Funny Girl
Nicky Hornby, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205415
Summary
Set in 1960's London, Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingenue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters.
Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 17, 1957
• Where—Surrey, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Cambridge
• Awards—E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Currently—lives in London, England
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels High Fidelity and About a Boy. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.
Early life and education
Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, England. He was brought up in Maidenhead, and educated at Maidenhead Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English. His parents divorced when he was 11.
Books
Hornby's first published book, 1992's Fever Pitch, is an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club, and earning Hornby the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The memoir was adapted for film in the UK in 1997, with a 2005 American remake with Jimmy Fallon as an obsessed Boston Red Sox fan.
After the success of Fever Pitch, Hornby began publishing articles in the Sunday Times, Time Out and the Times Literary Supplement. He also wrote music reviews for The New Yorker.
High Fidelity—his second book and first novel—was published in 1995. About a neurotic record collector and his failed relationships, the book was adapted into a 2000 film, starring John Cusack, and a 2006 Broadway musical.
His second novel, About a Boy, published in 1998, is about two "boys"—Marcus, an awkward yet endearing adolescent from a single-parent family, and Will Freeman, afree-floating, mid-30s who overcomes his own immaturity and self-centeredness through his growing relationship with Marcus. Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult starred in the 2002 film version.
In 1999, Hornby received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Hornby's next novel, How to Be Good, came out in 2001. The female protagonist in the novel explores contemporary morals, marriage and parenthood. It won the W.H. Smith Award for Fiction in 2002.
In 2002 Hornby edited Speaking with the Angel, twelve short stories written by friends. A portion of the money from the book went to TreeHouse, a charity for children with autism, the disorder that affects his own son.
In 2003, Hornby wrote a collection of essays on selected popular songs and the emotional resonance they carry, called 31 Songs (Songbook in the US). Also in 2003, Hornby was awarded the London Award 2003, an award that was selected by fellow writers.
Hornby has also written essays on various aspects of popular culture, in particular on pop music and mixed tapes. Since 2003, he has written a book review column, "Stuff I've Been Reading", for the monthly magazine The Believer; all of these articles are collected in The Polysyllabic Spree (2004), Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (2006), Shakespeare Wrote for Money (2008), and More Baths Less Talking (2012).
Hornby's novel A Long Way Down was published in 2005 and made the shortlist for the Whitbread Award. The film version, starring Pierce Brosnan and Toni Collett, was released in 2014. Hornby has also edited two sports-related anthologies: My Favourite Year and The Picador Book of Sports Writing.
Hornby's book Slam his first novel for young adults, was published in 2007. It was recognized as a 2008 ALA Best Books for Young Adults. The protagonist of Slam is a 16-year-old skateboarder named Sam whose life changes drastically when his girlfriend gets pregnant.
Hornby's next novel, Juliet, Naked, was published in September 2009. On the same wavelength as his first novel High Fidelity, the book follows a reclusive '80s rock star who is forced out of isolation when the re-release of his most famous album brings him into contact with some of his most passionate fans.
In 2010, Hornby co-founded the Ministry of Stories, a non-profit organisation in East London dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Hornby discussed his bouts of depression in 2012 on the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of "Fever Pitched: Twenty Years On."
Hornby's seventh novel, Funny Girl, about a Sixties beauty queen determined to make her mark upon television comedy, was released in 2014.
Music
The importance of music in Hornby's novels, and in his life, is evidenced by his long-standing and fruitful collaborations with the rock band Marah, fronted by Dave and Serge Bielanko. Hornby has even toured in the US and Europe with the band, joining them on stage to read his essays about particular moments and performers in his own musical history that have had a particular meaning for him.
Hornby's music criticism (most notably for The New Yorker and in his own Songbook) has been widely criticised by writers such as Kevin Dettmar (in his book Is Rock Dead), Curtis White (in an essay at www.centreforbookculture.org, titled "Kid Adorno"), Barry Faulk and Simon Reynolds for his embrace of rock traditionalism and his conservative take on post-rock and other experimental musics (exemplified in Hornby's negative review of the Radiohead album Kid A).
Hornby has also had extensive collaboration with American singer/songwriter Ben Folds. Their album Lonely Avenue was released in September 2010. Folds wrote the music, with Hornby contributing lyrics.
Personal
Hornby has been married twice. He and his first wife have one son, born in 1992, who has autism. Hornby's second wife is producer Amanda Posey. They have two sons, born in 2003 and 2005.
Hornby was directly involved in the creation of the charity Ambitious about Autism, then known as TreeHouse Trust, and its school TreeHouse School, as a result of trying to find specialist education for his son Danny. Hornby remains a major donor to the charity and is still involved as a vice president. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/15.)
