The Orphans at Race Point
Patry Francis, 2014
HarperCollins
544pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062281302
Summary
When a horrific act of violence shatters the peaceful October night in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the fates of nine-year-olds Gus Silva and Hallie Costa become inextricably entwined.
Told in alternating voices, The Orphans of Race Point traces their relationship over the next three decades as they try to come to terms with the past. What begins as a childhood friendship evolves into something stronger, but when a terrible tragedy exhumes the ghosts they thought they'd put to rest, their dreams are abruptly destroyed.
Hallie and Gus move forward to build separate lives, but Gus's hard-won peace is threatened when he meets a troubled woman who awakens memories of the childhood he has worked so hard to forget. Although helping her offers him a chance at the redemption he desperately desires, it will come at a devastating price.
Turning around an unthinkable betrayal, this epic, all-consuming novel explores how far we will go for love, even if it means sacrificing everything—and in doing so, celebrates our capacity for faith, forgiveness, and hope. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Brockton, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Currently—lives in Hyannis, Massachusetts
Patry Francis has published stories and poems in the Ontario Review, Tampa Review, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is a three time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and has been the recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council twice. Her first novel The Liar's Diary was published in 2007, and her second, The Orphans of Race Point, in 2014. She has four children and lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Like Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, this sprawling...[novel] starts out with a traumatic incident involving a young boy befriended by a girl and expands from there into a Dickensian story in which criminals with murky motives mingle casually with the pure of heart. —Laurie Cavanaugh, Holmes P.L., Halifax, MA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [T]his beautifully wrought novel is a sometimes wrenching but ultimately uplifting story of murder and betrayal in the face of faith, family in its truest sense, and—most of all—love.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. In the opening chapter of the novel, Hallie experiences an almost mystical connection with Gus at the hour when he suffers a lifealtering tragedy. Yet, she never tells anyone what happened to her that night—not even Gus. Why do you think she keeps her secret? How are the bonds we form as children different from those we make later on?
2. Nick lives by something he calls cortesia, which means courtesy in Portuguese. In what way is his interpretation different from simple politeness? How does it shape who his daughter, and to some extent, even Gus, becomes? If you had to choose one guiding principle for your life, what would it be?
3. Gus and Hallie grow up in an unusually tight-knit Portuguese community in which extended family, neighbors, and cultural tradition play a significant role. How does that shape their identity and sustain them in difficult times? In what ways is life diminished when we lose that?
4. The sea itself is a character in this novel, obsessing some, influencing all. Wolf spends his life trying to capture the ever-changing waters at Race Point on canvas, but never feels satisfied with the results. How do the other characters relate to the ocean? How does geography shape us all?
5. In a pivotal scene in the graveyard, Gus tells Hallie the secrets he never told anyone. She accepts most of it, but there are some things she doesn't understand until much later. What are they, and how do they affect her dreams for the future?
6. There are many orphans in this novel, some literally parentless, others emotionally bereft. Discuss the different ways they deal with their loneliness and loss. Why do some characters thrive, while others are destroyed by their sense of isolation?
7. Talk about the role of spirituality in the story. Gus has committed his life to traditional religion, and Hallie finds solace and awe in nature. Yet, their values are very similar and they share an abiding respect. How important is this in the novel? In our world?
8. After Gus is approached by a desperate Ava, his desire to help causes him to make a series of reckless choices. Why is he willing to take such risks for a stranger? Is it his personality, his history, or a combination of both?
9. Gus takes two "sacred" items to prison with him: a copy of David Copperfield and the photograph of a child he never met. Why are those things so important to him? Why does he give one back, but refuse to return the other?
10. Were you surprised by Hallie's marriage, or did it make sense in a way? Do you think its fate would have been different if she hadn't received the devastating call from Neil when she did?
11. How does the introduction of Mila as a first person narrator in the final third of the story change the narrative? In what way does she change Gus's life in their very first meeting? What is it about his presence that causes her to admit her vulnerability?
12. Following years of devastating and life-threatening abuse from their husbands, both Maria and Ava come to believe they are powerless to protect themselves and their children. How are their situations similar? How are they different?
13. Talk about the various "chosen families" that appear in the novel. Are they different from those formed by blood? If so, how? Do you believe they will endure?
14. After Nick's death, Hallie deeply regrets the time she didn't spend with her father. Is this a universal theme? How does she come to terms with it? How does Nick's presence continue to be felt when he is gone?
