Winter Street
Elin Hilderbrand, 2014
Little, Brown and Co.
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316376105
Summary
Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket's Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four grown children: Patrick, a hedge fund manager; Kevin, a bartender; Ava, a school teacher; and Bart, who has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.
As Christmas approaches, Kelley looks forward to spending the holidays with his family at the inn. But when he walks in on his wife Mitzi kissing another man, utter chaos descends, and things only get more interesting when Kelley's ex-wife, news anchor Margaret Quinn, arrives on the scene.
Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70
• Raised—Collegeville, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Hopkins University; University of Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Nantucket, Massachuestts
Elin Hilderbrand is an American writer of Summer beach read romance novels, some 20 in all. Her books have been set on and around Nantucket Island where she lives with her husband and three children.
Hilderbrand was born and raised in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. As a child, she spent summers on Cape Cod, "playing touch football at low tide, collecting sea glass, digging pools for hermit crabs, swimming out to the wooden raft off shore," until her father died in a plane crash when she was sixteen. She spent the next summer working—doing piecework in a factory that made Halloween costumes; she promised herself that the goal for the rest of her life would be that she would always have a real summer.
She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and became a teaching/writing fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 1993 she moved to Nantucket, took a job as "the classified ads girl" at a local paper, and later started writing.
Her first novels were published by St. Martin's Press. With A Summer Affair, published in 2008, she moved to Little, Brown and Company. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/11/2013.)
Book Reviews
Open this diverting tale of family dysfunction and you'll find a holiday package filled with humor, romance and realism.
USA Today
The whole island is looking forward to the annual Winter Street Inn Christmas party, except for the inn’s owner, Kelley Quinn, who's just discovered the hired Santa kissing his wife.... Hilderbrand’s...skill at creating character is present, but the plot feels constrained and a little predictable. A quick read to get you in the holiday mood, but not as strong as Hilderbrand’s best.
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.)
Strays
Jennifer Caloyeras, 2015
Ashland Creek Press
219 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781618220370
Summary
Sixteen-year-old Iris Moody has a problem controlling her temper, but then, she has a lot to be angry about. Dead mother. Workaholic father. Dumped by her boyfriend. Failing English.
When a note in Iris's journal is mistaken as a threat against her English teacher, she finds herself in trouble not only with school authorities but with the law.
In addition to summer school, dog-phobic Iris is sentenced to an entire summer of community service, rehabilitating troubled dogs. Iris believes she is nothing like Roman, the three-legged pit bull who is struggling to overcome his own dark past, not to mention the other humans in the program.
But when Roman's life is on the line, Iris learns that counting on the help of others may be the only way to save him.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 2, 1976
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz; M.A. California State University,
Los Angeles, M.F.A., University of British Columbia
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
She is the author of two young adult novels: Strays (2015) and Urban Falcon (2009). Her short stories have been published in Monday Night Literary, Wilde Magazine, Storm Cellar, and Booth. She has been a college instructor, elementary school teacher and camp counselor. She is the dog columnist for the Los Feliz Ledger and the Larchmont Ledger. (From the author.)
Jennifer is available for school visits and book club meetings.
Visit the author's website.
Follow Jennifer on Goodreads.
Book Reviews
One doesn't expect humor to evolve from such a serious theme; but, it does. One doesn't expect Strays to use the intersection of two fearful personalities to explore positive change and courage—yet, it does. And any who anticipate Strays to be a dog story alone may be disappointed only because it's so much more; it focuses equally on pet and person, and the situations that get them into trouble. Young adults who want a story of more than an animal rescue or a sixteen-year-old's angst will find Strays a compelling saga.
D. Donovan - Midwest Book Review
[A] source of comfort for angry teens.
Kirkus Reviews
[A]n engaging book about a journey of self-discovery that should inspire readers of all ages.
Bark Magazine
Strays is a quietly moving story about starting over, and the powerful bond that can form between animals and humans. Caloyeras’ prose is instantly captivating, and readers will feel for Iris’s agony and her pain. Iris is a multi-faceted character—as are the others we are introduced to throughout the story. These fully-realized individuals—both people and dogs—who populate the story are what really bring Strays to life.