Book Reviews
In Funny Girl, Nick Hornby uses the story of a reluctant beauty queen from Blackpool as the hook for a rambunctious cultural history of British television comedy 50 years ago. As befits a novel about a popular sitcom, this novel packs in lots of laughs, but it's also got more heft than Mr. Hornby's readers may expect
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Funny and fast moving, perceptive and sharp.
Los Angeles Times
A smart comic novel that...induces binge-reading that's the literary equivalent of polishing off an entire television series in one weekend.
NPR
Beautifully captures the thrill of youthful success and of discovering your own talent.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Funny Girl may be read as Hornby's latest defence of popular entertainment against high-culture elitism. Funny Girl makes his case for him eloquently and entertainingly...both hugely enjoyable and deceptively artful.
Spectator (UK)
I loved this hymn to the 1960s, their infinite creative possibilities.
Scotsman (UK)
Endearing, humorous and touching. Hugely enjoyable.
Sunday Mirror (UK)
Engaging...Hornby’s fictionalized evocation of the era is spot-on.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] light, fond, funny tale by the author of About a Boy…[a] fizzy delight about the likable oddballs who populate showbiz.
People
Theera and the theme (surfing the crest of a revolution, then getting dumped in its wake) are pure Mad Men, but the pulpy warmth and sprightly dialogue are classic Hornby.
Vulture
(Starred review.) Hornby wonderfully captures the voice and rhythms of broadcast television of the time, and seems to delight in endless inversions of art imitating life imitating art.... The result is a delightful collection of characters that care as much as they harm, each struggling to determine who they want to be.
Publishers Weekly
For a novel about comedy, the humor is off camera, implied but not evident. Hornby's usual spark is missing. A readable but melancholy and definitely not funny book. —Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Art and life are intertwined in a novel about TV sitcoms set during the cultural sea change of the 1960s. Hornby's...most ambitious novel to date extends his passion for pop culture and empathy for flawed characters in to the world of television comedy. "It's funny, and sad—like life." And like this novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Early in Funny Girl, before recording Barbara (and Jim) for Comedy Playhouse, Sophie Straw says of the show, “I don’t want it to go out into the world . . . I want to stay like we were” (see page 107). What is Sophie trying to preserve? What is she afraid of losing?
2. There are some in the book who are irritated by Barbara (and Jim)’s popularity (Edith Maxwell-Bishop and Vernon Whitfield, for example) and who seem to believe that entertainment should be more traditional and less bawdy. Whitfield also says of the show’s audience, “I love ordinary people individually. It’s ordinary people en masse that trouble me” (page 207). Does the narrator take a stand on this sentiment? How is it conveyed?
3. On page 150, a reviewer for The Times writes: “The very existence of Barbara (and Jim) indicates the birth of a modern Britain, one prepared to acknowledge that its citizens are as sex-obsessed as our neighbors across the Channel . . .” In what other ways does Funny Girl illustrate Britain’s transition from the austere 1950s to the Swinging ’60s? From the ’60s to the 2010s?
4. What do you make of the inclusion of real historical evidence (photographs, cartoons, and images of the 1960s) alongside fictional text? Does it blur the line between fact and fiction?
5. At the launch party for Bill Gardiner’s book, Diary of a Soho Boy, Tony Holmes does not feel jealous toward his colleague’s success but does feel jealous upon seeing a “beautiful young colored girl” (see page 368) and wonders, Why didn’t he know any young, colored women? What does this tell us about both Bill and Tony and about the milieu of Britain at the time?
6. Much of Funny Girl’s energy lies in the bantering dialogue between characters. How do these exchanges allow the characters to define themselves in ways the narrator cannot? For example, Sophie’s agent, Brian Debenham, is repeatedly telling young women, “I’m a happily married man” (see page 48, for example). What other character traits can we glean from such dialogue?
7. On page 208, when Dennis Maxwell-Bishop and Vernon Whitfield appear on Pipe Smoke to argue over the current state of entertainment, Whitfield says, “But . . . where are we going with all of this? The BBC is full of horse-racing and variety shows and pop groups who look and sounds like cavemen. What will it look like in ten years’ time? Fifty? You’re already making jokes about lavatories and God knows what. How long before you people decide it’s all right to show people taking a shit, so long as some hyena in the audience thinks it’s hysterical?” How does his argument address not just the fictional plot but entertainment as we know it today? Is Funny Girl a defense of lighthearted entertainment?
