The Remedy for Love
Bill Roorbach, 2014
Algonquin Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203313
Summary
They’re calling for the "Storm of the Century," and in western Maine, that means something. So Eric closes his law office early and heads to the grocery store. But when an unkempt and seemingly unstable young woman in line comes up short on cash, a kind of old-school charity takes hold of his heart—twenty bucks and a ride home; that’s the least he can do.
Trouble is, Danielle doesn’t really have a home. She’s squatting in a cabin deep in the woods: no electricity, no plumbing, no heat. Eric, with troubles—and secrets—of his own, tries to walk away but finds he can’t. She’ll need food, water, and firewood, and that’s just to get her through the storm: there’s a whole long winter ahead.
Resigned to help, fending off her violent mistrust of him, he gets her set up, departs with relief, and climbs back to the road, but—winds howling, snow mounting—he finds his car missing, phone inside. In desperation, he returns to the cabin. Danielle’s terrified, then merely enraged. And as the storm intensifies, these two lost souls are forced to ride it out together.
Intensely moving, frequently funny, The Remedy for Love is a harrowing story about the truths we reveal when there is no time or space for artifice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Raised—New Cannan, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., Ithaca College; M.F.A, Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Maine
Bill Roorbach is an American novelist, short story and nature writer, memoirist, journalist, blogger and critic. He has authored fiction and nonfiction works including Big Bend, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and the O. Henry Prize. His recent novels include Life Among Giants (2012) and The Remedy for Love (2014). Roorbach and his wife, painter Juliet Karelsen, live in Maine. They have a daughter.
Background
Bill Roorbach was born in Chicago, Illinois. The next year his family moved to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended kindergarten, and in 1959 moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where he attended public schools from first grade on, graduating from New Canaan High School in 1971. In 1976, he received his B.A. (cum laude) from Ithaca College.
During what he has called his "writing apprenticeship," Roorbach traveled and worked a series of different jobs. He played piano and sang in a succession of bands, bartended, worked briefly on a cattle ranch, and worked extensively as a carpenter, plumber, and handyman. In January, 1987, he enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program of the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts, where he was awarded a School of the Arts Fellowship, a Fellowship of Distinction and an English Department teaching assistantship. In addition, he was a fiction editor of Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. He graduated in May 1990.
Soon after he published his first book, Summers with Juliet.
Teaching
Roorbach taught at the University of Maine at Farmington from 1991 to 1995 and subsequently at the Ohio State University from 1995 to 2001, winning tenure in 1998. In 2001, he quit his tenured position and returned with his family to Maine where he taught odd semesters as visiting full professor at Colby College.
He wrote full-time until Fall, 2004, when he was awarded the William H.P. Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, a five-year position as full professor. He commuted from Maine to Worcester until April, 2009, when he returned to full-time writing.
Works
Roorbach sold his first book, Summers with Juliet shortly after graduating from Columbia. In 1998, he published Writing Life Stories. During the interim, he published short work, both fiction and nonfiction, in a number of magazines and journals, including The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, Playboy, Missouri Review, and Granta,
His first novel, The Smallest Color; a collection of stories, Big Bend; and a collection of essays, Into Woods, written incrementally during the preceding decade, were published in a flurry in 2000 and 2001. Big Bend was featured on the NPR program Selected Shorts, performed by the actor James Cromwell. Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth, a widely used anthology, was published in 2002. A Place on Water, which Roorbach wrote with poet Wesley McNair and essayist Robert Kimber, was published in 2004. In 2005, Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey was published. Roorbach based on an article of the same name he wrote for Harper’s Magazine. More recently, he published two novels, Life Among Giants in 2012 and The Remedy for Love in 2014.
Awards
2001 - Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
1999 - National Endowment for the Arts Fellow
2002 - O. Henry Prize
2004 - Kaplan Foundation Fellow
2006 - Maine Prize for Literary Nonfiction
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrived 10/14/2014.)
Book Reviews
A snowstorm hits a small town in Maine, trapping strangers in a cabin: Danielle, who is homeless, and Eric, a lawyer who swoops in to help her. As temps drop, tensions rise and passions flare.
Good Housekeeping
Predictably, they are trapped by the storm, woefully underprepared, and forced to weather it together. Danielle’s careening and unpredictable personality seems an odd fit for Eric’s mellow character. Roorbach does little to subvert the classic male rescue fantasy.
Publishers Weekly
Part survival tale and part romance.... Roorbach does well in the limited space, keeping the narrative tight without being claustrophobi.... There’s more depth to the fierce and mercurial Danielle than meets the eye, which gives [the characters'] interactions spark as the storm rages outside and something even more powerful develops within.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A closely observed meditation on isolation and loneliness.... [A] superbly grown-up love story.... Lyrical, reserved and sometimes unsettling—and those are the happier moments. Another expertly delivered portrait of the world from Roorbach, that poet of hopeless tangles.
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 Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385352857
Summary
Winner, 2014 Man Booker Prize
August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier.
His life is a daily struggle to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from pitiless beatings. Until he receives a letter that will change him forever.
Moving deftly from the POW camp to contemporary Australia, from the experiences of Dorrigo and his comrades to those of the Japanese guards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of love, death, and family, exploring the many forms of good and evil, war and truth, guilt and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1961
• Where—Longford, Tasmania, Australia
• Education—B.A., Tasmania University; M.L. Oxford University
• Awards—Man Booker Prize; Commonwealth Writers' Prize
• Currently—lives in Hobart, Tasmania
Richard Miller Flanagan is an Australian novelist, "Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation," according to The Economist. Each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours, including the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He also has written and directed feature films.
