Gray Mountain
John Grisham, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385537148
Summary
John Grisham has a new hero ... and she’s full of surprises.
The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building.
Samantha, though, is one of the "lucky" associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.
In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to "help real people with real problems."
For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, harbors some big secrets.
Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
Expect the expected in this tepid legal thriller from bestseller Grisham that may be the debut of a series character.... [M]ost readers will rapidly turn the pages, but the subtlety and full-blooded characters that mark the author's best work are sadly absent.
Publishers Weekly
When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, law firms went down, too, and third-year law associate Samantha Kofer loses her job and her dreams. She ends up as an unpaid intern at a legal aid clinic in Appalachia, where the problems are as troubling as the dangerous secret she discovers.
Library Journal
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 DISCUSSION 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.)
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10:04
Ben Lerner, 2014
Faber and Faber
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780865478107
Summary
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unlikely literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child.
In a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and social unrest, he must reckon with his own mortality and the prospect of fatherhood in a city that might soon be underwater.
A writer whose work Jonathan Franzen has called “hilarious...cracklingly intelligent...and original in every sentence,” Lerner captures what it’s like to be alive now, during the twilight of an empire, when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 4, 1979
• Where—Topeka, Kansas, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University
• Awards—Believer Book Award; Terry Southern Prize
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Ben Lerner has been a Fulbright Fellow, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, a Howard Foundation Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, won the 2012 Believer Book Award, and excerpts from 10:04 have been awarded The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize. He has published three poetry collections: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Lerner is among the most interesting young American novelists at present for several reasons, one being that he's akin to a young Brooklynite version of the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard. That is, in his books, little happens, yet everything happens. Small moments come steeped in vertiginous magic…In 10:04, he's written a striking and important novel of New York City, partly because he's so cognizant of both past and present. He's a walker in the city in conscious league with Walt Whitman, but also with writers up through Teju Cole…
Dwight Garner - New York Times
[F]requently brilliant…. Lerner writes with a poet's attention to language, and manages to make his preoccupation with identity more than solipsistic. His failure to make the Lerner who is experiencing things coincide with the Lerner who represents himself on the page and in the social world starts to feel, if not quite heroic, then certainly a matter that concerns all of us, as we obsess over our profile pictures and work out at the gym.
Hari Kunzru - New York Times
Just how many singular reading experiences can one novelist serve up?... 10:04 is a mind-blowing book; to use Lerner’s own description, it’s a book that’s written "on the very edge of fiction."... Lerner obviously loves playing with language, stretching sentences out, folding them in on themselves, and making readers laugh out loud with the unexpected turns his paragraphs take.... 10:04 is a strange and spectacular novel. Don't even worry about classifying it; just let Lerner’s language sweep you off your feet.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
Ingenious.... Lerner packs so much brilliance and humor into each episode. Some, like the narrator’s blunders while making his donation to a hospital fertility specialist, are worthy of Woody Allen in their comic neurosis. Others yield sparkling essayistic reflections on the blurred lines between art and reality.... This brain-tickling book imbues real experiences with a feeling of artistic possiblity, leaving the observable world "a little changed, a little charged."
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
[Lerner’s] concerns wrap around the modern moment with terrifying rightness.... 10:04 describes what it feels like to be alive.
John Freeman - Boston Globe
At 240 pages, his new novel does not announce itself as a magnum opus. But given Lerner’s considerable humor, rigorous intelligence, and shred breed of conscience—his bighearted spirit and formal achievement—it is. A generous, provocative, ambitious Chinese box of a novel, 10:04 is a near-perfect piece of literature, affirmative of both life and art, written with the full force of Lerner’s intellectual, aesthetic, and empathetic powers, which are as considerable as they are vitalizing.
Maggie Nelson- Los Angeles Times
Lerner writes rich, ruminative fiction.... Like Whitman, and like W. G. Seabld and Teju Cole, Ben Lerner is a courageous chronicler of meditative ambulation, of the mind reflecting on its own vibrant thinking processes before they congeal into inert thoughts.
Steven G. Kellman - San Francisco Chronicle
Lerner explores the connections between contemporary life, art, and literary writing.... Lerner’s insistence on showing off his skill...sometimes results in overwrought constructions that detract from the narrative momentum, but readers who can overlook the sluggish start will be rewarded with engaging streams of thought and moments of tenderness.
