The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer
Sydney Padua, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307908278
Summary
Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures.
Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron.
When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built.
Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines.
But do not despair!
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science.
Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Canada
• Education—Sheridan College
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Melina Sydney Padua is a graphic artist and animator. She is the author of the 2D Goggles webcomic and her animation work appears in several popular Hollywood films—Marmaduke, Clash of the Titans, The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Iron Giant, and Quest for Camelot.
Her work has been exhibited at the BBC Tech Lab and at a Steampunk exhibition by Oxford's Museum of the History of Science. She gave a conference on storytelling at The Story, an event shared with Cory Doctorow, Tim Etchells, David Hepworth, Aleks Krotoski, and Tony White among others.
Originally from the Canadian prairie, she now lives in London with her husband and far too many books
Lovelace and Babbage
Padua writes the steampunk webcomic 2D Goggles or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. It features a pocket universe where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage have actually built an analytical engine and use it to "fight crime" at Queen Victoria's request Also featured in the comic is the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whom Padua has called "The Wolverine of the early Victorians."
The comic is based on thorough research on the biographies and correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace, as well as other bits of early Victoriana, which is then twisted for humorous effect. According to Padua,
Some of the documents are more entertaining than the actual comic. Plenty of times, I've thrown something into the comic just so I'd have an excuse to refer to some document.
The comic began as a one-shot for Ada Lovelace Day—a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Disliking the fact that both Babbage and Lovelace died with their life work incomplete, Padua ended the comic with the alternate events, then found that...
[A] lot of people saw it and thought that I was actually going to do a comic, which I had no intention of doing. But then I started thinking, "What if I actually did the comic?" I started fooling around, and I guess I'm still fooling around with it.
Originally, in 2011, the comic was meant to be a limited edition print of only 25 to raise money for The Ada Initiative. Two years later, in 2013, it was adapted as a stage show, A Note of Discord by Theatre Paradok at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Then, in 2015, the comic was published as a 320-page book titled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Pantheon Books. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2016.)
Visit the author's blog.
Book Reviews
Much of this material is interesting, but it reads as a more or less unedited jumble. The impression it gives is that Padua was captivated by her research and couldn’t bear to leave much out, however peripheral to the main story line. Eventually a reader must give up trying to follow a narrative and read The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage primarily as a miscellany of historical curiosities.
Lauren Redniss - New York Times Book Review
Informative and entertaining... It’s a book that makes you a lot smarter as it makes you laugh.
Nancy Szokan - Washington Post
Reading The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is like auditing a dozen high-level, inventively taught college classes simultaneously: more than a little overwhelming yet fascinating.
Margaret Quamme - Columbus Dispatch
Sydney Padua’s new book is definitely "Yowza!" material.
Etelka Lehoczky - NPR
An outlandish, enlightening tale.
Discover Magazine
(Starred review.) [A] must-have for anyone who enjoys getting lost in a story as brilliant in execution as conception. Padua debut graphic novel transforms the collaboration between Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron) and Charles Babbage (a noted polymath) into an inspired, “What If?” story.... [A] spirit of genuine inventiveness.
Publishers Weekly
Originally a webcomic, this collection of jests interweaves history, literature, and fantasy into short stories starring Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Babbage's machines, and a number of 19th-century luminaries.... Padua's extravaganza is very much for the whimsical intelligentsia.... —Martha Cornig
Library Journal
Sydney Padua’s impeccably researched, yet playfully imagined graphic biography is a treat for history buffs and graphic novel lovers alike…With fantastically detailed art, footnotes and diagrams…, this is a whimsical graphic account like no other.
BookPage
(Starred review.) [A]udaciously imagined.... [W]ritten and illustrated by an artist and computer animator, [it] begins with a sliver of fact—the brief, apparently unproductive "intellectual partnership" between Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.... A prodigious feat of historically based fantasy that engages on a number of levels.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussions for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage:
1. One of the many (many) footnotes describes the difference between Babbage and Lovelace as this: "In a sense the stubborn, rigid Babbage and mercurial, airy Lovelace embody the division between hardware and software." How does this metaphor work to describe the personalities and characteristics of the two protagonists?