15. This is a long novel with many significant characters. Apart from the three protagonists, was there one who particularly resonated with you? Why?
16. At the end of the novel, Gus and Hallie feel as if they've never truly known their childhood friend, Neil. Did he change? If so, why? What were the signs throughout the story that he was not who they thought he was? Why did they choose to ignore them?
17. How does Hallie's concept of love evolve from the beginning of the story to the end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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This Is the Water
Yannick Murphy, 2014
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062294906
Summary
A fast-paced story of murder, adultery, parenthood, and romance, involving a girls’ swim team, their morally flawed parents, and a killer who swims in their midst.
In a quiet New England community members of swim team and their dedicated parents are preparing for a home meet. The most that Annie, a swim-mom of two girls, has to worry about is whether or not she fed her daughters enough carbs the night before; why her husband, Thomas, hasn’t kissed her in ages; and why she can’t get over the loss of her brother who shot himself a few years ago.
But Annie’s world is about to change. From the bleachers, looking down at the swimmers, a dark haired man watches a girl. No one notices him. Annie is busy getting to know Paul, who flirts with Annie despite the fact that he’s married to her friend Chris, and despite Annie’s greying hair and crow’s feet. Chris is busy trying to discover whether or not Paul is really having an affair, and the swimmers are trying to shave milliseconds off their race times by squeezing themselves into skin-tight bathing suits and visualizing themselves winning their races.
When a girl on the team is murdered at a nearby highway rest stop—the same rest stop where Paul made a gruesome discovery years ago—the parents suddenly find themselves adrift. Paul turns to Annie for comfort. Annie finds herself falling in love. Chris becomes obsessed with unmasking the killer.
With a serial killer now too close for comfort, Annie and her fellow swim-parents must make choices about where their loyalties lie. As a series of startling events unfold, Annie discovers what it means to follow your intuition, even if love, as well as lives, could be lost. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1958 (?)
• Raised—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Hamshire College; M.A., New York University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Reading, Vermont
Yannick Murphy is an American novelist and short story writer. She graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and received a graduate degree from New York University where she studied with Gordon Lish (writer and famed editor of Raymond Carver).
She has taught creative writing at the University of Southern California, University of California-Los Angeles, New York University, and Oberlin College in Ohio. She has also worked a variety of other jobs, ranging from personal assistant to famed journalist Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men) to the Hair Club for Men.
Yannick is the author of This Is the Water (2014), The Call (2011), Signed, Mata Hari (2007), Here They Come (2006), and The Sea of Trees (1997), as well as two story collections and several children's books.
She lives in Vermont, with her veterinery husband and their three children.
Awards
1990 Whiting Writers' Award
National Endowment for the Arts award
Chesterfield Screenwriting award
MacDowell Colony fellowship
The 2012 Winship/PEN New England Award. (Awards list from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [O]bscenely suspenseful.... Murphy...known for her stylistic experimentation, tries out a second-person perspective and a continual “this is” structure...that works... [I]n Murphy’s hands, the structure becomes almost hypnotic—and when the story hits full speed in the final quarter, the suspense becomes almost excruciating. (Aug.)
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] propulsive, psychologically lush, witty, and unpredictable novel.... Murphy’s evocation of feverish competition, stressed marriages, and the shocking banality of a serial killer’s inner life coalesce in a novel of acute observation, penetrating imagination, and rare agility that is capped by a resounding denouement.
Booklist
An offbeat thriller.... Countless sentences begin “This is,” as Murphy assumes the voice of a preschool teacher.... Murphy also presents the thoughts of swim-mom Annie in what for this woman is the aptly self-conscious “you” of the second person.... [A] different sort of murder yarn that boasts twists in both the style and the plot.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)
GENERIC QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they more one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you, the reader, begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers are skillful at hiding clues in plain sight. How well does the author hide the clues in this work?
4. Does the author use red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray?
5. Talk about plot's twists & turns—those surprising developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense? Are they plausible? Or do the twists & turns feel forced and preposterous—inserted only to extend the story.
6. Does the author ratchet up the story's suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? How does the author build suspense?
7. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Is it probable or believable? Does it grow out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 2). Or does the ending come out of the blue? Does it feel forced...tacked-on...or a cop-out? Or perhaps it's too predictable. Can you envision a better, or different, ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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An Obstinate, Headstrong Girl (by a Lady)
Abigail Bok, 2014
St. Martin's Press
350 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781631320057
Summary
Have you ever looked around at the modern world and asked yourself, "What would Jane Austen say?" about the follies of the day. This is your opportunity to discover the answer.
The peaceful hamlet of Lambtown, in central California’s ranch country, is cast into disarray after the Bennet family appears on the scene. From Mrs. Bennet’s social climbing to her youngest children’s dissolute behavior, the newcomers provoke universal censure. Eldest daughter Lizzy, a landscaper, challenges decorum with a series of social experiments aimed at improving the lot of the Spanish-speaking poor. And her gentle brother John offends many by virtue of his romance with local entrepreneur Charlie Bingley.
Nobody is more outraged by the Bennets than thoroughbred breeder Catherine de Bourgh and her amanuensis, Morris Collins. While Collins at first imagines that Lizzy is a promising prospect, she will have none of him, attracted instead to the elusive Jorge Carrillo. Unbeknownst to Lizzy, she has also been noticed by Fitzwilliam Darcy, scion of the founding family of Lambtown. Darcy, tantalized by her spirit but disapproving of her social crusades, makes an awkward pass that is spurned.
How will hearts be healed and peace return to a divided community? Who will move beyond their pride and prejudices to achieve lasting happiness?
Author Bio
• Birth—1775
• Where—Steventon, Hampshire, England
• Education—(The author's helper attended Princeton University,
earning an A.B. degree)
• Currently—lives in Richmond, California
About the author: The humble author of this volume finds herself much discomposed by her journey in the time travel device into which, in a moment of inattention to the niceties of comportment, she inadvertently strayed. She is even further bewildered by the world in which she finds herself; but, striving for the appearance at least of equanimity, is determined to inscribe a faithful record of all she observes here. Perhaps, by continuing to be true to her nature in such an odd circumstance, she will find her way home at last.
About the author's helper: Abigail Bok has been a Jane Austen addict since the age of thirteen, when she was given a collected edition of Austen's novels. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on one of Austen's unfinished novels, and published "A Dictionary of Jane Austen's Life and Work" as part of The Jane Austen Companion in 1986.
Imagine her astonishment when she discovered a more-surprised-than-pleased Miss Jane, suddenly transported into the late twentieth century and lost in America. But Ms. Bok immediately took her idol in hand and pledged to serve as her Cassandra, arranging all life's mundanities so that Miss Jane could turn her attention to what she does best--revealing with her pen all the inconsistencies and absurdities of daily life. This book is the result. (From the author's helper.)
For more information on An Obstinate, Headstrong Girl or to read an excerpt, kindly visit the website. Follow the author's helper on Goodreads.
Book Reviews
When I picked up An Obstinate, Headstrong Girl, I confess I didn't expect much—but hope began to rise with the first, witty sentence—and by the time I had finished page one, I was irrevocably hooked. Delicate, clever, wise, completely true to both the eighteenth century and to the twenty-first, this book is absolute perfection. A dizzying debut for a stunningly good writer
Mary Sheldon, author - Amazon Review
What a pleasure to find a modern-day Pride and Prejudice written in the voice of a modern-day Jane Austen! So many authors try to give it to us, but cannot achieve the kind affection for her characters that lies beneath the intelligent irony.... Those of us who consume Austen and her followers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner have found an author who delivers the inimitable voice of our true heroine.
Robin Schachat
Discussion Questions
1. Did you find yourself believing that this novel was actually written by Jane Austen?
2. If you have never read Pride and Prejudice or seen one of the film adaptations, did the story work for you on its own terms?
3. Did the story of Pride and Prejudice translate convincingly to rural California at the turn of the twenty-first century? What changed in the characters and storyline, and did those changes make sense?
4. Some characters from Pride and Prejudice were eliminated, and some new characters were added. Did you miss the missing, and/or did you enjoy the newcomers?
5. The narration is written in Jane Austen's voice but the characters speak in contemporary language. Did you find this juxtaposition awkward, or did it enhance the humor?
6. Some of the themes of this book are overtly political. Were there political undertones in any of Jane Austen's novels, and do modern readers recognize those undertones or overlook them?
7. Some Jane Austen characters have sex, but her novels never have sex scenes. By contrast, modern-day romances nearly always have a sexual element. An Obstinate, Headstrong Girl follows Jane Austen's lead in leaving out any explicit sex. Did the way this was handled in the modern context make sense to you?