8. A recurring question the characters face while producing Barbara (and Jim) is whether comedy can be intelligent. How is this addressed throughout Funny Girl? How would you respond to the question?
9. Sophie quietly struggles with feeling that she is relevant to the world of comedy. She’s disappointed when she meets Lucille Ball—her idol—after it becomes clear Lucy hasn’t seen Barbara (and Jim). But when Sophie and the team meet the Prime Minister, she is heartened that the “invitation was official acknowledgment that they mattered” (page 288), despite realizing the Prime Minister doesn’t watch the show either. Why do you think Sophie feels this way?
10.Funny Girl to narrate the book this way? How might it read differently if it had been told in the first person—say, if it had been told by Sophie?
11. As a “quick-witted, unpretentious, high-spirited, funny, curvy, clever, beautiful blonde” (page 257), Sophie might strike some readers as almost too good to be true. Is she? How does Hornby address this anomaly?
12. What dawning realization allows Sophie’s anger toward her mother, Gloria Balderstone, to soften? What does this tell us about Sophie? What does this tell us about the eras from which these two women came?
13. How do both the imaginary sitcom Barbara (and Jim) and the novel Funny Girl deal with issues of sex and class in Britain?
14. How does the relationship between Tony and Bill change over the course of Funny Girl?
15. The narrator tells us that, as an older woman, Sophie thinks that entertainment has “taken over the world, and she wasn’t sure that the world was a better place for it” (page 442). Do you agree with her assessment? Why or why not?
16. Funny Girl captures the excitement of youthful success and of burgeoning talent, but it also considers what it’s like once that excitement fades. How would you describe the mood at the end of the book as Barbara (and Jim)’s glory days inevitably pass?
17. What do you imagine Sophie did with the teapot in the opening scene of Barbara and Jim—The Reunion! to get them “off and running” (page 452)?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough, 1977
HarperCollins
673 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061990472
Summary
Colleen McCullough's sweeping saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback has enthralled readers the world over.
This is the chronicle of three generations of Clearys, ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. Most of all, it is the story of only daughter Meggie and her lifelong relationship with the haunted priest Father Ralph de Bricassart—an intense joining of two hearts and souls that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.
A poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit, Colleen McCullough's acclaimed masterwork remains a monumental literary achievement—a landmark novel to be cherished and read again and again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 1., 1937
• Where—Wellington, New South Wales, Australia
• Died—January 29, 2015
• Where—Norfolk Island, Australia
• Education—Holy Cross college, Woolhara; University of Sydney
Colleen Margaretta McCullough (married name Robinson) was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds.
McCullough was born in 1937 in Wellington, in the Central West region of New South Wales, to James and Laurie McCullough. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-Maori descent. During her childhood, the family moved around a great deal, eventually settled in Sydney where she attended Holy Cross College Woollahra. She was "a voracious reader" with a strong interest in both science and the humanities.
She had a younger brother, Carl, who drowned in the Mediterranean when he was 25. She based a character in The Thorn Birds on him, and also wrote about him in Life Without the Boring Bits.
Before her tertiary education, McCullough earned a living as a teacher, librarian and journalist. In her first year of medical studies at the University of Sydney she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Instead, she switched to neuroscience and worked at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.
In 1963, McCullough moved for four years to the United Kingdom; at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. She spent ten years from April 1967 to 1976 researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
Writing
It was while at Yale that she wrote her first two books. One of these, The Thorn Birds, became an international best seller that in 1983 was turned into one of the most watched television mini-series of all time.
The success of these books enabled her to give up her medical-scientific career and to try to "live on her own terms." In the late 1970s, after stints in London and Connecticut, she settled on the isolation of Norfolk Island, off the coast of mainland Australia, where she met her husband, Ric Robinson. They married in 1984. Under his birth name Cedric Newton Ion-Robinson, he was a member of the Norfolk Legislative Assembly. He changed his name formally to Ric Newton Ion Robinson in 2002.
McCullough's 2008 novel The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet engendered controversy with her reworking of characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Susannah Fullerton, the president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, said she "shuddered" that Elizabeth Bennet was rewritten as weak, and Mr Darcy as savage.
She is one of the strongest, liveliest heroines in literature...[and] Darcy's generosity of spirit and nobility of character make her fall in love with him—why should those essential traits in both of them change in 20 years?
McCullough died on 29 January 2015, at the age of 77, on Norfolk Island from apparent kidney failure after suffering from a series of small strokes. She had suffered from failing eyesight and was confined to a wheelchair.
Recognition
In 1984, a portrait of McCullough, painted by Wesley Walters, was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. The prize is awarded for the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics."