Flanagan is the fifth of six children, descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three brothers is Australian rules football journalist Martin Flanagan. He grew up in the remote mining town of Rosebery on Tasmania's western coast.
Flanagan left school at the age of 16 but returned to study at the University of Tasmania, where he became president of the Tasmania University Union in 1983. He graduated with a B.A. with first-class honours. The following year, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, where he earned a Master of Letters in History.
Flanagan wrote four non-fiction works before moving to fiction, works he has called "his apprenticeship." One of these was an autobiography of "Australia's greatest con man," John Friedrich. Flanagan ghost-wrote the book in six weeks to make money so he could write his first novel. Friedrich killed himself in the middle of the book's writing and it was published posthumously. Simon Caterson, writing in The Australian, described it as "one of the least reliable but most fascinating memoirs in the annals of Australian publishing."
Novels
His first novel, Death of a River Guide (1994), is the tale of Aljaz Cosini, river guide, who lies drowning, reliving his life and the lives of his family and forebears. It was described by The Times Literary Supplement as "one of the most auspicious debuts in Australian writing."
His next book, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997), which tells the story of Slovenian immigrants, was a major bestseller. Those first two novels, according to Kirkus Reviews, "rank with the finest fiction out of Australia since the heyday of Patrick White."
Gould's Book of Fish (2001), Flanagan’s third novel, is based on the life of William Buelow Gould, a convict artist, and tells the tale of his love affair with a young black woman in 1828. It went on to win the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
His fourth novel was The Unknown Terrorist (2006), which the New York Times called a "stunning...brilliant meditation upon the post-9/11 world."
His fifth novel, Wanting (2008) tells two parallel stories: about the novelist Charles Dickens in England, and Mathinna, an Aboriginal orphan adopted by Sir John Franklin, the colonial governor of Van Diemen's Land, and his wife, Lady Jane Franklin. As well as being a Book of the Year for both The New Yorker and The Observer, it won the Queensland Premier's Prize, the Western Australian Premier's Prize and the Tasmania Book Prize.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) is Flanagan's sixth novel. The life story of Dorrigo Evans, a flawed war hero and survivor of the Death Railway, it won the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Journalism
Richard Flanagan has written on literature, the environment, art and politics for The Australian and international press including Le Monde, Daily Telegraph (London), Suddeutsche Zeitung, New York Times, and The New Yorker. Some of his writings have proved controversial. "The Selling-out of Tasmania," published after the death of former Premier Jim Bacon in 2004, criticized his government's relationship with corporate interests in the state. Premier Paul Lennon declared, "Richard Flanagan and his fictions are not welcome in the new Tasmania."
"Gunns Out of Control," Flanagan's 2007 essay on logging company Gunns, then the biggest hardwood woodchipper in the world, inspired Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins' high profile campaign to stop the building of a two billion dollar Bell Bay Pulp Mill. Gunns subsequently collapsed with huge debt, and its CEO John Gay was found guilty of insider trading. Flanagan's essay won the 2008 John Curtin Prize for Journalism.
And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?, a collection of his non-fiction works, was published in 2011.
Film
The 1998 film of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, written and directed by Flanagan, was nominated for the Golden Bear at that year's Berlin Film Festival. He worked with Baz Luhrmann as a writer on the 2008 film Australia.
Personal
Flanagan lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with his wife, Majda (nee Smolej) and has three daughters. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/14/2014.)
Book Reviews
[Flanagan] manages to convey with stomach-churning power the sheer awfulness of this chapter in World War II history…It is the story of Dorrigo, as one man among many P.O.W.'s in the Asian jungle, that is the beating heart of this book: an excruciating, terrifying, life-altering story that is an indelible fictional testament to the prisoners there. Taken by themselves, these chapters create a slim, compelling story: Odysseus's perseverance through a bloody war and his return home at last to Penelope (in this case, Ella) and his efforts, like his fellow soldiers', to see if he can put the horrors and suffering of war in the rearview mirror, and somehow construct a fulfilling Act II to a broken life.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Flanagan has done something difficult here, creating a character [Dorrigo] who is at once vivid and shadowy…Flanagan manages…shifts in time and perspective with extraordinary skill. They're never confusing but they are dizzying, and demand the reader's full attention in a way that reminds me of Conrad. I suspect that on rereading, this magnificent novel will seem even more intricate, more carefully and beautifully constructed…Basho wrote that "Days and months are travelers of eternity," and Flanagan's book, like the poet's own, will push us far down that path. This Narrow Road to the Deep North is both unforgiving and generous, a paradox that should earn it some fame of its own.
Michael Gorra - New York Times Book Review
Nothing since Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has shaken me like this.... This is a classic work of war fiction from a world-class writer.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
An unforgettable story of men at war.... Flanagan’s prose is richly innovative and captures perfectly the Australian demotic of tough blokes, with their love of nicknames and excellent swearing. He evokes Evans’s affair with Amy, and his subsequent soulless wanderings, with an intensity and beauty that is as poetic as the classical Japanese literature that peppers this novel.
Times (London)
A devastatingly beautiful novel.
Sunday Times (London)
A novel of extraordinary power, deftly told and hugely affecting. A classic in the making.
Observer (UK)
A masterpiece.... A symphony of tenderness and love, a moving and powerful story that captures the weight and breadth of a life.
Guardian (UK)
Elegantly wrought, measured, and without an ounce of melodrama, Flanagan’s novel is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Financial Times
A moving and necessary work of devastating humanity and lasting significance.
Seattle Times
Nothing could have prepared us for this immense achievement.... The Narrow Road to the Deep North is beyond comparison.
