At the Water's Edge
Sara Gruen, 2015
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385523233
Summary
A gripping and poignant love story about a privileged young woman’s awakening as she experiences the devastation of World War II in a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands.
After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year’s Eve party in Philadelphia in 1944, Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war.
When Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the Colonel’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster—Maddie reluctantly follows them across the Atlantic, leaving her sheltered world behind.
The trio find themselves in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands, where the locals have nothing but contempt for the privileged interlopers. Maddie is left on her own at the isolated inn, where food is rationed, fuel is scarce, and a knock from the postman can bring tragic news. Yet she finds herself falling in love with the stark beauty and subtle magic of the Scottish countryside.
Gradually she comes to know the villagers, and the friendships she forms with two young women open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears: the values she holds dear prove unsustainable, and monsters lurk where they are least expected.
As she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, Maddie becomes aware not only of the dark forces around her, but of life’s beauty and surprising possibilities. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Vancouver, Canada
• Raised—London, Ontario
• Education—Carleton University (Ottawa)
• Currently—lives in western North Carolina
Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants and Riding Lessons. She lives in western North Carolina with her husband, three sons, and a menagerie of rescued animals. (From the publisher.)
More
Sara Gruen is a Canadian-born author, whose books deal greatly with animals; she is a supporter of numerous charitable organizations that support animals and wildlife.
Gruen moved to the U.S. from Canada in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. A devoted animal lover, her first novel, Riding Lessons (2004), explored the intimate and often healing spaces between people and animals and was a USA Today bestseller. She wrote a second novel, Flying Changes (2005), also about horses.
Although her first two novels sold several hundred thousands of copies—and Riding Lessons was a best seller—her third release, Water for Elephants, was initially turned down by her publisher at the time, forcing Gruen to find another publisher. That book, of course, went on to become one of the top-selling novels of our time. Readers fell in love with its story of Jacob, the young man tossed by fate onto a rickety circus train that was home to Rosie, the untrainable elephant. This #1 New York Times bestseller has been printed in 44 languages and the movie version (2011) stars Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, and Robert Pattinson.
Gruen sold her fourth novel, Ape House (2010), on the basis of a 12-page summary to Random House, which won that and another of her novels in a bidding war with 8 other publishers. Ape House features the amazing Bonobo ape. When a number of apes are kidnapped from a language laboratory, their mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about these animals who share 99.4% of our DNA.
Gruen has had a life-long fascination with human-ape discourse, with a particular interest in Bonobo apes. She has studied linguistics and a system of lexigrams in order to communicate with apes, and is one of the few visitors who has been allowed access to the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where the apes have come to love her. In bringing her experience and research to bear on her fourth novel, she opens the animal world to us as few novelists have done.
Sara Gruen’s awards include the 2007 Book Sense Book of the Year Award, the Cosmo Fun Fearless Fiction Award, the Bookbrowse Diamond Award for Most Popular Book, the Friends of American Literature Adult Fiction Award and the ALA/Alex Award 2007. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A gripping, compelling story...wholly diverting and well written. I read it in one sitting.... At the Water’s Edge will likely fly off bookstore shelves.
Emily Rapp Black - Boston Globe
Powerfully evocative.
USA Today
A page-turner of a novel that rollicks along with crisp historical detail, waves of deep emotions and a dash of Scottish mystical mythology.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Bestselling author Sara Gruen returns with the breathtaking tale of a young Philadelphia socialite who reluctantly follows her husband to a remote town in Scotland in search of the Loch Ness Monster. At the same time another monster, Hitler, threatens to tear their world apart. At the Water’s Edge is a daring story of adventure, friendship, and love in the shadow of WWII.
Harper’s Bazaar
[R]iveting.... A slow start gives way to mystery upon mystery, building to a gripping climax. Though some aspects, particularly an ambiguous brush with the supernatural, are a little pedestrian, Gruen’s beautiful setting and deeply sympathetic characters ensure a memorable read for new and returning fans alike.