Novel Novice
Strays is so much more than a story about a young, angry girl who learns to trust others and accept their help. It’s about grief, compassion, understanding and forgiveness.... Strays touched my heart and I would be willing to bet it will do the same for most people who read it.
Susan Barton - eBook Review Gal
[T]he reader can see the human-animal bond grow and enjoy Iris’s growth and turning points as well…a well-written story and a very enjoyable read.
Dianne Rich - Seattle pi
This is a sweet story about a girl and a dog and how hard it is to let go of the past in order to get on with the future. It’s a story about trust, redemption and acceptance [...] Readers young and old will appreciate this one.
Book Chatter
[T]he author did a great job capturing the human animal bond and this would be a great book to share with the young adults in your life.
Preston Speaks
Over the course of the book, Iris comes to terms with her mother’s death, learns how to reconnect with her father (thanks to court-appointed therapy), realizes that the quiet troublemaking boy in her new high school isn’t as much of a loser as her friends made him out to be and learns that facing your problems head-on is always better than ignoring them. I really enjoyed reading Strays and look forward to more novels by Jennifer Caloyeras.
Leigh-Ann Brodber at The Young Folks
I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Caloyeras captures the angst and discomfort of teenage years, especially for kids who have had a rough childhood. And she weaves into the story some very real dogs, each of whom has come from a punishing life. They are all strays of sorts. And there is hope for all of them.
Robin Lamont at The Hen House
Strays is a coming of age story that is as original as it is revealing with a heroine who is highly relatable. Author Jennifer Caloyeras' depiction of a young girl's struggles to find a way to move beyond her angst is a refreshingly honest tale which will appeal to readers of all ages. Caloyeras' comfortable writing style makes reading this book feel a bit like curling up with a fuzzy blanket. This book is highly recommended and has earned the Literary Classics Seal of Approval.
Literary Classics
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Iris was treated fairly by Ms. Schneider and the school when she gets into trouble taking her English final? Why or why not?
2. How does Roman and Iris’s relationship evolve throughout the story? Does Iris’s fear of dogs motivate or paralyze her? In what ways have you been motivated or paralyzed by fear?
3. Why do you think Perry structures her class around fairy tales? What fairy tale can you relate to your own life?
4. In what ways are the teens that participate in Ruff Rehabilitation similar to their dogs? In what ways are they different?
5. How does Perry’s selection of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber help Iris work through her relationship with Roman and help with grieving the loss of her mother?
6. Have you ever had a teacher like Perry? Or a teacher like Ms. Schneider? How can a teacher change your trajectory?
7. Describe Iris’s relationship with her father. How do you think her father would describe their relationship? How does their relationship change over the course of the novel?
8. How are Iris’s friendships tested throughout the novel?
9. Many of the characters in Strays have secrets. What are their secrets and how do they serve to help or hinder each character?
10. How has this novel changed your view on animals perceived as “dangerous”?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo, 2015
Henry Holt & Co.
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781627792127
Summary
Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker.
Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone...
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don't kill each other first. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Jerusalem, Israel
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in Hollywood, California, USA
Leigh Bardugo is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Shadow and Bone (2012) and Siege and Storm (2013). Ruin and Rising (2014) is the third installment in her Grisha Trilogy.
Six of Crows came out in 2015, which, although not yet announced, appears to be the first volume of a new series.
Leigh was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. She has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she’s lives and writes in Hollywood where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. (Adapted from the author's website .)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Bardugo reveals intriguing new depths and surprises. This has all the right elements to keep readers enthralled: a cunning leader..., nigh-impossible odds, ...skilled misfits, a twisty plot, and a nerve-wracking cliffhanger (Ages 12 & up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [W]ildly imaginative....[with] fully fleshed out, dynamic protagonists who will engage and enchant readers. What a thrill it is to return to the world [Bardugo] created with her popular Grisha Trilogy.... [U]unsettling, captivating, magical (Gr 7 & up). —Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This book can be fully enjoyed without having read any previous title. Great characters with complex backstories, dynamic relationships that show growth, and plenty of action to keep the pace lively. The criminal elements that pervade the story give a pleasantly gritty edge to it all. (Ages 15-18). —Stacey Hayman
VOYA
(Starred review.) Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.... Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family (Ages 14 & up).