Australian
The book Richard Flanagan was born to write.
Economist (UK)
[A] supple meditation on memory, trauma, and empathy that is also a sublime war novel. Initially, it is related through the reminiscences of Dorrigo Evans.... Yet it is Dorrigo’s Japanese adversary, Major Nakamura, Flanagan’s most conflicted and fully realized character, whose view of the war...comes to overshadow Dorrigo’s story.
Publishers Weekly
A literary war novel with a split personality, about a protagonist who loathes his dual character.... But the novel's deep flaw is a pivotal plot development that aims at the literary heights of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary but sounds too often like a swoon-worthy bodice ripper.... [T]here's too much "her body was a poem beyond memorising" for the novel to fulfill its considerable ambition.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the significance of the name of the novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North? Why might Flanagan have chosen to name his book after Basho’s well-known travelogue by the same name?
2. Consider the structure of the novel. How does the division and organization of the passages help to underscore the themes of time and memory that are revisited throughout the book? Likewise, consider how the structure allows the author to present a variety of points of view. What common themes does this help to uncover and what does it reveal about the common experiences of the characters? Does this form allow us to make any generalizations about the common human experience? Alternatively, how does the structure of the novel help to inform us about the difficulties and loneliness of the personal human experience?
3. How does the author’s "visual" portrait of the characters and the places they inhabit inform us about the state of the characters and shape our reaction to their story? Evaluate Flanagan’s choice of imagery and language. What type of imagery and language is most prevalent in the book? Does Flanagan employ much symbolism? How does this ultimately shape our experience of the book and our understanding of the major themes addressed therein?
4. The POWs are put to work—often to their deaths—as slaves building a railway for the Japanese emperor. What does this railway represent to the Japanese people and their leader? Why are they so devoted to its construction that they can be driven to violence and murder to ensure its completion? Nakamura says that the English also utilized "non-freedom" in order to ensure progress in their own country. What does this seem to indicate about the nature of progress and how do his comments change our perception of both the European and the Asian characters and what is happening on the Line?
5. Which of the characters believe that they are "good men"? How do they each define "goodness"? Does their self-analysis remain consistent throughout the story? If not, what seems to affect this? Is their self-perception in line with how we, as readers, perceive them? Does Flanagan provide us with a clear sense of who is "right" and who is "wrong" in the story—or who is "good" and who is "evil"? What does this seem to reveal about ethics and the matter of good and evil? Can we draw any conclusions at the book’s end about what it ultimately means to be a "good" person?
6. Evaluate Flanagan’s depiction of the dual nature of man. Consider representations of good and evil, of man as philosopher-poet and man as animal, of the public and private self. Does it seem to be possible for man to resist this dual nature? Does the novel indicate whether man can choose which side of his dual nature prevails over the other or is this beyond man’s control?
7. Early in the novel, Dorrigo in his old age recalls a saying: "A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else" (4). What does this saying mean? What message does the book ultimately seem to impart about memory and remembrance? Upon deciding whether to keep Rabbit’s illustrations of the war, Bonox Baker says that "memory is the true justice" (183) while Dorrigo, at this point in the story, believes it can be "the creator of new horrors" (183). Is it better to remember and even speak about one’s past or to remain silent and try to forget? What examples of this from the novel support your point of view?
8. The passages that feature Nakamura after the war reveal his struggle to understand himself and his past actions. Does he believe that the violence he committed or ordered was justified? What conclusion does he come to at the end of his life? How does his viewpoint evolve over the course of his lifetime and what influences this thought process and his understanding of himself and his actions during the war? Do any other characters also submit themselves to this process of self-analysis and philosophical inquisition? Are their experiences very similar?
9. Does The Narrow Road to the Deep North ultimately answer the question "What is a hero?" Who in the novel can be defined as a hero and what are some of the heroic actions depicted in the book? Are some of the characters more naturally suited to be leaders or is the role of leader or hero one they assume only because it is demanded of them? What proof do we find of this throughout the novel?
10. Flanagan writes: "Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life horror has no more form than it does meaning" (19). Does Flanagan’s novel give form and meaning to horror and suffering or does he resist this in his own work? Consider the places in the text where the themes of futility and the meaninglessness of suffering and horror surface. What does the description of the death of Darky Gardiner seem to contribute to this dialogue? Do the Europeans and the Japanese share similar views of death and suffering? If not, how do they differ and what seems to cause these differences in philosophy?
11. Evaluate the relationship between Dorrigo Evans and Amy Mulvaney. Why do they initially seem to be drawn to each other? What obstacles do they face as a couple? Could any of these obstacles have been overcome? While they are playing cards, one of Amy’s friends says, "Love is public...or it’s not love" (119). Do you agree with this statement? Can Dorrigo and Amy’s relationship be defined as love? If not, how would you categorize their relationship? When Dorrigo and Amy see each other on the bridge many years after their affair, why do they walk past each other?
12. Consider the many representations and definitions of love in the novel: love as duty, as romance, as magnetism, as friendship, as devotion, as annihilation, etc. Does one form of love seem to prevail over all of the others in the book? What can readers learn about love through their understanding of the characters’ varied experiences with love or its lack?
13. Are there any representations of faith in the novel? If so, to what are the characters faithful? There are also many examples of faithlessness and unfaithfulness to be found in the book. What causes the characters to lose their faith or to be unfaithful?
14. Many of the characters in the book share a love of poetry and literature. How does our knowledge of their love of literature alter our perception of their character? What might their interest in the arts reveal about the common human experience? Flanagan also chose to incorporate poetry by Basho, Issa, Tennyson, and others throughout the text in epigraphs and excerpts. Why might he have chosen to utilize poetry in this way?