The depth of historical research for the novels on ancient Rome led to her being awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by Macquarie University in 1993.
She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia on 12 June 2006, "[f]or service to the arts as an author and to the community through roles supporting national and international educational programs, medico-scientific disciplines and charitable organisations and causes."
Bibliograhy
Novels (stand-alones):
Tim (1974) ♦ The Thorn Birds (1977) ♦ An Indecent Obsession (1981) ♦ A Creed for the Third Millennium (1985) ♦ The Ladies of Missalonghi (1987) ♦ The Song of Troy (1998) ♦ Morgan's Run (2000) ♦ The Touch (2003) ♦ Angel Puss (2004) ♦ The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet (2008) ♦ Bittersweet (2013).
Masters of Rome series
The First Man in Rome (1990) ♦ The Grass Crown (1991) ♦ Fortune's Favorites (1993) ♦ Caesar's Women (1996) ♦ Caesar (1997) ♦ The October Horse (2002) ♦ Antony and Cleopatra (2007).
Carmine Delmonico series
On, Off (2006) ♦ Too Many Murders (December 2009) ♦ Naked Cruelty (2010) ♦ The Prodigal Son (2012) ♦ Sins of the Flesh (2013). (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/8/2015.)
Book Reviews
A heart-rending epic...truly marvelous.
Chicago Tribune
A perfect read.... The kind of book the world blockbuster was made for.
Boston Globe
We Are Pirates
Daniel Handler, 2015
Bloomsbury USA
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608196883
Summary
A boat has gone missing. Goods have been stolen. There is blood in the water. It is the twenty-first century and a crew of pirates is terrorizing the San Francisco Bay.
Phil is a husband, a father, a struggling radio producer, and the owner of a large condo with a view of the water. But he'd like to be a rebel and a fortune hunter.
Gwen is his daughter. She's fourteen. She's a student, a swimmer, and a best friend. But she'd like to be an adventurer and an outlaw.
Phil teams up with his young, attractive assistant. They head for the open road, attending a conference to seal a deal.
Gwen teams up with a new, fierce friend and some restless souls. They head for the open sea, stealing a boat to hunt for treasure.
We Are Pirates is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives.
Also, it's about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Lemony Snicket
• Birth—February 28, 1970
• Where—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Wesleyan University
• Awards—Michael L. Printz Honor Award
• Currently— lives in San Francisco, California
Daniel Handler is an American writer, best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket, although he also writes under his real name.
Personal life
Handler was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Sandra Handler Day (nee Walpole), an opera singer and retired City College of San Francisco Dean (also distantly related the British writer Hugh Walpole). Daniel's father, Louis Handler, was a Jewish refugee from Germany, who worked as an accountant. Daniel has a younger sister, Rebecca.
Handler attended Commodore Sloat Elementary, Herbert Hoover Middle School and Lowell High School, and is an alumnus of the San Francisco Boys Chorus.
He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992 and married Lisa Brown, a graphic artist, whom he met in college. They have a son Otto and live in an old Victorian house in San Francisco.
Handler is politically active and helped form LitPAC. In the June 10, 2007 edition of The New York Times Magazine, Handler reveals ambivalence toward his wealth, and the expectations it creates. He has supported the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He also describes himself as a secular humanist, claiming he is "not a believer in predetermined fates...[nor] a believer in karma.
The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.
Books
Four of Handler's major works have been published under his own name. The first, The Basic Eight, was, according to Handler, rejected by 37 publishers, who felt the tone was too dark for its subject, the life of a teenage girl. It was finally published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press.
Watch Your Mouth, his second novel, came out in 2002. The narrative uses an operatic structure, complete with stage directions and separate acts. Described by HarperCollins as an "incest opera," it mixes Jewish mythology with modern sexuality. In the second half of the book, however, the opera trope gives way to a 12-step-recovery format, linguistically undergone by the protagonist.
2006, saw the release of Adverbs, Handler's short story collection, which he says is "about love." A third novel Why We Broke Up, released in 2011, received a 2012 Michael L. Printz honor award. His fourth novel We Are Pirates was published in 2015.
Handler also served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012.
Lemony Snicket
Starting in 1999, Handler published A Series of Unfortunate Events under the Snicket pseudonym, finishing the series seven years later with a total of 13 books. The books, which became international bestsellers, revolve around three orphaned children who experience progressively terrible events after the alleged death of their parents. Snicket poses as narrator and biographer of the fictional orphans.
Handler (as Snicket) read for three consecutive audiobooks in the series, before handing the job back to Tim Curry, the original reader. He said he found it too difficult.