8. Have you read any other books in the Austenesque genre of fiction? Discuss the different forms Austenesque literature can take.
(Questions courtesy of the author's helper.)
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Landline
Rainbow Rowell, 2014
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250049377
Summary
A hilarious, heart-wrenching take on love, marriage, and magic phones.
Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply—but that almost seems beside the point now.
Maybe that was always beside the point.
Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her—Neal is always a little upset with Georgie—but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go without her.
When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.
That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. . . .
Is that what she’s supposed to do?
Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1973-74
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Currently—lives in Omaha
Rainbow Rowell is an American author of young adult and adult contemporary novels. Her first novel Attachments, published in 2011, is a contemporary romantic comedy about a company's IT guy who falls in love with a woman whose email he has been monitoring. Kirkus Reviews listed it as one of the outstanding debuts of 2011.
In 2013 Rowell published two young adult novels: Eleanor & Park and Fangirl. Both were chosen by the New York Times as being some of the best young adult fiction of the year. Eleanor & Park was also chosen by Amazon as one of the 10 best books of 2013, and as Goodreads' best young adult fiction of the year. DreamWorks and Carla Hacken are planning a movie, for which Rowell has been asked to write the screenplay.
Rowell completed the first draft of Fangirl for National Novel Writing Month in 2011. It was chosen as the inaugural selection for Tumblr's reblog book club. Landline, Rowell's fourth novel, a contemporary adult novel about a marriage in trouble, was released in 2014.
Controversy
Rowell's work also gained attention in 2013 when a parents' group at a Minnesota high school challenged Eleanor & Park, and Rowell herself was disinvited to a library event; however, a panel ultimately determined that the book could stay on library shelves. Rowell noted in an interview that the material that these parents were calling "profane" was what many kids in difficult situations realistically had to deal with, and that "when these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible."
The book has also come under fire from a multitude of social justice and Korean activist sources because of its fetishization of Korean bodies (particularly "feminine" masculinity), misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Asian diasporic and half-Asian experiences, and overt tones of white saviour complex. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/14/2014.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
This very direct, affecting book captures a sense of two people who once really needed each other and then, through the travails of marriage, work and parenthood, just lost their way. The magic phone becomes Ms. Rowell's way to rewrite It's a Wonderful Life…There's nothing sophisticated about Landline, nor is there any clutter. But there's the simple story of a woman suddenly able to imagine how important her husband has been to her, and how easily she managed to overlook him. What that film accomplished with an angel named Clarence, Ms. Rowell accomplishes with a quaint old means of communication, and for her narrative purposes, it really does the trick.
Janet Maslin - New York Times Book Review
Keen psychological insight, irrepressible humor and a supernatural twist: a woman can call her husband in the past.
Time
But a focus on the endings is the wrong one when you’re reading a book of Rowell’s. What matters most are the middles, which she packs with thoughtful dissections of how we live today, reflections upon the many ways in which we can love and connect as humans, and tacit reassurances of the validity of our feelings regardless of our particular experiences.
Slate.com
After the blazing successes of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl and Attachments, it’s become clear that Rowell is an absolute master of rendering emotionally authentic and absorbing stories...While the novel soars in its more poignant moments, Rowell injects the proper dose of humor to keep you laughing through your tears.
Romance Times
[A] magical plot device allows Georgie to investigate what drove her and Neal apart in flashbacks, and consider whether they were ever truly happy. Rowell is, as always, a fluent and enjoyable writer—the pages whip by. Still, something about the relationship between Georgie and Neal feels hollow, like it’s missing the complexity of adult love, despite the plot’s special effects.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The New York Times best-selling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl makes a leap back to the world of adult relationships we last saw in her Attachments.... While the topic might have changed, this is still Rowell—reading her work feels like listening to your hilariously insightful best friend tell her best stories. —Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal
A marriage in crisis, a magical intervention and a bittersweet choice.... [Rowell has] taken the romantic excitement of great contemporary teen literature and applied it to a more mature story.... Her characters are instantly lovable, and the story moves quickly and only a little predictably—the ending manages to surprise and satisfy all at once.... The realities of a grown-up relationship are leavened by the buoyancy and wonder of falling in love all over again.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What would you do if you found a magic phone that called into the past? Who would you call? Is there something in your life you’d try to fix?