Publishers Weekly
Gruen skillfully weaves in historical reference points, making Maddie’s story seem larger than that individual focus.... At the Water’s Edge captivates with its drama, intrigue and glimpses of both the dark and light of humanity.... For all her faults, Maddie’s tragic history and her courage in the face of her present predicament will win readers to her side (A Top Pick).
BookPage
Gruen...is not likely to replicate the success of the best-selling Water for Elephants (2006) with this silly novel.... [Her] handling of air raids, food rations, sad telegrams and reports from the front makes the thinness of the story's premise all the more awkward. At heart, this is an unlikely romance novel. A little too unlikely.
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 Children's Crusade
Ann Packer, 2015
Scribner
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476710464
Summary
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley.
Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children.
Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.
Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family’s future.
One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story—Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn’t settled down—their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.
Reviewers have praised Ann Packer’s "brilliant ear for character" (New York Times Book Review), her "naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented" (New Yorker), and the "utterly lifelike quality of her book’s everyday detail" (New York Times).
Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children’s Crusade, an extraordinary study in character, a rare and wise examination of the legacy of early life on adult children attempting to create successful families and identities of their own. This is Ann Packer’s most deeply affecting book yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Stanford, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—James Michener Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Northern California
Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
Personal life
Packer was born in Stanford, California. She is the daughter of Stanford University professors Herbert Packer and Nancy (Huddleston) Packer.
Her mother was a student of novelist Wallace Stegner at the Stanford Writing Program; she later joined the Stanford faculty as professor of English and creative writing. Ann's father was on the faculty of Stanford Law School, where he highlighted the tensions between Due Process and Crime Control. In 1969, when Ann was 10 years old, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. He committed suicide three years later. Her brother, George Packer, is a novelist, journalist, and playwright.
Packer currently lives in Northern California with her two children.
Early career
Packer was an English major at Yale University, but only began writing fiction during her senior year. She moved to New York after college and took a job writing paperback cover copy at Ballantine Books. She attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1986 to 1988, selling her first short story to The New Yorker a few weeks before receiving her M.F.A. degree.
In 1988 Packer moved to Madison, Wisconsin as a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. During her two years in Wisconsin she published stories in literary magazines, including the story "Babies," which was included in the 1992 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. The New Yorker story, "Mendocino," became the title story of her first book, Mendocino and Other Stories, published by Chronicle Books in 1994.
Recent career
Packer spent almost 10 years writing The Dive From Clausen's Pier. Geri Thoma of the Elaine Markson Agency agreed to take on the book and sold it almost immediately to the editor Jordan Pavlin at Alfred A. Knopf. It was published in 2002 and became the first selection of the Good Morning America "Read This!" Book Club. It also received a Great Lakes Book Award, an American Library Association Award, and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. The novel was adapted into a 2005 cable television film.
Packer’s next two books were also published by Knopf: a novel, Songs Without Words (2007), and a collection of short fiction, Swim Back to Me (2011). "Things Said or Done," one of the stories in Swim Back to Me, was included in the 2012 O. Henry Award prize stories collection. In 2015 another novel, The Children's Crusade, was published by Scribner.
In addition to fiction, Packer has written essays for the Washington Post, Vogue, Real Simple, and Oprah Magazine. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/13/2015.)
Book Reviews
Psychologically acute... provocative... Packer shows how unhappiness and happiness, selfishness and kindness, ricochet in complicated ways through relationships. This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love.
Marion Wink - New York Newsday
A more ambitious work that succeeds beautifully. The beauty comes from the rich characterizations that make each of the Blairs spring to life. We do not like them all equally, but ultimately we come to know them equally.... Packer’s dissection of domestic life reminds me of her elders in the field Anne Tyler and Louise Erdrich. But I’ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics. Packer is also a superb storyteller. The Children’s Crusade is as much plot-driven as character-driven. From its opening pages, the book seduces us into a world far from the present era, glides through ensuing decades, and finally drops us off in the 21st century.
Dan Cryer - San Francisco Chronicle
First-rate storytelling... Few writers are as emotionally astute at conveying subtle family ties as Packer.
Jane Ciabbattari - BBC.com
An absorbing novel which celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages.