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 Six of Crows:
1.. How do the characters—Kaz and his crew of five—differ from one another? Start, perhaps, with each one's defining characteristics; then consider...
♦ their individual motivations
♦ their skills (what talent each brings to the heist)
♦ their past histories
♦ how each views the society they live in, the job at hand, and one another.
2. To what extent do any of the characters grow or change by the end of the book? Do any (or all) reach a new level of maturity, gain insights, or find peace and redemption from their pasts?
3. Do you have any favorites within the Dregs? Is there one you relate to or sympathize with more than any of the others?
4. Six of Crows is set in the same world as Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy. If you've read any of the books in that trilogy, how does this one compare? If you haven't, was it hard to find your footing at first?
5. Did you enjoy the book's structure—a story told through five different characters? Do the differing voices progress seamlessly through the book, or does the storyline feel disjointed? Why might Bardugo have chosen to tell her story using different points of view?
6. Talk about the various loyalties and friendships that exist among and between crew members—there's Nina and Inej, as well as Jesper, Wylan, and Matthias.
7. What is going on between Nina and Matthias—do they love or hate one another? Or are their conflicted feelings flip sides of the same coin?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: What about the romance between Kaz and Inej? What does Inej mean when she says to Kaz, "I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all"? What are his feelings toward her?
9. Fantasy/dystopian literature is frequently a veiled allusion to the ills of contemporary, society, perhaps serving as a warning. What aspects of Ketterdam, though exaggerated, might be a reflection of our own 21st-century society?
10. Were you surprised by the twists and turns of the plot? Or did you "see it coming."
11. If Six of Crows is the first installment of a series, as most believe, will you be read the next volume?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Mrs. Engels
Gavin McCrea, 2015
Catapult
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936787296
Summary
Very little is known about Lizzie Burns, the illiterate Irishwoman and longtime lover of Frederick Engels, coauthor of The Communist Manifesto.
In Gavin McCrea’s first novel, the unsung Lizzie is finally given a voice that won’t be forgotten.
Lizzie is a poor worker in the Manchester, England, mill that Frederick owns. When they move to London to be closer to Karl Marx and family, she must learn to navigate the complex landscapes of Victorian society.
We are privy to Lizzie’s intimate, wry views on Marx and Engels’s mission to spur revolution among the working classes, and to her ambivalence toward her newly luxurious circumstances. Lizzie is haunted by her first love (a revolutionary Irishman), burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes, and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be cared for.
Yet despite or because of their profound differences, Lizzie and Frederick remain drawn to each other in this complex, high-spirited love story. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., M.A., University College, Dublin; M.A., Ph.D., University of East Anglia
• Currently—lives in the UK and Spain
Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978 and has since traveled widely, living in Japan, Belgium and Italy, among other places. He holds a BA and an MA from University College Dublin, and an MA and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. He currently divides his time between the UK and Spain. (From the author's website.)
McCrea on writing Mrs Engels: "I was lucky," he says. "I had a scholarship from the University of East Anglia that allowed me to put other work aside and immerse myself full time in this for a good two years. A lot of my research was into the nuts and bolts of what it would have been possible to say and do in 1870, within domestic space and outdoors."
About Lizzie Burns: "I thought long and hard about her being illiterate. I didn’t want that to impoverish her in some way. Every time she speaks, I didn’t want to think, Oh, this woman can’t read and write. I wanted to do the exact opposite. I wanted the liberties that she took with language to enrich her. (Both excerpts from Irish Times.com).
Book Reviews
Gavin McCrea is triumphant in his exuberant debut in creating Lizzie’s voice; she is dazzlingly convincing.
Antonia Senior - London Times
This is the best kind of historical fiction—oozing period detail, set in a milieu populated by famous figures and events about which much is known, but seen through the eyes of a central character who, due to her illiteracy, left no ready access to her experience in the form of letters or diary entries: a rich and accomplished first novel.