2. Why does Ada Lovelace take up mathematics and science? To escape...what?
3. Here's one of the big questions the novel poses: What is the relationship between science and imagination?
4. And Here's another intriguing question from the book: Was mathematics invented or discovered?
5. One of the footnotes tells us that Lovelace is fascinated by zero: "It had a spiritual dimension." How so?
6. Was the story and the prodigious imagery of the book overwhelming or distracting to you? Or did you find it enhanced your understanding of the story and its of humor ?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Ditto the footnotes—were they helpful or overwhelming?
8. Talk about the ways that Padua envisions The Difference Machine changing the world of the 19th century. In other words, what is the alternative history imagined here?
9. Describe the humor in Padua's novel—how she uses it and the different forms it takes.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Global War on Morris
Steve Israel, 2014
Simon & Schuster
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476772233
Summary
A witty political satire ripped from the headlines and written by Congressman Steve Israel, who’s met the characters, heard the conversations, and seen the plot twists firsthand.
Meet Morris Feldstein, a pharmaceutical salesman living and working in western Long Island who loves the Mets, loves his wife Rona, and loves things just the way they are. He doesn’t enjoy the news; he doesn’t like to argue. Rona may want to change the world; Morris wants the world to leave him alone. Morris does not make waves.
But one day Morris is seduced by a lonely, lovesick receptionist at one of the doctors’ offices along his sales route, and in a moment of weakness charges a non-business expense to his company credit card. No big deal, you might think. Easy mistake. But the government’s top-secret surveillance program, anchored by a giant, complex supercomputer known as NICK, thinks differently. Eventually NICK begins to thread together the largely disparate and tenuously connected strands of Morris’s life—his friends, family, friends’ friends, his traffic violations, his daughter’s political leanings, his wife’s new patients, and even his failed romantic endeavors—and Morris becomes the US government’s new public enemy number one.
A hilarious, debut novel from a charismatic author, The Global War on Morris toes the line between recent breaking headlines and a future that is not that difficult to imagine. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 30, 1958
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Wantagh, Long Island, New York
• Education—B.A., George Washington University
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Steven Israel is the United States Representative for New York's 3rd congressional district, serving in the United States Congress since 2001. The district, numbered as the 2nd district from 2001 to 2013, includes portions of northern Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, as well as a tiny portion of Queens in New York City. He is a member of the Democratic Party and was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee until November 2014. Before serving in Congress, he served on the Huntington, New York town board. He is a native of New York.
Early life, education, and career
Israel was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Wantagh, on Long Island. He graduated from Nassau Community College and George Washington University. At George Washington University, he worked as an aide for Robert Matsui and then Richard Ottinger. Israel went on to become Suffok County director of the American Jewish Congress. In 1987 he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the county legislature. After this defeat, he spent three years working as an aide to the Suffolk County executive and founded a PR and marketing firm.[2]
He was elected to the town council in Huntington, New York, in 1993. While there, he reportedly convinced the Republican supervisor to switch parties. A town official said that he persuaded colleagues to move for pay raises while opposing them himself, which was seen as a politically safer move.
U.S. House of Representatives
After Rick Lazio left his House seat to run for the United States Senate in 2001, Israel was elected to his seat, receiving 48% of the vote, defeating Republican Joan Jonhson, who received 34%, and four independent candidates. He has been reelected six times with relatively little difficulty, despite representing a district that is a swing district on paper.
—Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies
—Caucus membership
Co-chair and founder of Congressional Center Aisle Caucus
House Cancer Caucus (Co-chair)
Long Island Sound Caucus (Co-chair)
—Party leadership
Assistant Democratic Whip
House Democratic Caucus Task Force On Defense and the Military (Chair)
House Democratic Study Group on National Security Policy (Co-chair)
(From Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/29/14.)
