. Yet in her imagination, she could do something: she could create a world in which thse oppressed could fight back. Out of that kernel, and after years writing and rewriting, came her first book, An Ember in the Ashes. The book is the first in a planned series and is already optioned for film. The second book, released in 2016, is A Torch Against the Night.
During the first book's creation, Tahir left the Washington Post, moved back to California with her husband, gave birth to two children, and continued writing. The family now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Adapted from Entertainment Weekly and other sources. Retrieved 9/6/2016.)
Book Reviews
Tahir's exploration of the many ways in which we fall prey to one another, and to ourselves, strengthens the fiber of this action-driven book…There's a duality at work in An Ember in the Ashes: The novel thrusts its readers into a world marred by violence and oppression, yet does so with simple prose that can offer moments of loveliness in its clarity. This complexity makes Ember a worthy novel—and one as brave as its characters.
Marie Rutkoski - New York Times
This novel is a harrowing, haunting reminder of what it means to be human—and how hope might be kindled in the midst of oppression and fear.
Washington Post
This epic fantasy set in the Martial Empire has it all: danger and violence, secrets and lies, strong characters and forbidden romance and a touch of the supernatural.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fast-paced, well-structured and full of twists and turns, An Ember in the Ashes is an evocative debut that has left me invested in knowing what happens next.
NPR
Sabaa Tahir spins a captivating, heart-pounding fantasy.
Us Weekly
An Ember in the Ashes mixes The Hunger Games with Game of Thrones...and adds a dash of Romeo and Juliet.
Hollywood Reporter
Blew me away...This book is dark, complex, vivid, and romantic—expect to be completely transported.
MTV.com
Once you get caught up in the story, it’s addictive, and there’s no way you can put it down before you figure out what happens to the characters you have fallen for over the course of the 400 some-odd pages. So I didn’t.
Bustle
One thing I can say for sure: this is a page-turner. There comes a moment when it's impossible to put it down. Sabaa Tahir is a strong writer, but most of all, she's a great storyteller.
Huffington Post
(Starred review.) Tahir’s deft, polished debut alternates between two very different perspectives on the same brutal world, deepening both in the contrast.... [A] tale brimming with political intrigue and haunted by supernatural forces.... [Age 14 & up.]
Publishers Weekly
Tahir's world-building is wonderfully detailed and the setting is an unusual one for fantasy novels. All of her characters, even minor ones, are fully realized..... The author doesn't pull any punches; her descriptions of torture, punishment, and battle are graphic and brutal, and her realistic depictions of the treatment of slaves include rape and physical abuse. [Gr 9 & up.] —Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ
School Library Journal
Readers may wince at the cruelty of the trials, which pose friend against friend, and require the competitors to kill others. The trials seem repetitive at times, and the heroics sometimes impossible. A fair amount of double crossing adds to the tension, but the ending is unexpectedly satisfying. [Ages 12-18.]
VOYA
Predictably, action, intrigue, bloodshed and some pounding pulses follow; there's betrayal and a potential love triangle or two as well. Sometimes-lackluster prose and a slight overreliance on certain kinds of sexual violence as a threat only slightly diminish...[this] truly engaging if not fully fleshed-out fantasy world. [Ages 13 & up.]
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available. In the meantime, consider using these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for An Ember in the Ashes...then take off on your own:
1. The setting in An Ember in the Ashes is reminiscent of ancient Rome. Talk about the society, particularly it's slavery and the way that practice undermines a civilization's humanity.
2. Does the Sabaa Tahir flesh out her characters fully? Or do some seem undeveloped, overly cruel, even cartoonish perhaps? What kind of character is Elias, for instance, and why does he want to run away? Here is a child of privilege and yet he is unhappy with the way things are. What changes his mind?
3. Tahir uses multiple points of view, including that of the cruel headmistress of the military school. What does it feel like to see from her perpective? Does it change your attitude toward her character?
4. How and why is violence turned against the members of the empire, making them, in a way, victims of their own society.
5. And what about the violence. Does its frequent use in the novel inure you to it (do you become used to it), or are you continually repulsed by the brutality? Is the use of violence gratuitous, perhaps? Or is it purposeful in furthering the plot and building an overarching sense of dread?
6. Comparisons have inevitably been made to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones. What do you think?
7. What is the significance of the book's title?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Why LA? Pourquoi Paris? An Artistic Pairing of Two Iconic Cities
Diane Ratican, 2014
Benna Books
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780991131501
Summary
This unique book is about exploring Paris and Los Angeles, a mixing and pairing of yesterday and today, the monumental and the everyday, the people and things, all shared through text and illustrations that tell the stories of these two very different, yet similar, cities.
For the first time, the cities of Los Angeles and Paris are illustrated in parallel. Why LA? Pourquoi Paris? represents a visionary approach to a comparative study of two major, contemporary metropolises. As a long-time resident of both cities and a successful entrepreneur, author Diane Ratican curates visual pairings of Los Angeles and Paris with a newfound appreciation for their similarities, differences and eccentricities.