Lucy Scholes - Independent (UK)
This is an assured, beautifully written debut.
Mario Reading - Spectator (UK)
Ambitious and imaginative.... McCrea breathes real life into a historical character of whom we know next to nothing."
Daily Mail (UK)
McCrea’s novel, Mrs Engels, brings its historical characters to vivid and often—at least in Lizzie’s case—rambunctious life.... Clear-eyed, sardonic, self-deprecating, she is a strong literary heroine in the mould of the main characters of Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin and Anne Enright’s The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch.
Irish Times (UK)
A marginalized figure in the history books, the fictional Lizzie Burns is a marvelous creation: an illiterate Irish daughter of the Manchester slums whose withering deprecations cut a swathe through the self-
delusions and hypocrisies of the founding fathers of Communism.... Laugh-out-loud funny, touching and tender, and almost Dickensian in its physical descriptions of the Industrial Revolution’s worst excesses, Mrs Engels is a stunningly accomplished debut novel.
Irish Examiner (UK)
(Starred review.) McCrae gives the illiterate Lizzie a vivid, convincing voice, sparkling with energy and not untouched by pathos. Her sharp, pragmatic observations offer a human perspective on historical icons.... But the heart of the novel is the beautifully realized romance between Lizzie and Frederick.
Publishers Weekly
Through Lizzie's singular perspective, peppered with her wry observations, readers are treated to a backstage look at the domestic lives of the most public 19th-century revolutionaries and their families. While Lizzie's story exists only marginally in the historical record, first-time novelist McCrea brings her to life in this soulful work. —Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast
Library Journal
(Starred review.) First-novelist McCrea well captures Lizzie’s fiery temperament, vivid voice, and complicated relationship with Engels, whom she both longs to marry and longs to be free of. Moving, finely detailed, rife with full-bodied, humanizing portraits of historical icons, and told in striking prose, this is a novel to be savored.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Lizzie's voice—earthy, affectionate, and street-smart but also sly, unabashedly mercenary, and sometimes-scheming—grabs the reader from the first sentence.... Forget Marx and Engels.... For Lizzie (and McCrea), social mores trump politics, while individual loyalties and needs are what ultimately matter. Who knew reading about communists could be so much fun?
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 Secret Chord
Geraldine Brooks, 2015
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670025770
Summary
A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life of King David, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of People of the Book and March.
Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.
The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected.We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age.
Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans. (From the publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 14, 1955
• Raised—Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia
• Education—B.A., Sydney University; M.A. Columbia University (USA)
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Virginia, USA
Geraldine Brooks s an Australian American journalist and author whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While retaining her Australian passport, she became an United States citizen in 2002.
Early life
A native of Sydney, Geraldine Brooks grew up in its inner-west suburb of Ashfield, where she attended Bethlehem College, a secondary school for girls, and the University of Sydney.
Following graduation, she became a rookie reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and, after winning a Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship, moved to New York City in the United States, completing a Master's at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. The following year, she married American journalist Tony Horwitz in the Southern France village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup and converted to his religion, Judaism.
Career
As a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, with the stories from the Persian Gulf which she and her husband reported in 1990, receiving the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad." In 2006, she was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Brooks's first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over (1997), which won the Nita Kibble Literary Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.
Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, became an international bestseller. Set in 1666, the story depicts a young woman's battle to save fellow villagers as well as her own soul when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes her small Derbyshire village of Eyam.
Her next novel, March (2005), was inspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which her mother had given her. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002 as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls.
Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plow", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker, a month before March was published. The parallel novel was generally well received by the critics. It was selected in December 2005 selection by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year. In April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia. The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008.
Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, an achievement of the seventeenth century.
Her next work, The Secret Chord (2015) is a historical novel based on the life of the biblical King David in the period of the Second Iron Age.
Awards
2006 - Pulitzer Prize for March
2008 - Australian Publishers Association's Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book
2009 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
2010 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award
(From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/14/2015.)
Book Reviews
A page turner.... Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive...in [her]skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.