He has also shown up at author appearances as "Lemony Snicket's handler,"and he has appeared as Snicket in other books and media, including the commentary track for the film version of his books. Using his real name, he wrote an introduction to Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography.
HarperCollins published a short interview on its website posing questions regarding Lemony Snicket's "personal life." When asked about some of his hobbies, Snicket answered, "Taxidermy and playing the harpsichord."
The thirteenth (and final) book of the series was released on Friday, October 13, 2006. That morning Handler appeared on the Today show as Lemony Snicket's "representative."
Handler has also written short fiction and picture books under the Lemony Snicket pseudonym. As part of his support of Occupy Wall Street, he wrote "Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance." The piece was published on the Occupy Writers website.
Currently, Handler is working on a new series of novels, All the Wrong Questions, which serve as prequels to A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Music
Although Handler played accordion in two bands following college, it was 69 Love Songs, a three-album set by The Magnetic Fields, that finally gained notice. In the project's boxed set, he offers a lengthy interview with band leader Stephin Merritt about the project, as well as conversations about each song. Handler also appears in the 2009 documentary Strange Powers, by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara, about Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.
Handler has gone on to play accordion in several other Merritt projects, including music by The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths and The Gothic Archies, the last of which provided songs for the audiobooks for the Lemony Snicket book series. In 2006, Gothic Archies released an album contained with all thirteen songs from the thirteen audiobooks.
Film
Handler has also had some scattered success in film work. He produced the screenplay for Rick, based on the Verdi opera Rigoletto, and also wrote the screenplay for Kill the Poor, based on the novel by Joel Rose.
He was involved in the screenwriting process for the film version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. He was ultimately removed from the project, having completed eight separate drafts of the film before giving up. (Robert Gordon, screenwriter of Galaxy Quest, replaced Handler, eventually receiving credit for the film's screenplay, under Handler's request.)
Handler, however, submitted commentary for the DVD version, alongside director Brad Silberling. In character as Lemony Snicket, he derides the Lemony Snicket of the film—played by Jude Law—as an impostor. At numerous times during the track he expresses sympathy for the Baudelaire children and implies that he is being held captive by the director in order to do the commentary.
Controversy
At the 2014 National Book Awards ceremony, Handler made a racist joke while announcing author Jacqueline Woodson as winner of the Young People's Literature Award. Woodson is African-American, as well as a friend of Handler. Handler attempted a joke about watermelon that backfired and caused a firestorm of criticism. He issued multiple apologies and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, promising to match donations up to $100,000.
In a New York Times op-ed article, Woodson explained that in "making light of that deep and troubled history" Handler had come from a place of ignorance. His misguided joke underscored the continued need to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."
Handler referred to the incident as "a disaster of my own making.... [T]he story did not go out well and many, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A witty adult novel by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler.... Lemony Snicket's gothic humor lingers over this tale of upper-middle-class despair.... [A] dark and whimsical novel.... Yes, we are pirates, but we're chained on barren land. Has that theme ever been explored in such a weird mixture of impish wit and tender sympathy?
Washington Post
Exuberant.... Handler's a master with language, crafting showstopping sentences that are fresh and funny.... [He gives] everything the feel of legend, a story burnished with each retelling, and gleaming with rich moral lessons.... Although the novel is a raucously funny adventure, it's also a tragic exploration of the restlessness in all of us, of the ways we want to claim our happiness like buried treasure that might change everything. We Are Pirates is about how we try to forge our own destinies, and if we're lucky, become heroes of our own stories.
Caroline Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle
Full of whimsy, adventure and intrigue. There are dastardly grown-ups and children in peril, moments of high camp and utter despair.... Beneath all the trappings of make-believe and fancy dress, there is a poignant, serious story about a girl's need to find her true self, shackled to her desire to escape from the world-and the irreconcilable, sometimes bloody conflict between those two yearnings.... The exhilarating sections dealing with this caper are the book's highlights, the prose full of high-blown pirate speak that does little to hide the sincerity of all those on deck.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
This, his fifth novel for adults, retains the whimsy, intrigue and high camp of his children's fiction. Silly but poignant.
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
[D]ark and light, YA yarn and midlife doldrums—while making readers root for his 20th-century privateers. The book never quite decides how serious it wants to be..., but it does offer a jaunty and occasionally jolting, and honest take on the discomforts of youth, midlife, and old age, and how ineffective we are at dealing with them.