2. Do you think Georgie is supposed to use the phone to fix her marriage? Is her marriage broken?
3. Was it fair of Neal to take the girls to Omaha for Christmas without Georgie? Do you think his frustration with her was justified?
4. Do you blame Georgie for not going to Omaha with her family? For being so passionate about her career? Would you feel differently if the roles were reversed and it was Neal putting his career first?
5. Georgie doesn’t want to be home alone in her empty house while Neal and the girls are gone. How does being back in her childhood home with her mom, sister, and stepdad affect the way Georgie feels and behaves? How do each of these characters help her work through her feelings for Neal?
6. Georgie can never get in touch with Neal on his cell phone. Do you have people in your life who—even in this age of ubiquitous cell phones—never pick up their phone or answer their texts? Do you resend it? Or do you wish you could be more like them?
7. In many ways Seth is a better match for Georgie. Do you think they should have ended up together? What is it about Neal that attracts Georgie? What is it about Georgie that Neal falls in love with? Do you think they are a good match?
8. Was it wrong for Seth to tell Georgie he loves her? Or should he have kept that to himself? Do you believe him?
9. Why do you think Rainbow chose to include pugs in this novel? How does the pug scene in the laundry room relate to Georgie’s own life? Does that scene affect what Georgie does next?
10. Do you think Georgie regrets her career choices? Do you think women today are asked to make harder choices when it comes to family and their careers than men are?
11. Are you old enough to remember talking on a landline? Or a rotary phone? What memories did this book bring back? What’s different about talking on a landline compared to a cell phone? How is that reflected in the story?
12. This is how Georgie describes marriage and love: It’s more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the one—and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you’re right.Do you think she’s right? Do you think Rainbow agrees with Georgie?
13. Neal says of love, "Maybe there’s no such thing as enough." What does he mean? And do you agree?
14. If Georgie is right, Neal already took part in all of their phone calls as a younger man. How did that affect his understanding of their marriage?
15. What do you think happens at the end of the story? Does Georgie continue to work with Seth on her new show? What would you do? What does she owe Neal in this situation? What does she owe herself?
16. Does this book have a happy ending?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Year She Left Us
Kathryn Ma, 2014
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062273345
Summary
The Kong women are in crisis. A disastrous trip to visit her "home" orphanage in China has plunged eighteen-year-old Ari into a self-destructive spiral. Her adoptive mother, Charlie, a lawyer with a great heart, is desperate to keep her daughter safe.
Meanwhile, Charlie must endure the prickly scrutiny of her beautiful, Bryn Mawr–educated mother, Gran—who, as the daughter of a cultured Chinese doctor, came to America to survive Mao's Revolution—and her sister, Les, a brilliant judge with a penchant for ruling over everyone's lives.
As they cope with Ari's journey of discovery and its aftermath, the Kong women will come face-to-face with the truths of their lives—four powerful, intertwining stories of accomplishment, tenacity, secrets, loneliness, and love.
Beautifully illuminating the bonds of family and blood, The Year She Left Us explores the promise and pain of adoption, the price of assimilation and achievement, the debt we owe to others, and what we owe to ourselves. Full of pathos and humor, featuring a quartet of unforgettable characters, it marks the debut of an important new voice in American fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Stanford University; J.D., University of California
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Kathryn Ma is the author of the widely-praised novel The Year She Left Us. Her story collection, All That Work and Still No Boys, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. The book was also named a San Francisco Chronicle “Notable” Book, and a Los Angeles Times “Discoveries” Book. She received the David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction, and the honor of being named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Kathryn is the daughter of parents who emigrated from China. Her stories have appeared in the Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Slice, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Kathryn was a Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has taught in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. In 2011, she was a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Saint Mary's College of California.
Kathryn holds a bachelor’s degree with distinction and a master’s degree in history from Stanford University. She earned a JD from the University of California, Berkeley and practiced law for a number of years in San Francisco. She is an active volunteer in the arts and education, serving previously as the founding board chair of the San Francisco Friends School and currently on the Board of Directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. She’s been a member of the True to the Mood book club for thirty years. Kathryn lives with her family in San Francisco. The Year She Left Us is her first novel. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The foundling may be a familiar figure in the history of the novel, most prominently in Dickens and the Brontës, but Ma gives us a striking 21st-century iteration. In 1992, China passed a law allowing foreign adoptions. Since then, Americans have brought home more than 80,000 Chinese children—most of them girls, because of China’s infamous one-child policy and a cultural prejudice that favors sons.... Like Philip Roth and, more recently, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ma is unafraid to generalize about her culture and explore its snobberies and social codes.
