Snail & Boy: A Story About Peace, Love and Freedom
Gal Kleinman, 2014
Self Published
61 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781311803931 (Smashwords)
ASIN: B00JTR6KCW (Amazon digital)
Summary
Snail and Boy is a story about a boy who lost his family in the war. From the depths of despair, Boy overcomes his hardships, and discovers universal truths that give profound meaning to his life, and relationship to the world.
Boy's incredible transformation gets noticed by a very inquisitive snail, who eventually discovers Boy’s secrets, as they unfold, raising our awareness to deep life changing insights.
One day, Boy is astonished to discover a snail writing silvery letters on a wall, and from that moment on, a special relationship evolves between the two.
It is a story about love. It is a story about peace. It is a story about freedom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—Jerusalem, Israel
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Israel
Gal was born in Jerusalem, Israel, spending some of his childhood in the USA but eventually returning to Israel. This is Gal's first novel.
The son of a holocaust survivor, Gal has experienced war first hand. Due to his personal experiences, and realizing the futility of war, and the anguish it causes to all sides involved, Gal devotes his life to creating a new spirit of coexistence among the various peoples, religions and cultures within a single interconnected civilization. And inspiring feelings of compassion and understanding between human beings.
Gal is the founding director of a global educational project called Magical Moments Around the World. He is also the co-director of Education for Global Peace, which sets out to mainstream peace education in educational systems around the world. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
A niice little fable. This is a great little fable about how to live peaceably in the world. It is beautifully written and thought-provoking.
NM Reader
I really like how u can see a snails perspective as well as a boy and girls in this story. I also like all the proverbs and that this book promotes peace instead of war....[A] unique gem.
Angelica Dimeo "serenity20"
A worthwhile use of an hour.... This little book has many wonderful messages. So many, in fact, that to squeeze everything in, the author seemed "preachy" at times.... [T]he author...could easily make this into multiple books. For me, there could have been more story. All that said, I found this book thought provoking and inspirational, if rather heavy handed in all that it wanted to say to me.
jak717
[V]ery simplistic and yet the theme is one that we all need to adhere to... includ[ing]:
"If you want freedom, give freedom to someone else" (p. 45).
"If you want to be happy give happiness to someone else" (p. 49).
"Give peace and you will know peace" (p. 141).
Over all it is not a bad read, very quick and easy. I finished it in just over an hour.
Irishapples
Exploring possibilities for peace with two joyous and inquiring character.... This book is divided into short, easily read stories promoting peace. They also feature curiosity and empathy, joy, and freedom (peace's best friends). While the stories were rather didactic in some places, the overall reading experience is delightful.... My favorite quote: "Yes, this world needs a revolution. War is obsolete, and we must learn to live in peace" (p 24). I am ready for this revolution.
The Toucan
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think about the relationship between Snail & Boy?
2. Did you suspect the story would end the way it did?
3. In what ways did Girl contribute to Boy's transformation?
4. Has the story reminded you of a special connection you once felt toward animals and nature?
5. Movie time: who would you like to see play what part?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804172448
Summary
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead.
That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all.
A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Where—Comox, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Toronto Dance Theater.
• Awards—Prix Mystere de la Critique (France)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
"St. John's my middle name. The books go under M."
Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.
Mandel's latest novel, The Glass Hotel, was released in 2020 to high praise and numerousf starred reviews. Her fourth novel, Station Eleven, published in 2014 was long listed for the National Book Award. All three of her previous novels—Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet—were Indie Next Picks, and The Singer's Gun was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France.
Mandel's short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She lives in New York City with her husband. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Mandel is an able and exuberant storyteller, and many readers will be won over by her nimble interweaving of her characters' lives and fates…Station Eleven is as much a mystery as it is a post-apocalyptic tale, and Mandel is especially good at planting clues and raising the kind of plot-thickening questions that keep the reader turning pages…. If Station Eleven reveals little insight into the effects of extreme terror and misery on humanity, it offers comfort and hope to those who believe, or want to believe, that doomsday can be survived, that in spite of everything people will remain good at heart, and that when they start building a new world they will want what was best about the old.