People
A tour de force family drama… An engrossing saga… Packer brilliantly constructs the siblings’ narratives with both an appealing lightness and an arresting gravitas… Packer’s golden touch makes us care deeply for this memorable tribe.
Elle - Lisa Shea
An artful portrait of a California family.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair
[W]ell-crafted family saga.... [Family members'] stories unfold through distinctive narrative styles...suited to the characters.... Packer is an accomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as those you might find around your dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A]n engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances.... [A] flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal
Told in the most elegant prose... extraordinarily compassionate... A masterful portrait of indelible family bonds. —Joanne Wilkson
Booklist
(Starred review.) Packer is an expert at complicated relationships; she likes to show more than two sides to every story. Who's responsible for the fracturing of the Blair family?... When you read Packer, you'll know you're in the hands of a writer who knows what she's doing. A marvelously absorbing novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Explain the significance of the title of the book. What is the "children’s crusade"? Did your interpretation of the title change as you read?
2. One of Rebecca’s friends tells her, "Your dad is like a mom" (p. 35). Discuss Bill and Penny’s parenting styles. What did you think of Penny as a mother?
3. Discuss the structure of The Children’s Crusade. What is the effect of allowing each of the Blair children to narrate parts of the story? Packer intersperses the chapters from the children’s points of view with chapters where events are recounted in the third person. Why do you think she chose to do so?
4. At the outset of The Children’s Crusade, all four of the Blair children were "united in [their] desire" to keep their childhood home, but they have their "separate rationalizations" (p. 160). Why are the children reluctant to sell the house? Do these rationalizations give you any insight into their personalities?
5. When Ryan and Sierra become romantically involved, the narrator tells the reader, "Robert had had a girlfriend for almost three months, but until today [Rebecca] hadn’t truly believed anyone in her family would ever love someone outside it" (p. 254). What does Ryan’s relationship with Sierra make Rebecca understand? Discuss the romantic relationships of the Blair children. How does their parents’ marriage influence those relationships?
6. During a Thanksgiving visit to Penny’s parents, the children put together a jigsaw puzzle that reveals an old photo of the family on the porch of Bill’s childhood home. The image "upset[s] her more than she’d expected" because Penny views it as "a warning about the danger of desire" (p. 228). How do Penny’s yearnings change as she settles into married life with Bill? Which of her longings do you think are the most dangerous? Do you agree with the sacrifices that Penny makes in order to realize her desires?
7. Rebecca’s analyst tells her, "We never get over it.... Having started out as children" (p. 171). What does she mean? Apply this statement to each of the Blair children. How have their childhood experiences shaped who they are as adults?
8. Were you surprised by Penny’s behavior at the Lawson recital? What prompts her to leave? Once the family is back home, "Bill saw that the children were defining the moment as a rescue operation rather than the act of capture it actually was" (p. 140). Do you think, like Bill, that Penny is being cornered or, like the children, that she’s being saved?
9. At Ryan’s birthday, James reacts very strongly to Penny’s assertion that Bill isn’t supportive of her work. Do you think that James is justified? Why do you think that James destroys Penny’s watercolor?
10. Penny believes she and James "ruin things" (p. 415). Do you agree with her? In what ways are they forces of destruction? How pronounced are the differences between Penny and James, particularly in the way that they view family obligations?
11. Describe the Barn. What prompts James to join it? How does being part of the Barn change James? Why do you think he is reluctant to tell his siblings about it?
12. What is the significance of the three capital Rs that Bill scratches into the concrete foundation of his shed? How does the presence of the carving bring Bill and Penny closer together? How does it comfort Robert?
13. Discuss Penny’s artwork. From the descriptions of her work and the reactions of others to it, do you think she’s a talented artist? The narrator says, "It was no wonder Penny was so protective of her art; she’d needed to protect it for most of her life" (p. 305). What has Penny needed to protect her artwork from? Why is creating art so important to Penny?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Orhan's Inheritance
Aline Ohanesian, 2015
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203740
Summary
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business.
But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson.
Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.
Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Kuwait
• Rasied—Northridge, California, USA
• Education—M.A., University of California-Irvine
• Currently—lives in San Juan Capistrano, California
Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel,
Born Kuwait and raised in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Ohanesian’s heartrending debut chronicles the painful odyssey of one family against the broader backdrop of the Armenian genocide.... Ohanesian does a remarkable job of conveying the weight and the influence of time and place without excusing or excluding the human dimension that necessarily factors into the unfolding cataclysm.
Booklist
Unforgettable.... Drawing on the stories her Armenian great-grandmother told her, Ohanesian brings to life a painful, tragic history unfamiliar to most Americans (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A harrowing tale of unimaginable sacrifice.... A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.
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.)
God Help the Child
Toni Morrison, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307594174
Summary
Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child—the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment—weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.
At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love.
There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."
A fierce and provocative novel that adds a new dimension to the matchless oeuvre of Toni Morrison. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Chloe Anthony Wofford
• Birth— February 18, 1931
• Where—Lorain, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Howard University; M.A., Cornell University
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 1993, National Book Critics' Circle Award, 1977; Pulitzer Prize, 1988.
• Currently—lives in Princeton, NJ and New York, NY
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford) is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known works are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.
Early life and career
Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, to Ramah (nee Willis) and George Wofford. She was the second of four children in a working-class family. Her parents moved to Ohio to escape southern racism and instilled a sense of heritage through telling traditional African American folktales.
Morrison read frequently as a child; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. According to a 2012 interview in The Guardian, she became a Catholic at the age of 12 and received the baptismal name "Anthony," which later became the basis for her nickname "Toni."
In 1949 Morrison went to Howard University, graduating in 1953 with a B.A. in English; she went on to earn a Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955. She taught English, first at Texas Southern University in Houston for two years, then at Howard for seven years.
At Howard, she met Jamaican architect Harold Morrison, whom she married in 1958. The couple had two children and divorced in 1964. After the break up of her marriage, she worked as an editor, first in Syracuse and later in New York City where she worked for a textbook publisher as a senior editor.
Morrison later went to work as an editor for Random House. That position enabled her to play a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream, working with authors such as Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Gayl Jones.
Writing career
Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She attended one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. She later developed the story into her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970)—writing it while raising two children and teaching at Howard. (Years later, in 2000, the book became a selection for Oprah's Book Club.)
Her novel Sula (1973) was nominated for the 1975 National Book Award. However, it was her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977) that brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In 1987 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical and popular success. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, 48 black critics and writers protested the omission. Shortly afterward, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award. That same year, Morrison took a visiting professorship at Bard College.
Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, with music by Richard Danielpour.
In May 2006, the New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous 25 years.
In addition to her novels, Morrison has written books for children with her younger son, Slade Morrison, who worked as a painter and musician. Slade died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at the age of 45. Morrison's novel Home, half-written when Slade died, is dedicated to him.
Her 11th novel, entitled God Help the Child, was published in 2015. It is the first of her novels to be set in contemporary time.
Relationship to feminism
Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist. When asked in a 1998 interview "Why distance oneself from feminism?" she replied:
In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book—leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity.
She went on to state that she thought it off-putting to some readers
...who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things.
Critics, however, have referred to her body of work as exemplifying characteristics of "postmodern feminism" by "altering Euro-American dichotomies by rewriting a history written by mainstream historians" and by her usage of shifting narration in Beloved and Paradise.
Later life
Morrison taught English at two branches of the State University of New York and at Rutgers University: New Brunswick Campus. In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany, The State University of New York. From 1989 until her retirement in 2006, Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.
Though based in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton, Morrison did not regularly offer writing workshops to students after the late 1990s, a fact that earned her some criticism. Rather, she has conceived and developed the prestigious Princeton Atelier, a program that brings together talented students with critically acclaimed, world-famous artists. Together the students and the artists produce works of art that are presented to the public after a semester of collaboration. In her position at Princeton, Morrison used her insights to encourage not merely new and emerging writers, but artists working to develop new forms of art through interdisciplinary play and cooperation.
Honors
At its 1979 commencement ceremonies, Barnard College awarded her its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
She won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved
In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison,who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." Morrison is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor.