Alice Hoffman - Washington Post
There’s something bordering on the supernatural about Geraldine Brooks. She seems able to transport herself back to earlier time periods, to time travel. Sometimes, reading her work, she draws you so thoroughly into another era that you swear she’s actually lived in it. With sensory acuity and a deep and complex understanding of emotional states, she conjures up the way we lived then.... .Brooks has humanized the king and cleverly added a modern perspective to our understanding of him.... [Her] vision of the biblical world is enrapturing.
Boston Globe
Deeply sympathetic.... Brooks offers new perspectives on a character whose story has captured the Western imagination for millennia.... [S]he breaks from the biblical version by giving voice to the voiceless women in David’s life: wives and lovers, a daughter, a mother—the beloved and the scorned.
Chicago Tribune
The David that bursts off the page in this chronicle is a larger-than-life commixture of virtues and flaws.... I may be late to the party on the amazing Ms. Brooks, but The Secret Chord won me over. Its storytelling magic is as timeless as the tale it tells.
San Francisco Chronicle
Rich and imaginative.... Thanks to Brooks, David is as compelling as he is contradictory, with the writing in The Secret Chord as lyrical as the lyre that David plays.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
[A] deeply imaginative exploration of this once powerful but deeply flawed ruler.... Brooks is a gifted, engrossing storyteller. Like March and People of the Book, The Secret Chord is studded with action, interesting characters, sweeping timelines and moving scenes filled with drama and conflict.... [A] timely and universal exploration of the limits of loyalty, the seductive and corrupting influence of power, and the intersections between sin and faith, punishment and redemption.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A compelling read, contemporary in its relevance.... The Secret Chord is powerful storytelling, its landscape and time evoked in lyrical prose.
Guardian (UK)
The best historical fiction.... Brooks gives the whole king his due.... It’s a tall order to breathe life into such a human being, and she manages it admirably.
NPR
Brooks’s interest in religious commitment accrues rich rewards in this ambitious and psychologically astute novel about the harp-playing, psalm-singing King David of the bible.... [E]vents provide plenty of melodrama and considerable suspense.... [Told with] the verve of an adroit storyteller.
Publishers Weekly
Brooks has given us a portrait of a monarch who is despicable, heartless, and cruel and yet can inspire and reciprocate passionate love and fierce loyalty. The author's use of archaic language, including the Hebrew spelling of names...slows down the narrative, but her writing is insightful and impeccably researched. —Susan Santa, Syosset P.L., NY
Library Journal
[G]orgeously written....The language, clear and precise throughout, turns soaringly poetic when describing music or the glory of David’s city.... [T]aken as a whole, the novel feels simultaneously ancient, accessible, and timeless.
Booklist
"He was big enough, but no giant." With that gently dismissive allowance, spoken by the biblical King David, Brooks continues to explore the meaning of faith and religion in ordinary life.... A skillful reimagining of stories already well-known to any well-versed reader of the Bible gracefully and intelligently told.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Natan’s first prophecy spares him from certain death but also sets him apart from other men. Is his ability a gift or a curse?
2. How does David’s childhood inform your understanding of the man he will become?
3. What might it mean that God chose to bestow so much upon a man as imperfect as David?
4. Do you believe that some people are chosen to speak in God’s name? What role do prophets play in the events of man?
5. Would David make a good leader today? Why or why not?
6. What is David’s worst crime? His greatest achievement?
7. Which of David’s wives do you believe suffered the most at his hands? Did he love Yonatan more than any of them? If so, why might that be?
8. How well does Geraldine Brooks capture David’s era and his essence?
9. David is a man driven by passion and violence, but he loves God with equal fervor. How would you explain this?
10. Are you familiar with the psalms attributed to David? If so, do you have a favorite?
11. What might David have done if he had known that Natan was hiding what he knew about his sons’ futures? Would David hesitate to kill Natan if he felt the prophet had betrayed him?
12. What is the nature of Natan’s feelings toward David? Would you be able to serve a man like him?
13. What is “the secret chord”? Why did Brooks choose this phrase as the novel’s title?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)