15. Evaluate Dorrigo’s relationship with Ella. Why does Dorrigo choose to marry Ella? How does their relationship evolve—or not—over the course of the story? What does their relationship seem to indicate about love and family? Can we conclude whether or not Dorrigo truly loved Ella?
16. Keith and Ella both choose to lie to their partners. Why? How do these lies affect their lives thereafter? Do you believe that their actions were justified? Is anything gained by their dishonesty?
17. What messages does the novel impart about war and its aftermath? How do the former POWs respond to their new lives after the war is over? What are the lives of the Japanese soldiers like after the war? How has the war changed them and how has it changed life at home in each of their countries? What does this seem to imply about war and what the various characters endured throughout the war?
18. The Narrow Road to the Deep North begins with Dorrigo’s recollection of a church hall flooded with light. This image is recalled again at the story’s conclusion. Do you believe that this imagery is meant to represent some prevalent positive force—hope, faith, or optimism, for example?—or is it simply meant to provide a stark contrast to the dark material that fills the book?
19. What is the significance of Charon’s circle death poem at the start and the conclusion of the story? What does the circle represent and how does Dorrigo come to understand its meaning?
20. At the conclusion of the story, Flanagan presents us with the image of Dorrigo opening a book only to find out that the final pages have been torn out. Why do you think that the author chooses to employ this image at the story’s end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
A Sudden Light
Garth Stein, 2014
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439187036
Summary
When a boy tries to save his parents’ marriage, he uncovers a legacy of family secrets in a coming-of-age ghost story.
In the summer of 1990, fourteen-year-old Trevor Riddell gets his first glimpse of Riddell House. Built from the spoils of a massive timber fortune, the legendary family mansion is constructed of giant, whole trees, and is set on a huge estate overlooking Puget Sound.
Trevor’s bankrupt parents have begun a trial separation, and his father, Jones Riddell, has brought Trevor to Riddell House with a goal: to join forces with his sister, Serena, dispatch Grandpa Samuel—who is flickering in and out of dementia—to a graduated living facility, sell off the house and property for development into “tract housing for millionaires,” divide up the profits, and live happily ever after.
But Trevor soon discovers there’s someone else living in Riddell House: a ghost with an agenda of his own. For while the land holds tremendous value, it is also burdened by the final wishes of the family patriarch, Elijah, who mandated it be allowed to return to untamed forestland as a penance for the millions of trees harvested over the decades by the Riddell Timber company. The ghost will not rest until Elijah’s wish is fulfilled, and Trevor’s willingness to face the past holds the key to his family’s future.
A Sudden Light is a rich, atmospheric work that is at once a multigenerational family saga, a historical novel, a ghost story, and the story of a contemporary family’s struggle to connect with each other. A tribute to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, it reflects Garth Stein’s outsized capacity for empathy and keen understanding of human motivation, and his rare ability to see the unseen: the universal threads that connect us all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 6, 1964
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Rasied—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Garth Stein is an American author and film producer from Seattle, Washington. Widely known as the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stein is also a documentary film maker, playwright, teacher, and amateur racer.
Early years
Born in California, Garth Stein spent most of his childhood growing up in Seattle. His father, a Brooklyn native, was the child of Austrian Jewish immigrants, while Stein's Alaskan mother comes from Tlingit and Irish descent. Stein later revisited his Tlingit heritage in his first novel, Raven Stole the Moon.
Stein attended Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in 1987. He then stayed at Columbia to earn His M.F.A. from its School of the Arts in 1990.
Career
Stein has worked as a director, producer and/or writer of documentary films—several of which won awards. In 1991, he co-produced an Academy Award winning short film, The Lunch Date. He then co-produced The Last Party, a film account of the 1992 Democratic National Convention; later he produced and directed When Your Head's Not a Head, It's a Nut, a documentary about his sister's brain surgery.
After films, Stein took up creative writing. At one time, he taught creative writing at Tacoma School of the Arts. His published works include three books and two plays. Brother Jones, his first play, was produced in Los Angeles in 2005. He wrote another play, No One Calls Me Mutt Anymore in 2010 for the theatrical department at his alma mater, Shorewood High School in Shoreline, WA.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Stein's third novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008) became a New York Times bestseller. The novel is told from the point of view of Enzo, a race car-obsessed dog, whose owner teaches him about the art of racing. But most of Enzo's knowledge comes from watching television, including a program about a Mongolian legend of dogs reincarnated as humans. Enzo comes to believe it is his fate, as well—to be reincarnated as a human.
Stein was inspired to write the book after viewing a documentary on Mongolia called State of Dogs and after hearing a reading of the Billy Collins poem "The Revenant," told from a dog's point of view.
The racing experience is based on Stein's own experience racing cars. Stein became involved in "high performance driver education," receiveding his racing license from the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). He won the points championship in the Northwest Region Spec Miata class in 2004 but left racing after a serious crash—while racing in the rain.
Personal life
After spending 18 years in New York City, Stein returned to Seattle where he lives with his wife, Andrea Perlbinder Stein, their three sons, and the family dog, Comet, a lab/poodle mix. While living in New York, played in a rock band, called Zero Band, that rehearsed but rarely performed. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
Book Reviews
Rich and textured...Stein is resourceful, cleverly piecing together the family history with dreams, overheard conversations, and reminiscences...a tale well told.
Seattle Times
A captivating page-turner.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Witty, atmospheric and filled with acutely observed characters, Stein’s ghost story possesses uncommon depth.