Sigrid Nunez - New York Times Book Review
In Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, the Georgia Flu becomes airborne the night Arthur Leander dies during his performance as King Lear. Within months, all airplanes are grounded, cars run out of gas and electricity flickers out as most of the world’s population dies. The details of Arthur’s life before the flu and what happens afterward to his friends, wives and lovers create a surprisingly beautiful story of human relationships amid such devastation. Among the survivors are Kirsten, a child actor at the time of Arthur’s death who lives with no memory of what happened to her the first year after the flu.... A gorgeous retelling of Lear unfolds through Arthur’s flashbacks and Kirsten’s attempt to stay alive.
Nancy Hightower - Washington Post
Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven sensitively explores the dynamics of....a theater troupe called the Traveling Symphony whose musicians and actors perform Shakespeare for small communities around the Great Lakes. Ms. Mandel.... writ[es] with cool intelligence and poised understatement. Her real interest is in examining friendships and love affairs and the durable consolations of art.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
If you’re planning to write a post-apocalyptic novel, you’re going to have to breathe some new life into it. Emily St. John Mandel does that with her new book, Station Eleven.... The story is told through several characters, including an A-list actor, his ex-wives, a religious prophet and the Traveling Symphony, a ragtag group of Shakespearean actors and musicians who travel to settlements performing for the survivors. Each bring a unique perspective to life, relationships and what it means to live in a world returned to the dark ages.... Mandel doesn’t put the emphasis on the apocalypse itself (the chaos, the scavenging, the scientists trying to find a cure), but instead shows the effects it has on humanity. Despite the state of the world, people find reasons to continue.... Station Eleven will change the post-apocalyptic genre. While most writers tend to be bleak and cliched, Mandel chooses to be optimistic and imaginative. This isn’t a story about survival, it’s a story about living.
Andrew Blom - Boston Herald
Mandel deviates from the usual and creates what is possibly the most captivating and thought-provoking post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read.... Beautiful writing.... An assured handle on human emotions and relationships.... Though not without tension and a sense of horror, Station Eleven rises above the bleakness of the usual post-apocalyptic novels because its central concept is one so rarely offered in the genre—hope.
Independent (UK)
A beautiful and unsettling book, the action moves between the old and new world, drawing connections between the characters and their pasts and showing the sweetness of life as we know it now and the value of friendship, love and art over all the vehicles, screens and remote controls that have been rendered obsolete. Mandel's skill in portraying her post-apocalyptic world makes her fictional creation seem a terrifyingly real possibility. Apocalyptic stories once offered the reader a scary view of an alternative reality and the opportunity, on putting the book down, to look around gratefully at the real world. This is a book to make its reader mourn the life we still lead and the privileges we still enjoy.
Sunday Express (UK)
A novel that carries a magnificent depth.... We get to see something that is so difficult to show or feel – how small moments in time link together. And how these moments add up to a life.... Her best yet. It feels as though she took the experience earned from her previous writing and braided it together to make one gleaming strand.... An epic book.
Claire Cameron - Globe and Mail (Toronto)
So impressive.... Station Eleven is terrifying, reminding us of how paper-thin the achievements of civilization are. But it’s also surprisingly— nd quietly—beautiful.... As Emily Dickinson knew and as Mandel reminds us, there’s a sumptuousness in destitution, a painful beauty in loss.... A superb novel. Unlike most postapocalyptic works, it leaves us not fearful for the end of the world but appreciative of the grace of everyday existence.
Anthony Domestic - San Francisco Chronicle
Darkly lyrical.... An appreciation of art, love and the triumph of the human spirit.... Mandel effortlessly moves between time periods.... The book is full of beautiful set pieces and landscapes; big, bustling cities before and during the outbreak, an eerily peaceful Malaysian seashore, and an all-but-abandoned Midwest airport-turned museum that becomes an all important setting for the last third of the book.... Mandel ties up all the loose ends in a smooth and moving way, giving humanity to all her characters — both in a world that you might recognize as the one we all live in today (and perhaps take for granted) and a post-apocalyptic world without electricity, smartphones and the Internet. Station Eleven is a truly haunting book, one that is hard to put down and a pleasure to read.