Publishers Weekly
As the Huffington Post says, "If it's possible to be criminally underrated yet also be a millions-selling author, then Handler is it." He's world famous as Lemony Snicket, but not everyone remembers that his last adult book, Adverbs (2006), won considerable praise for being both formally experimental and emotionally arresting. Here, conscientious-to-a-fault 14-year-old Gwen follows her dreams, rounding up a motley crew and becoming a pirate who spreads terror on San Francisco Bay.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Handler (aka children’s author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn’t deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler’s capable hands, a macabre, darkly human portrayal of family dynamics and growing up in a world running low on adventure...peppered with black humor.
Booklist
Handler is a master at depicting the existential chaos all his major characters are living through, and with warmth, sympathy and considerable humor at that. The reader will delight in Gwen and old Errol's escapade.... Affecting, lively and expertly told. Just the sort of thing to make grown-ups and teenagers alike want to unfurl the black flag.
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.)
West of Sunset
Stewart O'Nan, 2015
Viking Adult
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670785957
Summary
A novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last years in Hollywood
In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack.
Those last three years of Fitzgerald’s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeously and gracefully written novel.
With flashbacks to key moments from Fitzgerald’s past, the story follows him as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with brassy gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, begins work on The Last Tycoon, and tries to maintain a semblance of family life with the absent Zelda and daughter, Scottie.
Fitzgerald’s orbit of literary fame and the Golden Age of Hollywood is brought vividly to life through the novel’s romantic cast of characters, from Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway to Humphrey Bogart. A sympathetic and deeply personal portrait of a flawed man who never gave up in the end, even as his every wish and hope seemed thwarted. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 4, 1961
• Raised—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.S., Boston University; M.F.A., Cornell University
• Awards—Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize
• Currently—lives in Avon, Connecticut
Stewart O'Nan is an American novelist, born in 1961 to John Lee O'Nan and Mary Ann O'Nan, (nee Smith). He and his brother were raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He earned his B.S. at Boston University in 1983. While in Boston, O'Nan became a fan of the Red Sox. On October 27, 1984, he married Trudy Anne Southwick, his high school sweetheart. They moved to Long Island, New York, and he went to work for Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, New York, as a test engineer from 1984 to 1988.
Encouraged by his wife to pursue a career in writing, they moved to Ithaca, New York, and O'Nan returned to college and graduated with his M.F.A. from Cornell University in 1992. His family and he then moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, and he taught at the University of Central Oklahoma and the University of New Mexico.
O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, In the Walled City, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The same year, he was able to find a publisher for his second book, and first novel, Snow Angels—based on the story "Finding Amy" from his In the Walled City collection—when the manuscript earned him the first Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel, awarded by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans. In 2007 Snow Angels was adapted for a film of the same title, directed by David Gordon Green, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.
In 1995, his family and he moved to Avon, Connecticut. He was a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing at Trinity College in nearby Hartford until 1997. The research he did for his novel The Names of the Dead led to the creation of a class that studied Vietnam War memoirs as a form of literature, which he also initially taught. In 1996, Granta named him one of America's Best Young Novelists.
In a 2002 article, "Finding Time to Write," O'Nan wrote:
Very simple things like keeping the manuscript with you at all times. Always keep it with you. That way you can always go back to it. Doesn't have to be the whole manuscript.
Another way to do this is to bring only the very last sentence that you worked on--where you left off, basically. Bring it with you on a sheet of paper or index card. Keep it on your person so that if you're running around the building where you're working, you take that five seconds to pull it out and look at it and say, "Okay, oh, maybe I'll do this with it. Maybe I'll do something else with it. Maybe I'll fix it there.
In the spring of 2005 O'Nan spoke at the Lucy Robbins Welles Library in Newington, Connecticut, as the featured author in its One Book, 4 Towns program. When asked about Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, the book he co-authored with Stephen King, O'Nan replied, "Who would have thought that writing a book about the Red Sox would be the luckiest thing I ever did in my life."
In 2008, Lonely Road Books sold out its pre-orders for O'Nan's latest writing, a screenplay simply titled Poe. It is a dramatic retelling of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. The screenplay was released as a limited edition of 200 copies and as a lettered edition of 26 copies. It features a foreword by Roger Corman and frontispieces by Jill Bauman.
Works
1993 - In the Walled City (Stories)
1987 - Transmission
1994 - Snow Angels
1996 - The Names of the Dead
1997 - The Speed Queen
1998 - A World Away
1999 - A Prayer for the Dying
2000 - The Circus Fire (Nonfiction)
2001 - Everyday People
2002 - Wish You Were Here
2003 - The Night Country
2004 - Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans... (Nonfiction w/ Stephen King)
2005 - The Good Wife
2007 - Last Night at the Lobster
2008 - Songs for the Missing
2008 - Poe (Screenplay)
2011 - Emily, Alone
2012 - A Face in the Crowd (Novella e-book w/ Stephen King)
2012 - The Odds
2015 - West of Sunset
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/16/2015.)