People
Set against the stunning beauty of the Pacific Northwest and told with expert angst, empthy, poetry, and mystery, Stein has created an ode to nature and redemption...in turns touching and classically sinister, with surprising twists.
Interview Magazine
A haunting family saga.
Good Housekeeping
With its single setting and small cast of characters...the story’s feeling of claustrophobia adds to the tension. Stein dramatizes the various tensions between his characters well.... The history of the Riddell family fails to shock after a while, even as events in the present lead to the tragic denouement.
Publishers Weekly
[O]ffers a touch of magic. [Trevor Riddell's father] wants to shove aside ailing grandpa and sell the house and land to a developer. But the ghost of family patriarch Elijah wants the land returned to wilderness to make amends for the millions of trees harvested by the Riddell Timber Company.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Haunting in all the right ways.
Booklist
A Sudden Light is the best of many genres: a ghost story, a love story, historical fiction….a truly killer read…a bold, poignant book about wealth, family ties, and the power—and fallacy—of memory.
BookPage
This monotonous multigenerational tale of a family and its timber empire will have the reader sawing logs in no time.... The fatal flaw here is the author's decision to have a teenager narrate this complex, sprawling story; ...no matter how precocious he was, he couldn't possibly have had the vantage point to describe the whole situation.... A repetitive, poorly conceived work of pulp fiction. Frankly, we're stumped.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
2. Jones tells Trevor that they are going to Riddell House so they can convince Samuel to sell it. What other reasons does Jones have for returning? What does he really hope will come of their visit?
3. What sort of woman is Serena? Why do you think she never left Riddell House? In what ways does she control the family narrative? What are some of her redemptive qualities?
4. Grandpa Samuel talks about what his wife, Isobel, knew: “If you feel you don’t have enough, you hold on to things. But if you feel you have enough, you let go of things.” Do you agree? What does each character in the novel hold on to and how does it motivate their actions? Who is most willing to let go?
5. A Sudden Light features generations of men. Other than Serena, the women in the story play a relatively minor role yet often have a lasting impact. How did Isobel, Rachel, and Alice influence the men in their lives?
6. Consider the theme of redemption in the novel. What drives Elijah’s and Benjamin’s wish to return The North Estate to its original wild forest? What do they have to atone for? Will returning the land to wilderness redeem them?
7. Why was Benjamin so conflicted during his lifetime? Is his internal conflict a result of his upbringing or education or sexuality? How much of it is a product of the place and time in which he lived?
8. What is the significance of the carving of a hand holding a globe that Harry made for Riddell House? What does the carving symbolize to Benjamin, Isobel, Samuel, Jones, and Trevor?
9. The “eternal groaning” is one of the characteristics of Riddell House. How are Riddell House and The North Estate used as characters in the novel?
10. The beauty and power of nature deeply move Benjamin and Trevor. What do they experience while climbing the great tree near Riddell House? How is Trevor transformed by the climb? Have you felt something similar in nature?
11. Trevor tells Dickie that he chooses truth over loyalty. Do you think seeking answers makes Trevor disloyal to his family? When Trevor reveals what he has learned to his father, what happens?
12. How does the author’s portrayal of ghosts and spirits differ from other ghost stories you’ve read? Did the distinction of ghosts versus spirits make sense to you? Why were Trevor and Samuel the only ones who could see the ghosts?
13. In what way was Jones’s death an act of love? How was it a promise he had to fulfill?
14. Elijah Riddell wrote: “no man is beyond redemption as long as he acts in redeemable ways” and Ben wrote: “It is not prayer, but in deeds that we find absolution.” What burdens have Elijah, Ben, Samuel, Jones, Serena, and Trevor each carried? Was each a permanent obstacle to success in life? Were the characters able to change their fates?
15. What does “faith” mean in the context of this novel? Are faith and belief the same thing? How would you answer the question: “How do we reconcile the differences between what we see and what we know?”
- See more at: Simon & Schuster.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good (Mitford Series, 10)
Jan Karon, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399167447
Summary
After five hectic years of retirement from Lord’s Chapel, Father Tim Kavanagh returns with his wife, Cynthia, from a so-called pleasure trip to the land of his Irish ancestors.
While glad to be at home in Mitford, something is definitely missing: a pulpit. But when he’s offered one, he decides he doesn’t want it. Maybe he’s lost his passion.
His adopted son, Dooley, wrestles with his own passion—for the beautiful and gifted Lace Turner, and his vision to become a successful country vet. Dooley’s brother, Sammy, still enraged by his mother’s abandonment, destroys one of Father Tim’s prized possessions. And Hope Murphy, owner of Happy Endings bookstore, struggles with the potential loss of her unborn child and her hard-won business.
All this as Wanda’s Feel Good Café opens, a romance catches fire through an Internet word game, their former mayor hatches a reelection campaign to throw the bums out, and the weekly Muse poses a probing inquiry: Does Mitford still take care of its own?
Millions of fans will applaud the chance to spend time, once more, in the often comic and utterly human presence of Jan Karon’s characters. Indeed, they have never been more sympathetic, bighearted, and engaging. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1937
• Where—Lenoir, North Carolina, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—ABBY Honor Award
• Currently—lives in Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Jan Karon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the Mitford novels, the Father Tim novels, a popular cookbook, and several books for children. She lives near Mr. Jefferson’s Monticello, a World Heritage site in Central Virginia.
Jan Karon, born Janice Meredith Wilson in the foothills of North Carolina, was named after the title of a popular novel, Janice Meredith.
Jan wrote her first novel at the age of ten.