Doug Knoop - Seattle Times
Haunting and riveting.... In several moving passages, Mandel's characters look back with similar longing toward the receding pre-plague world, remembering all the things they'd once taken for granted — from the Internet to eating an orange.... It's not just the residents of Mandel's post-collapse world who need to forge stronger connections and live for more than mere survival. So do we all.
Mike Fischer - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Though it centers on civilization’s collapse in the aftermath of a devastating flu, this mesmerizing novel isn’t just apocalyptic fantasy—it’s also an intricately layered character study of human life itself. Jumping back and forth between the decades before and after the pandemic, the narrative interlaces several individuals’ stories, encompassing a universe of emotions and ultimately delivering a view of life that’s both chilling and jubilant.
People
Emily St. John Mandel’s tender and lovely new novel, Station Eleven.... miraculously reads like equal parts page-turner and poem.... One of her great feats is that the story feels spun rather than plotted, with seamless shifts in time and characters.... "Because survival is insufficient," reads a line taken from Star Trek spray painted on the Traveling Symphony’s lead wagon. The genius of Mandel’s fourth novel...is that she lives up to those words. This is not a story of crisis and survival. It’s one of art and family and memory and community and the awful courage it takes to look upon the world with fresh and hopeful eyes.
Karen Valby - Entertainment Weekly
Few themes are as played-out as that of post-apocalypse, but St. John Mandel finds a unique point of departure from which to examine civilization’s wreckage.... With its wild fusion of celebrity gossip and grim future, this book shouldn’t work nearly so well, but St. John Mandel’s examination of the connections between individuals with disparate destinies makes a case for the worth of even a single life.
Publishers Weekly
A movie star who's decided to pound the boards as King Lear collapses and dies mid-performance, and shortly thereafter civilization collapses and starts dying as well. The narrative then moves between the actor's early career and a journey through the blasted landscape 15 years after the book's opening events. Indie Next darling Mandel breaks out with a major publisher.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Survivors and victims of a pandemic populate this quietly ambitious take on a post-apocalyptic world where some strive to preserve art, culture and kindness.... Mandel spins a satisfying web of coincidence and kismet while providing numerous strong moments.... [S]olid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Now that you’ve read the entire novel, go back and reread the passage by Czeslaw Milosz that serves as an epigraph. What does it mean? Why did Mandel choose it to introduce Station Eleven?
2. Does the novel have a main character? Who would you consider it to be?
3. Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear, and the Traveling Symphony performs Shakespeare’s works. On page 57, Mandel writes, "Shakespeare was the third born to his parents, but the first to survive infancy. Four of his siblings died young. His son, Hamnet, died at eleven and left behind a twin. Plague closed the theaters again and again, death flickering over the landscape." How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of Station Eleven, both the novel and the comic?
4. Arthur’s death happens to coincide with the arrival of the Georgia Flu. If Jeevan had been able to save him, it wouldn’t have prevented the apocalypse. But how might the trajectory of the novel been different?
5. What is the metaphor of the Station Eleven comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?
6. "Survival is insufficient," a line from Star Trek: Voyager, is the Traveling Symphony’s motto. What does it mean to them?
7. On page 62, the prophet discusses death: "I’m not speaking of the tedious variations on physical death. There’s the death of the body, and there’s the death of the soul. I saw my mother die twice." Knowing who his mother was, what do you think he meant by that?
8. Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, because he didn’t want any more possessions. And Clark’s Museum of Civilization turns what we think of as mundane belongings into totems worthy of study. What point is Mandel making?
9. On a related note, some characters—like Clark—believe in preserving and teaching about the time before the flu. But in Kirsten’s interview with François Diallo, we learn that there are entire towns that prefer not to: "We went to a place once where the children didn’t know the world had ever been different...." (page 115). What are the benefits of remembering, and of not remembering?