Book Reviews
[The] grim yet undeniably fascinating last act of Fitzgerald’s life is the subject of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeous new novel.... West of Sunset is a pretty fine Hollywood novel, too, but it’s an even finer novel about a great writer’s determination to keep trying to do his best work.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
A mesmerizing and haunting novel.... O’Nan’s prodigious power as a novelist asserts itself, which is to say you forget utterly that he’s behind the curtain and pulling a dazzling number of strings.... Above all, O’Nan delivers—whole-body—the sensation that you are deep inside a living, breathing, suffering consciousness.... Another triumph of the novel surfaces in O’Nan’s wily insinuation into Fitzgerald’s creative life, how it breathes through his everyday existence. Movingly and believingly, the manner in which a writer works—thinks, processes, assimilates, envies—is given life. And that is ultimately what makes the book so special.
Boston Globe
Just as O'Nan succeeded in drawing readers inside the heads of such ordinary people as the elderly widow Emily in Emily, Alone, or Manny DeLeon, the hapless chain-restaurant manager in Last Night at the Lobster, he inhabits Fitzgerald's very being and authentically depicts the writer's fluctuating mind-sets during the final years of his life…an intimate portrayal of a flawed man who never gave up.
Philadelphia Inquirer
There’s a certain romance to the tortured genius mythology, but Stewart O’Nan makes quick work of dispelling it in this beautifully written historical novel which follows Fitzgerald's stint as a screenwriter during the 1930s, captures that era of Hollywood well, offering juicy scenes with Humphrey Bogart, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and other Fitzgerald friends and hangers-on, while lending witty dialogue to his affair with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, a doomed romance that's worthy of a classic film.
Entertainment Weekly
O’Nan, an accomplished, award-winning writer who has clearly done his biographical homework, polishes this saga to a seductive sheen, populates it with persuasive incarnations of Dorothy Parker, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and takes us to a very dark place indeed.
Elle
[E]arnest but only fitfully interesting.... The book inadvertently illustrates the truth of Fitzgerald’s famous dictum: "There are no second acts in American lives."... The book is thoroughly researched, featuring a huge supporting cast of famous players...but it feels more like a television docudrama than a fully realized novel.
Publishers Weekly
F. Scott Fitzgerald's final years, when he worked unhappily as a Hollywood screenwriter.... Fitzgerald comes across as a haunting, multifaceted, sympathetic character.... The slide into drugs, alcoholism, and the heart disease that shortened his life is tragic to behold; Fitzgerald fans will mourn his loss all over again. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
It would appear to be a daunting task to write a biographical novel of one of our most iconic writers, yet O’Nan avoids every pitfall.... O’Nan renders a heartbreaking portrait of an artist soldiering on in the face of personal and professional ruin.... O’Nan’s convincing characterization of a man burdened by guilt and struggling to hold onto his dignity is, at once, a moving testament to grace under pressure and an intimate look at legend.
Booklist
[A] sympathetic portrayal of a troubled genius, a kind but deeply flawed man trying to stay on the wagon while keeping the peace between his unstable wife and their teenage daughter.... O'Nan has crafted an insightful glimpse into a sad period in Fitzgerald's life, as he fades into poverty, drunkenness and anonymity among a cast of notables, after his and Zelda's reign as America's literary golden couple and before his resurgence into universal acclaim.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Stewart O’Nan chooses to begin West of Sunset, not with Scott’s arrival in Hollywood, but with a meeting between Scott and Zelda. What does his story gain from this subtle and interesting choice?
2. O’Nan uses a variety of details to evoke the madness and absurdity of Hollywood culture. What images did you find most effective in this regard, and why?
3. What is the significance of the novel’s title, and how does that title bear upon the ensuing action?
4. Based on what you have read in West of Sunset, do you consider F. Scott Fitzgerald a brave man, a coward, or a bit of both? Explain your reaction.
5. Some have seen West of Sunset as, above all, a love story. If this is correct, who or what is the true object of Scott’s love: Zelda? Sheilah? Himself? Someone or something else? Discuss your answer.
6. O’Nan writes of Fitzgerald, "He was a poor boy from a rich neighborhood, a scholarship kid at boarding school, a Midwesterner in the East, an easterner out West" (pg. 208). Do you accept the idea that a Princeton man who is friends with Hemingway, Bogart, and Dorothy Parker can still claim to be an outsider? Why or why not?