The manuscript was written on Blue Horse notebook paper, and was, for good reason, kept hidden from my sister. When she found it, she discovered the one curse word I had, with pounding heart, included in someone's speech. For Pete's sake, hadn't Rhett Butler used that very same word and gotten away with it? After my grandmother's exceedingly focused reproof, I've written books without cussin' ever since.
A number of years ago, Karon left a successful career in advertising to move to the mountain village of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and write books. "I stepped out on faith to follow my lifelong dream of being an author," she says. "I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk."
Enthusiastic booksellers across the country have introduced readers of all ages to Karon's heartwarming books. At Home in Mitford, Karon's first book in the Mitford series, was nominated for an ABBY by the American Booksellers Association in 1996 and again in 1997. Bookstore owner, Shirley Sprinkle, says, "The Mitford Books have been our all-time fiction bestsellers since we went in business twenty-five years ago. We've sold 10,000 of Jan's books and don't see any end to the Mitford phenomenon. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Karon knits Mitford's small-town characters and multiple story lines into a cozy sweater of a book.... Somewhere Safe hits the sweet spot at the intersection of your heart and your funny bone (4/4 stars).
USA Today
The faster and more impersonal the world becomes, the more we need...Mitford.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Terrific…built on the foundation of the first nine Mitford novels, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good is Karon’s best.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Welcome home, Mitford fans...to Karon's gift for illuminating the struggles that creep into everyday lives—along with a vividly imagined world.
People
Fans of the Mitford novels, rejoice: Father Tim Kavanagh is back in town...[and] wrestling with the existential challenge of retirement.... It's a wonderful stew of small town characters.... The ending...is too emotionally prepackaged and drags out a long book. Fans should debate whether Father Tim has to cry as much as he does, but like him, they will welcome the return to Mitford.
Publishers Weekly
With the homecoming of much-beloved characters and a few new additions, Karon’s latest provides a return to a setting readers have been clamoring to revisit. Longtime readers will not be disappointed by the author’s latest cozy redemption tale.
Library Journal
Loyal fans of Karon’s Mitford novels and Father Tim will be delighted once again to spend time in this quintessential American village with its leading citizen and his colorful coterie of friends, family, and dependent souls.
Booklist
Father Tim Kavanagh ponders the pastand looks to the future in Mitford, his beloved North Carolina mountain town.... After a long hiatus, Karon has returned with a novel that offers somethingfor those who believe and those who do not. All the beloved quirky charactersare here, the past is neatly summarized and the future, full of hope.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Father Tim and Cynthia return to Mitford after five years of hectic retirement, drawn to the place that means home to them. What does home mean to you?
2. In your opinion, does Mitford still take care of its own? What does that phrase mean to you?
3. Do you think Mitford is a model for living a true and authentic life? Why or why not?
4. How is your local community similar to Mitford? In what ways is it different?
5. How has retirement changed Father Tim? Did Father Tim make the right decision declining the bishop’s offer? How do you think his life would have changed had he returned to his job as pastor?
6. Even though Father Tim no longer has an official pulpit, he’s still the lynchpin of his community. How does he serve the community, and do you think he’s more or less effective in his new role?
7. There are certain points throughout the novel where Father Tim feels “twelve years old again” (53, 143). Do you ever experience something similar, and if so, when?
8. Father Tim and Cynthia exchange love letters. What does this say about their marriage? Why is being “somewhere safe with somebody good” the source of ultimate happiness for Cynthia? Do you agree? If not, what would your source of ultimate happiness be?
9. Though Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good is mostly from Father Tim’s point of view, we’re occasionally treated to glimpses of Mitford life as seen through the eyes of others, such as Coot, Hope, and Esther. What purpose do you think these shifting views serve and how do they contribute to the story?
10. What do you think of Dooley and Lace’s decision? How do you think they will handle the next phase of their journey?
11. Sammy has come a long way since meeting Father Tim, but clearly still has a long way to go. Discuss his journey to becoming a happy, well-adjusted adult. Do you think that is possible for him? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Nora Webster
Colm Toibin, 2014
Scribner
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439138335
Summary
A magnificent new novel set in Ireland, about a fiercely compelling young widow and mother of four, navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope.
Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tobin’s superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born.
And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself.
Nora Webster is a masterpiece in character study by a writer at the zenith of his career, "beautiful and daring" (The New York Times Book Review) and able to "sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations" (USA TODAY). In Nora Webster, Tobin has created a character as iconic, engaging and memorable as Madame Bovary or Hedda Gabler. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 30, 1955
• Where—Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, UK
• Education—B.A. University College, Dublin
• Awards—Costa Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland
Colm Toibin is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.
Toibin is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was hailed as a champion of minorities as he collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award. In 2011, he was named one of Britain's Top 300 Intellectuals by The Observer, despite being Irish.
Early Life
Toibin's parents were Bríd and Michael Toibin. He was born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. He is the second youngest of five children. His grandfather, Patrick Tobin, was a member of the IRA, as was his grand-uncle Michael Tobin. Patrick Tobin took part in the 1916 Rebellion in Enniscorthy and was subsequently interned in Frongoch in Wales. Colm's father was a teacher who was involved in the Fianna Fail party in Enniscorthy. He received his secondary education at St Peter's College, Wexford, where he was a boarder between 1970 and 1972. He later spoke of finding some of the priests attractive.
In July 1972, aged 17, he had a summer job as a barman in the Grand Hotel in Tramore, County Waterford, working from six in the evening to two in the morning. He spent his days on the beach, reading The Essential Hemingway, the copy of which he still professes to have, "pages stained with seawater." It developed in him a fascination with Spain, led to a wish to visit that country, gave him "an idea of prose as something glamorous, smart and shaped, and the idea of character in fiction as something oddly mysterious, worthy of sympathy and admiration, but also elusive. And more than anything, the sheer pleasure of the sentences and their rhythms, and the amount of emotion living in what was not said, what was between the words and the sentences."