Publishers Weekly
There's plenty of dry wit in 10:04 and some laugh-out-loud moments too.... But as in his first novel, Lerner's chief tone is somber.... At times he seems to strain to make scraps of experience...relevant to his themes, but few novelists are working so hard to make experience grist for the mill. Provocative and thoughtful, if at times wooly and interior
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 Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories
Hilary Mantel, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781627792103
Summary
Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories.
In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel’s trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.
Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way.
Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 6, 1952
• Where—Glossop, Derbyshire, England, UK
• Education—University of Sheffield
• Awards—(See below)
• Currently—lives in England
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE* is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards. In 2009, she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall and won the prize a second time in 2012 for the first book's sequel Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel thus became the first British writer and the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize more than once.
Mantel was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her family is of Irish origin but her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were born in England. After losing touch with her father at the age of eleven, she took the name of her stepfather, Jack Mantel. Her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, is explained in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.
Mantel attended Harrytown Convent in Romiley, Cheshire, and in 1970 went to the London School of Economics to read law. She transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973. After graduating she worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a saleswoman. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety.
In 1977 she went to live in Botswana with her husband, Gerald McEwen, a geologist, whom she had married in 1972. Later they spent four years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia—a memoir of this time, Someone to Disturb, has been published in the London Review of Books. During her twenties she suffered from a debilitating and painful illness. This was initially diagnosed as a psychiatric illness for which she was hospitalised and treated with anti-psychotic drugs. These produced a paradoxical reaction of psychotic symptoms and for some years she refrained from seeking help from doctors. Finally, in Africa, and desperate, she consulted a medical text-book and realised she was probably suffering from a severe form of endometriosis, a diagnosis confirmed back in London. The condition and necessary surgery left her unable to have children and continued to disrupt her life, with continued treatment by steroids radically changing her appearance. She is now patron of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.
Novels
Her first novel, Every Day is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and its sequel, Vacant Possession, a year later. After returning to England, she became the film critic of The Spectator and a reviewer for a number of papers and magazines in Britain and the United States.
Her novel Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), which drew on her first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia, uses a threatening clash of values between the neighbours in a city apartment block to explore the tensions between Muslim culture and the liberal West.
Her Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize-winning novel Fludd is set in 1956 in a fictitious northern village called Fetherhoughton, centring on a Roman Catholic church and a convent. A mysterious stranger brings about transformations in the lives of those around him.
A Place of Greater Safety (1992) won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, for which her two previous books had been shortlisted. A long and historically accurate novel, it traces the career of three French revolutionaries, Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, from childhood to their early deaths during the Reign of Terror of 1794.
A Change of Climate (1994), set in rural Norfolk, explores the lives of Ralph and Anna Eldred, as they raise their four children and devote their lives to charity. It includes chapters about their early married life as missionaries in South Africa, when they were imprisoned and deported to Bechuanaland, and the tragedy that occurred there.
An Experiment in Love (1996), which won the Hawthornden Prize, takes place over two university terms in 1970. It follows the progress of three girls—two friends and one enemy—as they leave home and attend university in London. Margaret Thatcher makes a cameo appearance in this novel, which explores women’s appetites and ambitions, and suggests how they are often thwarted. Though Mantel has used material from her own life, it is not an autobiographical novel.
Her next book, The Giant, O'Brien (1998), is set in the 1780s, and is based on the true story of Charles O'Brien or Byrne. He came to London to earn money by displaying himself as a freak. His bones hang today in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The novel treats O'Brien and his antagonist, the Scots surgeon John Hunter, less as characters in history than as mythic protagonists in a dark and violent fairytale, necessary casualties of the Age of Enlightenment. She adapted the book for BBC Radio 4, in a play starring Alex Norton (as Hunter) and Frances Tomelty.
In 2003, Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND Book of the Year award. That same year she brought out a collection of short stories, Learning To Talk. All the stories deal with childhood and, taken together, the books show how the events of a life are mediated as fiction. Her 2005 novel, Beyond Black, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Set in the years around the second millennium, it features a professional medium, Alison Hart, whose calm and jolly exterior conceals grotesque psychic damage. She trails around with her a troupe of 'fiends', who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh.
The long novel Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell, was published in 2009 to critical acclaim. The book won that year's Man Booker Prize and, upon winning the award, Mantel said, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air." Judges voted three to two in favour of Wolf Hall for the prize. Mantel was presented with a trophy and a £50,000 cash prize during an evening ceremony at the London Guildhall. The accounted for 45% of the sales of all the nominated books. On receiving the prize, Mantel said that she would spend the prize money on "sex and drugs and rock' n' roll".