Book Reviews
[I]t’s an unexpected delight to find The Global War on Morris, a political satire by Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), so spirited and funny.... [A]t the center of a network of sycophants, [Vice President] Cheney stirs the cauldron of our nation’s anxieties about “terrorists, jihadists, liberals.” He whines about how soft Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has gone, snickers at constitutional rights and calculates how best to manipulate the terror alert system before the Republican convention.... a perfect storm of ineptitude, fervency and technophilia.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
[A] laugh-out-loud funny book. I don’t mean a chuckle here or there. This yarn by Congressman Steve Israel is downright hilarious....a race between laughter and absurdity with you as the referee.
Chris Matthews - Hardball
When he's not debuting as a novelist, Israel represents New York's third Congressional District. Naturally, his book has a political bent. After unassuming pharmaceutical salesman Morris Feldstein makes a hasty decision to charge a nonbusiness expense to his company credit card, he's tracked by the government's top-secret surveillance program, which manages to turn him into the new public enemy number one.
Library Journal
When he's not debuting as a novelist, Israel represents New York's third Congressional District. Naturally, his book has a political bent. After unassuming pharmaceutical salesman Morris Feldstein makes a hasty decision to charge a nonbusiness expense to his company credit card, he's tracked by the government's top-secret surveillance program, which manages to turn him into the new public enemy number one.
Booklist
Israel has fun with the bureaucratic side of national security but offers few surprises, while his political jabs are rather flat and facile, and, after all, a decade late....[and] at a time when refugees, casualties and decapitations can make it hard to see the lighter side of any aspect of the war on terror.
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 New Agenda (New Agenda series, 2)
Simone Pond, 2014
Ktown Waters Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780692208205
Summary
What would you do if your father was the man responsible for the end of civilization?
Book two of the New Agenda series continues following Ava's journey as searches inside the mainframe to find Chief Morray. For certain, society was disintegrating: humans were self-destructive and wildly uncontrolled.
But young William Morray had hoped, as an idealistic teenager, that his father’s acclaimed Repatterning Program—a precursor to the brilliant New Agenda—could manage the upheaval and get society back on track. They said it was for the greater good: out of chaos comes order and from the ashes the phoenix will rise. They said the Repatterning was a positive event, but like most advertising, it was a lie.
William’s wish had always been to work with his father and win his approval. However, when he is sent away to a remote underground safety shelter in Denver, William is awakened to the grisly truth that the Repatterning is a mass genocide. And worse: his father, the New Agenda leader, is the spearhead of this horrifying plan to eradicate all cities, homes and people outside of the Elite citizenship. William decides to team up with an underground rebel alliance to end the Repatterning and save what’s left of civilization. (From the publisher.)
This is the second book in The New Agenda Series. The first is The City Center (2013). Mainframe, the third, is due out in 2015.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 21, 1970
• Raised—Kensington, Maryland
• Education—B.A., University of Maryland
• Awards—Gold Medal Readers’ Favorite
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, CA
Simone Pond is an award-winning author of a dystopian fiction series, which includes The City Center, The New Agenda, and The Mainframe.
She grew up in Kensington, Maryland—a small town just outside of Washington D.C. As a young girl, she loved writing in her journal and making up stories, but after reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, everything changed. Amazed that a woman could write so convincingly from a teenage boy's perspective, Pond became determined to become a writer as well.
Pond currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their Boston Terrier. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Discussion Questions
1. Do you like the way The New Agenda goes back in time to when William Morray was a teenager? How did you feel about seeing the story through his eyes?
2. Do you feel any sympathy toward William or come out of the book with a better understanding about why he turned out the way he did?
3. Why do you think William wanted to win his father’s approval so badly? And do you think he ever overcame his feelings of inadequacy?
4. What were your feelings toward Dru in the beginning of the story? And how did they change by the end of the story?
5. Do you think Sarah did the right thing? What would you have done if you were in her situation?
6. What do you think about the elites and do you feel that this pertains only to the fictional world? Do you see elitism happening in the world today? Have you been affected by it?