10. What do you think happened during the year Kirsten can’t remember?
11. In a letter to his childhood friend, Arthur writes that he’s been thinking about a quote from Yeats, "Love is like the lion’s tooth." (page 158). What does this mean, and why is he thinking about it?
12. How does the impending publication of those letters affect Arthur?
13. On page 206, Arthur remembers Miranda saying "I regret nothing," and uses that to deepen his understanding of Lear, "a man who regrets everything," as well as his own life. How do his regrets fit into the larger scope of the novel? Other than Miranda, are there other characters that refuse to regret?
14. Throughout the novel, those who were alive during the time before the flu remember specific things about those days: the ease of electricity, the taste of an orange. In their place, what do you think you’d remember most?
15. What do you imagine the Traveling Symphony will find when they reach the brightly lit town to the south?
16. The novel ends with Clark, remembering the dinner party and imagining that somewhere in the world, ships are sailing. Why did Mandel choose to end the novel with him?
(Questions are issued by the publisher.)
Wolf in White Van
John Darnielle, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374292089
Summary
Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1967
• Where—Bloomington, Indiana, USA
• Raised—Central California
• Education—B.A., Pitzer College
• Currently—lives in Durham, North Carolina
John Darnielle is an American musician and novelist best known as the primary (and often solitary) member of the American band the Mountain Goats, for which he is the writer, composer, guitarist, pianist and vocalist.
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Darnielle grew up in Central California with an abusive stepfather by the name of Mike Noonan (1940-2004) (as referenced frequently in The Sunset Tree) and after high school, he went to work as a psychiatric nurse at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California.
For a couple of years, he lived on the Metropolitan State grounds, writing songs and playing his guitar when he wasn't working. During this time he began recording some of his songs onto cassette tapes using a Panasonic boombox. Shortly after working at the hospital, Darnielle attended Pitzer College from 1991 to 1995, earning a degree in English.
Throughout his college education he continued to record music. In 1992, Dennis Callaci, a friend of Darnielle's and owner of Shrimper Records, released a tape of Darnielle’s songs called "Taboo VI: The Homecoming". Around that time, the Mountain Goats were born and began touring with just Darnielle on guitar and a bassist, first Rachel Ware and then Peter Hughes.
Darnielle has lived in Grinnell, Iowa; Colo, Iowa; Ames, Iowa; Chicago, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; and Milpitas, CA. He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Lalitree Darnielle, a botanist and photographer (who was featured playing the banjo in the band's 1998 EP New Asian Cinema) and son Roman.
Musical career
Darnielle became a vegetarian in 1996 and a Vegan in 2007. In the same year, he performed at a benefit for the animal welfare organization Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York. He performed again at Farm Sanctuary in 2009.
Writing
Darnielle's first book, Black Sabbath: Master of Reality, was published in 2008 as part of the 33⅓ series. He writes the "South Pole Dispatch" feature in Decibel Magazine every month and also guest edited the poetry section of The Mays, an anthology of the best creative work coming out of Oxford and Cambridge. His first novel, entitled Wolf In White Van was released in 2014. It was among ten books nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
The extreme premise of Wolf in White Van…makes it sound like a lesser Chuck Palahniuk novel. Yet it has a careful and almost cloistered air.... The novel's emotional range is narrow but deep. Mr. Darnielle seems to be indicating his agreement with something the novelist Richard Ford has said: "People always know more than I do, but what I know, I know"…What drives Wolf in White Van is Mr. Darnielle's uncanny sense of what it's like to feel marginalized, an outsider, a freak. He has an instinctive understanding of fetid teenage emotional states and the "timelines of meaningless afternoons that ended somewhere big and terrible."
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Sean conceives of a mail-based strategy game.... When one young couple’s attempt to find the Trace Italian in real life leads them to a fatal “terminus” in the desert, Sean revisits his own dark history. He tracks back through the branching series of choices that led to his disfiguring injury, the creation of the game, and the couple’s tragic end.