7. Fitzgerald wonders whether he has mistaken oblivion for joy (pg. 166). How is it possible to confuse the two?
8. In West of Sunset, Fitzgerald, a superb novelist and sparkling writer of short stories, tries to make it as a screenwriter, an artistic milieu in which he seems desperately out of water. Why, apart from money, does he attempt this seemingly doomed transformation? Why might a writer who is so successful in one idiom fail so miserably in another?
9. The real Fitzgerald once wrote, "The two basic stories of all times are 'Cinderella' and 'Jack the Giant Killer'—the charm of women and the courage of men." Was he correct? Does O’Nan's novel undermine or confirm Fitzgerald’s statement?
10. In West of Sunset, Hemingway accuses Fitzgerald of betraying his gift. Is it his gift that Scott most significantly betrays, or someone or something else? What?
11. What do you think is Stewart O’Nan’s most penetrating insight into the life of a professional writer?
12. Compare Zelda and Sheilah. What does each woman represent in Fitzgerald’s life? Why does he seem to need them both?
13. Imagine that you are Scottie Fitzgerald. What would you most want from your parents that they are not giving you? Would there be anything you could do to try to get it?
14. Fitzgerald, a Midwesterner by birth, seems caught between the American East and the American West. What does each offer that the other denies him, and in which of the two places does he more naturally belong? Why?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Descent
Tim Johnston, 2015
Algonquin Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203047
Summary
The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college.
For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage.
But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic. Ssuddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines
or seen on TV.
As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?
Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1962
• Raised—Iowa City, Iowa, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Iowa; M.F.A., University of Massachusetts
• Awards—O. Henry Prize (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Memphis, Tennessee
Tim Johnston is the author of the debut adult novel Descent, the story collection Irish Girl, and the young adult novel Never So Green.
Published in 2009, the stories in Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. In 2005 the title story, “Irish Girl,” was included in the David Sedaris anthology of favorites, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules.
Johnston’s stories have also appeared in New England Review, New Letters, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, DoubleTake, Best Life Magazine, and Narrative Magazine, among others. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Memphis. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Johnston's descriptive prose attains a level of visceral brio…While the author periodically checks in on Caitlin's desperate plight, it's the men—bullies and stymied heroes alike—who power this engulfing thriller-cum-western, which is at its most potent in the adversarial banter of a couple of guys, sniffing around each other like pit bulls
Jan Stuart - New York Times
I’ve read many variations on this theme, some quite good, but never one as powerful as Tim Johnston’s Descent.... The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly, but the glory of Descent lies not in its plot but in the quality of the writing. The magic of his prose equals the horror of Johnston’s story; each somehow enhances the other.... Read this astonishing novel. It’s the best of both worlds.
Washington Post
This is much more than your typical thriller. Tim Johnston has written a book that makes Gone Girl seem gimmicky.... Johnston is an excellent writer. You want to set this one down so you can take a breath, and keep reading--all at the same time.
Alan Cheuse - NPR
[A] twisty thriller about a family grappling with loss
Oprah Magazine
Outstanding ... The days when you had to choose between a great story and a great piece of writing? Gone.
Esquire
An original and psychologically deep thriller.
Outside Magazine
(Starred review.) Johnston has a poet’s eye for the majestic and forbidding nature of the Rockies, and a sociologist’s understanding of how people act under pressure. He also has a knack for creating characters that the reader will come to care about.... Combining domestic drama with wilderness adventure, Johnston has created a hybrid novel that is as emotionally satisfying as it is viscerally exciting.
Publishers Weekly
Johnston tracks the dissolution of a family following the disappearance of the teenage daughter during a Colorado vacation.... Neither Grant nor Sean—Angela barely registers for the reader—makes for a compelling lead character, both laconic to the point of annoyance, and while Caitlin's ordeal is chilling, it's not enough to buoy this overwritten yet occasionally poignant tale.
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. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)
GENERIC QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they more one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you, the reader, begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers are skillful at hiding clues in plain sight. How well does the author hide the clues in this work?
4. Does the author use red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray?
5. Talk about plot's twists & turns—those surprising developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense? Are they plausible? Or do the twists & turns feel forced and preposterous—inserted only to extend the story.
6. Does the author ratchet up the story's suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? How does the author build suspense?
7. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Is it probable or believable? Does it grow out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 2). Or does the ending come out of the blue? Does it feel forced...tacked-on...or a cop-out? Or perhaps it's too predictable. Can you envision a better, or different, ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)