He progressed to University College Dublin, graduating in 1975. Immediately after graduation, he left for Barcelona. His first novel, 1990's The South, was partly inspired by his time in Barcelona; as was, more directly, his non-fiction Homage to Barcelona (1990). Having returned to Ireland in 1978, he began to study for a masters degree. However, he did not submit his thesis and left academia, at least partly, for a career in journalism.
The early 1980s were an especially bright period in Irish journalism, and the heyday for the monthly news magazine Magill. He became the magazine's editor in 1982, and remained in the position until 1985. He left due to a dispute with Vincent Browne, Magill's managing director.
Toibin is a member of Aosdana and has been visiting professor at Stanford University, The University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University. He has also lectured at several other universities, including Boston College, New York University, Loyola University Maryland, and The College of the Holy Cross. He is professor of creative writing at The University of Manchester succeeding Martin Amis and currently teaches at Columbia University.
Work
The Heather Blazing (1992), his second novel, was followed by The Story of the Night (1996) and The Blackwater Lightship (1999). His fifth novel, The Master (2004), is a fictional account of portions in the life of author Henry James. He is the author of other non-fiction books: Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994), (reprinted from the 1987 original edition) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994).
Toibin has written two short story collections. His first Mothers and Sons which, as the name suggests, explores the relationship between mothers and their sons, was published in 2006 and was reviewed favourably (including by Pico Iyer in The New York Times). His second, broader collection The Empty Family was published in 2010.
Toibin wrote a play, titled Beauty in a Broken Place: this was staged in Dublin in August 2004. He has continued to work as a journalist, both in Ireland and abroad, writing for the London Review of Books among others. He has also achieved a reputation as a literary critic: he has edited a book on Paul Durcan, The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997); The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); and has written The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 (1999), with Carmen Callil; a collection of essays, Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar (2002); and a study on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).
He sent a photograph of Borges to Don DeLillo who described it as "the face of Borges against a dark background—Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he’s like a shaman painted for visions, and the whole face has a kind of steely rapture." DeLillo often seeks inspiration from it.
During Desmond Hogan's sexual assault case he defended him in court as "a writer of immense power and importance who dealt with human isolation."
In 2011, The Times Literary Supplement published his poem "Cush Gap, 2007".
Toibín works in the most extreme, severe, austere conditions. He sits on a hard, uncomfortable chair which causes him pain. When working on a first draft he covers the right-hand side only of the page; later he carries out some rewriting on the left-hand side of the page. He keeps a word processor in another room on which to transfer writing at a later time.
Themes
Toibin's work explores several main lines: the depiction of Irish society, living abroad, the process of creativity and the preservation of a personal identity, focusing especially on homosexual identities — Toibín is openly gay — but also on identity when confronted with loss. The "Wexford" novels, The Heather Blazing and The Blackwater Lightship, use Enniscorthy, the town of Toibín's birth, as narrative material, together with the history of Ireland and the death of his father. An autobiographical account and reflection on this episode can be found in the non-fiction book, The Sign of the Cross. In 2009, he published Brooklyn, a tale of a woman emigrating to Brooklyn from Enniscorthy.
Two other novels, The Story of the Night and The Master revolve around characters who have to deal with a homosexual identity and take place outside Ireland for the most part, with a character having to cope with living abroad. His first novel, The South, seems to have ingredients of both lines of work. It can be read together with The Heather Blazing as a diptych of Protestant and Catholic heritages in County Wexford, or it can be grouped with the "living abroad" novels. A third topic that links The South and The Heather Blazing is that of creation. Of painting in the first case and of the careful wording of a judge's verdict in the second. This third thematic line culminated in The Master, a study on identity, preceded by a non-fiction book in the same subject, Love in a Dark Time. The book of short stories "Mothers and Sons" deal with family themes, both in Ireland and Catalonia, and homosexuality.
Toibín has written about gay sex in several novels, though Brooklyn contains a heterosexual sex scene in which the heroine loses her virginity. In his 2012 essay collection New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families he studies the biographies of James Baldwin, J. M. Synge and W. B. Yeats, among others.
His personal notes and work books reside at the National Library of Ireland. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Colm Toibin's high-wire act of an eighth novel…is written without a single physical description of its characters or adverbial signpost to guide our interpretation of their speech. The emotional distance between protagonist and reader is so great that at times the title character seems almost spectral. Yet it is precisely Toibin's radical restraint that elevates what might have been a familiar tale of grief and survival into a realm of heightened inquiry. The result is a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical.
Jennifer Egan - New York Times Book Review
Miraculous… a strikingly restrained novel about a woman awakening from grief and discovering her own space, her own will…extraordinary... [Toibin] portrays Nora with tremendous sympathy and understanding.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Toibin’s restraint, sly humor and gentle prose cadence echo those of another Irish master, William Trevor. So does his affection for his characters… How Nora chooses to make her voice heard and how her children find ways to express their own pain provide Nora Webster’s plot and pleasure…a so-called average life can make for a thrilling read…Toibin presents one woman’s life keenly observed and honored with compassion. With Enniscorthy, he also creates a town, constrained and forever behind the times though it is, that feels like the whole world.
Miami Herald
[A] quietly moving study of a complex character and her ambiguous feelings toward the web of family and neighbors surrounding her in the small town of Enniscorthy…. All his books share precise, restrained prose, which can, in its simplicity, reach elegance.