Why LA? Pourquoi Paris? features full-color illustrations by famed artists Eric Giriat (Paris) and Nick Lu (Los Angeles), highlighting the Yin-Yang relationship of everyday life between two of the world’s great cities. Primarily an art book, this visual publication playfully “connects the dots” between respective architectural icons, historical legends, fashion trends, and cultural peculiarities.
With the added benefit of historic information, cultural trivia, and a guide to the author’s favorite “addresses,” Why LA? Pourquoi Paris? is a unique visual guide for visitors to Los Angeles and/or Paris who want to experience the cultural milieu of these two distinguished cities.
Author Bio
It is as though there was never a time I did not love Paris. The minute I arrived and got a glimpse of the cityscape, I knew that I was born to be there. I am able to experience the privilege of a lifetime in being who I am―and this awareness has brought bliss to my life in Los Angeles, created a harmony between the two cities, and opened doors I didn't know existed.
Diane Ratican, educated at University of California Berkeley in History and Sociology, then at UCLA with a Masters in Sociology and Education, started her career educating gifted children, and then moved on to become a risk-taking entrepreneur. This background uniquely prepared her to engage in this latest endeavor, as writer, conjuror of images, and artistic director.
Sharing her enchantment with, and knowledge of, both Los Angeles and Paris has become a complex project with all the depth and nuances of a richly textured tapestry. As an entrepreneur, Ratican built a highly successful business importing children's clothing from France for upscale retailers across the U.S.
Ratican's excitement and infatuation with Paris, her second home, plus her enthusiasm for her resident city, Los Angeles, uniquely positions her to engage readers to develop their own love affair of both these dynamic destinations. Ratican is a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother living in Pasadena, California. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Diane on Facebook.
Book Reviews
In this travel guide and visual ode to the two cosmopolitan cities, Ratican....celebrates the [two] cities' shared qualities as iconic birthplaces of cinema and excellence in cuisine.... Illustrators Giriat and Lu not only capture the author's joyous esteem for her subjects, but steal the show with their whimsical pop-art illustration depicting famed locales and various ephemera.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. What is the books message? What was the author’s purpose in creating the book?
2. What did you think of the style, design and use of art to talk about the similarities and differences between Paris and Los Angeles?
3. How did the author use pairings to tell the story? Is one picture worth a thousand words?
4. How did you feel about the author’s use of quotes to connect the pairs?
Why do you think the author used quotes? What was your favorite quote/quotes?
5. What criteria do you think the author had in mind in selecting the “pairs” for the book?
6. How would you review the book?
7. What was your favorite pairing and why?
8. What was your favorite illustration and why?
9. Was there a personal connection to any part of the book that triggered a memory from the past or created a future fantasy?
10. What new things did you learn about LA or Paris and do you now have a desire to visit or revisit either city?
11. What emotions did you feel while reading the book and seeing the art work?
12. If you could ask the author one question, what would it be?
13. If you could ask the artist on question, what would it be?
14. What did you like best about the book?
15. If you could change something about the book, what would it be?
16. Give examples of how this book is a travel book, art book, or personal journey of the author.
(Questions issued courtesy of the author.)
Wolf Winter
Cecilia Ekback, 2015
Weinstein Publishing
376 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781602862944
Summary
"Wolf winter," she said, her voice small. "I wanted to ask about it. You know, what it is."
He was silent for a long time. "It’s the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal," he said. "Mortal and alone."
Swedish Lapland, 1717. Maija, her husband Paavo and her daughters Frederika and Dorotea arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land.
Above them looms Blackasen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow.
While herding the family’s goats on the mountain, Frederika happens upon the mutilated body of one of their neighbors, Eriksson. The death is dismissed as a wolf attack, but Maija feels certain that the wounds could only have been inflicted by another man.
Compelled to investigate despite her neighbors’ strange disinterest in the death and the fate of Eriksson’s widow, Maija is drawn into the dark history of tragedies and betrayals that have taken place on Blackasen. Young Frederika finds herself pulled towards the mountain as well, feeling something none of the adults around her seem to notice.
As the seasons change, and the "wolf winter," the harshest winter in memory, descends upon the settlers, Paavo travels to find work, and Maija finds herself struggling for her family’s survival in this land of winter-long darkness. As the snow gathers, the settlers' secrets are increasingly laid bare. Scarce resources and the never-ending darkness force them to come together, but Maija, not knowing who to trust and who may betray her, is determined to find the answers for herself.
Soon, Maija discovers the true cost of survival under the mountain, and what it will take to make it to spring. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Hudiksvall, Sweden
• Education—M.A., University of London
• Currently—lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Cecilia Ekback was born in Sweden in a small northern town. Her parents come from Lapland.