The sequel to Wolf Hall—Bring Up the Bodies—was published in 2012, also to wide acclaim. It won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year and the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Mantel is working on the third novel of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, called The Mirror and the Light.
She is also working on a short non-fiction book called The Woman Who Died of Robespierre, about the Polish playwright Stanisława Przybyszewska. Mantel also writes reviews and essays, mainly for the Guardian, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. The Culture Show programme on BBC 2 broadcast a profile of Mantel on 17 September 2011.
In September 2014, in an interview published in the Guardian, Mantel confessed to fantasizing about the murdering of Margaret Thatcher in 1983, and fictionalized the event in a short story called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983." That story became the title story in her 2014 collection.
Awards
1987 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize
1990 Southern Arts Literature Prize for Fludd
1990 Cheltenham Prize for Fludd
1990 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Fludd
1992 Sunday Express Book of the Year for A Place of Greater Safety
1996 Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love
2003 MIND Book of the Year for Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir)
2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall
2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Wolf Hall
2010 Walter Scott Prize for Wolf Hall
2012 Man Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Novel) for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Book of the Year) for Bring Up the Bodies
2013 David Cohen Prize
She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to literature.(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
*Commander of the British Empire
Book Reviews
Hilary Mantel's vastly entertaining new collection of stories…have their own special tang and quidditas. Even as one appreciates the suave authorial style—light, pared-down, technically scintillating, like the Olympic gymnast who nails her landing every time—one has the sense too that Mantel is working with some fairly edgy and complex private material in these contemporary fables…Mantel is…a funny and intelligent and generously untethered writer.
Terry Castle - New York Times Book Review
[Mantel] evokes a shadowy region where boundaries blur and what might have happened has equal weight with what actually occurred…. Despite the plethora of sharply observed social detail, her short stories always recognize other potential realities…. Even the most straightforward of Mantel’s tales retain a faintly otherworldly air.
Washington Post
Genius.
Seattle Times
Here are stories in which horror shudders between the high gothic of Grimm and the menacing quotidian. Oppression comes from air conditioners that ‘labor and hack’ and from "the smell of drains." Cruelty is made manifest by a wayward young girl who finds an even more outcast target in the form of a severely deformed child…. These are Ms. Mantel’s signature strokes—freaks made human and humans made freakish, and always with the expiation of a dark and judgmental humor.
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat…. Some of the stories are so brief and twisted…they have a hint of the cruelty of Roald Dahl’s short stories (the ones that were definitely for grown-ups)…. Mantel’s narrators never tell everything they know, and that’s why they’re worth listening to, carefully.
USA Today
The stories in Mantel's new collection reflect her interest in human frailty and assaults of all kinds, from the most intimate to those by or against the state.... [D]espite a title that promises action, [the book] offers something closer to an interesting conversation than a compelling narrative. There are pleasures here, but Mantel lovers toughing out the wait for the final book in the Cromwell series might do better visiting or revisiting her earlier work like A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, or Fludd.
Publishers Weekly
Mantel proves herself a skilled practitioner of short fiction as well…. "What would Anita Brookner do?" asks one of Mantel’s protagonists. The answer, we’d like to think, is this: She’d read Mantel’s latest, and she’d delight in it.
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.)
Us
David Nicholls, 2014
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062365583
Summary
David Nicholls brings the wit and intelligence that graced his New York Time bestseller one day to a compellingly human, deftly humorous new novel about what holds marriages and families together—and what happens when everything threatens to fall apart.
Douglas Petersen may be mild mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date... and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen-year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells Douglas that she thinks she wants a divorce.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best, anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and may even help him to bond with Albie.
Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger. Us is a moving meditation on the demands of marriage and parenthood and the intricate relationship between the heart and the head.
And in David Nicholls’s gifted hands, Douglas’s odyssey brings Europe—from the streets of Amsterdam to the famed museums of Paris, from the cafes of Venice to the beaches of Barcelona—to vivid life just as he experiences a powerful awakening of his own. Will this summer be his last as a husband, or the moment when he turns his marriage, and maybe even his whole life, around? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1966
• Where—Hampshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Bristol University; American Musical and Dramatic Academy
• Currently—lives in London, England
David Nicholls is an English novelist and screenwriter. His novels include Starter for Ten (2003), The Understudy (2005), One Day (2009), and Us (2014).