7. Ava played more of a backseat role in this story. How did you feel about that?
8. William goes through a series of transformations. What were some of the bigger ones you noticed?
9. What are your thoughts on the budding relationship between John Dickson and Morray?
10. Although this type of upload technology doesn’t exist in our world today, do you think it’s something that is possible in the future?
11. Transhumanism is the development of technologies to enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Where do you stand on this topic? Do you think there could be potential danger?
12. Who would you like to see play what part if a movie or television series were to be made?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Orange Girl
Jostein Gaarder (trans., James Anderson), 2004
Phoenix
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780753819920
Summary
At fifteen, Georg comes upon a letter written to him by his dying father, to be read when he comes of age. Their two voices make a fascinating dialogue as Georg comes to know the father he can barely remember, then is challenged by him to answer some profound questions.
The central mystery of The Orange Girl is the story of an elusive young woman for whom Georg’s father searches in Oslo and Seville—and whom Georg finally realizes is his mother. A thought-provoking fairy-tale romance imbued with the sense of awe and wonder that is Jostein Gaarder’s hallmark.
Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder, whose novel Sophie’s World was a best-seller in 40 countries, is also the author of The Ringmaster’s Daughter, Maya, The Solitaire Mystery, and The Christmas Mystery. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 8, 1952
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—University of Oslo
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Oslo, Norway
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often utilizes metafiction in his works and constructs stories within stories. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. It been translated into 60 languages; there are over 40 million copies in print.
Personal
Gaarder was born and raised in Oslo. His father was a school headmaster and his mother a teacher and author of children’s books. He attended Oslo Cathedral School and the University of Oslo, where he studied Scandinavian languages and theology. In 1974 he married Siri Dannevig, and the two moved to Bergen, Norway, where Gaarder taught high school prior to his writing career. The couple has two sons.
Environmental activism
Gaarder has been involved in the promotion of sustainable development for nearly two decades. He established the Sophie Prize in 1997, an international award bestowed on foundations and individuals concerned with the environment. Through the Sophie Prize, Gaarder contributed over $1.5 million to worthy environmental causes.
Controversy
Gaarder is active politically. The focus of his concern is the plight of Palestinian refugees, and he has vehemently criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In August 2006, Gaarder wrote "God's Chosen People," an op-ed in response to that year's Israel-Lebanon conflict. Published in Aftenposten, Norway's largest daily newspaper, he argued in favor of "recognizing the State of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967." He referred to Judaism as "an archaic national and warlike religion," contrasting it with Christianity and its belief that the "Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness." After the article's publication, Gaarder was accused of anti-Semitism.
Awards
1990 - Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature (year's best children's literature).
1993 – Norwegian Booksellers' Prize for Through a Glass, Darkly.
1994 – Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for Sophie's World.
1995 – Italy's Preancarella for Sophie's World.
1997 – Buxtehude Bull for Durch einen Spiegel for Through a Glass, Darkly.
2004 – Willy-Brandt Award in Oslo.
2005 – Commander, The Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.
2005 – Honorary degree, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/15/2014.)
Book Reviews
Eleven years after his father's death, ... Georg begins to read [his father's] letter and is soon captivated by...a woman known as the Orange Girl.... [A] modern fairy tale. Gaarder takes the most ordinary happenings and writes about them in a magical way, creating a truly refreshing tale. (Ages 12 up.)
Children's Literature
[The author] pops a Big Question here, but the leisurely way he prepares readers for it may lose most of them.... As he reads, Georg intersperses reactions and remarks about his own life, deliberately creating a collaborative story that draws together previously unsuspected connections with his barely remembered parent. He closes with his Answer; readers who get that far will be left to mull over their own. (Grades 6-9.) —John Peters, New York Public Library
Children's Library Journal
Threaded through the story of first love is information regarding the Hubble telescope and its "eye on the universe," which leads to a philosophical inquiry about human existence and the short amount of time humans have to spend on Earth. The novel is more about contemplating questions about life than answering them. (Ages 15 to 18.)