In 1996 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Morrison's lecture, entitled "The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations," began with the aphorism, "Time, it seems, has no future." She cautioned against the misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.
That same year, 1996, Morrison was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The medal is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."
Oxford University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in June 2005.
In November 2006, Morrison visited the Louvre Museum in Paris as the second in its "Grand Invité" program to guest-curate a month-long series of events across the arts on the theme of "The Foreigner's Home." Inspired by her curatorship, Morrison returned to Princeton in Fall 2008 to lead a small seminar, also entitled "The Foreigner's Home."
Also that year, the New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best novel of the past 25 years.
She continued to explore new art forms, writing the libretto for Margaret Garner, an American opera that explores the tragedy of slavery through the true life story of one woman's experiences. The opera debuted at the New York City Opera in 2007.
In May, 2010, Morrison appeared at PEN World Voices for a conversation with Marlene van Niekerk and Kwame Anthony Appiah about South African literature, and specifically, van Niekerk's novel Agaat.
In May, 2011, Morrison received an Honorable Doctor of Letters Degree from Rutgers University during commencement where she delivered a speech of the "pursuit of life, liberty, meaningfulness, integrity, and truth."
In March, 2012, Morrison established a residency at Oberlin College.In addition to Home, Morrison also debuted another work in 2012: She worked with opera director Peter Sellars and songwriter Rokia Traoré on a new production inspired by William Shakespeare's Othello. The trio focused on the relationship between Othello's wife Desdemona and her African nurse, Barbary, in Desdemona, which premiered in London in the summer of 2012.
Also, in 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Morrison serves as a member of the editorial board of The Nation magazine.
Papers
Morrison's papers are part of the permanent library collections of Princeton University.
Her decision to add her papers to Princeton rather than Howard University, her alma mater, was met with criticism from the Historical Black College and University community. Vice-President of Content with HBCU Buzz Inc., Robert K. Hoggard wrote in his article "Toni Morrison's Papers Will Go to Princeton? Not Howard":
For far too long, White America has found a way to miss-tell our story. Because of this, it’s more important now than ever to unapologetically support our own Black institutions.... Public White institutions do not need our support, they will thrive without. If we are courageous enough to support our own institutions the sky is the limit for what they can continue to do across America.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/6/2015.)
Book Reviews
Nobel laureate Morrison continues to add to her canon of eloquent, brilliantly conceived novels defining the crises and cultural shifts of our times.... Yet another finely distilled masterpiece.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC
Sly, savage, honest, and elegant.... Morrison spikes elements of realism and hyperrealism with magic and mayhem, while sustaining a sexily poetic and intoxicating narrative atmosphere.... Once again, Morrison thrillingly brings the storytelling moxie and mojo that make her, arguably, our greatest living novelist.
Lisa Shea - Elle
(Starred review.) Emotionally-wrenching... [Morrion’s] literary craftsmanship endures with sparse language, precise imagery, and even humor. This haunting novel displays a profound understanding of American culture and an unwavering sense of justice and forgiveness.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) "What you do to children matters. And they might never forget." That's the lesson finally learned by light-skinned Sweetness, who rejects her daughter Bride because of her blue-black skin. That luminous skin leads Bride to triumph.... Another dazzler from Nobel laureate Morrison. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Brutality, racism and lies are relieved by moments of connection in Morrison's latest. A little girl is born with skin so black her mother will not touch her. Desperate for approval...she tells a lie that puts an innocent schoolteacher in jail for decades.... A chilling oracle and a lively storyteller, Nobel winner Morrison continues the work she began 45 years ago with The Bluest Eye.
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.)
Inside the O'Briens
Lisa Genova, 2015
Gallery Books
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476717791
Summary
A powerful and transcendent new novel about a family struggling with the impact of Huntington’s disease.
Joe O’Brien is a forty-four-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A devoted husband, proud father of four children in their twenties, and respected officer, Joe begins experiencing bouts of disorganized thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and strange, involuntary movements.
He initially attributes these episodes to the stress of his job, but as these symptoms worsen, he agrees to see a neurologist and is handed a diagnosis that will change his and his family’s lives forever: Huntington’s Disease.