Early years
He attended Barton Peveril sixth-form college at Eastleigh, Hampshire, from 1983 to 1985 (taking A-levels in drama and theatre studies—like his elder and younger siblings—English, physics and biology), and playing a wide range of roles in college drama productions.
He then attended Bristol University in the 1980s (graduating with a BA in Drama and English in 1988) before training as an actor at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. Throughout his twenties, he worked as a professional actor, using the stage name David Holdaway. He played small roles at various theatres, including the West Yorkshire Playhouse and, for a three year period, at the Royal National Theatre.
Screenwriter
As a screenwriter, he co-wrote the adapted screenplay of Simpatico and contributed four scripts to the third series of Cold Feet (both 2000). For the latter, he was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award for Best New Writer (Fiction). He created the Granada Television pilot and miniseries I Saw You (2000, 2002) and the Tiger Aspect six-part series Rescue Me (2002). Rescue Me lasted for only one series before being cancelled. Nicholls had written four episodes for the second series before being told of the cancellation. His anger over this led to him taking a break from screenwriting to concentrate on writing his first novel, Starter for Ten. When he returned to screenwriting, he adapted Much Ado About Nothing into a one-hour segment of the BBC's 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told season.
In 2006, his film adaptation Starter for 10 was released in cinemas. The following year, he wrote And When Did You Last See Your Father?, an adaptation of the memoir by Blake Morrison. He penned an adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles for the BBC, which aired in 2008, and an adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd for BBC Films. He has also adapted Great Expectations; the screenplay has been listed on the 2009 Brit List, an annual industry poll of the best unmade scripts outside of the United States.
In 2005 he wrote Aftersun for the Old Vic's 24-Hour Play festival and later developed it into a one-off comedy for BBC One, broadcast in 2006. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Liked One Day? Then you’ll find this absolutely fabulous.… Very funny and very moving, often at the same time.
Daily Mail (UK)
The bestselling author of One Day…is back with another crowd-pleaser, this time about a man trying to save his collapsing marriage and connect with his teenage son during a family tour of Europe (Best Books of the Fall).
People
Douglas is an amiably bumbling narrator, and Nicholls convincingly infuses his protagonist's voice with the dry wit and charm that have served the author so well in his previous books. This is Nicholls's most ambitious work to date, and his realistically flawed characters are somehow endearing despite the many bruises they inflict upon each other.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Nicholls has created in Douglas a man who has always known where he was and where he was going and who now is suddenly adrift emotionally as well as physically. And all the guidebooks and online tours won't be enough to right his course. Are you thinking this is a predictable tale of family dynamics? Think again; this is Nicholls, after all. For those who loved One Day, the author's latest is another heart-grabber about discovering what makes us happy and learning to let go. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Nicholls brings his trademark wit and wisdom to this by turns hilarious and heartbreaking examination of a long-term marriage…. This tender novel will further cement Nicholls’ reputation as a master of romantic comedy.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Nicholls is a master of the braided narrative, weaving the past and present to create an intricate whole…. A funny and moving novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What inspired your group to select Us by David Nicholls? Did you have any expectations?
2. Describe Douglas, Connie and Albie and their family dynamic. What do you think draws Douglas and Connie together? What drives them apart? How has their marriage evolved over the years and how does it affect their family life and their son?
3. This novel is about marriage—and not just a boy-meets-girl love story account. What does the author tell us about the Happily Ever After part? How does "real life," as David Nicholls portrays here, compare with our romanticized notions? Do husbands and wives have a responsibility to keeping the spark alive after the honeymoon stage?
4. How important it is for a person to stay true to their individuality and how do we reconcile individual needs with those of our partners and loved ones?
5. Traveling is a major component of this novel. How does being physically away from home affect the characters? What opportunities does traveling offer them? What emotional challenges does it raise?
6. Throughout the “Grand Tour” of Europe, Douglas slowly realizes that his plans aren’t working out. How does he cope with this knowledge? How does he have to change over the course of his journey?
7. The novel is also about family. The parent-child relationship can be as frustrating as it is rewarding. What are the particular sources of turmoil in the relationship between Douglas and Albie? What do you think helps them resolve their differences?