Kliatt
Discussion Questions
1. Why does it mean so much for the father who is dying to ask his son these questions, which he knows his son will not be able to think about until many years later? Do you think it is because he cares for the son, to make him think about the big questions in life, and maybe even to enrich his life / improve his quality of life?
2. Do you think it is a problem that Georg is not presented as a whole person? Only his family life is presented, with a few "side trips to school, his teacher, his piano lessons. It makes the book "narrow," in focus. In France, this is called "a theory novel"—a book that sets out to prove a theory, rather than present a whole picture. Do you think it is a limitation? Does it detract from the beauty of the book? Or the wisdom?
3. Working with students: Allow students to familiarize themselves with the following elements from the book: the Hubble telescope, the United Nations, falling in love, Oslo and Norway, the Frognerpark (contains the Vigeland sculpture park), writing a will, their recollections (if any) from when they were three years of age. Also introduce them to the Beethoven's Moonlight sonata.
4. Is the the white pigeon (dove?) which Jan Olav and Veronika see in Spain a premonition of his death? Does Jan himself think so?
5. How does the Hubble telescope function as a metaphor? Does it imply that readers can see everything? Or the narrator can see everything?
6. What would it would be like to get a personal letter from someone who died a long time ago? How do you think the father felt realizing he would not be with his son much longer?
- when did his dad write the letter, and why do you think he did so?
- Why do you think the letter was put in the old cart/pram
- why wasn't it given to Georg's mother so she could give it to him when he was old enough?
7. What do you think is happening between the orange girl and Georg's father?
- Is Georg’s father really that good at reading signs?
- Do you know what scurvy is?
- How many theories does Georg's father have about the orange girl’s use for the oranges? Which do you think is the most realistic? Do you have any theories?
8. Which feelings form the basis for the father’s description of the orange girl and the man in the Toyota?
9. Has this book expanded your knowledge about space?
10. What do these words by Piet Hein mean? “If you don’t live now, you will never live. What do you do?” An alternative translation would be: "Living is a thing you do now or never. Which do you?
11. Where do oranges originate? Do you know any typical "fairy tale rules"?
12. What does Georg's father mean when he talks about the people in the square are like living treasure chests of thoughts and memories. He also says that he himself is in the heart of his own life on earth, as are others. What does he mean?
13. What is the point of The Orange Girl? What is it trying to say? Recall Georg's father's question: has Georg given his answer by the end of the book?
(Questions developed by Linda Johnsen, a librarian in Norway, and sent to us by Conrad, a long-term LitLovers friend. Thanks to both Linda and Conrad.)
Saving Grace
Jane Green, 2014
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250047335
Summary
Grace and Ted Chapman are widely regarded as the perfect literary power couple. Ted is a successful novelist and Grace, his wife of twenty years, is beautiful, stylish, carefree, and a wonderful homemaker.
But what no one sees, what is churning under the surface, is Ted’s rages. His mood swings. And the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted’s longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, the house of cards begins to crumble and Grace, with dark secrets in her past, is most vulnerable. She finds herself in need of help but with no one to turn to…until the perfect new assistant shows up out of the blue.
To the rescue comes Beth, a competent young woman who can handle Ted and has the calm efficiency to weather the storms that threaten to engulf the Chapman household. Soon, though, it’s clear to Grace that Beth might be too good to be true. This new interloper might be the biggest threat of all, one that could cost Grace her marriage, her reputation, and even her sanity. With everything at stake and no one to confide in, Grace must find a way to save herself before it is too late.
Powerful and riveting, Jane Green's Saving Grace will have you on the edge of your seat as you follow Grace on her harrowing journey to rock bottom and back. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 31, 1968
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—University of Wales
• Currently—lives in Westport, Connecticut, USA
Jane Green is the pen name of Jane Green Warburg, an English author of women's novels. Together with Helen Fielding she is considered a founder of the genre known as chick lit.
Green was born in London, England. She attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and worked as a journalist throughout her twenties, writing women's features for the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and others. At 27 she published her first book, Straight Talking, which went straight on to the Bestseller lists, and launched her career as "the queen of chick lit".