Huntington’s is a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure. Each of Joe’s four children has a 50 percent chance of inheriting their father’s disease, and a simple blood test can reveal their genetic fate. While watching her potential future in her father’s escalating symptoms, twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie struggles with the questions this test imposes on her young adult life. Does she want to know? What if she’s gene positive? Can she live with the constant anxiety of not knowing?
As Joe’s symptoms worsen and he’s eventually stripped of his badge and more, Joe struggles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose, while Katie and her siblings must find the courage to either live a life "at risk" or learn their fate.
Praised for writing that “explores the resilience of the human spirit” (San Francisco Chronicle), Lisa Genova has once again delivered a novel as powerful and unforgettable as the human insights at its core. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 22, 1970
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.S. Bates College; Ph.D, Harvard University
• Currently—lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Lisa Genova is an American neuroscientist and author of fiction. She graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Bates College with a BS degree in biopsychology and received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University in 1998.
Genova did research at Massachusetts General Hospital East, Yale Medical School, McLean Hospital, and the National Institutes of Health. She also taught neuroanatomy at Harvard Medical School fall 1996.
Genova married and gave birth to a daughter in 2000. Four years later she and her husband divorced, and Genova began writing full-time. To hear Genova tell it:
When I was 33, I got divorced. I’d been a stay-at-home mom for four years, and I planned to go back to work as a health-care industry strategy consultant. But then I asked myself a question that changed the course of my life: If I could do anything I wanted, what would I do? My answer, which was both exciting and terrifying—write a novel about a woman with Alzheimer’s (Cape Cod Magazine.).
In 2007 she self-published her first novel, Still Alice, which went on to became a major best seller and award winning film. Since then, Genova has written three other fictional works about characters dealing with neurological disorders.
Still Alice
Genova's debut novel follows a woman suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland, a 50-year-old woman, is a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned linguistics expert. She is married to an equally successful husband, and they have three grown children. The disease takes hold swiftly, changing Alice’s relationship with her family and the world.
Self-published, Genova sold copies of the book out of the trunk of her car. The book was later acquired by Simon & Schuster and published in 2009. It appeared on the New York Times best seller list for more than 40 weeks, was sold in 30 countries, and translated into more than 20 languages.
The book was adapted for the stage by Christine Mary Dunford and performed by Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company in 2013.
A 2014 film adaptation starred Julianne Moore as the lead and co-starred Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, and Kate Bosworth. Moore won an Oscar for Best Actress.
Other books
♦ Left Neglected (2011)
Genova's second novel tells the story of a woman who suffers from left neglect (also called hemispatial or unilateral neglect), caused by a traumatic brain injury. As she struggles to recover, she learns that she must embrace a simpler life. She begins to heal when she attends to elements left neglected in herself, her family, and the world around her.
♦ Love Anthony (2012)
Offering a unique perspective in fiction, this third novel presents the extraordinary voice of Anthony, a nonverbal boy with autism. Anthony reveals a neurologically plausible peek inside the mind of autism, why he hates pronouns, why he loves swinging and the number three, how he experiences routine, joy, and love. And it is the voice of this voiceless boy that guides two women in this powerfully unforgettable story to discover the universal truths that connect us all.
♦ Inside the O'Briens (2015)
In her fourth novel, Genova follows Joe O'Brien, a middle-aged Boston policeman diagnosed with Huntington's. There is no cure, and the disease is progressive and lethal. The story revolves around the fallout on Joe's family, including his daughter who is at risk for carrying the genes.
TV and film
Since her first novel was published, Genova has become a professional speaker about Alzheimer's disease. She has been a guest on the Today Show, Dr. Oz, CNN, PBS News Hour, and the Diane Rehm Show. She appeared in the documentary film To Not Fade Away. It is a follow-up to the Emmy Award-winning film, Not Fade Away (2009), about Marie Vitale, a woman who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at the age of 45. (Adapated from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/6/2015.)
Book Reviews
This novel of siblings rocked by their father's Huntington's disease is a total tearjerker, but ultimately it's a tribute to family love.