Publishers Weekly
Though in a way about sf, this debut novel by the lead singer of the Mountain Goats is not a sf story. It's essentially a character study about narrator Sean Phillips, a thirtysomething man with severe facial disfiguration.... Verdict: Beautifully written psychological fiction for sophisticated readers, with not much else like it out there. —Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A man badly disfigured in a gun accident ponders gaming, heavy metal, family, love and the crazed emotions that tend to surround our obsessions.... Sean is a consistently generous and sympathetic hero.... A pop culture-infused novel that thoughtfully and nonjudgmentally considers the dark side of nerddom.
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.)
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher, 2007
Penguin Group (USA)
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781595141880
Summary
Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier.
On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out how he made the list.
Through Hannah and Clay’s dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.
Thirteen Reasons Why is the gripping, addictive international bestseller that has changed lives the world over. It's an unrelenting modern classic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1975
• Where—Arcadia, California, USA
• Education—Cuesta Community College and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (no degree)
• Currently—lives in California
Jay Asher is an American writer of contemporary novels for teens. He was born in Arcadia, California, and grew up with a family that encouraged him to pursue his many interests—from guitar playing to writing. He attended Cuesta Community College after graduating from San Luis Obispo High School. It was here where he wrote his first two children’s books for a class called Children’s Literature Appreciation.
Deciding he wanted to become an elementary school teacher, he transferred to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. But he left his senior year in order to pursue his career as a serious writer. In 2002 he married his wife Joan Marie. Those early years found him working in various establishments, including a shoe store, libraries, and bookstores. Many of his work experiences had an impact on some aspect of his writing.
Writing
Asher's first novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, became a 2007 New York Times best-selling young-adult fiction novel. It won several awards and received five stars from Teen Book Review, as well as high praise from fellow authors, including Ellen Hopkins, Sherman Alexie, and Chris Crutcher, and Gordon Korman.
His second novel The Future of Us was co-written by Carolyn Mackler and published in 2011. He has also written several picture books and middle school humor novels.
Asher is a fan of the TV series My So-Called Life and cites it as a major influence on his work.
Synopses
Thirteen Reasons Why (2007). This is the story of Hannah Baker, a girl who committed suicide. She reveals her thirteen reasons for her decision in a series of seven audio tapes mailed to a classmate with instructions to pass them from one student to another, in the style of a chain letter. Through Hannah's recorded voice, her classmates learn the reasons why Hannah decides to take her own life. Besides Hannah, the reader also sees the story through the eyes of Clay Jensen, one of the recipients of the tapes. Asher was inspired to write due to incidents that happened in his high school.
The Future of Us (2011) This was co-written with Carolyn Mackler. This is the story of Josh and Emma, two teenagers who used to be best friends until a huge misunderstanding. In 1996, Josh helps Emma set up her internet, only to find Facebook—before it has been invented. There, they can see themselves 15 years in the future—status updates, information, friends, etc. Using Facebook, they are able to change their destinies. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/09/2014.)
Book Reviews
This novel is the first for Jay Asher, and it is billed as a spectacular one. The reader learns that one cannot stop the future or rewind the past. This book is also billed as suspense. It may not be for everyone, and many may become bored and/or discouraged before the end, but, like other Razorbill books, it is challenging and interesting. —Naomi Butler
Children's Literature
From Hannah, readers realize the impact of thoughtless actions and comments. As Clay finishes Hannah's story, he becomes more perceptive and sensitive to others.... [T]here is depth to the novel. This provocative tale touches on universal topics of interest, is genuine in its message, and would be a good choice for high school book discussions and booktalks. —Judy Sasges
VOYA
(Gr 7 Up.) High school senior Clay Jensen receives seven audiotapes in the mail. They contain the story of why Hannah Baker, a girl he adored, committed suicide.... He spends a torturous night listening and wandering, unearthing the depth and causes of Hannah's unhappiness.... [T]he breakneck pace and dizzying emotion are the true source of this novel's irresistible readability at all levels. —Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library
Library Journal
The text alternates, sometimes quickly, between Hannah's voice (italicized) and Clay's thoughts as he listens to her words, which illuminate betrayals and secrets that demonstrate the consequences of even small actions.... The message about how we treat one another, although sometimes heavy, makes for compelling reading. —Dobrez, Cindy
Booklist
(Starred review.) Asher has created an entrancing character study and a riveting look into the psyche of someone who would make this unfortunate choice. A brilliant and mesmerizing debut from a gifted new author
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How does Hannah and Clay’s dual narrative enhance the story? What additional details are revealed through this method of storytelling that might have otherwise remained secret if the book had been written from only one of their perspectives? How might the story have changed if the book had been written from one of the other people’s perspectives instead of Clay’s? For example, Tony’s?