Frequent themes in her most recent books, include cooking, class wars, children, infidelity, and female friendships. She says she does not write about her life, but is inspired by the themes of her life.
She is the author of more than 15 novels, several (The Beach House, Second Chance, and Dune Road) having been listed on the New York Times bestseller list. Her other novels Another Piece of My Heart (2012), Family Pictures (2013), and Tempting Fate (2014) received wide acclaim.
In addition to novels, she has taught at writers conferences, and writes for various publications including the Sunday Times, Parade magazine, Wowowow.com, and Huffington Post.
Green now lives in Connecticut with her second husband, Ian Warburg, six children, two dogs and three cats. Actively philanthropic, her foremost charities are The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp (Paul Newman's camp for children with life-threatening illnesses), Bethel Recovery Center, and various breast cancer charities. She is also a supporter of the Westport Public Library, and the Westport Country Playhouse. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/20/2014.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A] memorable novel probing the flimsy facade of one woman's seemingly perfect life.... Green has imbued her story with realistic, imperfect characters. The lure of the novel lies in Green's ability to create a consistently evolving story that entices from the very first page.
Publishers Weekly
Grace Chapman knows better than most how a perfect-looking life can be anything but.... Fans of Green get everything they have come to expect and love in this psychological domestic drama: it's fast paced and emotionally satisfying if a little rushed and downbeat in the conclusion. —Amy Brozio-Andrews, Albany P.L., NY
Library Journal
The perfect personal assistant can make even the most accomplished wife dispensable.... Grace must devise a plan to save herself and snare the culprit. A rather uncertain resolution suggests a sequel may be in the works. Green spins a dark romance, recalling All About Eve, where intimacy masks betrayal.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Grace’s complex relationship with her mother has a profound influence on the relationships she goes on to cultivate throughout her life. How is Grace’s relationship with and reaction to Ted influenced by that which she had with her mother? In what was are her relationships with Ted and her mother similar? In addition, how has Grace’s guilt over the circumstances of her mother’s death influenced her relationships, including those she has with Beth as well as the women at Harmont House?
2. Did you find anything about Beth to be suspicious at first? If you were Grace, at what point would you begin to suspect that something was not quite right about Beth and/or her motives?
3. Grace has lived her life propelled by the belief that, "If she just keeps running and running, keeps being the perfect wife, mother, cook, the past will surely disappear." Why does this ultimately not work? What does Grace come to realize about her goal of perfecting the illusion so that "her secrets will recede"?
4. Where in the story do we see examples of how cooking has served as a sort of sanctuary for Grace throughout her life? Do you have something in your own life that plays a similar role?
5. What manipulative tactics does Beth use to reel in Ted and Grace? How does she take advantage of their weaknesses?
6. Women are known for our intuition, that little voice that tells you when something is wrong, and we like to think that as we grow older, we learn to listen to it. Do you think intuition increases or decreases as we get older? Do you find that you are relying on your intuition more or less? In what circumstances have you let your head overrule those feelings, and then been proven right?
7. Grace repeatedly has a feeling or an instinct that things are off—for example with Beth and later with Dr. Ellery’s diagnosis. Where do we see examples of this? What factors in both Grace’s present and past have caused her to mistrust, question, or ignore her instincts?
8. As it relates to heath, should you trust your intuition or the facts as presented by doctors? Should you research your own health issues and inform yourself as much as possible or is too much information a dangerous thing?
9. Grace notes the differences in the treatment and view of medicine by society in the United States versus in England. How does the position of power and authority associated with a medical degree affect Grace’s experience with Dr. Frank Ellery?
10. When Lydia asks Grace what it is that she wants, Grace tells her that she wants her life back the way it was before, including Ted. What was your reaction to this? If you were in Grace’s shoes would you have said the same thing? If not, how would you have responded?
11. How did you react to the scene at Ted’s reading when Grace first encounters Beth after returning from England? What would you have said to Beth?
12. How did you react to the ending of the novel? What do you imagine the future holds for Beth? What about for Grace and also for Ted?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)