Maya Muir - Portland Oregonian
Toibin artfully shows us a Nora unmoored…This quiet, wrenching novel conceals considerable human turbulence beneath its placid surface. So Toibin has learned well from Henry James…In many ways, Nora Webster would bring an admiring smile to the Master’s lips.
Daniel Dyer - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Fascinating... Revelatory... More thoughtful than Emma Bovary and less self-destructive, in the end far and away a better parent than the doomed Anna Karenina for all the latter’s dramatic posturing, Nora Webster is easily as memorable as either—and far more believable. To say more would spoil a masterful— and unforgettable—novel.
Betsy Burton - NPR
[C]ompelling portrait of an Irish woman for whom fate has prescribed loneliness...until [she] gradually finds an unexpected fulfillment in a talent she had never acknowledged. Toibin never employs dramatic fireworks to add an artificial boost to the narrative.... [Nora] she remains a brave woman learning how to find a meaningful life as she goes on alone.
Publishers Weekly
The Ireland of four decades ago is beautifully evoked… Completely absorbing [and] remarkably heart-affecting.
Booklist
Nora Webster is widowed at 40, with four sons in her care and little money to support them. She's desperate to retain her independence and so grief-stricken that she barely registers how much her sons need her. But gradually she returns to singing, which she had abandoned years before, and finds herself. The multi-award-winning Toibin has a gift for portraiture.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A subtle, pitch-perfect sonata of a novel.... Nora exists in a "world filled with absences." ... A novel of mourning, healing and awakening; its plainspoken eloquence never succumbs to the sentimentality its heroine would reject.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with Nora discussing her intrusive visitors with her neighbor Tom O’Connor (p. 1). How does this set the tone for Nora Webster? What is your first impression of Nora?
2. What motivates Nora to sell the house in Cush? Is she just taking advantage of Jack Lacey’s offer (p. 6), or is it more emotional? Should she have consulted the children?
3. When Nora visits Josie to discuss Donal and Conor, Josie asks Nora, "Did you think they would come home unchanged?" (p. 54) What did Nora expect? Was it realistic? Is Josie being fair when she points out that Nora never called or visited the boys?
4. For her memory card for Maurice, Nora chooses "Too young to die, they say. Too young? No, rather he is blessed in being so young thus to be made swiftly an immortal. He has escaped the tremulous hands of age" (p. 57). Why do Jim and Margaret dislike it? Why does Nora insist on it?
5. When Nora gets her "fashionable cut" from Bernie, her enthusiasm turns to dismay, and she thinks that "anyone who saw her on the way home would think that she had lost her mind" (p. 63). Why does Nora react this way? Sometimes she seems to worry about what others think. Sometimes she is defiant. Where else does she second-guess her choices?
6. When Nora meets with William and Peggy Gibney to discuss working for them, she thinks of how Peggy and Francie Kavanaugh’s lives have changed since Nora first worked at Gibney’s. Is Nora comparing herself to them? Do either of them have anything that Nora wants?
7. On a beach trip with her sons (p. 129), Nora wonders about having never thought about whether the boys are happy or not. "Being with Donal sometimes made her afraid, but being with Conor could make her even more afraid, afraid for his innocence, his sweet loyalty, his open need to be taken care of." Why does Nora feel this way?
8. After Francie cuts up Nora’s folders and Nora storms out of Gibney’s (p. 146), unsure if she’ll return, why does she go to the sea at Keatings’ (p. 149)? What effect does Sister Thomas have on Nora?
9. When Nora decides to join the union meeting, she reflects, "Perhaps it was not wise. . . . But it pleased her to be grateful to no one" (p. 176). Where does this need to be unbeholden come from?
10. Why does Donal become so engrossed in photography? Nora thinks he wouldn’t have if Maurice had lived (p. 221). How are his camera and Margaret’s gift of a darkroom a reaction to his father’s death?
11. Laurie tells Nora, "You kept [your singing] to yourself. You saved it up" (p. 242). Is Laurie right? Why would Nora do that?
12. Why is Nora’s record player so dear to her (p. 280)? Consider the passages on pages 282 and 314–15. What does the woman of the Archduke Trio group come to mean to Nora?
13. What is it about Josie that allows Nora to turn to her after she struggles with her pain and insomnia (p. 358)? Is it the same thing that caused her to send the boys to Josie when Maurice was dying? What are the differences and similarities between these two episodes?
14. Throughout the story, family members make plans and keep secrets from Nora—about Una’s engagement (p. 155), Donal’s darkroom (p. 169), Josie’s offer of a trip to Spain (p. 261), Fiona’s worry that Nora is too interested in Paul Whitney (pp. 289–94), and Donal’s decision to go to boarding school (p. 298). Why do they do this?
15. When the British Embassy in Dublin is burned, are they right to panic over Aine? Is Nora correct that they all have a "lingering unease" that can be triggered by any crisis (p. 326)?
16. Does Maurice really appear to Nora or is it a dream (pp. 356–57)? What does it mean?
17. Why does Nora finally burn Maurice’s letters and let her sisters take his clothes away (p. 372)?
18. Nora thinks that no one notices her, but we see Mick Sinnott invite her to the union meeting (p. 174), Phyllis take her to the quiz (p. 192), Laurie give her voice lessons (p.236), and Dan Bolger help her fix up her house (p. 333). Phyllis tells her, "After all you’ve been through, everyone thinks you are.... Well, dignified" (p. 254). Is Phyllis right? Why doesn’t Nora see this?
19. Nora Webster is bold and independent, fierce and sympathetic at the same time. Does she remind you of other literary heroines? Which ones, and how so?
- See more at Simon & Schuster.
(Questions courtesy of publisher.)