8. In a culture accustomed to instant gratification, have we lost our ability to cope with and work through tough times? Do you think people give up on relationships too easily? What about Douglas and Connie? What about Albie?
9. The meaning of love can change over the course of relationship. Describe the love that Douglas has for his wife, Connie and his son, Albie. Compare and contrast each of the characters from the novel's beginning and its end. In what ways have they changed? How have they stayed the same? What have they learned about themselves, their lives, and each other?
10. Each part of the book begins with a quote. What do the quotes add to the story and the section it precedes? Which quote struck you the most? Why?
11. Between the “Grand Tour,” Connie’s painting and Albie’s photography, art is at the very center of Us. How does seeing art affect the Douglas, Connie, and Albie? What do you think art can tell us about our lives?
12. The novel is called Us. Is there really an "Us" in the story? If yes, who is it? If no, what do you think inspired the title?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Lost Catacomb
Shifra Hochberg, 2014
Enigma Press
358 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780615975696
Summary
An intoxicating blend of Vatican thriller and heart-rending love story, The Lost Catacomb's multiple timeline moves seamlessly across the centuries, from the early Roman Empire to the present and to World War II, where it explores the motif of loss—lost lovers, lost identity, and lost treasures—against the backdrop of the Holocaust in Italy.
At its center is Nicola Page, a beautiful young art historian who flies to Rome to assess a newly discovered catacomb of enigmatic provenance. Its magnificent frescoes hold the clues to a centuries-old murder and the existence of a fabled treasure from the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Assisted by a handsome Italian archaeologist, Nicola is quickly drawn into a tangled web of intrigue and peril, masterminded by a powerful priest who is determined to destroy those who would reveal the dark secrets of the past.
And as Nicola uncovers layer after layer of this deadly past, she is brought face to face with shocking facts about her own family history—facts that will forever change the course of her life.
Author Bio
• Birth—December 13, 1949
• Where—Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Education—Ph.D., New York University
• Currently—lives in Jerusalem, Israel
Shifra Hochberg, who received her Ph.D. in English literature from New York University, has published over 20 academic essays, mainly in the field of nineteenth-century fiction and feminist literary theory. She currently teaches at Ariel University in Israel and makes her home in Jerusalem.
In the course of writing The Lost Catacomb, Shifra visited Italy 14 times, making on-site visits to all locations in the novel and meeting with families of Italian Holocaust survivors. She was also privileged to view a special collection of Jewish catacomb artifacts at the Vatican Museum that is normally closed to visitors. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Shifra on Facebook.
Book Reviews
A marvelous book--thrilling and literary. A compelling depiction of the Vatican, with its profound mysteries and troubling ties to the Holocaust, riveting action, and a tender love story that will appeal to a wide audience.
Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul
I was impressed by the extensive on-site research [Hochberg] conducted.... The Lost Catacomb is a thoughtful and erudite yet fast-moving thriller about archaeological and personal discoveries. At its center is Nicola Page, an American art historian with Italian roots who is brought to Rome to examine the provenance of a newly uncovered catacomb; at the same time, she hopes to uncover long-buried secrets about her family.
Sarah Johnson - Reading the Past
[F]ast-moving, fascinating.... Hochberg is...a master storyteller in the way that, from the beginning, she drops little hints of what is to come in the book—such as references to the Nazi era. For anyone interested in historical fiction, the troubled history of Jews in Italy, art history, and above all, the great Eternal City of Rome, The Lost Catacomb is a valuable treasure in itself.
Raanan Geberer - Reader's Favorite
Discussion Questions
1. What are the thriller elements in The Lost Catacomb and how are they given literary resonance?
2. How does the search for the provenance of an ancient catacomb become a metaphor for the personal issues that Nicola faces?
3. How do the three central love stories echo and reinforce each other?
4. Discuss the two major metaphors in the novel--the stars and the myth of Andromeda.
5. Which of the three female figures in the love stories do you identify with the most and why?
6. Discuss the thematic relevance of the epigraphs that precede each section of the novel.7. What did you learn about the history of Italian Jewry that you were unaware of before you read The Lost Catacomb?
7. How do you feel about the implications of the relationship of the Vatican with the Nazis during World War Two as depicted in the novel?
8. What literary allusions and subtexts did you find in the novel and how do they enrich the text?
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9. Discuss the theme of loss in the novel. Which plot elements does it include?
(Discussion questions courtesy of the author.)