Mona Simpson - New York Times Book Review
A deft, raw dissection of an American family….With great cleverness, Ma injects her Chinese family with American realism.
Rebecca Liao - San Francisco Chronicle
In telling Ari Kong’s quest, Ma succeeds in creating a deeply intelligent heroine as compelling as Holden Caulfield and Alexander Portnoy….The Year She Left Us is a fresh, compelling look at the ties that bind among all the kinds of families that we create.
May-Lee Chai - Dallas Morning New
There’s much to enjoy in The Year She Left Us….It’s Ari’s voice that sets this novel on fire….The magnetism exerted by Ari’s chapters is all the more impressive because for much of the book, the character’s misery seems to float free of her circumstances.
Laura Miller - Salon
(Starred review.) Ma’s first novel is a sweeping success—a standout from the many novels about Chinese assimilation and the families of Chinese immigrants—with a fascinating protagonist with a troubling past.... This is a family saga of insight, regret, and pathos, and it is not to be missed.
Publishers Weekly
Ma turns conventional wisdom about adoption on its head in this probing novel about a young woman adopted from China as an infant. Ari is the kind of person who is abundant in real life but largely missing from fiction: a prickly, selfish, lost girl.... Ma brings all sorts of relationships.... And she painstakingly conveys that we are never just one thing, and can never be fixed by just one formula. —Lynn Weber
Booklist
A debut novel featuring a simple plot crammed with information—factual and emotional, conflicting and unreliable. The result is complicated, like real life.... The novel questions the meaning of family, background and belonging.Ma is a cagey writer, withholding and misdirecting at nearly every turn, which can be frustrating. Nonetheless, this is an impassioned, unapologetic look at tough, interesting subjects.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What are the various effects of having four different narrative voices: Ari and Gran’s chapters in first person, Charlie’s in third person and Les’s told from an omniscient point of view? Which do you find most compelling? Why?
2. Charlie names her adopted daughter Ariadne Bettina Yun-li Rose Kong as a gesture to positively influence her fate. What does each of these names represent? In what ways is naming a powerful and important act?
3. Allusions to classical mythology appear often in the novel, including the tale of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. What does each add to the story? What purpose and place do mythological stories have in contemporary culture?
4. Gran warns Ari not to dwell in the past and to "look forward, look forward, look forward." Why is this? In what ways does she follow her own advice or not? What's the best way to handle difficult memories or past mistakes?
5. How might one explain Ari's profound act of self-injury? How does her experience in Alaska, along with her special connection to Gran, help her heal?
6. Should Ari have visited the orphanage she lived in as a baby? Why or why not? What do you make of the interesting act of holding the small, plastic camera in front of her face for much of the visit?
7. Ari’s best friend, A.J., has a very different view of visits to the orphanage than Ari does. What do the actions and feelings of the other Whackadoodle girls suggest about the range of adoption experiences?
8. Consider the forceful character of WeiWei. What does she bring to the story? How do WeiWei’s choices in life illustrate Gran’s words that “Need means there are no other options”?
9. Compare sisters Charlie and Les. What qualities does each have that are helpful or problematic for Ari? How do their professional lives affect the way they view family issues, and vice versa?
10. What do Steve and Peg Ericsson, the couple Ari lives with in Alaska, bring to the story? What do they show Ari about compassion, kindness and the nature of friendship and family?
11. What do Ari and Noah have in common, and how are their situations different? What does Ari learn from Noah that is helpful to her in her journey toward acceptance and understanding?
12. In an important moment of self-awareness, Ari wonders to herself: "If I didn't have real problems, why did I feel as if I did?" What does she mean by "real" problems? Can suffering be measured and compared in objective ways or is it always relative?
13. Burial and mourning are repeating motifs in the story. On Qingming, April 5, both Gran and Ari make visits to honor the dead. Later, Ari writes a letter to her biological parents and buries it on Lushan Mountain. Is there power in rituals, whether ancient or invented?
14. By the end of the book, we learn that each of the main characters has experienced a profound loss or separation. How do their intertwined stories build on the novel’s themes of identity, loss and healing?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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