2. Consider the title of the novel. Are each of Hannah’s thirteen reasons of equal importance? Which do you find to be the most unexpected? Who is responsible for Hannah’s death? Why do you think Hannah committed suicide?
3. The inside of the book jacket for Thirteen Reasons Why pictures a replica of the map that Hannah leaves for each of the people named on her tapes. What does being able to visually trace Clay’s route through town add to your reading experience?
4. Discuss the role that the presence of Hannah’s voice plays as a physical presence on the tapes. Is the impact the tapes have different from the impression a suicide note would have left? Why do you think she recorded and left the tapes? If her story had been recorded on CDs or MP3 files would the effect have been different?
5. At the beginning of the first tape, Hannah says, "...there are thirteen sides to every story." What does she mean by this? Are there sides to her own story that Hannah doesn’t know? Do you think she would have made different decisions if she had had the chance to listen to each of the other thirteen sides?
6. Hannah references rumors that she hoped to get away from when her family moved. What do you imagine she meant? Define the word "rumor." What comment does this story make about rumors in general? Discuss how rumors and truth can be connected. Is one more powerful than the other? Can rumors be positive? Does Hannah’s story change your original point of view on this subject?
7. Hannah also says, "No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same." Discuss the concept of individual perception and how it contributes to how Hannah’s story plays out. What do you think she means by "pushing it"? Further on, Hannah says, "...I’m sure you must have thought, This can’t be why I’m on the tapes.
8. Mr. Porter tells Hannah that besides filing charges with the police,she has two options for dealing with what happened at the afterparty. He tells her she can confront the other person or move on. Do you agree that these are her only options? What do you think Clay was hoping Mr. Porter would say to Hannah?
9. Reflect on Hannah and Clay’s last words to each other in the hallway at school. Discuss their greater meaning within the context of the story. Compare and contrast their last words to the other times in the novel when these same words are uttered under different circumstances. How is it relevant that Clay hears Skye utter these words?
10. Discuss Skye’s role in the story. Compare and contrast her to Hannah. What do you think Clay says to Skye when he catches up with her in the hallway?
11. Why do you think the author ended the story the way he did? How do you think Clay is changed by listening to Hannah’s tapes? Do you think the tapes had similar effects on the other listeners? Do you think they all followed Hannah’s instructions in the same manner that Clay did? How do you imagine their experiences to be different?
12. Could anything have saved Hannah? If one link in this chain of events had been different, which one do you think would have made the most difference for Hannah? How would a change in that specific event have impacted the remaining portion of the other thirteen reasons that followed?
13. What will you remember from reading this novel?
14. Read Jay Asher’s responses to thirteen questions about Thirteen Reasons Why, which are printed in the back of the book. If you had you the chance, would you have asked Jay the same thirteen questions after reading the story? What else would you like to know? Which of his responses surprised you the most? How do his answers help you to better understand Hannah and the novel?
(Questions issued the publisher.)
Perfect Peace
Daniel Black, 2010
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312582678
Summary
The heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have...
When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while."
From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment. Chance is a mixed breed Pit Bull. He’s been born and raised to fight and seldom leaves the dirty basement where he is kept between fights.