Glamour
An intimate, heartbreaking look at life with Huntington's disease.
Marie Claire
(Starred review.) [The] tale of a Boston police officer who learns that he has Huntington's disease.... This is a gut-wrenching and memorable read, most similar to Genova's Still Alice in its detailed portrayal of the disintegration and rebuilding of a family in the face of a horrible illness. —Mariel Pachucki, Maple Valley, WA
Library Journal
Best-selling neuroscientist-turned-novelist Genova, author of several popular stories based on the experience of suffering debilitating diseases...now tackles the impact of Huntington's disease on one blue-collar Boston family.... Genova's intention once again is acceptance, and the wrung-out reader bids farewell to the family at a relatively calm and united moment. This journey to a place of mindfulness, while inevitably affecting, often reads like fictionalized campaign literature for a worthy cause.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
2. In the beginning of the novel, Joe is horrified to recognize his mother, Ruth, in his reflection. Why do you think that is such a painful realization? How do his feelings about Ruth change? Discuss the complex ties we all have with our parents.
3. Joe is fiercely proud of his job as a police officer, but admits that he sometimes feels constrained by the uniform and the trappings that come with assuming that identity. How do you think that internal conflict ripples through his children and their professional choices? Who do you think is most like him? Who is most different?
4. Katie is compelled to leave, yet still feels tethered. Discuss the role that family and tradition play in the novel. When is tradition helpful, and when does it hold us back?
5. In the ways they can see, through external physical traits and personality, Katie and JJ come from their dad. Does this mean they also have his Huntington’s? Discuss the interplay of nature versus nurture in the narrative. How does each sibling define themselves in both relation and opposition to their family?
6. Even in their darkest moments, the O’Brien family finds reasons to be grateful. Name some of them. Do these reasons change over the course of the story? How? Do you specifically relate to any?
7. As a cop, it is essential that Joe make split-second decisions in high-stress environments. He takes pleasure in it. But later into his diagnosis, as his body goes to war with his mind, we see him starting to think in the long-term. Discuss the dichotomy of instinctual versus analytical thinking in the novel. When do they contradict each other? When do they complement each other?
8. Joe is a born storyteller but Rosie is "intensely private" about her family, especially when it comes to difficult topics. How do they compromise these two opposing impulses throughout the narrative?
9. Ultimately, Joe becomes an unreliable narrator. He can’t predict his moods or even his movements. How does he use the reflections of people and his surrounding environment to monitor himself? Who do you think he depends on most, and why?
10. Discuss what Catholicism means to the O’Brien family, specifically the theme of purgatory as it attends to the implications of the Huntington’s genetic test. Do you think religion informs their decision-making? How?
11. Joe is well versed in both the immediate and reverberating effects of trauma, having served in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terrorist attack. He is aware that every day on the job might be his last. How is that specific dread different from the terrible anticipation of a Huntington’s diagnosis? How is it similar? Do you think Joe can still find honor in death from his disease? If so, how?
12. The O’Brien and extended Charlestown community is incredibly tight-knit. But when does that closeness cross the line into exclusivity? Discuss Katie’s relationship with Felix. Why do you think she hesitates to introduce him to her family? How does their reaction surprise her?
13. In chapter 31, Katie guides her dad through a yoga routine and tells him to "be the thermostat, not the temperature." What do you think she means? And how does it influence Joe’s decision to change his mantra from "stay in the fight" to “stay in the pose”?
14. In the novel, we learn one HD symptom is "chorea"—jerky, involuntary movements—and is derived from the Greek word for dance. Discuss the role of movement throughout the story, in both its liberating and debilitating forms. Why do you think Meghan decides to leave the Boston Ballet to work with a more experimental dance company in London?
15. In chapter 34, Katie frets about the effect a HD diagnosis would have on Felix’s future. Discuss the feeling of accountability that often comes with living with a terminal illness. At what point do we all have to relinquish the illusion of having control over someone else’s life?
16. Discuss Joe’s realization that his mother, Ruth, communicated gratitude and love to her children when she was in end-stage HD. How does that trickle down through him and onto Katie? Do you think Katie moves to Portland? Would you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)