After university she specialised in marketing. Over twenty years her work for a multinational took her to Russia, Germany, France, Portugal, the Middle East and the UK.
In 2010, she finished a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway of the University of London. She now lives in Calgary with her husband and twin daughters, "returning home" to the landscape and the characters of her childhood in her writing. Wolf Winter is her first novel and she is at work on her second. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Swedish Lapland of 1717 is evoked so vividly that it seeps into your bones… A highly intelligent piece of historical Scandi-noir.
Times (UK)
A compelling, suspenseful story.
Sunday Times (UK)
This story of the struggle for survival of a family of Finnish settlers in Swedish Lapland in the early 18th Century is not for the faint hearted. The writer creates a convincing atmosphere of a very strange time in a very strange land... The details of how these people survive in an extraordinary landscape stays with you long after you have finished reading.
Daily Mail (UK)
Wolf Winter eminently repays reading for the beauty of its prose, its strange, compelling atmosphere and its tremendous evocation of the stark, dangerous, threatening place, which exists in the far north and in the hearts of all of us.”
Melanie McGrath - Guardian (UK)
In Wolf Winter, Swede Cecilia Ekback (writing in English) provides something fresh: for a start, a period setting (Swedish Lapland in 1717) and a haunting poetic strain not found elsewhere in the genre, except perhaps in the novels of Johan Theorin…. Highly individual fare.
Barry Forshaw - Financial Times (UK)
Wolf Winter is an absorbing and impressive debut from an author who I look forward to reading again.
Globe and Mail (Canada)
Ekback keeps the historical setting vivid and laced with pertinent details, but her characters are multifaceted… There is nothing quaint about Ekback’s 18th century Sweden, which is full of political gaming at all levels, and a landscape that seems bent on killing anyone who commits to living on it. Ekback could certainly follow up with a sequel, but with her balance of fine prose and clever plotting, I hope she ventures into different times and characters, as I’m excited to see her range.
National Post (Canada)
Wolf Winter is richly atmospheric and vivid. The cold is beyond imagining, as is the enveloping dark and the terrible hunger as stores diminish. Inevitably, Wolf Winter will be compared with Hannah Kent's remarkable Burial Rites. Ekback, however, has achieved something different. Wolf Winter is an historical crime mystery in the Nordic noir tradition, which chills as it impresses.
Anna Creer - Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Ekback is at her best when describing the harsh, unforgiving land and the family’s unending battle with nature.
Jordan Foster - Strand Magazine
Swedish-born Cecilia Ekback’s debut novel is a real page-turner. Similar to Stephen King’s writing style and imagination, the novel, which is set in 1717 Lapland, takes us on an exhilarating journey (4 stars).
Ok! Magazine (UK)
Ekback does a good job depicting a terrifying snowstorm, the conflicting cultures of settlers and Lapps, and the endless winter darkness. But the novel also contains a disorienting mix of obsolete words..., realistic glimpses of pioneer hardships, and far-fetched plot devices.
Publishers Weekly
Swedish-born debut author Ekback writes with deliberate pacing and immerses the reader in the endless snowfall of winter with her hypnotic prose. —Emily Byers
Library Journal
Ekback takes readers on a journey to Swedish Lapland in 1717, a harsh and unforgiving place where the supernatural bleeds over into the difficult lives of the few settlers.... Ekback's straightforward prose lacks nuance, but her....snapshot of life...where simply staying alive is a victory, proves irresistible.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. To what extent does landscape affect the behavior of the characters in Wolf Winter?
2. There are three narrators in this story: Maija, Frederika, and the priest. How do their narrative styles differ?
3. Women are at the center of this story. Given the period in which the book is set, their agency is limited. How easy is it for a modern reader to accept this?
4. How wold you characterize the relationship between Maija and Frederika?
5. Jutta, Maija's grandmother, appears to her. What role does she play?
6. Why is Maija so hostile to Frederika's gifts?
7. What role do animals—real and imagined—play in this story?
8. Other older belief systems lie very close to the surface of peoples' lives in Blackasen Mountain. how does the Church attempt to control and manipulate them for its own end?
10. Cecilia Ekback has described a "Wolf Winter" as a moment in our lives when we confront our very darkest thoughts. How do the three main characters emerge from their Wolf Winters?
11. What do you imagine lies in store for the priest?
12. When Maija's husband returns (we may assume he does), how might their relationship have changed?
13. Each of the settlers has brought with them to their new homes on Blackasen Mountain the burdens of their past. What impact do the events in the book have on them?
14. What lies behind Elin Eriksson's actions?
15. The Lapps lead their lives largely in parallel to the settlers. What happens when the two communities come together?
16. Why does Maija persist in her inquiries?
17. Do you think the priest is a moral, immoral, or amoral agent in the story?
18. Why do you think the other settlers regard Maija as a threat?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)