But Chance is not a victim or a monster. It is Chance’s unique spirit that helps him escape and puts him in the path of Adam. What transpires is the story of one man, one dog, and how they save each other—in ways they ever could have expected. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Kansas Ctiy, Missouri, USA
• Raised—Blackwell, Arkansas
• Education—B.A., Clark College; Ph.D., Temple University
• Currently—lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Daniel Omotosho Black is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, yet spent the majority of his childhood years in Blackwell, Arkansas. He was granted a full scholarship to Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he majored in English. He was awarded the Oxford Modern British Studies Scholarship and studied abroad at Oxford University, Oxford, England.
Upon graduation from Clark College (magna cum laude in 1988), he was granted a full graduate fellowship to Temple University in pursuit of a Ph.D. in African-American Studies. Completing this phase of his academic career in 1993, with Sonia Sanchez as one of his dissertation advisers, Dr. Black returned to his alma mater in order to help establish the tradition of top-notch scholars who publish and remain at historically Black institutions.
As a tenured associate professor, he now aims to provide an example of young African Americans of the importance of self-knowledge and communal commitment.
Omotosho, as he prefers to be called, is the founder of the Nzinga-Ndugu rites of passage (or initiation) society — a group whose focus is instilling principle and character in the lives of African-American youth.
Novels
Black is the author of four novels, including They Tell Me of a Home (2005), The Sacred Place (2007), Perfect Peace (2010), and Twelve Gates to the City (2014). (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A high-spirited, compassionate look at everyone's longings for perfection, both inside and out.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Black effortlessly conveys Paul's agony over his inner shame and what the world sees on the outside. It's painful to see how his father also struggles to accept as a son the child he had once adored as a girl. For the Peace family, the end of Perfect is akin to the death of a loved one.
San Antonio Express-News
Black explores the fateful decision of Emma Jean Peace to raise her seventh son, Perfect, as the daughter she has always wanted.... While the rural South backdrop is overly familiar and the dialogue is painfully hoary, Black manages a nuanced exploration of sexual identity and social structures without elevating his characters to angels or martyrs.
Publishers Weekly
Black courageously delves into such sensitive issues such as sexuality, racism, and family dynamics and enchants readers with strong pacing and Southern imagery. Those who enjoy rich and complex works of literary fiction will be provoked to discuss this novel's many layers. —Lisa Jones, Birmingham P.L., AL
Library Journal
Black builds toward the point when Perfect discovers that she's a boy, but seems confused about what to do with his character after this astonishing revelation. At the same time, the author offers a nuanced portrait of an insular community's capacity to absorb difference, and it's a cold reader who will be unmoved by his depictions. Original and earnest, informed both by human limitation and human potential.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Emma Jean’s decision seems to be unjustifiable. However, is it possible to understand why Emma Jean does what she does? Who is really to blame? Without having healed from her own childhood abuse, can she really be held responsible for her current psychological well-being?
2. How does Gus’s emotional fragility contribute unto his abuse of Paul? How is he contradictory in this respect?
3. How do Perfect’s brothers both help and hinder his transform into malehood/masculinity?
4. What is the role Sugar Baby plays in Paul’s spiritual evolution? Although they speak infrequently, Sugar Baby’s impact on Perfect Paul is indelible. Why?
5. What are the places in the novel where Emma Jean’s love for her children is made obvious? Cite examples of her being a dedicated, nurturing mother.
6. What role does the church play in the social construction of gender in Swamp Creek? How does the church/church rhetoric "enslave" its members around issues of gender/sexuality?
7. Most readers are surprised by the revelation of Mister’s sexuality. Why do you think readers don’t suspect him?
8. Eva Mae loves Perfect Paul, regardless of his gender identification. Why isn’t Paul attracted to her, especially with all she’s done to love and protect him?
9. The Jordan River is personified, such that it assumes a life of its own. How does the Jordan assist Swamp Creek residents in dealing with their communal and personal issues? Is it a "kind" character or a "mean, wrathful" one?
10. When Emma Jean begins to hear The Voice, it sounds like her own conscience at one point and, at other times, it sounds like her mother, and at other times it sounds like something Omniscient. What is the role of The Voice and how does it lead to Emma Jean’s ultimate cleansing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)